Latest News

Georgetowner • January 13, 2012

Throughout the city, there are many places to celebrate New Year’s Eve. Check out the list below for places in Georgetown and all over the city. There is still time to make plans.

The Ritz-Carlton Georgetown (3100 South Street, NW) is offering two dinner options in the Fahrenheit Ballroom. For the 5:30, 6:00, and 6:30pm seatings, guests can choose from a three-course menu for $75 per person. After 8 p.m., a four-course menu for $125 per person is offered.

Cafe Milano (3251 Prospect Street, NW) is offering an a la carte menu until 9 p.m. and then a prix fixe menu, along with two DJs and a band. The prix fixe menu is $125 per person and includes one glass of sparkling Italian wine but excludes all other beverages, tax and gratuity.

Bistro Francais (3124 M Street, NW) invites you to ring in the New Year with with chef Gerard Cabrol and a special 3-course prix-fixe menu ($59), a complimentary glass of champagne and noisemakers before midnight. www.bistrofrancaisdc.com

Puro Lounge (3276 M Street, NW) hosts a New Year’s Eve party starting at 7p.m., including great music with Guy Robert Jean, DJ music after 10:30 p.m., favors, raffle and many more surprises.

Sequoia (3000 K Street, NW) is offering a special five-course New Year’s menu, live entertainment (Radio King Orchestra), and a champagne toast at midnight. For more information, visit www.arkrestaurants.com/sequoia_dc.html

L2 Lounge (3315 Cady’s Alley, NW) is hosting New Year’s Eve Havana Party. Live telecasts of New Year’s Eve celebrations happening across the globe will be projected throughout the lounge. Havana beats to be performed by a live bongo drum musician playing in synch with L2’s in-house DJ. Breakfast will be available from 1 to 3:30 a.m. No entry fee for L2 Members plus five of their guests present upon check-in; $50 per person for non-members. Table reservations being held in reserve for L2 Members; non-members may send their requests to be put on the waiting list to memberservices@l2lounge.com.

Kafe Leopold (3315 Cady’s Alley, NW) offers an unforgettable New Year’s Eve dining experience featuring a decadent Austrian-inspired menu and NYE specials, prepared by the chef, while listening to live jazz music performed by Amy Bormet. Guests will be provided a complimentary party favors and noise makers to ring in 2012. Call 202.965.6005 to make reservations.

Mate Lounge ( 3101 K Street, NW) knows how to throw a party. Enjoy two hours of sushi and Latin fusion cuisine, a midnight champagne toast, party favors and fabulous live DJ set to set the tone for a fabulous year. To party with friends, book a VIP table for six people, and enjoy a bottle of Absolut vodka as well as a bottle of champagne to toast 2012. Sushi and Latin fusion cuisine buffet and party favors also provided. For table reservations (parties 7 or more), contact farees@latinconcepts.com or 202.361.1666. Pre-sale tickets, $35; regular, $45; table service for six persons, $350.

Sea Catch Restaurant (1054 31st Street, NW) is offering a “New Years Symphony” menu, featuring five courses for $60. For an additional $25, guests can add a wine tasting including four wines.

Bourbon Steak (2800 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW) is offering guests executive chef Adam Sobel’s special six-course tasting menu priced at $175 per person — with an additional $95 including wine pairings. The menu will be filed with luxe dishes such as Osetra caviar sandwich with toasted blini and fried quail egg, Chinese roast squab with foie gras steamed bun and plum sauce and Grilled bison tenderloin with black truffle gnocchi and toasted hazelnut. Dessert will see sweets, such as pineapple in all forms from confit to soup to sorbet, and the rich Bourbon Steak brownie with bourbon cordial and chocolate creameaux. The restaurant will offer two seatings for New Year’s Eve. The first seating will be available from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. and will offer a three-course menu for $90 per person. The second seating will be available from 8:30 to 10:30 p.m. — www.bourbonsteakdc.com

Peacock Cafe (3251 Prospect Street, NW) There are some reservations available for our festive annual NYE prix fixe dinner. First seating is from 6 to 7:30 pm, three courses and a glass of bubbly for $50 (not incl. tax & tip). A la carte options also available at the first seating, and all night long for bar patrons. Second seating brings late night excitement and takes place from 8 to 10 p.m.; four courses include a glass of bubbly plus party favors and festivities at midnight for $65 (not incl. tax and tip). All night, Moet & Chandon will have a special price of $64.88 ($20.12 off list price). Please call 202-625-2740 to make your reservations; credit card confirmation required.

Citronelle (3000 M Street, NW) will be offering two dinner seatings for the evening, with the first seating at 5:30 p.m., and the second starting at 8:30 p.m. This year will feature a special New Year’s Eve package on Dec. 31, including an overnight stay at The Latham Hotel, parking, and a continental breakfast.

For more locations in Georgetown, visit Georgetown BID

Outside of Georgetown, There Are Many Other NYE Parties to Attend

Newseum (555 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW): Make the Headliners Ball an even bigger story, and add dinner at The Source by Wolfgang Puck and lodging at Hotel Monaco. There’s no better place to count down to 2012 than D.C.’s top museum and party venue. The Headliners Ball features the best in food, drink and entertainment for an unforgettable New Year’s Eve celebration. One-of-a-kind cocktails and food from Wolfgang Puck, entertainment from the area’s hottest party band, Round Midnight, Dance jams with DJ Scientific Beats and access to Newseum exhibits.

Countdown to midnight and 2012 on the 40-foot by 22-foot high-definition video screen.

The Headliners Ball at the Newseum offers a choice of three packages — $195 per person; $180 for Newseum members; includes an open bar (8 p.m. to 2 a.m.), light snacks and a champagne toast at midnight. For more information, please call 202/292-6100.

Eden Lounge: For those looking to party down in class, I Street hotspot Eden Lounge (1716 I Street, NW) is hosting the End of The World 2012 New Year’s Eve Party in our nation’s capital this year. Located in the heart of Washington, Eden is D.C.’s own oasis under the stars. The hotspot has attracted A-list celebrities, such as David Arquette, T.I., Nas, Alex Ovechkin, LMFAO, Jay Sean and Wale among others. For party-goers who want to flash some real cash, Eden is offering a slew of baller packages. The Ultimate End of The World Package for $5,000 includes VIP Admission for 40 Guests and a private VIP section. To bring in the New Year with cheers, guests will receive 24 bottles of Moet and Chandon Imperial Rose Champagne and 10 bottles of premium liquor. For those with a more reasonable budget, the venue is offering VIP Packages of both $1,000 and $750, including VIP admission for 10 or eight guests. All New Year’s Eve packages with bottle minimums also include complimentary bottles of champagne. Individual tickets are also available for purchase for $30. To reserve a table or for more information, visit www.EdenDC.com or call 202-491-2165.

Josephine: Celebrate New Year’s 2012 in style at the newly enhanced Josephine Lounge at 1008 Vermont Avenue, NW. Josephine wowed the D.C. party scene in October with its chic brand new modern decor and redesign expanding the venue’s usable dance and mingling space. The hotspot has hosted celebrities such as Sean Penn, Will.i.am, Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher and Spike Lee. D.C. party people are invited to dance the night away to music by DJ N’dys from Miami’s famous Set nightclub. The DJ recently remixed the song “Missing You” by the Black Eyed Peas. VIP Packages start at $1,000 for 10 guests and bottle and champagne numbers depend on package deals. Individual tickets can be purchased for $40 and $75 for couples. To reserve table packages, visit www.josephinedc.com or call 202-347-8601.

Public: Join high-energy Dupont Circle favorite Public Bar (1214 18th Street, NW) for an evening of vibing and imbibing this New Year’s Eve. Public will be offering tables for up to 10 guests starting at $800, including champagne and bottle service. Individual tickets can be purchased for $80. Happy Hour prices will be offered, 8 to 10 p.m., and an open bar will be available to all guests from 10p.m. to 1 a.m. An appetizer buffet will be served from 10 p.m. to midnight for hungry Public partygoers. To reserve table packages or purchase tickets, visit www.PublicBarDC.com or call 202-223-2200.

Lost Society: U Street boutique steakhouse Lost Society (2001 14th Street NW) will be hosting a special New Year’s Eve feast to ring in the new year. With a unique and sophisticated ambiance, the lounge has already attracted celebrities such as Sean Penn and Tara Reid. DJ’s Gavin Holland and Chris Burns will be spinning on the decks starting at 9 p.m., with dinner served at 7:30 p.m. Table reservations start at $250 and tickets can be purchased in advance for $25 with three guaranteed top shelf cocktails. For more information, visit www.lostsociety-dc.com or call 202-618-8868.

Robert Devaney •

The new year clean-up has begun. The Department of Public Works is now collecting Christmas trees and wreaths to be picked up curbside through Jan. 14. Remove all decorations and place the greenery in the treebox space or in front of your home now or by Jan. 9. Please do not put the trees in plastic or cloth bags. Trees collected between Jan. 3 and 14 will be recycled. Any trees not collected by Jan. 14 should be set out with your trash to be picked up as space in the trash trucks allows over the following weeks.

The fall leaf collection program continues through Jan. 14, and every neighborhood in the District will have its leaves collected. DPW will collect leaves at least twice from residential neighborhoods by “vacuuming” the leaves residents rake into their treebox spaces.

Also, DPW will collect bagged leaves from the treebox space or the alley in neighborhoods with rear trash and recycling collections. Bagged leaves will be placed in the landfill. By collecting leaves, DPW reduces potential accidents and injuries resulting from slipping on wet leaves and prevent catch basins (storm drains) from clogging and causing street flooding during heavy rains.

Robert Devaney •

Your sweet wait is over! On Thursday, Jan. 5, at 10 a.m., Pie Sisters of Georgetown will open its doors at 3423 M St., N.W.

With ovens, coolers and counter ready for action, Allison, Cat and Erin Blakely will feed the town’s new taste for pies, sweet, creamy and fruity — and a savory one, too. “People are excited,” Allison said. “They have been so nice.”

Flavors include apple caramel crunch, pecan, key lime and banana, coconut or chocolate cream. The shop will sell pies in three sizes: the $4-“cuppie,” seven-inch ($14 to $16) and nine-inch ($35) pies, but return the glass plate for $5 off next purchase — which appears irresistible. There are chairs and tables in front of the shop with a coffee counter as well.

Bakers, businesswomen and parishioners of St. John’s Church, the Blakely sisters hail from Great Falls, Va., two having gone to Bishop O’Connell High School in Arlington and also played college basketball. Allison worked at the State Department and finance section of NBC in New York; Erin at BCBG Max Azria. Cat still works at the State Department.

Already known around town for their pies for weddings and social and charitable events, the Blakely trio said they chose the site because of its closeness to Georgetown University and its visibility — you can’t miss it turning off Key Bridge from Virginia — and that “the location is not too small and not too big.” Erin added: “We’ve had Georgetown students contact us for part-time jobs.”

Pie Sisters of Georgetown is at 3423 M St., N.W., one of the shops along Regency Row: 202-338-PIES (7437) — www.PieSisters.com

Gary Tischler •

All last year, it seemed, different parts of the District of Columbia government were hanging under a cloud of suspicion, as Mayor Vincent Gray, Chairman Kwame Brown and Ward Five council member Harry Thomas, Jr., await the outcome of federal investigations.

The city, in short, was waiting for one of the three shoes to drop.

This week, one of them did, and it fell on Thomas, who resigned Thursday night after rumors and reports had swirled all week on local television news, websites and newspapers that he had reached an agreement or deal with the U.S. District Attorney’s Office that he would resign and that he would probably be facing jail time.

On Friday, Jan. 6, Thomas stood up in U.S. District Judge and pleaded guilty to two federal felonies, admitting that he had embezzled $350,00 in government money meant to go to a youth athletic program and that he had falsified federal income tax reports.

According to a report in the Washington Post, he answered U.S. Judge John D. Bates with “Guilty as charged, your honor.”

The resignation was historic. Thomas, who occupied the Ward 5 seat once held by his father as well as current at-large council member Vincent Orange, became the first sitting member of the D.C. Council since the beginning of home rule to resign his office under a cloud. That’s a dubious distinction for a once promising political career.

Suspicions about the fraud, theft or embezzlings have been long-standing, first raised by a Republican opponent after his 2010 re-election campaign, although vigorously denied by Thomas. The money was apparently funneled through a non-profit called Team Thomas, created by Thomas as a source of funds for youth athletics, funds which Thomas allegedly used for luxury cars and vacations among other things.

Recently, indicating the seriousness of the federal investigation, teams of FBI and IRS agents launched a raid on the Thomas residence, seizing a number of items and an SUV. Thomas had also agreed to pay back the some $300,000, although he did not admit he had done anything wrong.

Things came to a head this week with reports from television reporters citing individuals close to Thomas that he would be resigning.

The result leaves Ward 5 without a council representative at least until May, when a special election could be held. In addition, there are also early races for the Democratic and Republican nominations for several council seats.

Several council members had already called for Thomas’s resignation, as did Mayor Vincent Gray recently. Chairman Brown was not among them.

“I think it’s time to move on and heal and and work as hard as we can to gain the trust of Washingtonians,” Brown said in a television interview. He also indicated he felt “confident” about the outcome of the investigation into his 2008 campaign practices.

Thomas’s resignation comes amid newly created ethics reform legislation which the council is now attempting to give a final approval.

There is no small irony that the ethics package, praised by many, but criticized by others for not going far enough, is on its way to becoming a fact of life in the District, with key members of the government still under investigation.

Robert Devaney • December 30, 2011

The reorganized Georgetown Senior Center held Christmas lunch Dec. 19 at St. John’s Episcopal Church on O Street. Founded in 1982 by the late and beloved Virginia Allen, the non-profit regularly gathers its members at the parish hall for lunch Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Volunteers help with the food and fellowship — local restaurants often pitch in, and Mary Meyer and Karen Cruise are still helping in the kitchen. For the seniors, there are programs after lunch as well as day trips to movies or Washington sights. For more information, call 202-316-2632 or visit www.GeorgetownSeniorCenter.org. [gallery ids="100447,114837,114882,114847,114874,114857,114866" nav="thumbs"]

Robert Devaney •

For sheer size and sense of fun, the big winner in Georgetown’s Christmas decorations has to go to Jack Davies of Prospect Street. His 20-feet-tall, inflated Santa Claus waves, “Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas” from the back of his house with its grand vista of the Potomac River to all entering D.C. from Virginia. While many Georgetown homes are trimmed from evergreens, red ribbons and small lights, Davies’s Santa makes for a happy surprise.

The Santa on his rooftop, overlooking Canal Road and M Street, can be seen by Key Bridge commuters stuck in traffic. And it is up there, Davies says, to make people smile. Davies, founder of AOL International, is a philanthropist and businessman who is part owner of the Washington Capitals, Wizards and Mystics.

Drivers and pedestrians enjoy the sight, illuminated at night, as does Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans who says he loves it, too.

Davies first began positioning a Santa a few years ago on a back balcony and discovered how easily the wind can bring it down. This year, with the advice of friend Michael Murphy, an environmental engineer, Davies erected his winning St. Nick the week after Thanksgiving. “The best $700 I ever spent,” he says — and quite a Christmas present from one of our neighbors.
[gallery ids="100448,114925,114907,114934,114897,114943,114952,114887,114961,114970,114877,114979,114988,114867,114917" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

“Billy Elliot the Musical” started out as a movie, a smallish, critically well received and quite popular English movie about a working class kid who wanted to become a ballet dancer. The movie became a popular hit and received some award nominations. Then, as small movies often do, it disappeared, apparently indelibly embedded in the minds of people who saw it.

If you go to the Kennedy Center’s Opera House—and you should—to see “Billy Elliot the Musical,”, you might be amazed to think that this was ever anything you could call small. The touring version is big—a really big show—big in physical size, in production qualities, and most importantly, big in ambition and heart, while rarely mushing or stooping to out-and-out sentimentality.

Oh, it’s still the same old story, one boy’s fight for leaps of glory, but it manages to be fresh, original, it manages to be about big subjects—the importance of art in lives that rarely come in contact with it, the mystery of talent, and as always, the equally mysterious natures of families. At three hours, the musical should be a bit of a slog, but it’s worth every minute, a worthy payoff of time and money and a critical success at that.

We’re in Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, where the national mining union has just gone on strike, and the Iron Lady is out to bust the workers in villages across the country, which may explain her natural affinity for Ronald Reagan. In one such village, Billy Elliot, an adolescent boy who’s lost his mother and lives with his belligerent father, tough brother and slightly daft grandmother, is taking boxing lessons when he accidentally wanders into a ballet class. He’s intrigued, watching the energy of the dancers under the guidance of the tough-talking, colorful Mrs. Wilkinson, but he’s also put off, because in the mining culture ballet is part of the upper class world, not to mention unmanly.

Still, he comes back, and finds something in himself—a gift for movement, flight, he’s a natural—and Mrs. Wilkinson gives him private lessons.

When pops and brother find out, they cut his budding efforts to get into the National School of Ballet short. But as the miners battle cops and scabs and run out of money, it occurs to Billy’s family and the extended family of miners that maybe Billy ought to get a chance to live his dream — and theirs — with him. And so, off they—Billy and pops—go to an audition in London, an enterprise that is often funny in a clash-of-cultures way, but also results in Billy’s audition number “Electricity” where Billy, in a bout of spectacular dancing expresses what dance means to him—its electricity, its hope, its dreams and freedom.

The show—with music by Elton John, a book by Lee Hall, choreography by Peter Darling and direction by Stephen Daldry—ended up winning 10 Tonys when it first hit Broadway. The road company requires a cast of five different Billys, and just watching, somewhat awestruck, two of the big numbers Billy is featured in, you can understand the need for a break.

Lex Ishimoto was the Billy I saw, lithe, unpretentious, a kid until he started to fly and leap. Billy talks like a normal working class kid, there’s nothing treacly here, no Oliver Twist, no David Copperfield or Tiny Tim. This is an often lonely kid who misses his mother tremendously, whose best friend is an exhibitionist gay teen who likes to wear dresses, who feels adrift in the often violent, macho world of the miners.

I expect that none of the Billys are particularly grand singers—both dance and voice are exacting disciplines that require training, and, as far as I know, there is no Rudolf Nuryev’s greatest hits album.

Darling and Daldry have done something remarkable here, they’ve put dance and music in the service of the story, instead of the other way around. In depicting the battles between cops and strikers, they’ve included the ballet dancers in seamless fashion.

“Billy Elliot” is in fact, very moving, in a tug-tug way, it delves into the fulfillment and pursuit of aspirations, it creates the world of the miners with not only drama but dance and song, some of which occasionally swerves into Les Mis territory.

And it should be said that while its hero is a kid, “Billy Elliot, the Musical” is no Disney effort. It’s gritty, with the occasional blunt, four-letter gruff language of working class types, something that we can applaud, but also approach with caution, if you’re a parent.

Gary Tischler •

I’ve been reading stories about and obituaries of Christopher Hitchens these past few days.

I was amazed how much I laughed—out loud.

I mean no disrespect toward the noted writer, literary critic, verbal bomb-thrower, bane of organized religion, outrageous and
iconoclastic savager of the whole band-width of ideology and political rhetoric, who was, above all, a very serious man. His opinions and pronouncements were principled, well thought-out to the point of almost being irrefutable and passionately held.

But by God — okay, perhaps not by God — he could be and was funny in his writing, on the air, in debates and interviews and probably in his sleep. And I mean funny as in deadly serious funny. He died last week at the young age of 62 of pneumonia, and the effects of cancer of the esophagus. Put another way, he probably died of the way he lived, or rather the effects of his mammoth indulgent drinking and smoking.

He probably would have abided by that judgement, but not the one in which some mean-spirited religious types insisted he was being punished by you know who. He was towards his last days astonished by the amount of communications offering him prayers, but also urging him to repent and recognize God.

Hitchens suggested if that should somehow happen it would be from the effects of his illness, not a recantation.

He talked (and wrote) about the subject of his dying days on talk shows and his recent autobiography boldly titled “Hitch 22”. “I could not imagine seeing a good religionist on his death bed and screaming in ear that there was no afterlife, no nothing. That would be unethical,” he said.

Among the many entries in the comment sections of stories about his death there was this: “Just this once, I will admit I am not great.” God.

Hitchens became known a little late in his life as an atheist, with arguments aplenty to prove that he was right, including a book called “God is Not Great”. But he backed his arguments with his keen wit and intelligence, and it would always seem that in religious arguments, faith might trump reason, but reason holds the info cards.

What Hitchens despised was the intolerance, the violence against other religions that was practiced by fanatical religious adherents and fundamentalists, especially the most radical of Islamic believers who committed acts of terror and murdered in the name of their religion. He also attacked Mother Theresa. He loudly and bravely blasted the fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini against Iranian author Salman Rushdie for his novel, “The Satanic Verses.” He was in all his opinions and writings, an equal-opportunity critic, offending friends and enemies on the left and right. And I think he was a brave man—he reported for the Nation and later Vanity Fair from war zones and once underwent waterboarding personally to be able to write about it first hand. “If this is not torture,” he wrote, “then there is no torture.”

He was a brilliant and elegant, if sometimes brutish, essayist, a keen literary critic, and by all-accounts, non-stop talker, sober or not.

As somebody noted that if you’re a famous and respected writer, you’re bound to get good notices when you die. He got good notices from really good people all of his life. On the publication of “Hitch 22,” the great English novelist Ian McEwan wrote that “If Hitchens didn’t exist, we wouldn’t be able to invent him.” Richard Dawkins wrote “If you are invited
to debate … with Christopher Hitchens, decline. His witty repartee, his ready-access store of historical quotations, his bookish eloquence, his effortless flow of well formed words … would threaten your arguments even if you had good ones to deploy.”

I saw Hitchens once at a faux debate at the Shakespeare Theatre in Harman Hall, where, I believe a Supreme Court justice, several media pundits, historians and Arianna Huffington as well as Hitch debated the issue of whether Henry V’s invasion of France which resulted in the battle of Agincourt was a war crime or legal. I don’t remember the outcome, but I do remember Hitchens, apropos of nothing except that Shakespeare’s ghost was in the house, gave a perfectly vivid description of Edward II’s horrific murder (from a play by Marlowe), which left even Huffington silent for a second or two.

This is the kind of thing Hitchens could be counted on to do: whatever came out of his mouth, would come out in perfectly formed sentences, it would often be risible and offensive, and dead-on in the
facts.

He was on Bill Maher’s show at least once, because Maher, you suspect, saw him as a kindred spirit because Maher flayed against people of faith religiously on his show, in the manner of a petulant boy whose favorite insult is “redneck,” a peevish boy who had obviously been hit on the knuckles with a rule by a nun in his childhood. On that occasion, Maher might have been forced to believe that there was a higher being, because he was sitting next to one.

VACLAV HAVEL

Hitchens, unlike writers like Jimmy Breslin or Norman Mailer in America, never aspired to public office, high or low, because the tradeoff is inevitably a piece of your soul.

In other countries, especially in the latter part of the 20th century, during the time of the Cold War and the relatively imminent breakup
of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Europe, things sometimes were different.

The dissident, writer and playwright Vaclav Havel , who died at 75 on Dec. 17, would become president of what was then Czechoslovakia and later became president of the Czech Republic when the country split in two with Slovakia becoming a separate country.

In all cases, Havel was first and foremost an eloquent dissident and provocateur in a country where creativity and dreams of freedom burned
strongly even in the darkest hours when the Soviet Union crushed the Prague Spring in 1968 with an invasion of tanks into Prague.

Havel was a prolific playwright and prolific and open dissident which caused his writings to be banned, which caused him to be arrested and land in prison. He was a hero throughout the world for his defiant stance, and his plays were performed often in the United States and frequently by Scena Theater under its director Robert McNamara in Washington, D.C.

His letters to his wife published under the title of “Letters to Olga” were widely praised for their moral resonance and example.

Writers or artists, of course, don’t always make good presidents. The presidency in the Czech Republic, as it is in other European countries,
is large ceremonial and symbolic, but as a symbol to his country Havel filled the job. As a president per se, Havel was a very good playwright.

A noted filmmaker was visiting in Washington during the D.C. Film Festival at the time of Havel’s ascendancy to the presidency and passed on this story to me. “Someone told Havel that people were already making jokes about him,” he said. “And Havel said ‘Jokes? About me? But I’m the
president.’ ” “Yes,” he was told, “That’s the joke.”

Havel reportedly found that joke funny. But then, he would, because he was a serious man.
[gallery ids="100449,114926" nav="thumbs"]

Robert Devaney • December 22, 2011

Rock/jazz pianist ELEW (Eric Lewis) held court with his mighty piano in the studio hall of Halcyon House Dec. 13 to benefit Sasha Bruce Youthwork, which provides shelter and counseling to runaway, abused and neglected children and their families. The D.C. non-profit – which began in Georgetown’s Christ Church – was enlarged by donations from Evangeline Bruce, wife of Ambassador David Bruce, following the death of their daughter Sasha who had helped troubled youths as a volunteer.

Jasmine Williams, a Sasha Bruce success story, saved from her abusive stepfather, told the crowd in John Dreyfuss’s studio that she was preparing to go to college. ELEW said he felt at home at the Sasha Bruce house. Even Mayor Vincent Gray showed up to praise the group and its founder, Deborah Shore: “We share the same values.”

Then, it was time for the main event. The expressive, high-energy ELEW pounded the ivories and plucked the cords with such tunes as “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Fireflies,” “Paint It Black” and more, along with his own “Thanksgiving” – and some Christmas riffs, too. (ELEW’s new album debuts soon.)
[gallery ids="100439,114387,114402,114395" nav="thumbs"]

Robert Devaney •

The Hamilton, Clyde’s Restaurant Group’s new 37,000-square-foot restaurant at 14th and F Streets, is making the scene in no small way. It is as big in space and in time as the ambition of the first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, whose federal department is but a block away with the White House nearby.

The same goes for the food and the music. Under the care of executive Brian Stickel, the menu is an expansive mix: steaks, seafood, salads, munchies, muffulettas and burgers, too. (Too much to name right now.) It changes for the time of day, there is a breakfast, brunch and lunch menu and more. There is an Eggs Hamilton on the late night menu. It will be the first Clyde’s joint (the original opened 1963 in Georgetown) ever to serve sushi. Oh, did we add that, as in 24/7, the Hamilton which opens Sunday, Dec. 18, never closes?

In keeping with the restaurant designers of Clyde’s, the artwork is custom, the woodwork perfection and the look and details contemporary but classic. Check out the Lady Liberty hanging lamps.
The Hamilton is in the old Borders space, where before that was the flagship of Garfinkel’s department store. It is the 15th Clyde’s restaurant; Old Ebbitt Grill, owned by the group, is one block away on 15th Street.

A lot of patrons can show up: first floor restaurant areas, 400 seats; upstair Loft private dining room, 80 seated/100 standing; live music seating, 260 seats, 100 bar stools. Downstairs, the sound-proofed, high-tech music space has its own menu for “quiet food,” such as sliders, pizza or sushi. It will display pictures of the likes of Dylan, Hendrix and Elvis. Musical acts are just getting scheduled.

At presstime, The Hamilton Burger was “to be determined.” Singer Mavis Staples will headline the grand opening celebration on Jan. 19. And, that’s right, no duels allowed.
[gallery ids="100441,114438,114430,114422,114407,114414" nav="thumbs"]