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.

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:

With the blogosphere still reeling from the epochal sensation of our Hoods & Services Issue, the Prince of Petworth speaks out on McKenna’s coverage of Notyetworth. The Prince’s beef can be summed up in his second sentence:

The essay and “arbitrary rankings” were written by Dave McKenna who bought a house in Petworth in 2002. And it seems as though the article was written about the Petworth of 2002, a beautiful place for sure, but neglects much of the massive development/improvements that have taken place in the subsequent six years.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the warm-off-the-presses neighborhoods issue and a recent City Desk post, I named some of the dead VIPs buried in Rock Creek Cemetery in Petworth: Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter, a former head of the National Geographic Foundation; and a guy responsible for giving the world Wonder Bread. I also mentioned that Gore Vidal has already set up his burial plot there.

Well, turns out Tim Russert has joined the DVIP crowd there.

In a chat at washingtonpost.com, Dana Milbank was asked where Russert would be buried.

Milbank said the site was kept hush-hush, but “a birdie told me it’s Rock Creek Cemetery.”

It’s a beautiful place to take a walk or spend all eternity.

Rant Of the Moment: The Heights Life gripes that they just can’t find a decent pair of shoes despite the neighborhood’s new glut of shoe options at Target, Payless, and Marshalls. Oh indeed, these megashops have a surprising lack of good finds. Their shelves are either empty (Target) or just all messed up (Marshalls). I griped about this last weekend(!) when I was on my own sneaker hunt. The Marshalls stock was clearly presented in such a way as to tell patrons: We don’t give a shit.

Today a Cleveland Park resident posted on her neighborhood listserv a simple request:

“We are seeking advice on purchasing a two-person hammock on a wood stand — not a hammock that ties to a tree at both ends — for our backyard. We have reviewed a number of web sites that show attractive two-person hammocks but have no first-hand experience. Please respond off-line with advice on pros and cons of hammocks. I would be particularly interested in trying one out in a neighbor’s yard if possible.”

Do you really need to try out a hammock? Isn’t that just a little obssessive? I immediately thought of mocking such a request as this poster does not appear concerned about Tim Russert’s passing, flooding in Iowa or this really important news. But then I thought: Hammocks Are Awesome.

Not enough people have hammocks in their backyards. People often end up with this kind of crap. And I hear from NPR that with gas prices so high, people are saving money by using their backyards to grow things like vegetables. The backyard doesn’t have to be just another workspace. It can be used for relaxing!

We’ve been getting some incredible reactions to our long-awaited Hoods & Services issue.  The highlight so far: a certain Anonymous (A. Payton) posted the following (and so much more!) below Cherkis’s profile of the Dissed-Trict:

I enjoyed your June 20th series of articles on DC neghborhoods…..and I HATED IT!!!

To be fair, the series was educational and humorous. But I do wonder if the City Paper is consciously working to assist the careless real estate and population upheavals in DC. No I’m not talking conspiracies. Just a quiet, journalist stirring of the hornets nest .

You know this issue will become the Cliff Notes/cheat sheet for whites and newcomers looking to bone up on the territories they plan to envade and conquer. With this (and Google) they can pretend to be knowledable about these areas.

 Read more.

…and if all that hype just isn’t doing it for you, kindly dig the following video.

It’s a peek into the world of hard-nosed neighborhood reporting—and it captures the breakneck pace of a daily news cycle.

What does an alt-weekly know about that breakneck pace, you ask? Watch and see, folks. Watch and see.

The online component of our all-encompassing, incontrovertible Hoods & Services issue—your inexhaustive guide to D.C.’s neighborhoods—has gone live, people. And unlike with that dead-tree version right now in a box near you, you can instantly tell us what you think. Every hood profile has a comments section, so if our failsafe assessments of where you live fail to define it to your liking (the nerve!), why not let us know?

Have at it, D.C. We’ll run the especially fun/acerbic stuff in next week’s paper.

Thanks to Darrow Montgomery and the miracle of the internet, we managed to snag three fantastic shots from a good-lookin’ Flickr pool. The winning shot graces our paper this morning as the page 3 photo.

Don Harris—a man not unfamiliar with page 3 glory—runs away with the grand prize thanks to this shot, taken on the 1400 block of P Street, NW :

The silver medal goes to elsiedwyer, for her lovely photograph of Mount Pleasant at night:

And last but still delightful, these sparklers from the vowel-less Alxxxxxxxxxxxx:

The winners will be receiving their well-deserved gift baskets this coming week. Thanks to all those who contributed photos. And we hope you won’t stop the uploading just yet—there are more contests just around the corner, and some mouth-watering prizes to boot.

Meanwhile, check out this week’s issue, a heavens-to-Betsy extravaganza.

Dig it.