3200 block of Water St.

So, we can all basically agree that DDOT rolled out the Circulator in a pretty ham-handed fashion. Despite the fact that the takeover of the Blue Bus was well known to be coming, there was no official word coming from DDOT or the Circulator website (which, for what it’s worth, is registered to the Downtown Business District Corp., so perhaps they control it).

But more troubling is the sudden change of the old route. As you may be able to tell from above, the Union Station-Georgetown route now stays enters Georgetown on K St. before turning up Wisconsin towards M. This change has some benefits but a lot of drawbacks. (As previously discussed, the new route mirrors the old Blue Bus route but removes a couple stops including the stop in front of the Marriott).

The Benefits: It will get you to Georgetown a bit faster. M St. (particularly on weekends and during evening rush) gets pretty backed up going westbound. Staying on K will avoid that (although K St. itself, particularly just west of Washington Circle, can get bad itself). Second, some argue this will avoid the confusion an redundancy of running two Circulators along the same road.

The Drawbacks: Getting to east Georgetown from downtown will be more difficult. You either have to transfer to another bus or walk all the way up from M. Also, Penn and 24th is a very popular place for people to pick up the Circulator to Georgetown; that stop is gone. Finally, splitting the line up like this will add confusion and tourists will likely struggle with it.

Maybe the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, and people’s behavior will adjust to the new routes (wouldn’t an effective communications campaign been a good way to start that off?), but at least initially it seems people aren’t too happy with the changes.

And it goes without saying (but of course GM will go ahead and say it) that involving, or at least informing, the community before making this decision was the least that DDOT should have done. Maybe they took away a lesson from last year’s attempted route change that notifying the community will only result is headaches. GM definitely hopes that’s not it, but it’s a definite possibility.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Georgetown’s Snap expands to Adams Morgan.
• Georgetowner with controversial past will star as new real estate broker on HGTV reality show.

1000 block of 30th St.

Being a nerdy wonk that he is, GM made a pie chart:

Like the rest of America, we apparently really like, well, “American”, Italian (which is mostly to say: Pizza), and dessert.

Before tabulating the numbers (which were based off of GM’s last survey) GM thought that French might eek out a win, but the prevalence of pubs like Martin’s and J.Paul’s put American in first. The combination of ten different pizza places, combined with higher end Italian restaurants like Cafe Milano, put Italian squarely in second place. And despite an Ice Cream No-Man’s Land, when in Georgetown you’re never more than a few blocks from a frozen or baked treat.

The most amazing thing about this data? There are no fewer than 120 restaurants in Georgetown. 120!? That’s nuts.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Interesting graph by GU grad student showing how much better government services we get nowadays compared with ten years ago, and how equitably those services are spread throughout the city. (Although given the economic and racial diversity of Ward 2 [it goes from Georgetown to Shaw] GM doesn’t think that Wards are necessarily always the best units of socioeconomic measurement).
• A much better explanation than GM’s rant the other day of why the Circulator change rollout was a communications failure.

1400 block of Wisconsin Ave.

Last night the ANC met for its September session. It was long and grueling. In fact, for the first time in over a year GM left before the end, and that was after three hours.

Notwithstanding his early exit, GM was witness to a lot of interesting news, and most of it had to do with new bars and restaurants.

But first off, let’s talk bikes:

Capital Bikeshare Stations

Chris Holbin of DDOT came before the ANC to present his agency’s plans on new Capital Bikeshare stations in Georgetown. As previously reported here, there will be four such stations in Georgetown. One of those stations was previously announced to be at the gates of the university. Unfortunately, as Holbin discussed last night, there isn’t enough space on the sidewalk for a station and DDOT hasn’t reached an agreement with the school to place it inside the gates.

So they went looking for a replacement site and settled on the north front of the Car Barn on Prospect St. The commissioners, who to their credit were in favor of the program, nonetheless were opposed to this new location. They argued that the immediate neighbors objected to the noise and activity it would create. Ironically, the one commissioner who actually lives across the street from the proposed location, Aaron Golds, didn’t object. But his lone vote against the resolution objecting to the location wasn’t enough. Said resolution called for DDOT to look for another space closer to the university or on the university’s grounds.

Frankly GM would love a station across the street, but never underestimate Georgetowners’ ability to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The Gin Joints

No, none are going to be actual gin joints, whatever that even means, but eight different new liquor licenses were discussed last night. In the interest of brevity, GM will resort to convenient bullets:

• Paul Bakery – Nothing new here, really. They want to serve beer, wine, and liquor but won’t have a bar. No objections
• Zenobia Lounge – Also nothing really new here. This coffee-shop/hookah bar/book shop is a popular lower Georgetown spot. There are some fears over the noise from the patio, but it should face relatively smooth sailing.
• Hu’s Wear – GM’s talked about this before. The owners of Hu’s Shoes and Hu’s Wear want to open a Mediterranean restaurant. not many details yet, but the owner said it unfortunately wouldn’t be called Hu’s Hungry.
• Lapis – This was a new one to GM. The owners of Cafe Bonaparte want to open a new Afghan restaurant at 1032 Wisconsin Ave. Everyone seemed pretty excited about it and GM doesn’t predict much in the way of objections.
• Midtown Cafe – This one already exists, but is outside the moratorium zone. Few details at this point, given the fact it backs up on residents, it could face some problems.
• Come To Eat – ABRA Director Fred Moosally was at the meeting last night. He spoke briefly about the moratorium and revealed that two licenses that were held in safe keeping were released. One of them will likely go to a restaurant called Come to Eat to be located in the mall. No details on what that would look like.
• Ma Maison – More excitingly, Moosally mentioned that the other license would likely go to a restaurant called Ma Maison, which would move into the old Hibiscus Cafe space on Water Street. GM could have misheard it, but he swears Moosally said that the same family behind Cafe Bonaparte would also run this restaurant.
• Brush and Blush – There is apparently an establishment on Grace street called Brush and Blush that hosts groups to have painting sessions. They want to allow these groups to be BYOB, which requires a license. They are seeking the unusual (at least for Georgetown) DX license, which is to be used by multipurpose facilities.

The Rest

Here’s a quick rundown on the other matters that might call for longer discussion, but frankly, GM had to go to bed:

• Lieutenant Hedgecock of MPD2D stopped by. He spoke briefly about the sexual assault in Burleith, although he didn’t offer many new details. Additionally he mentioned that on July 27th, an officer in Georgetown apprehended three individuals that later were tied to armed robberies, burglaries, and assaults across town. MPD2D is confident this was a big arrest and will have a noticeable effect on reducing area crime.
• Morso’s application for a sidewalk cafe was roundly rejected.
• A left turn from westbound M St. to Wisconsin should start up in early September.
• Safeway was back to discuss its plans for the neighboring properties. They came up with much more Georgetown-consistent plans, but still called for traffic to connect through to the Safeway lot. The ANC is wisely concerned about the traffic effects. GM frankly thinks the smaller parking lot isn’t necessary in the first place:

And that’s about it.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• If you can’t wait for his ANC round up later, you can read GM’s live-tweeting of last night’s meeting. Sidenote: it’s a lot harder to live-tweet than GM thought it would be.
• Connections to the Georgetown Sexual Assaulter are being drawn to the recent Burleith sexual assault.

Georgetown Waterfront