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Robert Devaney • January 16, 2015

Yes, the whispers about its closing have been confirmed: the popular Glover Park Hardware Store, at 2251 Wisconsin Ave. NW for almost 10 years, will close its door Jan. 15.

“We had a deal and the landlord decided at the last minute to lease to someone else,” owner Gina Schaefer told the Current Newspapers in an email. “It felt like the worst part of business.” . . . “We like to think of ourselves as members of the community and a desirable tenant. We are easy to negotiate with. None of that worked in our favor this time.”

Schaefer said that lease renewal talks with property owner Chesapeake Realty Partners stopped about a month ago and that she would like to reopen Glover Park Hardware in the neighborhood. There will be a clearance sale in January before the hardware store closes.

Other small hardware stores nearby include Bredice Brothers Hardware and Shoe Repair at 1305 35th St. NW, District Hardware and Bike Shop at 1108 24th St. NW and Schaefer’s other Ace Hardware store in Tenleytown.

Gary Tischler •

Somewhere in time, the Golden Globe Awards, the annual movie and television awards show presented by 93 mostly obscure members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association became a must-watch Sunday night television event.

It’s still the big Hollywood awards party that it’s always been, with nominees and their entourages hanging out at tables, heading for the bar periodically and restrooms, while awards for acting, screenwriting, directing and music in movie and television land, with an added twist that movies have both musical-comedy and drama categories.

The Golden Globes’ rise to prominence probably coincided with the rise of the red carpet walks by celebrities, artists, and actors and their spouses and companions as a major component of the show, along with the practice of stars being asked “who” they were wearing while an army of paparazzi, television reporters (celebrities themselves) and print journalists, tweeters and bloggers yelled to be recognized.

It’s all well and good, and like most of the world—presumably the internet service is up in North Korea—I did my must-see duty, mostly because I couldn’t help myself. I mean, the depravity, the cleavage, the first Hollywood appearance of George Clooney and his bride Amal Alamuddin, Ricky Gervais, Tina and Amy, and that director-writer from “Birdman,” Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, and “Boyhood” which took 12 years to make, and Billy Bob Thornton’s best speech ever, and Jennifer Lopez and—words failed me there, lest I get abused by an irate commenter.

Even as co-hosts (for the last time, reportedly) Tina Fey and Amy Poehler razzed Clooney again, and, as promised, took on the Bill Cosby saga, and Kevin Spacey apparently overloaded the bleeper, even as the word ass was used twice—Spacey asking an interview if she’d like her to grab her ass, and Globe winner for best actress a drama series Ruth Wilson for “The Affair” complimented co-star Dominick West by telling him that “your ass is a thing of great beauty,” even with all that, the Globes were:

Kinda interesting. Kinda classy.

Even in an event like this, where there is no such thing as wretched excess, only excess, good things can happen to good people, for one thing, and for another, even inside a Hollywood hotel with a ballroom full of Hollywood elites (not you, Ricky Gervais), the world outside was a major presence.

The Globes with its odd category setup always manages to make some silly choices or some you’re not likely to see anywhere else—remember the Madonna win for “Evita” many years ago?

It seems also to favor the outsider spirit, the odd little movie that nobody but the membership and maybe friends and family have seen. These are the kinds of movies—“Still Alice,” which won Julianne Moore a best actress award—or television offerings—the Sundance TV offering, “The Honorable Woman,” which got Maggie Gyllenhaal an award, plus Jennifer Aniston’s “Cake,” which did not get an award—which deserve to come up in the very least for air at a major awards show.

The Globes picks are always dotted with long shots and a couple of Brits—guaranteed. This year’s major Brit was the rising star Eddie Redmayne, who got the best actor award in a drama for playing physicist Stephen Hawking. This year’s long shots were Matt Bomer for “The Normal Heart,” Jeffrey Tambor for “Transparent” and veteran J.K. Simmons for “Whiplash,” which I defy you to find in a theater. Simmons is one of the deserving ones—a craggy, balding, no-nonsense actor who played a recurring shrink on the Law and Order shows, and has a big gig in a State Farmers Insurance group and voiced the yellow M&M in commercials.

There is always a lot of buzz about dresses and clothes, now that the Red Carpet and the fashionista world are imbedded with each other. It’s still a little startling, however, to watch a tough guy like Liv Schreiber tell an interviewer, “I’m wearing Prada.”

It’s also a little, well, amazing, to hear how many times people, clothes, roles, jewelry, wives and husbands are called, well, amazing. I tried to count but stopped at a thousand. And that’s amazing.

People will talk, of course. You couldn’t shut Ricky Gervais up if you tried. They let him be a presenter, after finally not letting him be a host again.

There were great moments that were heart-felt and even resonant of the world outside: Tambor dedicated his award to the transgender community; Michael Keaton, winning for “Birdman,” saluted his son Sean as “kind, smart, did I say kind” and teared up; “The Grand Budapest Hotel” won best musical-comedy picture, which I loved, and “Selma” did not, a result which I did not love.

But it took Clooney to make us remember why we think he’s kind of a classy guy.

For one thing, while all this schmalzarei was going on, a million Frenchmen and several world leaders, including Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, marched down the Boulevard Voltaire to show unity in the face of terrorist murders at the satiric publication Charlie Hebdo, where 12 persons were murdered, as well as for those killed at the kosher supermarket.

Clooney and his wife Amal, a human rights attorney, wore “Je Suis Charlie” buttons, as did many among those attending. But Clooney himself pointed out the outrage and blew an emotional kiss by expressing his luck in love at a later age. More than that, speaking in a room full of the most competitive people in the world, he mindfully told nominees, “If you are in this room, you’ve caught the brass ring.”

Amos Gelb •

# JesuisCharlie, or to be more precise, # NoussommesCharlie.

In the aftermath of the tragic and horrific attack on the French version of the Onion satirical magazine (could we imagine that happening here?) there are two things that stand out.

First: Charlie Hedo-deniers – those like Hofstra University Professor Hussein Rashid’s recent column in the Washington Post that describe the French magazine content as racist.

Perhaps it was, but considering how small the magazine’s readership was in France isn’t it a bit ironic that critics like Rashid, who may never heard of the magazine until the shooting and almost certainly do not have a subscription, propound with such absolute confidence in characterizing its contents? Easy to snipe at a dead editor!

Charlie Hebdo might have been inappropriate at times, but it is time for arm chair commentators like Rashid to stop this blame-transferring and get back to the simple fact – the problem was not Hebdo or its content – it was the guys with the guns.

That sort of logic echoes the misplaced commentary after 9-11 of headlines like “why do they hate us?” as if those attacks were somehow justified.

Second: we all want to know whether these murderous thugs were talking to like-minded nuts in the U.S. – and, if so, who are they? The obvious question: are they setting the stage for similar attacks in the U.S.?

But how can we find that out? How can our national security apparatus protect us, because if an attack like this should happen the fingers will inevitably start pointing?

The answer includes checking the telephone records and using them to catch would-be attackers before they get started. But hang on. Haven’t we just had a gut-wrenching national debate over just that kind of bulk telephony metadata collection? Patriot Act Section 215 ring any bells?

“End it!” “Violation of civil rights!” “Police state!” The general charge – that sort of thing is un-American.

Section 215 expires in June and privacy advocates are screaming not to renew it. It is a new world, an unfriendly world, and Hebdo frightening points out – a world that is coming. Might All Things Media suggest that the idea of gathering this kind of data – without safeguards about personal identification until actions like #JesuisCharlie triggers more investigation — is not such a bad idea.

This is so that we don’t have to read columns that suggest somehow we were somehow asking for it, when Hebdo barbarism happens here.

Robert Devaney •

Mayor Vincent Gray, D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson, other local politicians and school officials formally broke ground Dec. 19 for the Duke Ellington School for the Arts Modernization Project.

Ellington students have moved to Eugene Meyer Elementary School on 11th Street, NW. The 35th Street school is closed until September 2016 for redesign, renovation and additions.

The $82-million project will expand the historic school — built in 1898 and originally known as Western High School — to 294,900 square feet. The interior of the school will contain an atrium and a new 850-seat theater. The rooftop will have a classroom along with limited-use space. The school’s main portico will be preserved. Construction has already begun.

Among the speeches by Gray, Brian Hanlon of the Department of General Services and others, Father John Payne was remembered. Payne had become school principal this year and died suddenly Oct. 9.

Gary Tischler •

Actor Rod Taylor and Actress Anita Ekberg died within days of each other, in their eighties.

Taylor, a rugged Australian-born actor who moved to Hollywood to try his luck, racked up a large number of credits, had strong-chinned, blondish sex appeal, proved to have a flair for romantic comedy. He died just short of his 85th birthday.

Ekberg was a physically impressive, blonde Swedish semi-star around the same time—she had roles in everything from Jerry and Lewis comedies to a Chinese peasant woman in a John Wayne action flick called “Blood Alley.” She died at age 83.

Both Taylor and Ekberg starred in two films that were cinema classics in one way or another.

In 1963, Taylor was the heroic figure in the Alfred Hitchcock classic about nature run amok for no particularly good reason called “The Birds.” We all remember that one: for a long time, you cast suspicious, nervous glances at any gathering of more than two ravens or seagulls.

The movie, built to terrific levels of suspense and fright, featured Taylor as a local bringing new love interest Tippi Hedren to his fishing town home in Northern California. Hedren, cool and icy blond (and the mother of Melanie Griffith), right up Hitchcock’s blonde obsession alley (Kim Novak, Grace Kelly), traveled with a set of love birds, which may have, may not have, been some kind of clue for birds descending on the town, wrecking a diner and a gas station, attacking school children and killing several people, including the delightful Suzanne Pleshette.

Artistically, it wasn’t a great movie, but you can’t forget the damn thing. Taylor was a steady, stoic, presence of sanity throughout the film.

Ekberg had a large, impressive role in the 1960 Federico Fellini black-and-white epic about a jaded journalist (the unforgettable Marcello Mastrioanni) making his way drunkenly through the sophisticated world of celebrities , aristocrats and long-staring bon vivants tired of it all in Rome.

Ekberg played a movie star, bigger than life, in many ways, plagued by paparazzi. At one point, she jumps into the Trevi Fountain in Rome and prances, splashes and dances in it with the besotten Mastrioanni in tow. It’s an impressionistic moment in a film that was about a lot of things—religion, politics, sex, boredom, anarchy.

If you were a boy growing up around that time into late teenhood, that movie was disturbing, mainly because you hadn’t a clue what was going on, but it sort of made you sweat. That was Ekberg. She could do that.

One other thing: in the Washington Post obituary about her, Ekberg was said to be famous for her numerous romances. Her conquests, the Post stated, “were said to have included Frank Sinatra, Tyrone Power, Yul Brynner and . . . Rod Taylor.”

Erin Schaff •

The Boathouse at Fletcher’s Cove — a concession owned and controlled by the National Park Service — is upstream on the Potomac River about two miles from the Georgetown shoreline and is stuck in the mud. Literally.

The boathouse has operated out of this small cove for more than 100 years, but the cove has now filled with silt and debris, which has grounded and isolated the walkway out to the dock at an angle and has made getting to it unsafe. Additionally, silting at the entrance to the cove from the water side makes entering the entire cove virtually impossible at any time other than at the highest tide.

In mid-October the NPS declared the walkway to the dock unsafe for public use, effectively shutting down the business and access to the river two weeks before the end of the season with no concrete plans to fix the problem. One NPS official admitted that the NPS does not have the money to dredge the cove or make any substantial long-term repairs.

Fletcher’s is treasured by fisherman who see it as an ideal fishing location, in part because of the currents from Great Falls and the depth of the water mid-river.

Aside from fishermen themselves, the biggest impact may be for the D.C. Fisheries & Wildlife Division. Fletcher’s is the only boathouse that rents fishing boats which, according to the District, account for 60 percent of D.C’s fishing and wildlife permits sold in the city, bringing in $60,000 for D.C. government.

At a Dec. 17 public meeting, held by the Park Service at its Ohio Drive office for the National Capital Region, Bryan King, director of D.C. Fisheries & Wildlife Division, saw the problem as urgent, saying that without Fletcher’s there would be no D.C. Fisheries and Wildlife Department. Without a working boathouse at Fletcher’s, King said, “We don’t even qualify for de minimis status . . . we don’t exist and that’s not hyperbole, that’s not exaggeration, we don’t exist.”

In a Dec. 29 follow-up with the Georgetowner, King said that he had later found that the department would still exist, but it would be hard pressed to cover its expenses and would be spending much more money than it brings in. “It’d be a slow painful death if we didn’t have that money,” King said.

At the Dec. 17 NPS meeting, King also said that D.C. has “literally hundreds of thousands of dollars,” part of a federal aid package “that we are currently not using, and it is strictly for boating access. . . . Now given that we haven’t spent any of this money of which we are supposedly obligated to spend, and we have money going back two, three, four years and in that sense it has been assigned to us, and it is non-competitive. … we could have a grant [for Fletcher’s] off our desks in a matter of weeks.”

There is a catch in this possible federal bailout: commercial activity is not allowed to take place where the federal funds are used. “The question is whether or not a government entity, [in this case the Park Service concession, operated by Guest Services, a private corporation] is considered a commercial enterprise. If the answer is no, it opens up literally hundreds of thousands of dollars with a 25-percent match.”

King is expecting an answer to whether D.C. government dollars can and will be used to help resolve the issue, at least in the short term.

Georgetowner •

Actor Tom Hanks and singer-songwriter and actress Rita Wilson co-hosted the 92nd annual National Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony Dec. 4 at the Ellipse, where the first family lit the tree around 5 p.m. Wilson also performed during the show. Hanks did a little schtick with President Obama about a possible film the two of them could do after he leaves office: cops by day; NBA basketball players by night. Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter and actor Ne-Yo, platinum-selling artist Steve Miller, and country star Chely Wright joined pop phenomenon Fifth Harmony, Grammy-winning legend Patti LaBelle, pop world duo Nico & Vinz, and award-winning vocal group the Tenors in performing a collection of holiday favorites. With first lady Michelle Obama, Little League star Mo’Ne Davis read “The Night Before Christmas” to children. At the end, all were stage — first daughters Malia and Sasha Obama — where the president high-fived Santa Claus. [gallery ids="101945,135938,135935,135930,135925,135921,135916,135907,135912,135944,135946" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

Even though the holidays are technically over, at a function like the 2015 Inauguration of Muriel Bowser as the seventh mayor of the District of Columbia, you start to feel like a political Ebenezer Scrooge. Look, here are the ghost(s) of elections past. Here are today’s leaders,  ensconced, and here is generation next, proclaiming the future of the city.  

“This is an auspicious day,” said WUSA Channel 9 reporter Bruce Johnson, presiding at the Washington Convention Center ceremony. He should know, since he’s been doing the presiding for years and presents himself as a familiar, affable ghost of politics past, present and future.

It was indeed, with all those timelines crisscrossing. Here was Muriel Bowser, who had rolled over formidable opponents to be here on the dais being handed the city seal in a formal handover of power from Mayor Vincent Gray,  proclaiming in a empathic windup to her speech that “I’m ready to get to work.”

Here was a generational moment and occasion, with three newly elected and energetic District Council members making their presence felt with speeches laced with optimism — and with two more council member seats (Ward 4 and 8) to be filled, making for a council full of relatively new faces.

Elissa Silverman—a policy analyst but also well known for years as a reporter and “Loose Lips” on the irreverent City Paper—won an at-large seat. Our process was  “keep it simple and make it fun.” Brianne Naldeau, upset the long-time Ward 1 rep, the always bow-tied (along with former mayor Anthony Williams) Jim Graham. Charles Allen, the young chief of staff for Tommy Wells in Ward 6, won his boss’s seat after Wells ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic Primary for mayor.

There was also the dynamic Kenyan McDuffie, winning his first full term as Ward 5 Council Member easily after a special election to replace the disgraced Harry Thomas, Jr., gave him a seat on the council.  McDuffie duly noted the importance of ethics and honesty in politics, and he did not have to go into specifics for people to understand what he was talking about.  Thomas and the two Browns, former chairman Kwame, and former at-large member Michael,  were the ghosts and shadows of politics past, promising politicians and elected officials who had run afoul of the law. (The three were not in attendance.)

Consider, then, the also auspicious presence of Karl Racine, the Washington lawyer, who became the District’s first-ever Attorney General.
           
The future—impatient, with its own set of challenges, problems to be solves, obligations to be met—was invoked often by all the people sworn in, the incumbents, the newcomers,  those elevated—like Bowser and Racine—to new responsibilities.

“Fresh starts,” embraced by just about everybody, might have been a part of the swearing-in oath, so often was it invoked by speakers—that and “Let’s get started,” “We must work together so that all of the city’s residents are served,” “Let us move forward” and “affordable housing . . . ”

The ghosts made their way into the speechifying machinery. “Marion, you are not forgotten,”  Bowser said at one point, to cheers from the audience.  Former Mayor Marion Barry, who passed away Nov. 23, still seemed a vivid presence at the inaugural proceedings, like a ghost not yet invisible. His memorial was held in the same hall less than a month ago.

Bowser, whose confidence grew with every appearance and interview and debate—“Actually, I kind of liked the debates”, she said, even though she was criticized for not having enough of them during the general campaign—burst onto the dais in full bloom. 

She was empathic, full of hope and plans: “We’re going to tackle homelessness head on,” “We need good jobs “ and “Si se puede [yes, we can,” “We’re going to allocate $100 million for affordable housing” and “We’re going to bring the Olympics to the District.”  She is the second female mayor, the second youngest (Adrian Fenty was the youngest), and the seventh elected mayor.

When you listen to Bowser talk like in this manner (and in person), you can see how see she’s grown. She touted her hometown beginnings. “I’m in Ward 4.” “My parents, as everybody knows, are in Ward 5, and my siblings are in Ward 6 and 7, but I aim to be a mayor for all eight wards.”
           
You could see a friend helping a couple, who said they were not “from here or from this country,” explain the ward system by drawing a diagram on the inaugural program for them.

An inauguration is a kind of spectacle of hope, memory and forgetfulness—judges and children move up with the new council members and the old ones.  Allen’s two-year-old daughter, once on the dais, seemed reluctant to leave her daddy.  “Actually, if you know two-year-olds, that was pretty good,” Allen said.  District Council Chairman Phil Mendelson’s daughter gently padded her dad’s partially shiny dome. 

One shouldn’t expect detailed policy speeches from those recently—seconds ago—sworn in.  It is the tone and the key words that count—”humble” was another word used one and all,  and the tone throughout was one of gratitude, of inclusion,  community, and uniform support for the promise of statehood . . . eventually. 

It was all strangely intimate.  

Newcomers, millennial types, mixed with officialdom, and officials past—hello, Harold Brazil, now a practicing lawyer, there’s Bill Lightfoot, who, while not running himself, has helped many to run, and media types, Tom Sherwood and legendary photographer Lateef Mangum and a pat on the back for Jim Graham from old constituents.  

There were politicians from the past or elsewhere: D.C. mayors Adrian Fenty and Anthony Williams—the recent past–former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown, who lost his bid for governor—and current stars—Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

And so . . . as they might say, the newly minted “honorable” and the mayor herself, wrapped around a prayer breakfast, a gala: “Let us begin,”  “moving forward” and “l’m ready to get to work”—and, for sure, “God bless us, everyone and the District of Columbia.”
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Robert Devaney •

The three days of services and tributes to former Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion S. Barry, Jr., ended Saturday, Nov. 6, at Congressional Cemetery, where many other significant local and national figures have been laid to rest. During this time for Barry, it was written: “A Life Ends. The Legacy Begins.”

Barry was mayor from 1979 to 1991 and 1995 to 1999. He died Nov. 23 at 78.

On Thursday, his casket was officially received by the District government at the Wilson Building on Pennsylvania Avenue and was in repose for more than a day. On Friday, a procession took the casket to the Temple of Praise Church on Southern Avenue.

At the Washington Convention Center on a rainy Saturday, speakers moved along the stage with Barry’s casket front and center in the upstair exhibit hall for a nearly day-long tribute to the former mayor and councilmember. Each noted on how Barry’s life touched them and how it changed the life of the nation’s capital and its residents. Here he was with his friends and people.

After the invocation, the former mayor’s son Christopher Barry addressed his father’s past and present. Another speaker wondered if the young Barry should go for the now vacant Ward 8 seat.

Later on, Barry’s wife Cora Masters Barry spoke of her husband, from whom she was separated, as someone who talked to everyone and gave away money.

Watching the clock because of the need for burial before sunset, master of ceremonies Rev. Willie Wilson kept the speakers moving on. Those included Mayor Vincent Gray with former mayors Sharon Pratt and Anthony Williams standing behind him, along with Ras Baraka, Mayor of Newark, N.J. Mayor-elect Muriel Bowser cited Barry’s summer jobs program, which so many Washingtonians have said gave them their first job.

Rev. Jesse Jackson, gave a heart-felt eulogy, recalling his time with Barry as “blood brothers” in the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam gave the fiery speech of the day at the convention center. He equated Barry’s sins of marital infidelity and drug use to those of President John F. Kennedy. Farrakhan also called for activists to be “lions” instead of “pussycats,” knowing that sometimes the elders do not make it to the promised land but that their children do.
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Gina Robinson •

A 15-room boutique hotel, the Avery, is planned for the 2600 block of P Street NW — between the Jerusalem Baptist Church, Chichie’s Grooming Spa for Dogs on one side and a new restaurant, After Peacock Room, and the Georgetown office of Washington Fine Properties on the corner, which brokered the property sale.

Located at 2616 and 2620 P St. NW, the new hotel is being created from two office townhouses, Samantha Schneck of the Avery Georgetown LLC told the Washington Business Journal. She said she expected the Avery could open by September after major interior reconstruction but no changes to the exterior.

Planners for the Avery expect its clients would be parents of Georgetown University students or guests of embassies.

“We plan to bring a lot of cool ideas to it to modernize the inn concept,” Schneck told the Journal. “We’re hoping the neighborhood embraces it.”

The proposed hotel is on the agenda for community comment during tonight’s monthly meeting of the Georgetown-Burleith Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2E at Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School on 35th Street, NW.