Sad news: Marshall Thompson is closing the District Line, his British-ish clothing store in Georgetown, (also a Best of DC winner). Perhaps there will be a sale.

Murky fans everywhere (well, mostly in Capitol Hill) will be happy to know that, after a lengthy process, coffee-bean buff and former Murky manager Ryan Jensen has scored the lease for the now-vacant storefront.

Barista doyen Nick Cho—who, as you undoubtedly recall, operated Murky out of the 7th Street space until the unfortunate raid of the D.C. tax office prompted by an even more unfortunate $427,000 in unpaid sales taxes—speculates that landlords Stanton Development may have selected Jensen because “they want to carry over the good things about Murky without the bad.” (The good ostensibly being serving excellent coffee, the bad, getting seized.)

Jensen, who spent three years managing Murky’s D.C. location, currently works for Counter Culture Coffee, a company that supplies beans to a number of area cafes—including Cho’s Arlington shop, which has, so far, escaped the consequences of his recent tax troubles.

Jensen is getting set to abandon his current occupational digs in order to run his new cafe, Peregrine Espresso.

“It means wanderer or pilgrim,” says the congenial 28-year-old. “It’s a word I came across a few years back. I wrote it down and have been slightly obsessed with it every since.”

Jensen says he doesn’t exactly know when the place will be up and running; there are some minor changes he’d like to make to the space, but he hopes to open by the end of summer.

Jensen and his wife, Jill Jensen—who will co-own the business—are serious coffee-lovers and felt strong connections to the Murky Coffee on Capitol Hill. Actually, they met there in the summer of 2003 and married two years later. “It’s where our romance blossomed,” Jensen says.

When the place closed down, they feared someone disinterested—or maybe someone who doesn’t love coffee as much as they do or did not meet and fall in love there—might snag the shop.

So they went for it, along with numerous other entrepreneurs, hoping to grab the valuable commercial space. When Jensen got word last week his bid was accepted, he contacted Cho before the rumor mill could. Cho and Jensen are not only former employer and employee, they’re friends.

Cho isn’t dwelling on how things turned out. He says that, for the most part, he’s ready to move on. “The more we talk about it the more misunderstandings there are,” he contends.

As City Desk reported last month, Murky’s equipment is also ready to move on—to soon-to-open Big Chair Coffee in Anacostia.

—Rend Smith

photo by peregrine espresso

There’s more to Woodley Park than feuding Indian restaurants. Who knew? While wandering around in the rain yesterday, I found one of the neighborhood’s new assets: the Stanford in Washington Art Gallery in what used to be a nasty little restaurant, Thai Town. (”Trust me,” says Stanford in Washington’s program cooridinator Janine Chen, “you should have seen the kitchen.”)

The building was built in the early 1900s and included a grocery store front, which has been partially restored, says Chen. It also includes Stanford U’s program, where students work at internships during the day and live in the building the rest of the time. The gallery space at 2655 Connecticut Ave. NW opened in October and is currently showing its third and most popular exhibit, “Leadership: Oliphant Cartoons & Sculpture from the Bush Years.”

Pat Oliphant, a classic and fantastic skewerist, lets loose on Bush and Cheney, of couse, with fine contributions to the Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Gonzales canons. One of his most brilliant works, though, concerns the Clintons‘ departure. Both are shown walking out of the White House gates loaded down with lamps, rugs, artwork—a lambast on B.C.’s obsession with his legacy and the prospect of H.C.’s return down the road. For a native Australian, Oliphant’s pretty prescient about U.S. politics.

But the exhibit’s greatest highlight, by my estimation anyway, was Oliphant’s description of a speech he gave to a D.C. room lousy with Republicans, including the sitting president at the time, Gerald R. Ford. Oliphant always drew Ford with a Band-Aid across his head, a comment on the late prez’s trademark clumsiness. Following Oliphant’s speech, the artist walked over to Ford and actually drew said Band-Aid on the man’s actual head. Ford, with his also-trademark good humor, sat perfectly still and grinned the whole time. A secret service agent, while also grinning, let Oliphant know that he would not be drawing on the president ever again. Later and as a tribute, Oliphant drew a panel with a laughing , handsome Ford—sans Band-Aid.

The traveling exhibit will be up through July 11.

photo by dbking

The case of the mysterious green Saab that is frequently parked in front of a fire hydrant but never has any tickets on it is closed, more or less.

A couple of months ago my brother and sister-in-law noticed a green Saab - the one pictured above with its license plate blurred out - that was, more often than not, parked on their street in front of a fire hydrant.

Why?, they asked, would the car be parked in front of the fire hydrant so often? And why are there never any tickets on it?

We speculated: undercover cop car, undercover diplomat, someone who has something on the chief of police.

In recent months the car started parking in legal spots, and we more or less forgot about it. Until yesterday, when I got a text message from my sister-in-law: Green Saab is back in front of the hydrant!

Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Marx Cafe:

Last night, I was stuck. I was hungry and I desperately wanted to watch the election returns. I picked your establishment because a) you were relatively empty and b) you had CNN on two out of three TVs. And I live near you.

I hate to say this but I regret this decision. Why you decided to pipe in bland adult contemporary alternative [think a Dawson’s Creek episode where Pacey drops some bad E] instead of the shout-y mantones of Wolf Blitzer is beyond me. Didn’t you hear that last night was the last real primary night loaded with delegate-rich states? Didn’t you hear that last night could have been—and probably was—a real game changer? Didn’t you hear that Indiana had been changed from a too-early-to call status to a too-close-to-call status?

Even if you don’t scan TPM every five minutes, you should at least have been able to give me the closed-caption option after I requested it. There are nerds out there. They can be your audience too. I am one of them.

Live up to your name. Why call yourselves Marx Cafe if you’re gonna make patrons watch the Celtics game? Why call yourselves Marx Cafe if Indiana is still Very Much In Play and you decide to flick off CNN for “Dancing with the Stars?”

What the hell was that?

You didn’t even ask me what I thought of your selection. If you had asked, I would have suggested that MSNBC’s political team would have been the better choice. I would have told you that its anchor had just been featured on the cover of the New York Times magazine, that the channel is almost hip. I would have told you also that even Morning Joe holds up as web-only reruns.

Instead, you made me think about watching “stars” try to “dance.”

I will end this now. I don’t think I need to mention the food since you appear to treat it as an afterthought. I’m sure whatever voluntary agreement you have does not include having to make a decent veggie burger.

Anyway, please keep in mind that there are still some primaries left. I hear Oregon is going to be the next game changer.

Sincerely,

J.C.

A very occasional series about escaped cats.

Poor Hugo. He was a street cat rescued from West Virginia and carted to D.C., only to bounce around to friendly and supportive, but ultimately temporary, foster parents. Then Vikram Chiruvolu, 31, who works at home writing a book about philosophies of physics and information theory, met Hugo, loved Hugo, adopted Hugo.

And then Hugo jumped from his third-floor window off Belmont Street NW, swinging onto a nearby branch and landing on a soft patch of brush below. He left behind his collar, as well as his soft cat bed, his favorite game (an extended fishing pole with a string attached), and one very sad Vikram, who had never had a pet before and had Hugo for only about 10 days. “He’s a terrific cat, really friendly and social. He’s the most puppy-like cat, just loved to play and be around people,” says Chiruvolu.

So Chiruvolu papered Adams Morgan and North Dupont Circle with fliers. His friend and adoption coordinator, Omkar Sawardekar—he fosters pets with the foster-only rescue outfit Homeward Trails—dutifully put lost-cat listings on Craigslist and offered a $100 reward. One fine fellow called and said he had a cat in a box and was going to kill it if he didn’t get 50 bucks. Sawardekar says he called the Humane Society.

The whole experience of losing Hugo has opened a “whole world of strangeness” regarding cats, says Chiruvolu. A woman in his neighborhood—she is like the “Jedi cat lady,” he says—sought him out and asked him if Hugo was a recently neutered male. She has six cats, see, and a garage set up as a playground for strays and she had recently smelled some urine she didn’t recognize.

“She had six cat traps on her front porch and told me how they worked,” says Chiruvolu. They then walked around the neighborhood together and the Jedi cat lady taught Chiruvolu “how to think like a cat. I think I almost got it.” But, alas, they did not find Hugo.

Chiruvolu did see him once, completely freaked out with his hair on end, possibly after a run-in with a fox. Hugo bolted past him and into an alley. This was about a month ago and it’s the last time Chiruvolu saw Hugo. If you’ve seen him, e-mail the info to comm-668928260@craigslist.org.

This afternoon, the D.C. Council’s public works and environment committee voted to strip $2 million meant to reconstruct Klingle Road NW from Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s budget proposal. Furthermore, the committee voted to add language to budget legislation requiring the road to remain closed, effectively overturning a 2003 council vote to reopen the road.

For LL’s take on the whole sordid story and how it got to this point, read this.

Committee chair and Ward 1 councilmember Jim Graham supported spending the money, as did Ward 4’s Muriel Bowser. Ward 3’s Mary Cheh, Ward 7’s Yvette Alexander, and at-large member Kwame R. Brown opposed doing so. Ward 8’s Marion Barry, though not a committee member, also showed up to speak in support of keeping the road closed.

The full council is free to revisit the decision when the budget legislation moves forward next month.

Updates to come.

UPDATE, 3:50 P.M.: A subsequent amendment by Cheh moves the $2 million in local money to alley repairs and earmarks another $2 million out of the District’s federal funds for environmental remediation of Klingle Valley and construction of a recreation trail.

UPDATE, 4:17 P.M.: After the markup ended, Graham vowed to take the matter to the full council at the May 13 budget session. He also said he intends to hold a public “roundtable” on the Klingle issue in the two weeks interim. “I think there’s going to be a lot of discussion,” he says. During the hearing, Graham had proposed delaying any vote until such a roundtable could be held. Cheh & Co. voted it down; “The public had had ample time….I don’t know anything that’s been debated more than Klingle Road,” she said.

UPDATE, 7:30 P.M.: The Fenty response, from spokesperson Carrie Brooks: “The Mayor will defer to the judgment of the members of the Committee on Public Works and the Environment on this issue. Having served as a councilmember for six years, he certainly appreciates the legislature’s role in shaping the District’s budget.”

For the second year in a row, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has proved himself faster than the city’s premier alt-weekly local-politics columnist.

This morning, congressional/bureaucratic/judicial/media types gathered at Anacostia Park for the yearly Capital Challenge three-mile race, a fundraiser benefiting the D.C. Special Olympics. Fenty, a special guest participant, finished the race in approximately 18 minutes flat (official results haven’t been posted yet, and since Fenty was a VIP entrant, his time won’t be posted anyway). LL came in at about 21:50.

That’s a pretty good improvement for Fenty, who was in the 18:40s last year, good enough to beat the previous LL’s 20:14. (Fenty’s improvement, though, wasn’t as stark as the current LL’s, who ran a 26:38 last year.)

Other great accomplishment for Fenty: He beat LL’s boss this year. Last year, Mr. Fuego y Frio turned in an 18:35; this year, he was in the low 18:20s. Not good enough to beat Hizzoner this time around.

And Fenty can rest assured knowing his rep precedes him—overheard several times among skinny cross-country types gabbing shortly after the race: “I can’t believe you beat Fenty!”

PS: Apologies to Dave Namamura Nakamura for stealing your shtick here.

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.

Following a full day of surgery—Earth Day, natch—a couple of D.C. cosmetic surgeons started crunching the numbers. Just how much carbon is used in the disposal of sucked-out fat?

Considering that an average of 7 pounds of fat is sucked out per surgery and that national surveys estimate Americans undergo 450,000 liposuctions and tummy tucks annually, that’s about 3 million pounds of yellow, goopy fat to get rid of. Each pound of fat is about 78 percent carbon, but because no one has yet figured out how to make biodiesel out of it in a way that people will, uh, stomach, the fat gets incinerated, pushing about 1,000 tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year. Drs. Navin Singh and Marwan Khalifeh, senior partners at Ivy Plastic Surgery Associates in Chevy Chase, D.C., figured out that creates the pollution equivalent of driving 2 million miles.

So they’re trying to do something about it. Their office is paperless; they’re energy conscious and all of that. But there’s only so much they can do with fat, so to offset handing about 160 pounds of fat per month over to a medical waste disposal service, Singh and Khalifeh are purchasing carbon credits.

Singh calls it a “baby step” for his industry. “The first incentive is to conserve, reuse, recycle. We do as many of those things as possible, but when we can’t, you have to go for a lazier way and purchase credits.”

The surgeons got online at carbonfund.org and signed up to spend about $100 to $200 a month on carbon credits, which will (they hope) go to companies and nonprofits involved in pollution reduction, protecting existing forests, planting trees, etc. “You do wonder if this is legitimate or if someone is taking our money and not doing anything, so we spread it around with different companies while we figure this out,” says Singh.

Something else they figured out: If people actually jogged off the weight, that would be cheaper and better for their health, but not actually better for the environment. “They would just liberate that carbon into the air by burning it off,” says Singh.

(photo by keizie)

A couple of weeks ago, Washington City Paper named Robert Triolo the city’s premier street performer. The designation came in deference to Triolo’s steady presence at Stead playground, where he shoots free throw after free throw, a succession of one-handed nothing-but-nets that Triolo documents in a pad that he brings with him each day. The hoop sits right above the well-trafficked sidewalk on P Street between 16th and 17th, a visibility that accounts in part for Triolo’s celebrity.

Well, the guy’s going to have to find a new spot to shoot, according to the following press release:

(Washington, D.C) — Beginning April 30, 2008, the Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) will temporarily close the play courts, plaza, and playground at the Stead Recreation Center, 1625 P Street, NW, to accommodate construction of a new playground. The recreation center and athletic field will remain open during construction. During construction, alternative access to the recreation center will be from 17th Street, NW, via Church Street, NW, to the rear of the recreation center.

**The new playground is scheduled to open in August 2008.**

Tough luck for the city’s most tireless free-throw shooter, but good luck for the community at large, which could use a shadier Stead playground. Place is brutal in summer.

By now, you may have heard of the legal troubles of one James L. Walls Jr., the mayor of District Heights, Md., who was arrested for soliciting a male undercover cop for prostitution early Thursday morning.

Fun fact: Mere hours before Walls was arrested near Verizon Center, he had been hanging out with Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander at a community meeting in the Prince George’s County burg of Fairmount Heights, where Walls serves as town administrator.

What was Alexander doing across the District line? She had planned to attended a community meeting in her ward, but a scheduling snafu meant that didn’t happen. So she decided to check out the Fairmount Heights meeting and work on those interjurisdictional relations a bit. There, she met Walls.

LL learned of this when he ran into Alexander at the Wilson Building yesterday—before the Walls scandal broke. At that time, Alexander referred to Walls as “an amazing individual.”

When Alexander learned of Walls’ arrest later in the day, she called LL. “I can’t believe this!” she exclaimed between guffaws. “We were just talking about the prostitution on Eastern Avenue.”

LL inquired whether there were any outward signs that Walls might have been on the prowl. Says Alexander, “He had some fancy brown-and-white shoes on.”

In this week’s column, LL detailed the political machinations beneath the latest resurrection of the interminable Klingle Road dispute. In the process of counting the votes on a $2 million budget line item to move forward with road reconstruction, LL chose to count At-Large Councilmember Kwame R. Brown as a “Spineless Wind-Twister” thanks to his comments in favor of further debate of an issue that has been debated for 17 years.

Well, yesterday, Brown called LL up and gave him an earful for lumping him in with Ward 8 Councilmember Marion S. Barry Jr. in that category. LL visited Brown’s office and listened as Brown explained his deep convictions—and campaign promises—against spending local money on Klingle Road repairs.

So there you have it folks: LL is officially pulling Brown from the Spineless Wind-Twisters and putting him amoung the proud ranks of the Bleeding-Heart Tree-Huggers. That’s brings the running count to eight anti-road votes, four pro-roaders, and one unknown.

Brown’s conviction also means that the mayor’s $2 million Klingle Road line item isn’t going to make it out of the council’s committee on public works and the environment. Committee chair and Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham favors spending the money, as does Ward 4’s Muriel Bowser, but the other three committee members—Mary Cheh of Ward 3, Yvette Alexander of Ward 7, and Brown—are all now unequivocally on the record against it.

Look for that $2 million to be directed elsewhere at the committee’s April 30 budget markup.

Photo of Klingle Road by Darrow Montgomery

Today, another battle has been decided in the ongoing war over live music in Mount Pleasant, and both sides are claiming victory.

For the past year, Mount Pleasant restaurants Don Jaime’s, Haydee’s, and Don Juan’s have been working with neighborhood group Hear Mount Pleasant to terminate their voluntary agreements with the Mount Pleasant Neighborhood Alliance. The voluntary agreements, or VA’s, restricted hours for live entertainment and prohibited cover charges and dancing. Catch up on some background here.

In yesterday’s ruling, the ABC board amended the MPNA’s voluntary agreements with Don Jaime’s and Haydee’s , but did not terminate them (a ruling on Don Juan’s voluntary agreement is slated for next Wednesday). Under the new agreement, hours for live music have been significantly expanded: The restaurants may host entertainment Sundays through Wednesdays until 11:00 p.m.; Thursdays until midnight; and Fridays and Saturdays until 1:00 a.m. Dancing is now permitted, as are cover charges.

In a press release, Hear Mount Pleasant declared the ruling “a major victory.” In their own release, the MPNA focused on the fact that the ABC board “denied the request to terminate voluntary agreements.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Right when you thought the Lincoln Theatre was all cashed out, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty announced earlier today that the District plans to develop two city-owned properties behind the theater and use a portion of the funds generated by the properties to support the theater’s future operations.

Fenty says its his hope that the two properties on the 90,000-square-foot parking lot will bring in enough revenue to help keep the cash-strapped 88-year-old theater afloat.

Early last year, Lincoln officials threatened to shut down the once-popular theater due to lack of finances until the D.C. gov put up a $200,000 grant to keep the doors open. The District also spent another $1.5 million last year for capital improvements that are nearly complete.

Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham and At-Large Councilmember Kwame R. Brown also attended the announcement today outside the theaterss U Street entrance.

“We want to bring the Lincoln Theatre where it should be,” said Graham, who has been on the theater’s board for 10 years.

It was a shame the announcement did not take place in the back parking lot so everyone could see where all the action was taking place. The District is requiring that any development will provide ongoing financial support for the theater and include at least 7,500 square feet of flexible event space. Bids for the site are due by July 18 and construction is scheduled to begin by October of this year.

Opened in 1922, the Lincoln Theatre is known for hosting big-name performers, including Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. Early next month, Maya Angelou is scheduled to celebrate her 80th birthday there. Maybe she can give over her birthday cash to help out?

—Whitney Boyd