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Riena Santa • August 10, 2012

The beloved C&O Canal boat, the Georgetown, is leaving us. The 19th-century style, mule-pulled, 90-foot cargo boat sits on blocks on the canal between 33rd and Thomas Jefferson Streets. Captivating visitors for a ride along the C&O Canal for decades, the boat has deteriorated and is deemed unsafe for passengers.

For years, the National Park Service had set up tours for visitors. Park rangers and volunteers would wear period clothing and describe what life was like for the families that lived and worked on the canal. The Georgetown boat will be removed and destroyed, and some of its neighbors are not happy with the decision. Despite a signed petition delivered to the NPS, there have been no public protests — and a date for any farewell parties have not been reported yet.

John Noel, chief of division of partnerships, the C&O Canal National Historical Park, had been fighting to keep the boat around. “The National Park Service and I have looked at all our options, whether it was better to repair the boat or to somehow save it,” Noel said. “Due to the budget crisis, unfortunately we cannot repair it.”

Noel also said that because of how bad the boat is deteriorating, there would be no way to transport it anywhere without it being destroyed. “We would have liked to have transported to a museum in Williamsport, Md., for installation as an exhibit, but it wouldn’t make the trip,” he said. “We don’t exactly have a date set when it’ll be taken out, but we are expecting within the next month or so.”

Fortunately, NPS plans to launch a boat program where a smaller recreational battery-powered boat will make the Georgetown tours accessible to visitors. Still, Noel said, it is “not the same effect as with the current Georgetown cargo boat, but still very effective.”

According to Noel and the NPS website, fees will stay the same unless further notice. The current summer boat tour hours are Wednesday through Sunday at 11:00 a.m., 1:30 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. Note: on 4th of July only 1-1/2 hour rides at 11am and 2pm will be offered. Prices range from $8 for adults (ages 15-61), $6 for seniors (ages 62 and over), and $5.00 for children (ages 4-14). Children, aged three and under, ride free.

For further information, please call 301-767-3714, or visit the NPS website [gallery ids="100864,127124" nav="thumbs"]

Robert Devaney •

It’s official in our neighborhood: Summer has begun and Volta Park Day is when it starts. June 10 at 92 degrees was the hottest day since August 10. The day provided family fun, especially for the little ones: soda, hamburgers, hot dogs, cupcakes, snow cones, balloon slide, water dunk, sprinklers, band and flea market — not to mention the tennis match and softball game for the older kids. The Volta Park pool opens its full summer schedule on June 19: Tuesday through Thursday, 1 to 8 p.m., public; Saturday and Sunday, noon to 6 p.m.; closed Monday.

The day is put on by the Friends of Volta Park, founded by John Richardson in 1995, a homegrown non-profit which works with the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation to maintain and improve Volta Park’s grounds and gardens. The effort has many local benefactors — Clyde’s Restaurant Group, Georgetown University, Nancy Taylor Bubes of Washington Fine Properties, Michael Rankin of TTR Sotheby’s, Long and Foster, Exxon of Georgetown, Colonial Parking and John Richardson Company — as well as even more neighborhood contributors. [gallery ids="100839,126166,126125,126160,126156,126152,126133,126140,126145" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

Nancy Pelosi looked like she had just arrived in Washington like a very well turned-out congressional freshman, full of energy, trailing pragmatic hope and ready to fight.

Instead, she was celebrating 25 years of service as the representative from San Francisco for California’s 8th congressional district in a one-on-one interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow at the historic Sewall-Belmont House and Museum on Capitol Hill June 8.

It was a bright-eyed, blue-skied Friday, around-lunch time event. Despite the fact that the media was calling the week a disastrous one for the Obama administration and Democrats in general, Pelosi, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, was upbeat, and even held out hope that the Dems could regain the House — and thereby, it’s presumed, return her to the speakership.

Still, the Democrats had lost the recall challenge to the Governor of Wisconsin, which was being widely being interpreted as a severe political blow to Democratic election fortunes everywhere, and an even more hurtful blow to unions throughout the country.

But under a tent at the Sewall-Belmont House and Museum, which co-sponsored the event with the National Women’s History Museum, the atmosphere was electric and upbeat with an audience of mostly women—including some current and former congresswomen—and the media in attendance.

Maddow, a classy star in the national firmament of political commentators left and right, interviewed with an obvious dose of deference and admiration. Given that this was Pelosi’s celebration that tack was probably appropriate. Maddow’s presence—a television star, oh my—seemed to thrill the audience almost as Pelosi’s star turn.

Almost. Pelosi couldn’t have been in a better place to celebrate her own considerable achievements, most notably that for a brief but impactful time she was the first female Speaker of the House. The co-sponsors were organizations that celebrated the achievements of women not only in politics but through the course of American history. The Sewall-Belmont House, built at the turn of the 19th century, at what is now 2nd Street and Constitution Avenue, N.E., is a historic beacon and a vaunted beehive of the historic process of the fight for women’s rights when the National Woman’s Party purchased the home and made it its headquarters.

So, Pelosi and Maddow did their back-and-forth in two different contexts—the short term of the alarm—for Democrats—raised by events in Wisconsin, and the long term of history, looking back and moving forward.

“It was important, but maybe not so surprising,” Pelosi said about the recall results. “What it showed was the current advantage in money they [Republicans] have, and just how damaging that Supreme Court decision which led to super PACs was.”

“I have to tell you,” she said. “I have a hard time believing that I’ve been here 25 years,” she said. “I can’t believe so much time has passed. Honestly, I did not set out to become a lifer, and I’m still not. But the work is not yet done.”

Pelosi came to Congress in the 1980s, at a time when AIDS was ravaging the country’s gay community, but the country was not paying much attention, especially the Republican administration of Ronald Reagan. Reagan, it should be recalled, publically mourned the death of his Hollywood friend Rock Hudson, without ever once mentioning that Hudson had died of AIDS.

“To my mind, that was the first and most important thing I was going to deal with when I got here, and there was tremendous ignorance and indifference out there about AIDS,” she said. “I am proud of raising awareness, and leading the effort to provide the first American contribution to the Global Fund to fight AIDS.”

Pelosi became speaker after the mid-term elections of 2006, when the Republicans lost both the House and the Senate during President George W. Bush’s second term, and lost that position when the Republicans retook control of the House in January 2011.

“So, what have we accomplished in that time,” Pelosi was asked. “We passed a Health Care Bill, we, we’ve increased the minimum wage, the Stimulus Bill, TARP, Wall Street Reform, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, we’ve created jobs.”

Pelosi sounded the alarm on the GOP money advantage, about the creation of a plutocracy, where “the checkbooks of a few can determine political outcomes, where the arena is defined by others for others.”

“The money has poisoned the debate,” she said. “It leads to a lack of disclosure, voter suppression. If there is full disclosure, then we can win.”

She recalled Bush’s plans to privatize Social Security. “He seemed very confident when he talked about it. I thought, ‘That’s not going to happen,’ and we did not let it happen.”

“In terms of the economy, there’s a lot that remains to be done,” she said. “People do not realize that jobs were created, and equally important, jobs were saved. But it’s hard to make that message stick, that kind of invisible thing—think of how much worse things could have been. People want things to be better.”

That’s politics. The occasion itself—her endurance, her strengths, her many historic firsts, that’s history.

“I am honored to be here, in this place,” she said. “All of us can look across the street, see the Senate and House office buildings, the Capitol and know where we are. But right here, in this house, where so many women fought so many battles, being here is an honor.” [gallery ids="100842,126505,126493,126501" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

A 91-year-old writer of fantasy, science fiction and horror stories and books died this week, and everyone stood up and notice. Ray Bradbury disdained the internet, cellphones, even though in one way or another, his works of fiction had predicted just about every modern technological miracle we have. He was a self-described dreamer.

In his passing, it was as if a whole world of fans and like-minded dreamers suddenly woke up from a dream of not remembering him and their voices were heard all over the world—from President Barack Obama and movie producer-director Steven Spielberg to perhaps the most prolific author of fantasy and horror novels Stephen King. All of them sang sad songs of praise. He was a giant in our midst who did not roar but accumulated memories of the future and fond recollections of the past for us all of his life.

On that same internet, the bloggers and insipient, if not insipid, comment makers buzzed with his name. While my search was not thorough, I’d bet few individuals had anything bad to say about him. Snarks, of course, are out there somewhere, but who cares.

I read Bradbury’s short stories when I was in high school when I lived in a small town in Ohio that was equal parts of his “Dandelion Wine” and “Something Wicked This Way Comes.” Bradbury’s writings—short stories, movie scripts, novels, essays, and scribbling beyond category —endure, and his death reminds us of how well placed and hidden they were in our psyches and communal literary, bookish memory.

My friend recently used “Fahrenheit 451” as a teaching tool for her middle school ESL students, and surprisingly, got a burst of interests from students from Ethiopia, El Salvador, Nigeria and Asia that proved Bradbury a true prophet. He was born in 1920 and lived a life that saw so many changes—many of which he foresaw in his stories—it would make most people dizzy with the recklessness of the results.

He wrote “The Martian Chronicles,” a strung-together group of tales about the last civilizations on Mars. It did not involve John Carter, although, predictably, Bradbury loved Edgar Rice Burroughs. He wrote the aforementioned “Fahrenheit 451,” which envisioned a society where firefighters, instead of putting out fires, started them to burn books and book collections. This was made into a fine, if critically mixed, film directed by Frenchman Francois Truffaut, starring Oscar Werner and Julie Christie, and left us with the indelible image of men and women turning themselves into living books, committing the great works of literature to memory in a forest where it seems it’s always snowing.

Bradbury was characterized as a science fiction writer. In truth, he saw himself as — and was— a writer of fantasy stories. In point of further fact, he was much better than that: he was a writer of great and lasting literature, by my way of thinking, who just happened never to have won a Nobel Prize for Literature. He committed the sin of being both popular and unforgettable. Imagine such an outpouring of comments and feeling of loss as well as a need to celebrate after the passing of the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, one of the less obscure Nobel literature prize winners.

In front of me, I have an old book, “The Stories of Ray Bradbury,” in which the man himself wrote a lengthy introduction called “Drunk and in Charge of a Bicycle.” The collection is by no means complete, but it has almost all of the highlights— 840 pages worth —including “The Night,” which begins thus: “You are a child in a small town. You are, to be exact, eight years old and it is growing late at night.” The book ends with “The End of the Beginning,” an apocalyptic tale that ends thus:

“He moved the lawn mower. The grass showering up fell softly around him; he relished and savored it and felt that he was all mankind bathing at last in the fresh waters of the fountain of youth.

“Thus bathed he remembered the song again about the wheels and the faith and the grace of God being way up there in the middle of the sky where that single star, among a million motionless stars, dared to move and keep on moving.

“Then he finished cutting the grass.”

If you suspect touches of Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe—the elder, so to speak—or Dickens in this, you would be right. One of the joys of Bradbury is the joys he had in books and writers. He was not competitive, but generous and would weave Wolfe, for instance, into a story about the writer who should be on a space flight to Mars because he came so close to getting every single thing into his novels, or how a group of wealthy Hemingway fans got together and built a time machine, which would allow Hemingway to die a Hemingway death, instead of that horrifying suicide by shotgun.

Bradbury appeared to have loved the Irish because he wrote funny, out-loud-laughing stories about them, none more so than “The Terrible Conflagration up at the Place”. He wrote the screenplay for the John Huston-directed movie version of “Moby Dick,” which had the unlikely castings of Gregory Peck as Ahab and Orson Welles as Father Marple. He wrote “I Sing the Body Electric.”

He wrote futuristic books that predicted well because he understood the past—and he envisioned a horrifying T-Rex long before Michael Crichton did. He was born in Waukegan, Illinois, which resonates Midwest summer like fireflies. He predicted automatic teller machines (ATMs) and ended up hating them when they materialized, not from his mind, but at a bank. His tales, novels and stories turned up on movie screens, on television, and on the dreaded internet. He was and remains everywhere. The credit line: 27 novels, 600 short stories, eight million copies of his works in print and all over the . . . internet.

Bradbury said: “I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries. And of course: books. Word.

In 1932, still a kid of sorts, he went to a carnival and met a carny entertainer named Mr. Electrico who touched him with an electrified sword and told him “Live Forever!” At that point, Bradbury became a writer—and a magician, which he wanted to be. Bradbury is, of course, both writer and magician. I found this on the internet.
“Live Forever!” And he did, and he has and he is.

Gary Tischler •

The District of Columbia Government is beginning to resemble a three-legged or four-legged man these days.

Another shoe dropped this week in a year when the sound of shoes dropping is beginning to sound like a hail-storm.

D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown, once considered a future mayor by many political observers for his considerable political skills and popularity, was charged with bank fraud June 6 after a lengthy federal investigation of his 2008 campaign. Brown was charged with bank fraud after prosecutors said he had falsified records while applying for a home loan and to buy a powerboat. Brown, in a written statement, resigned from his post in the wake of the charges the same day.

All of this was after a hectic day, June 5, when Brown was busy making changes to committee assignments, sparking rumors of his resignation, which he insisted were not true. On Tuesday, Brown said he would not resign. On Wednesday, he did.

The charges—Brown is expected to be at a plea hearing Friday—and the resignation sent shock waves through not only the city but the council itself, still recovering from indictments and guilty pleas by two of Mayor Vincent Gray’s campaign aides and the conviction of Ward 5 Councilman Harry Thomas on charges of using his campaign donations for private purchases. A special council meeting, led by Ward 3 Council Member Mary Cheh will be held June 13 to determine who will be named interim council chairman, to be chosen from the ranks of the councils at-large members.

That would be Michael Brown, David Catania, Phil Mendelson and Vincent Orange.

The city still awaits the possible of further indictments, admissions and/or charges in the ongoing and continuing investigation of Gray’s campaign, which might further muddy the political waters and reputation of the District of Columbia.

Both Thomas and Brown, when they arrived on the council, were considered gifted politicians: one with a prominent political pedigree taking over his father’s seat in Ward 5; the other, a popular and ambitious local political leader.

Early on, Brown had already given signs that perhaps he was not ready for prime time in his financial affairs—he had a huge credit card debt, spent lavishly and then became embroiled in wanting to have a “fully loaded” SUV for his use as chairman.

Brown admitted his mistakes—the public ones—but the cloud that hung over him and his 2008 campaign made him less effective as chairman than he could have been, after besting Orange for the chairmanship spot. The questions—as they are for Gray—always remained, and Brown tried to brush them aside.

Apparently not this time, because the charges were framed in a “criminal information” document, according to reports, which meant that Brown consent to the filing.

The irony—and there are many, many ironies in the affairs of this non-state—is that Brown would have been next in line to succeed Mayor Gray if he were to leave office, an outcome that is now being whispered about, depending on what else might happen. So far, the mayor has refused to talk about the investigation on the advice of his attorney.

Gray issued a statement in which he described himself as “shocked, disappointed and saddened.”

He said, in one report, that “never would I have imagined something like this would occur.”

A year ago, or two years ago, most of the District could not have imagined the current state of disarray of the District government. Now, the level of shock is still high, but perhaps we are no longer surprised.

The resignation of Brown will ultimately lead to an interim chairman, but also a special election, to replace him. The next mayoral election is in 2014, and speculation, as well as activity, about who will be running has already begun. Now, you can add speculation about who will run for chairman in a special election or the next election.

Robert Devaney •

After months of contentious discussions, private and public meetings and news coverage on Georgetown University’s 2010-2020 campus plan, the town-gown relationship of the oldest neighborhood of Washington, D.C., with the oldest Catholic institution of higher learning in America appears to have become collegial.

The war is over. Peace has been declared. Discussions will continue.

“This is an extraordinary event in the life of our community, and it’s very promising. We have found a way — the community and the university, together — that offers a new cooperative spirit and real results on issues that have divided us for years.”

So said Ron Lewis, chairman of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2E, at a sunlit media announcement at the intersection of 36th and P Streets, N.W., in front of commissioner Jeff Jones’s house, next to the university’s main campus June 6.

Assembled at the peace-treaty-like setting were Mayor Vincent Gray, Ward 2 Council member Jack Evans, Georgetown University President John DeGioia, the Office of Planning’s Jennifer Steingasser, peacemaker Don Edwards and other advisory neighborhood commissioners and university officials as well as Georgetown, Burleith and Foxhall neighborhood leaders.

Praise rang all around between the players in this conflict resolution. Said Gray: “What they have done is developed a prototype and set a precedent for how these issues are to be dealt with in the future.” Evans called the mayor “a miracle worker.” DeGioia called the agreement “exciting” and noted that it “reset the relationship” between the neighborhood and the university. “Without the mayor,” DeGioia continued, “this moment would not be possible.”

Lewis concluded the gathering, saying that details would be issued the next day. (Some reporters wanted them during the event.)

And here they are, according to ANC2E, issued June 7:

Key elements of the revised plan –

• A new collegial partnership of senior GU leadership and community representatives – the Georgetown Community Partnership – to work toward making the Campus Plan a success and to work together on planning for the future

• A Campus Plan for a seven-year term, beginning January 1, 2011, and ending December 31, 2017

• 450 more undergraduates housed on campus at the Leavey Center and other on campus locations by Fall 2015, including 65 moved from the “Magis Row” townhouses on 36th Street NW and housed on campus by Fall 2013 so that the “Magis Row” townhouses can transition to faculty and staff housing or daytime administrative offices

• Undergraduate enrollment to remain at a maximum of 6,675 and total enrollment at the main campus over the Campus Plan period to be a maximum of 14,106 students; and a new, more accurate method for measuring enrollment semester-by-semester

• New emphasis on a living and learning campus that centralizes student social life on campus

• Clear standards for appropriate off-campus behavior and a results-based system for maintaining the peaceful, quiet atmosphere of our residential neighborhoods

• Significantly improved measures for relieving parking and traffic congestion from GU traffic

• A new commitment to explore providing university-sponsored graduate student housing outside the Georgetown, Burleith and Foxhall communities.

• Acknowledgement of long-term goals of the community and GU for the future, including a new satellite campus of up to 100 acres located elsewhere; at least 90 percent of undergraduates living on campus by Fall 2025 (an additional 244 beds); cooperating in developing and implementing a 20-year campus plan following on the success of the 2011-2017 plan; and the mutual goal of “a collegial and harmonious relationship between the University and the community to address future plans and common issues in an effective, creative and lasting way”

Further details of the proposed campus plan are available on the ANC 2E website, anc2e.com.

[See Georgetown University’s one sheet on the strategic plan in the photo scroll beneath the story. Click on each picture icon to enlarge image.]

ANC 2E will hold a special public meeting to consider the proposed revised GU Campus Plan on Thursday, June 14, 6:30 p.m., at Georgetown Visitation Prep, 35th Street NW at Volta Place NW. [gallery ids="100837,126123,126110,126118" nav="thumbs"]

Robert Devaney •

Luke’s Lobster, which specializes in authentic Maine seafood rolls, is set to open a Georgetown location at 1211 Potomac Street, NW, Aug. 23.

The young company which runs eateries in Penn Quarter and Bethesda, along with its five Manhattan spots, was founded by Luke Holden, who is a Georgetown University business school alumnus. His family owns a lobster-processing company in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Holden opened his first spot in Greenwich Village in 2009.

As for the new Potomac Street, spot, Ben Conniff of Luke’s said, “We can’t wait to open in the neighborhood. Aug. 23 is around when we think we will be fully decorated, staffed and ready to go. We hope to get a few days under our belt and introduce ourselves to the neighbors before the students return to campus.”

Luke’s is planning a grand opening party around the Aug. 23 date, Conniff said. “For customers, we’ll be giving away some Luke’s Lobster Georgetown swag to our first hundred or two customers.”

“Luke’s Georgetown years were as formative as his lobster-boat summers,” a company press release recalls. “Dishing fresh, sustainable Maine lobster to his old neighborhood and fellow Hoyas has been Luke’s dream since he served his first sandwich. In particular, he has been pining for the building where he burned his mouth so many times on melted cheese and tomato sauce before the pizza joint closed in 2010. He couldn’t have found a better location. The whitewashed clapboard house at 1211 looks as though it was transplanted directly from a Maine lobster dock. Luke’s first two-story location will have room to satisfy neighbors and students alike amid lobster gear from his old boat. And the neighborhood’s love of good food, from cheesesteak to cupcakes, makes it the ideal community to share the world’s greatest lobster, in the form of D.C.’s favorite lobster roll.”

The menu is already posted outside the door of the Potomac Street eatery: Lobster roll, $15; crab roll, $12; shrimp roll, $8. For $20, there’s Taste of Maine, a sample of the three rolls in one meal; double that amount for $38 with Noah’s Ark. There is a blueberry ice cream sandwich — and, of course, clam chowder.

The Potomac Street building once housed Philly Pizza & Co. (closed due to community protests about neighborhood noise), which then became Go Fresh. It last occupant, a sandwich joint called The Crave, was shuttered a few months ago because of a rent dispute.

And what about Luke’s staffers’ favorite eating establishments around town? Conniff noted that there are “lots of good choices but I think we have to give a shout out to Luke’s classmates behind Sweetgreen. What great food and a great company. Beyond that, Scott won’t shut up about the Southwest Chicken Salad at the Tombs, and Wisey’s Chicken Madness is a team favorite. ” [gallery ids="100927,129544,129540" nav="thumbs"]

Robert Devaney •

Tomorrow Night, Aug. 7: National Night Out

Come celebrate National Night Out with the Metropolitan Police Department at your Second District Police station on Tuesday, Aug. 7, 5 to 7 p.m. There will be free car seat checks and installations, safety tips, McGruff the crime dog, a clown, hot dogs and ice cream. The Second District station is at 3320 Idaho Ave., NW.

What is National Night Out? It’s America’s Night Out Against Crime.

The “29th Annual National Night Out,”Aug. 7, is a unique crime/drug prevention event sponsored by the National Association of Town Watch.

Last year’s National Night Out campaign involved citizens, law enforcement agencies, civic groups, businesses, neighborhood organizations and local officials from more than15,000 communities from all 50 states, U.S. territories, along with Canadian cities and military bases worldwide. In all, more than 37 million people participated.

National Night Out is designed to:

• Heighten crime and drug prevention awareness;

• Generate support for, and participation in, local anticrime programs;

• Strengthen neighborhood spirit and police-community partnerships; and

• Send a message to criminals letting them know that neighborhoods are organized and fighting back.

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Canal Road Off-Peak Closures Planned Tomorrow and Next Week

The District Department of Transportation’s Urban Forestry Administration and the National Park Service will be implementing the following closures on Canal Road, NW, to conduct routine roadway maintenance activities.

Northbound and southbound Canal Road, NW, between Reservoir Road and Arizona Avenue will be closed from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Tuesday, Aug. 7 through Thursday, Aug. 9. Northbound traffic will be redirected at Foxhall Road to MacArthur Boulevard then onto Arizona Avenue. Southbound traffic will be redirected at Arizona Avenue to MacArthur Boulevard then onto Foxhall Road.

Northbound Canal Road, NW, between Arizona Avenue and Chain Bridge Road will be closed from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Tuesday, Aug. 14 through Thursday, Aug. 16. During this time, southbound Canal Road along this stretch will remain open. Northbound traffic will be redirected as follows at Arizona Avenue to MacArthur Boulevard then onto Foxhall Road.

Visit www.goDCgo.com for more information on transportation options in the District.

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DDOT Meeting Aug. 9 on Plans for 37th Street and Tunlaw Road

The District Department of Transportation will host a public meeting on Thursday, Aug. 9, 7 p.m., at Stoddert Elementary School, 4001 Calvert Street, NW, to present the preliminary design plans for the proposed reconfiguration of the intersection at 37th Street, NW, and Tunlaw Road, NW.

Representatives from DDOT will be on hand to discuss the roadway improvements that are being considered to enhance pedestrian and vehicular safety. Community members are encouraged to attend to review the plans and provide input.

As part of the safety improvement initiative for Wisconsin Avenue in the Glover Park corridor DDOT is further evaluating feasible improvements to implement at adjacent intersections. Included in the improvements that are being reviewed are new roadway markings, signage and traffic signage upgrades. This information will also be presented at this meeting.

For additional details about the Glover Park Wisconsin Avenue Project, visit the project website at wisconsinavenueproject.com or contact the public outreach coordinator for the project — Shana Vieira at 202-726-8650 or svieira@jdosinternational.com.

Georgetowner •

M&T Bank opened a new, full-service branch at 1420 Wisconsin Ave., NW, in the space once occupied by famed hipster clothing store, Commander Salamander. It is across from CVS pharmacy and another bank, BB&T. The M&T branch reports that will offer “several convenient features for customers, including extended weekday hours, Saturday hours, a customer service center, night depository and an ATM.”

“Our new Georgetown branch is an example our investment in and commitment to the greater Washington area,” said Steve Heine, M&T Bank’s greater Washington market manager. “This is a convenient location that will help us to serve existing customers and attract new customers with our high level of service and M&T’s wide range of banking products.”

The new branch manager Vickie Quezada and business banker Adeep Sandhu can meet with customers to deliver personalized solutions through the bank’s full product line as well as discuss a customized strategy for meeting their financial goals, says M&T which claims to be the leading Small Business Administration lender in greater Washington and the sixth largest in the nation.

M&T Bank Corporation is one of the 20 largest U.S. bank holding companies with more than 750 branch offices in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and Delaware. Founded in 1856 in Buffalo, N.Y., M&T was originally called Manufacturers and Traders Bank. Investor Warren Buffett owns large amounts of the bank’s stocks.

M&T’s hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Thursday; 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Friday; 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., Saturday. The branch’s phone number is 202-333-6163.

Gary Tischler •

Forget Obama.

Forget Romney and the horse he rode in on.

Forget Syria and the job reports, and the drought and the two hurricanes coming to a coastline near you. Forget Kristin Stewart, tsk tsk.

Instead:

Rule Brittania.

God Save the Queen.

Aren’t the Olympics a hoot?

Wasn’t it just last week that we (myself included) were trashing NBC for their coverage of the opening ceremonies in London?

Well, I’ll take some of it back, just for the way they covered the Heptathlon, the women’s athletes version of the Decathalon in which the athletes vie in seven events — high jump, javelin, 200 meter dash, 800 meter run, hurdles, shot put and long jump– for the title of best woman athlete in the world.

We caught Bob Costas and company covering Great Britain’s Jessica Ennis, the nation’s darling competing before 70-to-80 screaming, delirious Brits on Saturday, already leading going into the last event, the 800-meter run.

She could have finished second or third and still won, but what she did was even more exciting. Leading most of the race, she was passed late by two runners but suddenly surged in what seemed to from nowhere and won going away.

The stadium erupted. It was the kind of noise I last heard at Nathan’s when John Riggins burst open for a game-winning touchdown against Miami to give the Redskins their first of three Super Bowl championships.

It was loud. The usually much more reserved Brits jumped up and down, cried, patted each other on the back and high fived.

The British—who did know how to put on an Olympics and then some—had a lot to celebrate about, especially over the weekend, when they started piling up gold medals in cycling, rowing, distance running and finally, on Sunday, in the redemption of the great Scots tennis hope Andy Murray pulverizing Roger Federer in straight sets to win men’s tennis singles event.

These Olympics have provided all sorts of fun in spite of rain, wind and badminton. It was terrific to see, for instance, Serena Williams regain a kind of teenage delight in winning, dancing for joy, and joining in the joy with her sister Venus in the doubles, picking up two gold medals.

It was interesting to see the transformations of Michael Phelps, at once both senior superstar and elder statesmen, as he got better and better, ending up with the most individual gold medals in Olympic history but also marching towards history and into retirement.

Even watching Billy Bush—a man who would be struck dumb if ever the letter “I” was removed from the alphabet—interview America’s fabulous gymnasts was a reminder that these incredible girls were just that—girls still squealing about Justin Bieber, as was the dominant swimmer Missy Franklin.

There were courageous firsts everywhere—the woman from Afghanistan competing, running and following her father’s admonition “to run”, and the blade runner. Kudos for the men’s basketball team for prevailing over Lithuania after being pushed to the edge by the old back door, pick and roll as practiced in the Ivy League.

If there is a gold medal for putting on a great show, let the Londoners share it with all the athletes here, except the ones ordered to tank their badminton games.