So you've probably heard the news: Starting on Friday, disposable plastic bags cost an extra 5 cents in D.C. grocery stores. These bags are clogging up the Anacostia River! They must be stopped. Anyway, the fee was passed into law this past July. Nothing you can do about it now—except pick up free reusable bags [...]

This is not how it's supposed to be.
Two days before the new year, we should be making our little resolutions and hoping that next year somehow miraculously is better—or at least different in an enlightening, transformative kind of way.
But no! Today, we'll think about grocery bags and parking fees. It's the big story of the [...]

As I wrote back in July, you may have found yourself on Champlain Street NW if you were/are:
(A) Desperately looking for a parking spot in Adams Morgan on a weekend night (the street runs parallel to 18th St.)
(B) A cop answering a call for a murder, two shot officers and another man down, and/or [...]

Click on the image to see it enlarged in another screen. (The chart is from the Capitol Riverfront BID's "State of the Capitol Riverfront" report.)
All hail the Peeps.
The Capitol Riverfront—otherwise known as the Nationals Park area—is still struggling for name recognition. But it had a number of successes this year, including hosting the area's tenth [...]

Raw Deal: Norris is working through four seasons to open new Japanese restaurant.
Every once in a while, a restaurant that’s “Coming Soon!” just never comes. You see the sign for months, maybe even a year or more. You hear occasional reports about building permit holdups or problems with the city’s final inspection. And then, bang: [...]

Back in early July, one corner of one of D.C.'s busiest retail intersections—M Street and Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown—became available.  The famous Nathans restaurant was finally closing after 40 years. The business's owner Carol Joynt had inherited Nathans, along with an astonishing amount of debt, after her husband died.
At the end, Joynt had been on [...]

A familiar villain rears its head again!
Back in September, a D.C. judge halted the city's annual sale of tax liens on properties with delinquent payments. A Chicago based company named Aeon Financial LLC was demanding that all properties with delinquent payments—instead of just ones owing the city's minimum $1,200 and above—head to the auction block.
Aeon [...]

This morning's Washington Post features a front page article on District developers that have lost their "swagger." They meet in conference rooms, instead of pricey downtown restaurants. They drink cups of ice water, instead of scarfing down steaks at the Capitol Grille. Or they've dropped their businesses all together! Fired their staffs! Closed up their [...]

Zipcar lots are kind of like cupcake shops—a new one seems to pop up in some neighborhoods every month or so.  Currently, there are roughly 700 Zipcars zooming around the D.C. area. They all have names like Mini McNickle and "homes" like commercial parking lots and empty spaces around the city.
Some of those parking areas [...]

Jim Abdo's big Brookland project, which will add some 825 new homes, "eclectic college town retail," and below-market-rate spaces for artists, got final approval from the D.C. Zoning Commission on Monday night, the Washington Post reports. (Click here for more renderings of the Abdo plan, and here for details of what's coming and location info.)
According [...]