1600 Block of Newton Street NW, October 31

Page three photos are also in a big picture gallery.

Bonus, Halloween gallery.

The shooting sparked a wave of young people who made their way on foot along Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Foggy-Bottom-GWU Metrorail station at 23rd and I streets NW.

Many of them were visibly disturbed — some were weeping, others were yelling threats or calling for their friends. A few people ran, but most walked in loosely knit groups. Three young women told The Huffington Post they had witnessed the shooting in Georgetown, but none was willing to say who they thought might be responsible.

Within minutes, violence broke outside the Metrorail entrance, where an argument between two young women devolved into a street fight involving 20 to 30 people. Traffic was completely halted on 23rd Street, and one female eyewitness described the scene as "a gang war."

Mayor Vince Gray is giving a press conference at 11:30 today to discuss how the city is responding to the recent spate of shootings over the last few weeks.

Mount Pleasant, October 31

A full gallery.

Check out a gallery of the occupied pumpkins here.

36th Street NW, October 31

600 Block Rhode Island Ave, NW.  Oct. 29th.  © 2011 Matt Dunn

Halloween falls on Monday this year, which means you've only got a few more days to figure out what costume to wear if you're so inclined. Here at Washington City Paper, we're keenly aware of the holiday's approach—mostly because old Amanda Hess blog posts suddenly start getting lots of online traffic. But we're also under intense pressure, as everyone is in the journalism business, to make sure our coverage is hyperlocal.

So D.C., here are our suggestions for how to dress up in a way that would let you go straight from an Advisory Neighborhood Commission meeting to a Halloween party. Appropriate attire for this holiday basically falls into one of two basic genres: zombie, or sexy. With that in mind, these are the top five 2011 Washington City Paper D.C. Halloween Costumes:

1. Zombie Sulaimon Brown: Sure, you might get a laugh or two by dressing up as everyone's favorite mayoral candidate-turned-D.C. bureaucrat-turned federal witness. But unless you're trick-or-treating at former Vince Gray advisor Lorraine Green's house, chances are you won't scare anyone. Unless you become a zombie—because they're always scary.
2. Sexy Reusable Bag: Paying five cents into the District's coffers to get a plastic bag to carry home your candy isn't remotely sexy. You know what is sexy? Keeping the Anacostia River clean! Dress up this weekend by wearing one of those Whole Foods bags—and nothing else.
3. Zombie Streetcar: Because it may as well already be dead.
4. Sexy Tommy Wells: To get the smart growth set breathing hard this weekend, forget bobbing for apples; if the fruit isn't from a local orchard, chances are they won't want to play, anyway. Instead, throw on some Playboy Bunny ears, start talking about "livable, walkable" streets, and get all your colleagues to stand by and do nothing as you get crushed in a hardball power play!
5. Sexy NIMBY Zombie: The living keep trying to open up bars, restaurants, and shops in your neighborhood. Fortunately, you're in D.C., where the undead can veto that sort of thing simply by showing up at a meeting and growling loudly. Wave a copy of the latest D.C. Register, put on some lingerie, and scare that project into someone else's back yard.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery/Illustration by Brooke Hatfield

But I'm going to be real with you: Being an individual of a different race is fine, going as a stereotype just makes you look racist, and blackface is never, never okay.

WAMU's Elahe Izadi is far more diplomatic than I in her coverage of offensive Halloween costumes:

Why is it problematic to dress up as a Mexican for Halloween? Jelani Cobb, African studies professor at Rutgers University, explains to CNN: "To treat a character like Batman or Superman as a Halloween costume is one thing, but to treat an entire ethnicity as a costume is something else. It suggests that people conflate the actual broad diversity of a culture with caricatures and characters."

But not everyone agrees; negative comments flooded Melissa Sipin’s blog, which first reported about the [We Are A Culture, Not A Costume] campaign on Sunday before national media took note. Critics feel the campaign is a hyper-sensitive reaction to people who simply want to have fun on Halloween, a time to relax and check all the seriousness at the door.

Nope. That's wrong. If the plan is to go to a party full of other people who "simply" want to have "fun" mocking people of other races, go for it, but be warned: That's racist. If the plan is to be out in public where, say, a person of Mexican descent has to look at you dressed like an "illegal" (see poster) it's probably time to check yourself.

And, I repeat: Blackface is never okay.

There Be Lions Here: Typical postings on the Cleveland Park neighborhood message board deal with urgent matters like where one can find "electric adding machines." A recent update had something a bit more urgent—reports of a mountain lion loose near McLean Gardens. Hide your kids! Or at least keep them indoors with their adding machines. -1

Virtual Transfer Virtually Open: Don't like Metro Center, but need to transfer from the Red Line to the Blue Line so you can experience all the single-tracking delays Metro has to offer? You're in luck—starting tomorrow, the system will let you transfer electronically between Farragut North and Farragut West. (You'll still have to walk between them, of course.) Exiting at one end of Farragut Square and re-entering on the other won't result in any fare being deducted from your SmarTrip. Just in time for winter, too. +2

Radio, Radio: Sports-talk radio can get even the mildest-mannered listener all worked up; the format just seems to encourage ranting and raving, especially when you live in a city where the options for starting quarterback for the local NFL team are Rex Grossman or John Beck. Which may explain why Nazir Zia allegedly plowed his car into the studios of WJFK-FM during today's broadcast of The Sports Junkies. No one was hurt. Presumably, callers were complaining as soon as the crash was over about the tactics involved. -1

Trick or Treat?: In search of candy this weekend? Head to the West End. So says Zillow.com, in a new ranking of best neighborhoods for Halloween treats within cities. We suppose Trader Joe's might have some good chocolate, or something, but otherwise we're not sure we agree with the pick. Kalorama, U Street, Dupont Circle, and Georgetown were also ranked. Apparently there's no candy east of Rock Creek Park. -1

Yesterday's Needle rating: 54 Today's score: -1 Today's Needle rating: 53

The District is the fourth-stingiest city in the nation with Halloween candy, according to a new poll by LivingSocial—though you may have to take the results with a grain of salt, as well as some candy, because the poll surveyed "online customers," which (because it's self-selecting, not random) doesn't always yield especially reliable data.

Nonetheless, here are some stats to consider as Monday approaches. Washingtonians have the third-most encounters with ghosts (15 percent of people polled reported this), and half prefer Reese's to other candies listed in the poll. A shocking 51 percent of District residents admit to stealing candy from their kids.

The survey compiled D.C. residents' opinions on Halloween in the city. Of the 200 D.C.-area residents with kids age 15 or under who were sampled, only 18 percent admitted to toilet papering a neighbor's house as a kid.

LivingSocial also found that trick-or-treating is the most popular Halloween activity in D.C., with pumpkin carving at a close second. However, the District ranked only 13th out of 20 top cities for best trick-or-treating and best party city for adults. It seems, though, that when ranking D.C. low for best trick-or-treating, Washingtonians failed to incorporate the relative safety of the District on the holiday, as the city also ranked 13th in the most dangerous for trick-or-treating.

District parents came out strongly against the Mean Girls approach to Halloween—lingerie and animal ears—as 42 percent polled thought girls don costumes that are too sexy.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

17th Street NW, October  25

Full gallery here.

Halloween © 2010 Matt Dunn

Let's All Overreact!: The best policy, when faced with some danger of a terrorist attacks, is to abandon any commitment to civil liberties or, really, rational thought. Or at least, that seems to be the theory Metro officials are now operating under. In response to the news that a guy who wanted (but hadn't actually gotten his hands on) some kind of explosive materials wound up working with FBI agents to plot an entirely imaginary attack on subway stations, Metro Transit Police want to implement random searches of bags within the system. Congratulations, terrorists! You win again. -4

Don't Drink and Trick or Treat: Halloween always seemed like more of a holiday for kids, but maybe that's just because we're not the biggest fans of sexy [inappropriate noun] costumes. Enough adults observe, though, that police are mounting an aggressive crackdown on drunk driving over the weekend. One fact that's far scarier than any flick Vincent Price ever appeared in: 58 percent of traffic fatalities during Halloween in 2008 were caused by drunk drivers. Boo! +2

Popcorn? Milk Duds? Cabernet?: Years ago, you used to be able to watch arthouse movies and hang out in the bar at Visions, the long-defunct theater in Dupont Circle (whose space on Florida Avenue NW still sits maddeningly untouched, taunting anyone who used to love the place). Well, happy days are here again—you'll be able to do just that at West End Cinema, a new movie theater/bar set to open tomorrow night. Even better for nostalgia purposes: The theater will occupy the former home of the long-closed Inner Circle on M Street NW. Next project for D.C. film buffs: Reclaim the likes of the Biograph and the Key from CVS. +3

Bike (Ironically) to Rally: An update on an earlier Needle item—the Washington Area Bicyclists Association now says you should ride your bike there. Comedy Central, not generally known for its protest-organizing abilities, had failed to work with WABA to set up a bike valet station, and the National Park Service hasn't seen fit to install much in the way of bike racks on the Mall. So it didn't seem like there would be any place to lock a bike if you did ride there. On first glance, it still doesn't seem like that fundamental problem has been solved, but hey! People have been riding their bikes to rallies and locking them to benches for years now. Surely even a bunch of faux protesters can manage that on a gorgeous fall day. +2

Yesterday's Needle rating: 46 Today's score: +3 Today's Needle rating: 49