The Washington Nationals are withholding stadium rent from the city because, they say, the stadium isn’t finished. Well! I’ve been to a couple games, and I see a fully-functioning stadium. And it costs $11.50 for a beer and a bag of peanuts!

Fellow D.C. taxpayers, listen to my plan: So long as the Nationals withhold money from the city, I’m going to withhold money from the Nationals. The stadium allows outside food. So next time I’m offered a free ticket (which happens weirdly often), I’m going to smuggle all the beer I need by hiding it in a bag along with peanuts and other legitimate items. I predict that this will have no effect whatsoever on the franchise’s deadbeat doings, but I will enjoy myself righteously. Join me!

Far as I can tell, only the great Thom Loverro looked into the Nats‘ last-minute cancellation of Sunday’s scheduled jersey giveaway.

The team only told the disappointed 12-and-unders that they wouldn’t be getting shirts because of “circumstances beyond our control.”

But Loverro found “international intrigue” was behind the un-gifting.

“The Nationals giveaway jerseys, along with ones for the Marlins and Pirates,” Loverro wrote, “were seized by customs and have been locked away, according to Major League Baseball spokesman Pat Courtney, though Courtney said they had no explanation for why they were seized.”

Nationals president Stan Kasten told Loverro the same thing, and added that he “didn’t expect to ever see those promotional jerseys again.”

Just a hunch, but I bet for the next several years every Little League team with the offspring of U.S. Customs agents on it will be named “Nationals.”

Good work, Thom!

Recently an acqaintance shared with me a theory that if you’ve had a good idea, most likely 100,000 other people have had the same idea. The trick, he said, was getting your good idea to market. He’s one of the co-founders of Audible, so I figure his theory is worth pondering.

A couple of months ago, my sister was diagnosed with celiac disease. People with it can’t process gluten and are thus condemned to order many T-shirts celebrating this fact. Our much-missed former art director Pete Morelewicz was similarly afflicted and was always strutting around the office in some shirt or another that alerted folks to his wonky digestive system. After my sister’s diagnosis, I thought about Pete’s shirts and thought it would be funny to make a shirt that said “WHEAT IS MURDER.” I have no idea how exactly many other people had the idea, but there are a few at least. Drat! I thought, and went back to pursuing personal agendas and covering up scandals.

ANYWAY, last night I was at Nationals Park, where at least the pretzels were interesting. Noah’s Pretzels, a local company that has a stand in Nationals Park, sells both gluten-free pretzels and gluten-free beer. Apparently one of the founders has a child with autism, and autistic kids are often sensitive to gluten. Who knew? And also, now I’m glad that my sister has an enticement to come out to the ballgame with me, though perhaps gluten-free pretzels might not be enough.

So very few people bother drive to the new Nationals Park. While researching my story on all those empty lots, I noticed one tradition that has been left behind: the tailgate party.

If Nats fans did park their cars in the lots, they didn’t stick around. One patron simply sat in his air conditioned SUV until first pitch. One family stood by their car drinking. Two other dudes quickly slurped big cans of cheap beer before walking to the stadium. One ended up pouring most of his beer out in a trash can at the lot’s entrance.

I saw no mini grills. No hot dogs and burgers. No cases of Bud. And no lawn chairs. I suspect this is due to the fact that the lots are really lonely places and aren’t sprawl-y enough for any pre-game festivities. The one lot where you could get away with a tailgate is lot HH–but that’s located underneath a freeway. There are probably rules against firing up a grill underneath the on-ramp to 395.

Has anyone tried to tailgate at the new ballpark?

Remember, a few years back, when every politician in town was going nuts over Mayor Anthony A. Williams‘ plan to build a city-financed ballpark? Williams figured out a way to whip the votes to get the stadium deal through: create a “Community Benefit Fund” that would collect certain ballpark-related revenues that would be dished out for various neighborhood needs. Of course, for councilmembers to be allocated a piece of that money meant they had to play ball (har har) with Tony.

Several councilmembers did. Kevin Chavous, then Ward 7 councilmember, got $5 million for projects in his ward. Sharon Ambrose, then Ward 6 councilmember, got the same amount for her bailiwick. Sandy Allen, then Ward 8 councilmember, was promised tens of millions for development projects in her ward. Vincent B. Orange Sr., then Ward 5 councilmember, got $12 million for pet projects of his own, including laptops for kids at McKinley Tech High School. Tens of millions more was set aside for city schools and libraries.

According to estimates published in press accounts at the time, the fund was estimated to eventually bring in as much as $450 million. This year is the first time that the District’s chief financial officer is certifying that there’s any money actually in the fund—but only about $2.23 million. And, under Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s spending plan, not a dollar of that will go toward any of the projects Williams negotiated.

Instead, the money is being used for earmarks, including a half mil each for the Greater Washington Sports Alliance and the Lincoln Theater, plus $398,000 to “explore the feasibility of a D.C. Children’s Museum.” (The Williams allocations aren’t stripped out, but Fenty’s items are simply placed above them in the ballpark authorization law.) LL goes into much greater detail about the earmark game in his column to be published tomorrow.

Fenty’s budget czar, William Singer, says the move was a result of the low revenues seen coming into the fund, which come out of a tax-increment-financing district around the ballpark and other development-related sources. “We’re kind of recognizing that a modest amount of money is coming in,” Singer says. “Rather than wait 20 years to cross off one item…we’re saying, let’s just spend it on the community now.”

Also worthy of note: The community benefit money that wasn’t allocated through Williams’ horse-trading is supposed to be divvied according to a process that includes extended comment periods and “input from Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, community groups, the faith community, representatives of the labor community, representatives of the business community, and other community stakeholders.”

But under Fenty’s proposed budget, all those procedures are replaced with the following sentence: “The Mayor, through the annual budget process, may make a request for an appropriation for expenditures from the Community Benefit Fund.”

Fenty, of course, voted against the ballpark deal and owes no fealty to any of the four aforementioned ex-councilmembers. And the Williams horse-trading always had a hint of charade to it—meant, as it was, merely to provide short-term political cover for a deal unpopular in most parts of the city. Or, as Singer puts it, “Those were and always have been totally empty promises.”

Williams is traveling and was not available for comment. LL’s calls to Orange were returned by a spokesperson for his employer, Pepco, saying there would be no comment. Allen and Chavous did not immediately return calls for comment.

Singer says a time may come when the money might be used as Williams & Co. intended. “If a whole bunch of money started coming in to the fund, of course we’d come back to the list.”

Adam Eidinger, long one of DC’s most active activists, is also a businessman. He’s had his own PR firm for several years, and now he’s firing up a hemp clothing store.

The shop will open later this month in Adams Morgan, says Eidinger, who briefly achieved international fame in 2004 by disrupting the Washington Nationals introductory news conference to protest the public funding of a stadium here.

“Every major city in America already has a hemp store,” Eidinger says. “Now DC will, too.”

Eidinger, who counts among his good fights a long-time advocacy of marijuana law reform, says he thinks hemp shoes, going from $60-$110 a pair, will be big sellers. His store’s shelves will also be stocked with hemp shirts and pants, hemp cosmetics and hemp food.

Even the shelves will be hemp.

“We built the whole store out of cannabis,” says Eidinger. “It’s all hemp fiber board.”

But — sorry, Nats-heads — the shop won’t be selling hemp curly “W” caps, Eidinger promises.

This morning, the Washington Post flooded the proverbial zone on its Nationals Park coverage—dozens of its reporters documented every last aspect of the ballpark’s first official major-league game. The Post also flooded the paper with an inaccuracy: That the stadium cost $611 million.

The $611 million figure reflects the cap that the D.C. Council imposed on District financing back when it approved the stadium deal. Since then, costs have risen, largely due to inaccurate estimations of land acquisition costs by Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi. A January report issued by the CFO’s office showed that land and environmental remediation costs had to date run $43 million over estimates. (To get around the cap, some legal costs were moved out of the capped-cost category to an uncapped “ancillary costs” category last summer.)

Depending on the outcome of various land disputes (check out some early CP reporting on the issue), the local contribution to stadium construction is likely to edge into the mid-to-upper 600s, with the total project cost—including contributions from the team, Major League Baseball, and the federal government—likely to end up close to $800 million.

And yet:

• In their A1 lede-all, Dave Sheinin and Daniel LeDuc refer to “a $611 million, taxpayer-built palace in a formerly blighted part of the District”
• Marc Fisher kicks off his column with, “So, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer, what did you get for your $611 million?”
• Tom Boswell refers to MLB’s sweetheart deal as comprising “a $611 million stadium and a $450 million purchase price by the Lerners”
• Barry Svrluga’s sports-section fronter talks about the Nats’ “brand new, custom built, $611 million home”
• Philip Kennicott wraps up his pan of the stadium and its surroundings with the line, “All that for $611 million in public money.”

Here’s the thing: Plenty of people have repeated the $611 million figure, but the Post should know the number isn’t right. They published a very helpful graphic saying so last week!

Photo by D.F. Shapinsky for pingnews/Shapinsky MultiMedia

The Washington Post’s architecture guru Philip Kennicott writes a withering critique of Nationals Park for today’s paper. The critic believes this behemoth, designed by experienced stadium architecture firm HOK, is a dud.

He dubs the parking garages as “disastrously situated” for obscuring the front entrance. And then ticks off all the lost opportunities:

“Approached from the South Capitol Street bridge, the building might have been better framed by more greenery — but a parking lot for the team has been placed right where a garden should be. Along South Capitol, the face of the building might have been opened up for street-level retail, something to make it inviting and even useful for the residents of the very poor neighborhood. There are even glass windows that suggest what storefronts might have looked like, but those windows are filled with Nationals advertising and they hide empty, useless space.”

And later in the piece, Kennicott goes in for the devastating blow:

“From the top of the stadium, look out at the skyline, toward the Capitol Dome. At first, it seems like a happy accident that it is most visible from the cheapest seats. But now look down into the neighborhoods where public schools have become dilapidated brick bunkers, their windows covered in forbidding metal mesh. It’s enough to make you weep. Not about the stadium, which is as generic as it goes. But rather the cynical pragmatism that governs our priorities, socially and architecturally. Washington is a city where people can stare straight at the most powerful symbol of their democratic enfranchisement, and still feel absolutely powerless to change the course of our winner-takes-all society.”

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George W. Bush will throw out the first pitch at Nationals Park on Sunday night.

Being the least popular president in history, he’ll surely bring some sort of hater-repellant, such as the youngest Jonas Brother or a cutout of Martin Luther King, to the mound with him.

Will he be booed?

D.C. has to pay for security costs at the baseball stadium, and that’s going to cost over $1 million, reports WTOP’s Mark Segraves.

Today, the Washington Post published a front-page piece on Positive Nature and the non-profit’s on-going struggle to pay off its huge property tax bill. We have a story or two on this issue as well.

This afternoon we got the chance to talk to Stephen T. Baron, Director of the Department of Mental Health, about the non-profit.

“We think very highly of them,” Baron said. “We are trying to do everything we can to support them. They’ve done great work.”

On the property tax issue: “Where I come from I thought most non-profits get their taxes abated. They do great work. If you do a whole cost analysis….it’s much better for the kids and much cheaper for the kids to be served [by Positive Nature].”

Now if only the D.C. Council would actually do something. In the meantime, you can step up.

Update: In another conversation with DMH, they wanted to stress that Mr. Baron was arguing that having kids enrolled in Positive Nature is cost effective considering the alternative. Without Positive Nature, kids could have possible trouble with the law, require extra tutoring at school, and other social services.

Via Dan Steinberg, news that starting tomorrow at 9 a.m., you can vote on what songs you’d like to hear at Nationals Park. Nothing too surprising choice-wise—U2, Toby Keith, a convicted sex offender for victories, Blur’s “Song 2″ or perhaps Chuck Brown’s “Busting Loose” for home runs (note: do not play that one if Elijah Dukes is rounding the horn; his minder might overreact).

I was sort of surprised by Steinberg’s now struck-through suggestion that some Minor Threat or Bad Brains would sound sweet during the seventh-inning stretch. Frankly, given the situation up in New York, I think unleashing “Pay to Cum” on ballgame attendees would be in especially poor taste. Especially since the GREATEST SPORTS SONG OF ALL TIME is local, available, and, shockingly, not on the list.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the Nats stadium’s impact on the surrounding neighborhood. No one feels the sting of all that stadium-related development more than the non-profit Positive Nature. The higher property taxes may put them out of business.

It is hard to estimate the impact of a place like Positive Nature. They run an after-school program for some of the most vulnerable kids in the city. These are kids who have gone through countless case workers and foster care moms. These are kids who actually need city government to function properly. For most of them, Positive Nature amounts to a real home. It is hard to write a grant proposal around that.

And no grant can make up for the stadium’s impact. In the last two years, Positive Nature has seen its property taxes skyrocket. Now, those kids are in serious jeopardy of losing that home. The non-profit simply can not afford those taxes.

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While writing my story this week on the influence of Nationals Park on the surrounding neighborhood, I focused a lot of time on a non-profit called Positive Nature. The non-profit runs an after-school program that includes tutoring, sports, art and movement therapy, and a lot of one-on-one stuff for at-risk kids. I spent several days there just hanging out. This included playing a serious game of whiffle ball, sitting in on group discussions, and watching some of the more courageous kids lip sync and dance in a Motown revue.

My reason for being there: Positive Nature was/is contemplating shutting down because it can’t afford the property taxes on its building. Its taxes have increased 755 percent in the last two years.

But I think I shortchanged the non-profit in what I wrote up. I described the kids–as I do in the above graph–as “at risk.” This is journalistic shorthand, a cliche to be used when you just don’t have enough space for actually writing who these kids really are. Here are some of Positive Nature’s kids that I met or at least heard about:

*A set of twins who lost their parents when they were little. The majority of their relatives have also died. They spent a lot of years worrying if they were going to be split up into two different foster families. For a time, I think they were split up.

*A teenager who recently graduated the sixth grade. When he first came to Positive Nature, it was unclear whether he was homeless or not.

*A little girl who already has gone through about 10 foster families.

*A teenager who claimed that if she wasn’t at Positive Nature she’d be out drinking.

*A 17-year-old who is one of 11 kids in his family. There were issues of neglect. One of his brothers was murdered. When he came to Positive Nature, he was a kid who could curse in whole paragraphs. Now he has a job cleaning the building. When he’s not sweeping the floors, he can often been seen counseling kids.

I wonder what’s going to happen to all these kids if Positive Nature can’t keep its building.