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The Morning Metropolitan

Topher — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:00:35 +0000

Photo by srietzke.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

Vox Populi reviews the new Pinkberry.
Gifted program coming to Hardy.

The Morning Metropolitan

Topher — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:00:21 +0000

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

Yesterday Eleanor Hart Mathews was born. Today GM is a proud papa, but way, way too tired and preoccupied to write many posts this week. This news should be enough to carry you over for a while!

And Happy Holidays Too…

Topher — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 02:59:37 +0000

GM wanted to take the opportunity to be a little more ecumenical in his well wishings, and (more to to point) play around with animation again. So Merry Happy!

Season’s Greetings

Topher — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:00:34 +0000

Other Places Named Georgetown

Topher — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:00:24 +0000

Photo by Mikerhicks.

For every morning post that GM does, he searches in Flickr for recent photos uploaded tagged with the word “Georgetown”. Most of these photos are of our neighborhood here in DC, but lots are of far more exotic Georgian locales. So for no other reason other than the fact GM’s got nothing else to write about, let’s take a stroll through them.

The shot above is from George Town on Grand Cayman. This town was named after George III. This is a big tourist stop on the Caribbean cruise circuit.

Photo by arichards63.

Staying in the Caribbean, another Georgetown that pops up from time to time is Georgetown, Guyana. It too was named after George III.

Photo by Michael Boer.

Probably the most common non-DC Georgetown that pops up in Flickr is Georgetown, Seattle. It’s an industrial neighborhood on the south side of the Emerald City. From the photos, it appears to be full of old abandoned steam plants, art school grads, and beer. It’s probably the most interesting Georgetown on the list.

This Georgetown was named in honor of the town founder’s son, George Horton.

Photo by Snap Man.

Staying out west, another Georgetown that shows up a decent amount is Georgetown, Colorado. This one seems to include photos of a old steam train a lot.

This Georgetown was named after the older of two brothers who founded the town in the Gold Rush: George Griffith.

Photo by Khalzuri.

The last of the exotic Georgetowns to pop up with any regularity is Georgetown in Penang, Malaysia. Like our Georgetown, this Georgetown is an “old town” surrounded my a modern city.

This Georgetown is named after George III.

Finally, GM couldn’t help but mention Georgetown, Connecticut. Not because it pops up in Flickr, but because GM grew up just a mile away from it. This old industrial neighborhood is dominated by the empty Gilbert & Bennett Factory (seen above) that was still making wire fences for GE when GM was playing pee-wee soccer on the nearby fields. Before the real estate collapse, this neighborhood was poised to be a model of new urbanism for the suburbs.

This Georgetown was named after local grist miller George Abbott.

By the way, no one knows for sure who our Georgetown is named after, although the leading theory is that it is named for either George Gordon and/or George Beale, who were two of the first land owners of Georgetown, Maryland.

Gobble Gobble Hey

Topher — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:53:43 +0000

Between unpacking 1,000 boxes and heading over the river and through the North East Corridor for Thanksgiving, GM is going to have to take a break for a week. Check back on the 28th. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

The Other Washington

Topher — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 15:00:51 +0000

As mentioned yesterday, GM’s packing up and getting ready for a move this week, so he didn’t have time for a normal post. So even though it’s got nothing to do with Georgetown, here’s a film GM took this summer of his trip to Washington State. You ought to visit it sometime:

Not So Long Ago: Wisconsin and Blues Alley

Topher — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:00:26 +0000

This week for Not So Long Ago, GM dips below M St. for the first time to check out Wisconsin just south of Blues Alley.

Nowadays it hosts the clothing store slash restaurant Rugby Cafe. It is part of Ralph Lauren and is part of the store’s attempt to target the college-crowd. It must be successful since it seems like Brooks Brothers is trying to cater to that crowd too.

In 1993, it hosted the long-lasting Houston’s restaurant. Houston’s was part of a Phoenix-based national chain, that still has locations across the country, including Bethesda.

It was opened at this location in ~~1993~~1983. It stayed open until 2001. A representative told the Washington Business Journal that “the company was willing to ‘basically bulldoze’ the property and make a $2 million to $4 million investment to start over. Problems ranged from a shaky staircase to plumbing problems. But after two years of ‘vigorously’ negotiating for an extension, the property owners couldn’t commit to a long-term deal.”

Next door is Filomena. They’ve been open since 1983, so no change there.

Revised Redistricting Plan Released

Topher — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 14:00:06 +0000

Yesterday, Tom Birch released his revised version of the ANC redistricting map. Birch, who is a commissioner on Georgetown’s ANC, was selected by Jack Evans to take the plans of each Ward 2 ANC redistricting committee, alter it if he saw fit, and submit the result to Evans.

Birch made several changes to the plan approved by the ANC2E redistricting committee. The most significant changes address the controversy over the first map, namely that too many people (100% of whom are students) were shoehorned into proposed SMDs 4 and 8.

To address this problem, the revised map takes two dorms and shifts them back to the mixed districts. Specifically, it takes Darnell and shifts it to SMD 2 and takes LXR and shifts it to SMD 5. Of course, it’s worth noting that both those dorms were in “mixed” districts already (the Committee plan took all the dorms from the mixed districts and put them into two student-only districts).

Additional changes include giving Tudor Place back to SMD 7 and adding a couple more apartment buildings just east of Burleith to SMD 2 from SMD 1. The end result of these changes is that the overall numbers get a lot closer to the guideline range of 1,900-2,100:

SMD 1:

Committee Plan – 2,409
Revised Plan – 2,264

SMD 2:

Committee Plan – 1,660
Revised Plan – 1,917

SMD 3:

Committee Plan – 1,705
Revised Plan – 2,010

SMD 4:

Committee Plan – 2,581
Revised Plan – 2,096
Actual Numbers – 2,033 (explained below)

SMD 5:

Committee Plan – 1,710
Revised Plan – 1,973

SMD 6:

Committee Plan – 1,836
Revised Plan – 1,836 (Note: this is Tom Birch’s district, so the fact he didn’t change it at all probably reflects his desire not to be seen to be literally choosing his own voters)

SMD 7:

Committee Plan – 1,983
Revised Plan – 2,061

SMD 8:

Committee Plan – 2,581
Revised Plan – 2,315
Actual Numbers – 2,113

Whereas under the Committee’s plan, the districts ranged in population from 1,660 to 2,581 (a 55% variation) the current range is only 1,836 to 2,315. And you may have noticed those two “Actual Numbers” above; for those the report states that the Census’ numbers are probably wrong. The report looked to GU’s own reporting and found lower numbers. Taking that into account, the largest district is SMD 1 (Burleith) which has 2,264. And it’s a lot easier to use “neighborhood cohesiveness” to justify an aberrantly sized district when you’re using actual neighborhood lines.

Thus under the revised plan, the most diluted votes live in a non-dorm district. And in that sense, the revised report greatly reduces the one-man-one-vote problems in the Committee plan.

But the plan will certainly disappoint students who hoped to load a third district with enough dorms to ensure a third student commissioner. And the revised plan will likely result in large numbers of dorm-living students being represented by non-students, something proponents of the committee’s plan earlier called “disenfranchisement”.

However, GM can’t really criticize the revised plan much, since it is basically what he advised in August:

The obvious way to do that would be go back to the old model of having some dorms broke off into the “non-student” districts. It would mean moving a couple hundred students each into SMDs 2, 3, and 5, which is probably not enough to actually result in students winning those districts.

It would be an ugly map. It would mean some students getting ignored for ten more years. And students wouldn’t like it, but it would be legal.

And that’s still true.

Here’s the report:

View this document on Scribd

Verizon FIOS Still a Long Ways Away for Georgetown

Topher — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:00:57 +0000

GM is a fan of English soccer. And that means he mostly has to rely on the Fox Soccer Channel for his Saturday morning fix. And sadly for GM, this means not only having to pay an extra couple bucks a month to Comcast, it also means not watching it in high definition. And seeing people writhe on the ground in fake agony in standard definition is just not the same.

Verizon FIOS, however, does offer this channel in high definition. Plus a whole lot of other channels and features you might actually care about. But Verizon is rolling FIOS out very, very slowly in DC. In 2009, the District signed a memorandum of understanding with Verizon to bring FIOS to DC. It specifies when each neighborhood will get the service. In the first batch is Woodley Park, Dupont, Woodley Park, Petworth, Anacostia, and Southwest.

When the agreement was signed, Jack Evans publicly complained about the fact Ward 2 was scheduled to get the service later. GM thinks he heard Evans once announce at an ANC meeting that he successfully moved Georgetown up in the queue, but even if he did hear that, it’s not the case. According to a Verizon rep, Georgetown is in the third of three phases. That means we’re not scheduled to get FIOS until 2015-18. Booo.