Author Archives: Topher

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Nice old photo of Key Bridge under construction.
• Georgetowner staff raising money to fight cancer via bike.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Flashy new sushi restaurant coming to the former L2 space in Cady’s Alley.
• Research indicates that William Gaston, who GU’s Gaston Hall is named after, owned 163 enslaved people and advocated against equal citizenship for African Americans.

This week for Georgetown Time Machine, GM would like to consider a long lost school building. If GM were to try to compile a Georgetown version of James Goode’s “Capital Losses“, he would certainly include near the top of the list the old Curtis School.

This elementary school once stood on O St., basically right where Hyde-Addison’s playground now sits. As GM explored in this video, the Curtis School was the first of the modern municipal schools built in Georgetown (1875):

(There were, of course, school buildings in Georgetown long before the Curtis School. The Lancaster School, for instance, started teaching students in 1811. It still stands as a private home at 3126 O St.)

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Nice coverage of Art All Night by the Georgetowner (which GM should note is just as cherished at the Current was!).
• Graduate housing proposed for the former Key Bridge Exxon site. (This proposal seems like a possible negotiation maneuver, since the city is eyeing eminent domain for the property.)

Next week the ANC will be meeting for its October session. The meetings are still via Zoom and begins at 6:30.

No items jumped out at GM particularly, but one thing he’d like to note is all the updates. What he means by this is that each month, the ANC receives updates from organizations around the neighborhood. It’s a feature that has increased a lot in the last couple years versus the past, and GM thinks it’s great. With the loss of a weekly newspaper like the old Georgetown Current, it’s really hard for organizations to get the word out to the public about what they’re up to. While a few minutes of time in an ANC meeting is not the same as that old cherished paper, it’s still pretty good.

And this month there seems to be even more updates than normal. The organizations include Safeway (talking about their somewhat chaotic renovations), Office of People’s Counsel (talking about changes to water bills), the Four Seasons Hotel (talking about their vision for the neighborhood), Dumbarton Oaks Park Conservancy, the new MacArthur High School, and Georgetown Main Streets (who present most meetings, as they have so much going on).

If you want to get up on most issues happening around the neighborhood, with all these updates just listening in for the first hour or so of the monthly meeting will do the trick.

Anyway, here’s the full agenda:

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• GU drops mask requirement.
• GM used to run a series on birds in Georgetown, but this event is probably a lot better informed! It’s at the Georgetown library October 5th at 6:30.

The Georgetowner is reporting some fantastic news this week. The owners of Dent Place Market are in negotiations to revive Sara’s Market. The historic market (which has been open since 1919) closed this summer when the most recent market operator, Girma Hailu, decided to close the doors.

But GM kept up hope that it could be revived since the building was still owned by Andy and Suk Yang Johnson, who ran the shop themselves for many years. Hailu was actually the third operator to take over the space since the Johnson’s stepped back in 2011. With luck there would be a fourth.

And it looks like that is in the cards. Sara’s Market is a treasured part of life in east Georgetown. GM used to stop by practically every night when he lived on that side of the neighborhood. But Dent Place Market doesn’t try to be what Sara’s Market was, namely a small version of a full size grocery store. It’s more like a small version of the dry goods side of Dean and Deluca. And maybe that’s a better fit for the neighborhood. When he closed Sara’s, Hailu complained that Georgetowners rely so much on grocery delivery services that a corner market like Sara’s lost too much business. Dent Place Market is–for lack of a less trendy word–more of a curated experience. People like that.

So keep your fingers crossed this comes through…

And in related news, the Georgetowner also reported that Streets Market is opening a small grocery store in the old 7-11 on P St. This will be a good test of the very thing GM was just talking about! Can a small grocery store survive these days? We’ll see…

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Georgetown restaurant gets a NY Times shoutout.
• Pedestrian reports getting assaulted by a driver at Wisconsin and M for merely shaking his head at him.