Today I leave the best job I ever had, and that counts a brief stint at Trader Joe's where I tried to get health care after knocking over several cases of Two Buck Chuck with my ass. As asst. managing editor at Washington City Paper for the past two and half years, my job has been mostly plumbing, behind the walls, keeping things running without a nasty backup. But one cannot be merely a plumber and still be employed at an award-winning alternative weekly decimated by its ownership in the digital age. One has to blog.

I know all of you loyal City Desk readers have been following my posts with great vigor. And, so, as my parting gift to you, I give you the highlights of my tenure here (critters, baking, dudes living in their basements, Michael Phelps, D.C. brunch culture [FYI: It still sucks], and did I mention Michael Phelps?), as well as a super sappy goodbye.

First, I want to thank all of the commenters who agree with me regarding Sarah Palin and her inferiority to owls. Because do you know what? Owls are awesome and Sarah Palin is not. I stand by my original post. If you like that one—and so many of you did—I would encourage you to please check out my ongoing reportage on critters, including the saga of Lucy the Ninja Dog, ways coyote piss can rid this city of rats, and the adorable cuteness of this bedbug-sniffing beagle.

There were also a number of you who could not hold back the love when it came to my take on brunch. For the record: I am not leaving D.C. because of my hatred of its brunch culture. But it never entered the plus column. And, although I continue to believe what I wrote, I recently discovered that the city I am moving to has a "jazz brunch." So it seems this paticular sort of suck is not limited to the D.C. metropolitan area. I plan to take down brunch culture in greater Missoula, Mont., in the next incarnation of my career, so stay tuned.

And, unlike this guy, I do plan to have a career that takes me very far away from both my parents' basement and Brazillian "game." Thanks, Roosh V, for the memories.

But if my life as a brunch-taker-downer falls flat, I can always fall back on my many successes as a baker. I just don't know if the Marcello Goldberger Brown Sugar Chocolate Chunk Cookie will have a wider audience.

I do know that I have had the opportunity at City Paper to work with amazing, talented, tough people who make me laugh and challenge me as a journalist and who made me love my job. Among them are the above gentlemen, pictured hanging out in my old cube: Joe Eaton, Jason Cherkis, and Darrow Montgomery. I especially want to thank my bosses, Andrew Beaujon and Erik Wemple. I have never worked for finer people. I now join a cast of alumni who've left reluctantly, realizing it probably doesn't get any better than this.

Looking back on my work here, it's possible that blogging may not have been the strong suit for an old gal who started in newsrooms that didn't have Internet, but I didn't come here to become a great blogger.

I came here to be a part of something great. And I was. Thank you, colleagues and readers, for all of it.

And we thought it was interesting that the auctions for our newspaper chain and Mother Harriette's house in the Virgin Islands were announced the same week. Now it turns out the Watergate is on the block. Another coinkidink: The famous hotel is $40 million in the hole, which is roughly the same as Creative Loafing's debt after it bought the City Paper and the Chicago Reader. So Weird!

And speaking of City Paper, it's fresh in the box today, with another kickass cover starring Marion Barry. Unfortunately it does not star the phrase "You put me out in Denver 'cause I wouldn't suck your dick," but that would be overkill, doncha think? Read Mike DeBonis' ongoing scoop, complete with reax from the bossman himself.

Also new in the dead-tree: Tim Carman tells you were to get good bar food and valet parking, Dave McKenna's wondering whither the Nats? in the new D.C. sports talk, Amanda Hess details why Eckington hates battered women and their children, Aaron Leitko uncharacteristically writes the phrase "a burst of happiness," plus Fringe Fest, movies, and more!

Elsewhere in the D.C. Blogoworld:

The dog park is almost done! The dog park is almost done!

Somebody hates riding the "herky-jerky" bus but still sees the glass half-full, believing the SmartBike program is going to be something other than a funny joke.

We, too, wonder why D.C. doesn't have a llama farm. But we do NOT think the pandas are stupid.

We also wonder if the banh mi at Pho 14 in Columbia Heights are any good. Capital Spice ate like a virgin in an effort to let us know.

Still looking for the world-famous Stikman? Here's one in Dupont Circle.

Red-line rider put out by crowds "so intimately located near my personal space I feel compelled to forgo foreplay and skip right to the proposal portion of the the rail ride."

Why.i.hate.dc loses its edge, writes a post about 14th Street's "wine and furniture" district that could appear on Borderstan. Sigh.

According to the Examiner, more than 100 people wrote to District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle vouching for his character, including high-profile Post reporter Brigid Schulte. She described him as an "extraordinary" and "tortured" soul who was raped early in his life and kept that trauma a secret. Malakoff, who—according to this bio—lives in Alexandria with his wife and three children, says the rape occurred under the Taft Bridge in Rock Creek Park. A childhood friend remembers the rape happening to a boy they were with.

Among 150 images of child porn found on the computer of the editor and former correspondent was a video of a preteen girl being raped by her father, according to a court document. The woman, now 19, also submitted a letter and asked that it be read in court.

Chenille Spencer, once a regular ladyfriend of Marion Barry's—and a regular with him at Player's Lounge—described her connection to Barry in 2006 as "loyal." She remains so. In a phone call to Washington City Paper to "speak on the the police and the way Mr. Barry was treated," Spencer defended her former flame and current friend.

"Mr. Barry is like a tree and all of us are the branches and leaves," she says. "I am just one of the apples that never fell off." Donna Watts-Brighthaupt, the woman at the center of the latest Barry scandal, "needs to know that she has to accept certain things. She will never be able to have a public dinner with him....She needs to accept the fact that Mr. Barry is loved by reverends, bishops, friends, me....You'll never have him all to yourself."

But in speaking of Watts-Brighthaupt, Spencer got off track after prefacing her comments with: "I have nothing to say about Donna whatsoever."

Her main concern, she says, is how Barry was treated by the U.S. Park Police, who arrested and booked him for stalking Watts-Brighthaupt on the night of July 4. (The charge was later dropped by the U.S. Attorney's Office.) "When he came home from jail, he did not have any shoestrings [in his shoes]. They still have his car. They still have his cell phone....It's been a major inconvenience for him."

The ex-mayor and Ward 8 councilmember was detained for "well over an hour" and did not get home until 4:30 a.m., she says. "They took it too far. It was jut a simple domestic dispute," Spencer continues.

Watts-Brighthaupt didn't understand that and didn't understand Barry. "When you're with that man, you want him all to yourself," she says, but that's not how it is going to be. "That's just his personality."

Spencer signed off with a label previously given to her—"arm candy"—and a final message for Watts-Brighthaupt: "Tell her to come correct or don't come at all. We want a drama-free life. Believe me she is going to be scrutinized."

*Reported by Mike DeBonis. Photograph by Darrow Montgomery.

From Jason Cherkis, who is covering today's Marion Barry press conference:

The Ward 8 Councilmember refused to answer reporters' questions about public contracts he awarded and then revoked from his former girlfriend, Donna Watts-Brighthaupt. Instead, this latest standup would be a "single-issue" presser on his arrest by the U.S. Park Police on a stalking charge and the U.S. Attorney throwing out that charge.

Upon leaving, Barry did respond to Washington City Paper's release of the voicemails he left for Watts-Brighthaupt and its cover displaying her quote: "You put me out in Denver 'cause I wouldn't suck your dick," as "trashcan reporting."

Barry began his remarks by thanking God for "intervening in the situation."

The arrest, he says, caused him "great pain....My mother called me the day after the arrest. She's 92 years of age. This could have caused her to have a heart attack or a stroke." The mother of his godson also called him and reported her kids were being teased regarding Barry's stalking charge.

The whole matter could have been avoided had the U.S. Park Police not erroneously arrested him, Barry continued, explaining that he was simply going home on the night of July 4. He says "90 percent of the time" he does go home by way of Anacostia Park because it is "serene. I don't hear gunshots. I don't hear ambulances."

When questioned about public funds appropriated to Watts-Brighthaupt, Barry indicated he would not answer and that this press conference was not the time.

His spokesperson, Natalie Williams, also spoke—essentially re-reading her statement from last night and reiterating that Barry has said from the beginning he never stalked "Miss Watts." Her statement was followed by Barry's lawyer, Fred Cooke, who said the U.S. Attorney's Office made "the right decision. We think this arrest never should have happened."

A reporter then asked Cooke if his client had violated his probation. Cooke responded: "He has not reoffended as the law requires."

Photos By Darrow Montgomery

D.C. Wire's Marion Barry coverage leads the Post's site this a.m., wherein Councilmember David Catania "steps to the plate" (Barry loves that phrase) on the issue of granting and then yanking public contracts from his former ladyfriend. "These are public funds," he says. "There needs to be an accounting." Barry's spokesperson promises the good councilmember will actually answer some questions on that front today. Other Council react: Chairman Vincent Gray avoided the matter, issuing some boilerplate about how he's worked to increase the Council's ethics. Barry's across-the-river compadre's remarks were reserved for the kicker. Yvette Alexander: "The nine lives of Marion Barry, except I think he has maybe 11 lives." And, thanks, WaPo for giving City Paper credit on the voicemail tapes! The TV did the same last night, although funnily News Channel 8 cut off the last part of our cover image.

Speaking of: Get yours today! As the Sexist points out, they won't last long. Even Gawker thinks this week's cover is a thing of beauty, and they almost never say anything nice.

Only in D.C.: The anti Real World DC blog nerds out on the chances of former castmembers running for Congress and otherwise entering politics. Personally, I stopped paying attention after Puck. Why does this town care about these people? It's plain weird.

Borderstan's seeing the glass-half-full on stolen bikes: Registered ones are nine times more likely to be returned. (As a glass-half-empty blogger, I would point out that 9X0 still = 0. But, hey, give it a shot.)

The train's out of the barn now: Metro riders with video cams (i.e., every one of them) are going German Youth on operators. First, there was the texting-while-driving incident. Now we have a Fox 5 "Exclusive": a sleepy operator. The operators' union response to growing complaints from squished and pissed-off Red-Line riders? It's yesterday's news, but worth repeating: "At least you're alive."

You know you can't get enough. Pandacam is streaming live today on Butterstick's fourth birthday with the requisite "cake" made out of bamboo, beets, and other delicious-to-pandas ingredients. Happy birthday, Tai Shan!

(Pride Parade photo by LL Mike DeBonis.)

John P. Coon, who closed Washington Consignment Shop while still owing people money, recently closed another consignment store—Nest on Wisconsin Avenue—and opened another shop: Georgetown Birdcage.

And here's some more news: He's being filmed around town for a reality show about the privileged life he leads with his long-time partner and their adopted kids (Ella gets a pony! He needs a new housekeeper! Drinks with Chelsea Handler at the Willard!). His publicly available Facebook page says the show will debut on TLC after Jon & Kate Plus 8 on Aug. 24, but other posts say it's set to air in either August or September.

A class-action suit against Coon and Washington Consignment was in the works, but a source says it's on hold at the moment. Nearly a dozen consigners came forward for the story I wrote in October 2008 and several more came forward on the comments, all of them consistently claiming they were not paid for items sold by Coon's store. Coon, who did not file for bankruptcy, acknowledged he still owed people and encouraged them to send complaints to a P.O. box of the store's parent company, Tally Ho Ltd. He also said he'd be paying people in increments because of these spare economic times, despite the fact all of his customers had signed contracts outlining how they were to be paid (i.e. not in increments).

The times must not be too spare for Coon. On April 23rd he updated his FB status: "My new baby is a blk/blk Lexus E330.......sounds a little midlife crisis like....but I do not care!!!"

To wit:

* Joe on Ross Place: "I had a well dressed black male stop by my house yesterday at around 10am and say he was with a bible study group and wanted to know if I wanted to pray with him. I declined. He came back at around 6pm and asked if I'd like to buy magazines from him."

* Val on Norton Place: "About 5 p.m. Monday, a well-dressed black male knocked on my door. I was at home sick and did not answer, but he had stepped back far enough from the door for me to see him through the window"

* Sally on Quebec Street: "I was out walking and passed this man on mid to upper Porter Street Monday afternoon at approximately 3:30 pm. He was going door to door and was clean-shaven, wearing slacks, a white shirt, and tie." No mention of his race, but it's implied, don't you think?

* Ralph on 30th Street: "A similar young man came by our house yesterday. He said he was 'selling magazines and newspapers,' but he had no paperwork with him and looked like he made it up. When he left, I saw him to the next house and knock on the door."

* The infamous George Idelson: "I observed two African-American men engaged in conversation on my doorstep this morning. They ignored me, jotted something into a clipboard, finished their conversation and retreated down the steps. As they did I noticed the younger man was carrying a magazine labeled 'The Advocate.'"

* Ann With the Older French Husband: Last week, in the evening around 7:00, a not-so-young well dressed african american man (white shirt, crisply ironed trousers) came to our door.  I spoke to him through our storm door. He asked to come in for a moment to speak to me. I thought it was a religious or charity call. I asked the reason for his call. He smiled and tried to joke about he was wondering when dinner was. I asked again and he said he was a salesman. I told him that we were not interested in being approached door to door to be sold anything, and added that usually people who are selling say what it is up front and present a vendors license or organization  identification.  He looked very annoyed and went back down the steps, looking back angrily as I closed the door.  Our son, who is visiting, saw him continue down Idaho towards Macomb St. I again told my older French husband once again to never, ever open the door to strangers. Sigh."

Wake up, Metro. It's morning time! Also: Two of your employees are telling WJLA-TV that they not only knew about the circuit problem that likely caused the June 22 crash five days before it happened, but that they reported the problem to their supervisors. This seemingly contradicts GM John Catoe's statement yesterday, in which he assured the public the circuit's intermittent inability to detect trains on tracks was "not an issue that would have been easily detectable to controllers in our operations control center." Metro had no comment on the unnamed technicians' allegations, citing the ongoing investigation.

In case you missed it: City Desk reported last night that one of the crash victims' families lawyered up with local institution the Cochran Firm, which won the business over another firm based, partially, on its willingness to file suit before the investigation's over. Attorney David Haynes called today to correct my mistake. The family of Veronica DuBose actually has two law firms lined up, one from Florida already familiar to the family, as well as the Cochran Firm, which was brought in as lead counsel by the Florida lawyers. Haynes also notes that his firm is representing five people injured in the crash.

City Paper's fresh online and in the stands. Of note: Carman on Breadline's closing and reopening, Graham on The Year of Magical Thinking, Olszewski on the new Transformers, Leitko on Meow vs. Meow, and West on the theory of everything.

Elsewhere in D.C. Blogolands:

* Borderstan's reporting that actor and Obama up-and-comer Kal Penn, better known as Kumar going to the White Castle, is moving into the neighborhood. But no dice on exactly where.

* Molly, the pure-bred Viszla brazenly stolen from in front of the Whole Foods in Logan Circle, is still lost. Bloggers are on it.

* Congress Heights on the Rise has some news found newsworthy by the Examiner: Congress Heights is NOT Anacostia.

* We Love DC chimes in on the Caps signing winger Mike Knuble away from the Flyers. The Post says he'll be the net presence we lack. We're comin' for you, Pittsburgh. Grrrrr!

Photograph by City Paper Staff Photographer Darrow Montgomery

Alan Etter, spokesperson for D.C. Fire and EMS, writes in an e-mail: "There was no fire. Just a pressure-release explosion from using too much of the product."

The man received a "minor burn, but that's about it."

WJLA has photos from a guy who lived in the building. Looks like the explosion happened on the second floor of a four-floor complex.

For the second year in a row, contributor Jeffry Cudlin won the arts criticism category for his work, which this year included the following: "Pine of the Times" about the Martin Puryear retrospective at the National Gallery of Art, "Sheet Smart" about the Christo and Jeanne-Claude exhibit at the Phillips Collection, and "Pain by Numbers," a wrap-up of what D.C. museums did and didn't offer in 2008.

Editor Erik Wemple won first place for media reporting/criticism with his cover story "One Mission, Two Newsrooms" about the Washington Post's struggle to bridge the cultural and geographic divide between its print and online operations.

In the elusive "innovation/format buster" category, the cover story some loved and others hated—"Washington City Paper Files for Chapter 86 Content Bankruptcy"— also took home first-place honors. The piece by Wemple, Managing Editor Andrew Beaujon, and Asst. Managing Editor Jule Banville was written and presented in the form of a legal document spoofing both the changing nature of City Paper's journalism and and the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by our paper's owners, Creative Loafing.

Creative Loafing's Atlanta paper received second-place honors in the feature category for the first-person account, "Sober," by Thomas Wheatley. The Chicago Reader, also our sister paper, received two second-place awards. Ann Ford was so honored in the arts feature category for "Life Without a Script" and columnist Ben Jarovsky's "The Works" was named in the column (political) category

The AAN Awards are open to its 130 member papers. Most of the altweeklies in U.S. cities (plus a few in Canada) enter the contest each year. This year, the top all-time AAN Award winner, the L.A. Weekly, led the pack with four first-place awards. In the 14-year history of the awards, Washington City Paper has won the second-most overall awards in the top-circulation categories: 51.

Watch for architectural/vocab dispatches from Beaujon, "jump squad" efforts from Cherkis and Montgomery, doings at the landlord-tenant court from Housing Complex's regularly scheduled columnist Samuelson, Wemple doing whatever Wemple's doing, Scheinman on pricey condos, DeBonis on the new and improved (?) DCRA, Carman on crummy and otherwise restaurant designs, and I'll be on the critter beat with the animal shelters, as well as other random stuff, including a shaky real-estate angle from GoRemy, the infamous Arlington rapper. 

It's all real estate, all day. Got a tip? Got a crappy landlord? Got something to say about D.C. house porn? Hit the twitter (@housingcomplex) and the comments.

Burgess, on his way to U Street and planning to change trains at Fort Totten, describes climbing over the rubble in the smoke-filled car, seeing sky, losing his shoes, and trying to dislodge a teenager whose leg appeared to be broken. A roommate picked him up in a cab after the crash.

After all of it, Burgess says Metro's still the safest way to get around D.C. "but from now on I'll be sitting in the middle car of the train where, hopefully, this will never happen again."

• Jeanice McMillan, 42, of Springfield (train operator)

• Major General David F. Wherley, Jr., former commanding general, Joint Force Headquarters, District of Columbia National Guard, and his wife Ann, both 62
• Lavonda King, 23
• Dennis Hawkins, 64
• Mary Doolittle, 59
• Anna Fernandez, 40

Per Cherkis, per WTOP, as well, with more on where they lived and one alternate spelling (Lavanda King).

Councilmember Phil Mendelson put out a statement about the Wherleys:

"It is with great sadness that it appears that Retired Commanding General David F. Wherley and his wife, Ann, were two of the casualties in yesterday’s Metrorail accident.  My condolences go out to all the families affected by yesterday’s accident.  But over the years, I was fortunate to work with Major General Wherley, and saw his energy and commitment to the residents of the District of Columbia as well as his country.  A District resident, Major General Wherley will be remembered by the countless lives he has touched, from the District youth he mentored to the soldiers and airmen under his command.  I offer my most sincere condolences to the Major General’s family as well as the men and women of the DC National Guard."

WaPo also interviewed Ann Wherley, a mortgage banker, about living in a Cap Hill loft space in April 2005.

In a posh hotel in downtown D.C., Dixie, a beagle mix, is sniffing out bed bugs. She can find them in walls, under carpets, and mixed up with cockroaches inside a spinning training device. Mattresses, the most common hiding place for these seed-size suckers of human blood, pose little challenge.

“She only gets fed if she finds a bed bug,” says her trainer and handler, Blaine Lessard, as he reaches into his belted pouch for a piece of kibble.

She seems kinda skinny, I say, and wonder if this incentive-based feeding is providing all of Dixie’s nutritional needs. “Well, these kinds of dogs do run lean,” he counters. And, in truth, Dixie’s perfectly energetic and beagle-like as she follows Lessard’s command—Seek!—to sniff the room’s perimeter.

The hotel room is clean. The bug Dixie keeps hitting on is inside the big wheel sitting on the floor. It spans about four feet in diameter with spokes that end in plastic containers, each of which holds either a bed bug or some other scent-giving item designed to throw Dixie off.

Since she’s trained exclusively on bed bugs her entire life—about nine months—she is rarely, if ever, thrown off. “I have complete confidence in her,” says Lessard, who once witnessed Dixie pointing him to a hotel closet, even though he could find no evidence of a bug. She did the same thing in the room directly above and in another room directly above that one. A technician finally found a relatively small infestation inside the wall.

Dixie’s training began at the Florida Canine Academy before she moved in with Lessard and his family on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Both Lessard and his beagle-mix are in the employ of Western Pest Services, an extermination outfit with 24 offices, mostly in the eastern U.S. The dog is part of Western’s preventive market: If she finds a bug or two, the company’s pitch is that you can nip that problem before it becomes a full-on infestation. If she doesn’t find anything, well, go ahead and go to sleep without waking up with that creepy feeling you’ve got bugs in your sheets.

Her territory covers D.C. and Baltimore, but she’ll go as far as Virginia Beach and Philadelphia. She does need to get fed, after all. Prices start at $300 and go up from there depending on the type of building, how many rooms it has, and how long it takes Dixie’s nose to cover the premises. According to Lessard, she can cover 120 hotel rooms in one day of work.

He says he knows of "maybe one" other bug-sniffing dog in the D.C. region; an Internet search only pulled up Western's dog service. In NYC NY BedBug Dogs says it's been in business for 40 years.

According to Western Pest Services, the customer base here, which also includes hospitals, nursing homes, college dorms, apartment houses, and single-family homes, is starting to pick up. The other uptick comes from the bed bugs themselves. There are simply more of them.

The National Pest Management Association says that since 2000, bed-bug complaint calls have increased 71 percent. Every state and the District has had an outbreak, according to the Centers for Disease Control, although the CDC doesn’t have an accurate accounting; every municipality handles the problem differently.

In D.C., anecdotal evidence—including the creepy-crawly cover story we ran about bed bugs in Logan Circle and elsewhere—suggests the problem’s getting more serious. In March, the local Dept. of Health organized its first bed bug summit. There's also a Web site to register local infestations.

So what’s happened? Why does this pest now need specially-trained dogs and DOH summits? It’s actually a fairly recent problem. After World War II, the bed bug in the United States was pretty much a nonentity. DDT eradicated it. But DDT isn’t an acceptable pesticide for reasons illuminated by Rachel Carson, among others. As more people traveled the world, bringing back these notorious little hangers-on, colonies grew and they also grew resistant to common treatments.

Nowadays, says Lessard, “if you’ve one or two bugs in a room, you’re done.” And finding one or many? It has nothing to do with cleanliness. Five-star hotels fall victim. OCD clean freaks get them. Once your home's infested, two of the more common ways exterminators will treat your home is with freezing chemicals or heat; a friend in D.C. recently vacated her home so that technicians could blast the place with space heaters. It appears to have taken care of the problem.

One solution not to try? Diesel fuel around the bed. For more about that, read our cover story. Got a solution or a bed bug story of your own? Let us know in comments.

Photographs by City Paper Staff Photographer Darrow Montgomery