Murky fans everywhere (well, mostly in Capitol Hill) will be happy to know that, after a lengthy process, coffee-bean buff and former Murky manager Ryan Jensen has scored the lease for the now-vacant storefront.

Barista doyen Nick Cho—who, as you undoubtedly recall, operated Murky out of the 7th Street space until the unfortunate raid of the D.C. tax office prompted by an even more unfortunate $427,000 in unpaid sales taxes—speculates that landlords Stanton Development may have selected Jensen because “they want to carry over the good things about Murky without the bad.” (The good ostensibly being serving excellent coffee, the bad, getting seized.)

Jensen, who spent three years managing Murky’s D.C. location, currently works for Counter Culture Coffee, a company that supplies beans to a number of area cafes—including Cho’s Arlington shop, which has, so far, escaped the consequences of his recent tax troubles.

Jensen is getting set to abandon his current occupational digs in order to run his new cafe, Peregrine Espresso.

“It means wanderer or pilgrim,” says the congenial 28-year-old. “It’s a word I came across a few years back. I wrote it down and have been slightly obsessed with it every since.”

Jensen says he doesn’t exactly know when the place will be up and running; there are some minor changes he’d like to make to the space, but he hopes to open by the end of summer.

Jensen and his wife, Jill Jensen—who will co-own the business—are serious coffee-lovers and felt strong connections to the Murky Coffee on Capitol Hill. Actually, they met there in the summer of 2003 and married two years later. “It’s where our romance blossomed,” Jensen says.

When the place closed down, they feared someone disinterested—or maybe someone who doesn’t love coffee as much as they do or did not meet and fall in love there—might snag the shop.

So they went for it, along with numerous other entrepreneurs, hoping to grab the valuable commercial space. When Jensen got word last week his bid was accepted, he contacted Cho before the rumor mill could. Cho and Jensen are not only former employer and employee, they’re friends.

Cho isn’t dwelling on how things turned out. He says that, for the most part, he’s ready to move on. “The more we talk about it the more misunderstandings there are,” he contends.

As City Desk reported last month, Murky’s equipment is also ready to move on—to soon-to-open Big Chair Coffee in Anacostia.

—Rend Smith

photo by peregrine espresso

Forget knitting. Forget Oprah and Bingo and watching sports. This week, D.C. seniors are competing in track and field, bowling, tennis, and archery.

D.C. Parks and Rec and the Office on Aging today kicked off the 25th annual D.C. Golden Olympics for District residents over 50. This year is also a qualifying year for the 2009 Summer National Senior Games in San Francisco, so those who place first, second, or third will get to compete against other overly athletic seniors from around the country.

At this morning’s opening ceremony, Bradford Tatum, 87, and his 89-year-old brother, John, said they have been preparing all year for the Golden Olympics. Both residents of Northeast, they grew up in Georgetown and started swimming almost 80 years ago in their neighborhood pool.

Younger brother Bradford, who is competing in the 500-yard freestyle swim, had the honor of carrying the sort-of golden, possibly plastic torch at this morning’s ceremony in recognition of the six medals he won last year.

So, OK, the paper flames actually fell out of the golden/plastic torch as he made his way around the Emory Recreation Center auditorium. But no matter.

After the pomp and circumstance, wellwishers with mechanical wheelchairs, walking canes, and baggy T-shirts loaded up on private charter buses and made their way to Takoma Aquatic Center for the 500 freestyle.

Tomorrow: track, long jump, softball, tennis, football, archery, and shot put. Thursday: golf, basketball, swimming, and bowling. Friday: pool, table tennis, and the big closing ceremony at Fort Stevens Recreation Center.

Robert King, special assistant for DPR said the Golden Olympics have been so successful because D.C. residents are living longer. “With the senior population at 16 percent and growing, it is important that seniors participate in these games and practice throughout the year,” King said. “It’s never too late to start.”

He doesn’t have to tell it to Sue Barns, 80. A Brookland resident, she started running at the age of 60 and won the gold medal in the Penna Relays Master in 2000 as the oldest female participant.

She’s got some advice for the rest of us: “There is no excuse for young people to be sittin’ around.”

—Whitney Boyd

If you didn’t get your chance to wait in an impressive line of both people and idling cars to dump your hazardous waste for free last weekend, now you’ll have the chance to dump it all year long.

Your first (or second?) chance is tomorrow at RFK. The D.C. Department of Public Works will take household hazardous waste from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the stadium, a make-up date of sorts to accommodate District residents who did not get a chance to participate in last Saturday’s overwhelming semi-annual event.

DPW also announced that beginning May 17, weekly hazardous waste collections will happen on Saturdays at the Benning Road Trash Transfer Station, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Later this summer, Saturday dropoffs will shift to the Ft. Totten Trash Transfer Station.

Nancee Lyons, spokesperson for DPW, said she was baffled by last Saturday’s large turn out, but happy that people want to dispose of their hazardous waste responsibly.

“People were surprisingly in a positive mood as they made their way to the front of the line,” Lyons said on Monday, referring to the almost two-hour wait some people sat through. “Many people were just surprised to see so many cars there.”

Lyons also noted that DPW officials have been working with Mayor Adrian Fenty for the past year to start the weekly dropoff centers, saying, “all this event did was prove that there is a large need for these stations.”

Lyons’ advice: Keep your hazardous waste count low. Use the stuff up or give it someone else who can. If that’s not possible, here’s what you can get rid of through the DPW program:

• leftover cleaning and gardening chemicals
• small quantities of gasoline
• pesticides and poisons
• mercury
• thermometers
• paint and solvents
• spent batteries of all kinds
• antifreeze
• chemistry sets
• automotive fluids
• asbestos floor tiles

Items not accepted at the drop off site:

• ammunition
• bulk trash
• wooden TV consoles
• propane tanks
• microwave ovens
• air conditioners and other
• appliances
• radioactive or medical wastes

(photo by Bree Bailey)

—Whitney Boyd

Word is the Young Women’s Christian Association’s (YWCA) Gallery Place Fitness and Aquatics Center, located at 624 Ninth Street NW, will be shutting its doors on May 19th. The YWCA of the District of Columbia, which has been in operation since 1905, has run into financial troubles.

According to the organization’s Web site, the mission of the YWCA is ” to eliminate racism and empower women and their families with career education and training, health and wellness, and child and youth development programs that foster independence, economic stability, and overall well-being.”

Though its social programs have often been an integral part of our city, the Capital Area YWCA is perhaps best known for supplying a place for District residents to work out on the cheap.

Besides maintaining a gym and pool, the Gallery Place Fitness and Aquatic Center offers classes like boxing, yoga, and karate. Amanda Anderson, who recently joined the Y so she she could get in shape by swimming laps in its four-lane pool, says she’ll miss the casual atmosphere and friendly people there.

“The place seems to be full of real people,” she says.

A just-penned YWCA press release states that ” An increase in fitness competitors and escalating costs related to pool operations were factors in the closure.”

In 2006 the YWCA formed a task force that sought ways of keeping Gallery Place Fitness and Aquatics Center open and sustainable. “Many of the suggestions were implemented including a modest dues increase, but the bottom line remained in the red,” says the press release.

The good news is, the approximately 1,000 members that have made the gym part of their fitness regimen won’t have to pay for May, and the YWCA is planning on hooking these jilted patrons up with “special rates at other fitness centers in the area.”

—Rend Smith

Megaphone maniacs beware: Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells is again pushing a bill that would limit the amount of noise that people can make around town.

According to Charles Allen, the councilmember’s chief of staff, the council’s committee of the whole has approved the legislation, which will be up for a plenary council vote on May 6.–Rend Smith

The assets will be sold. That’s what the letter in the window explained–either in one big lot for which the sealed bidding begins at $10,000, or–if the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue doesn’t receive a good number of offers for the whole shebang by Friday– in pieces.

At 10:30 this morning, Johnathan Domingues, smartly dressed in business casual and donning a pair of brown sunglasses, was the first potential bidder to show up. The D.C. tax office hadn’t arrived yet, so he peered through the cafe’s picture window, eying the remains of what was once Murky Coffee.

“I hear they’re selling everything,” he says, “even the chandeliers”.

Asked if he’s scoping out Murky, a popular Capitol Hill coffee shop that was shut down in Febuary for back sales taxes to the amount of $427,395, in order to open his own cafe, Domingues says no, he’s not very interested in the equipment he’ll find inside, he’s interested in the location.

Though he won’t say what sort of business he would open up on 660 Pennsylvania Ave SE, he does say that it definitely wouldn’t be a restaurant. “There are too many around here already,” he explains.

Working to bring a new product called the Club Caddy to fruition, Domingues may be just the kind of D.C. entrepreneur the Tax Office would hope to attract to the auction. When two guys from the government office materialize, around 10:35, they greet him and hurriedly unlock the door.

Inside, the names and prices for Murky’s “in house only” espressos, and various other hot and cold drinks, are still on the chalkboard, written in neat loops of script. A grimy calculator and a box of unopened coffee stirrers sit on the tile bar. In the corner of the storefront, a now-empty “Naked Juice” cooler is plugged in and whirring. Wooden chairs and marbletop tables camp out in the center of the room.

The two guys from the tax office busy themselves, taking out unopened boxes of expensive looking Baratza coffee grinders from a cupboard and displaying them on a shelf. Domingues quietly explores the place– checking to see where the gray door in the back leads to. A few other potential bidders trickle in.

In a burst, the woman in charge of the auction enters the shop and starts giving her sales pitch. Talking loud enough to make everyone present stop in their tracks, she breaks it down, pointing out that there are 48 bottles of unopened flavored coffee syrup, 52 bags of unopened coffee (it keeps up to a year, evidently); even the counter is available. The only catch is everything has to be out of the building by the 21st of April to get ready for the storefront’s new renters, most likely,) and the bidder has to haul it.

“Everything is for sale” the auctioneer emphasizes, “it all needs to go. ”

And there the account of this intrepid coffee reporter must end. I was politely kicked out of the event by the woman in charge. The one whose name I failed to nail down before getting ejected.–Rend Smith

Slow-moving automobiles are making their way eastward in this great city of ours.

The Neighborhood Pace Car Program, sponsored by the D.C. Department of Transportation in partnership with the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA), has already taken root in Ward 3 and is currently creeping (at 30 mph or so) into Ward 6.

The safety program asks neighborhood motorists “to take responsibility for the impact of their own driving while setting the ‘pace’ for safer streets and neighborhoods.” It also asks them to place the special pace car decal in a prominent spot on their automobiles, so that other motorists don’t just assume that the driver is (a) trolling for a parking space; or (b) a longtime subscriber to AARP The Magazine.

Eve DeCoursey, a spokesperson for WABA, says the pace car idea originated in Australia. “Instead of just involving the engineers to FORCE the speed limit,” she writes, “or just involving the police to ENFORCE the speed limit, it also involves the drivers themselves(!) encouraging them to take responsibility for the impact that the velocity of their vehicles have on our neighborhood and community streets.”

DeCoursey goes on to say that the “risk and danger that a driver introduces to the street scape when driving 10-15mph beyond the speed limit is significant.”

Pat Munoz, who signed up to be a pace car driver in Northwest, says it hasn’t been an enormous part of her life because she doesn’t drive that much. But when she does drive, the sticker helps remind her to slow down and pay attention.

“Zooming around in your car isn’t conducive to having a nice neighborhood,” Munoz says. Munoz also says she hasn’t noticed if cleaving to the speed limit has convinced other drivers to slow down. “Maybe the people behind me…”

—Rend Smith

Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells is still fighting for peace and quiet in the District. The lawmaker, you may recall, pushed a bill before the D.C. Council last month to limit “non-commercial speech” to “70 decibels, or 10 decibels greater than ambient noise.” In other words: No setting up a big speaker on the corner and blasting people’s ear drums all day long.

The bill was tabled by a 7-5 council vote.

Charles Allen, chief of staff for Wells, says his boss isn’t giving up on the proposal.

“Just because it was tabled,” says Allen, “doesn’t mean the councilmember believes it’s dead. The community has made it clear that they want this.”

The community, in this instance, is code for residents living around 8th and H Streets NE. In that now-bustling corridor, religious groups like the Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ, featured in a recent Washington City Paper cover story, gather with loudspeakers to stage al fresco sermons.

Wells claims that “As a result of the group’s amplifiers, residents as far away as three blocks away can’t open their windows or work in their yards without being subject to the amplified noise.”

—Rend Smith

My boyfriend, Mike, spent Wednesday working as an extra on the set of the film State of Play, with Ben Affleck and Russell Crowe. He says it felt like detention.

“I thought it was cool at first that I was cast as a ‘delivery guy,’ as opposed to being just another passerby, but in the end, I was just a douchebag wearing a UPS uniform.”

He had to get to Ben’s Chili Bowl, where the scene was being shot, at 7:15 a.m., which for us is the middle of the night. He was shipped in a mini-bus “people mover” to the “staging area” on New York and G, where he got uniformed up in his UPS browns. The only other extra wearing a costume was a Screen Actors’ Guild member who had come all the way from Jersey for his shot at stardom.

Then they waited five hours for something to happen, snacking on Goldfish crackers.

When their big moment finally came, they got to walk down the sidewalk – pushing an empty dolly – across the street from Ben’s. Three times. The Jersey UPS guy had negotiated a better route for them to walk, so they would be more clearly seen on camera. He vaguely insisted on being the one on in front.

The SAG members sat in the same tent, in the same cattle call, but they were getting paid twice as much and got first dibs on the good food for lunch. They sat around bragging about the other movies they had barely appeared in.

Mike didn’t get to see Ben Affleck or Helen Mirren but he did get a few glimpses of Russell Crowe, who he said looked (in his role as an investigative reporter for the fictional Washington Globe) like a slightly healthier Christopher Hitchens.

From what he can gather, the scene involves Russell Crowe going in to Ben’s Chili Bowl, ordering a chili cheese dog, and then something happens involving a woman they’d made up to look more or less like she was dying of herpes, and Crowe almost gets hit by a car, and in the meantime his briefcase disappears.

So when State of Play comes out and you go see it at the Gallery Place Regalplex, and that scene comes on, look for the UPS guy you can’t really see. That’s my boyfriend, the movie star.–Tanya Snyder

Todd Pfeiffer, owner of Pfeiffer’s Hardware, surprised me when he said he isn’t too nervous about the new Target and the DC USA shopping bonanza just down the street at 14th and Irving.

He said most of his business comes from contractors looking for building materials and tools that Target just doesn’t have. Besides that, he said, “We have a huge, loyal clientele of people who love knowing the guy behind the counter and knowing that he’ll say hi to your children and your dog.”

The Mt. Pleasant Business Association met this morning, as shoppers from all over the city invaded the brand-spanking-new Target in Columbia Heights. They’ve received a $106,000 grant from the city as some kind of consolation prize, since the Target’s new underground parking lot got a sweet subsidy to the tune of $46 million from the National Capital Revitalization Corporation (NCRC), which was semi-private at the time and is now part of a D.C. city agency.

The Mt. Pleasant Business Association is planning to use the money to spruce up their facades and otherwise plot to lure people in to the neighborhood. Pfeiffer says it would be a shame if people “come out of the metro and go to Target and not even know we’re two blocks away.” They’d like to change the metro station’s name to “Columbia Heights / Mt. Pleasant” to remind people of the neighborhood business district.

“People may not understand the consequences of shopping over there [at the DC USA shopping center] as opposed to at Mt. Pleasant businesses, and that it may mean that these businesses fail,” said Pfeiffer. “It’s all well and good to say that you love local shopping, but spending money there instead of here could lead to these businesses’ demise.”

Yoli’s Boutique closed a couple months ago, apparently an early casualty of the DC USA. Pfeiffer said the owner was afraid of the impact the DC USA would have.

Pfeiffer and I agreed that most businesses on the street were probably safe – Target doesn’t have a pupusería yet, for example, and the bodegas in the ‘hood aren’t about to lose their business to Target – but there is some apprehension about how they will be affected.

When I tried to look at the bright side of the new shopping center, saying, well at least we’ll have a place to get things like vacuum cleaners that you never used to be able to get around here, Pfeiffer reminded me that I can get a vacuum cleaner at Brothers Sew & Vac in Cleveland Park, or he could have special-ordered me one.

It made the bright side a little less bright. I have to admit, I’m more likely to go to Target than Brothers Sew & Vac.–Tanya Snyder

Perhaps too often I’ve been an advocate of lax grammatical standards in the format-busting medium of the Web, but my kids still need to learn how to spell. That’s why we want to send them to a better school by means of the Out-of-Boundary application process. Well, if you’re going to be grading my kids, allow me to return the favor…


—Brian Nelson

Two nights ago I ordered the vegetarian stuffed pepper at Tonic, on Mount Pleasant Street. (I was there because some sticky goop fell from the ceiling onto my friend’s head last time she was at Tonic, and it took her an hour and a half to get it out, and the management felt bad and gave her a $100 gift certificate to apologize for the inconvenience, and she generously spent it on us, her dear friends.)

Anyway, back to the stuffed pepper. I remembered that pepper as one of the most delicious meals I’d ever had from three years ago, the last time I’d seen it on the menu. When I applauded its reappearance to the waitress, she told me that Tonic had decided a few years ago not to cater to vegetarians, so they took it off the menu.

Hello, Tonic? It’s me, Tanya. You know me, I live across the street and I don’t eat meat and I, like any good participant in our capitalist society, exchange hard-earned money for goods and services, including food that I can eat. What’s up with your anti-veggie business practices? Don’t you know that Mount Pleasant is full of freaks like me that don’t eat dead animals? Well, thanks for giving us back the stuffed pepper, anyway. According to the waitress, they only put it back on the menu because even non-vegetarians liked it. Thank god for them.

PS - Oh, and Tonic? We love the tater tots.

–Tanya Snyder