That’s what the Examiner is reporting.

According to the quasi-daily, the Gallery Place Metro stop has been so overrun with kids that station employees have taken to calling it “7th and Hell.”

That’s kinda catchy.

But the real scoop here is this: According to the Examiner, employees at the Fuddruckers at 7th and H have “resorted to locking the restaurant’s doors during business hours to keep out the crush of kids who have no intention of buying food.”

A store manager is quoted saying that youngsters have turned the place into “pandemonium.”

Understandable, I guess. But as a guy who scouts out all possible fire-escape options whenever alighting on a new public place, I gotta raise a stink about this door-locking thing: Doesn’t that violate the fire code?

On my way home from the National Arboretum just now, I passed a pretty grisly scene: the convenience store on the corner of Rock Creek Church and Warder, NW, has been burnt to a crisp. To wit:

The proprietors still don’t know what caused the fire, which witnesses say began around 3 o’clock this morning. By the time I got there, they were explaining to their employees that there’d be jobs in the future–they just didn’t know when. The fire department expects to have an explanation by early next week. As for the owners…well, all one of them could tell me was that “shit happens.”

Indeed. In the meantime, does anybody have a clue as to what the hell happened here?

Just announced: Dave Jamieson, a former Washington City Paper staff writer, has just won the prestigious Livingston Award for his story “Letters From an Arsonist.” The story—a must read!—ran as the cover story on June 1, 2007. The award brings with it not just a rubber-chicken lunch, but $10,000.

It’s a big deal. The Livingston Awards, which are given out to journalists under 35 and are the nation’s largest all-media reporting prizes, are always a big deal. Jamieson, who won in the local reporting category, had to beat out heavyweights at the Washington Post and other fine publications and broadcast networks with more resources.

But this is no upset. His story exemplified what all great stories do. It uncovered—with rich details and new facts—the story of the arsonist who burned our city for years and years. The story provided a haunting, unforgettable profile of the man behind all those fires and also broke serious news. Through dogged investigative work, Jamieson uncovered that the man was responsible for more than the one death that had been previously reported—and had to inform the children of two of the victims that their parents did not die as the result of an “accidental” fire.

While most of you have read his piece, few of you have an idea of what Jamieson went through to get his story just right. The arsonist’s letters would come in batches and then suddenly stop. A trip out to the Indiana prison for a one-on-one interview came to nothing. But he stuck with it for a year.

The story is a testament to what journalism can do and should do more often. In this era of cutbacks and imperatives to blog!blog!blog! Jamieson proved that journalism is still best served by expert reporting and expert writing. There’s not a wasted sentence in his piece (credit should go to his editors Erik Wemple, Andrew Beaujon, and Jule Banville as well). If you want a textbook case of why this publication should still matter to District residents and its owners down south, this is it.

So today, we are inspired by Jamieson’s news. And we will continue to be inspired by Jamieson’s arsonist story and his feature pieces.

Congrats, man. You earned it.

(photo by Darrow Montgomery)

Two years ago, when Brennan Proctor opened Uncle Brutha’s Hot Sauce Emporium in a stand-alone store, he knew he was entrusting his profits to impulse buyers. People don’t make a special trips just to buy condiments, at least not the way the masses converge on the market for cookies and produce and fresh meat.

But in 2006, when Proctor signed the lease on his shop on 7th Street SE, the area around Eastern Market was booming and he felt confident the crowds would toss enough cash his way to make the rent. The fire last May changed that. With the precipitous drop in foot traffic, Proctor says, he hasn’t been able to maintain growth. When his lease ends at the end of this month, Uncle Brutha’s will close.

“The local community has continued to support us but it’s just not enough,” he says. Proctor says he will go back to hawking his signature No. 10 (the red one) and No. 9 (the green one) sauces at various market stands and is working on getting his sauce on tables at local restaurants. So far, he’s sold bottles to B Smith’s, Bread and Chocolate, and the Nationals Park. Uncle Brutha’s will also soon reappear on the shelves at area Whole Foods, which haven’t carried the hot stuff for a few months because Proctor was having a problem with his distributor.

A new member has joined the Columbia Heights listserv in order to find out if anyone saw this guy last night:

I was driving north on 11th Street around 10:45, when suddenly there was a guy in the middle of the road (near the intersection with Euclid), flailing around. He was holding something in his hand that appeared to be smoking, and we watched as he threw at at a house. Turns out it was some sort of exploding firework, sparks, rockets, the whole nine yards. He saw us coming towards him, yelled, and ran at our car. As we passed, he pulled out another firework, and lit it and screamed at us. We got far enough away not to see what happened next. Did anybody else see this guy? Nobody else was on the street when we saw it. We called the police, but didn’t stick around for them to show up (as there was a crazy guy throwing fireworks nearby).

Any sightings?

Today, Don Juan’s restaurant in Mount Pleasant will make its case before the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board that it deserves to have live music and dancing reinstated, just as Don Jaime’s and Haydee’s did last week.

Don Juan’s is a different animal than the other two, and so its case will be harder to make. Over the years it has gained notoriety as a haven for drunk Latino men, getting drunker by the hour.

But Don Juan’s owner, Alberto Ferrufino, has taken extraordinary steps over the last year to change his restaurant’s image. Working with Hear Mount Pleasant, the neighborhood group working to overturn the live music ban, Ferrufino has spent thousands of dollars to install double-paned windows, a new roof, and soundproof insulation. After firing three DJs for refusing to turn the music down, he eliminated the problem by getting a new jukebox with smaller speakers and putting a limiter on it so it can’t get too loud.

The ABC Board requires yearly trainings for bar managers in responsible alcohol management, but for the last decade Don Juan’s has been sending its entire staff to the trainings. And recently, they’ve contracted with a well-known consultant from the Responsible Hospitality Institute to provide much more intensive training on responsible alcohol service and security.

Several neighbors have been making a concerted effort to bring families with children to Don Juan’s on a regular basis, trying to change the all-male composition of its clientele to be more family-friendly. After all, with the wave of gentrification in Mount Pleasant and the recent fire which effectively evicted 200 Latino residents from the neighborhood, Don Juan’s needs to expand its client base in order to survive.

I live directly behind Don Juan’s, and while I’m a big fan of their tamales, I usually get them to go because I don’t like being the only woman in there. I also didn’t like having a drunk guy pass out on my feet on a Sunday afternoon in there a few years ago. But I’ve got to hand it to Don Juan’s for cleaning up its act and making an effort to engage the community. I’ve been a supporter of Hear Mount Pleasant since their inception – I’ve even got their silk-screened “Bring Back Live Music” sign in front of my house – and I think they’ve done a great job listening to the community’s concerns and working with Don Juan’s to address them.

And as for live music, as far as I can tell men don’t like to dance alone, so more music will mean more women, and that can only be good for the place. We’ll see if the ABC Board agrees.

This weekend I came across the greatest find since moving to D.C. Caveat: My interests tend to skew less toward record stores and more toward woodland creatures. If yours do, too (hey, I know it’s a stretch, but the blog is lookin’ light today, OK?), you should check out Prince William Forest Park. Once you have your immigration papers in order, that is. They don’t like them illegals there, you know, but there are 15,000 acres, so it’s easy enough to get lost no matter who you are. That’s what’s great about this place.

From D.C., the park is only about 35 miles down the road, right off I-95 and the Marine Corps training site at Quantico. That means that in less than an hour, you could be set up at a wonderful campsite deep in the woods for 15 bucks a night. The Oak Ridge Campground inside the park has nearly 100 sites and is located 5.5 miles down wooded roads from the visitor center. Stop in there to get a great map of the park. Each of the three campground loops has decent bathrooms and a water spigot; Loop A has a shower, even, for those who do that sort of nonsense while camping. There are no hookups, however, a blessed deletion for tent campers (there won’t be any retirees and their obnoxious RVs anywere nearby. In fact, having had a few bad experiences with the RV/generator crowd, I found this place with the help of The Best in Tent Camping: Virginia: A Guide for Car Campers Who Hate RVs, Concrete Slabs, and Loud Portable Stereos). One aspect the book fails to play up is the spaciousness of the sites, especially compared to some of the puny ones inside Shenandoah National Park. Each comes with a fire ring and a pole to hang a lantern.

Beware the raccoons, though; they’re cheeky, so hide your grub. Also, I found a tick on my person, quickly tweezed off and killed, so bring some spray, but for god’s sake don’t whine about ticks. Just be careful.

Best of all: There are 37 miles of hiking trails maintained by the Potomac Appalacian Trail Club; several nice ones start right at the campground. The North Valley Trail includes a lovely stretch along Quantico Creek to Lake Quantico Falls and the former Pyrite Mine, abandoned in 1920 after workers went on strike for a 50-cent raise. Apparently, they don’t like them unions in Prince William, either.

I grew up in a rural area. I like hiking. I know how to put up a tent and start a fire. But the lovely people who live in Front Royal, Va., are good; they can smell the city folk from two blocks away. Last weekend some friends and I rented a cabin for a little R&R, which included a couple trips into town. Here’s what I learned:

1. Don’t Buy Firewood. This is a dead giveaway. After an unsuccessful fire from the soggy wood we chopped with random tools we found in the basement–including a mini chainsaw, a sledgehammer, and something called a wedge–we went searching for wood to buy. We found it at a 7-Eleven. And we got heckled. Actually, we got passively heckled. Two guys getting in their car had a very loud conversation that went something like this: “Shit! They’re buying firewood!” “Oh my god, I can’t believe it! They’re buying firewood?!” Not enjoyable.

2. Don’t Buy Fancy Coffee. OK, this one should be obvious. But if a town has a cafe, it seems reasonable to stop by it and buy a cappuccino. We did this. As we were walking down the sidewalk of this sleepy town, there were suddenly people hanging out every window (or so it seemed) making fun of us and our coffee. Much laughing ensued.

3. Don’t Take Pictures of the Anti-Abortion Signs. It’s hard to resist, especially with gems like: “If you can read this sign, you weren’t aborted.” But I’m pretty sure we got a nasty stare from a guy on his dirt bike.

4. Don’t Drive a Rented Chevy Impala. Enough said.

With the Mount Pleasant apartment fire and back history of thousands of code violations, a string of Post stories on crummy landlords, and the announcement today by Peter Nickles heralding a new “sweeping” offensive against slumlords, I have to wonder: Where’s Councilmember Jim Graham?

If you go to the Post’s “Forced Out Map,” so many–if not the majority–of controversial properties are in Graham’s ward. The news of these properties isn’t a surprise. Each of these properties has a history. Graham is great at throwing heat during a council hearing. And he’s wonderful at showing umbrage in front of a reporter. I have no doubt that he’s prevented a number of tenants from eviction. And maybe he’s even helped clean up a building or two. I can’t help but feel Graham could have done much, much more.

I can’t help but wonder where Graham was on these issues years ago. And if he was on these issues, why didn’t he do more to protect tenants? He certainly wasn’t living in these apartments ala Cory Booker.

After the Mount Pleasant fire, Graham was quoted in the Post saying: “This is the classic example of eviction by neglect.” The newspaper of record goes on to describe the councilmember as having “worked on various issues with tenants for years.”

So I’m sure Graham was well aware of the 7,000 code violations from that building. So couldn’t this powerful and savvy councilmember have done more?

To those grousing about this morning’s helicopters hovering over Mount Pleasant: 1) Give it up; 2) You live in a city, remember?; 3) Hundreds of people lost their homes, ya know?

There was enough whining on the Shepherd Park listserv that WJLA’s Managing Editor Dan Patrick had to respond. He wrote:

WJLA-TV and NewsChannel 8 has been getting complaints about “our helicopter” hovering over the scene of the Mount Pleasant fire this morning after a posting on a email group. I can assure you, due to flight restrictions post 9/11, our helicopter can come no closer than the northern portion of the Beltway in Montgomery County. We were not over the scene this morning, causing the noise issues for these residents. The only helicopters that would be allowed in the that airspace would be MPD’s helicopter or the United State’s Park Police helicopter.

And the response from a swell Shepherd Park citizen:

My sincere apologies to WJLA Channel 8. The helicopter hovering above Shepherd Park this morning was indeed a news helicopter, not military or police, but what looked like an ‘8′ was revealed to be a ‘6′ after the helicopter passed closer to my home. There is no Channel 6 in the DC area, but whoever they were need to be grounded, fined, and jailed.

Priceless.

Within hours of this morning’s fire in Mount Pleasant, various non-profits and government agencies hit the scene. And it looks like the hundreds of people displaced by the fire will not have to spend the night inside a rec center. They are being put up in hotels, reports Jason Yuckenberg, Councilmember Jim Graham’s spokesperson.

Also,Yuckenberg notes, a number of property owners have called Graham’s office to offer help. “We have many, many individuals coming forward offering rooms to rent at low cost or for free,” he says.

But these are temporary fixes.

As for the new Target possibly helping…

“I gave Target a call earlier today,” Yuckenberg reports. “They’ve always really come through.” But he adds: “I have not been able to reach our contact today.”

By now people know about the Mount Pleasant fire. The blaze took hold just before midnight. Sirens could be heard as far away as 16th and U Streets NW. Hundreds may have lost their homes.

This morning, Mount Pleasant Street is still shut down. Yellow tape cut off intersections and roped off businesses. Fire hoses take up Irving Street. Tired fire fighters gather around a truck serving coffee, rested at tables, and on apartment stoops.

Hundreds of people crowded near the 7-Eleven to watch as fire fighters continue to spray water on the four-story apartment building that is now gutted, that is mainly now just a scarred facade. People are quiet and respectful, snapping pictures with digital cameras, talking to neighbors, generally staying out of the way. It is eerie to see this busy street turn so silent. It’s now a possible crime scene.

According to the Post, Fire Department Spokesperson Alan Etter estimated that 200 firefighters and 80 pieces of equipment were used to combat the five-alarm fire: “The city had not had a five-alarm fire since a warehouse burned in the late 1970s, Etter said.”

Just behind the apartment, the fire had spread to Meridian Hill Baptist Church. Its stained-glass window are broken. Its roof is nearly collapsing. Inside, burnt debris is everywhere–down the pews and up at the pulpit. It looks like a total loss.

More pictures of the scene this morning, after the jump.

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Sorry.

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Over the past two weeks, I heard this joke three times:

Q: What do you call a sword swallower with health insurance?
A: A Canadian!

Ba-dump-ching!

In this week’s Show and Tell, I spoke with two American sword-swallowing couples about their experiences with horrific, uninsured throat injuries! Palace of Wonders employees and traveling side-show act Tyler Fyre and Thrill Kill Jill (above) and Centreville, Va. performers Charon Henning and Alex Kensington were kind enough to share their incredible injury stories (and their lame industry jokes).

Says Palace of Wonders museum director James Taylor,

Self-deprecation is a necessary element to the side-show business. Performers use massive amounts of double entendree, because that’s the way to make most of these acts palpatable to the audience: They make it seem funny so that the crowds can get past the hairs standing on the backs of their necks.

Neck hairs, step right up: Click here for a sword swallowing, fire breathing audio slideshow with Tyler and Jill.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery.

A four-alarm fire that started this morning in the historic Boone Hotel in downtown Boonsboro has spread to other buildings in the town square and is still smoldering. The hotel, built in the 1700s, was being renovated by romance novelist Nora Roberts and her husband, Bruce Wilder, who owns the bookshop across the street. They’ve lived in Washington County for some 30 years, according to the Haegerstown Herald-Mail.

An archived story in that paper describes the couple’s plans to renovate the six-room hotel for use as an inn, with each room to reflect a different literary theme and couple—including one reserved for Roberts’ In Death series (written under the pseudonym J.D. Robb) which features Eve Dallas, sexy police lieutenant of the future, and “her Irish billionaire, Roarke.”

The hotel went up in flames shortly before 8 a.m. and spread to at least four buildings, including apartments and a Subway sandwich shop. Nearly 40 fire companies were called in; various news reports this a.m. say no one was hurt. WUSA9 is reporting that witnesses source the fire to a kerosene heater that tipped over and started an explosion.

Roberts and Wilder also bought the U.S. Hotel in the same town square and their son, Dan Aufdem-Brinke, had planned to open a reastaurant there. Interestingly, he had a different restaurant on South Main Street, next door to the Boone Hotel, that was destroyed by fire roughly a year ago, on Jan. 19.