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Peter Murray •

Georgetown used to be the only game in town when it came to retail in D.C., touting easy walkability, historic charm and a diverse array of shops with broad appeal to customers. New retail hubs are starting to compete with that model though as large-scale redevelopments sweep over the rest of the District. Some of these new retail centers are the result of decades of planning. Others reflect the natural evolution of gentrification in dense, central corridors. And some are just now being unveiled. Each one offers something different: interesting shops or food choices, or extra activities outside of shopping. But they’re all worth exploring.

14th Street

Restaurants, retail and condos have risen quickly and concurrently on 14th Street NW between Thomas Circle and W Street over the past decade. A slew of new luxury retail players has diversified the mix and brought added draw to the corridor.

First, there’s Shinola. The Detroit-based watch, bicycle and leather brand moved into a massive, sun-soaked historic space on 14th and R streets NW earlier this year. Even if you’re not interested in buying a watch, bike or fine leather football, the store is worth entering, just to look around.

Anyone in need of gifts for the outdoorsy men in their life should visit Filson, right down the street. Inside the small store you can expect to find Barbour-esque leather jackets, bison wool gloves and hats, and plenty of flannels. Be sure to feel the moleskin shirt, an incredibly soft and warm layer for winter.

There’s more menswear on the northern part of the strip at Federal, which shares a space with skate shop Palace 5ive. Head to Federal for hip clothing, outerwear and wallets, or to Palace 5ive and grab a stylish pair of Vans for someone on your list.

For the hip chicks in your life, Treasury and Current Boutique are two high-end vintage shops where you need to be, on 14th between S and T streets NW.
Need something for the house? There are at least a dozen home décor and furniture stores on the strip for small gifts like scented candles or big ones like a new couch.

The best part about shopping on 14th Street though is access to some of the city’s best food. With Le Diplomate, Barcelona, Kapnos and other restaurants nearby, you’ll never get hungry while scouring the corridor for the perfect gift.

CityCenter

From afar, CityCenter looks much like the rest of downtown D.C. The development is square, glass, imposing and pretty much lacking in personality. A Christmas tree, an LED screen walkway and music playing do lend some holiday cheer, but make CityCenter even more reminiscent of a run-of-the-mill vacation destination shopping center, like Disney World or Honolulu.

But what CityCenter lacks in charm, it makes up for in high-end shopping. And we are talking the highest of the high. Big names in fashion — Gucci, Hermes, Burberry, Hugo Boss, Louis Vuitton — are there. Outerwear giant Arc’teryx has a shop for anyone going skiing this winter. And if you don’t have good luggage, check out the premium products at Tumi. But Loro Piana and Paul Stuart, two lesser names, are the standouts for their winter wear designs and the high-quality materials used to make them.

A big part of CityCenter’s appeal, though, is the food. Try out Momofuku’s world famous ramen or some of famed chef Daniel Boulud’s recipes at DBGB. For something more low key, grab some Crack Pie ice cream or a cookie at Milk Bar, Momofuku’s bakery concept. Or try something healthier, like a salad or smoothie at Fruitive, a new vegan concept that uses fresh, organic ingredients.

The Shay

Stores are rolling open at the Shay, a new development in Shaw that packs a retail punch along with the nearby Atlantic Plumbing development.

Just across the street from popular gay sports bar Nellie’s is Warby Parker, the eyewear brand that opened its first D.C. store at 3225 M St. NW in Georgetown. The space is a bit larger than the Georgetown store, and has a more modern aesthetic and a bright, nearly neon mini-marquee that shouts the brand’s name from the corner of 9th and U streets NW. A few doors down from Warby Parker, Chrome Industries, an outfitter specializing in durable apparel and messenger bags, opened last week.

Another formerly online-only retailer, Frank & Oak, also moved in over the past few weeks. The Montreal-based company is known for its reasonably priced, fashionable menswear, which is designed in-house, and has been expanding its brick-and-mortar operations over the past few years with store openings in Chicago, Boston, Toronto and Montreal.

Other highlights at the Shay include a newly opened Compass Coffee and a huge, window-front space for Kit and Ace, a new brand from the family that owns Lululemon. Much of the relatively hip apparel is made with what the company calls technical cashmere, a machine-washable blend of fabrics that mimics cashmere but requires little maintenance.

Gary Tischler •

UPDATE, Dec. 28:

Funeral services will be held Saturday, Jan. 2, for Fr. Rick Curry, S.J., at Holy Trinity Church on 36th Street in Georgetown. Visitation at the church will begin 9 a.m., followed by a 10:30 a.m. Mass of Christian Burial for Fr. Rick Curry, S.J. A funeral reception will be held noon at Trinity Hall on O Street.

When the Georgetowner interviewed Father Rick Curry, the co-founder—with philanthropist Connie Milstein—of the Dog Tag Bakery, we found him at the good stuff you’d find at bakeries, the aroma of freshly baked food, the quiet talk of friends over coffee.

As Curry talked about the bakery, about his days at the National Theater Workshop for the Handicapped, about the purpose of the baker and the Georgetown University-sponsored  Academy for Veterans, and the art of story telling and theater and sundry other things approached with a Jesuit attitude of keen intelligence, skepticism and great compassion, I thought, boy, there’s a man I want to spend some time with.  Because the time challenged your mind, was punctuated by warmth and laughter and words, sentences and conversations which seemed to be, like bread itself, the staff and stuff of life.

Sadly, that won’t be possible. Rev. Richard Curry, S.J., passed away Dec. 19 at the age of 72 of heart failure at the Jesuit infirmary at St. Joseph’s University in Curry’s hometown of Philadelphia.

The program he and Milstein founded, which resulted in Dog Tag Bakery, assists wounded veterans with emotional rehabilitation and employment assistance and training—and jobs.

Curry, who was handicapped himself (he was born without a right forearm), talked at the bakery, but he was really holding court and holding forth—you can just imagine him in a classroom, talking plays and stories.  As we talked to him during the summer, Georgetown University students, who knew him (or took his class) would come up and talk and joke with him—rugby players or rowers near the end of the school year.  He had qualities that were both challenging—he appeared in the Jesuit manner a combination of tough intelligence and Irish warmth and humor—and engaging in all senses of the word.

A Jesuit brother for most of his life, Curry decided to become a priest late in his life, enriching himself and those he ministered to in the process. He often told the story of a veteran who offered his confession and asked for absolution. Curry replied that he could not as he was a brother in the Society of Jesus, the largest religious order in the Roman Catholic Church, and has not been called, as it were. The veteran replied to Curry: “Well, I’m calling you.”

One of Curry’s many colleagues and friends, Rev. James Martin, S.J., eulogized him online as a “marvelous speaker and peerless raconteur; and a great supporter, mentor and friend to many.” 

To mouth the old cliché that “he will be missed” is one of those understatements that cannot fill the vacuum but is true, as clichés are, nonetheless.

Indeed, Curry’s life was an inspiration for many. Above all and also nonetheless, it fulfilled —and went beyond —the Jesuit motto, “Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam,” which means “To the Greater Glory of God.”

Check here to read the July 1 Georgetowner cover story about Dog Tag Bakery.
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Peter Murray •

The District Department of Transportation announced Friday that the prices for tickets related to traffic violations are going way up. Under the new proposal, exceeding the speed limit by 25 mph or over could cost you $1,000 while turning right on red without stopping could cost as much as $200.

Other newly proposed fines include $500 for drivers who fail to slow down or move out of the way for emergency vehicles and $100 for going over the speed limit near recreation and senior centers. There’s also a new $500 fine for failing to yield for buses reentering traffic.

The new proposal also includes fine increases for a number of violations regarding car-bike and car-pedestrian interactions. For example, the fine for hitting a bicyclist will increase from $50 to $500, parking in a bike lane will go from $65 to $200, hitting a pedestrian will cost $500 instead of $50, and failing to yield to a pedestrian before turning right on red will run $200 rather than $50.

DDOT proposed the new changes without the District Council’s input, a development that auto club AAA Mid-Atlantic questions. “DDOT is doing this through the regulator process,” said AAA’s John B. Townsend II. “Why not do it through the legislative process, where you can have public hearings?”

DDOT Director Leif Dormsjo told the Washington Post that there is no formal vote required by the Council on the changes, which are part of Mayor Bowser’s Vision Zero plans, but members can ask to amend or reject the proposed rules through the legislative process.

Bicycle and pedestrian advocate groups supported the proposal as a part of the larger Vision Zero initiative. They argue that stricter penalties will make D.C.’s roads safer for all users, whether they are pedestrians, bicyclists or drivers.

Under D.C. law, regulations can be changed after they are published in the D.C. Register twice, with a comment period of 30 days in between publications. So, while these rules are not final, they are currently in effect.

Robert Devaney • January 10, 2016

That fellow at Dog Tag Bakery just might be a veteran who has quite the story to tell. Some are more intense than others.
Lizandro Mateo-Ortiz and his wife Milena were part of the inaugural class of Dog Tag fellows. Army veteran Mateo-Ortiz barely survived being pulled under a Humvee in Iraq in 2007 and required many surgeries. He still walks with a brace and works with his wife of nearly 25 years. They have been in stories about the bakery.

Another story recalls the days of “Shock and Awe.” The newest Dog Tag fellow is 32-year-old Ayad Ahmed, who got swept up during the Battle of Baghdad in April 2003 . . . actually and harshly. His life changed forever. A bunker-busting bomb hit his street in the Mansour district, looking for Saddam Hussein on incorrect intelligence. The shock bombing killed his girlfriend and left his mother bleeding and grandfather in a coma. Eleven were killed. Ahmed was the only local who could speak English. Tough special operations soldiers grabbed Ahmed, tossed him in a Bradley fighting vehicle, threw a bullet-proof vest at him and told him to translate. None of the Americans spoke Arabic. Ahmed thought to himself: “You came all this way with no translator? What is Saddam doing in my garden, dude?”

His language skills saved the lives of some of his neighbors, whom he never saw again. “Everyone in the neighborhood hated me,” he said. There remains a bounty on his head, and he has never returned to Iraq. He lived with U.S. forces from 2003 until June 2009, when he left for Fort Riley, Kansas, for five years. “I was stuck with them.”

Ahmed became a U.S. citizen in November and wanted something more, he said, perhaps in Washington, D.C. While visiting the Pentagon, he stood in first of the office of Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pondering his future. In a moment, Ahmed’s life would change again, when he was urged to contact Dog Tag, Inc. He began working at the bakery last week.

Georgetowner •

Dog Tag Bakery’s Can-Do Spirit Provides Jobs for Disabled Veterans, Along With Sweet and Savory Treats for All

“True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.”—President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

FDR could have been speaking about Dog Tag Bakery, located on the perfectly named Grace Street, just past the C&O Canal below Wisconsin Avenue and M Street.

It’s an airy place, busy, with room enough to sit in style and ponder the world, take in really good cup of coffee, order up sandwiches, scones, sweets and soups, all while supporting veterans. You can see the bakers, the cooks, the people manning the cash register, the kitchen itself.

Here, the baguettes are exceptional, the chocolate cake great, the ginger pear torte exquisite and the soups super. This place is among the best in the city.

Yet this is more than your neighborhood coffee shop. When you step into Dog Tag Bakery — with its wide entrance for easy wheelchair access — you become a part of something larger than the time of the day, the aroma of coffee, the pleasantries, and stories shared around a table. Becoming a customer at Dog Tag Bakery lets you see the results of a unique program in action.
One of its slogans is “Baking a Difference.”

Dog Tag Bakery is part of Dog Tag Inc., which operates a six-month training program aimed squarely at “driven, entrepreneurial-minded wounded veterans and their spouses.” The program, through Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies, concludes with a group of fellows — all wounded veterans, or their spouses, and other professionals who have served in combat zones — well on their way to perhaps owning their own businesses or finding sustainable slots in the workplace. Its inaugural group of fellows has already graduated, and a second group started last month.

Dog Tag Bakery is a kind of physical, practical and workaday manifestation of the program, where veterans put their new business skills into practice: managing, keeping the kitchen running, preparing food, handling the counter. A chandelier of 3,456 dog tags is both a reminder of purpose and an additional way for customers to get involved. A $125 donation lets you hang one there too.
The program — which also features a lecture series and opportunities for wounded veterans to tell their own stories — is the first of its kind, a pilot program which its founders and operators hope to see duplicated in other cities.

Dog Tag has gotten a lot of attention from media, local and national, from the get-go. Its goals and the stories of the veterans are compelling. Retired Army Ranger Sedrick Banks, who had his neck broken in Iraq, told CBS News: “Dog Tag was my first major step back into the working mindset. Before the program, I didn’t have confidence. I didn’t feel like I had the ability. Now, I’m confident in myself, you know?”

The mission of Dog Tag has also earned the confidence and support from the likes of Mark and Sally Ein, Steve and Jean Case, Tammy Haddad, Roy and Kelley Schwartz, just to name a few.

Among the many human ingredients that go into Dog Tag’s operation are co-founders Rev. Richard Curry, S.J., and Constance Milstein; Chief Operating Officer Meghan Ogilvie; General Manager Justin Ford; Head Baker Rebecca Clerget; and Director of Development Simone Borisov.

Yet the most critical human ingredients are the fellows, the wounded veterans themselves, seeking doorways to enter the workforce, learn new skills, become entrepreneurs, become a part of the American mainstream. And that’s where the 72-year-old Father Curry comes in.

“He is the Jesuit father, and I am the Jewish godmother,” Milstein, one of Washington’s — and the country’s — leading philanthropists, told the crowd at the bakery’s grand opening in December. The attorney and real estate developer said she considers their partnership “a match made in heaven.” She is committed to helping veterans — her involvement with Blue Star Families is one example — and has also set up nonprofit bakeries in New York.

“It is because of my father, friends I lost in Vietnam, and those who continue to defend our freedom today that I am dedicated to our military and to helping empower and care for our military families,” Milstein has said.

It is Curry — a Jesuit brother who was ordained a priest at age 66 — who brings with him just what is needed to help disabled, wounded veterans. If there were degrees and medals in empathy, affinity, the ability to listen to and tell stories, Curry would have a fistful of them.

Curry founded, and headed for three decades, the National Theatre Workshop of the Handicapped, a nonprofit theater-arts training institution for persons with physical disabilities. Reaching out to disabled combat veterans, especially amputees, he began the Writers’ Program for Wounded Warriors, which encourages wounded veterans to tell their stories.

And, not to put too fine a point on it, he is technically disabled himself, having no right forearm. “I was born this way,” he told us in an interview at Dog Tag Bakery. He laughed. “I’m still wrestling with that. It still hurts.” But it also lets him understand with deep feeling, intellect and sometimes humor the plight of wounded veterans.

“Many people faced with a loss of a limb or internal organ internalize things. They can’t let it out,” he said. “And they think they won’t be able to do anything in life, all the things they could have done, all the tools to provide for a family. And that’s not true.”

“I don’t think of myself in terms of my disability,” Curry said. “And it’s important that our wounded warriors not be defined by their disabilities. This program is about confidence.”

Curry himself is a lot about building confidence — he exudes not so much strength as a kind of viability. He has that air of Irish curiosity about him, a conviviality that comes naturally, a love of the human race and its individual spirits.

In many ways, he is the heart of the Dog Tag enterprise, or at least its warmest cheerleader. The veterans themselves are the real stories, of course, and over the years Curry has managed to get them to tell their stories, time and again, in school and on stage; the stage at Dog Tag is one of his innovations.

“That was one of the reasons I started the wounded veterans’ writing program. There is this need for them to tell and write their stories,” Curry said. “Look what happened during the course and aftermath of the Vietnam War. The veterans, many of them badly wounded and maimed, and just as much psychologically, couldn’t tell their stories. Nobody wanted to hear them.

“This is about their stories as much as learning how to run a business, how to be part of a business,” he said. “So many buried their stories in silence and they have made us realize that war has its price.”

The need is obvious. Nearly 120 veterans applied for spots in the first group of fellows. Ten were chosen.

Curry decided to enter the priesthood after many of the wounded veterans he dealt with asked him to hear their confessions.

According to one story, a veteran asked him why he wasn’t a priest and Curry said he felt he had not been called. “Well, I’m calling you,” the man said to him.

Beyond his ability to administer the sacraments, Curry has written two books, “The Secrets of Jesuit Breadmaking” and “The Secrets of Jesuit Soupmaking.”

At Dog Tag Bakery, he’s already sharing his finely tuned Jesuit gift for compassion, hitched to intellectual curiosity and empathy, linked to worldly action. [gallery ids="102126,133741,133739" nav="thumbs"]

Peter Murray • January 9, 2016

After weighing a number of redevelopment options for the Franklin School at a special meeting on Nov. 16, the Advisory Neighborhood Commission, or ANC, with jurisdiction over the area, voted unanimously to support Georgetown University and Thoron Capital’s plan to turn the old school into new academic center focusing on technology and multi-media art. Previously, the school was slated to host a contemporary art museum but Mayor Muriel Bowser shelved those plans in February shortly after coming into office.

Four companies presented redevelopment proposals for the school, built in 1869, to the ANC. The crop of proposals included plans to turn the space into a co-working office space or a boutique hotel, with a focus on either the arts or on fine dining.

Georgetown’s plan, on the other hand, involves turning the space into “a technology, arts, and media center envisioned as the ‘Y Combinator start-up model meets Juilliard with live performance, educational activity, and a dynamic space where technologists, artists, and entrepreneurs come together,” according to the ANC. Robert Taylor, founder of Thoron Capital, explained to the Washington Post that the plan is based off “the idea of bringing different arts disciplines together and letting them play off of one another.”

Included in the plans are a performing arts hall run by the operators of Bohemian Caverns, a live music staple on U Street, an outdoor performance courtyard, and a restaurant facing 13th Street NW. According to Urban Turf, “there will also be community-based courses for Georgetown students which the public can audit, as well as a partnership with various public high schools in the city to teach and train youth and provide college students with community-based learning credits.”

Randall Bass, Georgetown vice provost for education, suggested to the Washington Post that a new university center at the Franklin School would help connect the school’s other downtown programs, like its continuing education campus near Mount Vernon Square and the Georgetown Law premises close to Union Station.

“We think that this is a really unique opportunity to be able to bring the music and film studies work to the heart of downtown,” he said to the Post.

Under the ANC’s recommended plan, Thoron would lease the old school from the city and undertake renovations, while Georgetown University would be the primary tenant. Thoron will consult with a number of experts on historic preservation for the project, but Taylor called the project a “comfortable undertaking” because it will not seek to “radically change the layout of the building.”

A panel within the Deputy Mayor of Planning & Economic Development’s office is in charge of the final decision on the building’s redevelopment. Bidders anticipate a decision by the end of the year and the Bowser administration aims to begin construction in 2017, around the same time that the National Park Service will be putting the finishing touches on its overhaul of Franklin Square Park.

Robert Devaney • January 6, 2016

Pre-parties, post-parties and brunches, as usual, surrounded the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner at the Washington Hilton on Connecticut Avenue April 27. Friday night parties involved a Creative Coalition Coalition and Lanmark Technology, Inc., dinner at Neyla, a Vote Latino reception at the Hay Adams and a People-Time party at the St. Regis. On Saturday afternoon, Tammy Haddad’s brunch at Mark Ein’s place on R Street created more buzz. At the Hilton, several receptions went on before the dinner bells chimes. Afterwards, Bloomberg-Vanity Fair, Capitol File and MSNBC parties commenced. On Sunday, more brunches by Politico on Q Street and Reuters and Yahoo at the Hay Adams. Besides the parties and dinners, Georgetowners spied WHCA dinner headliner Conan O’Brien on P Street and Korean rapper Psy in front of the Four Seasons Hotel. [gallery ids="101272,148463,148457,148451,148445,148438,148431,148425,148419,148413,148475,148406,148480,148399,148485,148490,148469" nav="thumbs"]

Robert Devaney • December 22, 2015

Cardinal Donald Wuehl, Archbishop of Washington, was the main celebrant of the Dec. 6 Mass, which formally installed the 52nd pastor of Holy Trinity Church, Rev. C. Kevin Gillespie, S.J. Founded in 1787, Holy Trinity on 36th Street NW is the oldest Catholic parish in Washington, D.C. Formerly the president of St. Joseph’s University, Gillespie also taught religious studies and coached baseball at Gonzaga College High School and Georgetown Prep.

Robert Devaney •

At the Nov. 30 meeting of the Georgetown-Burleith Advisory Neighborhood Commission, representatives of DC Water, also known as the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority, stood in front of a table of commissioners and were scolded like schoolboys.

What was the problem? If you live or drive along P Street on the east side of Georgetown, you have no doubt experienced the slow progress of the water work, digging and repaving.

P Street resident and commissioner Monica Roache criticized DC Water representatives, who said they were also frustrated and wanted the pace of work quickened — and put the blame on their contractors. Roache and her neighbors got the noise and parking restrictions reduced. After months of disruption, streets around 27th and P were fully paved and smooth this week.