In a Post feature story out today on the semi-booming H Street (tagged with the lame headline: “H Is For Happening”), the writer leads with a description of the cheap sushi joint Sticky Rice. She sets the scene this way:

Rock music plays, and tattooed waiters with fashionable mullets work the dining room. In each of the two unisex bathrooms you can pick up a phone that calls the other bathroom, a strangely entertaining and potentially useful feature.

So what the hell is a fashionable mullet?

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

H Street haunt The Palace of Wonders—D.C.’s only bar to boast a “monkey contemplating human bone skull,” a “cyclops fetal skull,” and a “living unicorn”—celebrates its second birthday this weekend.

Helping ring in the sideshow bar’s terrible twos are D.C.’s Best Sideshow Duo Tyler Fyre and Thrill Kill Jill, burlesque performer Li’l Dutch, and “Skullduggery & Skin Show” performers Albert Cadabra and Gal Friday. During the three-hour show, Jill promises sword swallowing, magic, burlesque, belly dancing, fire eating, snake charming, bag pipers, aerialists, contortionists and a flea circus. Though personally, I’m not convinced there is actually a living unicorn.

Real Palace enthusiasts can celebrate the birthday twice—first on Friday, June 27, and again on Saturday, June 28. Shows are 20 bucks a pop, and begin at 10:00 p.m. at the Palace of Wonders, 1210 H Street NE.

Flier after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m in the middle of a glorious vacation. It’s not quite one of those trendy “staycations” the mainstream media has just discovered as a (fake) trend. I still have to go to work. No, I’m house sitting for a colleague (the guy who takes all those amazing, soulful pictures for WCP). He lives a block and a half away from my apartment. But it could be another world. His neighborhood is quiet and leafy. My block is nearly treeless. His block has strollers and dogs. My block has a boarded apartment building and drunks. He lives in a sweet house. I don’t.

This feels like a vacation because of the following items:

1) Cable. The last two nights, I spent serious time sunk in the couch hooked on Law & Order and its various spinoffs. This isn’t a surprise. That show is on constantly. But I also get to indulge in a little wide-screen Charlie Rose. I’m used to watching his shows on the laptop.

2) The prospect of free laundry facilities. Now I quite haven’t taken advantage of this. But it’s there–no lines, no coins!

3) Free food. OK. There’s a lot of frozen meat in the freezer. Not my thing. But there’s tons of bread, organic bread. No pre-packaged slices for me! There’s also plenty of rice, weird sauces, and kettle corn. Hell yeah.

4) The house is quiet. I live in a noisy apartment building. Open the window and there’s a good chance I’m going to either a) hear people talking or b) hear the woman next door sing along to slow jams on the radio.

This morning, as I woke up to free coffee, I couldn’t think of a more relaxing and cheap way to kill a week. I don’t have to use up my vacation time. And I get to experience another part of the city. I can’t think of a better way to explore the District than through house sitting. We had a staff writer here—not too long ago—who managed to get by on nearly house sitting full-time. I’m pretty sure I made fun of him. I regret that now.

House sitting—will this replace the staycation?

From Politico: Spike, of Top Chef fame, announces that his burger joint is set to open July 7 on Capitol Hill:

Washington, rising in the ranks of food towns but still not quite at the top, is home to Mendelsohn’s parents and sister, which explains his choice to open in the D.C. market. Don’t look for any Palm-esque dignitaries or pundits on the wall, though: “It probably wouldn’t be a great decision to take the political route,” he said. Good Stuff Eatery will be “a neutral cow” — much like the Canadian-born Mendelsohn, whose permanent resident status prevents him from voting in the November election. He admits to having a horse in the ’08 race, though.

“I come from a Democratic family,” he said. “We definitely seem to lean more toward Obama, all of us.”

Note to Spike: Please ditch the hat. It’s making you look—judging from this picture—like a forgotten cast member of “90210.” Do you really want to be the Brian Austin Green of celebrity chefs?

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 »

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.

For this week’s all-consuming neighborhoods issue, I went over some of the dead people who stay 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.

After I’d finished my piece, I learned, from a 1999 story in City Paper’s own archives no less, that a non-dead fellow whose celebrity towers over the already dead is scheduled to someday lay his head in my ‘hood : Gore Vidal has a burial plot and a stone with his name on it in the cemetery.

Gore Vidal in Petworth? Turns out he wants, or at least at some time wanted, to stay for all eternity next to Jimmie Trimble, his boyhood, umm, friend and fellow St. Albans alum. Trimble’s already got his place in Rock Creek Cemetery.

Wonder what that’ll do for property values in the neighborhood.

This afternoon, I was again stuck in the rain. At least this time, I could take refuge in my car before most of the big drops fell. But jeez, not 30 seconds into riding back to WCP from Congress Heights (where myself and our resident filmmaker were doing some on-location business for our upcoming neighborhoods issue), I noticed an already downed tree.

Thirty seconds into a thunderstorm and a dead tree.

The tree was a neighborhood tree. It wasn’t part of the National Mall. It had been planted along a row of squat red brick apartments. It had survived the crack epidemic, neglect, and piss-poor area schools. And now because of a quickie thunderstorm it was gone.

That’s pretty weak. I saw more scattered leaves, branches, and tree guts along MLK Ave. And near the on-ramp to 295, the limbs of another tree were blocking the road. Weak.

I thought to myself: “D.C. has some pretty weak-ass trees.” Trees: Please step it up.

I’ve still got my gay pride beads on from today’s rain-soaked parade. But here’s a question for the rest of the folks who lined 17th and P streets today: is it just me, or has Capitol Pride gone a little corporate?

The parade started with the Chief of Police and the Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit, followed by Mayor Adrian Fenty, Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton and a smattering of Councilmembers. But then it seemed like one business after another.

Citibank, Verizon, Bloom Grocery Stores all participated in the parade. Southwest Airlines had one of the coolest and biggest floats all day (they even gave out inflatable airplane toys). You should have seen the woman on the Maid to Clean float gyrate.

The D.C. Cowboys were great, and PFLAG’s “I Love My Gay Son” signs always make me a little teary. And far be it from me to judge how a marginalized community celebrates itself. But it made me a little sad that the guys in leather were so far behind SunTrust Bank’s ATM puppet.

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