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Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• The new beer garden at the intersection of M and Pennsylvania opens this weekend.
• GU continues to record lower Covid cases week-over-week.

You may have noticed the construction of the above unusual looking structure along the canal recently (GM jokingly called them flying buttresses). What is it about and what’s going on with the canal generally? GM is here to help!

Like real flying buttresses, this structure (which is in the canal just west of Wisconsin Ave.) was put up in order to stabilize the adjoining wall. Last year, Georgetown Heritage, the non-profit that is leading the effort to restore the canal through Georgetown, became alarmed at the state of the old stone wall on the south side of the canal and the way it was bulging out. With the help of structural engineers, it determined that the wall was at risk of a catastrophic failure. It alerted NPS to the crisis and even commissioned blueprints for this support structure.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Georgetown a good place to be old!
• They finally released a trailer for that movie about the Drath murder. (The way they’ve held back this movie makes GM think it’s pretty bad!)

This week for Georgetown Time Machine, GM is visiting upper Wisconsin Ave. The photo comes from the DDOT archives.

GM believes the photo is from the 1960s, based upon the cars and the fact that there are no streetcar tracks down the center of the road (the streetcars stopped in 1962).

To get your bearings, the large building up the hill in the center of the shot is now the British School. That is just about the only building on the east side of the street that is still standing today.

The most notable building in the photo is the Safeway at the center:

This was the first Safeway building at this location. It was built in 1955:

Despite being built during the height of suburbanization, the store was built right up to the street. To be sure, it was still surrounded by a large parking lot, but there was somewhat of a consistent streetscape. Interestingly, before its construction, this stretch of Wisconsin Ave. was just parking lots:

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• More on the street decking.
• Come be GM’s neighbor! Invite him into your incredible wine cave!

As GM mentioned in February, parking enforcement has been essentially suspended since the early days of the pandemic. That will start to end starting June 1st.

This development was reported recently during one of the Covid status news conferences. Specifically the following enforcement will resume:

• All parking rules
• Vehicles will be required to have valid registration and license plates
• Towing will be enforced
• Street sweeping rules will be enforced

Some have groaned about the return of this enforcement, but any Georgetown ought not to. When you allow non-residents to park for free and without time limit, they will take up a lot more parking spaces. So if you find yourself circling the block a lot more recently, lack of enforcement probably is contributing to that.