The Art of the Deal
Builders took over my block, and all I got was a “rain garden.”
Cover Story
Gentlemen, start your bulldozers.
Let’s begin in Northwest. I want to lay some concrete over, say, all of it. Now you masons: Stack the brick. Build it up. Higher, dammit. Yes. Build it up so it cleaves the clouds. Pokes a hole through the sun. Slaps the Milky Way into a lower-rent neighborhood. Yes. Yes! Yes! Build it to...God!
It’s fortunate most of us aren’t privy to the wet dreams of D.C. developers, lest our society spend all its time at the cleaners. No, most of us have to rely on our observations to assess the rapacity behind the city’s growth. Not that you’d need eyes. You could just as easily walk blind in any direction until you hit a wall. Odds are a construction guy on scaffolding above you will be yelling at you to get your goddamn ass off the work site.
Though you would never guess it in our Reign of Crane, there are limits to how tall, how dense, and how many developers can build. Every so often, one stumbles into an impediment that precludes a thorough deleafing of the money tree. There are historic horse barns and obstinate landowners, and then there’s the biggest impediment of them all: wimpy zoning. Can you construe “single-family dwelling” to mean 85 rooms for cousins thrice removed and lost Aunt Myrtles? Probably not, though that’s not to say nobody has tried.... Continued 
Issue of Mar. 18 - 24, 2005
News and Features
- The Art of the Deal
Cover Story - A Cut Above
The City - Hall Monitor
The City - Icy Reception
The City - Price Pick of the Week
Seller's Market - Wet Dream
The Mail - Monster Garage
The Mail
Columns
- Dream Job
Cheap Seats - Mall Trampling
City Desk - Name Calling
City Desk - BACK IN THE RING
Loose Lips
Eats
- The Regular
Young & Hungry
Movies
- A Boy and His Dosh
Film Review - Twisted Nerve
Film Review
Music
- Incorrect Change
Music Review - Picaresque
Music Reviews - Dignity and Shame
Music Reviews
Theater
- Nanny 911
Theater Review - Trauma Club
Theater Review - The Spitfire Grill
Theater Reviews - Afterplay
Theater Reviews
Arts and Events
- On the Beaten Path
Artifacts - Drawn From Memories
Artifacts - THE SPIRITS OF GIVING
Show & Tell - The Tools of Attraction
Arts
City Lights
This week's best in Arts and Entertainment.
- The Art of Memory/ The Memory of Art
City Lights - Slint
City Lights - An Evening With Gene Wilder
City Lights - Wilma Mankiller
City Lights - Joe Ovelman
City Lights - Seeing the Landscape: Richard Serra’s Tuhirangi Contour
City Lights - Turtles Can Fly
City Lights - Soukous Stars
City Lights - French Toast
City Lights - Tim Eriksen
City Lights - Jeffrey D. Sachs
City Lights - Die! Die! My Darling!
City Lights - Alvaro Vargas Llosa
City Lights - Fabulous! Fashions of the 1940s From the Museum at FIT
City Lights
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- Exit Strategy
Nov. 26 - Dec. 2, 1999 - Midget Wrestling
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