Have your Chipotle burrito at
John Dos Passos' house. Read
Silent Spring in
Silver Spring. You can now take a real or virtual walking tour of literary DC, from
Roald Dahl to
Philip K. Dick to
Zora Neale Hurston with
DCWriters.org. Two DC-area poets have put together a compendium of 123 (and growing) residences in the DC area where novelists, poets, and playwrights plied their trade. The buildings may not all have plaques, but they are still standing: Dan Vera and Kim Roberts
focused on not "documenting what used to be here, but what people could actually go and take a look at."
posted by HonoriaGlossop
on Dec 18, 2011 -
18 comments
The Washington Mall welcomes another hero. The Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial is unveiled. Sitting directly between the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, "the composition of the [King] memorial utilizes landscape elements to powerfully convey four fundamental and recurring themes throughout Dr. King's message: justice, democracy, hope and love."
[more inside]
posted by darkstar
on Aug 22, 2011 -
72 comments
In 1972, Washington, DC
opened the doors to the HD Woodson Senior High School. It was the city's first new school in twelve years, and the first to be constructed after riots
devastated the city in 1968. Like its sister school across town, it had been
built to withstand another riot, and protect its students within its fortress-like walls. For a time, it stood as the pride and joy of the city's school system, featuring a diverse range of academic and vocational programs in a state of the art 8-story building complete with escalators, science labs, and a six-lane pool; a symbol of hope for a downtrodden community.
By 2008, however, things had gone horribly, horribly wrong. The building was literally crumbling, many of its original facilities had closed due to neglect, only 13% of sophomores were proficient in reading or mathematics, and violence was a daily concern. Facing no other choice, the city closed the school in 2008, and
demolished the brutalist structure shortly thereafter.
After a three year
series of delays, next week,
students will begin classes in the
newly reconstructed HD Woodson High School; a 3-story state of the art building complete with elevators, science labs, and an eight-lane pool; a symbol of hope for a downtrodden community -- leading many to question: Will it work this time? The correlation between architecture and academic performance is not well-studied, and
previous efforts have been inconclusive at best.
posted by schmod
on Aug 18, 2011 -
49 comments
If you have spent anytime at all on the National Mall in Washington DC, you have no doubt seen the Tourmobile trolleys shuttling tourists around to the major attractions surrounding the National Mall.
Some are now questioning the 40+ year old monopoly that the operator has held on tourist transportation on the Mall, especially in light of the National Park Service's refusal to open up bidding, or even allow more economical or environmentally friendly services to compete.
posted by COD
on Jul 29, 2011 -
54 comments
Hidden Tunnels, Bugs, and Bigamy: A Strange and True D.C. Story: "Reports indicated that the tunnels were long and extensive – that they may have reached as far as Rock Creek Park. Some electric lighting was discovered inside. For days, wild theories abounded – was it a Confederate soldier hideout? A stop on the Underground Railroad? A liquor depot for bootleggers? A counterfeiter’s lair? Or maybe a secret laboratory for 'Dr. Otto von Golph’s' experiments?
None of the above."
[more inside]
posted by codacorolla
on Jul 8, 2011 -
41 comments
The mayor of Washington DC has been arrested, along with 6 of the 12 members of its city council, during a protest today near a US Senate office building, objecting to the city's use as a bargaining chip while negotiating the
7th Continuing Resolution to avoid a government shutdown last Friday. The bill prohibits the District of Columbia from locally funding abortion services, and imposes a locally-unpopular school voucher program. Had the government shutdown taken place, the DC government would have also had to suspend most of its operations including
trash pickup. For those of you keeping track, Vince Gray is the 3rd (of 6) DC mayor to be arrested while in office.
[more inside]
posted by schmod
on Apr 11, 2011 -
93 comments
The Complaints Choir phenomenon, started by the Finnish artists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, has
spread all over the world since
last we paid it any attention, from
Birmingham to
Helsinki,
Hamburg,
St. Petersburg,
Poikkilaakso,
Bodø,
Penn State,
Canada,
Juneau,
Gabriola Island,
Sointula,
Jerusalem,
Melbourne,
Budapest,
Malmö,
Chicago,
Florence,
Copenhagen,
Vancouver (
2),
Philadelphia,
Sundbyberg,
Milano,
Åland,
Hong Kong,
Tokyo,
Rotterdam,
Basel,
Umeå,
Ljubljana,
Gdansk,
Arizona State University,
Washington, DC,
Horace Mann School,
Durham-Chapel Hill,
Auckland,
Toronto theatre students,
Kortrijk,
Cairo (
2),
St. Pölten,
Maribor,
Port Coquitlam,
Ústí nad Labem,
Columbus &
Kauhajoki (
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8). For more information, including a
9 step guide to forming your own complaints choir, go to the
Complaints Choir website. Finally, here's the
Singapore Complaints Choir, whose performance was banned by the Singapore government.
posted by Kattullus
on Nov 19, 2010 -
40 comments
Less than a year after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States detonated
the fourth and fifth nuclear weapons under the name
Operation Crossroads in July 1946. Beyond testing the capabilities of nuclear bombs,
the Navy said it wanted the Bikini tests treated like "the story of the year, maybe of the decade, and possibly of a lifetime." Only two of the three bombs were detonated, and the project was shut down over the next months. To celebrate the efforts of Operation Crossroads,
a cake in the shape of a mushroom cloud was featured at a publicized event on November 5, 1946. In response to this display, Reverend Arthur Powell Davies, the minister of the Unitarian All Souls Church in Washington, D.C.,
gave a sermon on the "utterly loathsome picture" and the message it sent to other nations. That sermon
set off a flurry of replies and reactions, that extended around the world, including a connection formed between
Reverend Davies' All Souls Unitarian Church and school children in Hiroshima.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Sep 8, 2010 -
62 comments
"The 9:30 Club became the place in Washington where the misfits could go and nobody would judge them. The scene became bigger as MTV opened the doors to this kind of music. But the 9:30 Club was on the ground floor."
Today's Washington Post magazine features an
oral history of the 9:30 Club, in celebration of its 30th anniversary. (Alternate link to
just the text of the article.)
posted by Ike_Arumba
on Apr 18, 2010 -
59 comments
It was a
mass protest held outside the halls of Washington. Led, or at least it was supposed to be, by
Martin Luther King Jr. (before he was assassinated) it was going to show the world the
glaring divide that existed between the
Rich and the Poor of America.
Black, White, Red, Yellow--they all gathered from all over the US, to stay together for six weeks, outside the Capitol, and
inform the public about what life in America could sometimes mean, if you were not considered economically, socially or racially acceptable. Unfortunately, the problem still
persists, even today.
posted by hadjiboy
on Aug 10, 2008 -
8 comments
Ballpark Blues. To make way for a new stadium and redevelopment, DC has been clearing out the underground bar and club scene in the
Navy Yard area of southeast Washington. The first victim was
Tracks, one of DC's first gay clubs and the epicenter of the nascent Goth scene in DC--closed in 1999 to make way for an office building. Now the
rest of the neighborhood's gay clubs are being demolished to make way for the new stadium. And finally,
Nation, home of
Cubik(formerly Buzz),
Velvet and
Alchemy is closing to make way for another new office complex. DC nightlife will never be the same again.
posted by empath
on Apr 5, 2006 -
19 comments
Poppin' Fresh from the newly launched
QueerMeta community weblog:
We'Wha: The Zuni Man-Woman.
How could a six-foot tall Indian man be mistaken for a "maiden" and a "princess"?
This was no Pocahontas! Even more intriguing is the relationship
between Stevenson and We'wha. According to one gossip, "she" regularly
entered the ladies rooms and boudoirs of Washington. How could
Stevenson not know that her intelligent Zuni informant was really, in
the words of one gossip, a "bold, bad man"? More about the 'berdaches' of the Zuni [
1,
2,
3].
Google cache of last (Geocities) link here.
posted by taz
on Mar 10, 2004 -
8 comments
Long Wait for a Taste of Home: Guatemalan Fried Chicken Draws a Crowd. Pollo Campero's first US store in Los Angeles reached the unprecedented sales mark of $1 million in an astounding seven weeks, a daily average of $20.4 thousand. After a full weekend of operation in the Washington DC market,
Pollo Campero broke this record by selling $65 thousand in two days, a daily average of $32.5 thousand. At the franchise in Herndon (Virginia), I have personally seen the line exit the store, cross the front of the building and circle around to the back (at 3pm). Is this fried chicken really that good?
posted by probablysteve
on Oct 31, 2003 -
42 comments
A friend reports that she's in lockdown in her office at
The Canon House Office Building in Washington, D.C. due to a man wielding a .38 pistol. The Canon House Office Building houses 1/3 of the members of the United States Congress. Offices are now being searched for the gunman. He is supposedly a shorter man with dark hair and white shirt. News first emerged of the gunman around an hour ago.
posted by ericrolph
on Oct 30, 2003 -
32 comments
