New Neighbor on Potomac Street: Zoe Feldman Designs
• July 12, 2012

On behalf of the Georgetown Media Group, we would like to welcome our new neighbor, Zoe Feldman. This local designer started her business, Zoe Feldman Designs in 2004 and relocated to her new office space above the Georgetown Media Group on Potomac Street June 29. We had the opportunity to sit down with Feldman and ask her about her company and what got her there.

Q: How did you get started?

A: A couple of good choices and a lot of luck. I went to school for advertising and found out it wasn’t my jam. So, I went to interior design school, and got an internship with Mark Hampton, Inc. It turned into an assistant job, and by the time I left I was a designer.

Q: How long have you been in the interior designing business?

A: I started my business in 2004, and I’ve been in the Georgetown area for almost five years. We just moved from down the street because it was too small. The new space is the perfect fit, and it was the push we needed to take a risk.

Q: What’s your design style?

A: Classic modernism. I grew up in a mid-century modern home with pop art. I use a blend of classical and modern, and I like to modernize traditional spaces but also pay homage to the history. My design style is always evolving.

Q: What kind of demographic do you try to appeal to?

A: I’d say young professionals. Cool couples in their 40s, a few bachelors and more established clients. Basically, people looking for a little more of a less traditional D.C. look.

Q: What inspires you?

A: I’m very inspired by art, nature-like colors and texture in nature and fashion. I look at what the space is begging for. The space I work in and the clients are the most important things.

Q: Is there any thing else you’d like the Georgetowner readers to know?

A: I’m a fan of Georgetown, and I’m for hire!

To see Zoe Feldman portfolio visit. zoefeldmandesign.com [gallery ids="100888,127652" nav="thumbs"]

Prospect Street Tree Huge Hit; Residents Without Power
•

We all want to go green, but this is ridiculous.

The June 29 storm felled a huge tree at the corner of Prospect & 35th Streets, NW. The downed tree is a traffic-stopper and apparently wins the prize for biggest tree on the ground in Georgetown.

The entire tree snapped from its roots and landed directly along the sidewalk. The branches destroyed windows, damaged roofs and blocked access and egress to the several homes for a time. While cars were parked on the street, all but one BMW escaped serious damage.

At one Prospect Street house, which has no power, tree branches not only damaged the roof and smashed glass and paster into a second-floor bedroom, it pulled an electrical box off the outside wall of the house near its main entrance which is now blocked by tree branches. (All other homes on the 3400 block of Prospect Street have power.)

D.C.’s Department of Transportation stopped by the corner to look at the tree June 30 in the afternoon and recorded information into its system. (The tree is on District of Columbia land.) Advisory neighborhood commissioner Bill Starrels rushed to the scene when called July 1 by a resident. He, too, was astonished by the downed tree, saying, “It is the biggest one I’ve seen in Georgetown.” Starrels immediately contacted the mayor’s office.

Residents sawed off branches to clear the entrances to their homes. All the while, curious on-lookers photographed and posed alongside it — verifying the phenomenon, known as “disaster tourists.”

As for the powerless Prospect Street home, the owner who has lived there for decades said that she saw tiny sparks coming from the smashed outside electrical box. Pepco arrived to check the house without power around 9 a.m. July 2 and said tree branches were blocking its access to the box and walked away.

Meanwhile, the popular tree in front of six houses now poses traffic safety problems: curious amateur photographers take pictures of the tree, sometimes in the middle of the busy intersection, and cars stop to gawk and further block traffic. (Prospect Street is a mini M Street with delivery trucks, tour buses and commuters using it constantly.)

As for the Prospect Street residents, like many around D.C., they are fed up — and are chopping, sawing and clearing a pathway, waiting no longer. [gallery ids="100889,127683,127675,127657,127670,127665" nav="thumbs"]

The Small-Town Wisdom of Andy Griffith
•

There was always more to Andy Griffith than meets the eye, or at least that part of his legacy which consists of the self-contained world of Mayberry, the small North Carolina town in which he starred as Andy Taylor, the town sheriff who didn’t pack a gun and raised his son Opie to grow up normal.

That was the world of “The Andy Griffith Show,” a hugely successful television sitcom which ran for eight-years into the teeth of the 1960s, extolling classic, small-town values and virtues in a United States that was rapidly changing in its cultural mores. Mayberry existed fictionally in a country where the birth control pill sparked a sexual revolution, where the war over civil rights was entering its most dramatic, violent and transformative phase in the South and all over the country, where America’s war in Viet Nam would expand until it began to tear the country’s politics into pieces. Still popular, the show ended in 1968, the year both Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, Richard Nixon elected president and the Black Panthers became a political force. Need we add the surprise of the Tet Offense and the power of the “Silent Majority”? In Mayberry, the 1960s stopped just outside the town limits, or stayed on a train that never whizzed by and never stopped.

In Mayberry, the talk was often led by Aunt Bea, or about finding a mother for Opie, gossiping on the town’s only phone line, father-and-son doings between Andy Taylor and Opie, Deputy Barney Fife’s hysterical doings and the occasional speeding ticket or moonshining trouble. The whistling theme which announced the opening theme of “The Andy Griffith Show” was every bit as familiar to Americans as Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A Changing,” which had long ago become a battle hymn of the counter-culture republic. In Mayberry, the times were not a changing, which might account for its audience appeal in a country constantly in mounting turmoil.

When some of us who grew up in small towns watched this show—however, we might not admit it to our long-haired hippie friends—we were drawn back into our school days, in the town we ran away from screaming. It was one of those strange constants in America’s popular culture life where both Andy Griffith and the music of Andy Williams would co-exist with the Byrds and eventually, yes, Meathead from Archie Bunker’s TV world.

Because the show was so well-acted, especially by Griffith, who underacted American decency to the point of authenticity, and so heavily populated by outrageously eccentric characters, it became an enduring part of our life, unforgettable in its own way. The only pot prevalent in Mayberry was the pot containing Aunt Bea’s latest cooking miracle.

Griffith, who died at the age of 86 this week, would be the first to tell you that he was hardly as saintly virtuous and common-sense steady as the part he played on the show. “He was the best part of me,” he said. “But he wasn’t the only part.” In fact, Griffith said his personality contained chunks of the character he played in “A Face in the Crowd,” a dark film about American politics directed by Elia Kazan in which he played, to chilling effect, a malevolent country drifter and television host who used his position and everybody around him to become a highly popular and despotic politician.

Griffith came from a town similar in size and ambiance to Mayberry: Mount Airy, N.C., which today has its own Andy Griffith Parkway. He had hard-scrabble beginnings but was encouraged by teachers in his interests in music and drama. He tried his hand at acting and being a stand-up comedian, with a bit that included trying to explain football to a non-gridiron fan. He became noticed in a hit live drama performance of “No Time For Sergeants” during television’s golden age of live drama. The show was eventually turned into a hit Broadway production and included a cast member named Don Knotts, who became a close friend of Griffith.

In 1960, “The Andy Griffith Show” debuted, and nothing Griffith did after that—and he did a lot—quite registered so perfectly in the popular mind, heart and memory. Griffith was the driving force behind the show—but it was also memorably for being so densely full of characters with a capital C, and that rhymes with Bea, that it was practically an anthropological merry-go-round of American and Southern types, a wished-for bucolic place where broken hearts go to mend. We do not know what the unemployment figures are or were for Mayberry, but it was obvious that most everybody made it to the town diner and Aunt Bea made cookies and pies to spare.

Knotts played Barney Fife the irrepressibly near-psychotic, bumbling deputy, and he wore his uniform as if it was infested by ants. At the time, Ronnie Howard played Opie, the sheriff’s son. He would become a television star in his own right with “Happy Days,” a movie star with “American Graffiti” and a Hollywood mogul as a director (he won an Oscar for “A Beautiful Mind”). Gomer Pyle got his start here as an inept mechanic, played by Jim Nabors, who played the same character in the hit television series “Gomer Pyle USMC.” The great western character actor Denver Pyle—he played the Texas Ranger who did in Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in “Bonnie and Clyde”—was the head of the Darlings, moonshiners and bluegrassers. An actress namned Aneta Corsaut played Helen Crump, Opie’s teacher and Andy’s girlfriend. Francis Bavier was the sweet-hearted Aunt Bee who raises Opie as her own.

From 1986 to 1995, Griffith also starred in “Matlock” and acted throughout the rest of his life on television series, made-for-tv movies and movies in general. In 2005, he was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and you can bet that it’s a Mayberry medal.

Mayberry exists—like a brigadoon with a twang, with pies, with fishing poles and no power outages. It’s hard not to think it rose up again just the other day on the Fourth of July, somewhere in a place where there’s nothing but a gas station, two roads intersecting, a pond nearby and a diner where someone starts singing and the coffee is the best and not latte.

It’s hard to put a whistle into words. So we won’t.

“A Capitol Fourth” Independence Day Concert (photos)
•

“A Capitol Fourth” is the free annual Independence Day concert extravaganza on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol. This year’s concert was hosted by Emmy Award-winning television personality Tom Bergeron, of the hit TV series, “Dancing With the Stars”; and an all-star cast featuring Megan Hilty of TV’s “Smash”; four time Toni nominee Kelli O’Hara, Javier Colon winner of “The Voice”; R&B superstars Kool and the Gang and other’s. Olympian Apolo Ohno appeared in a tribute to Team USA and five-time Academy Award winner John Williams conducted his “Olympic Fanfare”.

We got some great close-ups at the dress rehearsal which you can view by clicking on the photo icons below.

View additional photos by clicking here. [gallery ids="100891,128013,128005,127997,128030,127989,128036,127979,128043,127969,128051,128021" nav="thumbs"]

Public Transportation Just Got a Lot Easier, Along with More Expensive
•

On June 18, the Washington Metropolitan
Area Transit Authority (WMATA) rolled out
Rush+, a new service plan that adds more
trains during peak hours and provides faster
access to Downtown DC. The goal is to serve
more customers, reduce crowding, offer more
transfer-free destinations and begin preparing
for the future Dulles Corridor Metroline Project,
dubbed the Silver Line. It is expected to improve
service on the Green, Yellow, Blue and Orange
Lines Monday through Friday, from 6:30 am to
9:00 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. All told,
21 Metrorail stations will get more frequent
service with six additional trains every hour of
rush hour. A new map reflecting the changes
will be placed throughout the system. Fares also
increased around percent.

Catch Tennis Stars and the Washington Kastles
• July 11, 2012

The Washington Kastles bring live
tennis tournaments to Washington,
D.C. each July. Owned by entrepreneur
Mark Ein, the Washington Kastles are
the 2009 and 2011 World TeamTennis
champions and the only team in league
history to go undefeated through
the regular season and playoffs. The
Kastles’ fifth season will again be led
by 27-time Grand Slam tournament
winner Serena Williams and 21-time
Grand Slam winner Venus Williams.
The Kastles play a total of 14 matches,
seven at home and seven on the road,
with the top two finishers in each conference
moving on to the playoffs. Gates open at
5:15 p.m., matches start at 7:10 p.m. Tickets
are available through www.washingtonkastles.
com or Ticketmaster. Located at The Wharf
at 800 Water St. SW, the closest Metro stop is
Waterfront-SEU and L’Enfant Plaza.Williams
and 21-time Grand Slam winner Venus Williams.
The Kastles play a total of 14 matches, seven at
home and seven on the road, with the top two
finishers in each conference moving on to the
playoffs. Gates open at 5:15 p.m., matches start
at 7:10 p.m. Tickets are available through www.
washingtonkastles.com or Ticketmaster. Located
at The Wharf at 800 Water St. SW, the closest
Metro stop is Waterfront-SEU and L’Enfant
Plaza.

Chinatown Rent Pushes Bank from 7th Street
•

The Chinatown Branch of Premier Bank
(802 7th Street), formerly Adams National Bank
and a fixture in Chinatown, will close on July
13. Citing an increase in rent and an imposed
reduction in its space by the landlord, the branch
will be consolidated into Premier’s 1501 K
Street location, where the hours of operation will
extend by an hour, to 4:00 p.m., Monday through
Thursday. The Friday closing time will remain
at 5:00 p.m.

Cool off on the Mall With Screen on the Green
•

Screen on the Green starts on July 16 and
goes through Aug. 6 on the National Mall. Films
are shown on Monday nights beginning at dusk,
around 8:30-9:00 p.m. People start to claim their
spots on the lawn as early as 5 p.m. Movies play
except in extreme weather, and there are no rain
days. This years films include “Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid,” “It Happened One
Night,” “From Here to Eternity” and “Psycho.”

Refined Bathroom Decor
•

Waterworks is a unique, family- owned business that — since its 1978 opening in Danbury, Conn. — has been selling everything for your bathroom — in all its decadence. The Georgetown location, now in its 15th year of operation, is one of 13 stores the company operates nationwide. “We sell bath fixtures, fittings, surfaces, and kitchen sinks,” said general manager Shanda Burk. “People come in for plumbing, tiles, and rugs — but it depends on what they’re looking for.”

The store’s appeal lies in the natural light reflected from its central skylight and the various windows located around the premises. “The natural light of the store is amazing. It’s so nice to see these products in a natural space, especially when picking surfaces,” Burk said.

Many products, including bath towels, bath accessories, bathtubs, and showers, are modeled within the store, providing customers with a picturesque image of what their future bathroom may look like. “It’s a bright, inviting and clean open space that showcases a distinct collection,” she added.

Waterworks’ style, Burk said, is: “Classic European traditional with high-end finishes, qualities, and focus on details.” It’s a style appealing to high-end clients in the Georgetown area.

Burk said the style is not for renters but homeowners. “When you walk into our store you’ll see that we have a certain look. The Waterworks look. It’s very distinct and people know it.”

If you’re looking to redesign, the consultants of Waterworks can assist you. “Our consultants have 40-plus years of experience in plumbing and tile,” Burk said. “They’re a very educated and knowledgeable staff.” If you want to check out more Waterworks work, visit the store at 3314 M Street, NW, or go online at www.Waterworks.com. ?

Weather or Not, Count Your Blessings
•

Throw in one heat wave that just went on and on and on, in the end resulting in a record-breaking four days of 100-plus-degrees temperatures. Throw in a sudden, swift line of storms on a hot June 29th night in the area which upended trees, resulted in power outages that left thousands in the city and area without electric power.

As time passed, people without power, people carefully making their way through streets blocked off by the presence of fallen trees, people waiting endlessly in lines at gasoline stations (many stations were closes due to electric outages), people and restaurant owners who had to throw away food going bad for lack of refrigeration, people unable to use their advanced fone and computer tools and toys, the elderly suffering in homes without air conditioning, all made their feelings known.

A great daily and plaintive note began to be heard in our area, over the airwaves, in tweets and toots and blogs and e-mails.

Most of us experienced the discomforts of the storm and the heat wave which have made their presence know all the way across the country, and we can be excused if things just got plain frustrating. The ongoing television commentary, often hysterical warnings and coverage from self-styled storm centers and watches didn’t help much: one weatherman kept telling us that such and such a place was getting “hammered” by hail and thunderstorms while another displayed his gift for making the word “huge”—as in huge storms, huge hail, huge heat—sound even, well, huger, than it was.

But as one local commentator says, “Folks, let’s get real.”

Things can always be worse. Can’t get your e-mails or tweet or text your friends: read a newspaper (ours, included), or, use the phone, if it works. If not, send a card. Did that falling tree across the street scare you? Be glad it didn’t hit the place where you live, and we can tell stories about that.

More important—like snowmageddon and other natural disasters that are increasingly more a part of our daily lives—you survived. Sure, times are a little more anxious, given that we’re only in early July with lots of good old summertime left with all its attendant climatic dangers. But you survived, and not so much worse for wear.

Some were not so lucky. The storm—and the heat—caused fatalities across the country, including in this region.

Two elderly women in the area were killed when trees struck their home. A man on his way home from school died when his car was struck by a tree.

Mohammad Ghafoorian who lived near Woodley Park died that Friday night. Power lines hit his Maserati, and it went up in flames. He ran out of his home to put the fire out but stepped on a live power line on the ground. The story, told in the Washington Post, was filled with irony. But his son summed all it up best, when he told the newspaper of his larger-than-life father who emigrated here from Iran: “He lived like a storm, and a storm took him. I think only a storm like that could take him.”

And then there’s Carolina Alcalde, a D.C. resident, native of Peru, office manager for a national consulting firm and avid motorcyclist who was struck by a tree on the night of the storm near Meridian Park. She suffered a severed spinal cord, broken rib and fractures and was paralyzed below the waist. A special fund has been set up for Alcade and her family by friends. We encourage our readers to help if they can. Visit their fundraising website: https://www.wepay.com/donations/camp-carolina.

Let us count our blessings.