Every Tuesday and Thursday, we run down what’s going on in local Internet discussion groups.

columbia_heights
Listserv slam poet Halyadoing wants your vote. “Dear Voter-peoples, Please don’t settle for the same status quotes. Give me your votes. Write on your ballots: Halyadoing? Just Fine! That will ease your mind. We will have four fun years. Picking cotton out our ears. Doing the hand jive for our peers. Raising our glasses and yellin ‘cheers.’ Debating marriage for the—oops—don’t want to lose the gay vote. Just kidden Miss Thang. You aw-ite with me! Halyadoing loves the ladies and you ain’t no competition. So put down your petition. I give you permission to stroll down to the Mission and get yo freak on like nuclear fission.…I’m Halyadoing. And I approve this massage.” And with that post, Halyadoing apparently lost the Dave vote: “I don’t think he’s old enough to run for office,” he sneers.

FriendsOfSligoCreek
A real friend of Sligo Creek resurfaces after a long absence. “15 or 20 years ago, a guy used to hang around Sligo Creek Park in back [of] my house on Dublin Drive, 1/4 mile north of Forest Glen,” writes Joe. “He wore a ragged dress and looked really weird. He spooked our kids, who were small at the time, so much they would not go into the park. One neighbor claimed to have seen him behind her house naked, but other than that we had no indication that he was doing anything illegal.” He disappeared, but then, last week, “we saw him again in the same place, wearing a ragged dress with his slip showing. Does anyone know anything about him?”

DC-Area-Cacophony
Goddess Santa is upset at the Santarchists behind Santa Crawl. Specifically, on the Crawl’s Web site, the rules on “Women” state: “Not allowed, unless you meet them on the crawl, and then you have to share them with the other Single Santas. Don’t bring your wife, girlfriend, a girl that your thinking about seeing, a girl that’s a friend, a girl that’s a friend that happens to live in Baltimore or Maryland, don’t bring or invite anyone that’s not a dude. Oh and don’t assume that it’s cool to have your wife/girlfriend show-up late in the evening, or at the last bar.” Goddess Santa thinks this blanket ban warrants action: “We could get a group of counter-santas and meet up around 8:00 pm and track down the sexist santas—then PICKET THEM!” However, after some discussion, the wild-’n’-wacky cacophonists decide that picketing isn’t really their style. So alternatives are posted, ranging from “chase them with lots of dildos” to showing up as “topless women Santas,” because that “would confuse them.” To which Louis responds: “Yep!…Ain’t nothing a misogynist hates as much as getting to see boobs without putting any actual effort into it.”

Every Tuesday and Thursday, we run down what’s going on in local Internet discussion groups.

genxdc
Kelly has a nonhairy dilemma: “I am a total bear ‘chaser’,” he writes on the board devoted to local Generation-X bears, “and were I more hairy I would be considered an otter. I am smooth though, and have found several bears that weren’t into me cuz I wasn’t hairy.” In his quest to transform into something “more bearish, and therefore more ‘woofy’ to other bears,” Kelly admits to considering taking some Rogaine and “slathering it on my chest and tummy to grow hair.” He ultimately turned down the idea—not because a nasty, greasy shirt might just turn off more men, but because of side effects such as hypertension. Kelly hopes to hear word about “a natural treatment of some type,” but like many afflicted by the baldness curse, finds depressingly few options. “I would say…power lifting, but there’s no real way to beat genetics,” writes Alex. Adds Aaron: “I would say either Chia pet or Miracle Grow.”

gloverpark
“Does anyone know,” asks aglue, “if it’s technically illegal to fashion a fire hydrant looking ‘thing’ and place it on a stretch of grass?…Imagine the parking options…anyone know?” Probably, replies John: “As long as the ‘stretch of grass’ is in your backyard, I don’t see a problem; but I’m guessing the stretch of grass you have in mind is [that] part of the public right-of-way where they put things like telephone poles, and, uh, fire hydrants. You will very likely need a permit to put /anything/ in the PROW.” When Bill asks where this fake hydrant might be, so he can take a photo and post it on a Flickr page, aglue quickly responds: “Doesnt exist…we’re just talkin…”

MPD-1D
A posse of highly aggressive robbers with lowly goals apparently rode into town. On the 1100 block of McKenna Walk NW on Oct. 28, according to a police report, two women at home “report hearing a knock. One answered the door and observed the two suspects outside, one handing the other a handgun. One suspect pushed the door open knocking the victim back. The other suspect shoved the victim in the face and entered the home stealing a slim jim, soda, and a honey bun before fleeing.”

Chuck Caspari enjoys camping: Each year, the 42-year-old property manager treks to someplace like Assateague or New Jersey to reconnect with the great outdoors. But Caspari has traditional notions when it comes to what constitutes a campground, so when his wife alerted him on Oct. 29 that there was a tent on top of their Mount Pleasant row house, he grabbed his kid’s T-ball bat before going to check it out.

Standing astride his Kenyon Street NW abode, Caspari saw that there was indeed a two-man blue-and-gray North Face tent pitched on his new tin roof. “I immediately thought it was some homeless guy up there,” he says. “We get weird people. I’ll be out on the front porch having a smoke or something, and I get all sorts of strange people coming up and bumming smokes off me.”

But the tent was empty: There was only a foam mat and a wet sleeping bag inside; a heavy motorcycle lock was weighing the setup down. Caspari collapsed the tent—”The roof, I draw the line”—and deposited it into the alley.

Now he’s trying to crack the problem of its provenance. “I walked around the block a couple times, and I couldn’t figure out where somebody would be able to climb up, much less with a tent and camping gear,” he says. But just in case there was a secret trail, he’s decided to reinforce his attic hatch with a couple of eye hooks.

Later, Adams Morgan. Good tidings to you, “Washington Heights Historic District.”

If you’ve never heard that Manhattan-esque moniker applied to Northwest D.C.’s most popular ethnically diverse party spot, it’s probably because it describes a neighborhood whose “period of significance [was] 1891 to 1950,” according to a research firm that recently compiled a historic-preservation report on the area. On Sept. 10, the city, responding to the firm’s recommendations and the lobbying of the Kalorama Citizens Association (KCA), smacked the historic label onto the land roughly bounded by Florida Avenue NW, the Washington Hilton, Columbia Road, and the 18th Street strip—land that years ago held historic fixtures such as the Knickerbocker Theater, a Piggly Wiggly, various sightly berms, and the home of architect Waddy B. Wood (actual name).

Ann Hargrove, zoning and historic-preservation chair of the KCA, says her group wanted to protect the motley façades of the neighborhood against ugly or towering replacements. “They are quite a variety, architecturally,” she says, “and really nice.”

The designation has already clotheslined one business owner, Madam’s Organ’s Bill Duggan, who had planned to renovate the old DCCD building on 18th Street into a New Orleans–style bar/restaurant. Now he’s waiting for a November meeting of the city historic-preservation board to see if he can build or if he has to sell off tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of iron balconies.

“I think…certain neighbors thought it was another way they could interfere with liquor licenses,” says Duggan, noting that at a recent historic-review hearing, “the only thing historic in that room was the age of the people.”

Residents of Swann Street NW have grown accustomed to peering into vacant houses only to find strange people peering back out at them—or, in one case, jumping out and mugging them. But the reign of “abandominiums” might be drawing to an end, if Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham’s “Nuisance Property Boardup” legislation rolls through the D.C. Council.

Introduced last week, the bill gives the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs the power to immediately seal up unsafe buildings, whereas before the process could take weeks. “[A nuisance property] is not only demoralizing, but it’s obviously an invitation to crime. And we’ve had very serious fires occur,” says Graham.

Neighbors of 1774 Willard St. NW are particularly happy about the fix. The vacant, three-story bricker has over the years hosted an illegal cable connection, an apparently drugged woman who liked to randomly scream at things, and frequent male visitations that some believed to be evidence of prostitution. One neighbor reports that he recently saw a man and a woman huddled in the dark under the house’s back porch, but a recent visit turned up only a broken back door, beer bottles, and a pile of human-looking feces.

Every Tuesday and Thursday, we run down what’s going on in local Internet discussion groups.

3DSubstation
There goes Wacko. From a Sept. 16 police report, at 1:25 a.m on the 2900 block of Sherman Avenue NW: “[Complainant 1] REPORTS THAT [Subjects 1 through 4] GOT OUT OF THE VEHICLE. S1 SAID ‘THERE’S WACKO!, LETS GET HIM.’ S1-S4 CHASED C1 & BEGAN TO KICK & PUNCH C1 ABOUT THE FACE & BODY. S1-S4 THEN DROVE AWAY IN THE VEHICLE IN AN UNKNOWN DIRECTION.”

Burleith
If only all spouse-beaters could be so considerate about their choice of venue. From a Sept. 12 police report describing incidents in a “Doctor’s Office/Hospital” on the same block as George Washington University Hospital, “[Complainant 1] REPORTS THAT [Suspect 1] BECAME ANGRY WHEN A MALE FRIEND CALLED C1′S HOSPITAL ROOM. S1 PUNCHED C1 [IN THE] FACE WITH A CLOSED FIST RESULTING IN A SWOLLEN RIGHT EYE.…S1 & C1 HAVE A CHILD IN COMMON.” And four days later, at the same location, “C1 REPORTS S1 PUSHED HER, KNOCKING C1 OFF BALANCE ONTO THE FLOOR. S1 THEN EXITED THE LISTED LOCATION. S1 IS C1′S HUSBAND.”

Brookland
“Dear All, this might be useful for you and your family,” writes gayatrimaharani. “Technically engineered natural minerals have been structurally bonded in glass, at molecular level, using several high heat fusion methods. This combination of the techniques causes a catalytic energy conversion creating a long lasting, specific natural Nano resonance in the BIO DISC.” BIO DISC! What does it do? Well, it “helps to improve sleep,” removes “Fat From Milk,” alleviates muscle injury when you “Move it counter clock wise,” and energizes lotions that are poured onto the BIO DISC. “Dear moderator: the…email is clearly a scam and I do not believe we need info like this on our listserv,” responds Sara. “The claim that putting a cigarette box on this “bio disc” for 30 minutes will remove tar and nicotine is particularly outrageous.”

Every Tuesday and Thursday, we run down what’s going on in local Internet discussion groups.

TMOTTGoGo Community Forum Board
Denizens of TMOTTGoGo—that’d be Take Me Out To The GoGo for all you knuckleheads—discuss the pertinent issues of the day. “LLEM,” says King. “LMMFAO,” says BUCKSHOT. “GTHOH!!!!!!!!” says Da Remixx. “MODEL JOANT!!!!!…Butta cranks.…WOW!!!!!!!!” says #02. “*chiggity*…Huh?” asks Hatee. “Pressed ass!” says Chipster. “WHAT HE SAID!!!!!,” says #02. “My GAWD woman!!!!! You don’t wanna know what I’ve saying over here!!,” says Jay113. “WHAT HE SAID AGAIN!!!!!!” repeats #02. “DAYUM RIGHT!!” says momma.honey. “to the utmost!!!!!!!!” says Da Remixx. “holllaaaaa!” asks Chipster. “SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDDDDD!!!!!!” says Peaches_Baby. “lunch time,” says Xenobia.

psa105
Posts on this crime forum continue to suggest that Capitol Hill residents believe the earth, in fact, does revolve around a large, really cute golden retriever. “Saturday night in Marion Park, two police officers drew their guns when a friendly, non-barking dog ran towards them. One officer pointed the gun at the dog and the other waved his gun in the air,” writes kennedym. And that was wrong: “[W]hy would anyone, police or not, who is afraid of dogs walk through Marion Park in the evening, when so many people are walking their dogs? Is this a training issue?” PTLdogs, however, takes exception to the idea that dogs should have their own police force. “I [am] a 19 year resident of the District and the fact that you would even ask this question is troubling.…There is not a sign on the side of dogs that says ‘this one is friendly.’” In retort, kennedym posts the following Rules of Canine Engagement from the Humane Society of the USA: “Remain motionless, hands at your sides.…If the dog does attack, ‘feed’ him your jacket, purse, bicycle, or anything that you can put between yourself and the dog,” and “curl into a ball with your hands over your ears and remain motionless.” Got that, officer?

hstreetdc
On Behalf Of Marilyn has people hanging out in front of her house drinking sack beers—they obviously need to go. “I’ve only had to do it a couple of times,” says Sharon, “but I’ve found playing classical music very loudly, with the speakers pointing toward the windows works very well.” And Richard takes the joke too far, suggesting a Barry Manilow assault. “[T]hen again,” he reconsiders, “listening to ‘Mandy’ over and over ought to set anybody on edge, regardless of their musical preferences.”

In a minimalist condo in the Cityline at Tenley building, the founding members of the Washington Area Liquor Retailers Association are holding one of their first board meetings. A bottle of liquor and an Asian statuette stand in for decorations; the members—President H. Singh Bakshi, Vice President S.P. Toor, Treasurer Sarbjit Kochhar, and Secretary Vivek Bhargava—lounge in chairs and black-leather couches.

“Charity begins from home,” says the 58-year-old Bakshi, owner of Tenley Wine & Liquor, regarding the group’s decision this spring to organize D.C.’s Indian-owned, Class A liquor stores into a unified force.

The nonprofit’s goals are many: to get fair deals from wholesalers, to provide help to members in legal trouble, to stymie underage buyers and other would-be criminals with a phone-tree alert system. For years, many of the city’s Korean-owned businesses have had a similar arrangement. So far, the association has roped in more than 30 Indian-owned stores out of the city’s 42 (though entrepreneurs of all races are welcomed), and spirits are running high.

“We were a few of the pioneers who initially took over from either the Jewish- or Korean-community owners,” the former of whom controlled D.C.’s liquor trade since Prohibition, says Bakshi. “As a group we want to be heard,” adds Kochhar, 53, owner of S&S Liquors in Brightwood. “Already wholesalers have called to work with us.”

Toor teases Bakshi over this reporter’s request for his age: “Beautiful girls will be calling you up now.” “No,” jokes the president. “Now beautiful girls will be calling you up to get a deal!”

Every Tuesday and Thursday, we run down what’s going on in local Internet discussion groups.

columbia_heights
Most. Depressing. Post. Ever. Abridged from C.J.’s original poem:

OPTIONS
(For My Parents - Alice F. and Joseph L.)

…During the first realization that you were with Kid
You should’ve done to me what with your first-born you did -
Taken an Olympic-type dive off of the end of your bed,
In an infallible attempt to crush my newly formed head.

If you were warned about drinking while carrying me
You could’ve swung by a Liquor Store and set yourself free;
Ingesting anything you desired that would totally serve
To disconnect “me” from your every nerve.…

Rather than taking me through those eight years of hell
You could’ve entered the tallest building, dropped me over the rail;
You could’ve created a receptacle, and burned me as ash,
Or simply wrapped and deposited me in your “Landlady’s” trash.

MPD-4D
A crime report from Aug. 13 suggests more questionable parenting. The incident occurred on the 100 block of Longfellow Street NW; one can only hope the kid wasn’t strapped in at the time. “[The complainant] reports that she and [the suspect] were involved in a verbal arguement. [The suspect] then picked up an infant car seat and threw it at [the complainant] causing a small laceration above [the complainant's] eye. [The suspect] then ran to her car and returned with a hatchet and swung it at [the complainant] several times but didn’t strike her. [The suspect] then chased [a different complainant] out of the house with the hatchet. [The suspect] was apprehended and placed under arrest.”

Artists-Models
Tim needs volunteers this weekend to work on the set of “NUDIST CAMP ZOMBIE MASSACRE” in Stafford, Va. “Sunday is the big climax of the film where Beth, played by Zui finally meets and teams up with the alien Remco,” he writes, before posting a call for make-up artists, PAs, grips, and “Actors to play Nudists.” Oh yeah: “[I]f anyone has a whip please bring it for the Devo zombie.”

Every Tuesday and Thursday, we run down what’s going on in local Internet discussion groups.

MPD-1D
On July 27, ebranic stimulates the collective gag reflex by describing a neighbor who hoards “loosely-wrapped” bags of dog crap in her front yard. “Over the course of several days a collection of bags grows on her front step, and on any given day the pile stinks to high heaven,” writes the peeved resident. “I cannot leave my window open without the ‘fragrance’ of baked dog poop entering my home.” Eleven days and 43 posts later, there’s a new poop problem in the neighborhood: e-list diarrhea. “Clearly dog poop is a major issue in the 1st District!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” writes D Grant, who later apologizes for his immodest use of exclamation points. “I [couldn't] take another reply to the pooper post.”

MPD-1D
Those thievin’ horticulprits have struck a new low. “I was affected firsthand by this last night when apx. 15 hostas that were recently planted at my daughter’s day care center - having been paid for with money from a grant we received from a community gardening group - were dug up and stolen,” writes Angela. “I…realize that in the big picture, this is not an A-list crime, but it really galls me that someone not only stole plants but that they stole them from small children at an obviously marked day care.” Eric suggests that it is, in fact, an A-list crime worthy of an A-list response. “Having had this exact problem happen in our garden two years ago,” he writes, “my wife and I encased the root balls of our plants in chicken wire and then bolted them to the stone wall planter.”

MPD-6D
Trish asks the police for help in catching red-light runners at a busy intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue SE. She also wants to know if somebody can fix the bad grammar on a nearby sign, which she says reads, “Red means stop, yellow means break, don’t run red yours life’s at stake.” Sixth District Commander Robin Hoey implies that he can at least assist in the crime-fighting department. “If the sign say it, we should be enforcing it.”

Every Tuesday and Thursday (and sometimes Friday), we run down what’s going on in local Internet discussion groups.

MPD-4D
On July 31, a 60-year-old man was sitting in his wheelchair at a bus stop when a group of hoods walked up. One put a knife to his throat, and, according to the police report, told him to “start walking and don’t look back.’” Then they took his chair and ran away. David quickly turned the heist into anti–Adrian Fenty fodder, knocking the mayoral hopeful’s nay vote on the recent crime-emergency bill. “We still have people in our neighborhoods that would hold a knife to a wheelchair bound resident so that they can steal his wheelchair,” he writes. “Does the councilman not want to even have a chance to capture that on video?” Unfortunately for David, “it appears that the individual who was robbed of the wheelchair, was not wheelchair bound, but used the wheelchair as a prop as he verbally accosted people along Kennedy street,” writes La Reine. “Thus, the command from the robbers to ‘walk and don’t look back’ - or something of that sort.”

columbia_heights
A man is shot dead on Girard Street NW and Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham, on WTOP, calls the crime “very disturbing.” But what’s really disturbing, according to “Your Next Ward 1 Councilmember” Chad Williams, is Jim Graham’s jerkiness. In a 424-word post, Williams decries the “continued violence under Mr. Graham’s leadership” and the “political grandstanding” of Graham “over this dead child’s body.” “33 Days and counting!” ends Williams. The e-list audience, however, doesn’t seem to get it. “Using this death to make a political statement for your campaign is probably offensive to the families,” posts Marcus. “It would be to me if one of my family members were killed.” Tom adds: “Seriously dude. That’s downright cheesy.” Williams doesn’t post a follow-up.

metromusicscene
Steve wants to get on American Idol with an original tune inspired by, we’re guessing, Taco Bell. “To wit:” he writes, “I busted out my cell phone late last night/Burritos busting loose and pants were tight/I thanked Jesus for the glory of the black bean/But looked at my ringtone said what did it mean/And from the sky a light came down/I busted bad like Ernie Borgnine’s frown/Gave ten fingers to the lord above/Prayed to the mexi-flavor with one love.” Steve finishes by assuring his fellow posters that “drinks are on me when the check comes in.”

David Howcroft’s car got one hell of a cleaning on July 1 at the Wash & Shine at 5020 Wisconsin Ave. NW: The 2000 Volkswagen Passat sustained $634 worth of bumper, panel, and tire damage.

An employee took Howcroft to the mangled vehicle, which appeared to have been backed out still covered in soap, and told the American University Park resident he “must have run over a nail.” Howcroft, in filing a subsequent police report, says he heard from a cop that an Audi had suffered a flat tire at the business the day before. After complaining on the Internet, he also received five e-mails from neighbors laying out similar tales of wash and woe.

“The problems with this car wash date back a long time,” says Maureen Miller, who about five years ago had her Chevy Blazer roll out of the wash and into traffic, where another car butted it into a line of parked cars. “That was pretty traumatic.”

Wash & Shine Manager Hans Grasser says Howcroft didn’t follow up on an offer to cover at least some of the cost?”He never got back to us, that’s basically the story”?but a Wash & Shine representative recently offered to pay for all damage except the panel scratches.

Those, his letter asserts, were Howcroft’s own fault for having bought “an used car.”

Emphasis ours.

Hello:

Our Office has been advised of the following:

The DC Department of Corrections (DOC) will be testing its siren system at the D. C. Jail, Saturday, June [24] at 12 noon for 15 seconds only and continue every Saturday until they are sure it works. The purpose of the test is to ensure that the Department’s emergency notification is functioning properly so citizens living in the areas surrounding the jail are notified of any emergencies at the facility. The test will consist of one short blast.

Tawanna Shuford, Director of Constituent Services
Office of Councilmember Sharon Ambrose, Ward 6…

Every Tuesday and Thursday, we run down what’s going on in local Internet discussion groups.

Brookland
Nature was definitely up to something in Brookland this past Saturday. Just what that was, however, remains a mystery. “Our cat has not wanted to go out in the mornings which seemed pretty strange,” writes Debra. “Then today there was a ‘fox-looking’ animal sitting on the back steps when we opened the door.” The fox-looker booked before ID could be taken, but another ominous animal was soon spotted biding its time inside some guy’s bushes. Possibly. “My dad claims that he saw a deer running through our yard at 12th/Lawrence early this morning,” writes Julie, sounding a little skeptical of Pops, “and insists that the deer is hiding in our neighbor’s brush.” Later in the day, the locals were visited by another exotic creature—preliminary reports suggest a sneakius contractorus. “So we are new to the neighborhood and making some basic repairs to our New home… and today we got a call that the alarms were faulted on several zones,” writes Jess. “I raced over and discovered that apparently no one made it into the house… so they stole our front downspouts? Downspouts.”

columbia_heights
Jane chews her e-nails over a group of young men who appear at night in a nearby vacant lot—”and they ain’t playing checkers,” she writes. So putting on her thinking cap, she proposes some solutions: “How about a fence at the back of the empty lot, how about lighting in the direction that these guys hang out, work with the police to address loitering.” But Dave isn’t taking any Proactivil today. “We can’t act on rumor and innuendo from people in the email shadows,” he writes. “[B]low it out your ear.” “That’s nice: ‘Blow it out your ear’ to the lady who offers some helpful advice about improving security,” responds jhorvatsr. And Michelle’s got something to say about aural wind, too: “You’re going to have to start blowing it out your ear yourself and start listening to your neighbors…bc those observations can save somebody’s life one day if they were the victim of a crime on those grounds.” Dave refuses to budge. “I don’t respond to McCarthy like tactics,” he writes, reiterating, “yes, I say, blow it out your ear.”

MPD-4D
“C1 REPORTS THAT S1 APPROACHED HER AND SAID ‘HI’ AND C1 REPLIED ‘HI,’” reads a police report, regarding a June 3 incident between Subject 1 and Complainant 1 at 5007 New Hampshire Ave. NW. “S1 FOLLOWED HER INSIDE AND YELLED ‘I’M NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU BECAUSE I’M AFRO-AMERICAN’. S1 THEN SNATCHED THE LISTED PROPERTY FROM AROUND HER NECK AND THEN STATED ‘THANK YOU MA’AM’. S1 FLED IN AN [UNKNOWN] DIRECTION.”

Every Tuesday and Thursday, we run down what’s going on in local Internet discussion groups.

columbia_heights
“Felton Earls,” Harvard professor, “does interesting work, but I don’t think he’s demonstrated either weakly or conclusively that the efficacy thesis is superior to broken windows,” writes Richard, continuing a discussion sparked by news of black men robbing a taxi passenger. “Interesting work, Richard,” replies Jack. “It appears to me, based on a rather quick reading, that you’re finding ‘broken windows’ to be a valid symptom of a failure of ‘collective efficacy.’” And now, for a musical interlude. “If this was a tribe,” rhymes rapping e-pundit halyadoing, “I might subscribe to the notion that motion with so much emotion and anger and hate has a place in this state for people get wild and once in awhile population control is the rule of the code but we civilized now so let us adhere with helping out brothers and sisters and mothers and get off this topic stop being so myopic.”

CherrydaleCitizens
As city grit continues its infiltration of Arlington, Cherrydale residents are shaken by memories of felonious times past. “Going to Stratford Junior High School there were thug 9th-graders who would ‘rookie’ you if you dared to walk thru the tunnel under Old Dominion Drive,” writes Eric. “(If you got rookied, you usually got most of your clothes ripped up or off you, a few peppermint twists on the cheeks, alot of lipstick all over you, and you went straight home and didn’t come back for a few days out of sheer embarassment.)” That undated time of terror leaves the ’50s looking pretty charming. That’s when the “Cherrydale gang” roamed the redneck ’burb’s roadways and, according to Eric, “brass knuckles and numb-chucks were part of the daily attire.”

MPD-4D
If only robbers could work around your schedule. A woman living on the 5500 block of 8th Street NW came home to grab some lunch on May 24, only to find unspecified “listed items” stolen, according to a police summary of the crime. She didn’t have a phone to call in the invasion, so she went to the police station to report it in person. Stupid move, that. “[She] was informed that she had to make the report from her home and went back to the location,” the summary explains. “As the wait became time consuming, [she] went back to work and called 311 to have the police call her when they arrived on the scene, she was only 7 miles away.” When police eventually arrived, they found that, yeah, “her window screws had been tampered with.”