Arlene Reba, 74, stood outside Nest, a new consignment shop on Wisconsin Avenue NW in Tenleytown, and peered in. The place was closed, but Reba caught a glimpse of an employee inside the store. The employee ducked out of sight and waited for Reba to leave.

Reba, it turns out, had a history with the people running Nest. The man behind Nest is John Coon, an entrepreneur who specializes in opening and closing consignment shops. Coon ran the recently shuttered Washington Consignment in Cleveland Park and operated another store by the same name on Wisconsin Avenue before closing it more than a year ago. Another Coon consignment store on Nicholson Lane in Rockville closed in August.

Per his travels in the second-hand-sales biz, Coon has attracted a coterie of regulars, with Reba among them. At Washington Consignment in Cleveland Park, Reba was “a friend of the store,� according to Coon. But the two have had a falling-out since Washington Consignment began going under. Reba lost trust in the store, where she knew all of the employees and had done business for several years. Others who claim they should have been paid and weren’t or were paid too little too late echo her concerns.

The Cleveland Park store closed Sept. 28. “We went insolvent,� says Coon, who sometimes lists himself as the store owner but is in actuality the president of a board of a directors of a company that owns the store, he says.

“It was a victim of the economy,� says Coon of his latest closed store. He needed out of an expensive Connecticut Avenue lease, and when he realized he was not taking in enough money to cover expenses—including paying his consigners—he decided to have a big sale, close up shop, and sell the store’s Web site and e-mail list to a new corporation, which owns Nest.

At Nest, he has combined all of his endeavors, making it one-stop shopping for cleaning services, painting, interior design, home-staging, and event- and wedding-planning. He turned an old rug store that, he says, “everyone told me had been going out of business for 20 years� into a brightly colored gallery of other people’s furnishings, complete with a parrot named Pedro.

The sale of the Web site and the proceeds from the new store are helping him to pay his old consigners, he says. But some of his old consigners feel they are getting a bad deal. Among those who’ve come forward, Reba was owed the most.

Reba, a retired teacher and travel broker who finds items at estate sales and the like and then consigns them, was offered store credit in lieu of a check from Washington Consignment for more than $2,000. She took it, she says, “because I figured if they closed, I would have nothing.� She picked out a 1920s-era Chinese emperor’s robe, a Japanese wedding coat, and a few small statues. “All of it had to be carried out,� she says.

Reba felt her account had not been zeroed-out; Coon says it was and then some. When Reba went in again a few days later, she spied a bronze panther someone had recently brought in. “I loved it,� she says of the small sculpture by artist Loet Vanderveen. She owned another work of his, a bishop sitting in a rocking chair, “and I had never seen another piece by him� before the panther showed up.

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Steven Posniak, a former ANC commissioner representing the American University Park neighborhood, faces federal charges for setting the 2007 Ham Lake fire in Minnesota, the state’s largest and most expensive forest fire in 80 years.

The indictment alleges Posniak, 64, who notably fought Metro bus cutbacks in Tenleytown, was camping and left his campsite while trash was still burning. The Ham Lake fire burned more than 70,000 acres and about 150 structures, including cabins and homes, valued at $4 million. According to Pioneer Press, the fire cost more than $11 million to put out.

Reached at his home today, Posniak said he could not speak publicly about what happened and referred calls to his lawyer in Minnesota, Mark Larsen. Larsen has told the Minnesota press his client will plead not guilty.

Posniak, who is listed as a retired computer programmer and went to graduate school at the University of Minnesota, will attend a federal arraignment in Minneapolis, St. Paul, or Duluth, according a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota. A trial date will be set after that.

The indictment, according to reports, alleges Posniak gave “false, factitious and fraudulent information” to the U.S. Forest Service in telling officers he camped at Cross Bay Lake and came across the out-of-control fire at Ham Lake.

Drought conditions helped fuel the fire; hundreds were evacuated and it closed the popular Gunflint Trail into Ontario for weeks. No one was injured. Larsen says Posniak has been cooperating with federal officials in the investigation and will continue to do so.

I rely on the Northwest Current to keep me current on things happening in D.C.’s suburb. Usually the big issues have to do with one firehouse or another, a zoning spat over an adult-oriented store, or some other semiworthy civic affair. But I can’t quite get excited about today’s headliner in this community paper: “Bank driveways irk Tenley commission.”

As it turns out, Commerce Bank is proposing to put in some driveways for its new location at the corner of Ellicott Street and Wisconsin Avenue NW. So that’s somehow a big deal–there are apparently alley-access and safety issues. “We’re concerned about what’s going to happen here,” says one resident quoted in the story.

Let the “Tenley commission”–i.e., the advisory neighborhood commission–work through this bank driveway issue. I wish them the best of luck, because this one could get sticky. Never before has Ward 3 looked like such a good candidate to merge with MoCo, where there’s probably lots of activists with expertise in bank-driveway crises.

Last night, I found myself at Drink & Walk, a weekly happy hour populated largely by locals who self-identify as “poets.” (”What do you do?” I asked one Drink & Walker. “I am a poet,” he replied. There was a long pause. “I also work as a system programmer.”)

This week, Drink & Walk was held at Tenleytown’s Cafe Olé. I arrived and ordered a Yuengling served in a glass so cold that a curved chip of ice frozen to its bottom rendered the glass wobbly, and prevented me from setting it flat upon the table. A man sat beside me as I attempted to manage the glass’s steady drip.

“Is this the first fall meeting of the D.C. poets?” the man asked, in a lilting British accent.

“Uhhh,” I said, wincing slightly at the question. “I guess so.” The man seemed satisfied. “What’s your name?” I asked him.

“They call me Antony,” the man said.

“But what is your name?” I asked.

“They call me Antony,” he repeated. “Tell me about this beer,” he continued. He pointed to my bottle of Yeungling. “The Chinese have a history of making a German beer.”

“This beer is made in Pennsylvania,” I explained.

“Why did you choose this beer?” he asked.

“This is the cheapest beer they have,” I replied. “I don’t make much money and my job security is low.”

“What do you do?” Antony asked.

I told him about my job at the Washington City Paper.

“The Washington Street Paper?” he replied. “I will have to pick up a copy.”

“The Washington City Paper,” I corrected him. “It is the alternative weekly paper.”

“Ah, I see,” Antony said. “My alternative paper of choice is the Northwest Current.”

The chip of ice released from my glass and fell to the ground.

“I’m afraid I forgot to ask your name,” Antony said.

“They call me Amanda,” I replied.

The man’s wife approached. “Oh, you must excuse Antony,” the woman hushed to me. “Antony is English.”

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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Bands: Mass Movement of the Moth, Deleted Scenes, The Boom Orangutangs [sic]

Attendance: High

Ominous Police Presence: Low. By last year’s final show at least three cop cars were perched on the hill above the stage for the duration of the concert. This year that’s not the case—at least so far. Zero squad cars were present to loom over the proceedings (which—of course—is not an excuse to ruin Fort Reno through vandalism or the use/possession of illicit substances on the concert grounds).

Notable High Jinks: Perhaps fearful that their new-wavey pop stylings would not alone suffice to excite audiences, Deleted Scenes offered up a cooler full of Fla-Vor-Ice in an effort to draw attendees toward the stage. Which worked. A gaggle of teens scrambled forward—a few of which even remained to dance for the duration of the set.

One candidate running in the May 1 special election for the D.C. School Board can at least claim to have luck on his side.

When Sekou Biddle showed up at the auction and raffle for Janney Elementary School in Tenleytown on Saturday night, he wasn’t making a campaign stop. The candidate for the vacant school board seat representing Wards 3 and 4 says he was really just looking to catch up with some friends and contribute to the school fundraiser.

Biddle plopped down $50 for one raffle ticket. “I was thinking I might win a toaster or something,” he says. “I was talking with a friend, when somebody came up to me and said, ‘Hey, they’re calling your name up there,’” says Biddle.

He was declared the winner of the top raffle prize of $5,000. Biddle hadn’t even looked at the ticket.

“I don’t know what to do with the money,” says Biddle, who isn’t exactly getting rich on the campaign trail, seeing as he took unpaid leave from his job to campaign. For a moment, Biddle considered staking all the money on another wager. “The other thought I had was to take it as a sign and dump it all into the campaign,” he said.

After the gamblers rush faded, Biddle decided it was no time to let it ride.

“I think I’m going to give some to help fund the dual-language program at my son’s school [Shepherd Elementary],” he says. “I might cover the expenses for another child.”

He also plans to make a contribution to Janney Elementary, but he doesn’t think it would be wise to give back the entire $5,000. “I would want to stay away from any perception that I am giving money to Janney to get votes from parents,” he says.

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

AdamsMorgan
jwilcox23 reports that an unidentified vandal took on several parked cars and beat them soundly. It isn’t clear whether the car-smasher was male, female, alien, or cyborg. The poster guesses that this car-basher did not come from the sky, but from the suburbs: “If it turns out that Mr. Incredible wasn’t from Maryland or Virginia, I extend my sincere apologies to any suburbanites who may be offended by my assumption that this was a commuter drunk.”

Brookland
Things we want: jlw122364, mourning his son, seeks a support group for the families of murder victims. gregounours, throwing a party, seeks a disco ball.

tenleytown
Wilderness-in-the-city edition. Says carolynsherman2: “The other night a possum came in through our dog door and curled up and fell asleep in the corner of our sofa. He may have been asleep for hours when I saw him ? Our two dogs didn’t even notice him. I called animal control and they came in about half an hour with a cage, picked him up by the tail, put him in, and said they were going to release him in Rock Creek Park.” From faniafleissig: “Just a few minutes ago I saw a red fox trot across Belt Road in broad daylight. He was quite at ease and seemed to know where he was going. It was quite fascinating.” And pretzel102270 says, “I’ve seen a raccoon in my back alley a few times, including in my trash can. It lunged at me.”

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

AdamsMorgan
December is the season of giving. And taking. Lately, posts about thefts in Adams Morgan have been flying like the first snowballs of winter. One resident reports a stolen Mercedes. Another reports five thefts-from-auto. This prompts a third resident to remind everyone that it’s not just carolers belting out off-key tunes: “When you hear a car alarm, it could be yours!” And Josh chimes in that even well-sheltered belongings aren’t protected. “The basement of our building (1791 Lanier) has been broken into three times in the past month,” he writes. The thieves made off with bikes the first two times, then returned with bolt cutters to break into storage cages. And police seem to be more interested in making their lists than checking them twice. Chris had some jewelry stolen from her home and trying to get recover the cherished items has been nothing but frustration. “We know who stole the items and where they were pawned, and then just NOTHING from the police,” she writes. The whole experience has turned her into a bit of a Grinch. “I don’t mean to be cynical,” she concludes, “but I wish you luck on finding the person who stole the property on Lanier Place.”

concerned4DCPS
Congress’ recent decision to increase the income limit for school vouchers sparks a lively discussion in this education forum. Bonnie wonders if the schools participating in the voucher program are performing any better than the public ones. That’s a difficult question to answer, but one member doesn’t care to make the distinction. “If anyone can name another federally funded program wherein $60k is the bar for ‘low income’ I will eat my hat!!” writes the member. “Once again your tax dollars and this city’s children are being used to carry out an agenda that has nothing to do with the welfare of the children involved in this scheme.” Helen says not to blame the Man. “Anyone who cares for children should look to the cure instead of pointing fingers at ‘the man’ (read Republicans) who is behind this nefarious plot to hurt public schools,” she writes. “Public schools have done a darn fine job of hurting themselves. They don’t need any help from ‘the man.’” Jedxn blames the system, and in a roundabout way ends up blaming the Man. “Ones education determines class,” writes Jedxn. “You can buy your way up through private school. How do you think that numbskull in the White House got his job? Phillips Academy and Yale! Not DCPS and UDC.”

tenleytown
One resident suffering from a case of buyer’s remorse solicits advice. “Help!” she writes. “I’ve signed on for a wonderful trip with an old friend—but now remember she snores loud enough to wake the dead. By the end of the last trip we took together I was contemplating murder most foul. Anyone know of REALLY good earplugs I can buy?” “Try a sports store where they have items for fishing and hunting,” writes Amy. “Target shooters wear earplugs.” Lorrie says a travel-sized white-noise machine might augment her defenses while Fred suggests asking her friend to wear Breathe Right strips. “My wife says they really help,” he writes. Doris says that if poster is truly a good friend, she’ll take the snorer to get checked for sleep apnea. “No ear plugs or device can block out the sound of intensely loud snoring,” she writes. “I know. I now use a breathing machine and travel with it. My husband sleeps soundly and my blood pressure has returned to the normal range. Also, I no longer feel drowsy. Good luck.”

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

AdamsMorgan
Last week, scarlsondc spotted a handful of workers doing measurements inside the former DCCD music shop on 18th Street NW. He said the group buying the vacant building is a nonprofit working in drug and alcohol rehabilitation. Naturally, the rumor of a possible rehab clinic being dropped in the middle of our premier nightlife district set off an informal contest for Most Ironic Analogy among commenters. lst103dc asks, “But isn’t putting an alcohol rehab facility in the middle of 18th Street like putting a Weight Watchers meeting next to Maggie Moos?” And poster martymoo69 tries to go one better: “It does seem like an odd location for alcohol rehab …kind of like putting a methadone clinic in Laos.”

Brookland
Poster baringlake is tired of hopscotching over urine streams and fetid T.P. on the way to the Rhode Island Avenue metro station: “There are “Jiffy John” port-a-john toilets at the…station. They do not appear to be maintained in any way, and often people who have to walk by the toilets (and there are many of us since the toilets are placed along a major walkway) are forced to walk over blue urinal liquid that’s overflowed, as well as toilet paper and other garbage from the port-a-john.” And fancy footwork can only go so far: “the stench often coming out of the port-a-johns, even when the doors are closed, is unbelieveable.”

MPD-2d
Anarchy spreads west of Rock Creek Park! Either that, or Ward 3 puritans are branding the homes of Tenleytown adulterers:

Psa 202 4400 b/o Chesapeake
C1 reports that his garage door was spray painted with red paint.
A letter “A” was drawn along with other unidentifiable symbols.
————————
Psa 202 4400 b/o Chesapeake
C1 reports that someone spray painted her garage door
with red paint. There was a letter “A” inside of a circle and
“06 *** capitalism” drawn on the garage door.

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

columbia_heights
So many people are getting mugged in the 3rd District that even the Post picked up on it. The same day that the paper of record stated the obvious, colleenleyrer1 told two stories—a relative’s and her own—of how thugs made things bad before cops made things worse. First, three unarmed men robbed her cousin in Adams Morgan, beating him till he started to bleed internally. He struck back, chased them to their car, and read the license tags to 911 as the car drove off. When he found two officers and said what happened, they said to wait there; they’d call dispatch. He waited 20 minutes. No one came, and no one could find a record of his 911 call. colleenleyrer1’s own tale was that she saw a man breaking into her neighbor’s house. She and a housemate told police to approach the neighbor’s alley door. Instead, the cops went through her house to get there, and the burglar escaped. “I give the police credit for at least trying in this instance, but I don’t think they were really listening to us when we explained what was going on,” she wrote.

newhilleast
Gunshots or fireworks? The late-evening explosions on the southeast side of Capitol Hill kept guesses coming through last week. “I saw large white flashes out the back so I think they were somewhere in the alley behind 17th bet. D & E,” dscroft wrote Oct. 9. He added, with a poetic touch, “their measured beat and the brightness of the light leads me to believe they were of Chinese origin…” He reassured another poster, but kimba414 refused to take false comfort. On Oct. 12, she wrote, “I was sitting at the computer that night, heard the first bangs, looked out the window, and saw, across the roofs of the storage sheds in the alley, some flashes of light against the backs of the houses over on E Street. The noises/flashes didn’t quite sound or look like fireworks to me.”

tenleytown
kdell42 and her husband were waiting for an elevator in Bethesda. It took its time arriving, and the two had decided to use the stairs instead. Two well-dressed men expressed concern because her husband was using a walker; they said the elevator was nearly there. Once it came, one of the men dropped a stack of brochures on the elevator floor. People watched him gather them up. In a grocery line two hours later, the poster’s husband said his wallet was gone. One of his credit cards already listed a $2,500 purchase; the charge was rejected. “Because the pickpocketing occurred in Montgomery County, our DC Police Precinct isn’t recording it,” kdell42 wrote on Oct. 12. “This concerns me because our pickpockets seem to be operating in both jurisdictions hoping back and forth across the District line.” 2nd District Commander Andy Solberg replied on Oct. 16 that the cops had just locked up a Tenleytown pickpocket and were looking for others who had helped him.

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

tenleytown
People dump cars. People dump ratty couches. In Tenleytown, people dump bamboo. Julie posted such an incident report on Oct. 12: “This morning I discovered that someone had dumped a pile of bamboo and bamboo roots on my front lawn. It was not just thrown there…it was obviously carefully stacked on my lawn. Around the corner, on my neighbor’s property there was another big pile. I am curious if anyone on this listserv had some bamboo cut down recently. Also, I am curious if anyone else got stuck with a pile this morning. If anybody saw anything or has any leads it would be appreciated.”

cleveland-park
New resident alert! Mishboni showed his greenness with his post, the dumbest of the week, writing on Oct. 11: “We also have had things taken from our cars (cds, change, etc) at least twice in the last 6 months. This only happened on the rare occassions that a car was left unlocked, not on the street but back in our driveway. Does this mean that someone regularly combs the neighborhood at night looking for unlocked cars? This is very unsettling.” Runner-up goes to Peter. After a weeklong debate over pedestrian safety when crossing streets, walking on sidewalks, and so forth, Peter threw up this idea: “Would it work to stripe the sidewalks that bikers use most often with a dotted (or solid) line marking a right (or left) “lane”? The bike part could be marked iinside the line with a stencil of a bike/rider and the pedestrian part with a stencil of a walker. THis probably wouldn’t help where the sidewalk is barely wide enough for two walkers to pass each other going in opposite directions.”

shepherdpark
Wishful thinking of the week goes to “evange408” who is trying to unload his Redskins tickets for this weekend’s game against the Titans: “Section 447, row 20. Two seats for $130 cash.”

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

tenleytown
The upper Northwest neighborhood spies intrigue in the upcoming November election for Ward 3 councilmember. On Oct. 9, poster msilver1957 reports that none of the Ward 3 Democratic primary candidates have come out to endorse primary winner Mary Cheh: “Is this lack of support from fellow Democrats sour grapes?” they ask. “Also will the anti-development Democrats do the unusual and vote for an anti-development Republican like Theresa Conroy?” Another poster serves up a top eight reasons to vote against Cheh. The faux Letterman pads out their reasons by twice listing the candidate’s insistence on retaining her teaching gig if elected. Inevitably primary loser Jonathan Rees gets mentioned. For at least one poster, he still is someone to fear. Which brought a reply from msilver: “Rees did not win but you still act afraid of him as if he was a creature from the movie “Night of the Living Dead” and he is going to come and get you.”

Brookland
School Board candidate Marc Borbely has found himself in the message board’s cross hairs. One poster alleges that the aspiring do-gooder has “pursued zoning exceptions in order to get kickbacks from businesses when the ANC voted down the exceptions. Several abandoned public spaces in our neighborhood which were slated for renovations, remain abandoned buildings because of Marc’s grandstanding.” Borbely responded with demands for a retraction or evidence proving these alleged “kickbacks.” The original poster soon conceded, writing: “True-I have no proof that you have received kickbacks. I apologize for passing a rumor I heard as fact.”