October 14, 2010 | 7:59 AM | By Anna
Good morning, DCentric readers! Ready for some links?
How Rustik Ended Bloomingdale’s Prohibition, and What’s Coming Next “Over the course of several months, Stu Davenport’s aspirations to stay open late and serve cocktails would pit mostly black, longer-term residents against the Big Bear’s mostly white, mostly recent transplant supporters. The ugly public debate burst back onto the surface most recently at last week’s hearing before the Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration board, where all the worries about parking, trash, and noise were trotted out again.” (Washington City Paper)
Hipster Highway: New shuttle service to run from U Street to Brooklyn ““We know the kind of people who live around U Street. They’re younger, more vibrant, more creative…Anybody is welcome, but it’s definitely more for the sort of folks who are interested in looking at things off the beaten path, interested in getting to know neighborhoods, and interested in scraping the surface and seeing more than the Statue of Liberty and the Washington Monument.”” (tbd.com)
Michelle Rhee and Adrian Fenty’s most cheerful potshots at Vince Gray “Rhee: “With Kaya Henderson at the helm and the DCPS management team in place, everything the city needs to be able to continue the reforms will be in place.” Translation: My deputy and all my people are staying, so you can’t screw it up too badly, Gray.” (tbd.com)
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October 13, 2010 | 3:03 PM | By Anna
jaundicedferret
Lorax tattoo by Paul Roe, British Ink
Yesterday, I went to Metro Mutts on H Street NE to find out more about the hateful graffiti which some vandal had spray painted on “their” door this weekend. I was surprised to discover two things:
- Metro Mutts has never encountered any negativity or hostility before this
- Metro Mutts shares the vandalized door with upstairs neighbor, British Ink.
In fact, the “door” which was tagged is really an outer door which doesn’t even have the six-month old pet shop’s name on it yet– there is merely a round, Metro Mutts sticker. It seems inaccurate to declare that Metro Mutts was the target of racist, anti-Gay, anti-gentrification graffiti but the mistake is wholly understandable; the first floor store front belongs to them. Anna Collins, one of the co-owners of the cleanest pet store I’ve ever been to, said that she didn’t think the ugly message was aimed at Metro Mutts– and that I should speak to Paul Roe, of British Ink about the incident. I did, this morning, for an hour.
Roe’s unique, by-appointment-only, couture tattoo studio has been open for four years. I asked him why he chose H Street.
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October 13, 2010 | 9:15 AM | By Anna
Window at Metro Mutts
Yesterday, TBD, Prince of Petworth and Frozen Tropics all reported that Metro Mutts, a pet store on H Street NE, had been vandalized with hateful, racist graffiti. Someone spray painted the following on their door:
“Cracker (large penis illustration) get out my city fag”
Since this unfortunate incident involves race, class and gentrification in the District, I wanted to learn more about what I had read, so last night I took my puppy to H Street to visit Metro Mutts and talk to Anna Collins, who has a fantastic name; she is one of the six-month old store’s owners.
Collins said that the door had been vandalized on Saturday night, after Metro Mutts closed at 6pm but before a regular customer walked by and spotted the graffiti at 9. She expressed some surprise at the gay slur since Metro Mutts is “primarily a woman-run business”– they do have one male partner, but he’s not in the store that often. Collins confirmed that the police had taken their complaint and then sent someone who investigates hate crimes (possibly someone from the GLLU).
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October 13, 2010 | 7:45 AM | By Anna
Good morning, DCentric readers! While you were watching “Glee”, we were trawling for links:
Michelle Rhee to announce resignation “After more than three years in the job, Rhee’s tenure already is the longest of any D.C. chancellor or superintendent of the past two decades. Measures of student performance generally improved during her time in the job but sagged in a round of test results released in August, a month before the primary vote.” (voices.washingtonpost.com)
WaPo Invites Anti-Gay Editorial For National Coming Out Day “The truly galling thing, of course, is that Perkins is happy to share this opinion on any day of the year, but the WaPo thought that this would be a good thing to run on a day specifically given over to the support of the LGBT community. But then, 2010 has been a banner year for anti-gay sentiment at the paper. When the National Organization for Marriage took on Washington, DC’s support for marriage equality, the Washington Post was happy to endorse their chosen emissary, Delano Hunter, in the Ward 5 council race against incumbent Harry Thomas.” (Huffington Post)
Survey Asks DCPS Middle Schoolers If They Are Transgender “On the one hand, there is an argument to be made about the validity of research asking children whether they identify as transgender or whether they’ve ever had sex after drinking alcohol or getting high…Of course, in a city where the HIV/AIDS rate is sky high and a majority of cases are the result of heterosexual sex and drug use, there’s plenty of reason to believe that knowing whether pre-teens are engaging in either would be very valuable information. (DCist)
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October 12, 2010 | 11:02 AM | By Anna
Jon Haynes Photography
In today’s Washington Post, Petula Dvorak points out that like their disadvantaged peers, privileged children are stressed out, too, in “No class boundaries to childhood stress“:
Three in 10 living in the nation’s capital are feeling the weight of adult problems every day.
Those kids rarely have a carefree moment. The pressure of their situation squeezes them constantly, putting the joy of a simple exhale beyond their reach.
But wait a minute. Isn’t that almost exactly what we hear from many of their more privileged peers?
They describe a life in which they aren’t given the time to just go out back and play. They are crushed by their obligations and crippled by stress.
I’ll give it to Dvorak– this column could have been grating. It’s not exactly gracious to compare the problems of the haves with the have-nots, but she carefully avoided that pitfall.
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October 12, 2010 | 7:45 AM | By Anna
Good morning, DCentric readers! Ready for some links?
Carla Cohen dies; co-founder of D.C. bookstore Politics and Prose “During Mrs. Cohen’s period of unemployment during the early 1980s, she watched a movie about the violinist Isaac Stern. Afterward, she turned to her husband, inspired. She recalled that moment in an interview with The Post in 1999, when Politics and Prose was recognized by Publishers Weekly as bookseller of the year. “If I could only be like Isaac Stern and do something in my life that would bring nothing but pleasure to other people,” she remembered saying. “And that’s how I feel about what I do now.”" (The Washington Post)
Congressional Staffers Gain From Trading in Stocks So THAT’S how they get by on those salaries: “At least 72 aides on both sides of the aisle traded shares of companies that their bosses help oversee, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of more than 3,000 disclosure forms covering trading activity by Capitol Hill staffers for 2008 and 2009.” (Wall Street Journal)
What happened to the ‘Where’s Muhammad?’ cartoon that should’ve been in WaPo? “Style editor Ned Martel said he decided to yank it, after conferring with others, including Executive Editor Marcus W. Brauchli, because “it seemed a deliberate provocation without a clear message.” He added that “the point of the joke was not immediately clear” and that readers might think that Muhammad was somewhere in the drawing. Some readers accused The Post of censorship. “Cowards,” e-mailed John D. Stackpole of Fort Washington, one of several who used that word.” (The Washington Post)
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October 8, 2010 | 7:45 AM | By Anna
Good morning, DCentric readers! While you were standing in line for a lobster roll at Curbside Cookoff, we were foraging around online, looking for links:
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Hurts Black Women Most “African-American women were discharged under DADT at almost three times the rate at which they serve in the military…Although black women made up less than 1 percent of service members, they represented 3.3 percent of those discharged under the policy, the report says. “We do not know why African-American women are so adversely impacted by this policy…We are in the midst of conducting a new study to try to understand why they are being hit so hard.” (The Root)
Curbside Cookoff proves food truck popularity; Tryst/Diner-owner counters with restaurant industry’s p.o.v. “Thousands of Washington D.C.’s working crowd ditched the power lunch places Thursday afternoon and stood in snaking sidewalk lines instead. All for a taste of the District’s burgeoning street food scene…Attendance at D.C.’s first Curbside Cookoff, sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Commission, was a testament to the demand for more interesting dining choices in the city.” (myfoxdc.com)
Metro prepping iconic map for makeover (because the Gap’s new logo is such a hit!) “Contrary to popular belief, the rail extension out to Dulles International Airport has not officially been selected as the “Silver Line,” although it is commonly called that now…Asked about the possibility of Metro moving away from a color-based system and more toward a system with rail lines identified by numbers (like in New York City), Richardson wouldn’t rule out the possibility.” (wtop.com)
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October 7, 2010 | 7:45 AM | By Anna
Good morning, DCentric readers! While you were in, unpacking winter clothing, we were out, searching for links!
At Farragut Square, mourning the burrito man who became a friend “Guardado came, illegally, to the United States in 1981, as the war in El Salvador made life dangerous for a 17-year-old boy. He told Sheahan how he’d had one cousin die in his arms and discovered the body of an uncle. For years, Guardado worked as a painter, eventually gaining legal residency. In 1990, paying in installments, he bought a hot dog cart licensed for Farragut Square. Soon, he changed his menu to burritos, which put him years ahead of the food-cart boom the city is now enjoying. He put out a basket for people to pay by the honor system – so he wouldn’t have to handle money in his “kitchen” – and found himself a career.” (The Washington Post)
Peaceoholics Buildings Yanked, Will Be Used for Homeless Families “If the Peaceoholics lost out, they might have brought in on themselves. At a hearing on their real estate activities in July, Ron Moten and Jauhar Abraham hurled insults at Councilmembers Michael A. Brown and Harry Thomas, saying that racism and politics were at the root of their inquiry (”Man, this ain’t right, man. You got to check yourself, brother,” Moten huffed. “Put politics in the way of our children?”)” (Washington City Paper)
The Third Rail of the American Blogsphere – Ta-Nehisi Coates “It’s weird because people always say “race is hard to talk about.” I haven’t found that to be true. I have found that obesity is, far and away, the hardest issue. It’s pretty clear that there’s been some sort of cultural overlap between what we consider healthy and what some of us consider attractive. I say “some of us” because, in all honesty, this has all been a dose of culture-shock for me. I would not go so far as to say that black people don’t have their shares of issues about weight, but it plays out a lot differently (though not necessarily better) for us.” (The Atlantic)
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October 6, 2010 | 3:53 PM | By Anna
DCVirago
Inspired by "Black is Beautiful", in the '60s Kameny said, "Gay is Good".
Recently, Washingtonian magazine profiled Dr. Frank Kameny, a notable local leader for Gay rights. Over 50 years ago, Kameny, a veteran of World War II who holds a PhD from Harvard, was fired from his astronomy job because of his sexual orientation. According to Wikipedia, he filed “the first civil rights claim based on sexual orientation”. Two things about the extensive profile jumped out at me:
W: Has DC been the center of the gay-rights movement?
FK: I’ve said for many years that San Francisco was looked upon as the center, but DC is very much the success story of the gay movement.
Huh. I just read a post on SFist expressing surprise that D.C.’s Starbucks would offer gender neutral bathrooms before San Francisco’s did.
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