Today’s Reliable Source notes some of the geographical anomalies in The Invasion, the latest remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The paranoid thriller, which opens tomorrow, is set in Washington and Baltimore, and its exteriors were shot entirely in those cities (mostly the latter). Being the Reliable Source, the column’s comments emphasize upscale cuisine (the film’s caviar is supposedly too expensive) and suburban fixations (the Nicole Kidman character parks too easily in Georgetown).

The film includes lots of the usual Hollywood jumbling of locations, as when Kidman drives from one part of Northwest to another on a route that somehow takes her down Independence Avenue SW past the Agriculture Department. What’s more interesting, however, is how the movie blurs D.C. and B’more, suggesting an exceptional ease of transport between the two cities. If the movie’s geography were accurate, Barbara Mikulski’s pork-barrel maglev study would be irrelevant.

For example, Kidman works in a downtown in which, from block to block, Washington becomes Baltimore and then reverts. And in one scene, she escapes alien-possessed humans by running down a suburban Charm City street that leads very quickly to the Cleveland Park Metro station. In a rare action scene filmed on D.C.’s subway, she hops on a train. But when it stops in mid-tunnel and she must flee into the tunnel, the car she leaves has the markings of Baltimore’s MTA.

It seems that the even filmmakers lost track of what city the movie was in at any given moment. In the climactic action sequence, Kidman is driving through downtown Baltimore while communicating by cell phone with a potential rescuer. The voice at the other end of the call asks where she is, and Kidman blurts that she thinks she’s headed south on 13th Street.

Maybe director Oliver Hirschbiegel just needs to get out more. His last movie to get U.S. distribution, Downfall, was set mostly in Hitler’s bunker. Still, when the Fuhrer’s aides in that film reported the location of the advancing Russian troops, they never said they were on the Champs Elysées.

The Washington Post Magazine loves to experiment with first-person narratives. Sometimes they’re gripping; other times, they’re miserable.

This past weekend’s edition features a piece that falls in the former category. It’s by an L.A. journalist named Kate Hahn and it’s titled, “A Scoop of Scandal: During the summer of the Iran-contra hearings, she was dishing out her own brand of justice.” It’s just a narrative by some woman who worked in Bob’s, a G’town ice-cream parlor, in the summer of ‘87, right in the thick of Iran-Contra hearings. The climax of the piece is when she serves I-C character Robert MacFarlane some ice cream.

It was a routine transaction, so there was not really a lot of drama packed into it. Yet somehow, Hahn manages to spin an engrossing tale of summertime, of the sort that Style section writers and poets and essayists so often fail so miserably at. She talks about a crush on a co-worker, a punker who goes by the name Ivor and has to be Ivor Hanson. She talks about being alone at home and lounging in the pool. It all works.

Just so you get the point, take a look at Style’s summer piece from last month, which includes this:

“Summer’s honey breath whispers, blowing faintly over people caught in transitions in these hot months when we believe life is supposed to be easy. Instead, summer finds some unsettled, some worried, separating, getting older, traveling from one stage to the next.

If winter is the best time to tell sad stories, summer is the time to tell stories of transition.”

And then Hahn:

“As the summer went on, we lingered at my car after closing up, talking past the time the pint I was taking home started to melt. And later, while I swam, I began to think how great it would be to see his shadow next to mine on the bottom of the illuminated pool. But he had a girlfriend, and I doubted he was interested in me. I was too far away from the very center of coolness. So I went in every day, keeping my crush to myself, and doling out my frozen ounces of reward and punishment.”

On August 19, Adams Morgan will lose another retail outlet.

Marshall Thompson is moving his English-themed clothing store, The District Line, to Georgetown. The new store, which opens in mid-September at 1250 Wisconsin Ave., will focus solely on menswear and will include some higher-priced lines like Ted Baker and Oliver Spencer in addition to mod standbys like Fred Perry and Ben Sherman.

Perhaps he can inspire the popped-collar crew to trade their Polo ponies for Wimbledon laurels.

Last year, Metro proposed radical surgery on D.C.’s longest, most-used bus route, the 30 line, which runs from the Montgomery County line in Northwest to the Prince George’s County border in Southeast. The procedure the agency recommended was one of its current favorites: cutting the route in half. The buses now designated 30, 32, 34, 35, or 36 would terminate at 10th and Pennsylvania NW, and riders who wanted to go further in either direction would have been forced to transfer to a renumbered service covering the other half of the journey.

Metro recently performed a similar bisection on the 90 line, which travels from various points in Southeast to Adams Morgan and McLean Gardens. But after a June 27 ridership survey, bus planners backed away from the proposal to sunder the 30, which is 15 miles long and carries almost 20,000 riders every weekday. “Reaction to that plan was negative,” James Hamre, Metro’s planning manager for bus and corridor projects, told a group of about 30 bus users who attended a “listening session” Tuesday night at St. Columba’s Episcopal Church in Tenleytown.

Divided into four subgroups, the participants were asked to discuss problems with the notoriously unreliable 30s, and suggest fixes. When the conversations were summarized for the entire assembly, it turned out that at least some of the riders had a familiar idea: cutting the line in half.

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The D.C. government is considering two big projects to increase retail businesses in two very different neighborhoods: Georgetown and H Street NE. Yet neither plan addresses basic retail-boosting strategies that the city should have adopted decade ago.

In Georgetown, developer Herb Miller is looking for at least $20 million in tax increment financing (TIF) to redo Georgetown Park, the mall his former company developed and that his current firm recently bought back. This remake might include a Nordstrom’s, which would be the first new department store to locate in D.C. since Neiman Marcus opened in Friendship Heights in 1977.

The odds might seem to be against this deal. Former Mayors Marion Barry and Tony Williams, as well as erstwhile Pennsylvania Avenue Development Commission director M.J. Brodie, all tried to lure department stores into the city, preferably into the “retail core” around Metro Center. When their campaigns began more than 25 years ago, there were three department stores downtown. Now there’s one.

Yet Miller has a successful record. In addition to developing Georgetown Park, he built (with TIF money) the architecturally gruesome but impressively lively Gallery Place complex. And it’s possible that Nordstrom, having saturated the suburbs, is finally ready to expand into a major East Coast city. (It does have downtown stores in the West, but on this side of the country, it’s avoided cities, save for little Providence, R.I.) Now that Georgetown has been upscaled to the point of tedium—which may explain why Georgetown Park is struggling—perhaps prissy Nordstrom can feel comfortable there.

The department store chain certainly wouldn’t take to scruffy H Street NE, where the city plans a $27 million fix-up in hopes of attracting some 300,000 additional square feet of retail. The idea is to build on the “Atlas District,” with its arts center and nearby bars and live-music venues.

Interestingly, both Georgetown and H Street NE would be along the route of the long-touted crosstown Metro line, which could link in Rosslyn to the Silver Line to Tysons Corner and Dulles. Building that Metro extension—which no one is seriously discussing these days—would cost a lot more than $27 million, but it would make both Georgetown and H Street NE more attractive to shoppers and shop-keepers alike.

There are simpler things the city can do, of course. Retail requirements and street-frontage regulations for major streets should have been instituted back in the 1970s, at the dawn of Home Rule. Parking lots that separate streets from shops—as at the dreary H Street Connection strip mall—should never have been allowed. City officials now say that $1 billion in annual sales tax revenue is lost to the suburbs because D.C. is—in the retail-biz parlance—”understored.” A lot of that cash would have been retained if the city hadn’t permitted large new buildings with minimal or no retail space to be erected on prominent sites.

Such urban essentials as maintaining and improving infrastructure, establishing zoning regulations that require effective retail spaces, and improving law enforcement—an issue on H Street NE, but also in Georgetown—would do more to transform D.C. than any Nordstrom’s. Yet city officials still have a lottery mentality. They continue to behave as if they can fix everything with one big score, rather than doing the slow, hard work of providing the basic services and consistent planning that would allow the city to mend itself.

I knew better, but I still took the bait when our waiter at Hook asked if we wanted to hear about the concept behind chef Barton Seaver’s sustainable seafood outlet in Georgetown. He proceeded to stand there and talk about the menu for five minutes, while I debated the relative merits of liquefying my brain. The one thing I took away from his monologue was the wisdom of ordering a glass of Prosecco, which, he said, pairs well with the bite-sized crudo dishes.

My wife, Carrie, and I had finished our crudo long before the waiter brought over her glass of sauvignon blanc. My Prosecco was still nowhere in sight. I chalked up the poor timing to an overtaxed bar staff, which was working hard to keep the hawks and their wingmen supplied with fuel. Turns out, though, that the bar was not responsible for my drink. Our waiter, the one so fucking jazzed about everything, finally pulled a Prosecco bottle from the wine stand located next to our table and poured me a glass.

I couldn’t let it pass. Says me: “Would have been nice to have my Prosecco in time for the crudo.”

The waiter smiles, laughs, apologizes. He even suggests a peace offering: the remainder of the Prosecco. I take up the offer. It turns out to be an extra swallow left at the bottom of the bottle.

From the pages of the Dupont Current: Dee-Dot is launching a trial program in Georgetown under which residents will be allowed to park their cars in front of their own driveways. The plan, of course, is part of a longrunning effort by Georgetowners to mitigate their longrunning parking crisis. So the idea here is that Dee-Dot will, like, issue special permits to driveway people and take the necessary precautions to guard against abuse of the program.

The biggest drawback of the program is that it essentially privatizes public space. One great thing about street parking is that whether you’re driving a Mercedes or a Hyundai, that open spot is a first-come, first-served proposition. Driveway-front parking adds a big element of privilege to what was once a level playing field—especially in G’town, where those with driveway rights are likely to be pulling out with some pretty sweet rides. But there’s more than just egg-headed equality theories at work here: Consider a scenario in which a driveway person on a busy Saturday night hops in his Saab and prepares to pull out of her personal space. The brake lights will signal to other motorists that there’s a space opening up. As soon as the Saab pulls out, someone else will be lining up to take the spot. One of the following scenarios will result: (1) The person realizes it’s a driveway and moves on to seek another spot; (2) The person just says fuck it and takes the spot, setting up a possible towing situation; or (3) The Saab person gets out of the car and explains how this piece of public space is actually his.

According to the Current, however, one of the main objections from residents is that the program will end up diminishing the number of parking spots available in the neighborhood. The paper didn’t explain the reasoning behind this position, and it’s a bit hard to figure. Sure, some cars that get permitted for driveway-front parking could be longer than the width of the driveway, thus encroaching on other spaces. But that seems like a minor concern. Another possibility is that driveway people might buy another car because of the guaranteed space. Or they’d turn their driveway into a garden and park full-time in their guaranteed street spot. But those scenarios would simply result in a wash: One additional space, one additional car. Any thoughts out there on how you add parking spaces and diminish them at the same time?

Despite the news that the Georgetown Boys & Girls Club might be sold, the staffers at the Jelleff branch have reached out to a facility facing a more uncertain future: the Georgetown public library.

Bob Stowers, the branch’s director, says that library officials have called him to see about annexing the library’s now-homeless children’s programs to his facility. “I am going to do everything I can to make it work,” he says, adding that the relocation plan may include the library taking over some part of the branch’s parking lot.

Monica Lewis, spokesperson for the D.C. Public Library, says nothing formal has yet crossed her desk concerning this arrangement. She does note that others are jumping in to help out. Today, the fire department announced that it, too, wanted to get familiar with the works of J.K. Rowling, saying that it would make some room at a nearby fire house to host children’s programs.

Lewis says there are plans to repurpose a bookmobile as well. The mobile has room for roughly five computers, equipped with WiFi, as well as a small collection of books. No word yet, Lewis adds, on where the mobile will be idling. “We hope within a few blocks of the current Georgetown library,” she says. The Jelleff branch is a block away.

And not to be outdone, the Washington Conservation Guild announced today [PDF] that it will be donating proceeds from a fundraiser to help preserve materials damaged by the fire. No matter what, the guild has the other orgs beat in the charity sweepstakes—they were there first. Guild members were able to get a freezer truck and painting conservator to the scene as the library was still smoldering.

For those that need a little Preservation 101: Sarah Stauderman, a Guild board member, explains the use of a freezer truck this way: “Freezing is typically what we do with paper-based materials when they’ve been exposed to water. If you leave something that’s wet out, mold will grow on it….Freezing gives you the time to get together your resources, to develop a plan of triage.”

When I saw Grindhouse, one of my friends kept pointing at a man far behind us in a hooded sweater. “It’s him!” she said. “It’s Nicholas Cage!” I wished she’d shut up. The last thing I care for is celebrity sightings, and what would Cage be doing anyway in the AMC Loews Georgetown theater? I tried to keep my eyes on the film, but now I didn’t want to. I wanted to stare up at the hooded man to see if he really was Nick Cage. “Why did you have to do that?” I wanted to say, and perhaps fling popcorn at her for putting my curiosity on alert. Then the movie was on. I lost myself to the strippers and the dead. Halfway through Grindhouse, we see a Rob Zombie trailer called “Werewolf Women of the SS.” It includes a cameo of Cage as Fu Manchu, making devilish gestures in front of a Nazi flag. At this provocation, my friend was at it again: “Did you see him? Did you see him? He’s really up there.” No peace.

We were leaving the theater. Cars rumbled on the overpass, people walked in dirty coats, and my friend was preparing her camera. I shook my head. One sees no celebrities in places like this. Then, through the glass doors, I noticed the man in the sweater, wearing a scarf, walking with a dark-haired woman. I gaped. This did, indeed, resemble the face I knew from Gone in 60 Seconds. Some young men approached them; I could see them talking, smiling, the hooded man giving a wave. The men came through the doors in satisfied awe. “Yeah,” one of them said. “It’s him.”

After 20 years in Georgetown under various names, Big Monkey Comics is pulling up stakes and moving to 14th Street NW. “The rent just got too high,” says head manager Devon Sanders. “Georgetown doesn’t favor small businesses.”

That goes double when your small business’ lead product has a $3 price point. Chain stores and rent hikes aren’t the only reason for the move, however. Sanders admits that after years of battling bitter neighborhood rivals Big Planet for nerd-market dominance, Big Monkey (formerly Another Universe and Beyond Comics under different owners) was ready to throw in the towel. “We’ve been fighting the dragon down the street for years. After a while it’s like, why fight the dragon? Why not just move to where there is no dragon?”

But Sanders doesn’t feel like Big Monkey has lost the battle or ceded turf. “As far as I’m concerned, if they want Georgetown, they can have it,” he says. “Georgetown is a piece of dead property.”

When Big Monkey’s arrives at their new location, at 1722 14th St. NW, they will be part of a more vital community, Sanders believes. “It’s a bigger space with more things to do in a happening neighborhood,” he says. “It will be a destination spot.”

Big Monkey also plans to revitalize its approach to comic book retail—mainly by concentrating on books. “Our new space will be more of a comic-book store instead of a boutique. There will be more stock, more focus on the comic-book side of things.”

“There will still be toys,” says Sanders. “But there will be no doubt as to what it is a comic book store.” But what will it not be? “It won’t be ‘modeled after an English bookstore,’” jokes Sanders—referencing his Big Planet’s self-description from a year-old City Paper story about the two stores’ rivalry.

On its Web site, Georgetown tavern The Third Edition guarantees “to have you jumping on the floor all night.”

I’ll say.

Take what happened on Sept. 16, 2006. At about 1:30 a.m., according to an Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration case report, Martha Eugenia Pelivanis was walking out of the establishment’s front entrance when she felt a jolt from behind.

It was more painful than a collision, more shocking than a grab. Pelivanis turned around to find the source of the sting, the report says, and saw a man wielding a stun gun. She immediately summoned security, who apprehended suspect Jerred James Ley as he tried to flee the building. Ley was arrested, according to the report, and Pelivanis received medical attention for her bruised and swollen leg.

The Alcoholic Beverage Control Board held a fact-finding hearing on the matter yesterday. “The board was concerned that this could happen. It could easily have been a gun,” an administration official said. The board called on The Third Edition to submit a security plan within the next 30 days.

The District Department of Transportation’s new multispace parking meters in Georgetown, Adams Morgan, and along K Street are a triumph of modern municipal innovation. They’re solar-powered, they automatically notify DDOT when they need maintenance, and they free up lots of sidewalk space. DDOT spokesman Erik Linden says the agency has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from motorists.

But there’s one thing the newfangled devices can’t do that the old ones could—accommodate a bicycle lock. And D.C.’s bike-riding community is miffed.

“There’s nowhere to park your bike in Georgetown,” says cyclist Ari Goldstein, a Catholic University grad student, unlocking his bike on 18th Street NW. “It’s all right here [in Adams Morgan]. It could definitely be better.”

Eric Gilliland, executive director of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA), says the problem threatens to worsen when it warms up and more people start cycling. “In Adams Morgan, there’s no place to park aside from the parking meters,” he says. “Some forethought should have been put into this.”

DDOT removed 168 old-fashioned meters from the area and replaced them with 21 of the stout green machines. Bicyclists lost more parking spots to the new machines downtown, but the problem is particularly bad along 18th Street, Gilliland says, because Adams Morgan “has the highest rate of bicycle commuting and bicycle usage in the entire city.”

Linden says his agency is “putting the wheels in motion” to have bike racks installed in Adams Morgan by spring and is also looking to install new racks in Georgetown and along K Street.

Every Tuesday and Thursday, we run down what’s going on in local Internet discussion groups.

cleveland-park
Residents mourn the transferring of 2nd District head Andrew Solberg to the police department equivalent of Siberia—something called “security services.” Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey removed Solberg, the King of All Message Boards, from his post after he addressed a forum in Georgetown and apparently told residents to report suspicious activity and allegedly stated that “black people are unusual in Georgetown.” Cleveland Parkers got Solberg’s back. Tamra wrote: “Security Division for what he said at the meeting in Georgetown. A man’s throat was sliced by thugs!” And Bill wrote: “No one has ever accused me of being a racist and I am certainly not one, but if I saw any group of two or more people of any race looking incongruous on any residential street at 2 am I would be alarmed and try to avoid them, maybe report them. If it were Georgetown and they were African American, I would be even more alarmed for precisely the reasons Andy Solberg mentioned.”

TakomaDC
A newbie discovers that rats live here too. Kathleen writes earlier this week: “For the first time since moving in a year ago, i have spotted a rat-twice in one week. It was on my deck the first time and i saw it run under it yesterday. Any suggestions as to what i can do to make the outside parameters a ‘no rat’ zone?… I am crossing my fingers that there are no hidden entryways into my home, but i also don’t want to dread sitting on my porch.” On July 12, Victoria piggybacks on the rat issue with her own gripe: “I have a problem similar to this but I know it is coming from my neighbor. They were feeding the birds with bird seed until they saw the the seeds were going too fast. Now they are throwing their garbage out in the yard (some of which ends up in our yard) claiming that they are starting a compost.” And finally, Sharon queries message board the same day: “Is anyone else irritated by the Feng Shui sign in the yard on Aspen.? It’s been up for month and months. Doesn’t this constitute advertising? Is that allowed in a residential neighborhood, not to mention a historic district?”

Brookland
Signs, signs, everywhere signs. Beware advertisers: Tom doesn’t like your signs messin’ with his mind. On July 11, he writes of his daily mission: “I remove all placards (advertising day care, carpet cleaning, new housing, you name it) attached to poles on my block as soon as they are put up. It is illegal to do this according to DC Municipal Regs. I also take the liberty of removing the yard sale signs after the event, since they are frequently left there. The worst offenders (beyond politicians running for office!) are those advertising for free car removal, and those who inconsiderately nail these signs to trees…”

Pinder’s “Slave Ship Quilts (Triangle Trade)”

When CORE Architecture & Design invited artist Jefferson Pinder to create an installation for its Georgetown lobby, he was surprised. “I’ve never been invited to do something corporate because I didn’t think my work would lend itself to that,” he says. “In the back of my mind I was thinking, Boy, these people are pretty progressive.” So Pinder, 35, went ahead and went edgy, creating an installation inspired by the design of slave ships, including “Slave Ship Quilts (Triangle Trade),” a series of three cotton banners treated with gunpowder, molasses, and rum—all materials used in the exchange for human cargo.

The exhibition was slated to run through May 12; it was pulled off the wall on Sunday.

Jennifer Motruk Loy, CORE’s director of marketing and business development, says the abrupt takedown was due to “business presentation materials” that needed to be posted in the lobby. “His work looked fantastic in our space and we have a great deal of respect for him,” she says. The lobby walls were still blank as of today, but Loy says the business materials are to be installed this afternoon. She would not reveal any specifics about the new installation. The Pinder press release with the May 12 date was still up on the CORE Web site as of Tuesday afternoon.

Pinder suspects that the content of his work played a role, but, he says, he is mostly upset that CORE did not treat him like a professional. He and his gallery, G Fine Arts, sent out hundreds of mailings with the now-defunct May 12 end date. “They never negotiated with me and said the show is coming down,” he says. “I don’t think they were ready for it. I don’t think they could handle it.”

CORE told Pinder that the show was coming down last week via his curator. Pinder did not talk to Loy until she called him on Sunday; they had a “strange conversation,” he says, about how CORE is a professional firm and not an art gallery. Says Pinder: “Then maybe you shouldn’t have asked me to come to your space.”