The Washington Times is doing everything in its power to maintain its stranglehold on weirdest local publication. For starters, it fired top newspaper leaders on a Sunday night. Then, the next day, it fills its flagship facility on New York Avenue NE with security personnel and holds a quickie meeting with staff to not-explain what went down. The third floor of the building, where the execs hang out, is somehow closed for business.

And then there's the whole John Solomon angle. The outgoing, popular newsroom leader hasn't been seen since the putsch. The staff-wide meeting yesterday featured no mention of the guy who happens to top the masthead. Solomon isn't commenting and even people who consider him a close friend are reporting no contact with him.

One possible reason for Solomon's scarcity: He has lost his parking spot. According to Washington Times sources, the signs that reserved spaces for top company officials have been stripped away, including the one for Solomon.

So even if he did have plans to come back, where the hell is he going to park? At the Arboretum?

Random parking lot not in Shaw

The Issue: An abandoned parking lot in Shaw neighborhood is being scrubbed down, spiffed up, and revamped into…another parking lot. This time, however, the 1300 block of 9th Street NW will be turned into a posh 24/7-valet lot, serving area restaurants. But the neighbors think the space’s rebirth isn’t exactly a step up the karmic property ladder. They argue there are better uses; also, the proposed expansion of the curb on 9th raises a Catch-22: A new curb will steal valuable street parking—but without it, the block may be buggered with traffic.

No More Parking! Ralph, of the blog Renew Shaw, told City Desk: “Based on [my conversations with the neighborhood] everyone —myself included—seems greatly opposed to the lot…it would not add value or bring patrons to the area like, for example, a farmers or flea market or community garden would.” Another commenter on the blog says: “There are already two huge lots in Naylor Court on land where historical homes once sat.” The lot is situated close to “the old Abate building,” a federally protected building that neighbors fear could meet the same fate as the demolished Naylor Court stables.

It’s Just Parking: According to zoning regulations, the space is allowed to be any sort of parking lot the lessee wishes—and the only thing the Advisory Neighborhood Commission can do about it is protest the curb expansion. So far, that seems unlikely: Every ANC 2F member called by City Desk hadn’t even heard of the parking lot issue.

Next Step: If this is your sort of NIMBY, talk to the ANC about the curb issue and keep an eye on the Abate home. For the record, there could be a farmers market there someday; the lot is a lease and won’t be there forever.

Photo by Paul Wansen, Creative Commons Attribution License

Earlier today, Cheap Seats Daily reported that J.P Szymkowicz, an expert on Dan Snyder's parking operations, had no problems getting to and from FedExField for the U2 show.

By reporting Szymkowicz's anecdotes, Cheap Seats Daily could have left the impression with readers that Snyder had, after 10 years of owning the stadium, come up with a way to get people to their seats on time.

But, upon further review, it seems traffic at FedExField was as Snyder'd up as ever. A quick reading of the comments section of Washington Post rock critic Chris Richards'* review of the show reveals that about as many concert goers are venting about their commute as are praising the band's performance.

After the jump, some of the early returns.

Read More "Clarification: Traffic Situation at FedExField for U2 Was Indeed Snyder’d Up" »

Has Dan Snyder figured out how to hold events at FedExField?

Well, special correspondent J.P. Szymkowicz says that while he can't vouch for everybody, his U2 experience was uneventful, other than the show itself.

Szymkowicz says he left DC via Metro at 3 p.m. yesterday and arrived at the Morgan Boulevard station quickly and without any problems. He went into the stadium at 5 p.m. when the gates opened and with his general admission tickets got to the spot on the field that he desired. He got a ride home and found that the drive took "30 minutes from the stadium to the Rte. 50 exit," which is acceptable.

Szymkowicz, an expert on Snyder's parking methods and U2's discography, left so early because he feared the crowd would be too much for the stadium operators to handle.

The show, he says, "was great," and featured a sound system "as good as any of the other shows I have seen dating back to Unforgettable Fire."

Any other travel tales from u2 goers?

***

The Great Dan Steinberg mulls an issue that will likely get more timely as the 2009 season wears on: What do you do if you're mad at the Redskins, but get offered free tickets?

(AFTER THE JUMP: Paper or plastic for Sunday at FedExfield? DC football recruiting star in trouble? DC basketball recruiting star in trouble? Maryland hoops recruit in trouble? Stubblefield 2.0 in domestic and non-domestic legal and financial trouble? Sean Taylor's survivors in some money trouble?)

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Will Fanimosity Rear Its Covered Head at FedExField This Weekend?" »

J.P. Szymkowicz has a prediction for tonight's U2 concert at FedExField:

"It's going to be a mess," he says. "By 6 p.m. they'll start turning people away from the parking lots. It's going to be another Radiohead."

In concert go-er parlance, "another Radiohead" means "way @#$%^&*'d up!" A lack of usable parking spaces for the precious British band's performance at the Bristow, Va., hellhole caused thousands of ticketholders to miss the entire show.

Szymkowicz personally witnessed that Nissan Pavilion debacle. But that's not the only reason to have faith in his prediction of another Radiohead tonight. Nobody outside Redskins Park knows more about Dan Snyder's parking set up than Szymkowicz. He's the guy who spearheaded the lawsuit against the Redskins for the game-day ban on pedestrian traffic around FedExField.

Because of his litigation, in 2004 the team had to reverse its policy and allow folks who found ways around Snyder's outrageous parking charges to walk into Skins games.

(AFTER THE JUMP: FedExField has HOW many parking spaces? Capitol Hill interns are going to be to blame for the U2 mess? Some buffoon's looking for a parking pass to tonight's show? The New York Times and Dan Snyder are in bed together? Audi is Dan Snyder's new mattress?)

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: If You’ve Got U2 Tickets, Don’t Read This! Just Leave Now!" »

The Issue: How far should the city go to keep mourners from worrying about parking tickets? A bill before the D.C. Council proposes a five-hour window in which funeral attendees cannot be ticketed in residential zones - as well as the creation of designated funeral zones non-attendees can’t park in during that same time slot. But in neighborhoods like Shaw, which has more than three dozen houses of worship, some fear the legislation is impractical and could hurt business. Read More "Funeral Parking: Should You Have to Worry About Tickets?" »

FanZoneGate™ Update: Redskins spokesman Karl Swanson says WJFK, a new sportsradio station and rival to Dan Snyder's WTEM, had no business selling passes to the FanZone, a new private parking lot near FedExField that was set to compete with the Snyder-owned lots on Redskins game days.

Folks who bought FanZone parking passes on WJFK's web site and showed up to Saturday's preseason game with Pittsburgh found that Snyder had taken over the lot.

Yesterday, a marketing rep for CBS-owned WPGC, a WJFK sister station that was also promoting the parking lot, told me “some situations occurred” that led to Snyder’s takeover.

The marketing rep, however, would not go into detail over how the promotion, which positioned the FanZone lot as cheaper than Snyder's lots and without the new tailgating restrictions that so many fans are concerned about, fell apart.

Swanson says all the problems come from WJFK selling parking passes before getting the rights to use the land.

"[I]n a nutshell the Redskins, the radio stations and (I think) one other group were in separate negotiations to lease the lot as a parking site," Swanson tells me via email. "For reasons unbeknownst to us, the radio stations began advertising the lot without a contract and as negotiations were ongoing.  We entered terms and leased the lot for game day parking."

The Redskins did the fans who bought passes a solid for the Pittsburgh game, Swanson says: "[W]e decided to honor all of the passes the radio stations had already sold."

(AFTER THE JUMP: The sad tale of Bullets gaffer Dick Gibbs? Local rookie Brett Cecil makes his own blooper tape? Best of the decade time...already? AAU teammates Durant and Beasley make different sorts of news? Would only an idiot reference the Tom Boswell Curse?)

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Snyder Crushes Radio Rival WJFK in Redskins Parking Lot Battle" »

You can mess with Dan Snyder in radio and get away with it. But parking?

Not without a fight.

That's what the folks at WJFK are finding out.

Cheap Seats Daily has been reporting on the emergence of the FanZone, a new private parking lot near FedExField that was set to compete this season with the Snyder-owned lots. Local CBS-owned radio stations, including WJFK, the new sports station and rival to Snyder's WTEM, marketed the new parking option.

As of this weekend, the web site for the FanZone posted an announcement that passes for the lot were sold out.

But the story's a lot more complicated. Turns out Snyder took over operation of the FanZone lot from the radio stations before Saturday's game with Pittsburgh. The radio stations were not able to run the FanZone as they'd promised.

A marketing rep for CBS-owned WPGC tells me "some situations occurred" that led to Snyder's takeover.

Snyder's radio rivals aren't happy about it, either, and are now trying to contact everybody who bought the season passes for the FanZone to tell them about the Redskins owner's coup.

Read More "Snyder/WJFK Radio Feud Spills Over to Parking!" »

Lost in the Stephen Strasburg hub-bub: Jeff Ruland is back in town.

The onetime Bruise Brother was named head coach of the University of the District of Columbia. Ruland gets the UDC job after getting canned as an assistant by new '76ers coach Eddie Jordan.

Ruland played the moody lug to Rick Mahorn's gregarious lug when the two of them lugged up the lane for the Washington Bullets of the 1980s. He and Mahorn were famously dubbed "McFilthy & McNasty" by the greatest play-by-play announcer ever, the Celtics' Johnny Most.

At UDC, Ruland takes over a program that hasn't been good since his earliest days as a Bullet. Given the way college basketball and recruiting have changed in the years since, there's no way that Ruland can bring UDC back to the heights it reached back in the early 1980s. The Firebirds won an NCAA Division II national championship in 1981 with a squad that featured two high NBA draft picks: First-rounder Earl Jones, who went to the L.A. Lakers, and Michael Britt, a second-round pick of the Washington Bullets in 1983. D-II ballplayers don't get drafted anymore.

Mahorn's also a coach, and he's still getting in trouble for shoving people around on the court these days.

Only now, he shoves women.

He's head coach of the Detroit Shock, and last year, when he was an assistant under seminal NBA thug Bill Laimbeer, Mahorn got a little too involved in a bench-clearing brawl between his team and the L.A. Sparks.

Mahorn said he pushed Sparks star Lisa Leslie to the ground while acting as "peacemaker," but he got suspended anyway.

***

Duke basketballer Greg Paulus was just named the starting quarterback at Syracuse.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Adrian Dantley's son bumped for Paulus? How do you sell parking for Redskins games without ever saying "Redskins"? Is taping guys to goal posts still giggly? Does anybody really think Cora Masters Barry is a victim?)

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Is Jim Zorn Running ‘Camp Snoopy’?" »

For the Titanic platform (or maybe not!) of the latest City Paper, I wrote about Dan Snyder's newest parking scheme.

Snyder now adds a parking surcharge to the cost of every ticket sold at non-football events at FedExField. All other venues around town put parking charges, if there are any, in the advertised price of the ticket.

Snyder doesn't. He throws it at the consumer at the point of purchase, as a line item on the invoice that can't be turned down by the buyer. For Paul McCartney, where around 60,000 folks attended and there was a $10 per ticket parking charge, whether they intended to use FedEx parking services or not, that added an additional $600,000 to Snyder's bank account.

For U2's upcoming show at FedEx, the forced charge is $8 per ticket; if that show sells out, the add-on charge will mean more than $700,000 sneaky dollars for Snyder. And this is with zero overhead, unless you count the cost to his reputation, which really can't be harmed around here at this point.

Snyder's the king of parking schemes, as outlined in the story, and a godfather of the sneaky surcharge: He's the guy, remember, who after buying the Redskins took a ticket price that had historically included state and local taxes, and then added a new charge equal to the state and local taxes onto the old ticket price, but left the old price as the face value of Skins tickets -- just so he could act like he wasn't really raising the price of tickets!

So where's the outrage?

***

Betting Football season begins tonight!

(AFTER THE JUMP: Cheap Seats Daily gives you tonight's winner? "Biggest Loser" back in play? Which pregame show are you going to listen to? What's the meanest sport? Is there a Curse of Tom Boswell?)

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Dan Snyder’s Sneaky Parking Charge Nets Him Millions?" »

7th Street SW, between Maryland Avenue and Virginia Avenue

So says Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham in a press release this morning.

In an oversight hearing last month, Department of Motor Vehicles Director Lucinda Babers revealed that its been a longstanding policy (15 years!) to reduce by half tickets accrued by big fleet operators in the city---folks like FedEx and UPS who regularly foul up downtown traffic by stopping in travel lanes.

Well, no more, Graham reports.

The change could mean as much as $120,000 yearly in extra revenue, Graham claims.

Apollo Gonzales, a Capitol Hill listserv poster is upset his neighborhood wasn't warned that a portion of 18th Street SE would be lined with "No Parking" signs come inauguration-time.

Upon first spotting the signs on Jan. 16, Gonzales was completely perplexed:

"Can someone explain to me why Emergency No Parking signs went up today on both sides of 18th SE north of Mass and south of Independence? They are randomly placed up and down both sides of the street. Does this mean that from today until the 23rd, when the city is more crowded than ever in history, I'm gonna have to go somewhere else to find parking?"

The resident soon figured out that despite 18th St. SE not being mentioned on a DC government Web page that spells out parking restrictions and road closures for the inaug...yes, he would have to find alternative parking. He writes in another post:

Read More "Inauguration Parking Wars" »

Within a few days, parking meter rates will double in various downtown locations. Double. The economy has tanked. This year we've seen increases in bus rates, Metro rides, and now meter rates. I admit I have not been following this parking meter issue at all. I was just shocked to read about it this morning in the Examiner. The paper reports that the rate increase from $1 to $2 per hour was passed in emergency legislation by the D.C. Council.

I have some questions for our informed readers. Why did this huge rate increase need emergency legislation? What was so pressing that the council felt it had to bypass the usual route? Here's what the Examiner reported:

"'I don’t think anyone wants to pay more to government,'said [Councilmember Jim] Graham, who introduced the emergency bill. 'But this government has cut its budget. We’re faced with a situation now where we either continue to cut or we find some new revenue to address fundamental needs for some very poor people.'

At-large Councilman Phil Mendelson voted against the bill, he said, because it was introduced with little analysis to justify the increases. The council, he said, should not adjust its meter rates 'piecemeal.'"