There’s really nothing more ominous than a circling police helicopter. Action movies are to blame: for immediate drama intensification, just show a chopper cutting across the sky, or better yet, zipping between skyscrapers. Works every time. When I saw a helicopter in Columbia Heights on Saturday night around 11 p.m., I immediately thought the worst. With its spotlight beaming, it made several tight rotations in the area. On Girard Street, the block between 13th and 14th was closed off, and there were several parked cop cars. Soon, rumors were circulating amongst onlookers. There was a murder! There was a drug bust!

Wrong, and wrong. Of course, these were realistic options. And, for the record, at the moment, the homicide count in D.C. is up from last year’s numbers: 112 today, as compared to 106 on August 1, 2007, as stated on MPD’s website. But those figures are not part of our story. Apparently, the helicopter was called over to Columbia Heights after checking out a fight reported around O Street in Southwest, according to Marco Santiago, the third district’s community relations coordinator. Then, a call came in describing sounds of gunshots on Girard Street. A black revolver was recovered from an alley on the above-mentioned block. Then, the helicopter flew directly west where a rifle was recovered at 1620 Columbia Road, said Santiago.

Image by Mr. T in DC.

My good friend, roommate, and I decided to check out Commonwealth, the new restaurant in Columbia Heights, last night, and though many of the menu items were unavailable, we ended up having a pretty good meal. Our server was very helpful and knowledgeable about the menu, though it was obvious the kinks with the service haven’t been ironed out yet. Thank goodness we weren’t in a hurry, and all three of us are pretty patient. The restaurant was out of most of the beers I wanted to try, so I settled on a monkey ale, and it was pretty good. The highlight of my meal, though (besides the company), was the roasted trout with stuffed bread and butter. I was warned that the fish would come with its head and tail still on, but I was up for something new. Boy, was it delicious (and expensive)!

I know Ruth said she’d probably wait until sweater season to sample the entrees, but I’ll be headed back to try a new dish.

Okay, before people start jumping down my throat about this one, I’ll acknowledge Columbia Heights has other oft-mentioned restaurants besides Logan @ The Heights: Rumberos, Taqueria Distrito Federal, RedRocks Fire Brick Pizzeria, etc. Still, Logan @The Heights is frequently referred to as the area’s only decent sit-down place with a pretty standard, broad American menu.

People constantly complain about the dearth of good restaurants in the area (if you want to note some hidden gem in the comments, feel free). Since everyone else in the world has already blogged about it, I’m not going to spend too much time discussing CommonWealth, Chef Jamie Leeds‘ gastropub, opening up in Columbia Heights today. But, during one of the restaurant’s two mock openings earlier this week, I walked in and picked up a menu. So, here’s a short report:

The restaurant’s “English-inspired and American-bred” cuisine includes a wide assortment of U.K. bottled and canned beers, mostly in the $7 to $12 range. For those looking for some cheaper suds, there are drafts on tap for $5 and $6.

The food itself sounds, frankly, like your classic heavy, winter fare. I might wait until I’m in a wool sweater and a scarf to sample some real entrees, which range from $15 to $38, for a two-person dish. The “Mains” include London Broil, Smithwick’s Beer Battered Fish & Chips, and Butcher Breakfast (2 poached eggs, streaky bacon, black pudding, surrey ham, pork ‘n beans).

In the meanwhile—while the weather is still in the 80s and 90s—there are snacks and “butcher plates” with pick-and-choose-your-own meats and cheeses. The dessert section is also relatively robust with Sticky Toffee Pudding, Lemon Trifle w/Rasberry Sauce, and Chocolate Pudding Cake w/Ice Cream. The list goes on.

Commonwealth is located at 1400 Irving Street NW.

Yesterday, we blogged about the boundaries for the new “Shaw ShotSpotter” that actually covers parts of Adams Morgan, Columbia Heights, Mt. Pleasant, U Street, Bloomingdale, Truxton Circle, and Park View. (Perhaps it graces the borders of lower Crestwood and lower Petworth, as well? D.C. has too many damn neighborhoods.)

Anyway, here’s the graphic version of the rough boundaries of the coverage area, as approved by Captain Michael Eldridge, who is overseeing the technology.

My hair has gotten to that point, folks. It’s time for a haircut.

I don’t know if this happens to anyone else, but there’s a point—an actual length—in the afterlife of my hair follicles when all hell breaks loose. In January 2007, I was so sick of it (and it was long enough, after the split ends) to donate the majority of my locks to Locks of Love. Yes, I did revert to looking like my sixth-grade self, but it was worth it just to get rid of the horrible tangles that kept me in the shower for 30-45 minutes shampooing, conditioning, pulling strands apart, and repeating.

I’m not willing to get a cut as drastic as before (I’ve realized that chin-length bobs make me look a little chunky above the neck). I just need to take a couple inches off.

Which brings me to my main problem: decision-making. Sometimes (and when it really counts), I’m able to go confidently in the direction of my dreams…ahem. But for everyday decisions, like, say, where to eat for lunch in a new area or a new place to get my hair cut, it takes me awhile.

I asked colleagues the other day and scoured Yelp! looking for a quality salon with moderate prices and near Adams Morgan. I did a new search online this morning (with, of course, the same results and reviews) and chose a couple of places to call. I thought today would be the day. Thursdays can be relatively slower in terms of content, so I figured I could leave for a long lunch, get my hair cut, and come back beautiful and ready for a date tonight. And then I came to work and promptly forgot about it until I ran my fingers through my hair.

I was thinking Trim (close but expensive), Blondie’s (a bit of a walk but moderate), Urban Escape (I could just tumble down the hill to get there), or Bang (more of a trek but moderate prices, I think). Any (helpful) suggestions?

What is the deal with all of these metal carts I see everywhere? And where does one get one for less than $40? I’ve never seen one before moving to the East Coast, and I’m dismayed that everyone seems to have one (that is, except my roommate and me). I’ve been far too shy to stop random people on the sidewalks to inquire because I still haven’t figured out the friendliness rating of the District.

Please, tell me where to get one on the cheap. My womanly arms are going to grow out of proportion to the rest of my body pretty soon if I don’t get some relief from carrying gallons upon gallons of chocolate milk the two blocks home from the nearest market. (No, I don’t have a problem. I just like chocolate milk. There’s nothing wrong with that.)

Earlier this month, the New York Times Magazine ran a lengthy article on the clandestine doings of London guerrilla gardener Richard Reynolds.

If you’re not familiar with this rogue tilling movement, Reynolds supplies a neat explanation of the practice to writer Jon Mooallem. Guerrilla gardening, he says, is ” the cultivation of someone else’s land without permission.”

Gardeners like Reynolds home in on forgotten properties, whether public or private, in order to work horticultural wizardry over them, transforming formerly crappy parcels into botanical wonderlands or small farms. The movement, for which Reynolds has become the default spokesperson, has attracted its share of devotees. Reynolds’ Web site boasts impressive before-and-after guerrillla garden pics sent to the flora guru from such places as Toronto, Portland, Ore., and Brisbane, Australia. “There are hundreds of us around the world discreetly digging at night. Some like me improve their cities, some make the countryside that little bit more colorful, and some live off the vegetables they illicitly grow in roadside verges,” writes Reynolds on his site.

Scanning the site’s photos and extensive guerrilla garden map (evidently there’s a “dig” in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba) and finding no mention of the District might lead one to conclude that insurgent gardening is just one more vintage-clothed hipster phenomenon a decidedly Brooks Brothers D.C. is missing out on.

Not so. In what was a vacant lot across from Marcus Popetz’s two-story house in east Columbia Heights, a lot that was, as the 32-year-old computer engineer puts it, “attracting drug users, trash, etc…everything a normal nuisance property does” now grow tomato, squash, and cucumber plants.

According to Popetz, two years ago he and some other residents who’d been working on beautification projects around the neighborhood began thinking about what to do with the large, eyesore of a plot just adjacent to the playground of Bruce Monroe Elementary school. “We looked into who owned it,” Popetz writes in an email “and the city did a lien to clean it once they found that the owner was a corporation [that] hadn’t paid back taxes in 20 years. We cleaned it a couple of times and then started to think about planting flowers and then the idea sorta ballooned into a garden from there.”

Unlike celebrity guerrilla gardener Reynolds, who, in his recently published book– as the Times mag reports– makes “references to horticultural ’sleeper cells’ and ’shock and awe’ plantings,’” Popetz doesn’t act as if he’s involved in environmentally responsible espionage. There’s been no night-time gardening or “seed bombs” at the plot on Columbia Road. Popetz and crew (made up of the garden’s co-leader Sara Eigenberg and at any given time six to eight other gardeners) have never really tried to hide their work.

Though technically, the community-oriented green thumbers are trespassing, no one seems to mind, especially not the neighborhood kids who help weed or the senior citizens who get handed surplus veggies. And the city, which is still trying to locate the owner’s of the abandoned lot the guerrillas commandeered, has not only failed to give the gardeners any grief but erected a gate to help protect the project.

“It’s completely illegal, we don’t have any ownership, but morality is on our side,” says Popetz. In a neighborhood where dark, empty lots create the perfect hideaway for gunmen (which happened once in the lot, Popetz remembers), who could argue with him? Asked whether the Columbia Heights gardeners have–like many other guerrilla gardeners–a political agenda, Popetz snorts, “The grandest political aspiration we have,” he says, “is to keep the garden going.”–Rend Smith

I recently moved to the District from the other Washington (as in, I flew over Monday night), and while chatting up the sublettor as he packed the last of his things, he mentioned that he was taking his Brita filter with him. I haven’t gotten a chance to talk to my new roommate about this situation, but I’m concerned.

I never felt comfortable drinking water straight from the tap in my house in Seattle. Early on in my two-year stay in that house off campus, I filled a glass from the kitchen faucet and was dismayed and a bit disgusted to find swirling gray water almost touching my lips. From then on, I used botted water, even to cook.

My parents’ house in eastern Washington (the state) has great water, but I think that’s because we have well water.

When I visited friends in New Jersey and New York City earlier this year, I heard all about how great tap water is in the city, and yes, I definitely agree. The water in NYC is pretty darn swell. NYC is so big and still has awesome water, it would be logical to thing that D.C. water filtration systems would be of high quality as well.

What do you think? Should I buy a water filter on my way home from work tonight? Is tap water in D.C. rivaling NYC in water taste, purity and clarity? Are Brita filters so common in the District that it’s unheard of to drink straight from the tap? Does everyone know something that I, mere “newbie,” haven’t discovered yet? Or are filters for the health-conscious Seattleites and other West-Coasters who move east and fear for the worst?

As July 4 approaches, I am sure there are many neighborhoods that have started to celebrate our independence a little early with some imported Mineshell Mayhem or a Phandemonium 205 Shot. I’m sure police are having a grand time chasing down every dispatch to some little back-alley salute and corner tribute in bottle rockets. And I know the listservs go crazy on this issue. I understand all the arguments against: kids need working fingers on July 5, cops need to chase after gunshot noises not the blast off a roman candle, it’s all such a noisy racket well past the time the Mall has emptied out. But still.

I secretly love driving around the city and watching the illegal stuff go off all sparkly in the air. In my experience, Columbia Heights is awesome with unregulated mini-finales (particularly 13th Street is gold).

So where are the best and worst places to catch the illegal action?

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.

On June 4, the North Columbia Heights Civic Association held a meeting regarding the park at 11th and Monroe. All were welcome, and all were heard, as evidenced by this item in the very comprehensive minutes: “Anonymous resident (self-described drunk who hangs out in the park): people in the park aren’t that bad, come on into the park, we welcome kids, we welcome the church.”–Brian Reed

I used to say I live on a pretty standard block in Columbia Heights. I knew the block well, had some serious history there before I made it my address.

An old editor/friend had lived in a one-bedroom across from my new apartment. We used to drink beer and smoke cigarettes on his fire escape. We’d look out and see clotheslines, and busy children. It felt like Brooklyn or something.

My brother and his soon-to-be wife had turned an empty lot into a makeshift garden (lead levels be damned) a few years a back. They grew all kinds of stuff. I just remember the handfuls of hot peppers they were always trying to give away. I kept worrying about the lead levels.

When I moved on to Newton Street last summer, the lot was still vacant. The number of old row homes untouched by gentrification still outnumbered the ones with the fresh green-and-yellow paint jobs and fancy new stoops.

But that was last summer. Recently, a new condo building opened up next door. I dutifully took the tour knowing I could not afford the fresh hardwood floors and weird cheap looking balconeys. The units are incredibly plain and incredibly expensive. Behind my apartment, construction is in full swing on another new building. Whether that building will be condos or rentals by the time the ribbons are cut, I don’t know.

Construction noise used to be in just one direction. Now, I hear the noise of hammers and saws in surround sound. I don’t care. It keeps me from sleeping too late.

Read the rest of this entry »