Latest News

Georgetowner • August 18, 2014

Yanni

August 15th, 2014 at 08:00 PM | $35.00 – $125.00 | philipc@wolftrap.org | Tel: 703.255.1900 ext. 1729 | Event Website

Globally acclaimed composer whose epic orchestrations fuse otherworldly synthesized sound with gorgeous instrumentation

Address

1551 Trap Road Vienna Virginia, 22182

Architecture 101: Bio-architecture

August 16th, 2014 at 11:00 AM | $12 Member | $10 Student | $20 Non-member. | marcommintern@nbm.org | Event Website

Address

National Building Museum, 401 F St., NW

National Bonsai Foundation Celebrates John Naka’s 100th Birthday

August 16th, 2014 at 02:00 PM | Free | averyanapol@gmail.com | Tel: 4148612076 | Event Website

Join the National Bonsai Foundation as we celebrate the legacy of John Naka, North American bonsai master who would have been 100 years old on this date. The event will feature videos and photos of Naka at work, remarks by the Museum’s assistant curator Aarin Packard, a display of Naka’s bonsai from the museum’s permanent collection and birthday cake.

Address

The National Arboretum, 3501 New York Ave., NE

IEF Old Fashioned Family Picnic

August 17th, 2014 at 02:00 PM | $70 per person, $150 for family | cbaerveldt@iefusa.org | Tel: 240-290-0263 ext 118 | [Event Website](http://iefusa.org/

Second Annual Old Fashioned Family Picnic to benefit the International Eye Foundation. Great family picnic fare, wine, beer, sodas. Hay rides, and listen to the music of King Street Bluegrass. Children welcome.

Address

Farm of Dr. & Mrs. A. Raymond Pilkerton, 15111 River Road, Potomac, Md.

Georgetown Family Festival

August 23rd, 2014 at 10:00 AM | info@dumbartonhouse.org | [Event Website](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dolley-day-at-dumbarton-house-war-of-1812-commemoration-tickets-8779302129?ref=ebapi)

Dumbarton House invites you to a weekend full of events that are fun for the whole family. Programs include, Georgetown walking tours, ice cream making, a Dolley cake and Federal period games and crafts. Events begin Saturday, August 23rd at 10am and conclude Sunday, August 24th at 4pm.Admission to the museum is free this weekend.

Address

Dumbarton House; 2715 Q ST, NW

Joseph Park •

Beginning Sept. 1, a new anti-littering law will be enforced by the Metropolitan Police, which will allow officers to issue $75 Notice of Violation for littering to any pedestrians caught littering on public space, in waterways or on someone else’s private property.

If you are issued an NOV for littering, you are then required to provide your accurate name and your address to the officer. If you refuse or fail to do so, you can be arrested. When convicted, the litterer will be fined an additional $100 to $250 by D.C. Superior Court. The fines will double when an individual fails to respond to the ticket either by paying or appealing the ticket to the Office of Administrative Hearing.

During August, police officers are writing warnings to litterers in the First, Second, Third, Fifth and Seventh Police Districts to educate the public about the possible consequences of the upcoming littering law enforcement.

A driver of any vehicle — where an officer sees either the driver or any passenger throw out trash of any kind on to any public space, such as streets, alleys and sidewalks — will continue to be fined with a $100 ticket.

Georgetowner • August 11, 2014

In Washington, the anniversaries just keep on coming.

“Therefore, I am resigning the office of the Presidency of the United States,” announced President Richard Nixon, embroiled beyond constitutional and legal hope in the Watergate tapes and scandal. No American president had ever uttered those words before. That was Aug. 8, 1974, 40 years ago on Friday. He was gone in helicopter liftoff the following day, Aug. 9, even as Vice President Gerald Ford was sworn in as President of the United States.

Giving voice to a collective national sigh, Ford said, “At last, our long national nightmare is over.”

Well, apparently not. Many people are still dreaming not so good dreams about the Watergate years, with the result there has been a constant flow of books, articles, films, made-for-TV films, documentary and quasi-fictional since Nixon, perhaps the most controversial president in modern times, resigned his office.

There were, of course, numerous tomes by some of the participants and principals, not the least of which was Nixon himself, but also his aides Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, Jeb Magruder, and most and always ever lastingly famous “All The President’s Men” by the Washington Post reporters, who unearthed and covered the scandal, which forever tagged the “gate” on every subsequent political scandal, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

The Post, by going after the story tooth and nail, risking quite a bit before jumping in, and as a consequence solidified its standing as the country’s top newspaper with the New York Times. The Post won a Pulitzer Prize for its Watergate reporting along with legendary political cartoonist Herblock and became something of an institutional celebrity, if there is such a thing.

Nixon, who had won re-election by an unprecedented plus 60-percent margin in 1972, seemed poised on the precipice of great opportunity. Instead, the arrest of several men, who had tried to burglarize the office of the Democratic Party headquarters, located within the Watergate complex, would in not so long a time spiral into revelations of campaign sabotage, bribery, lies, illegal funding, wiretapping and a gigantic coverup that would doom Nixon and most of the ranking members of his administration, and destroy a dramatic political career.

There’s no point today in detailing the story—everyone else has, and in great deal, and continues to do so. Nationally, the highlight was probably Nixon’s emotional resignation speech, and an earlier one in which he had to declare, “I am not a crook.” Top aides and U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell were forced to resign. There were revelations of break-ins, of former CIA agents working for the aptly acronymed CREEP (Campaign to Re-elect the President) and attempts to co-opt an often willing FBI.

Also, there were the tapes, the damnable tapes, thousands of pages of tapes, in which the president, profane, ranting, dispirited, angry and completely uncensored, not only revealed himself to have knowledge of the coverup and all that went with it but displayed a man who was profoundly paranoid, bigoted and vengeful.

The last tape was the last straw—by that time, it was apparent that there were few if any House of Representatives members who weren’t prepared to vote articles of impeachment.

The saga always made for great, eye-popping reading or watching. At least two films of note were made from the material—“Nixon-Frost,” a gripping film made from a gripping stage play, and “Nixon,” starring Anthony Hopkins as a Nixon trapped in a conspiracy as imagined feverishly by Oliver Stone, whose view of American politics (“JFK” and “W”) is nothing if not conspiratorial.

In 2012, there was “Watergate,” a kind of emotional and understated novel by the gifted Thomas Mallon, a political and historical novelist of note (“Henry and Clara” about the couple in the presidential box with Abraham Lincoln and “Dewey Defeats Truman” among others). In “Watergate,” Mallon uses Rosemary Woods and Fred LaRue as major characters and comes up with a work of fiction that is almost a kind of trenchant elegy of and eulogy for the days of Richard Nixon.

John Dean as Nixon’s White House’s counsel was one of the most pivotal figures in the scandal, once called a master manipulator of the cover-up, who also warned the president that there was a cancer on the presidency, close to the presidency.

Dean testified for the prosecution, spent small time in prison and became a prolific author, beginning with his first account of Watergate “Blind Ambition” and, recently, “The Nixon Defense.”

If you want a great sense of what it was like to live in Washington during the Nixon years and especially the Watergate debacle, it’s worth reading and looking at “Washington Journal” by the veteran reporter and graceful writer Elizabeth Drew, who began writing a series of journal entries during the scandal for the New Yorker.

For both facts, and atmospherics, it’s hard to beat this thick (nearly 500 pages) almost day-by-account of the scandal, unfolding like a wave far out to sea, and becoming a tidal wave that engulfed the Nixonites, the city and the country.

I was a reporter in the San Francisco Bay area at the time and was told to take the pulse of the passers-by on the day of the president’s resignation. The reaction amounted to shock, outrage among residents of this very liberal part of California, and confusion about the facts and details of Watergate.

By the time, I moved to Washington, Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman were already in the city, scouting out the scene and the Washington Post for the movie version of “All the President’s Men”.

Nixon was pardoned by President Gerald Ford a year after he resigned. Nixon died in 1994, a sage and wizened member of the New York law establishment. Former presidents extolled Nixon at his funeral as a flawed statesman who had many successes and political talents. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wept at the funeral.

By that time, you could be forgiven if you forgot Nixon’s flaws. “One of Us” was Tom Wicker’s judgement on Nixon in the sense that he suggested that Nixon was made of humble and insecure cloth, much like many Americans, and rose to eminence in spite of the holes in his character.

Those holes, it turns out, remain considerable if you looked at “Nixon by Nixon: In His Own Words,” a documentary by Peter Kunhardt (“Teddy: In His Own Words”), in a style that unfilters Nixon amid not only Watergate but also his own biggest triumph, the trip to China. With clips on different subjects—tapes, the press, China, Viet Nam—Kunhardt references Nixon through his recorded voice from the infamous tapes talking with aides like Ken H. R. Haldeman or Chuck Colson. The outpouring remains shocking—just when you think you’ve forgotten this as ancient history—there he is bristling with vitriol, about Jews—they’re “disloyal,” full of bigoted cliches and characterizations of minorities—and a burning hatred of the press. At one point, he’s making out a media list for the trip to China “the networks, sure, the wires and only a couple of others. Nothing for Post or the Times. Screw them. Not even photographers.”

His voice, then, becomes as alive as you or I, because we know this to be the truth. The unvarnished truth.

History may judge Nixon as a great president, if we are to believe Kissinger. After all, he was the first president to go to China. He was also the first president to resign his office.

History will remember that, too.

Georgetowner •

Architecture 101: Traditional Japanese Architecture

August 9th, 2014 at 11:00 AM | $12 Member | $10 Student | $20 Non-member | marcommintern@nbm.org | Event Website

Mira Locher, FAIA, LEED AP discusses why thick, thatched roofs, rough mud-plaster walls, and precisely woven tatami mats are grounded within the natural environment and culture of Japan. 1.5 LU (AIA)
$12 Member | $10 Student | $20 Non-member.
Special series pricing for all three Architecture 101 lectures: $30 Member | $25 Student | $50 Non-member.

Address

National Building Museum; 401 F St. NW

DC’s Biggest Outdoor Water Festival For Adults Comes To The Yards

August 9th, 2014 at 02:00 PM | Free | Event Website

The Yards will host its first-ever adult outdoor water festival, Splash Yards. The park will transform into an adult pool party complete with water elements, lawn games and a tiki bar. Guests can stay cool with a giant inflatable water slide, two pools with individual motorboats and people-sized hamster balls, and a water battle of epic proportions. Live entertainment will be provided by beloved 90s party band, White Ford Bronco, as well as multiple DJ sets.

Address

355 Water Street SE

Harbour Nights: Stephen Heller

August 13th, 2014 at 06:30 PM | Event Website

Relax on the plaza at the Washington Harbour and hear live music at Harbour Nights every Wednesday evening starting June 4 through September 24. Different local bands each week – including Kerry McCool, Josh Burgess, ilyAIMY, and many more – begin their two-hour shows at 6:30 pm, next to outdoor restaurants on the Potomac River waterfront in Georgetown. See the lists of bands, special events, and dining options on the website, and stay updated with Facebook/TheWashHarbour and Twitter/TheWashHarbour.

Address

3050 K Street NW

Collections Conversation: Dolley Madison and the War of 1812

August 13th, 2014 at 12:30 PM | Free | info@dumbartonhouse.org | Event Website

Join Dumbarton House Executive Director Karen Daly and learn more about Dolley Madison’s exciting flight from the White House and her stop at Dumbarton House through research by author Anthony Pitch and the collections of Dumbarton House. The talk will feature items on loan for the exhibition “Homefront 1812: Friends, Family & Foe” on view at Dumbarton House throughout Summer 2014.Event is free, but reservations are suggested.

Address

Dumbarton House; 2715 Q ST, NW

Exhibition Reception: 50 Egg Tempera Paintings by Caroline Adams

August 15th, 2014 at 06:00 PM | FREE | gallery@callowayart.com | Tel: 202-965-4601 | Event Website

Mix egg yolk with powdered pigment and you have egg tempera, a painting medium that has been used for over 1,000 years. A successful Kickstarter campaign provided the funding for Washington artist Caroline Adams’s project to make 50 paintings in egg tempera. The project culminates in an exhibition of the fifty small landscapes at Susan Calloway Fine Arts in Georgetown. Adams noted that they will be hung together “to feel like glimpses of a larger space”.

Address

Susan Calloway Fine Arts; 1643 Wisconsin Ave NW

Robert Devaney • August 7, 2014

With Georgetown toddlers and youngsters at the ready, the Citizens Association of Georgetown celebrated this year’s finale to Concerts in the Park July 13 with a patriotic celebration and parade at Rose Park at 26th and O Streets, NW.

Singer Laura Tsaggaris and her band belted out some lively country-pop tunes, as the little ones — along with the grown-ups — sampled free ce cream cones from Haagen Daz, snow cones or hot dogs from TTR Sotheby’s, which also handed out its blue balloons. Long & Foster had a photographer for special shoots and a prize give-away. Nancy Taylor Bubes of Washington Fine Properties gave out frisbees for coloring and other crafting. Sprinkles cupcakes handed out red velvet or vanilla cupcakes. Also, parked next to the park was Glover Park’s Surfside food truck.

Children kept the July 4th theme going with red, white and blue streamers, glasses, pinwheels and tried to march in front of the stage in a straight line.
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Joseph Park •

Yummi Crawfish Restaurant is opening up its first location at 1529 Wisconsin Ave., NW, as it takes over the former Puro Café space.

The restaurant plans to offer crawfish, Cajun-style, unique to Louisiana. Other seafood options will be available, such as crab legs, lobster, mussels, shrimp and raw oysters.

As Yummi Crawfish is interviewing prospective restaurant workers, it promises to provide quality seafood as well as friendly service to the customers.
“With our hearts in our hands, our promise is to always provide fresh and high quality seafood that will be pampered with delightful flavors,” according to the Yummi Crawfish website. “It is a commitment to achieve the ideal customer experience success. We believe in making a difference, we are the difference.”

The opening date for the restaurant is yet to be determined. Stay tuned for updates on the restaurant’s debut.

Robert Devaney • August 4, 2014

The Metropolitan Police Department’s Mountain Bike Tactical Unit is joining up with the Citizen’s Advisory Council to host their annual community bike ride event, the Orange Helmet Patrol. This event will take place 7 p.m. to 8 p.m., Thursday, July 10. The ride will begin at 26th and P Streets, NW.
Meet your neighborhood officers. Identify street lights that are out and other problems. Be part of a new high-visibility crime prevention strategy.

The Orange Helmet Patrol of bicyclists is a new twist on an old concept. Begun in the late 1980s in Washington, D.C., Orange Hat Patrols have become a widely used and accepted component of community policing. Wearing orange hats to show neighbors that they are helping to check out the community, groups of volunteers have proven to be a crime deterrent. With the increasing popularity of biking, the Second District has implemented a new community policing bike program.

All skill levels and ages are encouraged to join the ride. For more details, email Kaitlyn.Bush@dc.gov.

Note from MPD: Participation in the community-police bike ride is voluntary. Participants will be required to sign a liability waiver before the ride. Children under the age of 16 must wear a helmet to participate.

Gary Tischler •

In troubled times, the precious daily dealings we do demand to be noticed, as if they might lose themselves in the morning headlines and the nightly news.

Of late, we have lived a summer of ongoing sorrow as well as one in which the weather has contrived to bring us rain and heat and the tribulations of storms during the week, and often picture-perfect weekends which we embrace with urgency.

In Washington, D.C, where the world news is local news and politics are like soot in the air, these patterns are especially poignant. We saw recently flowers grow like gardens at the Malaysian Embassy and the Embassy of the Netherlands, where mourners signed condolence books and President Barack Obama visited. It was the Dutch who suffered the most deaths in the shocking, horrific shoot down of a Malaysian over battle-contested territory in Ukraine. Nearly 300 deaths came from that act, suspected to be committed by pro-Russian separatists armed with sophisticated missiles, obtained from Russia, in eastern Ukraine. Bodies of passengers and uniformed crew members and children and toys, laptops, scarves and shoes and notebooks fell from the sky and scattered across the war-torn steppe.

The protagonists in that tragedy are still sifting through the physical and emotional wreckage that came from—there were funeral marches, candlelit vigils, full churches and anguish both spoken and held in the quiet of the night. In the meantime, the quasi-civil war continued in the Ukraine, apace, some of it fought near the site of the crash.

In the Middle East, there was nothing but death and fire everywhere, most dramatically in the Gaza strip, that embattled, compact land in which Palestinians live in stark contrast to many of their neighbors. A series of events—the murder of three Israeli teenagers, a retaliatory killing of a Palestinian teenager and the launching of rockets by the militant group Hamas into Israel—led to eventually an Israeli invasion of Gaza in search of deadly tunnels and launching sites. Gaza has become a killing ground with half-hearted truces quickly broken. A thousand Palestinians have died, many of them civilians, many children among them. There have been significantly more Israeli military casualties than in previous such clashes.

There seems to be no end in sight—thousands dying in Syria in the civil war there, hundreds more in Iraq where a preternaturally violent terrorist group is still within sight of Baghdad, killing with terrible efficiency.

These are the daily news of our lives—they often obliterate other news, as well as the politics of our divided times, including the big national questions of what to do with the flow of Central American youngsters to the American borders in Texas.

This is the stuff of coffee house talk, morning headaches, anguish and sorrow for many Washingtonians, this most international of cities, who have friends and relatives in the areas of conflict and killing.

In times like these, in this city, we cherish the joys we can manage, almost with a kind of guilt, the news always out there like a reproach. Still, the sun reflecting on carefully stacked tomatoes, bright and shiny, from the Eastern Shore, is a welcome, almost energizing sight: the colors seem perfect, even blessed. At the Dupont Circle Sunday market, musicians—a black, wiry man playing jazz with his violin, a smallish man in blue jeans putting a folk and country wail into a song about love gone dry in the long ago.

We wander through the market, where ready-made food is an increasing presence, buy our Sunday crab cakes because we must, take home West Virginia potato salad and a scrumptious peach and strawberry pie.

At Eastern Market on Capitol Hill, we mingle with the many who have come to enjoy the sun and its bearable temperatures and blue sky. We buy a stack of chocolate chip cookies from a woman who says, “Money back guaranteed, the best cookies on the street.” We go to the bookstore stacked with so many used books over two or three floors that the building seems to list. “Been here over two decades, sitting right here behind the counter,” the proprietor says. “You need to get out more,” somebody tells him. Children run, fathers lift their baby boys, dogs abound and jewelry from South Africa sparkles like a gift to come.

These days, you notice these things in what appears to be a sad, dangerous summer, filled with bright skies and omens.

In 1914, 100 years ago, on July 28, World War I began — after a month before there was another impossible blue-sky day like that in Sarajevo, when Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb, shot the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, setting off a series of events that would lead to the deaths of millions and change the world.

Natalie Koltun •

Equinox, the upscale fitness club known for its luxury facilities and seasoned personal trainers, has announced its plans to acquire the Sports Club/LA properties in Washington, D.C., July 28, as well as those located in New York, Boston, Miami and San Francisco.

With the six newly acquired clubs, Equinox now operates a total of 73 fitness centers around the world, including several in London and Toronto. Next to the Ritz-Carlton, a newly acquired Sports/LA — and soon to be renamed — is located at 1170 22nd St., NW. An Equinox club can also be found on Elm Street in Bethesda, Md.

“This acquisition is a testament to the continued expansion of the Equinox brand as a global leader in luxury health and fitness and the growing demand for our unique offering,” says Harvey Spevak, CEO of Equinox.

Since its inception in 1991, the company has provided a holistic approach to fitness and offers a variety of strength and cardio training programs, group fitness classes, personal training, spa services and products and healthy food and juice options. Seeking to expand its range of health and fitness options and reach a broader scope of clientele, Equinox introduced an outpost of Pure Yoga, a popular Asian yoga studio, in New York, as well as acquiring a majority interest in SoulCycle, the trendy boutique cycle studio to open Saturday, August 2, on M Street.

Equinox will take operational control of the new clubs immediately and will begin transitioning the clubs to the Equinox brand. During the transitional period, the company’s signature classes will be introduced to members as well as new strength and cardio training equipment. Members will receive special access to Equinox’s mobile app, which stores the member’s fitness activity and data while exercising both inside and outside the club.

“Equinox is committed to an unparalleled member experience,” Spevak says. “We are thrilled to welcome all of the existing Sports Club/LA members to Equinox. We think they will welcome the changes in their clubs, and look forward to continuing to serve them with a luxurious lifestyle fitness experience.”

For more information, visit Equinox.com.

Joseph Park •

U.S. District Court Judge Frederick Scullin ordered a 90-day stay on his ruling that D.C.’s total ban on carrying handguns in public is unconstitutional. Scullin relied on the fact the plaintiffs in the lawsuit did not oppose the stay so that the District Council can have the time to re-write the gun law.

Of his decision, Scullin wrote, “. . . An immediate 90-day stay is appropriate to provide the city council with an opportunity to enact appropriate legislation consistent with the court’s.”

On July 28, D.C. Attorney General Irvin Nathan asked for a stay on the ruling until the D.C. decides on a potential appeal for the ruling or 180 days which will give the city lawmakers enough time to approve a new legislation that will regulate public gun carry within the District.

The stay will be in effect until Oct. 22 for the District Council to come up with new regulations or appeal the judge’s ruling to a higher court

Below is the original news story.

The D.C. ban on handguns carried outside the home was struck down as unconstitutional on July 26 by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. District residents are now permitted to carry legally registered pistols in public. Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier sent out an instructional memo telling officers not to arrest individuals carrying legally registered handguns.

The ruling came after five-year long lawsuit, Palmer vs. District of Columbia, and was brought by the Second Amendment Foundation and four licensed gun owners in the District. The legal started when three licensed gun-owners had their gun registration denied by the MPD because they intended to carry their guns in public.

The fourth plaintiff in the lawsuit is a New Hampshire resident who was charged with illegal gun carry after he was stopped for speeding. He later applied for a legal permit which would allow him to carry his handgun when he traveled through the city but had his gun licensing application rejected by the MPD.

“Congratulations, Americans, your capital is not a constitution-free zone,” wrote attorney Alan Gura, who represented the gun owners in this case, on his blog in response to the ruling. “Obviously, the carrying of handguns for self-defense can be regulated. But totally banning a right literally spelled out in the Bill of Rights isn’t going to fly.”

Ted Gest, a spokesman for the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, which defended the city’s ban, told the Washington Times that the city is studying the opinion and its options, which would include appealing the judge’s ruling and asking the judge to stop his ruling from going into effect during any appeal made by the city.