Why are gas prices so high at the infamous Watergate Exxon? The District’s gas king, Joe Mamo, turned out for a D.C. Council hearing Friday toting a slide show aimed at answering that question—or at least deflecting allegations that his company, Capitol Petroleum Group, is to blame.

On June 12, when the Watergate station was peddling its black gold for a pricey $5.09 and $5.29 a gallon, the franchisee who rents the locale from Mamo was pocketing “pure profit” of $1.18 to $1.25 a gallon, compared to a national average of just 16 cents a gallon, according to Mamo’s lawyer, Al Afano.

“Here’s your answer. Take a look at what they’re making,” said Alfano, who also offered CPG’s estimates of the profits being made by five other Northwest gas station operators he characterized as part of “the leadership group” pushing for legislation that, if passed, could force Mamo to sell some of his 45 D.C. stations, which make up nearly half of the city’s total.

There was plenty more, er, fuel poured on the rhetorical bonfire at Friday’s D.C. Council hearing on the legislation. But after six hours of testimony, the only thing that was clear is that gas prices have been rising faster in the Districts than they have both regionally and nationally.

John B. Townsend II of AAA Mid-Atlantic testified that in 2007, when the council repealed the measure it’s now thinking of reinstating, D.C. gas prices were only about 5 cents higher per gallon than the national average. For several months that year, the price split between the District and the greater Washington metropolitan area was as little as 2 cents. Today, however, the average gallon of gas sold in D.C. costs 41 cents more than Virginia’s statewide average, and it’s 27 cents and 28 cents, respectively, more expensive than the Maryland and U.S. national averages, according to AAA’s price tracking data.

What has also changed in that time frame is Mamo’s business. Through a series of acquisitions, he purchased more than 200 ExxonMobils and Shells in Greater Washington and New York City, ending up with a quarter of all stations in the D.C. region and about 42 percent of the District’s gas stations.

For Team Mamo, the June 17 hearing must have had elements of déjà vu-meets-Twilight Zone. Ward 3 councilmember Mary Cheh, who led the charge to repeal the 2004 law four years ago after a lobbying campaign by Mamo, is the author of the new measure Mamo desperately opposes.

Perhaps the single most persuasive piece of evidence presented in 2007, a letter issued by the Federal Trade Commission, came under heavy attack from AAA and antitrust experts last week. The letter had provided independent backing to Mamo’s argument that the so-called “divorcement law” would lead to higher gas prices.

“It’s great to predict, but they were simply wrong,” David Balto, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a former F.T.C. anti-trust lawyer, said of the position laid out by the commission four years ago.

Balto testified that the city’s gas industry is not “competitively healthy” today because repealing the earlier law had allowed jobbers to acquire the oil companies’ “market power,” a legal term referring to the extent to which a single firm or a few firms can influence the price of a product.

During a particularly vigorous faceoff with At-Large Councilmember Vincent Orange, Townsend declared that not only had the FTC gotten it wrong, but so had The Washington Post in a May 27 editorial Orange quoted repeatedly throughout the hearing, which defended Mamo as a victim of “blatant example of political scapegoating and opportunism.”

Only three councilmembers showed up for the hearing: Cheh, Phil Mendelson (who wrote an earlier version of the legislation) and Orange. Cheh and Mendelson seemed to side with the operators. But Orange, who has received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions and other support from the Mamo and his companies, said he hadn’t heard anything to convince him that the District needs a new divorcement law or that Mamo’s company has anything to do with surging gas prices in the District.

Orange and Cheh did clash, though, over race, prompted by letter the Rev. Jesse Jackson sent to D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown, other black councilmembers, and Mayor Vince Gray.

In the letter, Jackson praised Mamo as a role model for minority entrepreneurs and accused the council’s white members of seeking “to put in place onerous and inequitable business restrictions.”

When Orange echoed Jackson’s view, Cheh turned toward Orange, raised a finger and said the racism allegation was “deeply offensive, and I reject it.”

Orange, his voice rising, tried to continue, but Cheh cut in: “It is also perfectly clear that my legislation has nothing to do with race.”

Later, when Mamo and his entourage testified, Cheh demanded to know who had “ginned up” Jackson’s letter, in a heated exchange with Mamo’s longtime lobbyist, former councilmember and mayoral candidate John Ray.

“No one,” Ray said, “no one puts words in Mr. Jackson’s month.” Cheh responded: “You, Mr. Ray, or you, Mr. Mamo, ginned up this letter, and I want to know who it was.”

“You are using words you shouldn’t be using. No one ginned up this letter,” retorted Ray, accusing Cheh of disrespecting him.

That got Cheh to back down, saying, “Perhaps ginned up was not the right phraseology.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

The robber barons are back!

Or at least, the specter of them was back this morning, as a group of ExxonMobil station operators, led by their lobbyist Bruce Bereano, called on city officials today to free them—and District drivers—from gas mogul Joe Mamo, whom the operators and their lobbyist accused of price gouging.

“You have absolutely no competition in the District of Columbia," Bereano said at a press conference at the Watergate Exxon, a station best known for having the highest prices in the city. Standing behind him were the operators of half a dozen other independently run Exxons. "What you have is a modern day John D. Rockefeller." (The reference was, at least, historically apt; Rockefeller's Standard Oil went on to become Exxon.)

The press conference came as Mamo suddenly faces pressure on multiple fronts from a District government he had previously shown some skill in befriending. D.C. Councilmember Mary Cheh introduced a bill last week that would restore 2004 legislation barring gasoline distributors like Mamo’s Springfield-based Capitol Petroleum Group from both owning and operating gas stations in the District. Attorney General Irv Nathan is also investigating Mamo's business to determine whether he's unfairly driving up gas prices. (And for what it's worth, Bereano contributed to both Cheh's last campaign and to Mayor Vince Gray's.)

Mamo owns 45 stations in D.C., which gives him about 42 percent of the total. In the greater Washington region, his company owns about a quarter of the stations, as well as dozens in New York City.

Bereano and his clients applauded Cheh for the new legislation, which would restore a measure she had been instrumental in repealing in 2007. They said they were “fully cooperating” with Nathan's investigation, as well. But Bereano said restoring the city’s 2004 divorcement law won’t go far enough and could take too long to provide relief from what he and his clients characterized as Mamo’s excessive profits. As soon as the D.C. Council wraps up its work on the city budget this week, Bereano will contact Cheh and other councilmembers to urge them to expand the proposed legislation; they also want the measure to allow station operators to shop around for the best wholesale prices for Exxon-branded gasoline, instead of having to purchase it exclusively from Mamo.

If the stations weren’t locked into purchasing gas from Mamo, Bereano said, they could cut costs and pass the savings on to drivers in the District, where gasoline prices are among the highest in the country. “All my clients want is a competitive world,” Bereano told reporters. “They don’t want any exclusive privileges. They just want to compete.” (Of course, they could also cut costs and keep the savings for themselves.)

Mamo’s company purchased the properties as part of a bigger deal with Exxon three years ago. Along with the real estate, Exxon assigned Mamo exclusive rights to supply the stations with Exxon-branded gasoline. Since then, the station operators say Mamo has jacked up their rents and stretched the profit he tacks onto every gallon of gas he sells. They, in turn, have no choice but to pass the price hikes on to drivers, they say.

Mamo has denied the allegations of price gouging and said he has reduced his profit margin in the last year to keep his Exxon stations competitive with other stations in the region. In response to a request for comment, he sent the following statement by email:

We disagree with the proposed measures because we believe they are anti-competitive. The measures would allow only franchisees, who set their own prices at the pump, to sell gasoline to consumers in the District of Columbia, rather than distributors and other entities. If these measures pass, D.C. would be the only jurisdiction in the country with these kinds of measures in place. The reason there is no similar legislation anywhere in the country is that it would be detrimental to consumers. When the 2004 bill was repealed in 2007, the [Federal Trade Commission], in supporting its appeal, released studies that demonstrated these types of measures would drive up gasoline prices by restricting competition. I simply do not understand why Councilwoman Cheh would now be proposing a law that she herself repealed in 2007 for the stated reason it was anti-competitive.

Mamo also took issue with allegations that his company has overhauled the longstanding business relationship with operators since taking over from Exxon.

"The contracts that we have with our dealers are the same ones we assumed when we bought the properties from Exxon Mobil—they've been in place for decades. The only difference is that now a self-made Washingtonian business man owns their properties,” he wrote.

Cheh said in an interview last week that she expected the council to consider a range of options, including language that would let station operators choose their gasoline suppliers. She didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mamo, a 44-year-old Ethiopian immigrant, got into the gas business a couple of decades ago with a single station in Northeast D.C. He gradually built a gas station empire, then branched out into distributing gas to his and other stations in the area. The experience as a distributor, or “jobber,” put him in a position to grow rapidly in the last few years, as the big oil companies got out the retail gas business, unloading large blocks of stations to regional distributors.

This is the latest skirmish between the independent operators and Mamo in a long-running dispute that dates back at least two years before the 2009 Exxon deal. After that acquisition, several independents sued Exxon and Mamo, arguing that they should have been given first-refusal rights to purchase their stations. They say they have also offered to purchase the stations from CPG. But they say Mamo has rebuffed their overtures.

“He doesn’t even want to talk about that, because he is having a free ride now,” Raj Gupta, who owns the Exxon at 22nd and M streets NW, said of the attempted purchases. Gupta said his profits have plummeted, forcing him to sell three other suburban Washington stations since Mamo’s company took over from Exxon in 2009.

Another operator, John Johnson, who said he has operated an Exxon station on Capitol Hill for 22 years, said he’s not looking for sympathy—just a level playing field.

“I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me. I just want to compete fairly in this business,” Johnson said. “When it all comes out, you’re going to see what’s really happened in D.C. in the last three years.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

The bill, sponsored by Councilmember Mary Cheh, would bring back a law the council (with Cheh's help) repealed four years ago. One of Mamo's gas station tenants says the legislation could protect franchisees from Mamo’s “greed.”

But in his first interview since D.C. Attorney General Irv Nathan last week announced an anti-trust investigation of his business practices, Mamo, the chairman of Capitol Petroleum Group LLC, accused D.C. officials of playing politics to kiss up to constituents outraged over the high price of gas.

“Blaming the distributor is scapegoating simply to get politicians their airtime,” says Mamo, whose Springfield, Va.-based company owns about 45 stations in D.C., around 42 percent of the total, and about a quarter of all stations in the greater Washington area.

This morning, Cheh will introduce a bill that would restore a 2004 amendment to the Retail Service Station Act, a law first enacted during the energy crisis of the mid-1970s to keep big oil companies from controlling gasoline sales all the way from the oil field to neighborhood stations. In 2004, D.C. Councilmember Phil Mendelson sponsored an amendment that added gasoline distributors, known in the industry as “jobbers,” to the list of entities that must “divorce” themselves from day-to-day retail sales—meaning they couldn't operate stations themselves.In 2007, just as the measure was set to take effect, Cheh spearheaded the legislative effort that led to its repeal. In a hearing before the council vote, Mamo, his lobbyist—former D.C. Councilmember and mayoral candidate John Ray—Mamo’s attorneys, and business associates testified that the measure would run jobbers out of business, stymie competition, and run up gas prices. His team also submitted written testimony from the Federal Trade Commission suggesting such so-called “divorcement” laws tend spur higher gas prices.

But since then, Cheh says she’s come to believe the jobbers may be constraining competition, instead of spurring it.

The measure would not require jobbers to sell all of their D.C. stations, as was reported by several media outlets last week. The original law never went that far, according to Harry Storm, a Bethesda attorney specializing in gas station industry litigation. The legislation merely blocks distributors from running the stations—not owning them.

“If they are trying to force the sale of all the (distributors’) properties, that would be a different (legal) analysis,” Storm says.

Mamo says the measure could force him to sell 15 D.C. stations currently run by “contract operators,” free agents, usually family-owned small businesses, whom he contracts with to run the stations and sell gas and other products that he supplies. (There would be no legal change to 30 other CPG stations run under franchise agreements that Mamo inherited when he purchased the stations from ExxonMobil in 2009.)

The franchise operators, also usually small family-owned businesses, pay rent to Mamo and purchase gas from him, but the profit they make from gas and convenience store sales and auto repairs is theirs to keep.

One of Mamo’s franchise operators says the bill would ease concerns that Mamo wants to gradually replace them with contract operators. Mamo says he has no interest in evicting the franchise operators, but several franchise tenants say they are fearful that he intends to do just that as their leases come up for renegotiation.

“He’ll make more money if he can have our profit too. It’s a matter of greed,” says the franchisee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of affecting dealings with Mamo.

For his part, Mamo says the measure would be unfair to his contract operators, who will be out of work unless they can come up with the $200,000 to $700,000 it typically takes to purchase a gas station franchise in the District.

“Who decides which families stay in business and which get thrown out?” he says. Cheh is "basically doing this so that two or three folks—wealthy operators—can buy their stations. That’s not fair.”

In response, Cheh says there would be nothing improper if she were acting in the interest of her constituents, but the attorney general’s anti-trust investigation was a bigger motivator. Those concerns, along with the recent spike in gas prices, and frustration at never getting “a good answer” as to why gas prices in the District are higher than in the surrounding suburbs, spurred her to act now.

“We are going to restore it to what it was in 2004,” and consider other measures to address issues that could increase competition and bring down prices, Cheh says. “Introducing legislation is just the beginning of the process.” She invited Mamo to make his case before the council. “And we’ll seen how it adds up."

Mamo is more sanguine about Nathan’s anti-trust investigation. He says he is confident the city will conclude that he operates fairly.

“Gas has gone up a dollar, and we’re making less,” he says. Mamo says CPG has cut its profit margin by about 1.5 cents a gallon in the past year to help dealers remain competitive, even as prices at the pump have jumped up.

“I see it happening in Maryland and other states,” he says of the anti-trust investigation. “It’s part of the high price of gasoline. I am being scapegoated, but so are other distributors, as well as some dealers around the country."

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

An attorney for Joe Mamo rejects claims that the D.C. gas station kingpin is driving up the cost of gas, pointing the finger instead at the operators of stations like the Watergate Exxon, where prices topping $5 a gallon have caused public outrage and consternation this spring. (How complicated is the gas business? Mamo’s company, Capitol Petroleum Group, owns that station, but an independent operator runs it and sets the prices.)

Far from jacking up prices, Mamo has cut his profit margins to help station operators stay competitive, attorney Alphonse M. Alfano tells Washington City Paper. D.C. Attorney General Irv Nathan announced this week that his office is investigating whether anti-competitive actions by Mamo's company have contributed to high gas prices.

“His margin has declined from 2010 to 2011” to keep pace with prices “on the street,” an industry term referring to prices charged by competing stations, says Alfano, of the District-based law firm Bassman, Mitchell & Alfano, Chtd.

Mamo alluded to the falling margins in a statement he released yesterday, saying, “In fact, the city makes more money on each gallon of gas than CPG does.” That last bit refers to D.C.’s 23.5 cent per gallon fuel tax.

“There’s a lot of sound and fury here,” says Alfano, attributing Nathan’s investigation to robust lobbying by some of the operators of stations Mamo owns and public outcry over high gas prices. Alfano says CPG makes 14 or 15 cents a gallon today, which, he adds, would put the company’s profit margin at just about the national average.

Mamo’s tenants, meanwhile, aren’t buying those claims. They say Mamo has been raising their rents and gas prices ever since a spate of acquisitions that transformed him into a major Washington-area player in the gasoline business.

In the District, Mamo’s companies own 45 ExxonMobil and Shell stations. In industry terms, middlemen companies like his are called “jobbers.” He leases his stations to independent operators, known as “dealers,” who make money by pumping gas, convenience store sales, auto repairs or a combination of the three.

Many of his tenants bristle at the arrangement, in which Mamo is both their landlord and principal supplier. But that’s not likely the issue Nathan’s office is investigating, according to Robert Lande, an anti-trust expert at the University of Baltimore law school.

Lande, who is also a board member of the American Anti-Trust Institute, says the probe likely focuses on Mamo’s June 2009 purchases and whether those acquisitions could “substantially” lessen competition.

First, however, investigators will have to determine whether the city of Washington alone comprises a “relative geographic market,” a legal term key to determining whether a company has too much power to set prices in a given area.

“It all comes down to market power,” Lande says.

Investigators would have more cause for concern if the District alone were considered the geographic market, says Lande, since Mamo owns about 42 percent of all stations in the city. In the greater Washington region, he owns about a quarter of the total, which might not raise as many regulatory concerns.

For the 2009 FTC review, Alfano says, the relevant geographic market included Northern Virgina and some Maryland suburbs, as well as D.C., because they all get most of their gas from an oil terminal in Fairfax.

Either way, don’t expect a resolution in time for summer vacations. Lande says these investigations are so time-consuming and complex that it could be years before Nathan’s office even compiles enough information to decide whether to bring charges.

According to Alfano, CPG received an inquiry from Nathan’s office in mid-April. The company has already turned over a copy of the hefty legal document it filed with the Federal Trade Commission in 2009, and has until June 3 to supply additional price and sales information, he says.

Alfano says the FTC raised no issues with the deal. But Lande says that doesn’t mean it was vetted and found acceptable; it could have just gotten lost amid much bigger deals, like the massive federal antitrust investigation of Google.

“A little thing like this would probably get lost in the noise at the FTC,” Lande says. “You think they are going to worry about a guy buying a few gas stations?”

Nevertheless, Nathan’s office is free to bring charges if they find Mamo’s operation is stymieing competition. “If they find some of these acquisitions were anti-competitive,” Lande says, “legally, the attorney general could go back and force him to sell some of those stations.”

Meanwhile, Mamo’s tenants are thrilled city investigators are finally looking into allegations they’ve been raising for more than two years.

Roland Joun, who operates the Mamo-owned Watergate Exxon, blames the station’s infamously high prices on Mamo. He is less sure how the D.C. investigation could help gas dealers like him.

“We don’t know anything yet,” he says. “We just know we’ve been robbed with high gas prices. Our rents are skyrocketing.”

Joun wants the D.C. Council to pass new legislation reining in Mamo. Councilmember Mary Cheh has already said she plans to introduce a measure that would restore a 2004 law that barred jobbers from operating the stations they own. But Joun says what station operators would really like is a measure that would free them from their contractual obligations to purchase gasoline solely from CPG—most of which are legacies from before Mamo even owned the stations.

UPDATE: While she wasn't sure what, if any, immediate impact the measure could have on lowering prices, Cheh says she will introduce new legislation next Tuesday that would bar jobbers from both owning stations and acting as distributors. The measure is similar to a clause she was instrumental in repealing four years ago, at the behest of Mamo and other jobbers.

Instead of spurring more competition, the move now appears, she says, to have helped Mamo put the squeeze on independent operators. "If I made a mistake, I want to go back and fix it," she says.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

satellite imagery from SkyTruth.org

WaPo's story yesterday about the cozy ties between BP and the nation's leading environmental groups  has let loose a deluge of angry comments from members of the Arlington-based Nature Conservancy and other groups that have taken millions of dollars from the disgraced oil giant.

Here's a good one from Cindy D., a Nature Conservancy member who last night accused the organization of censoring comments to its blog: "Why are my comments not being posted? Are the moderators afraid to leave up criticism of NC? I notice that my posts and those of others who are critical of NC have been removed. Even more reason to revoke my membership. Oh, and remember, you don’t moderate the world; there are plenty of other venues in which to expose your hypocrisy."

You can read more of the e-wrangling between the group's executives and its members here (provided these comments have not been similarly erased).

The British oil conglomerate has spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the last decade to transform its image from that of a dirty old oil company into “Beyond Petroleum” – a company so environmentally friendly it had transcended oil drilling (and spilling) for happy, sunny and clean technologies such as wind and solar. Never mind that the  so-called "renewables" never received anywhere near as much investment as the company puts into exploring for and extracting oil and gas.

Most of the money went to the advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide but, as the Post’s Joe Stephens points out, the oil giant has shelled out to prominent environmental groups – including several headquartered in the D.C. area. The Nature Conservancy has received nearly $10 million from the company. Crystal City-based Conservation International has received millions more and even gave BP chief executive John Browne a seat on its board from 2000 to 2006. (Browne relinquished his seat about the time a sex scandal ended his reign at BP.) And, the company has had dealings with the Sierra Club, Audubon, Environmental Defense Fund, among others.

While it may seem incongruous to their mission, the environmentalists haven't tried to hide the corporate dough. They have, in fact, trumpeted their ties to corporations, arguing that these partnerships lead to better corporate environmental policies and less damage to the planet.

So it's understandable that BP's latest environmental debacle does not look good for its environmentalist friends – many of whom have been partnering with the company for a decade or more.

For BP, it's been a decade replete with felony charges, criminal fines and consent decrees with various federal agencies. The Department of Justice ordered BP to pay $70 million in criminal fines and restitution to settle felony charges related to an pipeline leak on Alaska’s North Slope and an explosion at its Texas City, Texas, refinery that left 15 dead. And that ’s just a partial recap of BP’s various run-ins with the feds.

The unraveling of BP’s “green” marketing efforts would almost seem comical -  perhaps poetic justice – if the accident wasn’t wreaking so much havoc in the Gulf of Mexico. By some estimates, it's already gushed more petroleum than the Exxon Valdez. But much has changed in corporate-environmentalist relations in the 21 years since the Valdez hit a reef and spilled more than 10 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound.

The most telling quote in Stephens' story is from Justin Ward, a Conservation International vice president: “Reputational risk is on our minds," says Ward, eluding to the risk that people may lose all faith in environmental groups that get too close to corporate polluters.

Well, duh! But the interesting thing is the way Ward expressed the growing angst at the conservation group. The term "reputational risk" is a buzzword of companies like BP that have given lavishly to nonprofit organizations as part of their quest to be seen as (but not necessarily to become)  "socially responsible" corporations.

It kinda makes you wonder if the environmentalists have been influencing the corporations or if it's the other way around.

Photo from Wikimedia, Creative Commons license

This morning, a bureaucrat from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control , the nation's preeminent public health agency, was summoned to Capitol Hill, where she was, in all likelihood, reamed out by members of a House subcommittee.

And with good reason, according to congressional investigators, who say CDC officials knowingly mislead District residents about the dangers of drinking the tap water in 2004, when it became public that several neighborhoods around the city were experiencing record-breaking lead levels.

CDC officials rushed to release a soothing report insisting that the amount of lead in the water did not pose a health threat, though they knew the findings were based on misleadingly incomplete data, according to WaPo's reporting on the investigation in today's paper. The Centers also failed to publicize a more comprehensive analysis that later showed children in the effected neighborhoods were more than twice as likely than other kids to have dangerous amounts of lead in their blood.

Since House officials haven't posted a podcast and it would have taken way to much effort to venture over to the Rayburn House Office Building, one can only imagine the grilling received by Dr. Robin M. Ikeda, who testified for the CDC at this morning's hearing of a House Science and Technology subcommittee. A quick perusal of her written testimony shows Ikeda defended her agency’s response to the lead controversy, saying: "CDC’s initial reports did not understate the magnitude of the problem."

Also in attendance was Marc Edwards, the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University professor, whose study of the lead in the D.C. water supply provided the fodder for the Post’s reporting and the subsequent uproar. He had a pretty different take on the Centers' performance: He called it “a monumental public health fiasco” that affected tens of thousands of D.C. homes.

Exposure to lead can literally make children dumber: According to the EPA, scientists have linked the effects of lead on the brain with lowered IQ in children, among other things.

Besides wondering how many IQ points D.C. youths lost forever, the episode raises questions about the believability of the CDC, the agency that leads the federal government's analysis and response to a wide range of public health threats – everything from combating swine flu and biological weapons to suggesting guidelines on pH levels in public swimming pools.

This hit to the CDC’s credibility – its performance after Hurricane Katrina was also discussed at today’s hearing – comes during a week filled with bad news on the public health front, much of it the kind that suggests our lifestyle is slowly killing us.

Diane Sawyer kicked off a week of gloomy headlines with hand-wringing on ABC World News Monday night over a study linking ADHD to pesticides found on strawberries, peaches and other produce. According to the researchers, children who test positive for the chemicals are twice as likely to have ADHD symptoms.

And, that's only one of the scary side effects linked to pesticides; Let's not forget about the Potomac River's inter-sex fish problem.

Researchers in Germany, meanwhile, announced that people living in cities tend to have higher blood pressure.

Another bummer: Cologne may lower men's sperm count. So the very same toilet water meant to signal a man's virility might actually be stripping him of it.

In other news to be filed under "counterproductive," suntan lotion is contributing to the death of coral reefs. So all those snorkelers who lather on the lotion before taking a dip are helping to kill off a main attraction to going into the water. Sheesh!

And another point of consensus: The M Street Safeway is better than no grocery at all, which is what Southwesterners are bracing for this spring. During about two weeks in April, the company plans to close down the existing store while it puts the finishing touches on a brand new Safeway, set to open April 16 as part of a redevelopment of the same parcel.

A two-week closure might not be a big deal in neighborhoods with abundant shopping options, but it’s going to be a hardship for waterfront residents, says David C. Sobelsohn, secretary of the 6D Advisory Neighborhood Commission.

“This Safeway is not only the largest retailer in Southwest; it’s our only source of food. For many people without cars, there is really no other option,” Sobelsohn says. “We are looking for assurances that Safeway will do what it takes to make sure people in this neighborhood have access to food.”

The old store is slated to close on April 4. The new one will open on April 16, according to Craig M. Muckle, spokesman for Safeway’s Eastern Division.

Among those concerned is Tserha Gebreamlak, 41, who moved into the neighborhood a decade ago, partly because of the supermarket a few blocks from her apartment. She suffers from a chronic syndrome that often leaves her exhausted, so she tends to shop two or three times a week to cut down on number of items she has to lug at any one time.

“I moved here depending on Safeway,” she says. “Now I may have to take a train to Harris Teeter,” on Capitol Hill, near the Potomac Ave. Metro station.

Safeway also has another store near Kentucky Avenue SE. But both of those supermarkets are located on the other side of the Southeast Freeway, more than a mile away. That leaves a 7-Eleven, a few variety stores, and not much else by way of shopping options.

Sobelsohn and other residents would like the store to remain open and wonder whether Safeway executives are just trying to save a few bucks with the temporary shutdown.

But Muckle says the company needs the time to move existing equipment into the new store located directly behind the old store and demolish the old building. Besides, Muckle says, Safeway has already gone out of its way to keep its doors open during construction.

“This isn’t about creating a hardship. We want to do what’s right for the community,” says Muckle, pointing out that things could be much worse: Safeway’s Georgetown store has been closed for renovations for about a year now.

But those two neighborhoods make for a lopsided comparison. For starters, Georgetown is one of the city’s wealthier neighborhoods, while the area around the Safeway is still one of the District’s poorer sections despite new construction in recent years. Not only is there a Whole Foods Market a few blocks from the closed Safeway on Wisconsin Avenue NW, Georgetown residents are more mobile. According to 2000 Census figures, the most recent available, 83 percent of households in the Georgetown, Burleith, Hilldale area of the city owned cars, compared to 60 percent of households in the Southwest-Waterfront section of Ward 6.

“Southwest is an older, established neighborhood. It’s mostly seniors and may don’t drive,” says Clarence Brown, executive director of the District’s Office on Aging, who also happens to live next door to the Safeway. “Ten days, I can live with that. I go to Harris Teeter,” he says, “but it will be a concern for a lot of people.” (Safeway originally estimated a 10-day closure but revised that yesterday to12 days.)

“I’m still driving,” says Sandra Butler-Truesdale, 70, the secretary of the residents’ association of St. James Mutual coop building, on O Street SW. “I’m just concerned to know what those seniors will do and what plans are being made” to help them get to the supermarket during the closure.

Neighborhood residents have been pushing Safeway officials to discuss their plans to make sure no one goes hungry during to the 12-day closure. Shuttle bus service to another grocery store, moving a small retail operation into a temporary trailer on the property, or offering free delivery service are among the ideas buzzing around the neighborhood.

Muckle says Safeway officials are working on alternative "shopping opportunities” but declined to go into detail about what they might be.

“We are working on those and will have something in place by the ANC meeting in March,” Muckle says.

That’s not much comfort for Gebreamlak, who says she could probably cope for a couple of weeks but “it would be nice if I knew in advance, so I can make a plan.”

Anger over the closure just adds to resentment Southwest residents feel about the way they say the store has been run over the years, concerns that prompted the ANC to launch a special task force to work with store management to improve cleanliness, security and a litany of other issues.

“Items advertised on sale are so often out of stock that I have begun to think ‘on sale’ is a euphemism for ‘out of stock’ at that store,” Sobelsohn says.

Anger boiled last September at a community meeting to discuss Safeway’s application to sell beer and wine at the new store. Hundreds of residents packed the meeting and bombarded Safeway district managers with complaints, recalls Robert Sockwell, chair of the SW Safeway Taskforce. [CLARIFICATION:  Sockwell emailed to say the meeting was called to discuss the problems at the store but the liquor license was also discussed.]

“The meeting probably never would have ended if we hadn’t cut off the questions,” says Sockwell, who also chaired the September meeting.

Susan Henriques-Payne has lived across the street from the store for 31 years but, like Brown, hasn’t shopped there in ages. only shops there on "an as needed basis." Instead, she makes road trips to Virginia to buy her groceries. She’s looking forward to the prospect of shopping closer to home once the new store opens, but her expectations are low.

“It’s a culture of mediocrity,” she says. “They really aren’t customer focused.”

“I know we have to regain some credibility with the community,” Muckle says. “But this is in no way an attempt to place some hardship on them. We see the new store as an opportunity to turn the page completely.”

(Darrow Montgomery)

Awhile ago, we brought you a story about recycling that routinely gets tossed out with the trash. Well, as you can imagine, we thought this was pretty surprising news: that loads of plastics, paper, bottles and cans dutifully dumped into recycling bins around the city were still ending up at the landfill. The culprits? Some private haulers, who apparently f0und it too expensive and too much of a hassle to take the goods to out-of-town recycling centers.

After the story ran last November, we asked Department of Public Works officials if they planned to do anything about the problem. This week DPW got back to us, which is convenient since DPW recycling chief Bill Easley and I are all going to be on the Kojo Nnamdi Show this afternoon talking about the city's recycling travails.

But, for starters, here's DPW's response to our follow up questions:

"In response to your follow-up question, DPW is working to step up its enforcement efforts by expanding the numbers of personnel who will be inspecting for commercial recycling violations. We plan to augment the number of inspectors by training some of the inspectors with our Solid Waste Education and Enforcement Program (SWEEP) on what to look for. I don't have an exact number of how many additional inspectors will be added but we currently have only three recycling inspectors compared to 35-40 SWEEP inspectors.

"We'll start looking at some of the smaller haulers to see what their ratio of trash to recycling vehicles are.

"Finally, DPW is seeking legislation to increase the amount of fines for violators. We feel like this will make businesses more likely to stay in compliance. We expect Council to hold a hearing on this sometime in the Spring."

Later, Nancee Lyons sent another email saying the following:

"I'd like to expand on what I sent earlier with regard to increasing our commercial recycling fines:

"The Department is working on revisions to the recycling regulations that include increased fines for many initial offenses and that establish graduated increased penalties for repeat offenses.  We expect to move forward with the regulations soon."

I'd still like to know if DPW is investigating the five companies we caught trashing recyclables and whether the planned new legislation will go far enough to close loopholes in the law. I've already sent in my follow up to the department's follow up.  Maybe we'll get some answers this afternoon on the radio! (ADVERTISEMENT: tune in at 1:15 p.m.)

Cappuccino photo by Jazzbobrown, Creative Commons Attribution License

I was just loafing when this popped into my inbox: The District Department of Transportation is doing away with one of the city's sweetest freebies: Saturday parking. Starting soon, drivers will have to feed the meters on Saturdays, just like they do Monday through Friday. The rate for primo spots in parking-challenged neighborhoods is also going up to $2 an hour. So forget about budget loafing at Mid City Caffe or  Sova unless you can get there – lugging your laptop – without a car.

Not quite yet, though. The new rules were supposed to begin Saturday. Since the Washington Post's Dr. Gridlock reported the news this morning, however, District Transportation officials have apparently pushed back the start day from Jan. 2 to sometime in mid January, according to this story by NBC's Washington station.

Either way, Monica G. pretty much summed things up when she forwarded the news to the Petworth listserv with the following comments: "This completely sucks! This is horrible!"

Cappuccino photo by Jazzbobrown, Creative Commons Attribution License

Last night – which was technically the night before, the night before Christmas – Qualia Coffee on Georgia Avenue stayed open later than usual, and more than a few people were stirring in there.

In part, owner Joel Finkelstein’s gesture was community-spirited: He was helping his neighbors maintain the necessary caffeine levels for frenzied last minute shopping. And, there was plenty to do to make up time lost during the Blizzard of 2009! But that wasn’t the only reason the micro-roaster kept the lights on; the Petworth coffee shop is having a great week in pre-holiday sales. Finkelstein says he has barely been able to keep the shelves stocked with the beans he roasts himself in the backroom.

Selling beans by the bagful has kept his little enterprise afloat while the coffeehouse builds its following, a task, he says, complicated by the preponderance of Wi-Fi loafers in the neighborhood.

As one of the city's only in-house coffee roasters, the store is a draw for aficionados from around the region. Many of them were already buying Finkelstein’s bags of Uganda Bugisu and Sumatra Mandheling at weekend farmer’s markets long before he opened Qualia last spring.  Those customers, who tend to shop up only on weekends, keep the doors open but the ones walking through them more regularly are neighborhood residents overjoyed that the area finally has a coffeehouse with everybody-knows-your-name ambiance – and high-speed wireless. Juggling the two constituencies isn’t always easy, Finkelstein says.

“All I ever wanted to do was sell coffee,” he says. “I never wanted to be a Wi-Fi provider. But that's the nature of the beast.”

Qualia’s Internet policy has gone through a number of iterations in the shop’s short lifespan but “it’s just a constant struggle,” says Finkelstein, who wants regulars to feel at home but would rather they didn't turn the place into their home-offices. “I don’t have a problem with people who buy a cup of coffee and spend two or three hours. It’s the people who spend six or more hours who are the problem.”

Within a couple of months of opening, he says, the same customers who helped keep the place from looking dead on weekdays were killing off the weekend business by monopolizing the table space.

Finkelstein first tried posting signs with various directives. Results, however, were mixed from the communiqués requesting that people limit their Internet time and asking laptop squatters to share table space; Some changed their ways while others ignored requests entirely, setting the stage for awkward conversations.

He says still feels bad about the regulars who left in a huff but also frets about the new customers he’s losing because they can never find a seat.

“We love our regulars. Even if they buy a cup of coffee, over time they really do support us. The problem is managing the space,” Finkelstein says. “Wi-Fi was initially used to draw people in. And it does that but now it’s hard to say if it’s a benefit or a determinant to the business.”

Cappuccino photo by Jazzbobrown, Creative Commons Attribution License

Today is the one-month anniversary of Mi Little Bistro, a Wi-Fi establishment that has livened up a long-vacant storefront on Cedar Street NW, a few doors away from the Takoma Metro station.

It opened about the same time The Culture Shop next door transformed into the Cedar Crossing Tavern & Wine Bar amid neighborhood fanfare and Listserv accolades. The bistro’s arrival was a much different, unheralded matter. So, with four-weeks gone, it is still struggling to fill its tables with customers for coffee and pastries, soup and sandwiches, Peruvian chicken and other light fare served from breakfast through dinnertime. Times are hard. The nearby Savory Café, a longtime Takoma Park, Md., institution, closed last month and so has another café across the street from the Metro stop.

Despite the rough start, the place is slowly building a following, particularly among those in search of wireless fidelity. While most of these cyber squatters fall into the category of good (or at least paying) customers, there was this one guy recently who apparently broke the unspoken rule governing the café/patron relationship and crossed the line separating the digital nomad from the Wi-Fi loafer.

“He walked in, took off his backpack, pulled out a laptop and a pack with his lunch and started eating,” says Lady Rodriguez, who owns the new café with her husband Ramón and son Edwin.

“We thought it was very rude,” she says.

The family was so taken aback that they are still not sure what they should have done, Mrs. Rodriguez says.

“We are so new at this, we didn’t know how to handle this. How would you handle that?”

Cappuccino photo by Jazzbobrown, Creative Commons Attribution License

This week, The Modern Times Coffeehouse has become the first coffee shop in the District to throw down the gauntlet at Wi-Fi loafers: The management has covered up some of the electrical outlets in an attempt to herd its laptop loiterers toward communal tables, where they can still plug in.

This particular gambit was first seen after the economy took a nosedive in New York City and has since spread elsewhere as independent shops try to cope with hordes of wireless customers, including laid off workers with plenty of time but little disposable income. Washington, as usual, is fashionably late to join in. The Modern Times appears to be the first  in the District to take similar measures.

But, not all local café owners see this as a good option. At Tynan Coffee and Tea, a Columbia Heights joint that opened in October, special care was taken to ensure the electrical outlets were close to the tables and plentiful enough to satisfy demand from laptop owners, according to Jim Sullivan, who owns the place with his brother Brian.

Now that McDonald’s franchises offer free Wi-Fi, Starbucks no longer charges its customers to get online, and even bookstore chains like Barnes & Noble double as hotspots, independent coffeehouses are in no position to forgo the complimentary hookups.

“It’s a balance,” says Dan Silverman, A.K.A. the Prince of Petworth, whose site has played host to the online furor over changes in the Wi-Fi policies at Tynan and Sticky Fingers Bakery. “They are not running Starbucks or a Dunkin’ Donuts. They want to foster an independent feeling and not just cycle people in and out.”

Beyond questions of profitability, many café owners find themselves caught between their wired and unwired customers.

Moderating the growing strife has proved more complicated than the Sullivan brothers had imagined. Last month, the shop cut back on the Internet service and turned it off altogether during some weekend hours, after a flurry of complaints from the sans-computer crowd.

“We got a fair amount of feedback from people in the neighborhood, saying: ‘Love your place but I couldn’t find a seat,” Sullivan says. But the changes fueled new controversy from the digital nomads in the neighborhood.

At The Modern Times, the debate has taken on a generational dimension.

"It's a shame that some folks feel that they are being pushed out by a new technology – one, that, honestly, I'm still coming to terms with myself. I understand that this sentiment is partly derived from a slight fear of the new and perhaps a manifestation of an increasing generational gap, but, nonetheless, it is a valid concern that creates conflict, worry, much argument and division,” Javier, one of the café’s operators, wrote on its blog earlier this month.

Informal readers’ poll: Should more café’s pull the plug on unlimited Internet usage?

Cappuccino photo by Jazzbobrown, Creative Commons Attribution License

If you are just tuning to this new WCP series on Internet cafes around the District, let me introduce myself: I am the Wi-Fi loafer on assignment, your faithful correspondent on wired café culture.

Since this is a confessional column I figure you might want to know how I became a Wi-Fi loafer, a café idler and usurper of table space.

Until recently, I was more of what you might call a Wi-Fi café dilettante, not the harden loafer I’ve become. I might have spent an hour comfortably ensconced in one of those faux living room setups at Busboys & Poets or checked the movie listings on a lazy Sunday in the afterwords part of Kramer Books. For getting any real work done, though, I pretty much stuck to my apartment/office, where it’s easy to do phone interviews and the coffee is free, plentiful and always fresh.

My loafing days began last summer when we had a lot of visitors. DC is a great place to live. It certainly makes you popular with friends and family; the same folks who would never visit you when you live in Des Moines or Columbus with a REAL need of outside stimulus. Nope. Those folks don’t make the trek to places like Des Moines. But move to DC and you’d better be ready for a steady onslaught.

While it’s nice of them to visit, those of you who work from home know as well as I do that having your in-laws in town for two weeks can put a real cramp in your productivity. I took to sneaking away to Internet cafes.

That’s when I discovered that despite the friendly service Wi-Fi cafe owners really don’t like it when you stay all day. And, while they may offer free refills, they consider it rather rude when you replenish your coffee cup – like 15 times – during the hours you toil there, books and papers sprawled across an entire table. While many proprietors go out of their way to make you feel at home, they don’t want you to get THAT comfortable.

But four hours can go by fast when you are actually trying to meet a deadline and not just checking the movie listings or obsessing over email.

Still, nobody’s going to come over and evict you as long as you've made some minimum purchase. (At least, I have yet to be asked to leave, though there have been a few cases around the country where Wi-Fi scofflaws have been led away in handcuffs for pirating shop connections without buying as much as a teabag. I’m not making this stuff up, check out this story.)  The baristas may not toss out a paying customer but you don’t have to have extrasensory perception to pick up on the disapproving vibes.

And, sometimes it goes beyond vibes. At least one DC coffeehouse has started covering up the electrical outlets, following an example set by New York City shop owners who pulled the plug on loafers months ago. The Modern Times Coffeehouse inside Politics & Prose bookstore that was featured in Tuesday’s Confessions column has covered  some of its electric outlets, according to a post on its blog.

The Internet has apparently been an ongoing source of tension at the upper Connecticut Avenue NW coffeehouse for sometime now. The café managers sent me an email this morning with a link to an online discussion they started about a week ago that brought out some strong feelings on both sides. Here’s an excerpt:

"It's a shame that some folks feel that they are being pushed out by a new technology – one, that, honestly, I'm still coming to terms with myself. I understand that this sentiment is partly derived from a slight fear of the new and perhaps a manifestation of an increasing generational gap, but, nonetheless, it is a valid concern that creates conflict, worry, much argument and division. I must also note that many laptop users – writers, students, those working from "home"- here are aware of our spatial (and economic) limitations and try their best to share tables and purchase something every hour or so.

“I guess the spectrum of possibilities range from not offering wireless at all, limiting it to certain times of the day or days of the week, limiting it to certain tables, charging an hourly fee (!), plugging up all the electrical outlets and have people rely on their batteries, to not changing anything at all. I don't want you – laptop users – to feel that we are waging a war against you, but want you to understand this ongoing concern of ours and that we want you to be part of shaping our new policy in this ever-changing landscape and environment.”

Cappuccino photo by Jazzbobrown, Creative Commons Attribution License

Just in case you missed the inaugural post yesterday, this is the second installment in a new series about “digital nomads,” who wander the District setting up their laptops wherever they can find free Wi-Fi and coffee drinks. Before we delve any deeper, let’s define some basic terminology:

Wi-Fi
n.
a certification mark —used to certify the interoperability of wireless computer networking devices.  Stands for “wireless fidelity.”

Loaf·er
n.
1 : one that loafs : idler
2 : a low step-in shoe

Wi–Fi loaf·er
n.
1 : An Internet-surfing freeloader, who arrives early, orders little, and stays all day.
2 : A Digital nomad

Coffee shop
n.
A small restaurant in which coffee and light meals are served.

Internet café
n.
1 : The high-tech equivalent of the coffee house.

2 : Eating and drinking establishments that feature wireless Internet connection. Early versions offered communal computers but no actual beverages, possibly out of fear that patrons would spill on the equipment. Anyone who travels much knows these cafes – sans café – are still big abroad. But the District and most U.S. cities have moved to the Wi-Fi model that actually includes coffee and sometimes beer, wine, other libations and full dinner service. Since people now bring their own hardware, proprietors apparently a no longer see libations as a liability.

Cappuccino photo by Jazzbobrown, Creative Commons Attribution License

It’s an early Saturday afternoon inside the cozy basement café at Politics & Prose bookstore on Connecticut Avenue NW. I’ve been here awhile – a good long while.

I arrive with my laptop and a yellow legal pad before 10 a.m. and install myself at one of the little tables along the wall that leads to the stacks. After ordering a cappuccino, I fire up my computer and get right to work. When the battery wanes, I fish around behind a pedestal holding a lamp and find an electrical outlet to plug into. There is even an extension cord handy – what convenience!

All the while, I nurse the same cappuccino. Eventually, what was lacey white foam has congealed into a dingy crust around the porcelain cup.

Every now and then, I catch the gaze of one of the baristas – a woman with long brown hair and tattoos, who keeps up an incessant banter with the other barista, while the patrons come and go with their coffee drinks, bagels, soup of the day.

There she goes again. She’s giving me the eye, the sign that the coffee shop staff has made you – that you are bagged, spotted, scoped, identified as a Wi-Fi loafer, one of those Internet-surfing freeloaders who arrives early, orders little, and stays all day.

Sometimes referred to as “digital nomads,” the café vagabonds have inspired countless features and were even toasted in the Washington Post as harbingers of a future business culture, in which we will all one day be untethered from bland cubicles and dreary office parks.

No sooner has digital nomad culture been feted as trendsetting, however, than it has become apparent that not everyone is so happy with the Wi-Fi wanderers who move between establishments such as the Big Bear in Bloomingdale, Tryst in Adams Morgan and Mid-City Caffé in Columbia Heights.

One could assume that coffee shops lose money on these one-cuppa customers who spread out across tabletops from breakfast through teatime. There are signs that this has been the case. Some popular establishments like Tryst have turned off the Wi-Fi on weekends, while others contract with Internet providers that allow them to dole out the online access an hour or two at a time and only to paying customers.

And the issue has sparked heated debate among customers as well. Just check out the eruption on Prince of Petworth earlier this month when one local nomad expressed “shock” upon hearing that Sticky Fingers Bakery had banished Internet service on Saturdays.

While people voice strong views online, where they remain comfortably anonymous, the same issues are rarely aired in real time and face-to-face.

Take my experience at Politics & Prose’s café. Despite my suspicions about the eye, I’m left to my online reverie as the morning coffee and pastry crowd comes and goes – many without even sitting down – followed by some gatherings of mommies with baby strollers in tow, the dads with young kids who are stopping in after Saturday morning sports practice, and a few other laptop luggers like myself. They eventually are joined by late-rising American University students, here to rehash the night before and plot the one ahead. The students are holding fast to their table too but sans computers.

My crusty coffee cup forgotten at the corner of my screen, I’m open season for the Upper Northwest matrons who just popped in. They’ve come for lunch but, by now, all the tables are taken. So one of the women sidles up to mine and asks: “Are you going to be staying long?”

Her companion looks slightly mortified by her friend’s nerve. My inquisitor rolls her eyes, as if to acknowledge the breaking of a social code. But her look says she is more displeased by my audacity at hogging a scarce patch of coffee shop real estate more than her own cheek at trying to nudge my computer and me toward the door.

This is the first real challenge I’ve had in several weeks of Internet loafing.  My first reaction: shame. I am taken aback by the woman’s righteous indignation. After all, it cannot be denied that I am hogging table space from customers who are willing to plunk down lots more money than the two bucks and change I spent on a cappuccino several hours ago.

I mumble faintly: “Yes, yes, I’m planning to stay.”

The barista looks over and gives me the eye again. Or is she?  At some point it becomes hard to distinguish whether you’re getting the eye or simply projecting – “They’re thinking I’m a Wi-Fi loafer! Right now, they are thinking, ‘what a deadbeat!’”

Then, I snap out of it, remembering I’m not just some Wi-Fi loafer, I am a Wi-Fi loafer on assignment. Confessions of a Wi-Fi Loafer—that's the title of this series.

I have not resorted to such guerrilla reporting tactics lightly. I tried the standard interviewing techniques. But café owners are understandably reluctant to publicly dis their customers – even the Wi-Fi moocher variety. And, who in their right mind – especially in this status-oriented city – is going to allow a reporter to identify them on the record as an Internet café idler, an exploiter of bandwidth and table space?

Ever the dedicated public service journalist, and with few other avenues open to me, I have taken it upon myself to become the ultimate Wi-Fi loafer. I’m your faithful correspondent on the frontlines of cafes in every corner of the city wherever Internet connections and electrical outlets beckon and coffee is sold. Please feel free to share your own Internet loafing experiences or your feelings – either for or against the loafers you have encountered.  You can post them here or email me at thegreendistrict@gmail.com.