Richard Selden • May 16, 2016

On Friday, Paul Wiedefeld, general manager of Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, announced “SafeTrack,” a plan to carry out three years of repairs to D.C.’s Metrorail system in a single year.

The planned work is to include repairs to rails, insulators, fasteners, ventilation systems, tunnel lighting and third-rail cables, boots and cover boards, as well as radio-system installation, debris cleaning and tunnel leak-mitigation and washing.

Starting Friday, June 3, according to the plan, extended weekend service will be eliminated, with the system closing at midnight every night. Over the course of the year, there will be 15 SafeTrack Surges, “long-duration outages on selected line segments,” the first to be on the Blue Line between Franconia and Van Dorn, from June 4 to 19.

The stated goal is to continue to provide a minimum level of service, with single tracking or “bus bridges” — shuttles of 40 to 50 buses — connecting stations, such as between Braddock Road and National Airport from July 5 to 12 and between Pentagon City and National Airport from July 12 to 19.

The draft plan awaits approval by the WMATA board, chaired by Ward 2 Council member Jack Evans. Wiedefeld, who started as GM last November, did not provide an estimate for the work’s total cost, saying that the funds will come from Metro’s capital-improvement budget, with some taken from future years.

Among those commenting on the “tough medicine,” in Wiedefeld’s phrase, was President Obama. “It is just one more example of the underinvestments that have been made,” he said. “We’ve known for years now that we are $1 trillion or $2 trillion short in terms of necessary infrastructure repair.” The president placed the blame on “an ideology that says government spending is necessarily bad.”

Richard Selden • May 9, 2016

ZGF Architects, a firm based in Portland, Oregon, with offices in Seattle, Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C., has been chosen from a pool of eight to carry out a feasibility study for an aerial gondola between Georgetown and Rosslyn, Virginia. The firm worked on the preliminary concept for the Portland Aerial Tram.

The selection was announced today by the Georgetown-Rosslyn Gondola Executive Committee, a coalition of the Rosslyn and Georgetown Business Improvement Districts; the D.C. and Arlington County governments; Georgetown University; and developers JBG, Penzance and Gould Properties.

Georgetown BID CEO and President Joe Sternlieb said in the announcement that ZGF “brought together the most experienced team of subject matter experts in engineering, transportation, and economics from across the country to serve as subcontractors and contribute to the study.”

The study has a five-month project schedule and a budget of approximately $190,000.

Richard Selden • May 5, 2016

“Historical literacy,” according to public historian and R Street resident Brent D. Glass, “is more than simply knowing the names of leaders or when famous battles were fought. It involves understanding the context of historical events and how events are connected.”

Having devoted his career to the cause of historical literacy, the director emeritus of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History decided to take action in a direct and personal way: He wrote a book.

Published this spring, Glass’s “50 Great American Places: Essential Historic Sites Across the U.S.” doesn’t read like a lecture from your American history teacher, unless you had an unusually inspiring one. In an inviting, conversational style, Glass captures some of the atmosphere of the places his entries describe.

Better yet, many of his Great American Places are well-chosen surprises.

Yes, Great American Place No. 1 is the National Mall, here in D.C. But No. 50 is “Malls of America.” Glass uses the plural because that entry covers the history of the enclosed shopping mall, from the 1956 debut of modernist architect Victor Gruen’s Southdale Center in Edina, Minnesota, to the gargantuan Mall of America, which opened in 1992 in nearby Bloomington.

Along the way, the reader gets a capsule history of suburbanization, with a cross-reference to the phenomenon’s 19th-century roots, nurtured in books like “The American Woman’s Home,” written in 1869 by Catharine Beecher and her sister Harriet Beecher Stowe (Stowe’s Hartford, Connecticut, home, along with that of her neighbor, Mark Twain, is Great American Place No. 25).

By grouping sites both geographically and thematically, Glass has written an enjoyable volume for the hammock (or the bathroom) as well as a guidebook. You may want to get one copy for the car and one to keep handy at home.

The entries between the Mall and the Malls are roughly chronological. Glass checks in at the Liberty Bell (No. 9), the Alamo (No. 18) and Pearl Harbor (No. 41, get it?), but also touches down at key spots in the history of American art, science and social change.

Famed biographer David McCullough, who met Glass — then head of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission — in 1989 at the centennial of the Johnstown Flood, calls attention in the book’s forward to the choice of a farmhouse in Red Cloud, Nebraska, as Great American Place No. 26 (“Willa Cather’s Great Prairie”):

“[Pioneer woman] Annie Pavelka and her story were the inspiration for Willa Cather’s famous masterpiece ?My Ántonia,’ and to stand there beside the storm cellar into which she rushed her children when tornadoes struck is to feel the ?power of place’ in no uncertain terms.”

As much as anyone, McCullough has shown that history doesn’t have to go down like medicine. Well-written narratives can motivate us both to want to learn more and to experience in person the places that shaped our nation. Glass’s book contains many such motivating moments, neatly packaged for 21st-century lives.

Richard Selden • April 27, 2016

The 13th annual French Market, along the boutique-and-gallery-filled Book Hill section of Wisconsin Avenue, will run for three days instead of two, Friday, April 29, through Sunday, May 1.

Organized by the Georgetown Business Improvement District and sponsored by TD Bank, the French Market isn’t strictly French, but as you sample a croissant, sip Sancerre and sidewalk-shop, you may feel that you’re spending the afternoon in Paris (or, at least, Europe).

The blocks between P Street and Reservoir Road, where Book Hill Park begins, will be enlivened with music, street performers and activities for kids on Saturday and Sunday. The Saturday music line-up includes Swing Guitars DC with Daisy Castro, Bitter Dose Combo and Mary Alouette and the Crew. On Sunday, Laissez Foure (how clever can you get?) will perform.

The French Market is not only kid-friendly, but dog-friendly. On Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., visitors can have their picture taken with their dog(s) at the Parisian Pup Photo Booth, courtesy of A-list Photo Booths. Unleashed by Petco is providing treats.

Also on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Revolution Cycles and DC Bike Ride are offering free bicycle spot checks in the parking lot at Wisconsin and P Street. The first 100 bicyclists who stop by Patisserie Poupon’s booth in the same lot will receive a free gift bag.

Speaking of bags, on Sunday between noon and 3 p.m. in the TD Bank parking lot at Wisconsin and Q Street, a limited-edition Georgetown French Market tote bag will be screen-printed by Soul & Ink before your very eyes for $10 (while they last).

Friday and Saturday hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday hours are noon to 5 p.m. About three dozen shops and cafes are offering French Market discounts of up to 75 percent. Here is the list (or, as they say in French, la liste), adapted from the Georgetown BID website:

A MANO, 1677 Wisconsin: Clearance, up to 75 percent off.
Appalachian Spring, 1455 Wisconsin: Broken Hearts Sale, up to 50 percent off.
Artist’s Proof, 1533 Wisconsin: Spring art collection, prints by Carol Rowan, John Stango and others, 20 percent off coffee-table art books by Phaidon and Taschen.
Bacchus Wine Cellar, 1635 Wisconsin: Six-pack of wines in a canvas tote for $50, samples offered for tasting prior to purchase, 15 percent off all French wines.
Cafe Bonaparte, 1522 Wisconsin: Sweet and savory crepe stand, $5 per crepe.
Cross MacKenzie Gallery, 1675 Wisconsin: Discounts on all artwork in the gallery and affordable functional ceramic pieces outside.
Egg by Susan Lazar, 1661 Wisconsin: Sample sale items, 20 percent off everything full price.
Ella Rue, 3231 P: In-store basement sale and sidewalk sale, $30- and $20-and-under racks, 50 percent off jewelry on Wisconsin in front of Carine’s, Steals & Deals 50 to 75 percent off.
Georgetown Lutheran Church, 1556 Wisconsin: Church and garden open to visitors, free treats.
Georgetown Olive Oil Co., 1524 Wisconsin: Free small bottle of Champagne wine vinegar with purchase, 15 to 30 percent off select items, French-inspired variety packs and gifts.
Illusions Salon of Georgetown, 1629 Wisconsin: Parisian-inspired hair show, Kerasilk launch party hosted by Goldwell, giveaways, beauty tips from the Illusions Team, complimentary makeup applications by a Jane Iredale artist, discounts on selected items.
Jaco Juice & Taco Bar, 1614 Wisconsin: 15 percent off regular-menu items, special limited tasting menu, fresh juices and smoothies.
Jaryam, 1531 Wisconsin: 70 percent off select clothing.
LiLi The First, 1419 Wisconsin: 15 percent off regular-price items and 50 percent off sale items.
Little Birdies Boutique, 1526 Wisconsin: 50 percent off past-season styles and headbands and bows, newborn to size 10 designer clothing on sale including French children’s clothing lines Baby Dior, Petite Plume, Petite Annette and Petite Bateau, French-inspired baby plates, sippy cups, bowls, utensils.
Lynn Louisa, 1631 Wisconsin: Up to 70 percent off, including Parisian designer brands Margaux Lonnberg and Gat Rimon apparel, Adeline Affre jewelry.
Manny and Olga’s Pizza, 1641 Wisconsin: $3 fresh pizza slices, $1 drinks.
Marston Luce, 1651 Wisconsin: Selection of 18th-, 19th- and 20th-century French and Swedish furniture and accessories, carefully chosen jewelry.
Matt Camron Rugs, 1651 Wisconsin: Rugs and textiles.
Maurine Littleton Gallery, 1667 Wisconsin: 20 percent off SwitchWood interchangeable wooden bow ties, 10 percent off monogrammed cuff links.
Moss & Co., 1657 Wisconsin: Up to 75 percent off, assortment of home accessories, antiques (including French antiques), furniture, garden items, jewelry.
Patisserie Poupon, 1645 Wisconsin: Illy coffee station, French pastries including croissants, kouign amman, eclairs, tarts and macarons, grilled specialties including merguez, flank steak, chicken and toulouse sausage, French tablecloths, linens and handmade baskets.
Pho Viet & Grille, 1639 Wisconsin: 30 to 40 percent off Vietnamese sandwiches, Viet salad and Viet coffee drink.
Pretty Chic, 1671 Wisconsin: 60 percent off throughout the entire store excluding consignment items, Secret Garden Special with $5, $10 and $20 racks.
Reddz Trading, 1413 Wisconsin: 20 percent off everything in the store excluding Chanel and Hermès.
Sherman Pickey, 1647 Wisconsin: 20 percent off everything in the store excluding Chanel and Hermès.
Susan Calloway Fine Arts, 1643 Wisconsin: Classic modern designs inspired by Chinese ceramics by Georgetown-based Middle Kingdom Ceramics at street level, 40 percent off antique and vintage French paintings inside.
TD Bank, 1611Wisconsin: Portraits by caricature artist on Saturday.
The Bean Counter, 1665 Wisconsin: 10 percent off sandwiches.
The Phoenix, 1514 Wisconsin: 20 percent off jewelry by French designer Selen, 20 to 50 percent off spring and fall clothing from Eileen Fisher, Oska, White + Warren.
Via Umbria, 1525 Wisconsin: Discounted Italian olive oils, foods and ceramics, French cooking class and dinner with chef-sommelier Vickie Reh on Friday at 7:30 p.m.
Washington Printmakers Gallery, 1641 Wisconsin: Friday from 1 to 3 p.m., “Make and Take” prints for children 3-12.
Zannchi, 1529 Wisconsin: Special Kimbap (rolls) and tea.

Richard Selden • April 20, 2016

Urban Pace, a D.C.-based firm that provides real estate developers with sales, marketing and advisory services on new residential projects, will become part of the Long & Foster group.

The partnership, representing an investment in Urban Pace by the Long & Foster Companies — the parent of Long & Foster Real Estate, the nation’s largest privately owned real estate firm — was announced today.

“In regions like Washington, D.C., urban developments — whether they’re high-rise or townhouse-style condos — are thriving, and our team at Long & Foster recognized the opportunities for our company’s and our agents’ growth by partnering with a firm like Urban Pace,” said Jeffrey S. Detwiler, president and COO of the Long & Foster Companies.

“In addition to our base office in Washington, D.C., we now operate in New York City and Philadelphia as well,” said newly appointed CEO of Urban Pace Lynn Hackney, previously the firm’s president. “We’ve noticed that several successful firms using our business model — working directly with real estate developers — have been strengthened substantially by their affiliations with large residential real estate brokerage firms.”

Urban Pace will continue to operate under its same brand and team at the current office location at 1919 14th St. NW.

Richard Selden • April 18, 2016

Billing itself as a “full-service, boutique fitness studio,” the first BLAST outside Georgia — just west of Georgetown, at 2311 M St. NW — held its grand opening March 19.

The brand’s backstory will sound familiar to many.

In the course of carrying her second child, founder Missi Wolf put on weight — a lot of weight. Five feet tall, after giving birth she weighed 206 pounds and had 34 percent body fat. Her doctor categorized her as morbidly obese and borderline diabetic.

That was motivating. Wolf immediately began researching, studying and experimenting in order to create her own personal fitness program, which enabled her to lose 100 pounds in two years and get her body fat out of the danger zone (in the ‘after’ photograph on the website, Wolf has also become a blonde).

That crash program evolved into BLAST, an acronym for Balanced Level of Aerobic and Strength Training. The three parts of the program are classes, metabolic testing and nutritional coaching. Wolf opened her first studio in Atlanta in 2008.

Among the five instructors at the D.C. location are Christa A., a cheerleader for the football team with the objectionable name, whose power song is “Anything” by Calvin Harris. To read more instructor profiles, schedule a class and connect with the BLAST community, visit theblastlife.com.

Richard Selden • April 8, 2016

A National Historic Landmark, the Seventh Regiment Armory on Manhattan’s Upper East Side made an about-face in 2007.
The one-time drill hall for New York’s aristocracy — with interiors by Tiffany, Stanford White and the Herter Brothers, among others — had become best known as a cavernous venue for high-end antiques shows.

That year, the massive brick castle became the home of Park Avenue Armory, a nonprofit that undertook the building’s restoration and began to program performances and contemporary art installations. The Royal Shakespeare Company came for six weeks one summer and the Merce Cunningham Company danced its last there. Visitors listened in the dark to “The Murder of Crows,” a sound piece by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller; swung on giant swings amid dangling sheets at Ann Hamilton’s “The Event of a Thread”; and marveled at Paul McCarthy’s pornographic take on Snow White, “WS.”

Almost singlehandedly, the Armory has made the Upper East Side hip. (The next major installation, “Martin Creed: The Back Door,” opens June 8.) Its avant-garde events have been so successful that last year the New York Art, Antique & Jewelry Show, an annual rental of $300,000 or so, was evicted; the 2016 show will be at Pier 94 in November.

But two of the most prestigious shows of their kind in the world are still Armory tenants. The Winter Antiques Show will return in January 2017. This weekend, April 7 to 10, more than 200 of the top U.S. and international vendors of rare books, maps, manuscripts and ephemera will be at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair.

A short walk up Park Avenue from the Armory is the Asia Society Museum, between 70th and 71st streets, where “Kamakura: Realism and Spirituality in the Sculpture of Japan” is on view through May 8. The exhibition focuses on sculpture from the politically turbulent Kamakura period (1185 to 1333), when artists and their workshops were commissioned by the warrior class to create Buddhist icons of exceptional realism, power and technical excellence.

Meanwhile, the big news on the Upper East Side is the opening, last month, of the Met Breuer. With the Whitney Museum of Art in a new Renzo Piano building in the Meatpacking District (at the southern terminus of the High Line), the Metropolitan Museum of Art has taken over the old Whitney, at Madison Avenue and 75th Street, a Brutalist icon designed by Marcel Breuer.

The inaugural exhibition at what this writer calls the Metney (until I hear from both museums’ lawyers) is “Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible,” running through Sept. 4. Under the direction of Sheena Wagstaff, named the Met’s chair of modern and contemporary art, a new department, in 2012, the show’s curators selected nearly 200 works — by contemporary artists and by big names from Rembrandt to Rauschenberg — that were never completed or “partake of a non finito … aesthetic that embraces the unresolved and open-ended.”

About eight blocks away, at what is now identified as the Met Fifth Avenue, the top-billed special exhibition is “Vigée Le Brun: Woman Artist in Revolutionary France.” Closing May 15, the display of 80 paintings and pastels is said to be the painter’s first retrospective “in modern times.”

Finally, across Fifth Avenue from the “Big Met,” the exquisite Neue Galerie on the corner of 86th Street is the sole U.S. venue for “Munch and Expressionism,” through June 13. Organized with the Munch Museum in Oslo, the exhibition will explore the mutual influences among Edvard Munch and his German and Austrian contemporaries, including Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele.
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Richard Selden • April 6, 2016

A National Historic Landmark, the Seventh Regiment Armory on Manhattan’s Upper East Side made an about-face in 2007.

The one-time drill hall for New York’s aristocracy — with interiors by Tiffany, Stanford White and the Herter Brothers, among others — had become best known as a cavernous venue for high-end antiques shows.

That year, the massive brick castle became the home of Park Avenue Armory, a nonprofit that undertook the building’s restoration and began to program performances and contemporary art installations. The Royal Shakespeare Company came for six weeks one summer and the Merce Cunningham Company danced its last there. Visitors listened in the dark to “The Murder of Crows,” a sound piece by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller; swung on giant swings amid dangling sheets at Ann Hamilton’s “The Event of a Thread”; and marveled at Paul McCarthy’s pornographic take on Snow White, “WS.”

Almost singlehandedly, the Armory has made the Upper East Side hip. (The next major installation, “Martin Creed: The Back Door,” opens June 8.) Its avant-garde events have been so successful that last year the New York Art, Antique & Jewelry Show, an annual rental of $300,000 or so, was evicted; the 2016 show will be at Pier 94 in November.

But two of the most prestigious shows of their kind in the world are still Armory tenants. The Winter Antiques Show will return in January 2017. This weekend, April 7 to 10, more than 200 of the top U.S. and international vendors of rare books, maps, manuscripts and ephemera will be at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair.

A short walk up Park Avenue from the Armory is the Asia Society Museum, between 70th and 71st Streets, where “Kamakura: Realism and Spirituality in the Sculpture of Japan” is on view through May 8. The exhibition focuses on sculpture from the politically turbulent Kamakura period (1185 to 1333), when artists and their workshops were commissioned by the warrior class to create Buddhist icons of exceptional realism, power and technical excellence.

Meanwhile, the big news on the Upper East Side is the opening, last month, of the Met Breuer. With the Whitney Museum of Art in a new Renzo Piano building in the Meatpacking District (at the southern terminus of the High Line), the Metropolitan Museum of Art has taken over the old Whitney, at Madison Avenue and 75th Street, a Brutalist icon designed by Marcel Breuer.

The inaugural exhibition at what this writer calls the Metney (until I hear from both museums’ lawyers) is “Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible,” running through Sept. 4. Under the direction of Sheena Wagstaff, named the Met’s chair of modern and contemporary art, a new department, in 2012, the show’s curators selected nearly 200 works — by contemporary artists and by big names from Rembrandt to Rauschenberg — that were never completed or “partake of a non finito … aesthetic that embraces the unresolved and open-ended.”

About eight blocks away, at what is now identified as the Met Fifth Avenue, the top-billed special exhibition is “Vigée Le Brun: Woman Artist in Revolutionary France.” Closing May 15, the display of 80 paintings and pastels is said to be the painter’s first retrospective “in modern times.”

Finally, across Fifth Avenue from the “Big Met,” the exquisite Neue Galerie on the corner of 86th Street is the sole U.S. venue for “Munch and Expressionism,” through June 13. Organized with the Munch Museum in Oslo, the exhibition explores the mutual influences among Edvard Munch and his German and Austrian contemporaries, including Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele.
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Richard Selden • March 30, 2016

Several great Americans were born into slavery. One way the nation pays tribute to such personages is on our currency. We are likely to see Harriet Tubman on the $10 or $20 bill in a few years. And in 2017, the former home in Anacostia of Tubman’s fellow abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, will appear on quarters.

Douglass, who lived in the hilltop house he named Cedar Hill from 1877 until his death in 1895, was known as the “Sage of Anacostia” and — both for his oratory and for his white mane — “the Lion of Cedar Hill.” Preserved by Douglass’s second wife, the property became Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in 1988.

Whether during Black History Month or when the nine-acre site is in bloom, a visit to Cedar Hill is one of D.C.’s most rewarding heritage experiences. The National Park Service offers ranger-guided tours of the restored house, furnished largely with original pieces, five times daily (reservations, made for a $1.50 fee at recreation.gov, are recommended).

The huge trees, terraced front lawn and woodsy backyard — where Douglass’s rustic stone hideaway, the “Growlery,” has been reconstructed — make it easy to imagine the rural Anacostia of the mid-1800s. The house’s builder and original owner was John Van Hook, one of the developers of an early, semi-successful suburb called Uniontown, aimed at Navy Yard workers (and from which Irish and African Americans were excluded).

Douglass purchased the house in 1877 upon his appointment by Rutherford B. Hayes as U.S. Marshall for the District of Columbia. He served until 1881 and later became Minister to Haiti, appointed by Benjamin Harrison.

Speaking at the dedication of the Haitian Pavilion at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, Douglas said of the Haitian people: “It will ever be a matter of wonder and astonishment to thoughtful men, that a people in abject slavery, subject to the lash, and kept in ignorance of letters, as these slaves were, should have known enough, or had left in them enough manhood, to combine, to organize, and to select for themselves trusted leaders and with loyal hearts follow them into the jaws of death to obtain liberty.”

Writing and speaking about human rights — of blacks and, during the latter part of his life, of women — was Douglass’s calling. Born in 1818 on a plantation in Talbot County, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, he taught himself to read and write as an enslaved boy, a household servant in Baltimore.

At 20, while working as a ship caulker on the Baltimore docks, he escaped to New York City, married a free black woman, Anna Murray, and began to raise a family in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He soon became an agent of William Lloyd Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society and wrote the first of three autobiographies.

Still a fugitive from slavery, Douglass went on a speaking tour in Europe, returning to the U.S. after English friends purchased his freedom. In 1847, he launched an abolitionist newspaper, the North Star, in Rochester, New York. Twenty-five years later, at 54, a prominent public figure who had advised Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, he and his family relocated to Washington, living at 316 A St. NE prior to buying the Anacostia estate.

A short film shown in the visitor center movingly tells his life-story, with graphic scenes of his treatment by a slave-breaker and winning cameos by actors playing Garrison, Tubman, Lincoln and John Brown. Several scenes were filmed in the house, including a confrontation between Douglass and his daughter over his decision to marry Helen Pitts, white and 20 years his junior.

There is an extensive selection of books by and about Douglass for all ages in the shop, notably the dual biography “Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln” by Harvard professor John Stauffer.

After a climb of 85 outdoor steps from the visitor center (there is also a ramp), the tour enters the house from the front porch. Visitors get to look in on rooms downstairs and up, including the kitchen wing that Douglass added, converting the former kitchen into a large dining room in which to host his many visitors. Before or after the tour, the hilly grounds are open to explore.

When in Anacostia, another black history stop is the Anacostia Community Museum, founded by the Smithsonian in 1967 as a storefront museum in the Carver Theater, a 1940s movie house. Twenty years later, it moved to a new building near Fort Stanton Park. On Saturday, Feb. 27, at 2 p.m., the museum will host Aaron Reeder’s show, “Rhythm Café: The Life & Times of Sammy Davis Jr.”

For more information on the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, 1411 W St. SE, visit nps.gov/frdo or call 202-426-5961.

For more information on the Anacostia Community Museum, 1901 Fort Place SE, visit anacostia.si.edu or call 202-633-4820.
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Richard Selden •

Ears pricked up at the press preview for the Kennedy Center’s 2015-2016 season this morning when the stodgy-but-stirring performing arts palace announced its first artistic director of hip-hop culture. Q-Tip, 45, a former member of A Tribe Called Quest, was born Jonathan Davis in Harlem. He grew up in St. Albans, a middle-class neighborhood in Queens (the Q in Q-Tip stands for Queens) that was home to Basie, Miles and Coltrane and a couple guys who played baseball in one of the other boroughs, Roy Campanella and Jackie Robinson. When he converted to Islam, he changed his name to Kamaal Ibn John Fareed.

Tip (as his friends call him) has been nominated for a Grammy Award six times, winning Best Dance Recording in 2006 for “Galvanize,” with the Chemical Brothers. What’s the difference between hip-hop and rap? Rap is considered one element in hip-hop, a culture that embraces music, art, dance and fashion. But we’ll leave it to Tip to drop science on our ass starting this summer. Welcome to D.C.!