But "east of the river" isn't settling too well with relative newcomers to the area. Some of these people want to call the region "River East," an appellation that summons images of plush, new homes and green pastures. Champions of the new name have coalesced in an organization called (logically) River East Emerging Leaders (r.e.e.l.).

This is a gentrification battle. Old-timers don't like the idea of rebranding the area. The story quotes 35-year Anacostia resident Bessie Brown as saying, “I hate it.”

Though I am not a resident of the territory in question, I vote for "River East." Not on ideological grounds, but rather for the sake of simplicity. It's two syllables shorter. It's simpler. Change can be good for a name.

Brookland Avenue praises some Franciscan Monastery honey: "I was lucky enough to get a behind the scenes tour from Chris Schierkolk a Brookland resident, co-moderator of the Brookland Listserv, FMGG member, and apiarist. Chris gave me a pretty in depth tour of the bee keeping operation on the monastery grounds. There are a total of 5 beekeepers that manage 2 apiaries at the monastery."

The Heights Life praises this past weekend's Columbia Heights Day and has video of the festivities: "I knew Columbia Heights Day was going to be big this year, I just didn't know it was going to be this big. The new Harriet Tubman Elementary Field was a great addition, as was the separate performance area with bleacher seating. And there were plenty of things to do, especially for families. But what I liked best was that much of the soccer field was open so people could just hang out. Or play with hula-hoops, which was my favorite."

The Other 35 Percent has a must-read story with a statistical breakdown of gunshots (or gunshot sounds) per ward. So far this year, Ward 3 had the lowest gunshot sounds with 27 instances. Ward 7 had the highest with 1294. There have been over 5,000 reports of gunfire.

Ward3DC posts some great inside-Cleveland-Park-nerd shit.