Latest News

Robert Devaney • January 16, 2013

The Georgetowner’s Holiday Benefit and Bazaar, held at the George Town Club, Nov. 29, attracted a great crowd and garnered $5,574.50 for the Georgetown Senior Center, said Georgetowner publisher Sonya Bernhardt, who added that the Georgetown Media Group has also pledged $7,000 in in-kind donations for the center. The group meets three times a week at St. John’s parish hall on O Street.

Gary Tischler •

You might be hearing media chatter around town that the upcoming second-term inauguration of President Barack Obama is not as much excitement this time around, that there’s very little scuttlebutt surrounding the event on Monday, that it’s, well, no big deal.

For sure, this inauguration will not have any of the historic drama and precedent of Pres. Obama’s first inauguration four years ago when he became the first African American to be inaugurated as President of the United States and drew the largest crowds in the history of such events in Washington, D.C.

Don’t believe that blasé is king this time around. In this town, and in our country, and perhaps the world, the event itself has always been a big deal, a marker, an occasion full of certain kinds of majestic traditions and rituals, omens and portents, comings and goings, beginnings, endings and continuations, invocations and marching bands, cheers and cheerleaders. People always come by the thousands and people always remember.

If you have lived in Washington for any length of time, the presidential inauguration becomes a personal kind of occasion and memory, depending on the extent of your participation. There will be parades. There will be inaugural balls. There will be speeches and swearing in and perhaps even some swearing.

We live in an information age where we seem to know an awful lot about historic events, as if we’d been there and known the presidents personally—these days Ronald Reagan’s joke that “I knew Thomas Jefferson. He was a friend of mine,” seems not just a reference to an old campaign anecdote, but a state of mind.

For certain, the most romantic, most resonant, echoing imagery for almost any presidential inauguration was the one surrounding John F. Kennedy. The occasion—full of snow and cold and wintry weather and youthful optimism—spoke to just about everything in our political history and our feelings about our democracy. You could be forgiven if you think you remember just how cold it was, or still hear the stories of Kennedy’s resounding challenge to American citizens to “ask not what your country can do for you”, and the image of JFK and the older, serious Eisenhower riding together, top-hatted in the cold air. You think you remember the pre-eminent shaman poet of our times, Robert Frost, wintry hair, wintry voice, trying to remember the poem he wrote for the occasion, and you remember Jackie Kennedy, the first lady, fulfilling the promise of youthful, graceful, just plain high class beauty that was almost royal.

The longer I live in Washington, the more I can sometimes talk myself into thinking I was here for that cold January day in 1961. Watching Daniel Day Lewis in “Lincoln” makes me think I actually heard Lincoln’s second inauguration speech line that began “With malice toward none and charity toward all”. He opened his second term near the end of the war not far in time from his assassination.

These things matter, and not just if the president catches a cold. Until inaugurations were televised, people who did not attend, learned about them only through reportage. Now we know everything there is to know, but perhaps not as much as we should.
Let me be honest—I have never attended an inaugural ball, but I remember how they looked, the glow, the dresses, occasions where even presidents not known for their romantic images can look endearing. Here, we got to see that Richard loved Pat, and George loved Laura and Nancy was crazy about Ron, and Barack and Michelle locked eyes to “At Last”. That music, that dance, those balls are part of inaugural lore. It’s where we first saw Nancy Reagan’s utterly genuine and adoring look.

I remember the cheers at the news of the release of the hostages when Reagan took the oath, remember the jeers as crowds noted the helicopter departure of George W. Bush. I remember turning around near a press section in front of the podium last inauguration and seeing those multitudes stretching energetically to the Washington Monument.

That was a big deal.

This will be too, differently, smaller, perhaps, but all the same a big deal, because all the same history is present, on this Monday, the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., it’s present with this man who gets to say again, “I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear …”
[gallery ids="101120,139550" nav="thumbs"]

Nico Dodd • January 15, 2013

Randolph J. Lokke of Arlington, Va., died at the age of 62 Dec. 25, 2012. A funeral mass was offered Jan. 7 at the Cathedral of St. Thomas More in Arlington, Va. He was buried at National Memorial Park in Falls Church, Va.

Lokke, known simply as “Randy” to most people who knew him, was a local legend. He was a quiet neighborhood curiosity who seemed always to be around. According to Zeff Yousef, athletic director at Georgetown Visitation, Randy was “part of the furniture of Georgetown.” His ubiquity at high school sporting events spawned multiple Facebook groups and curiosity of whereabouts, including “Is Randy Random?” Randy was known for riding his bicycle everywhere he went and often had plastic bags on the handlebars. In Georgetown, Randy was often seen at Saxby’s coffee, where he would get tea. Randy was a fixture at sports games at Gonzaga College High School, Georgetown Visitation Prep and high schools around Washington, D.C.

Approximately 100 people attended the funeral at St. Thomas More’s, where Randy was a parishioner since his family moved to the area. There was no eulogy at the service. A reception at the church followed the burial. One of Randy’s brothers, Ken Lokke, says that Randy was present at many different Catholic Youth Organization activities.

According to Ken Lokke, he and Randy were two of eight children, and their family moved to Arlington in 1958. Their mother insisted that Randy attend regular school despite being mentally challenged. In a tribute, one of Randy’s sisters, Michele Quintana, wrote that Randy would likely be diagnosed with autism today. Randy Lokke graduated from Wakefield High School and worked at Washington Hospital Center sterilizing surgical tools for operating rooms. One person attending the funeral said that Lokke logged approximately 1,500 volunteer hours per year at the Washington, D.C., VA Medical Center for the past 13 years. According to Ken Lokke, Randy’s volunteer job at the VA Medical Center was as a transporter helping people in wheelchairs.

Randy was “very independent,” said his brother Ken, who added that Randy lived in a basement apartment by himself in Arlington. Ken Lokke said that Randy was never married and never had any children. He believes Randy died of a heart attack. Randy was hospitalized for the second time for congestive heart failure over this past Thanksgiving.

Mac Kimmitt, who worked at the Italian Store in Arlington on Lee Highway from 2005 to 2010, said that Randy would often come into the store and ask for three or four slices of cheddar cheese. Kimmitt also said Randy would spend time at the nearby Starbucks.

Lokke often watched sports games at Georgetown Visitation. Yousef said that when he started at Visitation in 2000, “Randy was already sort of a legend.” He would often watch Visitation soccer games from the fence along 35th Street. “Everyone knew who he was,” said Yousef. “Over the last six or seven years, you wouldn’t see him as much.”

Steve Turner, head basketball coach at Gonzaga, said that he first remembers seeing Lokke around 1995. “He was a fixture at big WCAC games,” he said. “It was amazing how he got to all those games on his bike.”

Molly Quigley of the Clyde’s Restaurant Group said that when she worked at the Tombs as a student, Lokke would often be in the restaurant listening to conversations, and he could recall everything later. “One time, he asked me how I did on a paper I had been talking about with my friends,” Quigley said. [gallery ids="101118,139530" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

Richard Nixon was never easy to dismiss, forget, defeat, or ignore even unto death.

For a brief time last week, there was a flurry of articles, reports and buzz in what passes for our muddled media mass today—news stories in newspapers, passing comments on the network news, buzz, buzz, buzz on the internet. Richard Nixon was, for a short time, back in the news, because some 400 of his friends, staffers, family members, loyalists and prominences during his not-quite completed two terms of office as President of the United States gathered to celebrate what would have been his 100th birthday.

Henry Kissinger was there, Tricia and Julie, the daughters were there, at the Mayflower, were, ironically during this time of the upcoming inauguration, Nixon balls were held in the same venerable space. We read the reports in various places, including the Washington Post, where the occasion made the Reliable Source, not the front page. Pat Buchanan, the pugnacious Nixon speech writer famous in later life for outrageous to the right of Nixon punditry, was the most tenacious defender of Nixon and his legacy and Kissinger, the man most elevated to prominence by Nixon as his National Security Adviser and Secretary of State back in the day, extolled his foreign policy greatness, not the least of which was Nixon opening China to the U.S. and vice versa, because, as the saying went then, “only Nixon could go to China.” This was after all still a country led by Mao Tse Tung back then.

Nixon’s brother showed up to give a victory sign, his daughters praised their dad, and Buchanan talked about the “old jackal pack” who brought Nixon down. Somewhere, Woodward and Bernstein were talking about Watergate and the Nixon tapes, which Woodward once called the “gift that keeps on giving.”

Nixon, famously, infamously, of course was the only president of the United States to resign his office to avoid impeachment a result of the umbrella scandal called Watergate, which included dirty tricks, a burglary of the DNC offices in the Watergate, a coverup, firings, resignations, jail time for some, and the wholesale destruction of careers. Forever after, scandals would have a gate tied to their names as in Irangate, Whitewater gate, and so on. All this, after Nixon, a former U.S. Congressman, Senator and two-term vice president under President Dwight Eisenhower, made a remarkable political comeback, winning one of the closest elections ever by defeating Hubert Humphrey in 1968, then again by scoring the biggest landslide win in the history of presidential elections over George McGovern in 1972. Talk about rescuing defeat from the jaws of victory.

It would be easy to dwell on “Tricky Dick”, “Watergate”, the extension and escalation of the Viet Nam war by way of ending it, the “you won’t have Nixon to kick around any more” debacle in California, the bad diet (ketchup and cottage cheese), the betrayals, the denials and cover-ups, the Checkers Speech, to focus on that Nixon the press loved to hate—and the feeling was mutual.

But I’m more inclined to take the late Tom Wicker’s view in his more or less biography “One of Us”. Nixon is endlessly fascinating—like LBJ and not like LBJ—for his complexities, for his persona and his conflicting achievements. But if we are truthful, most of us—males—don’t look in the mirror and see JFK, but we might recognize aspects of Nixon’s flawed face instantly. His small beginnings in a small town in California, his love of his mother, being a manager, not an athlete, his outsized use of profanity as evidenced on the tapes, that strange awkwardness he carried around with him, even unto the presidency, were traits shared by many. He had no flash, no flair, no charisma except the kind of scowl that predicts bad weather.

And yet, no man was better prepared for the presidency, better ready to think in visionary terms—he created the EPA and his domestic and economic policies tended to benefit the middle class, not the rich. He was no ideologue (his anti-communism may have been fervent but it had its expedient political uses), no right wing fundamentalist, no Barry Goldwater, no Tea Party guy, who probably would have found him way too liberal for their give-no-quarter tastes.

Here was a man who endured a kind of paternal dis-respect from Ike, who saw fit to use his dog and his wife’s coat to stave off being dumped from the GOP ticket, who had to say as president that “I am not a crook”, who rashly ran for governor of California after enduring a heart-breaking, nail-biting defeat at the hands of JFK and yet, there he was, in 1968 and in 1972, winning the presidency.

He could have—given some of the more questionable aspects of vote counting in Illinois and Texas in the 1960 election—asked for a recount, so close was that election. He chose not to because such a challenge might have torn the country apart.

He showed courage often—getting into Chairman Kruschev’s face, enduring the mobs who rioted in Venezuela on his visit there. He was an awkward man, that’s easy to see, but he became, in the end, a grandee in one of those Wall Street law firms that practically says Wasp on its letterhead. He could be maudlin and sentimental, always considered cheap emotions by the intelligentsia of a better class but he had his loyalists and loyalties.

If you throw out Watergate, he might be counted as one of our more effective presidents—hard to say since you can’t throw out Watergate or Nixon. It’s not the only questionable thing he’s associated with, only the worst one.

For many of us, he remains the difficult ghost in the machine that we call democracy, and, like the man said, one of us. He does not speak to our better angels, but rather to our more complicated memories.

Robert Devaney • January 14, 2013

Hamid Karzai, President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, will talk about the future of Afghan-U.S. Relations when he visits Georgetown University for the third time on Jan. 11, the university reported.
Karzai, who first came to the Georgetown University in 2002 for the Afghanistan America Summit on Recovery and Reconstruction, returned in 2006 to receive an honorary degree, according to the university. “During this year’s visit, Karzai’s evening talk will be “Afghanistan Beyond 2014: A Perspective on Afghan-U.S. Relations.” He will speak at 5:30 p.m. at Gaston Hall.
President Barack Obama will host Karzai and his delegation at the White House for “bilateral meetings” Friday before the speech at Georgetown, the White House announced. “President Obama looks forward to welcoming the Afghan delegation to Washington, and discussing our continued transition in Afghanistan, and our shared vision of an enduring partnership between the United States and Afghanistan,” the White House statement said.

Robert Devaney • January 11, 2013

Like a Christmas miracle, the National Park Service has put on hold the termination of its lease with Jack’s Boathouse, the popular canoe and kayak renting facility on the Potomac River in the shadow of Key Bridge.

“In the last 24 hours, I have received hundreds of emails from citizens concerned with the future of Jack’s Boathouse,” said National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis in a statement on Christmas Eve, according to the Washington Post. The Park Service director added that he had “directed the staff at the park and the Regional Office to withhold further action on the lease termination until I have conducted a thorough review and determined the best course of action.”

A Dec. 18 letter from the National Park Service to Paul Simkin, owner of Jack’s Canoes & Kayaks, LLC, informed him that his business had until the end of January to vacate the property.

The news that Jack’s Boathouse would be closed — first reported by the Georgetowner — launched a barrage of comments on various news websites as well as on Jack’s Boathouse Facebook page and a petition page for Jack’s on Change.org

Owner Paul Simkin found the comments “heartening” and responded in kind: “We are beyond overjoyed. While there is much work still to be done to ensure a future at the boathouse, we are hoping beyond hope that we will be able to be there for our customers and that our great staff will be able to hold on to their jobs. We can’t even begin to thank everyone for their support. We don’t know where this is going to go yet, but we do know that we couldn’t be this far without your love. This is an extraordinarily Merry Christmas for the entire Jack’s family, and we hope to see you on the water this summer.”

Despite the good will toward Jack’s and the pause by the Park Service on its decision to end its lease with Jack’s, Simkin remains uncertain about the boathouse’s future. “At a Dec. 26 meeting with the Park Service, I was trying to find a win-win situation,” he said. “Let’s just say it was frustrating and less than helpful.”

Reminded by Park Service officials that they were only interested in following the law, Simkin was also told, he said, that “the National Park Service director will decide when the director decides.”

The NPS says that it wants a boathouse at the 3500 K Street location but has not said what that will be. After the completion of Georgetown Waterfront Park, the Park Service turned its attention to the shoreline near Key Bridge and west along the shoreline of the Potomac River. It has held meetings for a study to examine “the feasibility of implementing a non- motorized boathouse zone.”

According to the NPS, “the project area includes the waterfront land from immediately upstream of the Georgetown Waterfront Park at 34th Street, to approximately 1,200 feet upstream of Key Bridge, including federal properties north of Water Street / K Street. The purpose of this study is to identify speci?c ways NPS can enhance access to the river for user groups and complement the riverside experiences provided by the Georgetown Waterfront Park, part of Rock Creek Park, and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park.”

The fear for some — including Simkin — is that Jack’s Boathouse will not be part of the Park Service’s vision for an enhanced Georgetown shoreline.

Despite remaining unsure of his business’s situation, Simkin praised Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans, whose 2010 wedding reception was at the boathouse. “He has been a guardian angel to us,” Simkin said. “He has made all the difference in the world, reaching out to the mayor and the Park Service and calling during Christmas. The whole staff is incredibly touched by his commitment to Jack’s.”

Simkin said that he has grown Jack’s seasonal customer base from 4,000 four years ago to 72,000 in 2012. The boathouse was opened in 1945 by Jack Baxter, a former D.C. police officer. It now employs 27 persons, mostly college students.

Robert Devaney •

Agreeing with residents who live in the Georgetown Park condominiums, Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2E voted at its Jan. 2 monthly meeting to oppose the construction of a bowling alley in the former Shops at Georgetown Park if an enforceable agreement on noise is not made.

The request by new tenant, Pinstripes, a Illinois-based Italian bistro with bowling and bocce as well as banquet space, caught flak from condo residents, who fear more noise from the proposed bowling alley. Residents also voiced their frustration with living above an ongoing construction zone. One condo dweller, a veteran from Operation Enduring Freedom, told the crowd that living there was “hell” and that it was “worse than sleeping in Afghanistan.”

A representative from Vornado Realty, owner of the huge retail space at 3222 M Street, NW, was on hand to talk about Pinstripes and other new tenants — including T.J. Maxx and Home Goods. Pinstripes’s founder and CEO Dale Schwartz was also at the meeting to address the ANC about the quality and upscale nature of his food operation and talk to the crowd in the hall outside the meeting.

It came down to ANC chair Ron Lewis to offer a resolution that would oppose the bowling alley before the Board of Zoning Adjustment at its Jan. 15 meeting — if the condominium association and Pinstripes do not strike an agreement on vibration and noise control with an “enforceable mechanism for securing that assurance.” The ANC also opposed an outdoor patio, also proposed by Pinstripes.

Robert Devaney •

Beginning Jan. 3, the District Department of Transportation is scheduled to conduct repairs and bridge preservation activities on the Pennsylvania Avenue Bridge over Rock Creek Parkway, according to a DDOT traffic advisory. The off-peak lane closures on the bridge which leads to the western end of Pennsylvania Avenue in Georgetown should last only about six weeks.

The work will be conducted daily, 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., DDOT said, and the project is expected to be completed on or before Feb. 15. “The work will require closing one lane of westbound traffic over the bridge during off-peak hours. The lane closures are temporary and will not be installed until the completion of the morning rush hour and will be removed before the start of the evening rush hour.”

Messages boards are in place to alert the traveling public to these closures, DDOT added. Motorists in this corridor can expect some delays but DDOT does not anticipate the lane closures will significantly impact the flow of traffic.

Georgetowner • January 3, 2013

The Hamilton Crowne Plaza Hotel on 14th & K Street, NW, unveiled its latest renovations Dec. 12 with a Roaring ’20s party in honor of the era when the hotel was built. Guests enjoyed prohibition-era cocktails while listening to a jazz band trio in the newly refurbished lobby. New executive chef Juan Natal prepared exquisite hors d’oeuvres. Mae West and W.C. Fields impersonators mingled with guests to put them in the spirit of the 1920s. Interstate Hotels & Resorts CEO Jim Abrahamson was joined by Linda Roth Conte (left) and Kate Michael aka K Street Kate (right).