Jury duty is no joke. You sit. You wait. You suffer boredom or Ken Burns overload. But still. You have to do it. It’s like voting, changing your MD tags to DC tags, and reading Loose Lips. I confess: A few years back, I kinda ignored my jury duty invites. I know I failed to RSVP until after the deadline. But recently, I did show up for my federal court jury time.

Apparently, 100 residents failed to show up for their Superior Court experience. Today, the hammer fell pretty hard on these 100 no-shows.

According to the D.C. Superior Court press release:

“D.C. Superior Court Chief Judge Rufus King III announced today that he had issued bench warrants for nearly 100 people who had failed to appear on their date of jury service, and had not appeared before him at a ‘show cause’ hearing that was scheduled for them to explain their absence. Those for whom bench warrants have been issued are subject to arrest at any time, and will then be detained by law enforcement until they can be brought before a judge….

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Christopher Hitchens, a serious man of letters, has debased himself with a cheap stunt best left to the nobodies of YouTube and CNN. He submits himself for a little waterboarding vid. Watch the video for yourself and you will gag. Why must this towering intellectual fall for this sweeps-week-Fear-Factor trick. I hope he got some extra dough or nice bottle of booze for this.

I get his point. But his point has been made long before he decided to put on the black hood and get the sensation of drowning. A roll call on YouTube suggests this is old news. Are we to believe that the middle-aged-Lexus-driving readership of Vanity Fair is still on the fence about waterboarding? Are they the last to understand what happens during this procedure?

As July 4 approaches, I am sure there are many neighborhoods that have started to celebrate our independence a little early with some imported Mineshell Mayhem or a Phandemonium 205 Shot. I’m sure police are having a grand time chasing down every dispatch to some little back-alley salute and corner tribute in bottle rockets. And I know the listservs go crazy on this issue. I understand all the arguments against: kids need working fingers on July 5, cops need to chase after gunshot noises not the blast off a roman candle, it’s all such a noisy racket well past the time the Mall has emptied out. But still.

I secretly love driving around the city and watching the illegal stuff go off all sparkly in the air. In my experience, Columbia Heights is awesome with unregulated mini-finales (particularly 13th Street is gold).

So where are the best and worst places to catch the illegal action?

Congress Heights On The Rise recently attends East of the River development meeting and comes back with rave reviews: “Perhaps I am biased (this was the first community meeting I attended) but it definitely wont be my last. This meeting set my expectations for community/non profit meetings going forward. Overall, the board members were friendly, insightful and patient in explaining things to a newbie such as myself. They were welcoming and very inviting. In their words “‘no one from the community has ever come in to observe the meeting although it is a public meeting.’” Citizen journalism on the rise!

The Heights Life finds the next underground hotspot: “Leaving the Wonderland early Sunday morning, your bloggers came across a site that I exclaimed as “fantastic” about 50 times in a row. The vacant building next to the Wonderland on 11th Street was transformed into Bloombar, which its website describes as ‘Spontaneous, underground music, art and inspiration.’ The small gallery and performance space is a great fit for the 11th Street corridor, and I can’t wait to see what it becomes.” PoP has an in-depth post on Bloombar as well.

Bloomingdale got stood-up by a cab. A bad night turns into a rant.

BaancBlog reports on the sale of 1212 9th Street: “Hanny Chan, of Old Dominion Brewery, has purchased the 1212 Ninth Street lot from Selp Help, who got it from Walnut Street Development, who got it from Phillip Abraham, who had it for a very long time.”

14th & You wonders Where do you get your drink on? They write:

“Bar Pilar has practically no outdoor seating, and Saint Ex restricts theirs to dinner patrons only. Cork was packed, as per usual, and we weren’t really feeling the “wine bar” vibe anyway.

So, we hoof it over to 17th/18th street, only to find every place either packed or restricting outdoor seating to dinner guests. We ended up having dinner and a couple of drinks at the Straits of Malaya on 18th street (good food, loathesome service, but that’s another post for another time…)

We didn’t head up to U St., because the narrowness of the street tends to preclude much outdoor seating…but there may be a place or two that we’re simply not aware of.”

The District Domestic offers this tip of the day: Rosemary can be used as a medicine.

Your morning wake-up song: “Lagos City” by Asiko Rock Group (thank you Soul Sides).

Must Read.

*photo by rockcreek as found on WCP’s neighborhood Flickr pool.

Dear Landlord Dude:

I saw your ad in the Post and called you yesterday afternoon. The apartment you were offering sounded good enough: 1700 block of Corcoran, $1900, one-bedroom described either as “sunny” or “cozy” or “featuring hardwood floors.”

I thought: I just can’t swing that kind of rent. Not even sharing that kind of rent. No way. Not unless I want stomach aches and no fun for the rest of my life (or at least through the terms of a one-year lease). But screw it. You told me to meet your guy at 5 p.m.

When your guy called my cellphone at 4:30 p.m. to ask where I was, I explained the 5 p.m. meeting time. I was “sunny” on the phone. I told your guy I could change our meet-up time to 4:40 p.m. I showed you—or your guy—that I could be whimsical, flexible, and carefree. I showed that if say the A/C didn’t work I could play along, adjust my schedule to fit your schedule. That’s just the kind of person I am: “sunny.”

But anyway. Thanks for wasting my time. Your ad said nothing about the rundown closet, the stove that looked like it had last given heat to a crack pellet, and the hardwood floors being just the right shade of beat up. Nor did your ad promote the view from the small living room: a Supercan.

I wouldn’t normally care. But you kind of ruined my afternoon. We renters take your ads as truth. They swiftly become the start up points for little dreams. Not big dreams of flat-screen televisions and warm glasses of cocoa. But simpler stuff like being able to live reasonable and sort-of content. We think of all the good times we’d have with your hardwood floors and central AC. So when we show up to find our dreams replaced with the outlines of a slum, we can only be disappointed. Deeply disappointed.

I ended up leaving your rental after about 10 seconds inside. I didn’t need to inspect the small closet to realize I ain’t ready for a $1900 un-sunny junior one-bedroom with view of Supercan.

Walking away, I filled 17th Street with whispered curse words about fairness and the impossibility of living here. Talk about crushed dreams. Two years ago, an ambitious resident could find a two-bedroom dump for $1900.

Not any more. Now there are only over-priced one-bedroom dumps.

Sincerely,

Jason Cherkis

P.S. 17th Street NW hasn’t changed in at least 10 years. It still sucks. Charging $1900 to live within walking distance of one of the worst Safeways in the city is almost criminal.

By now stories of Iraq War vets and PTSD have become incredibly common. I mean USA Today was running stories on the mental anguish of returning soldiers three years ago. There is now an Iraq War PTSD clinical guide. The guide is in its 2nd Edition. This just means that a new story on the subject will usually produce a big yawn from the serious reader. Frank Rich recently noted that most Americans view the war as all but decided: it was a mistake, bring the troops home, etc. All this just makes this weekend’s Post story titled “Treating Wounds You Can’t See” by Linda Blum that much more amazing. Her story is one trend story that enriches rather than dulls. Blum, a psychologist who went to Fort Dix as a civilian contractor, began treating returning soldiers for PTSD a few years ago. Her access translates into a great read.

Blum’s story takes us to a riveting, maddening place—one a reporter just could not tell. Some of it is even morbidly funny: “This soldier remains in immense distress, like many of the people I treated who needed to grieve for lives they had taken in combat. Once, after he killed at least nine people in one week, he experienced acute anxiety and depression and was taken off work for a week. “They had me pet a dog,” he said.”

And then there’s this type of warmed-over journalism Ambien: the Post’s discovery that gee West Virginia is leaning deep red while Virginia is turning blue. Alex MacGillis’ dutifully dissects the trend but this is the type of dull story that the cable chat shows would dismiss in a quick segment. Everyone knows VA is trending for Obama–you don’t need to be Chuck Todd to know this is one musty piece!

You want a killer trend piece? You’ll find no better trend story than the New York Times’ Sunday entry on Obama supporters “adopting” his middle name–something Fox News never seems to fail to mention–out of solidarity:

“Jeff Strabone of Brooklyn now signs credit card receipts with his newly assumed middle name, while Dan O’Maley of Washington, D.C., jiggered his e-mail account so his name would appear as “D. Hussein O’Maley.” Alex Enderle made the switch online along with several other Obama volunteers from Columbus, Ohio, and now friends greet him that way in person, too….“I am sick of Republicans pronouncing Barack Obama’s name like it was some sort of cuss word,” Mr. Strabone wrote in a manifesto titled “We Are All Hussein” that he posted on his own blog and on dailykos.com.”

Judging by a google search, this is one trend story that’s going to stick around!

Ugh. Olsson’s isn’t just leaving its great Penn Quarter spot. The great local book-and-record chain will soon be filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Post writes:

Olsson’s Books, one of the oldest independent booksellers in Washington, plans to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, founder John Olsson said yesterday.

Pressed by creditors who have filed claims against the company’s inventories and by rising overhead costs, Olsson’s is closing at least one store and will evaluate its ability to operate its remaining five properties, an attorney for the company said.

“The book business is getting a little soft. It’s not selling as much as it used to,” Olsson said. “Our music sales went from 50 percent of our business to maybe 15. We lost a lot of revenue, and at the same time rents went up and real estate taxes went up. I don’t know what we would have done differently. It’s a killer.”

Let’s hope Olsson’s sticks it out. But it sounds like they are done. The chain owes a ton of dough and major publishers aren’t pleased. If one reads the listservs regularly, residents clamor for a lot of things: decent restaurants, good schools, etc. But they are always hungry for a book store. Always.

It’s ironic that this local chain has helped make many a neighborhood liveable–Dupont, Bethesda, Alexandria, etc.–is now slowly dying out. The chain had nine stores in 2002. Now they have five.

*photo courtesy of Keith Stanley.

You don’t have to be PoP to obsess about homes that are not yours. This is one of the city’s great pastimes: walking its blocks and gawking at its homes. We are all rubberneckers for a great built-in library, interesting stained-glass, a well-manicured yard, a big, well-lit living space.

Then there are the mystery buildings–the places that either look like rundown embassies or the once-grand quarters of some senator or freaky cult. I’ve spent a lot of time recently trying to figure out the large Grey Gardens-style joint at 1720 16th Street NW.

The building has 15 bedrooms, 9.5 bathrooms, and covers 6,700 Sq. ft. And a big-ass horror-classic gate. Inside, there must be a candelabra or two, a player piano, some Anne Rice books, and of course, Magick.

I could be wrong about the Magick. The building rarely appears occupied. On only one occasion did I find people hanging out on its stoop. I took this as my big chance to find out what goes on inside.

I carefully walked past the gate. I asked as politely as I could a variation on “What the hell is up with your building?”

Unfortunately, the kids decided to be snotty about it and refused to tell me. Now the building is for sale. List price: $7.5 million.

Yesterday, we reported that D.C. Superior Court has installed an urgent-care clinic for mentally-ill defendants. The new clinic is being spearheaded by both the court and the Department of Mental Health as well as the Psychiatric Institute of Washington.

According to Phyllis Jones, DMH’s spokesperson, the clinic has seen five people between Monday and Wednesday. One client was new to the system. The other four had been in the system but had lost contact. She says they were reconnected with services.

Sounds like the clinic–much needed in Superior Court and, of course, elsewhere–is working.

A few weeks ago, D.C. Superior Court and the D.C. Department of Corrections announced that they would be implementing a courthouse release program for defendants ordered released in misdemeanor and traffic cases. This is a huge deal especially considering the controversies over the jail’s inability to release people on time. The over-detentions have cost the city millions of dollars from one class-action lawsuit. Another class-action lawsuit is pending in District Court.

The Court’s press release states:

The Superior Court of the District of Columbia (“the Court”) and D.C. Department of Corrections (DOC) today announced the upcoming implementation of a pilot ‘courthouse release’ program to begin this summer. The new program will reduce the number of defendants who must return to the D.C. Jail at the end of each court day, solely to be processed out. This, in turn, will allow the DOC to focus on processing other defendants more promptly and releasing them earlier in the day.

The pilot project, designed and implemented with the participation of the D.C. Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (CJCC), will involve the release at the courthouse of those accused of misdemeanors and traffic offenses who are ordered released by a judge.

The problem of over-detentions has been an issue that never seems to go away. It has been a problem for more than a decade. Numerous studies have been done. But this seems like a real solution. No one knows more about this issue than William Claiborne, the attorney who has spent years investigating and litigating over-detention cases. He has lead on this issue, filing both class-action cases.

Says Claiborne of the courthouse release program: “It’s something we’ve been working for for a long time. We believe it should result in fewer over detentions and most importantly it obviates the need for people who’ve already been ordered released by a judge to have to go back to the jail and get strip searched.”

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In a Post feature story out today on the semi-booming H Street (tagged with the lame headline: “H Is For Happening”), the writer leads with a description of the cheap sushi joint Sticky Rice. She sets the scene this way:

Rock music plays, and tattooed waiters with fashionable mullets work the dining room. In each of the two unisex bathrooms you can pick up a phone that calls the other bathroom, a strangely entertaining and potentially useful feature.

So what the hell is a fashionable mullet?

I’m in the middle of a glorious vacation. It’s not quite one of those trendy “staycations” the mainstream media has just discovered as a (fake) trend. I still have to go to work. No, I’m house sitting for a colleague (the guy who takes all those amazing, soulful pictures for WCP). He lives a block and a half away from my apartment. But it could be another world. His neighborhood is quiet and leafy. My block is nearly treeless. His block has strollers and dogs. My block has a boarded apartment building and drunks. He lives in a sweet house. I don’t.

This feels like a vacation because of the following items:

1) Cable. The last two nights, I spent serious time sunk in the couch hooked on Law & Order and its various spinoffs. This isn’t a surprise. That show is on constantly. But I also get to indulge in a little wide-screen Charlie Rose. I’m used to watching his shows on the laptop.

2) The prospect of free laundry facilities. Now I quite haven’t taken advantage of this. But it’s there–no lines, no coins!

3) Free food. OK. There’s a lot of frozen meat in the freezer. Not my thing. But there’s tons of bread, organic bread. No pre-packaged slices for me! There’s also plenty of rice, weird sauces, and kettle corn. Hell yeah.

4) The house is quiet. I live in a noisy apartment building. Open the window and there’s a good chance I’m going to either a) hear people talking or b) hear the woman next door sing along to slow jams on the radio.

This morning, as I woke up to free coffee, I couldn’t think of a more relaxing and cheap way to kill a week. I don’t have to use up my vacation time. And I get to experience another part of the city. I can’t think of a better way to explore the District than through house sitting. We had a staff writer here—not too long ago—who managed to get by on nearly house sitting full-time. I’m pretty sure I made fun of him. I regret that now.

House sitting—will this replace the staycation?

The Smithsonian Folklife Festival seeks volunteers: It announced today that it is still looking for a few brave souls to work the popular event:

It “needs capable and enthusiastic volunteers before, during and after its annual Folklife Festival, which will be held on the National Mall Wednesday, June 25 through Sunday, June 29 and Wednesday, July 2 through Sunday, July 6.”

The festival is known to be a great time. And it is also infamous for huge crowds and sweltering heat. Read the rest of the press release after the jump.

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From Politico: Spike, of Top Chef fame, announces that his burger joint is set to open July 7 on Capitol Hill:

Washington, rising in the ranks of food towns but still not quite at the top, is home to Mendelsohn’s parents and sister, which explains his choice to open in the D.C. market. Don’t look for any Palm-esque dignitaries or pundits on the wall, though: “It probably wouldn’t be a great decision to take the political route,” he said. Good Stuff Eatery will be “a neutral cow” — much like the Canadian-born Mendelsohn, whose permanent resident status prevents him from voting in the November election. He admits to having a horse in the ’08 race, though.

“I come from a Democratic family,” he said. “We definitely seem to lean more toward Obama, all of us.”

Note to Spike: Please ditch the hat. It’s making you look—judging from this picture—like a forgotten cast member of “90210.” Do you really want to be the Brian Austin Green of celebrity chefs?

Frank Winstead: Folk hero to some, YouTube vigilante to others, and a total mystery to the press. The advisory neighborhood commissioner has made a name for himself by turning the ping-pong action in front of Comet into a grainy snuff film, and by referring to such ping-pong action as a short swat away from murder and rapes.

Thankfully, this city has a low tolerance for ping-pong porn vids. And, well, a high tolerance for wacky ANC reps.

Maybe Winstead will be re-elected. After all, bad press is the same as good press. Winstead doesn’t quite see it that way. Who the hell knows what he thinks? What he doesn’t believe in is taking reporters’ phone calls. He has stiffed the Post when they came calling. And he hasn’t returned my multiple voice-mail messages. As an elected official, he should be able to answer reporters’ questions.

With that in mind, we decided last night to take a trip to Winstead’s apartment on the 4500 block of Connecticut Avenue NW—quite a distance from Comet. Oh, and we brought along a video camera.

We’d like to call our little film: “Frank Winstead Gives Us The Bird.” Enjoy: