Safeway, Alexandria, VA 12/18.

This week, The Modern Times Coffeehouse has become the first coffee shop in the District to throw down the gauntlet at Wi-Fi loafers: The management has covered up some of the electrical outlets in an attempt to herd its laptop loiterers toward communal tables, where they can still plug in.
This particular gambit was first seen [...]

DC Teacher Chic stresses about having to monitor at-risk students. A huge number of your colleagues just got canned. And you get to complain about your job on a blog. Maybe you should quit. Here's what they wrote:
"I have the fortunate task of progress monitoring at least three-quarters of the students in my classroom. To [...]

Last year, Central Union Mission attempted to bring its 128-bed homeless shelter to the 3500 block of Georgia Avenue, but was shot down by Ward 1 Council member Jim Graham and a group of residents in a rather shameless case of NIMBYism. "Good news!!! Central Union Mission is not moving to Georgia Avenue in Ward [...]

There's been a change in the sports pecking order around here, for those who haven't noticed. "DC was a basketball town," says Vernon Davis "It's a football town now."
You gonna argue with him?
Davis, a 6'3", 253-pound former University of Maryland star and now tight end with the San Francisco 49ers, has done his share to [...]

Here's a few minutes of what freedom sounded like this year from a porch in Petworth.
Every Independence Day, the show on the streets gives me giggles and makes me fall in love with my neighborhood all over again.

Mike Ratel's got a trailer for "On Your Mark, Get Set, Mow!"
But without some more funds, the rest of his lawnmower racing movie will end up on the cutting room floor.
Ratel, who lives on Upshur Street NW in Petworth, alleges that a project that has roots in trying to let the world know about a [...]

The Washington Post has a tiny brief on the back page of today's Metro section reporting that the Metropolitan Police Department has made an arrest in Monday night's fatal shooting on Quebec Place N.W. and another in Colombia Heights last month. 
Police charged Troy Renard Thomas, 18, of the 3000 block of Third Street N.W. , with first-degree [...]

Metropolitan Police Department’s Homicide Branch has identified Ryan Randy Trotman as one of the victims of Monday night’s shooting on Quebec Place N.W. 
Trotman, 28, of the 7400 block of 7th Street, N.W., later died of his injuries. The name of the other victim, a woman who was shot in the leg, is being withheld because she [...]

Big day coming up in Petworth: The spray park at the Petworth Rec Center is about to open.
Howard Marshall, director of the facility, tells me that the fountains are being worked on and will be turned on for the season next Monday, June 15. And the spray park will be open Monday to Saturday through [...]

In addition to the new Safeway coming to Georgetown, the go-to D.C. grocery chain is planning similar overhauls at the Southwest Waterfront and Petworth.
At the Waterfront, preliminary work is under way for the new store, which will go up behind the current building near the Metro. When completed in 2011, the old store will be [...]

I was just driving down Georgia Avenue in Petworth and saw a young male walking toward a corner store wearing a bandana over his face. I hadn't seen this get-up on the streets of DC since the Mount Pleasant riots.
It's a jarring look, no doubt, and likely to catch on.
I couldn't tell if his garb [...]

Hell hath no fury like a robin whose eggs have been tampered with.
I learned that early this morning. Exiting my Petworth abode, I spotted a squirrel scampering pell-mell down a tree across the street. Was he fleeing a jealous mate? Had my roommate's snakes gotten loose?
Neither, it turned out. The squirrel had [...]

Evelyn Y. Davis wants to go to Petworth, she just doesn't want to go now.
Just across the street from the U.S. Soldiers' and Airmen’s Home National Cemetery sits Rock Creek Cemetery, an equally beautiful resting place for civilians. It's on the grounds of the oldest church in DC, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, and bodies [...]