Cleveland Park is starting to look like an old steel town. Last week, Starbucks and 7-Eleven closed, adding to a growing list of shuttered shops: a Blockbuster, a Magruder’s, a Cold Stone Creamery, etc. WUSA’s Bruce Johnson examined the corpse last week wondering why such an elite ‘hood had fallen on hard times. Councilmember Mary Cheh characterized the decline as a problem.

Colbert King recently wrote a column on the racial paranoia bubbling up on Cleveland Park’s listserv. He followed up our own blog post on the subject. Whether residents there are racist or not we can not say. Those stories only prove that people still live in Cleveland Park. There are always the holdouts.

Video and more, below the jump! Read More “VIDEO: Is Cleveland Park Dead?” »

City Renewed reports that Dupont Circle is getting two green restaurants. Before you get excited, one of them is (another) yogurt shop.

The 42 wonders if it’s possible to feel claustrophobic in a wide-open space. The writer experienced serious Cherry Blossom gridlock: “Just looking at the gridlocked car (and baby stroller) traffic around me was enough to cause anxiety. Sidewalks were jammed. We moved at more of a shuffle than a walk. And there was no way out. Once you decided to go with the flow, well, you were there for the long run. All par for the course for a beautiful Saturday at the National Cherry Blossom Festival.”

Diary of a Mad DC Cabbie explains why they haven’t updated the blog in some time:

“Last September while reading his Sunday paper my dad felt kind of dizzy and checked in a hospital. After a short battle with cancer on March 4th around 9:08pm with all his children by his side, my father passed away peacefully at home few minutes after he asked us to play one of Wes Montgomery’s CD.

The last six month was sad and sweet for me. I spent every single day with him crying, laughing and rewinding our lives. I think it was the most unforgettable time of my life and I am hoping that I come out as a much better individual out of this experience….”

DCist gets a first look at Pho 14 in Columbia Heights. The Heights Life couldn’t get into the jammed Pho place. Meanwhile our own Young & Hungry sees some downsizing in the Bear Claw market.

Wonkette writes on the news that the Late Night Shots-based show is finally airing this summer.

Prince of Petworth wonders about retail at Harvard and Sherman.

Attention local urban sophisticates! You will not be able to visit an Apple Store in the District of Columbia anytime soon!

That scoop comes courtesy of the underappreciated, under-Webbed Current newspapers, which explained in last week’s editions [PDF, see pp. 1 and 19] that plans for the District’s first Apple Store are held up in a thicket of regulatory approvals, from the Georgetown advisory neighborhood commission and the Old Georgetown Board.

Earlier this month, both bodies rejected Apple’s design—the third the company had submitted for the property at 1229 Wisconsin Ave. NW, a Georgetown storefront the company has owned for more than a year—because, as the Current’s Carol Buckley puts it, it “would not fit into Georgetown.”

Nay, not even this testimonial, delivered by an Apple project manager, can cut through the red tape: “Steve saw this design and really loves it.”

That’s Steve Jobs, people. Steve Jobs!

When will you hoity-toity bureaucrats wake up and realize that when Steve Jobs loves something, that means you must love it, too?

Read More “No Apple Store for D.C. Anytime Soon” »