Drink up, PG. Your boiled water advisory has been lifted.

Via WaPo’s Virginia Politics blog, we learn that Virginia Republican Party chair Jeffrey M. Frederick, the guy who couldn’t keep his state from voting for a Democratic president for the first time since 1964, has a new fundraising message out. Reports Tim Craig:

In another inflammatory barb, Frederick says Obama will push for voting rights for the District of Columbia and council member Marion Barry will become a United States senator.

“We beat back radical liberalism in the past and we can do it again,” Frederick wrote. “We must.”

The ghost hunters show up at the Wayside Theatre in Middletown, Va., during the September run for Unnecessary Farce, a screwball comedy, and before opening night of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. They are looking for “George,” the so-called “colored usher,” who worked in the ’40s at Virginia’s second-oldest professional theater.

George, the story goes, lived and died on a porch just off the second floor that was dismantled during a theater renovation a few months ago. Now George is possibly hanging out at a balcony in an upper section—seat CC1—where he used to sit and watch performances after showing people (black only, this was during segregation) to their seats.

Theater types claim George, or some other ghost, is hanging around in other places as well. The stories they tell involve ghosts lurking among the dress racks in the costume room and creepy feelings of being followed on the stairs.

“Sound is not trustworthy in this booth,” says Wayside actress Thomasin Savaiano, the hunters’ tour guide, as she escorts them to the hub of the operation over the stage. “[The monitor will] shut off everything, and it’s entirely rearranged in the morning.”

The scene that follows is familiar to anyone who’s watched the plumbers-turned-spirit-catchers on the Sci-Fi network’s Ghost Hunters or those earnest Penn State kids on A&E’s Paranormal State. The place empties out, and the D.C. Metro Area Ghost Watchers haul out their A/V equipment (seven cameras wired up to a central command center next to the snack shop) and wait.

True to TV, they also try talking to the ghost, telling him to move a spindle on the sewing table—”It’s a very light spindle…” This is where the woman of the group, Jan Cunard, comes in. She’s the flirt.

Read the rest of this entry »

The moving date for Huong Que/Four Sisters from the Eden Center to Gallows Road and Lee Highway in Falls Church has been pushed back… again. A manager said today the owners now expect to stay put at least until the end of next month. The popular Vietnamese restaurant—and Tim Carman’s pick for Best Of—has had some trouble with construction and renovation of the new space, the manager said.

When Carman broke the news in ‘06 (thanks, Washington Post, for forgetting to credit us) that Four Sisters was picking up and moving out of its longtime Little Saigon locale because of parking problems and high rent, those of us who frequent the place were shocked, stunned, and really craving pho right at that moment. The way things are going, though, we won’t have to hunt down the new joint until sometime in 2011. Stay tuned for an update next year.

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.”

Bad news if you were hoping to pedal past CIA HQ in the next few decades—National Park Service has decided against extending the Mount Vernon Trail past the Roosevelt Bridge. TheWashCycle has the scoop.

Back in February, LL detailed a horribly complicated but tremendously juicy jurisdictional squabble over the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority. Long story short: The suburbs, which hold five of 11 seats on the WASA board, were pissed that District had asserted control over the agency’s finances and passed a law granting hiring preferences to District residents. To settle things, suburban congressional interests had nearly tacked a rider onto a federal appropriations bill late last year.

The meddling isn’t over.

Maryland Congressman Chris Van Hollen introduced a bill last week that inserts language into the Home Rule Act that explicitly takes WASA out from under the CFO’s oversight. It’s the sort of bigfooting that the District hates, and usually the District’s congressional delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, finds a way to make these things go away.

Not this time, though: Norton isn’t going to be on the District’s side. Yesterday, in a congressional hearing, Norton revealed she had sent a pair of letters to Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray urging them to ease their hard line on WASA governance, citing her efforts to balance jurisdictional interests when the agency was established back in the mid-1990s.

“I write now to alert you that congressional action is imminent if recent Council bills remain in effect,” Norton wrote on March 14. “In the interest of maintaining WASA as a D.C. agency, I urge you to take the necessary steps that have allowed the Council to have continuing oversight of WASA as a D.C. agency.”

Outside the hearing yesterday, City Administrator Dan Tangherlini, also a member of the WASA board, said he still holds out hope that the dispute can be resolved without congressional intervention. “The [Van Hollen] approach is different than one we’d advocate,” he said. “We’d prefer that changes come through the D.C. Council rather than Congress.” Such changes to the Home Rule charter, he says, are not uncommon—the council, for instance, did so when authorizing the mayoral schools takeover.

Van Hollen told LL he doesn’t see that solving anything: “What we’re all looking for is clarity. The only way you can clarify federal law is through congressional action.”

As for overturning the District-resident job preferences, Tangherlini says, “That’s something we’re going to talk to the council about.” The draft fiscal 2009 Budget Support Act submitted to the council last month includes a provision to exempt WASA from any job preferences.

At the hearing yesterday, Van Hollen said, “We need to put the conflicts regarding governance behind us.” Republican committee members Tom Davis (Va.) and Kenny Marchant (Texas) submitted statements in support of Van Hollen’s bill; suburban reps—including Fairfax County Executive Tony Griffin; Timothy Firestine, Montgomery County’s chief administrative officer; and Jacqueline F. Brown, Prince George’s County’s chief administrative officer—also spoke in support of it.

For her part, Norton didn’t question the suburban board members about the governance dispute during the hearing. Afterward, she told LL that congressional intervention is permissible in this instance because WASA is not a “true home rule agency.” Rather, she said, it’s more akin to an interjurisdictional entity like the Metro board. “The only difference,” she said, “is that this was once a D.C. agency.”

And, Norton says, her stand on Van Hollen’s bill doesn’t reflect any attenuation of her usual fieriness. “If it’s a home rule issue,” she says, “I may go down, but I’ll go down fighting.”

My friends are still a little alarmed at my impending relocation to Arlington. They cry that I’m abandoning the city and soon will have no life. I try to explain that Arlington isn’t the burbs, that it’s actually cool. It’s like a secret hidden neighborhood were you can be a real person and avoid the high-rent, high-douchebag factor of living in Dupont Circle or Adams Morgan (Whitlow’s aside). The Royal Lee proves my point.

The Royal Lee is a real dive bar, an increasingly rare find in D.C., where most are either fake or infested with doofuses or both. And since it’s inconveniently located in a strip mall far from any Metro stops, there’s no risk of it being “discovered.” In addition to hosting karaoke five nights a week (five!), the Royal Lee serves some damn good fried stuff in baskets (usually with a doily). The highlight of the menu, however, is a sandwich. A buffalo chicken sandwich. I’m sure this has been done before, but the Royal Lee’s version is a miracle. A slab of breaded and fried chicken swimming in a gooey, spicy buffalo coating. Squishy white bun, lettuce, mayo. The sloppy thing usually falls apart about two-thirds of the way through, which is usually just about quitting time. Next time, I’ll take a picture.

Last week DCist linked to a post by Rob Goodspeed about “underperforming” Metro stations. He writes:

Of the system’s 86 stations, 32 (or 37%) had fewer than 5,000 average weekday riders (boardings) in 2007. If the entire system is subsidized by taxes, these stations are the most deeply subsidized. Given the huge expense of the station construction, maintenance, and staff, is it acceptable to let these stations remain underutilized?

Hell no, I thought–high-density neighborhoods with functioning-at-capacity stations for all! But then I noticed that Goodspeed’s list of the least-trafficked stations places the one I use–the one I need–second.

The Cheverly station attracted an average of fewer than 5,000 weekday riders in 2007, and I’ve figured the station was meeting its market–hey, good luck getting a parking spot there after 8:30 a.m. After all, Metro stops that are outside of the city–which are almost by definition high-density places–but not endpoints on the lines are going to get fewer regular commuters. The fact that New Carrollton and Vienna are among the 20 busiest stations suggests that the Orange Line is in high demand for people driving in from around Annapolis or deep into NoVa. Building condos and strip malls near the Cheverly station, true, may make the station busier. But (and, sure, yeah, I’m being a bit NIMBY in saying this) to suggest that stations in residential areas are “underperforming” and must attract more riders is to think of the D.C. Metro map as a chart for some kind of Soviet ideal, where all people from all areas of equal density all equally, happily step onto Metro trains at the same time. Get those trains to run on time, and maybe I’ll even consider it.

I (clearly) have no schooling in urban planning. But it’s not clear to me what harm is being done by having fewer than 5,000 riders at a Metro station. Especially without evidence of who or what, exactly, is “underperforming.”