The party at Republic Gardens is over, at least for now. Whitney Restaurants Inc., the company that operated the club at 1355 U Street, was evicted Oct. 29 due to “over $200,000 [owed] in back rent [and] taxes,” landlord Henry McCall says.

U.S. Marshals carried out the eviction Monday morning. “That building has been gutted out,” McCall says. A day later, McCall changed the locks and padlocked the double doors at the club’s entrance. “I’ve never seen anybody I’ve wanted to shoot as much as him,” he says of his former tenant.

According to McCall, Whitney Restaurants Inc. stopped paying rent, water and electricity bills several years ago, prompting him to sue his tenant in July 2005. In February 2006, the two sides discussed a possible settlement of $105,029.05—less than the company actually owed, says McCall’s attorney Robert Bunn.

The settlement never came to pass. Elbert Robinson, Whitney’s president, says that’s because McCall was “unreasonable,” unwilling “even to make an agreement.” He suspects his landlord wants to redevelop the precious U Street property, with an assessed value of more than $1.6 million. But Bunn says the company never paid the settlement money, and when the lease expired in 2006, “no new lease was ever entered into.”

“We went to court and got judgment,” says McCall. “They were supposed to pay the money. When they didn’t pay the money, we got them evicted.”

McCall says he hopes to replace Republic Gardens with another nightclub. “I’d love to put a club there, because I feel they’re the ones making the money that can afford to pay,” he says.

And, according to Robinson, Republic Gardens will live on, too. He’s now “looking for a more suitable, more profitable location to go to,” he says.

That’s good news for the club’s loyal fans, who’ve swarmed the U Street institution since Marc Barnes owned the place in the ’90s. Daryl “Uncle Q” Francis, who DJ’d there a couple of times and hung out there often, says Republic Gardens “was one of the only establishments that catered to…sophisticated black folk without a too upper class attitude…It was always a nice place where you could see nice women.”

Alexis Diop, his girlfriend, was one of those women. She began bartending there soon after Barnes sold the club, in 2003, and says “the staff was like a family.”

A family with some secrets, perhaps: She said she didn’t know anything about the financial troubles the club was facing.

Francis says he’d heard rumors, but had no idea Republic Gardens was on the verge of eviction. “I was there Saturday night,” he says. “It was very much a surprise that it happened.”

Photographs by Darrow Montgomery

Waiting for the 90 bus at 13th and U last Friday afternoon, 43-year-old Leon Wilkerson was jolted to attention by a bag of candy whizzing by and landing near him on the sidewalk. A young man in shorts and a black T-shirt walked over and took credit. “‘Yeah, I threw it,’” he said, in Wilkerson’s recollection. “‘What you wanna do?’”

“I just stood there looking at him,” Wilkerson says. “Then for some reason, I just started to smile.” At that, the man grabbed the candy, slapped Wilkerson across the cheek with it, then spit in his face. The man’s friends pulled him away. As Wilkerson called 911, the group hurried into the U Street Metro station. Moments later, a van containing two D.C. police officers arrived.

The officers, Wilkerson says, weren’t eager to help. One was apparently short on cash and ran over to an ATM. Both officers discouraged Wilkerson from filing a complaint and went back to sit in their van.

A few minutes later, the officers’ boss pulled up. Lt. Michael Smith ran down into the station and jumped through the closing doors of a car with the suspects inside. During the ensuing melee, Smith injured his right pinkie, and the main suspect punched out a Metro car window. Smith detained two members of the group but missed the candy-slapper. Smith says he’s identified the suspect, a juvenile whose MySpace picture is taped to the wall at the Silver Spring substation of the Montgomery County Police. His caption reads, “It’s not my fault I’m out of control.…Mess with me, get shot.”

Thanks go out to the good people over at Local First D.C. for inviting City Desk out to their first-anniversary party. At Busboys & Poets there was chicken-on-a-stick, falafel, fruit, pitas, hummus, but more importantly, there were stickers!

No, no. More importantly, there were owners of a bunch of D.C. businesses and staffers with the LEDC (Latino Economic Development Corporation), including our new friends: Kate Drew, Leda Hernandez, and Daniel Perra (pictured), who explained the concept: LEDC is is incubating, like very small chickens, the Local First campaign, now in more than 50 communities. Well, they explained it a little differently, but this is a blog, people. We have to fun it up.

In D.C., there are, as of today, 72 members, most in Ward 1, about half of them restaurants and cafes and the rest of them retail and services (salons, yoga, etc.), according to the campaign’s coordinator, Ayari De la Rosa of LEDC. What they get for their membership, in addition to Super Friends who can help stop the world from becoming Wal-Mart, are group rates for expensive things like advertising, marketing, insurance, and utilities. A group of 10 of them actually went in together to switch their electricity to wind energy through Clean Currents and saved 9 percent on costs, says De la Rosa. Go wind!

And not only that: Go D.C. Dept. of Housing and Community Development! The department contributed enough to the LEDC to pay De la Rosa’s salary so that she could get the campaign off the ground. “So many people think D.C. is doing nothing to help small businesses, and of course they could do more, but they’re supporting us on this and we hope they will continue,” she says.

Want to find out more? Of course you do! Read The Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition, by D.C.’s own Michael Shuman, an economist and lawyer who’s the go-to on going local. But don’t get it on Amazon, dude. Walk your ass over to Olsson’s.

Read last week’s cover story, Franklin Schneider’s “Buzz Kill,” and wondering what you can do to remember the millions of bees that have disappeared from the mid-Atlantic states in recent months?

Blogger Herb of DC’s found someone who’s way ahead of the curve in the bee-memorial department. Behind the Garden District nursery on S Street NW just east of 14th, there’s an odd street memorial somewhat reminiscent of the impromptu sidewalk encomiums following a resident’s untimely death, complete with votive candles and “dead soldier” beer bottles.

Chances are this is part of that SiteProjects DC thing—probably the work of Carolina Mayorga, though we haven’t been able to confirm— This is actually part of that SiteProjects DC thing—the work of artists Matthew McGuinness and Eliza Newman Saul—but remember this is about more than art: It’s about the bees.

Black Cat: Curator Welmoed Laanstra hit up 15 local artists for the Washington Project for the Arts\Corcoran’s “Site Projects D.C.,” which includes “site-specific outdoor pieces designed to explore the issues of poverty, gentrification, community, and revitalization of the historic 14th St. corridor.” Chances are those artists—whose contributions range from “new media and interactive displays, to sculpture and live performance” have plenty to say about the Big G, both from the perspective of being starving artists who move into cheap neighborhoods thus forcing poor families out, and from the perspective of being kicked out once the neighborhoods’ property values have risen high enough to attract rich prospective homeowners and condo developers. The reception, which is followed by a tour of the project sites led by Laanstra, is at 7 p.m. Friday, June 15, at the Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW. Free. (202) 667-7960; the outdoor pieces are on view to Saturday, July 28, at various venues along the 14th St. Corridor between P and V Sts. NW (see link for a list of sites). Free. (202) 639-1828.

Meat Market Gallery: If, upon reading the press release for Matt Ravenstahl’s “Works With an Initial Impulse”—which proclaims that the “work comes off on your hands”—your initial impulse is to bring a pair of gloves, don’t worry. The videos and sculptural works “exploring the depths behind surface interaction” on display won’t leave you feeling too dirty—provided you look but don’t touch. The reception runs from 6-8:30 p.m. Friday, June 15; the exhibition is on view from noon to 6 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays and noon to 3 p.m. Sundays, to Sunday, July 8, at Meat Market Gallery, 1636 17th St. NW. Free. (202) 328-6328.

Earlier this week the Workingman Collective—local artists Janis Goodman, Tom Ashcraft, and Peter Winant—installed 30 bird habitats on 14th Street NW between P and U Streets. The project, titled Site, Cite, Sight, was commissioned by WPA/Corcoran as part of SiteProjects DC, which places a variety of art projects onto that stretch of 14th. You can see the collective’s members in that picture on the right. What’s with the orange jumpsuits? It’s about “interaction with the community,” says Goodman. “When we’re out there in our coveralls, people can come to us and ask us what we’re doing.” Adds Winant: “We’re recognized as doing something that’s an art piece, rather than graffiti artists.”

Site, Cite, Sight, Ashcraft says, is meant to draw city dwellers’ attention to the distinctions between “the environment and the built environment”: the habitats are designed for the Eastern Bluebird, the Black-capped Chickadee, and the Downy Woodpecker, three of the hardest-hit species from the West Nile Virus. (Specific habitat designs are “mainly a matter of the size of the openings,” says Goodman.) The Workingman Collective specializes in work that deals in this sort of urban-natural intersection. In April 2006 the group went to Butte, Mont., to draw a five-mile chalk line that “represents commitment, delineates territory and marks what’s cut and what’s kept.” Earlier this year Ashcraft and Winant headed to the campus of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., to install Pine, a wooden ping-pong table intended in part to revitalize a little-used campus quad.

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One of the favored myths of D.C. officials is that the Frank D. Reeves Center, which opened at 14th and U Streets NW in 1986, resuscitated the area. According to this fantasy, it was the government office building—not the 1991 arrival of the Green Line, nor the expanding gentrification of the Dupont Circle, Logan Circle, and Adams Morgan neighborhoods—that brought clubs, restaurants, and other businesses to the U Street corridor.

The Reeves Center legend is so popular, in fact, that it’s used to justify moving other government offices to ever more remote locations. Following his predecessor’s lead, Mayor Adrian Fenty has even proposed forcing Metro, a regional agency, to relocate its Judiciary Square headquarters to the vicinity of the Anacostia Metro station.

Yet even as the Reeves fable is used to justify further decentralization, the city’s Office of Property Management is seeking to redeem the fairy-tale building. On Tuesday evening, OPM Director Lars Etzkorn convened a public meeting to discuss ways to save the structure that supposedly saved U Street. “Finally, I can actually do something about this building,” Etzkorn announced.

Actually, the parley was called only to discuss the building’s first floor, a retail graveyard that currently holds a convenience store, a gallery, a bank, a D.C. Lottery redemption center, and lots of unleased space. Other problems, such as the perennially leaking roof, were not on the agenda.

Etzkorn was followed by consultants, two retail and one architectural, and then a OPM staffer who led an “audience participation exercise.” Unlike most such drills organized by D.C. government agencies, this one was not structured to drive people toward a preordained decision. The discussion was so free-form that the approximately 15 attendees, most of them from the neighborhood, were free to offer ideas that were largely detached from reality.

They proposed adding a supermarket, a “food hall,” or an Apple Store. People suggested that the revamped Reeves should resemble Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market or Seattle’s Pike Place Market—both of which are much bigger than the center’s first floor, and in far more heavily trafficked and architecturally attractive locations.

A “food hall” would be possible in Reeves only if, at considerable expense, the entire first floor were converted to retail and the entrance and security-clearance functions for the offices above were somehow moved to the second floor. Much simpler, and just as a beneficial to the adjacent streets, would be to reconfigure the existing retail space so that it’s more conspicuous and appealing, and make all of it accessible from the street. That, plus a cafe or other outdoor business on the U Street side, would be enough to fix what local resident Scott Pomeroy called “the major dead zone” the building creates.

Ironically, though, the Reeves Center shows more urbanistic promise than the other government centers planned to disperse city functions to far-flung locations. But more on that later.

I had a one-night stand in December with a woman who, once we were too far into things for a second thought, told me that she had been raped. She said she was clean, but when I didn’t hear from her again, I started to worry. I would wash my hands for too long in the bathroom and be afraid of touching my fly. So when Angela reported that Whitman-Walker Clinic was testing for free, I decided to quit hiding from God.

HIV and STD tests have two phases: They draw blood, then they take a urine sample. After the needle, I was waiting with a small group in a hall where the chairs faced each other. People who are about to pee in cups don’t want to make eye contact. But if we turned our eyes up the wall, we saw our own reflections in a plastic frame, and that was worse.

One man slouched against the wall in baggy clothes, with a baseball cap pulled over his eyes. He was flipping through Cosmo or something. Though he never looked up from the page, we all could hear what he was saying:

“Beautiful. Oh, so beautiful. Look at that swimsuit.”

“Yes, gorgeous, man. Mmm. Here’s a girl doing ‘jinjitsu.’ Oh, no, no, wait, it’s not jinjitsu, it’s—what do you call it?—It’s yoga. She doing yoga.”

“She look Spanish. How come a Spanish girl doing yoga?”

We started to laugh. The guy looked up and enjoyed our approval, then his number was called. He said, “Bingo!” and walked away.

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It’s been a while since anybody in D.C. made an honest-to-god music video and Benjy Ferree must be applauded for his efforts. A video for the Domino recording artist and local bartender’s song “In the Countryside” popped up on YouTube today and it’s pretty entertaining. In it, a sepia tinted Ferree watches from the porch while a little girl controls undead patricians via a primitive joystick and colorful locals run amok. There’s some quality knock-kneed dancing too. See for yourself.

I’ve been a serious gym obsessive for several years now, in several different cities. I had the scuzzy, muscle-man gym in Philly, the hip, scenester gyms in Portland and Seattle. All three have had a dominant pack of gay men who basically run the place. Like most straight girls, I find the homosexual presence pretty comforting in a setting that involves sweating and tight clothes. You don’t get ogled and hit on all the time, and you can ogle men without risk of anything other than them thinking you have a staring problem.

But the gay-male presence at the “Dupont Circle” Results I recently joined is way beyond dominant. The gym is all men. And they’re a little territorial. On my tour I was shown the special women-only weights area. I thought it was great, an added comfort zone. After joining I realized it’s more like the women’s ghetto. I get icy stares when I work out anywhere else, and our little play lot doesn’t have as many weights or as nice of equipment as the two floors of weights used freely by lots and lots of men.

So I’ve decided to rebel. I’m going to stake out space in man land and see what happens.

In attempting to document the lapses of one Postie, our esteemed editor believes that white people gentrifiers don’t say racist shit out in the open, like, say, at a hipster joint on H Street. I disagreed at the time. And then this past weekend I witnessed a Great Moment in Gentrification, one that I think deserves some debate.

What do y’all think of this: It’s about 11:15 p.m. this past Saturday night. In front of Cue Bar, I wait to meet up with a friend and observe a squad of frat goons (you know the look: buzz cuts, thick necks, untucked dress shirts, jeans) approach an idling cab. These men are seriously drunk. One dude, maybe three ask the cabbie for a ride. The cab driver says he’s waiting for another fare. One of the dudes then yells at the cabbie: “We have a lot more money than whoever you’re waiting for!”

I thought: Yikes.

Racism? Classism? Or this is just what happens on the new U Street?

It turns out the cabbie was waiting for woman just getting off a shift at a nearby bar.

We here at City Paper can never pass up a good bodily-fluid story, so we figured we’d give you advance warning on tonight’s Velvet Lounge show by controversial French performance artist Jean-Louis Costes.

Here’s how Costes describes his new act:

“Little Birds Shit” is the story of an ordinary couple. They meet…They Flirt…They Fuck…They make a baby… They fall into the normal trappings of family existence, working to make money.
– As they grow weary from the struggles of life, they find solace in acts of bizarre s&m sex.

However, this description of the act from North Dakota’s Rapid City Journal might give you a better idea of what you’re in for:

After stripping off their grubby clothes, the pair gobbled potato chips and spit them on the crowd, vomited into a filthy commode and threw around fake feces and urine before being shut down about a half hour into what was to be a 45-minute performance.

There were also plenty of “props.” The last straw, apparently, was a simulated sex act involving a carrot.

At any rate, if your idea of a chill Friday night is a cold can of Schlitz and a randy Frenchman performing vegetable-driven-buttsex on somebody, you know where to find it.