Because half the block is dedicated to urban peacekeeping, it seemed destined to be ignored, relegated to the D.C. development dustbin. But entrepreneur David von Storch saw something in the tan brick building at 1612 U, formally known as E.B. Adams Co. and stocked full of cutlery and dining necessities. Von Storch had served hard time on D.C.’s gentrification frontier. In 1987, he helped usher in “the Georgetownization of Adams Morgan”—as one former D.C. Council chair called it—with the opening of the Dakota Nightclub/Montana Café. In the mid-1990s, he was a beer man running Capitol City Brewing Company. But he decided to take a chance on a new hard-knock neighborhood—and, in the roughly 15 years since, the area above and below 14th and U Streets down to Logan Circle has exploded. A surprising amount of that development has come out of his starter building. There are a few key personalities involved—and a few tangled stories between them. But they’re all connected to 1612, a place that’s much more than bricks, mortar, and hard bodies.

1995

Von Storch signs a lease-to-own agreement on the four-story building at 1612 U Street. He has a vision for it: After hauling out “random boxes and crates of plates and silverware,” von Storch decides he wants to transform the fourth floor into a kind of community center for gay-oriented businesses and nonprofits. “This was at the height of the AIDS crisis, and there was so much discrimination and lack of positive energy within the gay community,” he says. He sees “a place where people could be safe to create their own businesses in an environment that was supportive.” On the ground floor, there’s an art gallery and an eatery called Basics Café, which serves smoothies and sandwiches and offers weekend brunch with counter service.

Von Storch also draws up plans for a gym. The fitness scene is fairly limited at this point: There’s Washington Sports Club, Gold’s Gym, and “a couple of gay gyms that were really kind of ratty,” but no sizable space where gays could work out and feel comfortable and welcome. Back then, that kind of space was important for the gay community, especially for anyone who was HIV-positive, says von Storch, who learned in the late 1980s that he is infected with the virus. “You can’t go to a club and drink and smoke cigarettes if you’re positive and you want to stay healthy.”

But after designing the space with his architect brother Stephen, von Storch decides he’s not ready to launch a gym, especially since Capitol City is expanding to three new locations.

Instead he selects Doug Jefferies, a personal trainer with his own boutique fitness operation on 17th Street, to run the gym. Jefferies, who’d been looking for such an opportunity, rents the space, asking to expand inside the building within a year. Results ends up flourishing into a four-gym chain with other locations in Mount Vernon Triangle, downtown, and on Capitol Hill.

2001

Things sour between Jefferies and von Storch; they’re engaged in a legal battle over landlord/tenant issues, and David Franco, a friend of both who owns the Universal Gear clothing chain, steps in to mediate. Franco and Jefferies are buddies from way back: “Actually, I was in the cherry picker washing windows the day before he opened up his gym,” says Franco. He and von Storch had planned a massive fundraiser surrounding the 1993 gay rights march on Washington. “Though our friendship has been casual, there’s always been a great deal of mutual respect,” says Franco of von Storch. “He’s someone that I can count on.”

While resolving the legal conflicts—von Storch claims Jefferies isn’t in compliance with the lease, which Jefferies denies—Franco spends a lot of time on the fourth floor of 1612 U Street and decides the space would be perfect for the headquarters of his blooming clothing boutique chain, which also has stores in Chicago and New York. At that point, Universal Gear’s D.C. shop is on 17th Street, a few blocks south of 1612 U. The building had become part of a “routine” for young gay men living in the area, he says. “Oftentimes, after work, you’d go to Results, get your workout in, you’d stop and get a bite to eat, or stop at the Safeway on 17th Street—and then pop into Universal Gear and buy your outfit for the weekend.” The southern end of 17th Street had J.R.’s DC Bar and Grill. The northern end, near where 17th hits U, had Results. “That was the strip,” says Franco.

Von Storch and Jefferies aren’t Franco’s only connection to the building: His friend Jeff Blum also works on the fourth floor. In 2001, Blum is commuting back and forth from Dallas, where he works for a company that builds security systems. He spends one week a month in Texas and the rest of the time in D.C. at 1612 U Street. But finally, he quits the Texas gig. “I was just miserable,” he says. “I wanted to do something that was focused back home in the neighborhood that I had moved into, and so that’s when I started my real estate business,” he recalls. His first project is the Clift, a 19th-century rowhouse transformed into a four-unit condo building on R Street between 14th and 15th.

2003

After Blum finishes the Clift, he and Franco start looking at real estate together, co-founding Level2Development. Both men had grown up in suburban Maryland—Blum in Potomac, Franco in Silver Spring—and spent their formative years in D.C., where their fathers worked in prominent retail businesses. Blum’s dad ran the catalog showroom for W. Bell & Company at 14th and P Streets in the building that’s now the Studio Theatre. Franco’s family owned the Brentwood Village Shopping Centre on Rhode Island Avenue NE, a couple of discount shopping stores, and a children’s apparel, furniture, and toy store downtown at 12th and G.

Level2Development’s first project is the Mercury on Chapin Street, a conversion of 1960s apartments into a fancy 12-unit condo building. “The 14th Street gold rush was clearly underway,” says Blum. “The Whole Foods was open. The 1400 block of P was clearly underway.” In 2004, as the Mercury was underway, Level2Development makes its next, and much more substantial, acquisition: a parcel of land at 14th Street and Florida Avenue, then home to an auto repair shop, a body shop, a used car dealership, and a storage space for vending carts—and, right next door, a humongous, antiquated-looking signal tower controlled by Comcast. View 14 is slated to be one of the largest condo projects in an area that’s booming with them: 180 units.

2005

Von Storch purchases 1612 U Street for $5.8 million. “As soon as I was able to buy the building, I did,” he says. “Once I controlled the building, I was able to start planning for the addition and the different things I wanted to do.” The new concept includes installing his own gym in the space currently occupied by Results, whose 15-year lease is up in March 2011.

Von Storch already has his own gym chain in the works and the following year launches Vida Fitness in the Verizon Center, adding clubs in Logan Circle and the Renaissance Hotel near the Convention Center later. D.C. is a different place than when he first envisioned creating a gym. “As the market has changed, and as people have changed, and as health has changed,” he says, “my concept of what a gym and fitness center could be and should be has changed.” There’s no mention of the AIDS crisis in this vision—just extreme luxury: There’s state-of-the-art equipment, including exercise pools known as “the swimmers treadmill,” as well as spas offering “Zone Therapy Wraps” and “Marine Therapy Pedi Scrubs.” By now, 1612 U Street is also home to Bang Salon, another von Storch chain co-founded with Nikki Esoldo in 2001. “I have always wanted to come back here and bring my businesses back into this building at a new level,” he says. “I just didn’t know how to get it done. It took a long time for me to figure out the process, the people, and the financing.”

2006

Blum and Franco buy the Nehemiah Retail Center, a decrepit strip mall across 14th Street from View 14. Home to a wig shop, nail salon, Chinese carryout, and 24-hour mini-mart, it’s only 11 years old, but already an “instant relic, a symbol of lame government-spurred development during the pre-boom years,” as Washington City Paper described it in a 2008 cover story called “Outstripped.” “It never shook off the feel of government cheese.” Blum and Franco negotiate the lease termination agreements with the strip mall’s tenants and begin sketching out another gentrification behemoth. Their final plans include a building with 250 residential units, many boasting “floor to ceiling glass, balconies, and terraces to capture natural light and views of the city.” The mixed-use development is also slated to include “a hotel-inspired lobby open to an outdoor atrium, a wi-fi lounge, ground floor retail services, and underground parking.”

2007

Having bought and cleared out the Nehemiah Center, Franco and Blum sell the land to another developer. Meanwhile, View 14 has switched from for-purchase units to apartments, in light of what has become a condo glut in Washington. As the groundbreaking nears, a number of gym owners express interest in leasing the ground-level space. Among them: von Storch, Jefferies, and out-of-town chain Crunch. Talks accelerate with Jefferies. “We went through a series of design changes and protracted lease negotiations for about 11 months. We gave Doug a lot of liberties because he was a friend of mine, and we pressed on knowing that Doug had to find a new facility because his lease was up.” But in the “11th hour,” Jefferies backed out, says Franco.

Says Jefferies: “Jeff and David had courted me for years in that space. I told them if that space wasn’t going to be absolutely stunning, that area wasn’t going to be right for me. They tried to make it happen.” But ultimately, Jefferies isn’t enthusiastic about it.

Franco moves his Universal Gear store on 17th Street to a 14th Street space that’s roughly double the size. “We felt that it was important for us to be in an area that was growing as a retail corridor,” he says. “We believed that 17th Street was very limited, and 14th Street was just basically wide open with its large boulevard-style street, wide sidewalks and many storefronts.”

2009

Von Storch starts making the rounds to the Dupont Circle Conservancy, local ANCs, and the usual District zoning and preservation bodies to get his design approved for his 1612 U Street overhaul. In the new plans, Bang Salon remains. Vida Fitness’ flagship location consumes most of the space, including a new addition to the east of the current 1612 building. There is to be a large restaurant, a swanky rooftop pool, and a dumbwaiter between the two, so bikini-clad gym members won’t starve mid-tanning session.

By year’s end, Franco and Blum’s View 14 opens and starts leasing units.

2010

Jefferies has a new venture, too, called “Stroga,” with spaces for yoga and group strength training sessions. It will be located near the intersection of 18th Street and Columbia Road. To replace his Results Dupont location, Jefferies says he considered space in the same building as the Harris Teeter in Adams Morgan and checked out places below 14th and U Streets—like the Central Union Mission building and the large brick structure at 14th and T, soon to be home to furniture store Room & Board. He’s worried the area’s too saturated with large-scale gyms. “Stroga could become its own independent chain,” says Jefferies. This one’s set to open Feb. 15.

Von Storch pours “six figures” into producing his own reality show about himself and his mini-empire, co-starring “Nikki,” the kinky-haired salon partner; “Elaine,” the spa director who describes herself as “haggalicious”; “Camden,” the punky, young, married stylist; and “James,” Vida’s sales and marketing director whose claim to fame is that he sold Barack Obama an early D.C. gym membership back in his senatorial days (and, no, it wasn’t to Vida). The show is called “Complicated Order” and, on Jan. 11, von Storch releases it to the world—and Hollywood cable networks—with a Web site that clearly takes some of its inspiration from Bravo. The pilot airs to a packed crowd, mostly von Storch’s employees and their friends, at Town Danceboutique by U Street. “This is gonna be so exciting!” von Storch exclaims in the pilot, in front of a long-empty building at 14th and Q that he hopes to turn into a restaurant/bakery. (Lease negotiations are underway, he says.)

Photograph by Darrow Montgomery

(On that note, thanks Andrew Beaujon for ripping me out of my stream of consciousness moment at exactly 11:08 a.m. with your utterances of “Piece of shit software! Such a piece of shit.” )

As I see it, there are a couple of approaches to this: the (A) self-deprecating–but not really– “let me recount all my mistakes so that you may understand the breadth of my career while still finding me winning” approach; Or (B) perhaps the classic rumination on journalism and city life approach. Or (C) the typical blogger format of  “Hey I’m not blogging here anymore—but catch me over here [click for new blog link]” approach.

But as for (A) and (B), I really haven’t been doing this long enough ( September 2008) for those kind of pronouncements and (C) won’t work either because Housing Complex is staying put.  So maybe we’ll try this:

A series of quick “Full House” style lessons that I have learned by the end of several episodes—er columns. So here goes:

• Hope and change do not apply to your $20,000 inauguration rental in  Mitchellville Maryland (which is located here in case you’re wondering).

• Any celebrity—even a former vice presidential nominee—will talk to you if they’re trying to sell their condo during a recession.

• If you mention that you enjoy Bravo reality shows while interviewing with potential, future roommates, you may be sending a profound message.

• Have patience: That cursed, un-sellable building in your neighborhood will eventually sell-–just don’t rely on Dave Chappelle to do it for you.

• And finally: Even if you spend months hounding reality television stars—scratching deep under the skin of the show’s producers—they’ll still party with you, if you pay for their travel arrangements.

And, naturally, those are just a couple pearls of wisdom (especially the last one—believe it.) Alright, time to go. I have stolen my last piece of gum from Mike “Loose Lips” DeBonis’s cube.   Swept up my last bit of mouse poo—ewwwwwwwwwwww—hiding behind the thick stacks of paper I cleared out last night. And by the time you’re seeing this, pressed “Publish” for the…you know…time.

First, there are the homeless advocates crying “Reopen Franklin Shelter Now.” (That is, in fact, the name of their campaign.) And since the Franklin School was last used as a homeless shelter, and the homeless population has entered a bit of a crisis lately, their claim seems totally fair.

Then there are, of course, the private developers, who the city seems to be targeting in their push to redevelop the school. And since they can bring in the tax dollars and a spending boost to D.C.—and the city already deemed charter schools not economically “viable” for the space—their claim is also legitimate.

But then, there are the school advocates who say “Hello, the Franklin School is a school.” And you can imagine their thrust. The advocates are now a formal group,”The Coalition for Franklin School.” They sent out a press release on Jan. 19 about a proposal sent to the city with some suggestions for the building’s use:

1. Educational use

a. Public School use – Model 21st Century School (remembering that Franklin School was internationally recognized in the 1870’s as a model school). Something like the very successful “School Without Walls”, which has many more applicants than can be accommodated from all over Washington, can be considered. A new high school with a special program in international and diplomatic studies, arts and music has been proposed. Ward 2, where many embassies and international organizations are located, would be the ideal location. The school district of the capital of the United States, above all, should have such a high school as other school districts in other capital cities and within this country do.

b. Charter School use – also as a model 21st century school. There is a call for the building’s use as a Chinese-language immersion school.

c. A new teacher-training institution to prepare future teachers for 21st-century teaching methods and to offer in-service seminars for current teachers. Franklin School previously served a similar purpose for forty years, from 1873 to 1913. This could be combined with a model school on the premises.

d. Community College space for the University of the District of Columbia;

e. Classroom space on a rental basis for out-of-town universities

2. Cultural/non-profit use – taking advantage of a restored Great Hall for concerts, lectures, gallery space.

a. Not-for-profit institutions with international connections. There are many in Washington and most of them currently rent space. We believe that many would be attracted by the Franklin School’s elegance, location, and historical character.

b. Partial use for a museum: a museum of education was proposed in the 1980’s but never implemented. Yet, this would be an appropriate place for such a facility at a time when the nation is reexamining public education in general. Music, labor, photography, and high-tech communications are also unrepresented in the center city and would be attractive to Washingtonians and visitors alike.

3. Mixed use.

Any of the above non-profit educational/cultural tenants plus a commercial client. If the building is wired as a high-tech, 21st century school, it becomes a prestigious conference space, available for rental to clients having meetings planned in Washington. We believe that a high-tech firm (e.g., Google, Microsoft, Apple) would be interested in the building’s prestigious location for a non-profit gallery where its technology could be highlighted. This could also be a way of creating a creative industries workplace, in which every former classroom would be a studio for a different creative activity. A business conference center, technology gallery, or a creative industries workplace would all serve to make Washington known as an innovator in the global 21st century economy.

Oyster ranked local hotels by “Best Value Hotels” “Best Luxury Hotels” “Best Boutique Hotels” “Best Kid-Friendly Hotels” “Gay-Friendly Hotels” etc. It also apparently prides itself on the number of photos posted with each review. The description of The Jefferson comes complete with 259 photos. The Post story also captured one Oyster reviewer in action:

“We don’t stop at the pearl rating,” said Begeny [the aforementioned reviewer], who had previously worked with the New York Police Department, investigating firearm incidents. “We want to show every cranny. There’s no detail left unnoted, especially the bathroom.”

Begeny had spent the night at the hotel (per Oyster’s methodology, overnights are compulsory), where he went through the motions of being a regular guest without an agenda. “I want to see what they do without any requests or demands — if the hotel takes the initiative,” he said…

Before checking out, Begeny embarked on a full tour of the property, inspecting every obscure hallway, peering into every public room and roaming the outdoor grounds, his lens nudging its way into every scene. At the fitness center, he snapped shots of cardio machines and the spa treatment door, then noted the lack of staffing at the front desk. “From what I can tell, no one ever seems to be here,” he said. “I checked when they opened this morning, yesterday and now. It’s pretty safe to say they don’t staff that desk.” (He later learned that desk assistance is seasonal and that someone would return in a few weeks.)

I’ve lived in a Dupont studio since 2006 because of its location, pet friendliness, affordable rent ($1,000/month with utilities included) and free washer and dryer in the building. I don’t want/can’t afford to move, but the last 10 months have been miserable.

From January through end of March, there was no hot water in the apartment for showering or cooking. After 1.5 months of no response, I reported both of them to the DCRA. Reparative action was taken only in March.

In June, I came home one day to find all my medicine from my medicine cabinet cleared out. Since the building managers were the only ones besides myself who had access and a history of entering my apartment before without advanced notice and some of the medicine included prescription painkillers, I promptly had the locks professionally re-keyed.

In September, my oven/stove stopped working and my back entrance door started splintering off in chunks. Calls, e-mails, written notices did nothing. Five weeks later, it took my bottom lock/doorknob finally falling out of my door for my landlord to call a locksmith to repair the door temporarily. My stove wasn’t repaired/replaced for months, leaving only the microwave for heating food. Compounding my displeasure are newer tenants who do laundry in the weeknight’s early morning hours. The washer/dryer share a wall with my apartment—I cannot sleep with all the whirring and banging. I’ve been paying rent on time this entire time. It kills me that I’m paying for an apartment that I feel isn’t habitable most of the time.

In an ideal situation, the issues I speak of would be resolved promptly, effectively and I’d be compensated for the troubles caused by their gross negligence. Am I asking for too much?

—Pained by Missing Painkillers

Quick question: What the hell are you still doing there? Are you waiting for pieces of your kitchen cabinets, all your door frames, and windowsills to start “splintering off in chunks” too? For the drywall to grow soggy and turn your walls into white clay? To have your microwave die as well, imposing an automatic raw foods diet?

It’s possible that one day, your landlord and manager will force you to re-key the apartment so they can get in and steal all your furniture. Would you leave then? Perhaps you’ll need to be forced out: The nighttime whirring and banging will send you into such a fit of rage that your fellow tenants will demand you are removed from the premises. But, man, if you haven’t cracked already—and really, in all seriousness, that’s very impressive composure—it seems your time will come.

Sure, you could stick around, withhold rent, wait to be sued by your landlord in Superior Court’s Landlord and Tenant Branch and hope for some fixes and some compensation. (Most tenant lawyers seem to agree
that this is the fastest way to fight terrible building conditions.)

But, really, don’t do that. Wrap up your lease and just leave. Dupont Circle isn’t worth 10 miserable months. Try Mount Pleasant. Capitol Hill. Columbia Heights. I just checked Craigslist, and there are listings for one-bedroom places within your price range in all these neighborhoods. If you want to recoup some money for the loss of enjoyment of your apartment, you could always go to small claims court (as long as you’re asking for no more than $5,000.) Just document the various problems and delayed repairs in your claim. The entire process will most likely take three to four months.

A familiar, long-running story is back in the news—and that’s definitely a bad thing.

For years, D.C. officials have wanted to build a hotel to support big groups hosting events at the Washington Convention Center. That project—despite the economic downturn—was rejuvenated this summer when Councilmembers Kwame Brown (At-large) and Jack Evans (Ward 2) decided it could wait no longer.*

And so we got our convention center hotel after a new financing deal was inked! Two thousand jobs were on the way! An August 2009 press release from the city stated that “the development team expects to break ground on the hotel project this fall and it is expected to be complete in 2013.”

Yet, fall has come and gone, and I recall no groundbreaking. Instead, D.C. was served with another roadblock, this time in the form of a lawsuit from a competing developer.  The Washington Post covers all the latest twists—”No construction bonds have been issued, and a D.C. Superior Court judge has twice refused to dismiss the case”—in a story published yesterday.

On its face, the lawsuit by Wardman Investor, a company controlled by Chevy Chase-based JBG Companies, is a protest against the bidding process. The city selected Bethesda-based Marriott several years ago to develop the hotel, but when financing grew scarce, increased the public subsidy before the deal was finalized last summer.

Wardman Investor claims the D.C. Council acted illegally by negotiating exclusively with Marriott, granting the firm “extraordinarily favorable terms,” including not only the subsidy but also a 99-year lease on a city-owned site, with no payments during construction or the first three years of operation. Marriott would run the hotel, which would be built by Quadrangle Development and Capstone Development.

The suit seeks to halt construction and require that the city solicit new bids for the project. When the city initially opened the competition, JBG did not bid, but managing partner Ben Jacobs said the developer “would have been an obvious contender” if the original bidding process had included the new terms negotiated with Marriott.

*After all, Disney had just purchased 15 acres near National Harbor, igniting new questions about whether P.G. county’s own hotel mecca was eating up hospitality profits that could be going to D.C.

Image by Kjarrett, Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

(1) What Ever Happened to the Skinny House?

(2) Meet Real World DC Cast Member Mike

(3) Big Chair Coffee—Anacostia’s First Stand-Alone Coffee Shop That Anyone Can Remember—Opened Today

(4) Krystal From the Real World DC Discusses Her “Once in a Lifetime Experience”

(5) Meet Real World DC Cast Member Ashley

Image by Darrow Montgomery

I know. I know. You cannot believe it.

For months, we’ve been hearing about how METRO will be upping its fares while decreasing its service hours. But today, the Washington Examiner is reporting a bit of comforting news: If METRO keeps you waiting for too long, you’ll be able to recoup the fare under some circumstances, if a revised policy goes through.

The new policy will be modeled on a program used by Philadelphia’s transportation authority (according to the Examiner piece):

SEPTA service guarantees that its transit trips will arrive within 15 minutes of their scheduled arrival time, offering a free trip when it doesn’t meet the standard. Kissal said the program was expensive for SEPTA in the beginning but now costs little. SEPTA could not provide any estimates of how many free rides it awarded annually.

There is a current METRO policy in place allowing fares to be waived during extreme delays, but it was applied very rarely last year. You can read more about it in the Examiner story.

Pfrench99, Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

But before that happens, I’d like to know what other people think about this particularly lengthy, exasperating concern. Here’s the gist: A lady living in Dupont decides she’s willing to put up with annoyance after annoyance—and laziness and negligence bordering on abuse from her landlord and manager—because she can’t bear the thought of moving.

How much would you put up with before deciding to move? Would you have split in March? In June? Would you have tolerated all of it? Here’s the complaint:

I’ve lived in a large Dupont basement studio since 2006 because of its location, quiet atmosphere, pet friendliness and affordable rent ($1,000/month utilities included with free washer & dryer in the building. I don’t want/can’t afford to move, but the last 10 months have been miserable.

From January through end of March (11 weeks) there was no hot water in the apartment for showering or cooking. I documented the situation, made multiple calls/emails to the (out-of-state) landlord (Edit) and the DC management company (Edit). After 1.5 months of no response, I reported both of them to [a city department.] Reparative action was only taken by [the management company] in March. My rent was never pro-rated and no reason given as to why the repairs were not made in a timely matter other than the expense, especially because the brownstone is historic.

In June, I came home one day to find all my medicine from my medicine cabinet cleared out. Since [the management company] & the building manager were the only ones besides myself who had access & a history of entering my apartment before without advanced notice & some of the medicine included prescription painkillers, I promptly had the locks professionally rekeyed. I did not give a copy of the new key to my landlord or [the management company.]

In September, my oven/stove stopped working and my back entrance door started splintering off in chunks. Calls, emails, written notices did nothing. Five weeks later, it took my bottom lock/doorknob finally falling out of my door for my landlord to call a locksmith to repair the door temporarily. It’s now mid-November and my stove isn’t repaired/replaced. Unless I microwave food, I can’t cook for myself in my apartment. Compounding my displeasure are newer tenants who do laundry in the weeknight’s early morning hours (1 -3 a.m.). The washer/dryer share a wall with my apartment and can be heard loud and clear. I cannot sleep with all the whirring and banging.

I’ve been paying rent on time this entire time. It kills me that I’m paying for an apartment that I feel isn’t habitable most of the time and the money goes to a management company that doesn’t even have an after hours number/contact!

My understanding of DC law is that the only way I can pressure my landlord/management company at this point would be having the court establish an escrow account to legally withhold rent. I can’t just stop paying rent for a non-working oven/stove or lack of hot water, right? Is there any other way to hold [the management company]/landlord responsible without going through the time, hassle and expense of court? I have friends who are lawyers, but none of them specialize in landlord/tenant issues—or are admitted to the DC bar.

In an ideal situation, the issues I speak of would be resolved promptly, effectively and I’d be compensated for the troubles caused by their gross negligence. Am I asking for too much?

Last night, with spotlights swooping across the sky, David von Storch—owner of businesses Vida Fitness, Bang Salon, Capitol City Brewing Company and the building at 1612 U Street—debuted the pilot of his reality show at Town Danceboutique near 8th and U Streets NW.

He financed the filming himself and is now marketing it to various TV networks.

“I was looking at my iPhone all night, praying that my agent from L.A. would call with good news, but I can tell you that it is very encouraging that we will be picked up,” von Storch told the packed crowd right before the screening.

You can watch a teaser of the pilot for the show, called “Complicated Order,” here. It centers on von Storch and several key employees of his various businesses and his live-in ex-boyfriend, kinda-sorta-boyfriend? I was a bit unclear on that, since it was hard to hear at times.

Reached yesterday during the day, von Storch said he’d been thinking about doing a reality show focused on the stylists in some of his Bang Salons for roughly three years.

“If you could be a fly in the wall in the break room, it’s just really fun to listen to. Stylists are just a crazy breed,” he said.

But then, von Storch was approached by a northern Virginia-based production company, who pitched a show focusing on him and his businesses. Von Storch ultimately didn’t like the vision, but he started working on his own concept—one that would be more open about his personal life, which includes being HIV positive.

“Look if I’m going in, I’m going all in,” he says. “All in is the warts, and this unpleasant stuff and the failures and the difficult times as well as things that are fun.”

Von Storch and his team filmed the pilot in the third week of November. They filmed for just seven days and it took more than a month to cut the tape together. Footage  on the official “Complicated Order” website went live on Monday night, and von Storch’s team contacted six networks on Tuesday.

“It’ll take probably a month,” said von Storch on the phone yesterday. “We might know by the end of January. But we should know within a month…whether or not the discussions we’re having with any one of those networks goes forward.”

Picture from Complicated Order website.