Latest News

Robert Devaney • May 21, 2015

That was the case when D.C. Superior Court Judge Maurice Ross ordered Douglas G. Jefferies, the owner of a Dupont Circle property at 2220 Q St. NW, to cease unlawfully operating an unlicensed residential housing business, public hall, boarding house, bed and breakfast and general business by renting the home for parties, weddings and concerts.

The order came after the Office of the Attorney General had filed a lawsuit against Jefferies for creating a hazard to public safety and a nuisance to neighbors. The order stated that Jefferies had been using vacation-rental websites to rent the property, despite the owner and the venue not being properly licensed or outfitted for such events.

“Assuming Mr. Jefferies abides by the terms of the consent order, this agreement will bring an end to the dangerous, illegal and troublesome use of this property to host large and noisy events,” Attorney General Karl A. Racine said. “Today’s action sends a strong message to individuals who seek to unlawfully conduct lodging and entertainment businesses without proper licenses.”

Jefferies was also ordered to pay an $8,000 fine.

The lawsuit was filed after an investigation by DCRA officials, who had received numerous complaints from neighbors about excessive noise.

Caitlin Franz •

A local man, Jahmar Thaxter, was arrested April 22 in connection with 19 car break-ins that took place across the District in areas from Tenleytown to Georgetown. According to court documents, Thatxer is also under investigation for the killing of a 76-year-old Korean grocery store owner last summer.

Thaxter, 23, was arrested after his GPS ankle monitor placed him at scene of thefts that occurred from late February through March, according to his arrest warrant.

He is believed to have been near the location of 10 other car break-ins (included in the total 19) at the times they occurred. As many as seven cars a day were entered in order to steal items such as laptop computers, purses and jewelry.

According to court documents, MPD detectives have sought DNA samples from Thaxter that may tie him to the homicide of James Oh, who owned Gold Corner Market in 16th Street Heights. Oh and his wife were assaulted during a robbery of their store in July 2014. He suffered multiple skull fractures, which led to his death four days later.

The arrest warrant does not explain why Thaxter was wearing a GPS monitor or what prompted police to track his movements. However, he was released from jail, following his arraignment on the conditions that he wear a GPS monitor and check in with a probation officer.

Georgetowner • May 20, 2015

Four alcoholic beverage licenses will be open for application this summer for restaurants in Georgetown, according to D.C.’s Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration. ABRA will begin accepting applications for the limited and desired licenses 8:30 a.m., Thursday, June 25.

Because of the liquor license cap and restrictions within the Georgetown Moratorium Zone, a maximum of 68 restaurants are permitted to be licensed in the area, according to ABRA, which added, “Establishments exempt from the moratorium include all hotels and those in or to be located in Georgetown Park, Georgetown Park II, Prospect Place Mall, Georgetown Court and Washington Harbour.” Other D.C. neighborhoods with a liquor license moratorium are Adams Morgan, East Dupont and West Dupont and Glover Park.

The four licenses in Georgetown will be available because of license cancellations or expirations. The former licensees are M Cafe on Prospect Street, Puro Cafe on Wisconsin Avenue, Pizzeria Uno on M Street and Zenobia Lounge on 31st Street.

ABRA advised:
Applications for the licenses are available online but must be submitted in person. Any applicant must be the actual owner of the business. Businesses interested in applying can do so beginning at 8:30 a.m., Thursday, June 25 at ABRA’s office, which at the Reeves Municipal Center, 2000 14th St., NW, Suite 400 South, 4th Floor, Washington, D.C.

Completed license applications will be reviewed on a first-come, first-served basis and are subject to the consideration of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board. Members of the public that have questions can contact ABRA by emailing abra@DC.gov or calling 202-442-4423. 

Georgetowner • May 18, 2015

Stories of Art & Money at the Freer Gallery of Art

May 16th, 2015, AT 3:30PM | Event Website

Moderated by NPR’s Scott Simon, this moderated panel discussion focuses on the complex relationship between art, money and patronage. To collect art is a pursuit of passion, but it is also a pursuit of status, wealth and cultural influence. What is art worth? Who determines its value? Find out at the Freer! Free and open to the public.

Address

Freer Gallery of Art, 1050 Independence Ave SW

Jackson Art Center Spring 2015 Open Studios

May 17th, 2015 at 12:00 PM | free | jacksonartcenter@gmail.com | Tel: (202) 342-9778 | Event Website

Jackson Art Center Spring Open Studios, Sunday, May 17, 2015, from 12pm to 5pm.

Jackson artists host their semi-annual event on Sun., May 17 from 12 to 5pm. Visit the studios of 30+ artists while enjoying complimentary refreshments and live music. Free and open to the public.

We will also include a children’s workshop — “Marvelous Murals” — from 3 to 4pm that afternoon, in our outdoor courtyard. If there is bad weather, we’ll postpone the workshop until Sun., May 24 from 3-4 pm.

Address

3050 R Street NW, in Georgetown, across from Montrose Park

Cathedral Choral Society: Great Opera Choruses

May 17th, 2015 at 04:00 PM | $15-75 | lsheridan@cathedral.org | Tel: 202-537-2228 | Event Website

Magnificent opera music, sacred and profane, perfect for a cathedral. Stirring choruses and heartbreaking arias tell great stories of love, revenge, passion, greed, and glory. Selections from Wagner, “Die Meistersinger;” Bellini, “Norma;” Gounod, “Faust;” Verdi, “Nabucco;” Puccini, “Tosca;” Mascagni, “Cavalleria Rusticana;” Puccini, “Manon Lescaut;” and Boito, “Mefistofele.”

J. Reilly Lewis, conductor. Jessica Julin, soprano. Ben Wager, bass.

Address

Washington National Cathedral; 3101 Wisconsin Ave. NW

Life in Luon

May 18th, 2015 at 06:30 PM | lhumphrey@lululemon.com | Event Website

Join us for an evening of sweat, stories and salads. Hear how we live the luon lives we love and how you can create your next #dreamjob! Enjoy a complimentary Barre Class from 6:30 to 7:30PM (please arrive by 6:15PM with mat) and then enjoy a Q&A with a Lululemon employee panel.

For your spot on the guest list, email lhumphrey@lululemon.com

Address

lululemon athletica, 3265 M St. NW

Spanish Conversation Club

May 19th, 2015 at 11:00 AM | Free | julia.strusienski@dc.gov | Tel: 202-727-0232 | Event Website

Looking to grow, revive, or begin to develop your Spanish skills?

Join the Georgetown Neighborhood Library this May for weekly casual conversation hours, led by instructor Luz Verost.

Address

Georgetown Neighborhood Library; 3260 R St. NW

Free Chamber Concert

May 19th, 2015 at 12:00 PM | Free | info@dumbartonhouse.org | Tel: 2023372288 | Event Website

A community of music lovers and musicians, the Friday Morning Music Club, Inc., has promoted classical music in the Washington area for over 120 years. Join us for a delightful Spring concert in the Belle Vue Room of Dumbarton House.

Address

Dumbarton House, 2715 Q Street, NW

“Get Out & Play” Clinic

May 20th, 2015 at 04:30 PM | $0.00 | Tel: 888-747-5361 | Event Website

Giant Food, LLC and Ripken Baseball are again collaborating to host a series of health and fitness clinics throughout the Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. regions. The Second Annual “Get Out and Play” clinics will combine baseball instruction with nutritional programming to create a fun and informative program for youth and their families.

Address

Dwight Moseley Field Complex; 20th and Perry St NE

Robert Devaney •

A kitchen fire at 8 a.m. Saturday, May 2, shut down Good Stuff Eatery at 3291 M St. NW. The hamburger restaurant will be closed for several days. The fire was quickly contained. There were no injuries and minimal damage. During the fire, traffic in the 3100 and 3300 block of M Street NW was diverted.

Owner and chef Spike Mendelsohn tweeted, “#GoodStuffEatery Gtown will be closed for several days due to a small fire. Sorry for any inconvenience.”

Gary Tischler • May 11, 2015

One of the obituaries that almost immediately hit the Internet after the death, at 87, of Gunter Grass, the Nobel Prize-winning German novelist,  focused strongly on his admission in the autobiographical work, “Peeling the Onion,” that he had been a draftee in the Waffen-SS, the Nazi Party’s soldiers—a fact that he had not exactly kept hidden but had not dealt with in his voluminous writings of novels, fiction, stories, autobiography and poems.

The revelation, which came seven years after he had won the Nobel Prize, caused a bit of an uproar among the literati, and Grass himself tried to explain away the omission as an outcrop of his sense of shame.

But in truth, he didn’t need to do even that. For all of his writing life, the subject was always German literary, cultural, societal and moral loss of memory or re-arranging of the same, which afflicted many adult Germans who survived the war. 

In that gigantic genius of an imaginative work, “The Tin Drum,” his main character was a boy who willed himself not to grow physically, who had a gift with playing hypnotically on a tin drum and a scream that broke glass and eardrums. The boy, Oskar Matzerath, grew up in the much fought-over city of Danzig and grew to emotional maturity throughout the war, watching betrayals, bombings, serving in the army, and generally becoming a devout cynic,  a survivor who saw the devastating, ruinous, morally decrepitude and slaughter of the war: Germans winning, then waning and Russians invading.

All of his books—“Cat and Mouse” and “Dog Years,” which, with “The Tin Drum”—formed his Danzig trilogy, as well as later books, were about the effects of the rise of the Nazi state, the scalding devastation and punishment of the war, and the post-war years.  It was a German—and a Catholic at that—dealing with the moral effects of memory, of forgetting willfully or pragmatically things that should be impossible to forget.  German survivors were not crippled by the war, they were, in a way, invigorated and energized to affect a phenomenal rebuilding of the state and country. Today, Germany, pacified and pacificist, and re-unified  is the master of Europe, economically.

In one way or another, Grass, whose works in translation managed to preserve the lyricism, the wicked, metaphor-rich styles of writing,  dealt vividly with what is remembered, and what the memories mean—his characters are not about atrocities, but about moral betrayals and outrages, about sexual excess and sexual betrayal as well, and they are paradoxically rich in humor, especially books like “The Tin Drum,” the surreal “Dog Years,” which is about Hitler’s dog, and “The Flounder,” a hefty almost whimsical work of magical realism and folk tall tale.

Grass was more than a writer. He was the novelist as conscience, questioner, left-wing politician.  He was, as one person described him, a citizen-writer.  Grass said once that writers should always “keep their mouths open.” Only Heinrich Boll matched his gift for unapologetic scrutiny.

He was a teenager when he was in the Waffen-SS and died an old man, spanning war, defeat, resurgence, re-unification, deflecting controversy and creating it.   Writers like Grass are rare these days, when the Great American Novel is a little like a dream few American writers pursue.  You can find his ilk in the great Latin American writers like Marques, Allende and Fuentes, whose writing were part magic, part hidden politics and full-blooded dreams.

I read “The Tin Drum,” when I was college-age and without fully understanding the multi-ethnic—Slav, German, Polish—aspects of it, or being familiar with Danzig. I responded strongly to the book.  The book was oddly perverse and entertaining, full of violence and the kind of Grimm fairy tale—adult version—aspects that were familiar to me.

Grass’s subject—the slippery status of memory in Germany—hit home to me: I was a decade and a half behind Grass in his experience, born in Munich, with a first memory of American tanks driving over the rubble of Munich in 1945, tossing out candy bars, for which, like any hungry kid, I fought. I emigrated to the U.S. in 1952 at age 10, and that’s when I first discovered what happened in Germany, in a book about Nazi war crimes, the Holocaust, Hitler and everything else with pictures.

It’s hard to take in then, and now, still, and Grass met that subject of memory elusively, including his own. My relatives essentially claimed a kind of not-remembering.  I had three uncles which almost sum up the war—an infantry soldier killed in Russia, another an SS major and the third, an intellectual member of the German underground. That, at least, were the stories, I was told. They died so long ago.

We all do these things to move into a different life.  Somewhere, I stopped using my real name of Gerhard and went to Gary, instead. People sometimes get tired of being different, far from home. Grass gave a lot of thought to who he was and when he was:  the result are pages and pages of forever memories and their meaning.

Georgetowner •

Forms of the Journey

April 16, 2015 at 6 p.m. | Free | media@allweartstudio.com | Tel: 202-375-9713 | Event Website

All We Art is pleased to announce the exhibition, “Forms of a Journey,” featuring artists Félix Ángel, Marta Luz Gutierrez and Jesús Matheus.

Public reception will take place on Thursday, April 16, 2015 from 6 to 9 p.m. (Please RSVP to media@artseedc.com). The three artists share their work as part of their experience as individuals committed with creation, as well as the journey that started several decades ago when they migrated to the United States.

Address
1666 33rd St NW

2015 Spring Art Walk

April 17, 2015 at 6 p.m. | Free | chris@neptunefineart.com | Tel: 202-338-0353 | Event Website

The Georgetown Galleries on Book Hill invite you to our Spring Art Walk: Friday, April 17th, 2015 from 6 – 8 pm. Nine galleries will host an evening stroll and launch their fine art exhibitions in the most beautiful part of Washington, D.C. Add to your collection and please join us for a night of art, fun, and refreshments.

Address
1662 33rd Street NW

The Sum Total of Our Memory: Facing Alzheimer’s Together

April 17, 2015 AT 1 p.m. | $11 | Tel: 703-960-1970 | Event Website

When Barbara Klutinis’ husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s she had no idea how she was going to get through the ordeal ahead of her. After joining a support group and hearing the stories of others going through the same thing, Klutinis realized she was not alone. Inspired by the experience, she decided to make a documentary about the lives of couples suffering from the disease.

Address
Angelika Film Center
2911 District Ave.
Fairfax, VA 22031

Opening Reception: Layered Memories: The In-between paintings by Karen Silve

April 17, 2015 at 6 p.m. | Free | gallery@callowayart.com | Tel: 202-965-4601 | Event Website

After spending the summer in the South of France, Karen Silve reflects on the differences between older and new memories. Her seductive, painterly abstractions reveal a unique expression of harmonious colors: bright and joyous, warm and sensual, cool and luscious. On view April 17 – May 23, 2015.

Address
Susan Calloway Fine Arts
1643 Wisconsin Ave NW
Washington, DC 20007

Global Citizen Earth Day Rally

April 18, 2015 at 11 a.m. | Free | Event Website

The Global Citizen Earth Day Rally will take place from 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. on the National Mall. The event features a free concert with performances by My Morning Jacket, Train, Fall Out Boy, Mary J. Blige, Usher and No Doubt. It is hosted by Will.i.am and Soledad O’Brien. Speakers throughout the day will include Don Cheadle, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim.

Posey Quilt Exhibition

April 18, 2015 at 11 a.m | $5 | info@dumbartonhouse.org | Tel: 202-337-2288 | [Event Website] (http://dumbartonhouse.org/archives/2990)

2015 from April to Labor Day, Dumbarton House will display the “Posey Quilt,” an early 19th century American pieced quilt made of silk dress fabrics from a number of early American women and Posey family members. The exhibition will highlight the eight women believed to have owned the dresses used in the quilt, as well as the Posey family and its long tradition of passing the quilt down from mother to oldest daughter.

Address
Dumbarton House, 2715 Q Street, N.W.

“Partners in Crime” presented by FilmFest DC and TECRO

April 18, 2015 at 5 p.m. | $13 | Tel: 202-234-3456 | [Event Website](http://www.filmfestdc.org/filmView.cfm?passID=59)

The Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States will join FilmFest DC in presenting Partners in Crime. The screenings will be held both on Saturday, April 18, at 5:00 p.m. and on Sunday, April 19, at 3:00 p.m. at the Landmark E Street Cinema.

Partners in Crime is a 2014 Taiwanese thriller directed by Jung-chi Chang following his debut feature, Touch of the Light (Taiwan’s foreign-language Oscar entry in 2012).

Address
555 11th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20004

Cantate Chambers Singers featuring HU’s Afro Blue: A Concert Meditation on Civil Rights in America

April 19, 2015 at 5 p.m. | $35-45, $15 with student ID, Ages 18 and under free | exec@cantate.org | Tel: 301-986-1799 | [Event Website](http://cantate.org)

Closing its adventurous 30th anniversary season, Cantate Chamber Singers hosts jazz a cappella virtuosos Afro Blue in a concert tribute to the rich musical heritage of the Civil Rights Movement. Featuring classic spirituals, jazz, and the timely world premiere of Rise by Judah Adashi, with text by Tameka Cage Conley. With a special appearance by journalist Gwen Ifill. Tickets available at www.cantate.org, 301-986-1799, or at the door.

Address
Metropolitan A.M.E. Church
1518 M Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005

Caitlin Franz •

Melvin Gresham was promoted to commander of the Second District on April 6. He formerly served as a captain in also in the Second District under Commander Michael Reese.

Gresham has previously served in the Third, Fourth, Fifth and Seventh Patrol Districts, as well as the Narcotics Branch and the Special Operations Divisions.

He joined the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department in October 1984. Commander Gresham is originally from Prince George County, Maryland and attended the University of Maryland’s University College, where he majored in Criminal Justice.

“I am an advocate of community policing and believe that the police should know the citizens in the community that they serve,” Gresham said. “It is the only way for the police to become part of the fabric of the community.”

The Second District neighborhoods include Chevy Chase, Cleveland Park, Foggy Bottom, Georgetown, Palisades and Spring Valley. Several embassies are also locating in this region.

While total violent crime has decreased in the last year, Commander Gresham faces increased levels of other crime, including burglary and theft as he begins his new role.

“I believe that the Georgetown area will continue to be a very vibrant community,” he said.  “The police have to work with the community in problem solving and working together to make the community safer. I have always believed that the citizens are the eyes and ears of law enforcement.”

Robert Devaney •

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton visited the home of Elizabeth Frawley Bagley on 29th Street in Georgetown for an afternoon fund-raising luncheon April 30.

Previously in New York City for three receptions, Clinton visited the homes of Milly and Arne Glimcher, of Lisa Perry and of Doug Teitelbaum, according to the New York Times.

Bagley, a former ambassador, and her late husband Smith Bagley have supported both Bill and Hillary Clinton and their national campaigns. The Bagleys are known to have given more than $1 million to the Clinton Foundation, the Times reported.

Clinton also paid a visit to Frank White Jr., who was a member of Barack Obama’s 2008 national finance committee.

The ticket price for the Clinton fundraising receptions is $2,700. The money raised is to used for the Democratic primary campaign.