Is this like ironic LARPing? Will there be a Darkon of tube fighting? The Seattle Cardboard Tube Fighting league (typical twee Northwest goofiness) is coming to D.C. to host a participatory tournament on the mall on July 26. Organizers recommend cardboard armor, and also, business suits. Sounds pretty silly but I like it better than those messy pillow fights.

It boggles my mind how all you District dwellers don’t appreciate the scenery around here. Yes, I’m a recent transplant to D.C., and to the East Coast in general, so my sense of newness really helps the amazement of seeing the beautiful architecture and famous buildings and monuments. But let me tell you, on my drives up and down Interstate 5 in Seattle, not once in two years did I glance at the skyline, see the Space Needle, and not feel amazed. Every single time I saw that World’s Fair monstrosity hovering over the Seattle Center area, I felt a tinge of excitement. “I LIVE in Seattle,” I’d say to myself with a bit of a smile. “I live in Seattle!”

Almost every day since I moved, I’ve caught myself in a moment of equal amazement. I watched the fireworks from the Iwo Jima memorial and said to a date, “I live in D.C. I’m watching fireworks in the capital!” While on another date Thursday night, a guy and I took a stroll by the White House, the Mall and over to the Jefferson Memorial. I felt the little-kid giddiness start to swell up in my chest, and I asked him if we could pause to look at everything and take it in. He humored me, and I think I perplexed him with the huge grin plastered on my face. I went to a Nationals game Saturday night and saw the Washington Monument in the distance. “Holy crap!” I said to my group. “We’re in Washington, D.C.! Do you see that?!”

Each person I was with had the same sort of reaction: “Huh. I guess I’m jaded.” To which I’d say something like, “Really, how cool is this?! We’re in Washington, D.C.!”

Don’t give me that “I guess I’m jaded” nonsense. That, to me, translates as “Gee, I’m so caught up in my everyday life that I can’t take 10 seconds out of my busy day to appreciate my surroundings.” I’m sure you get that rush when you travel, right? It’s not that hard to feel the same way about a familiar place—and it might lower your blood pressure a bit, too.

Thankfully, on a bike ride to Virginia (Virginia!) yesterday, my housemate picked up on my excitement and pedaled with it (though he’s lived in the DMV area his entire life).

Try to enjoy here while you’re here, because there’s no here anywhere else.

Quote of the Day: in the Washington Post’s ode to hangin’ out by the Potomac, David A. Fahrenthold catches this beauty, from a dude hangin’ out by the Potomac:

Wayne Anderson, who moves furniture for a living, joked that he might “kill his boss” if he didn’t have his time at Hains Point every Sunday.

Ensuring that no creepy detail about Wayne Anderson go unpublished, Fahrenthold follows up with this:

Yesterday, he was watching the calm channel between Hains Point and the Southwest waterfront, ready to fish with bloodworms and little nuggets of liver-flavored bait for Potomac catfish.

As I mentioned before, I’m brand new to the District. In fact, this is day 8 of my new life on the East Coast. With this new transition comes adjustments to weather (How ridiculous is this weather, people? I’ll tell you. It’s ridiculous!) and discoveries of fun things to do and great places to spend money on delicious eats. Which brings me to cupcakes.

I casually mentioned to one of my co-workers yesterday that I wished there was a great cupcake place nearby. To my surprise, she told me there were actually a couple bakeries devoted to cupcakes in the city; the closest shop to the office is a mere 15-minute hop over to U Street. After a lengthy discussion about our preferences regarding the tasty treats, I decided I’d try the first bakery this morning.

Enter CakeLove.

The less-than-humble “The CakeLove Story” section of Warren Brown’s “About CakeLove” shrine to himself and the play-by-play of his creative “brilliance” was more than enough to leave a bad taste in my mouth, let alone the misspellings, punctuation errors and typos that littered his site. (Note to Mr. Brown: I would be thrilled to tidy up your site. I am a copy editor, after all.) I’m getting dizzy just trying to figure out whether the name of his creation is Cakelove, CakeLove or cakelove. Let’s just pick a way to write it and stick with it, OK?

CakeLove seems to just be a glorified Safeway bakery. For one, I couldn’t believe my eyes when the person behind the counter wrapped the first cupcake, a raspberry frosting on vanilla concoction, in wax paper. What happened to the idea of using tongs to delicately place a frosted treat into a cardboard box, preferably in little cupcake stands? The folks at this shop definitely have the right idea when it comes to the cute cardboard boxes, but Brown needs to hit up a couple other cupcakeries — yes, I’m making that word up — and see how the treats should be presented. Heck, he should use his Food Network show to pay for the trip!

First stop on the tour: Magnolia Bakery in New York City, made famous on an episode of Sex and the City. It was my first true cupcake experience, and boy was it glorious. I bought enough to take a couple home with me to Seattle, but they didn’t even make it off the plane.

Trophy Cupcakes, in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle, has great presentation, in addition to amazing frosting, though the cupcakes themselves are a bit hard to stomach. I don’t know about you, but my ideal cupcake shouldn’t make me feel like I just ate a brick. Those were some dense little cakes.

More recently, I visited Cupcake Royale, in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood. Known for its “Legalize frostitution” bumper stickers and shirts, Cupcake Royale comes in a close second in quality to Magnolia Bakery. Its recipe of just-the-right-amount-of-fluff and frosting to (almost) swoon for makes it a top dessert stop on my 2008 Sweets Tour.

CakeLove, though? I’d say skip it. The frosting looks gross (especially at room temperature), the cake is a tad too dense for my palate, and just looking at the chocolate on chocolate treat on my desk makes me want to have a burger and a milkshake to wash down the nasty, cheap Safeway/Costco-like buttercream frosting taste lingering on my tongue.

I hope the next cupcake shop suggestion is far better than this.

Over the weekend Georgetown alum Dinaw Mengestu—author of a good-but-not-great D.C. novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears—had a nice piece in the Wall Street Journal about how lonely it is these days being an American writer in Paris. Yes, part of the problem is how badly the dollar measures up against the Euro; to hear Mengestu tell it, a cup of coffee will now run you more than $7.50 there. But the bigger issue, he argues, is that France is much more Americanized now—making it less interesting as an escape hatch for disillusioned American bohos:

A recent walk along Boulevard St. Germain with a French book editor and friend quickly became an exercise in nostalgia as he tried to recall the names of some of the smaller family-owned stores that had dominated the street before the explosion of French and foreign chain stores took over; “None of this was here,” being the phrase he used most often to describe what’s happened since. Perhaps even more emblematic is the decidedly pro-American business model of the current president, Nicolas Sarkozy (aka “Sarko L’Americain” as he’s sometimes mocked in the French media), whose attempts to adjust the retirement age of civil servants and squeeze more efficiency out of the government have been met with massive nationwide strikes that seem aimed more at holding on to the remnants of a vanishing culture than challenging the logic of the policy.

About a decade ago, if you were a slacker-bohemian type, Prague was where you wanted to be. Now, Mengestu says that Buenos Aires is the place to go—somebody bring the news to Williamsburg, where the townies have got to be sick of gypsy bands by now.

Has D.C. ever hosted a Republican or Democratic Convention? I’m guessing the answer is no, at least not a modern party convention. Sure, this region gets a boost from the federal government every day. Sure, we have (practically) no votes to offer either political party, though Maryland and Virginia certainly do. Yes, I recognize there are very few solid arguments in favor of holding a convention here. But, that is a shame for a few reasons.

This press release from leadership in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, home of this year’s GOP convention, can elaborate reason number one:

“It is estimated that the Convention will bring $150 million to $160 million in economic impact to Minneapolis, Saint Paul and the surrounding areas. In addition, more than 2,800 jobs will be created generating more than $100 million in wages. The national exposure that will focus on Minneapolis Saint Paul and the surrounding area will be priceless.”

Money and jobs are good, right? On that we can all agree? Okay. Read the rest of this entry »

Bicycling Magazine named D.C. it’s #1 Most Improved City for biking! Meaning, look how bad we used to suck and how hard we’re trying!

Their profile on D.C., coming out in their June issue, focuses on bells and whistles like the SmartBike program, sort of a Zipcar for bicycles. SmartBike is due to launch this month, with 10 stations and 120 bikes you can rent with a swipecard and return to any other station. It’s kind of cool, though I’m a little hard-pressed to think who needs it. Locals who want to bike probably have a bike already, and tourists wouldn’t pay the $40 annual membership fee if they’re visiting for a weekend.

Yes, bike valet parking at the stadium rocks. And yes, the new Bike Station they’re putting in at Union Station will rock. Now let’s just get back on track for building bike lanes (even Bicycling Magazine had to acknowledge that we’re just over halfway to where we should be with striped lanes at this point) and maybe next time around we’ll be #1 Most Awesome Bikey City Ever. Go, D.C., go!

Word is the Young Women’s Christian Association’s (YWCA) Gallery Place Fitness and Aquatics Center, located at 624 Ninth Street NW, will be shutting its doors on May 19th. The YWCA of the District of Columbia, which has been in operation since 1905, has run into financial troubles.

According to the organization’s Web site, the mission of the YWCA is ” to eliminate racism and empower women and their families with career education and training, health and wellness, and child and youth development programs that foster independence, economic stability, and overall well-being.”

Though its social programs have often been an integral part of our city, the Capital Area YWCA is perhaps best known for supplying a place for District residents to work out on the cheap.

Besides maintaining a gym and pool, the Gallery Place Fitness and Aquatic Center offers classes like boxing, yoga, and karate. Amanda Anderson, who recently joined the Y so she she could get in shape by swimming laps in its four-lane pool, says she’ll miss the casual atmosphere and friendly people there.

“The place seems to be full of real people,” she says.

A just-penned YWCA press release states that ” An increase in fitness competitors and escalating costs related to pool operations were factors in the closure.”

In 2006 the YWCA formed a task force that sought ways of keeping Gallery Place Fitness and Aquatics Center open and sustainable. “Many of the suggestions were implemented including a modest dues increase, but the bottom line remained in the red,” says the press release.

The good news is, the approximately 1,000 members that have made the gym part of their fitness regimen won’t have to pay for May, and the YWCA is planning on hooking these jilted patrons up with “special rates at other fitness centers in the area.”

—Rend Smith

Local nonprofit Good Ground-Good Life has an innovative plan to connect with District youth. First, drive around a tricked-out box truck with mobile sound system, wireless mic, and see-through, Plexiglas back. Then, lure children inside. Finally, bring them back to a community center to educate them about AIDS, drugs, and street violence. If pressed, add roller skates.

The mobile entertainment system/youth outreach program/positive kidnapping initiative, called Rock the Block, is run by a trio who know their trucks: current and former postal truck drivers DeLyon Gigger, Kevin Whitaker, and Brad Rorrer (not pictured).

Check out this week’s Show & Tell for GGGL’s truancy prevention plans, mobile roller rink, and super-secret work-in-progress. (Hint: They all involve the truck).

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Last time in Managing Your Rodent Infestation, we planted new snap traps, baited, once again, with delicious peanut butter. A while back, we switched to smooth butter after our mouse simply ate the chunks out of the chunky, leaving only the butter behind. Picky, picky!

Since setting our new traps, my roommate and I haven’t heard a squeak out of our as-yet-unnamed mouse. The traps are set, the peanut butter is creamy, but the mouse isn’t licking. What, wee rodent? Lost your appetite, have you? Or perhaps, sensing your impending doom at the hands of our advanced weaponry, you have retreated from our basement in order to seek your scrumptious protein-rich handouts elsewhere?

The mouse isn’t talking. But the public is! As it turns out, everybody’s a mouse extermination critic!

Read the rest of this entry »

For this week’s Show & Tell, I spoke to a group of local writers, educators, and nonprofit  staffers working to start up a creative writing center for District youth, ages 6 to 18. The 19 volunteers have a lot of ideas for the project, but their Capitol Letters Writing Center is still very much a work-in-progress: Currently, they’ve got no location, no students, and no money. Why don’t we help them out!

Reader: The future of the Capitol Letters Writing Center is in your hands! Help its volunteers decide where to locate their center, what sort of proto-nonprofit optimism Kool-Aid to drink , and whether or not to face their white guilt!

Last time in Managing Your Rodent Infestation, my roommate and I identified that we had a problem, sampled several implements of torture, and asked for help. I think that’s pretty good progress. But despite our three-pronged assault (poison! stick! snap!) , with efforts concentrated largely in the Kitchen Theatre, the yet-to-be-named mouse is still using our basement as a giant mouse playground/poop depository. It grows bolder: Earlier this week, my roommate heard it investigating her closet. I’m afraid it may be time to extend our efforts to the bedrooms.

For now, though, we’ve decided to stay the course in the kitchen: this time, with upgraded snap traps. Yesterday, we replaced these:

Read the rest of this entry »

There is a mouse in my basement. The squeaky little guy isn’t too much of a bother, but it shits places, my roommate swears she’s allergic to it, and I fear it may breed. We’ve tried three methods of extermination since discovering our new roommate: First, we laid out poison; then, we set sticky traps; finally, we baited two snap traps with peanut butter. Here’s what we’ve found:

Poison: mildly uncomfortable at best! The only effect the posion seems to have on the situation is to make me nervous that the mouse will spread it around and feed it into my food supply … possibly intentionally.

Sticky traps: not very sticky! The other day, I dropped a take-out menu on the floor and accidentally palmed a sticky trap when I bent down to pick it up. I escaped handily. I didn’t even need to use my other hand to help free myself.

Peanut-butter-baited snap traps: delicious! Our basement mouse not only eats the peanut butter off our death machines: He licks them clean. The traps themselves don’t seem too interested in snapping. The scant information I could locate online concerning mouse tongue muscles suggests that they are “similar to limb muscles.” What does it all mean?

Can somebody help me out here? I am not covering my kitchen floor with upside-down duct tape. So, should we just go ahead and name the little guy and prepare to throw a mouse pups shower?

Gridskipper, the “Urban Travel Guide,” hates on the name NoMa, pointing out that it’s the name of a horrible disease, an acronym for a museum, and way worse than “Swampoodle.” Duh!

I gotta say, I think “Atlas District” is more of a threat, aesthetically.