Just trying to get in on the Valentine's Day traffic grab.

Nope, you're not crazy! At about five minutes past five this morning, a tremor centered in Gaithersburg rattled the D.C. area. Twitter exploded. According to The Post: "Previously, the largest earthquake reported [around D.C. since 1974] was a 2.6 magnitude tremor that occurred in 1990."

City Paper reporters, who have nerves of steel, seem to have slept soundly through the incident. Early reports indicate that everyone is okay and wants to know if everyone else is okay too.

Image courtesy the U.S. Geological Survey.

Photos by Will Mitchell

What happens when you get 140 characters from the D.C. area in a room together? Help us find out!

Our @wcp twitter account is about to hit 2,500 followers. To celebrate this little milestone, we're organizing a D.C. tweetup next week on Thursday, Dec. 10th, 2009. Come out and hang with us and your fellow D.C. tweeps at Buffalo Billiards The Big Hunt in Dupont Circle.

@TheSexist, @MikeRiggs, @wamitchell, @nikkididit, and a bunch of our staff will be there. The date coincides with one night of the "12 Bars of Christmas" promotion from our illustrious sales team, and that means $6 Clipper City Heavy Seas. The event starts at 6 p.m. at The Big Hunt, 1345 Connecticut Ave NW.

Spread the word! Let @wcp know if you can make it! (Or leave a comment below with your @username in the name field.)

Special Double Bonus: We have free stuff to give away! The first 20 people to give @MikeRiggs a hug at the tweetup will be given 2 free passes to Landmark Theaters. Bonanza!

(Update: Due to a rescheduling in the "12 Bars of Christmas" promotion, we've changed venues to The Big Hunt instead of Buffalo Billiards.)

It depends on the weather, of course.

Photo of the sunset on Sept. 21, 2009 by Will Atwood Mitchell, Creative Commons Attribution License

City Paper was on the scene to interview the protesters.

That got me to wondering about other possible city ’henges. I checked with Whet Moser at the Chicago Reader, and in short order he had calculated the dates of Chicagohenge using some handy photographer software.

In theory, any city with a street grid can have its own ’henge, including D.C. Our downtown grid, like Chicago's, is a more or less a true east-west grid. So the next "DCHenge" sunset should occur a month from now on September 23, 2009, one day after the autumnal equinox:

But will it be cool? D.C. has a lower skyline than Manhattan and Chicago, and without the negative space between tall buildings, it may look like just another sunset. With that in mind, K or L streets NW seem like better candidates for DCHenge viewing than Constitution Avenue. (And depending on how closely the street runs due east and west, the 24th may be a better viewing date.)

There are other possibilities, too, if we take advantage of the diagonals:

New York Avenuehenge will occur on November 16, 2009, and Pennsylvaniahenge would appear to have been last week, on August 13th. (Do you always watch for Pennsylvaniahenge and then miss it? I always watch for Pennsylvaniahenge and then miss it.) Likewise Massachusettshenge, which was on August 1st or 2nd. The next Floridahenge will be July 17, 2010.

Does anyone have a good suggestion for making the most of the upcoming DCHenge? Or are we just doing for Manhattanhenge what Spinal Tap did for Stonehenge?

(Note: I am aware that "henge" does not mean what I am using it to mean: a suffix like ’gate from Watergate. While it would be cool to have a Watergatehenge, Virginia Avenue NW is just a bit too steeply angled.)

Photo of Manhattanhenge courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Maps made with The Photographer's Ephemeris.

The goal is to create more focused sections. You can search for restaurants under eats, movies under movies, music under music, and theater under theater.

It's an open secret that our website is in dire need of design improvements. Ever notice how this page actually has two search boxes? The one directly beneath the top navigation goes to a full site search powered by Google, while the search box under the City Desk header searches only City Desk posts. That's because we use two different content management systems (WordPress MU for blogs and an in-house system for our print-centric content) which haven't been integrated. We don't consider this an ideal solution, and we're working on a more sensible search page.

We're always open to suggestions and criticisms of how the site looks and works. Feel free to comment here or contact me directly at wamitchell@washingtoncitypaper.com.

You can read an engaging account of his discovery and the subsequent clean-up effort at Wired, including memorable lines like

"Oh shit," he mumbled. "I just broke the Internet."

and

"The first thing I want to say to you," Vixie told Kaminsky, trying to contain the flood of feeling, "is never, ever repeat what you just told me over a cell phone."

Seriously, this is a good read. Kaminsky's talk should be of interest to internet-security types and hacker types alike.

In the video after the jump, NBC's Pat Collins heads to the one street in D.C. where "flinty Chicago toughness" flows like frozen water.

Video courtesy of NBC Washington.

I first noticed that the doors were closing quicker than usual when I tried to board a Red Line train at Dupont Circle. It was about 6:30. I'm on crutches with a broken foot, so it wasn't like I was rushing for a train from the escalator–I was queued up and waiting when the train pulled in. The line in front of me was short, but not short enough: the doors slammed in the face of the woman ahead of me, and the train left without us. I cursed and laughed, and she told me the same thing had happened to her last night.

When the next train came, a kindly fellow put his hand in front of the door to hold it open for me. We boarded, and again the doors shut immediately. He speculated that they were running the trains quickly to practice for the inauguration crowds, echoing the opinion of the woman who'd been left on the platform with me minutes before.

Fast forward to Metro Center, where I switched to the Orange Line. I had boarded the train and found a seat quickly, and people were still boarding. Suddenly, the doors snapped shut, pinning a woman in between them. She turned and twisted but couldn't move in either direction. No one inside the car made any motion remotely resembling an attempt to help her. I didn't either, at first figuring that someone else would jump up to help before I could even get up on my crutches, and then staring in shock when nobody did. I couldn't see that someone outside was involved, until the last moment when a hand came all the way through and wrenched the door back. She struggled for probably fifteen seconds while we watched.

Then the stern, scolding voice of the metro car warned us to Step Back! and the doors finally opened and attempted to close. They didn't close, because the left-hand door was now jammed open. "Smooth move," grumbled the man sitting across from me, as he thumbed his blackberry.

A moment passed. Step Back! the metro car said again, and this time the door loosened and closed, and we began to roll.

Now I know, this story comes straight from an episode of Righteous Indignation and The City, but here's the real question: What should you do if this happens to you? Leaving aside the ubiquitous unheeded warnings and the consensus of the others that you brought it on yourself. Now that you're stuck, what are you supposed to do? Fifteen seconds is a long time when you're pinned between the doors of a fucking train. Are you supposed to just wait, or ask for help, or are you meant to struggle?

Photograph by F.S.M., Creative Commons Attribution License

From the Post homepage: "Richardson Nixes Cabinet Bid"

Is this a pun, or am I seeing something that's not there?

"At least a dozen people said they voted for me," Delaney GChatted, "[and] not a single person said they wouldn't vote for me."

Is Delaney headed for a blowout? Contacted seconds later, also by chat, the candidate said that much of his support is probably due to the single-beer plank of his political platform.

"Sometimes you just want ONE!" Delaney said. "The slogan resonates with everybody."

Delaney says he plans to spend the afternoon addressing voters' hunger and desire for change. "I'm home for a snack and to put on my jeans, which are finally dry."

Judge for yourself, below the jump.