Brad Pitt Has Your Secret Shit: Rolling DC

https://www.thrillist.com/eat/washington-dc/best-washington-dc-restaurants-for-ethnic-cuisine

Not sure I agree with Yechon as top Korean

The writer is including the whole region btw, not just DC itself

Someone needs to do an updated ratings of Eden Center restaurants list.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dc-sports-bog/wp/2015/12/03/pro-kobe-crowd-at-verizon-center-doesnt-make-d-c-a-bad-sports-town/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_sports

hmmmm

I never agree with top X lists for food in this town. They always seem soaked in affectation and a clear preference for places with demonstrably shitty service

If you like the Big 3 sports, DC is totally trash. If you like the other two, it's great.

'is _________ a good sports town' is an even dumber argument than 'is __________ an elite quarterback'

yes but seriously DC is a demonstrably awful sports town for fans of 3/3 of the big major league sports

what's...sport #5

frolf

tiddlywinks

I never agree with top X lists for food in this town. They always seem soaked in affectation and a clear preference for places with demonstrably shitty service

― El Tomboto, Thursday, December 3, 2015

Examples please of these raved about places with lousy service? Also, while there are similarities on many top local food lists (from Tom Sietsema in the W. Post to blogs like Eater and Thrillist and Washingtonian and Tyler Cowen and Don Rockwell) they all have their idiosyncrasies, so I am not clear which ones you are talking about.

We eat out at about the same 5 places over and over and over since the person-making happened, so take my grouching with a grain of salt. I would like examples of good service in WDC actually. Even as regulars where the managers all know us (and like us) we still get frequent WTF moments from hosts and staff.

take my grouching with a grain of salt

always do <3

I view those lists the same way I view "100 greatest books" or "100 greatest albums" or whatever. Interesting as debate starters for people with a lot of spare time and money - "Why haven't you included Chez X?" Or "Why are you still listing chez Y"? But not very good indicators of where you should go tonight for a reliably good meal.

Just as I don't consult Rolling Stone to know what record albums to put on the ol' hi-fi of an evening.

And like Tombot I have the small-person factor to consider. Taking an unruly special-needs toddler to even the most patient restaurant is risk incarnate. And every time we go out on our own, we blow 80 bucks on a babysitter in addition to whatever we're going to do or eat, so sure bets are prioritized over the New Hot Thing.

That said, in 40 years of living here I've managed to hit a lot of the highlights (Eve, 2941, Pesce, Vidalia), a few reliable mainstays (Lebanese Taverna, Lost Dog, Cashion's, Nora, 1789), and a number of overhyped Fails (Zola, Corduroy, Zed's).

Luxury apartments are more fun to build and market than affordable apartments, file under Duh.

Here in Arlingtopia, we use tax incentives and the permitting process to force developers to include a certain percentage of "affordable" units (i.e., still pretty costly but theoretically within reach) along with their "at-market" (i.e., gonzo insane nightmarishly expensive) luxury units. My hood has a bunch of this kind of housing (though not nearly enough to meet the demand). It helps (a little). Certainly better than nothing.

For every allegedly "affordable" apartment that is close-in and transit-accessible, there are surely 25 people living in some exurban group-house, or with their parents, who desperately want to move to the city but can't afford the rent. It's an unquenchable level of demand. Hard to fault developers for preferring to serve the market of people who can spend $3k/month and are picky about what type of marble lines the showers in the gym, and how obsequious the concierge is about getting them KenCen tickets.

The Metro sucks? http://www.washingtonian.com/blogs/capitalcomment/transportation/why-does-metro-suck-dangerous-accidents-escalator-outages.php

Yes, it does.

That's a great article.

http://dcist.com/2015/12/_all_aaditya_shah_wanted.php

It all began when Shah made an appointment with Paint1ng.com, a company he found on Craigslist, for Monday at 8 a.m. He got a call at 8:09 a.m. saying that the crew wouldn't arrive for another 45 minutes.

"I told them I didn't have time to wait around, and they told me to leave the door open or the key under the door," Shah says. He declined and said he would hire another crew instead. That's when "the guy started losing it," Shah said.

Shah provided DCist with the texts he received, which quickly escalate from promises to arrive shortly to "Death to Muslims," and "Get out of my country bitch," with a photo of Shah from Facebook.

from the wmata article

Colvin left after a year on account of the unsafe practices, which “just blew my mind,” he says. He’s now working in Kuwait.

lmao

Was never interested in restaurant Fig & Olive, and definitely not now. Misleading re local farm grown food and raising prices after salmonella problems and the shipped in dishes controversy

As City Paper reported earlier this week, many components of these dishes were not made fresh on-site. While the restaurant touts local farms and "genuine taste and seasonality" at the top of its menu, a lot of the food—from risotto to ratatouille—was pre-prepared at a central commissary in Long Island City, New York. That commissary suspended production in the wake of the salmonella outbreak, and investigators from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration never got a chance to test food samples for the bacteria there.

In response to City Paper's reporting, Fig & Olive shared the following statement with other media outlets:

"Commissaries are routinely used by upscale restaurant groups that serve a high volume of customers to ensure consistency in food quality and service. We had a commissary that was utilized for specific items by our New York outposts and selectively nationwide, which we closed in September 2015. The vast majority of ingredients served at our restaurants are locally sourced from vendors and farms. Currently all of our dishes are prepared in house at each location."

It's possible that the price hikes are related to changes in how and where they produce their food. However, Fig & Olive declined to elaborate to City Paper on what "prepared in house" actually means or how they were able to transition from making nearly 200 food items at a commissary to now making them at individual restaurants. They declined to say if they now make desserts, breads, sauces, and other ingredients from scratch at each location.

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/youngandhungry/2015/12/17/fig-olive-increased-prices-after-salmonella-outbreak/

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/19-Year-Old-Found-Dead-in-Adams-Morgan-After-Night-at-Bar-Family-Says-362866631.html

McGuinness' family believes he went down the back stairs of the bar and fell, Nicolai said.

Madam's Organ

http://dcist.com/2015/12/activists_take_complaints_about_con.php

An unassuming house in Cleveland Park had some extra lights shining in front of it on Wednesday night, but they were not of the festive variety. About 50 activists placed lighted placards reading 'slumlord' at a politically connected developer's home and demanded better conditions at a Congress Heights apartment complex.

"If you're allowing rodents, mold, no heat, we don't want you to be able to return to your nice house in a nice neighborhood and enjoy yourself," says activist Eugene Puryear of Justice First, which organized the protest. "We're not just going to sit back."

The developer, Geofffrey Griffis, counters that those sorts of issues are exactly what his firm is trying to fix with a sizable new development. He pins the problems on the buildings' owner, which his firm has partnered with on the planned project.

At issue is a complex of apartment buildings—four inhabited, one vacant—around the Congress Metro station and across the street from a proposed pro-basketball arena on the St. Elizabeth's East campus. Sanford Capital, which bought four of the buildings in recent years, has teamed up with Griffis of CityPartners to plan a gleaming new mixed-use apartment complex. But two major issues stand in their way.

hell yeah, that was good shit

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2015/12/AbrDUcK/3f163c270.jpg

Boycotting Cafe Saint-Ex on the basis of "HTTR" on their sidewalk chalkboard this morning.

Also I watched three people walk out of Provision 14 saying "Sorry not sorry - $20 for a (inaudible), I don't think so" and then walk directly across the street to Eatonville. Hilarious.

I heard the place that replaced Ulah Bistro is obnoxious and terrible.

The place that replaced Ulah is owned by the same people as Provision 14, so no surprises there.

Aha.

x-post - you wanted a soccer reference instead on the chalkboard, or did the DC amurican football squad steer you wrong in fantasy football? Or is this just a suggestion St Ex is bandwagon jumping?

1. They're in bumfuck maryland, not dc
2. It's a tossup whether "Make America Great Again" would make me more or less annoyed than cheering Dan Snyder's shit show of a team
3. That too

seriously the idea that I would play fantasy sports, though

anyway I came here to post this

http://wtop.com/lifestyle/2016/01/new-development-transforms-shaws-historic-streets-into-retail-destination/

“I think they see a life and an energy in D.C., and they saw a great opportunity in D.C. to do something that was a collection, so to speak, of retailers that were in a more intimate format and more neighborhood based,” Mosle says.

“This is underground, this is artisanal, this is the creative class.”

HURBLRGGH

I guess I like that I can (more easily) walk to a movie theater now, although I haven't been yet.

As a mortgage holder I'm not even that stoked for what this potentially means for property values, because if every square foot in the neighborhood goes up, then we're not climbing the ladder - just staying put at an inflated nominal price. OTOH I keep hoping for the Reeves Center to come down, like they're going to replace it with anything other than another high-rise, high-priced residential development that looks like basically all the other big-windows tiny-patios multicolored-brick-curtain-wall buildings that popped up over the last decade and a half. I am a gentrification hypocrite

3,000 a month for a one bedroom at The Shay

FWIW I heard The Louis hasn't been able to break ~88% occupancy since they opened. There are still some units that have never had a tenant.

Chris Earnshaw's old-school DC photo exhibit with limited hours, opening tonight--

January 7 – February 26, 2016

DISTRICT explores D.C. during the 1960s and 1970s through the extraordinary eye of photographer Chris Earnshaw. These images – captured originally as Polaroid prints and nearly lost to time and neglect – reflect the demolition, desperation, beauty, and energy in the every-day of the capital city of the era. DISTRICT is presented by the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., in partnership with artist and archivist Joseph Mills.

121 - Loew's Palace in Her Prime, 1965

Earnshaw, whose work is in the permanent collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among others, is, says Mills, “one of the finest photographers I have ever had the pleasure and privilege of knowing. He is able to speak in depth of the great architects of his time and place, as well as of the details on the building and the destruction he witnessed of their beautiful works. Whether turned toward a building being wrecked, or a soul being lost, Earnshaw knew instinctively not to interfere with the camera’s ability to see clearly.”

DISTRICT will be on display in the Historical Society’s rotating gallery space on the second floor of the historic Carnegie Library at Mt. Vernon Square, 801 K Street NW, Washington, D.C. Following the evening opening reception on Wednesday January 6, 2016, exhibition hours will be 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, with additional viewings on Saturday January 30 and Saturday February 20. The exhibition closes February 26, 2016.

Anyone know anything about this movie Sweaty Betty? Apparently it's a little slice of life indie set in hyattsville with a dude who wants his 1000 lb pig to represent the Redskins. Got some good reviews and festival awards but I've read nothing about it locally and I live in hyattsville

can we have a moratorium on naming things DISTRICT that are in or related to the district

x-post--- from the V. Voice review

Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified the film's setting as Hyattsville, Maryland. The film actually was shot near Hyattsville, in Cheverly and Kentland, also in Prince George's County. A newscast excerpted in the film erroneously identifies Hyattsville as the setting.

Sweaty Betty
Directed by Joe Frank and Zachary Reed

Yep, no one has written about the Sweaty Betty movie locally

just film sites and publications in NY and elsewhere.

The film, from first-time directors and best friends Joe Frank and Zachary Reed, tells the story of a number of real-life residents — and a massive pig named Miss Charlotte — living in a low income African American neighborhood in Hyattsville, Maryland on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. Frank and Reed, both Hyattsville residents (Frank works as an accountant when not making films; Reed works as a meat processor), made "Sweaty Betty" to pay tribute to their neighborhood and the people they've come to love in the area.

springboard-meet-the-directors-behind-sweaty-betty-a-film-unlike-anything-playing-on-the-festival-circuit-20150605

Odd that no one has written about this. Maybe not odd since most blogs around here just write about new restaurant/bar openings

I think this is their first movie, but they were smart enough to get it to national film fests elsewhere and quickly garnish attention from folks who pay attention to such events.

Pat Padua, who writes about offbeat and critic fave movies for the dcist blog, and curates films for the Library of Congress, usually gears his coverage around movies opening/showing here, as do others in the local media, so maybe when this opens locally it will get ink. But yea, new restaurant/bar openings get the most attention, followed by local rock bands...

Sweaty Betty opens in nyc tomorrow and i plan to catch it, i'll let ya know

Please do.

Chris Earnshaw's old-school DC photo exhibit, "District" may have a clichéd name, but its worth seeing at the Carnegie Library.

The Anacostia Community Museum has an exhibit with 60s and 70s DC too, that I need to check out.

def recommend Sweaty Betty, tho i was unprepared for Redsk1ns content, and thank God for subtitles.

Deft avoidance of hatcat there. Good to hear re sweaty Betty

This treehouse extends 20 inches into an alley and it’s dividing the neighborhood

"I hope it gets taken down and we can go back to healing," she said.

jfc

wow

Capital Hill Corner blog beating the Post to the story

The couple said they passed out fliers alerting neighbors that they were building the treehouse and got no response. They also hired an arborist to help them avoid harming the tree, then bought $300 worth of “eco-friendly tree-building hardware

It looks like that "Sweaty Betty" movie about the people with a pig in Cheverly is already available via Amazon and elsewhere online, if not yet in DC area theatres (I don't think)

http://dcist.com/2016/01/dcist_interview_sweaty_betty_director_zachary_reed.php

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2016/01/15/walmart-is-ending-its-express-concept-and-closing-269-stores/?hpid=hp_local-news_walmart-1015am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

As part of this strategy, the company said it will not move forward with plans to build two new supercenters in the District — one that was planned for Skyland Town Center in Southeast Washington and the other at Capitol Gateway Marketplace in Northeast Washington.

Of course