Town Topics

Robert Devaney • July 26, 2011

Raise a glass, Washingtonians, to Richard McCooey, who celebrates 50 years in the business world this year, and his 80th birthday on October 14th. You likely have dined at his first classics in Georgetown: 1789 Restaurant or The Tombs, now owned by Clyde’s Restaurant Group.

Today, McCooey and his wife Karen run a restaurant design and consulting business that has left its mark from California to Russia.

It began in Georgetown back in 1960 with the plans to build The Tombs and 1789, where McCooey
had been a student. “I always wanted to open a restaurant near Georgetown University since my freshman year there,” recalled McCooey, who had just arrived back in D.C. from Florida, where another restaurant venture was discussed.

He has collected art since college and has worked with Clyde’s John Laytham in art and collectibles for many of Clyde’s restaurants. Laytham liked The Tombs and 1789 so much that he purchased 1789, Inc., in 1985, along with F. Scott’s.

Before McCooey made his archetypes of a student pub and faculty club a reality, he had to convince Georgetown residents that his plan made sense for the community as well. There was opposition to his project. When The Georgetowner’s founder Ami Stewart stood up at a citizen’s meeting to back McCooey, the tide turned. Two restaurants that epitomize Georgetown today were born in 1962. McCooey never forgot Stewart’s support and towards the end of her life would regularly send waiters to her home with meals from his restaurant.

Back in the 1960s, McCooey was the first in D.C. to introduce things we take for granted: pizza and gourmet burgers in a pub, rock ‘n roll music — with students selecting the music — and a consistent story throughout the restaurant’s concept, design and decor. By the way, if anyone asks, why the name “1789”? That was the year the Federal government was established, Georgetown University founded and Georgetown, Md., incorporated. And “The Tombs”? Inspired by T.S. Eliot’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.” In it, “Bustopher Jones, The Cat About Town” likes to lunch at the tomb. (Add to that McCooey’s nickname in the Air Force: “Bustopher Cat.”) As for the now private club, F. Scott’s, it is named after author F. Scott Fitzgerald, a distant cousin of Francis Scott Key.

“A restaurant is a neutral spot,” the soft-spoken and private McCooey says. “It is where people can forget their troubles. I have a drive to delight people by giving them a magical, tasteful and soul-filled space in which to be.”

Years from running a restaurant, McCooey and his wife Karen now use their design talent and an impressive art collection of posters and other artwork in their restaurant design business, Persona
Studios. “One of our principal contributions to a project is the basic concept and the art and artifacts that support it,” they say. “The concept can be a unique idea or can flow from the style of food, the general history of the area or even the personalities of the owners.”

“So, we celebrate Richard,” says his wife Karen, “ . . . for his loyal 50-year career in Washington,
D.C., for sharing his exquisite gift in designing comfortable, gorgeous restaurants . . . and for dedicating his life to feeding us — body and soul. He serves up an inspiring example.”

Here is a partial list of establishments where McCooey has been involved: Clyde’s 1789 Restaurant, Clyde’s Tombs, Clyde’s F. Scott’s Restaurant as well as the Clyde’s on M Street, in Reston, Chevy Chase, Gallery Place, Columbia and the Old Ebbitt Grill; The Tap Room, Georgetown Club; Union Street Cafe, Alexandria, Va.; Riverbend Restaurant (Philadelphia Airport Marriott); The Polo Club, Marriott Grand Aurora Hotel (Moscow, Russia); Tap Room, The Greenbrier (White Sulphur Springs, W.V.); Marriott Laguna Cliffs Resort (Calif.).

Georgetowner •

The ANC 2E has released the announcement of Metro’s holiday schedules.

Metrorail will stay open from 7 a.m. to 3 a.m. on Christmas Eve (Friday, Dec. 24), Christmas Day (Saturday, Dec. 25), New Year’s Eve (Friday, Dec. 31), and New Year’s Day (Saturday, Jan. 1) with a Sunday schedule slated each day.

Metrobus will operate on a Sunday schedule from Dec. 24 to 26, and Dec. 31 to Jan. 2, 2011, and a modified weekday schedule from Dec. 27 to 30.

MetroAccess will cancel all subscription trips on Dec. 24, 25, 31 and Jan. 1. All trips during that timeframe must be reserved separately.

Christmas Day ridership in the rail system historically has been extremely light. Last year about 64,000 people rode the Metrorail system, compared to an average Saturday weekday ridership of 350,000. New Year’s Day ridership is likewise traditionally light. Last year only about 167,000 people rode the Metrorail system on Jan. 1.

Gary Tischler •

Vincent Gray strode toward the microphone in front of the Washington Court Hotel Wednesday with a confident spring in his step, looking fresh and energetic.

“My God, he looks rested,” said one of the dozens of reporters, photographers, and television crewmembers who had gathered here around noon.

Amazingly, Gray looked, talked and acted sharp, like a man with eight hours of sleep under his belt. Which probably wasn’t so. He was giving his first press conference as the winner of the District of Columbia’s Democratic Primary over incumbent Adrian Fenty, getting a surprisingly solid six-point victory with 53% of the vote to Fenty’s 47%. The last count had Gray with 59,285 votes and Fenty with 50,850 votes.

Given that only four years ago Fenty swept every precinct and every ward en route to a stunning win over City Council Chairperson Linda Cropp, becoming the city’s youngest mayor in the short history of home rule, Gray’s victory, which wasn’t really nailed down until the wee hours of the morning, was an astounding and probably historic turn-around.

It was also a clear sign that Gray had been correct early in his campaign when he said that the city was never more divided. “I am humbled by the victory we won,” Gray said. “And I am thankful for all the people across the city that made this possible with their votes. But I realize that there were also many people who did not vote for me, and I want to reach out to them. I want to unite this city once again.

The victory was achieved – it’s safe to say – along racial and economic lines, with many black voters favoring Gray over Fenny. Fenty lost because many voters felt excluded from the changes that were occurring under Fenty, especially in school reform. It was a battle over style and voters apparently preferred Gray’s evident style of consensus-making, thoughtfulness and inclusion. Fenty had plenty of warning that this personality, style, and character issue was important to many people. First revealed in a Washington Pots poll in January, it was cited as the main cause for Gray’s double-digit lead in a Post poll several weeks ago.

“Now is the time to move forward,” Gray said at the press conference. “[Let] now be the time for the city to unite.”

Now was a time many reporters were prodding Gray to say what was coming next, which is to say that they found ways to ask the questions about the fate of the often-controversial school chancellor Michelle Rhee. During the campaign Gray was asked at every turn whether he would fire Rhee. He never did say. He wasn’t saying now either. “I put in a call to her,” he said. “We will be sitting down and talking. I haven’t heard back yet. I imagine she’s busy. She’s running our schools, after all.”

Other than announcing that there would be a transition team, Gray in fact would not deal with names and faces. “I’m not talking about personnel decisions right now,” he said. “There will be time enough for that. We are still facing serious problems right now, especially on budget matters. I’m still the Chairman of the City Council.”

He was asked who would head the transition team or who would be part of it. “It’s a process,” he said.

“Yes,” Tom Sherwood of NBC 4 said, “but will it move quickly?”

“I talked with Mayor Fenty today,” Gray said. “We had a great conversation. I know that he loves this city, and wants nothing but the best for the city. He assured he would do everything he could to help with the transition.”

Gray said he got no indication that Fenty might be considering a run in the general election as an independent. “I didn’t get any sense of that,” Gray said.

“I meant everything I said about transparency in my administration,” he said. “This is going to be an open government. I want people to feel empowered, not disenfranchised. My door will be open. And for the press, I’ll be having regular press conferences.”

“The onus is obviously on me now,” Gray said. “I expect to be held accountable.”
Winning the democratic primary meant that Gray is all but assured of winning the general election in November and will become Washington’s oldest elected mayor. Although, as was noted, he sure didn’t look it or act it.

Election night, in fact, was full of confusion and uncertainty until well past midnight. At the hotel where Gray held a gathering for his followers, a strange atmosphere prevailed early in the night, and lasted well until midnight. Nobody knew anything. For an event full of politicos and campaign workers, the silence was nerve-wracking. Nary a rumor or piece of gossip managed to surface. All people knew was that there were no results forthcoming from the Board of Elections, where a major case of the slows and computer glitches were occurring.

Fenty did not concede until, “…we have official results from the Board of Elections.” The delays from the Board of Elections were heavily criticized by followers of both candidates and frustrated news reporters from all media. Even the bloggers and internet world couldn’t come up with a single voting result.

Gray, it’s now clear, will also be joined by Kwame Brown, who fended off challenger Vincent Orange to win the Democratic Primary for the City Council Chairman position, Gray’s old job. “I look forward to working with Kwame, who ran a fine campaign, and with whom I’ve already had a great working relationship…” said Gray.

In the other city-wide election, Phil Mendelson at last overcame the great Michael D. Brown confusion, handily winning over the shadow senator, a late entry in the race whom polls showed was leading , mostly because voters confused him with Michael A. Brown, a current member of the city council who was not running.

Gary Tischler •

That small room in the National Portrait Gallery housing “One Life”, the series of exhibitions begun since the completed renovation of the Reynolds Center, may be one of the biggest rooms in the whole building. “One Life”, after all, attempts to squeeze into a small, square room a summation of an entire American life with a minimum of artifacts, paintings and photographs. Not an easy task when you’re dealing with the previous tenants.

There was Walt Whitman, the outsized poet of the outsized American experience; Thomas Paine, the inspiring, iconoclastic political pamphleteer of inspiration for the American revolution; there was most recently Elvis Presley, king of rock and roll, an entire American cultural invention unto himself.
There was Abraham Lincoln. No one sentence would suffice.

There was the first Katharine, the grand dame and Dame of American movies, Katharine Hepburn, or Katharine the Great.

And there is today the other Katharine, Katharine Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post, who made the Post one of the truly great newspapers of the world in what may arguably have been the last golden age, the Indian summer of the newspaper business.

Probably no previous subject of the “One Life” series means quite so much to the current residents of this city as this one – even Lincoln or Elvis. Katharine Graham, as a prominent figure, as a publisher of a national newspaper, as a deeply powerful and influential national and international figure, rose to real prominence in 1963 when she became the publisher of the Washington Post after the shocking and tragic suicide of her husband Phil Graham. At sea in a role she never anticipated, even though she grew up in the world of the Post her father had bought in the 1930s, she learned quickly and adapted, overcame painful shyness, and in a unique partnership with Managing Editor Ben Bradlee, guided the paper in short order through the risky and courageous business of printing the Pentagon Papers (though the New York Times fell into the same category), exploding Watergate onto the front pages of a major newspaper, and afterwards, surviving an almost ruinous printers’ strike in the 1970s.

She was, as it turned out, tough.

That’s certainly the impression you get from the first photograph you see upon entering the exhibition – the famous, iconic, dramatic, almost forbidding black and white portrait taken by Richard Avedon in March of 1976.

She stares at the camera sternly, challengingly, even quizzically. Her arms are folded. Her mind appears made up about something. She has, for want of a better word, a certain gravitas there, earned honestly and with great difficulty in a world completely dominated by men, even in the ‘70s.

It’s not an entirely inviting image to an exhibition, but it takes care of summing up Graham as, by that time and certainly for the rest of her life, one of the most powerful women—people—in the world.

“It’s not something you could leave out,” says Curator Amy Henderson, who normally organizes exhibitions on popular culture icons like…say, the other Katharine, Katharine Hepburn. “The image
is iconic, and it shows that toughness, that courage which let her accomplish what she did. It’s a way in. But we wanted to do a lot more. We wanted to show a little bit of what made Katharine Graham the woman and person she became.”

The “We” Henderson refers to was a notable duo of consultants who knew Graham intimately. Pie Friendly, a researcher at the National Portrait Gallery, knew Graham socially through her husband
and father-in-law, journalist and writer Alfred Friendly Jr., and former Post Managing Editor Al Friendly, respectively. Liz Hylton, Graham’s personal assistant, provided access to photos and memorabilia and anecdotal material. “It was just us three ladies,” Henderson said. “The Washington Post and the Graham family were tremendously helpful.”

“We all knew each other,” Friendly said. “You would always cross paths through the paper, schools, parties and social occasions. I respected and admired her tremendously. She was a woman in a man’s world, truly. She was straight forward, honest. You cannot imagine what it must have been like for her, but she did more than persevere. She made the Post a great newspaper. It was just tremendous fun working on this, it really was. And mind you, she fired my father-in-law and replaced him with Ben Bradlee.”

Henderson was obviously limited in terms of space, so there’s a lot more that could have found its way into a larger exhibition. But what resides tells her story, fleshes her out, and portrays Graham
in full.

“It’s interesting going through these photographs—of which there were a lot,” Henderson said. “You get a sense of a woman, a girl, who was raised in a privileged world, was raised in her father’s newspaper business [working as a reporter]…who met and married a man she absolutely adored, and wanted nothing more than to be a wife, a mother, raise her children and do good deeds, and perhaps be a social leader. She never expected to be what she became. It required reinvention of the most difficult sort.”

When Henderson talks about Graham—whom she never met, she will tell you—certain words recur with regularity, as they do when you talk with Pie Friendly: “forthrightness, honesty, integrity, courage, resilience.” These are, of course, all qualities that elicit great admiration, without necessarily revealin a human being so much as a statue.

The pictures and artifacts, carefully selected by the trio of women, accomplish that job, even if the two videos (for the NPG’s Living History series by former director Mark Pachter) in which Graham talks about Watergate and the Pentagon Papers don’t entirely do so. There are many pictures, for instance, in which some form of the Graham sternness of the Avedon image are repeated: Graham with her editors, Graham at a meeting of the Associated Press National Board, Graham unsmiling in lots of photos.

But there are also a lot of portraits of Graham smiling, laughing with her head thrown back, and the smile and laugh show a woman transformed: a fun loving person in the moment. It’s a pretty dazzling smile she’s got there. And not one easy to acquire given the charismatic but self-absorbed nature of the dazzling Agnes Ernst Meyer, her mother, shown in a haunting photograph taken by no less a photographer than Edward Steichen. Her father, Eugene Meyer, while he encouraged and obviously loved his daughter, was rarely accessible and often distant. And there was the kinetic, hypnotic Phil Graham, who became publisher of the Post and absolutely swept Katharine away, until his instability began to overtake him.

What did she achieve? Take a look at the AP meeting portrait: a semi-circular made up entirely
of men who look somewhat like the cast of “Mad Men” in late middle age, minus cocktail
and cigarettes. And there is Graham, alone as a woman, but uncommonly self-assured. In her memoir, she wrote that she accepted life in a man’s world but then ended up leading a change in that world.

Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, and the Post’s growing reputation as a writer and reporter’s paper under Graham’s leadership, steered the paper into a stratosphere occupied by few publications.

Both the Pentagon Paper publication and, even more so Watergate, were dangerous times for the Post, but also thrilling and memorable times. In a way, the Post helped bring down a president, and the movie version of the Woodward-Bernstein saga “All The President’s Men” did not change that perception. Graham herself began to become an influential social lioness, and you can see her light up like a Christmas tree with Jacqueline Kennedy in New York, and at the black and white ball thrown by Truman Capote in her honor.

The infamous—therefore treasured—showdown with then-Attorney General John Mitchell, in which he blustered that Kate had gotten her tit in a wringer, resulted in a gift of a miniature wringer and small jeweled replicas of a wringer and a breast, which she wore proudly and with grand humor. They are among the artifacts on view, which also include the first hand-written page of her Pulitzer Prize-winning
memoir and the mask she wore to Truman Capote’s black and white ball.

The strike was difficult for Graham and in squashing the union she acquired, unfairly said a Post reporter, a reputation for ruthlessness. “Not so, not so,” said Robert Kaiser, who wrote the official story on the strike for the Post, “without any interference from her.”

“That was undeserved. She was the ideal publisher if you were a reporter.”

For most of us who were not Posties, the paper nevertheless was a daily presence in its headiest period, and Graham, for Georgetowners, living in her mansion, was an uncrowned queen. When she passed away, the funeral at the National Cathedral and subsequent wake at her home seemed like one last gathering for which she had called upon the world to come. And the world came.

The exhibition, which gets all the right things in that small room, seems particularly poignant in a time when the idea of great newspapers seems more memory, and a memory without a future at that. You feel almost glad that she’s not here to see the confusion and decline and predicted disappearance of newspapers in the 21st Century.

On the other hand, she might have found a way to prevent all that, to persevere. That Avedon picture, that look, those crossed arms seem to indicate that she just might have done it. [gallery ids="99247,104180,104159,104176,104172,104168,104164" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

I came to Washington in the mid 1970s, after living ten years in the San Francisco Bay Area, during a turbulent, heady period working on two different daily newspapers. I’ve never quite been able to satisfactorily explain to myself, or people who know me, why I came. Usually, I make a joke about it.

During the late 1970s — post Watergate, post Gerald Ford even, Carter in mid-malaise — I lived on Capitol Hill, where a group of friends once held an alley-stoop neighborhood party. A young go-getting politician and school board member named Marion Barry found his way to the party. He whizzed by in a frenzied, hand-shaking Afro blur but made an impression. People there, mostly white, talked about him. He was running for mayor, taking on the venerable Walter Washington, the city’s first mayor under Home Rule.

By around 1980, I started writing for The Georgetowner, and the first story I ever wrote for this publication was a detailed from-afar look at Ted Kennedy’s disaster of a challenge against President Carter, a disaster redeemed in part by a defiant, eloquent convention speech. The very next story that I recall was an interview-profile of the legendary stripper, Blaze Starr, backstage at the notorious Silver Slipper Burlesque House, in the New York Avenue area. Starr was futilely enamored of politicians — she had affairs with Earl Long, the Governor of Louisiana (captured nicely in a movie called “Blaze”), and the mayor of Philadelphia, Mr. Rizzo. It’s thirty years and hundreds and hundreds of stories later, and some things have changed…

Ari Post •

After a swift remodeling beginning in April of this year, innovative kitchen and bathroom designer Boffi has reopened their doors on M Street with brand new designs that seamlessly integrate their innovative blend of modern aesthetics with artisan tradition.

Upon walking into the newly designed store you are guided through the showrooms by the sleek, clean lines of the model, which direct you in and out of the spaces so naturally you might not realize you’re being persuaded. Along the way, your eyes stray from the smoothly beaten path, finding long expanses of custom countertops, shelving, wide-mouthed sinks (the daydreams of serious cooks), and luxurious modern bathtubs in haute blacks, whites, silvers, and browns.

Roberto Gavazzi, CEO of Boffi, delights in the idea of bringing Boffi’s signature style to Georgetown. Unlike other big cities, Washington – and specifically Georgetown – is filled with wonderfully antiquated, colonial homes; the perfect palette on which to bring out the dynamic designs Boffi creates. “It is what you see in the current trends,” says Gavazzi, “to mix things with very strong combinations of products coming from very different cultures, and from very different styles. Here, you see a raw wall of bricks close to a very clean and aggressive kitchen. In an old mansion here, it would really be a very nice contrast.”

However, the Boffi designs aren’t only for those with an eye for pushing the envelope of interior decoration. While the store offers kitchens that can be very aggressive and modern, there are also many ways to adjust their furniture to be warm and conservative.

“You can moderate the presentation in a way that is more acceptable to someone who wants something more reassuring,” says Gavazzi. “While when you are with somebody else who wants a more aggressive, ‘New York’ type of kitchen, you can go with a stainless steel solution, totally clean and simple. We have this possibility of really adapting our lines to the type of customer we are in front of.”

But at the end of the day, the store preserves the fact that their customers are buying an overall Boffi style. “We will never completely change the basic way of being that Boffi transmits,” says Gavazzi. Started in 1934 in Milan, Italy, the company has a long history being a high-end, trendsetting designer of comprehensive furniture packages, or modular system products, as they call them.

Buying a kitchen or bathroom from Boffi is not like purchasing other furniture. Buying a sofa, for instance, is quite simple. You keep it for a few years, and when you tire of it you get rid of it, get a new one. Buying an entire kitchen can be more complicated. You will most likely be stuck with the one you choose for the duration of your time in that house. So it’s important to get one that suits you.

That’s why Boffi works with the architects and designers to incorporate the kitchen into each individual space. The showrooms are there to expose the product in the best way, from warmer and more intimate, to modern, clean and aggressive.

“What we like to offer is a very international style for people who are from different places,” says Gavazzi. “We are quite an international company in general,” which nonetheless offers a universally Boffian way of looking at furniture and lifestyle.

At Boffi Georgetown’s grand opening on the evening of September 16th (though they had officially reopened back in August), Boffi’s premier art director Pierro Lissoni, who designed a huge percentage of the overall line, mingled with Georgetowners and delighted in the opportunity to bring his signature style to one of DC’s most cultured neighborhoods.
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