Category Archives: Uncategorized

PBS published this wonderful piece on Georgetown’s Yarrow Mamout. It’s goes wonderfully deep on Yarrow and his identity as a muslim in early America. Enjoy!

Photo by Victoria Pickering.

• City Tavern Club sold to Cechi Group, which plans to maintain it as an event space.
• Just an update from my Barnes and Noble article, apparently they do plan on having a coffee shop on the third floor. They are aiming to open it by the spring.

Late last week, my neighbors on 33rd St. woke up to find no parking signs plastered up an down the block. This is not a rare phenomenon. But what was particularly irksome was that the permit claimed the entire block for a whole month. This would be unprecedented. So I dug into the permit and here’s what I found.

First of all, while the permit is good for 30 days, my understanding is that it will be a moving project and once they are done with a block, the restrictions will be removed. It looks like they are going to take about 3-4 days a block, which is a pain, but is far better than 30 days. Also, while the restrictions are post on both sides, it looks like the work is mostly on the east side and they are not demanding cars be moved from the west side of the street.

So the parking restrictions are annoying but not the end of the world. But what is really irking me (and anyone I mention this to) is that this work is involving digging a trench. But this trench is getting dug in a street that just was repaved last year!! This is such a wasteful destruction of public infrastructure. But surely it’s for a good cause?

Eh, about that. This is what it’s for:

It’s for a slightly upgraded business internet service. That’s it. Our streets were nicely repaved just last year, but that gets to be thrown into the dumpster because AT&T wants to make a buck.

Looking through permits, this work has been going on across the city. This particular job appears to be heading up 33rd St. and spreading on Volta and Q. It may spread beyond that in Georgetown, and I’m digging for answers on that question.

And it’s not just our nicely paved streets that AT&T is being allowed to vandalize. As part of the digging, they spray paint all the sewer and gas lines going into each house. So now our sidewalk and street look like this:

And, of course, they only just replaced all these bricks a year or two ago. So these neon lines will be with us for a long time.

I levied a complaint with DDOT for this wasteful practice. They acknowledged that they are supposed to coordinate work like this with plans for repaving. But “it just fell through the cracks”. Of course, falling through the cracks doesn’t apparently lead to any consequences for the massive telecom company. Only residents and taxpayers.

I will be asking AT&T to come before the ANC and explain this work, why we had zero notice, and how much more of it we’re going to have to endure. I’ll keep you posted on that.

Photo by M.V. Jantzen.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• More on Call Your Mother getting its zoning relief.
• Large office-to-residential project still trying to move forward.

Feeling like it’s 2011 again, I went to visit the Barnes and Noble the other day. The bookstore, newly returned to its location at M and Thomas Jefferson, felt both familiar and strange. Come check it out with me!

Right off the bat, the entrance might throw you off, were you to have magically appeared here from 13 years ago. The old entrance was through a vestibule on the corner, not the mid-block entrance that the Nike Store created. But that’s really neither here nor there, in terms of the experience.

Once you enter, you see a spacious first floor that is part new releases and part gift shop:

(You also might notice that they kept the Hoya-themed gym floor that Nike installed)

I was a little surprised that they did not use this first floor for the coffee shop. But I guess putting it upstairs would force customers past the bookshelves. It does, however, leave a somewhat empty feel to the first floor (an excessive spaciousness that afflicted the Nike Store too):

The second story is where the real book-heavy sections begin:

As you may recall, in its old iteration the store had a large music section on the second floor. It also had the Starbucks there. Again this new iteration appears to have located its coffee shop even higher up as it does not appear on the second story.

Onward to the third story I expected to finally find the coffee shop. But no. There’s not one there either. They really did build the store without a coffee shop. That seems mad to me, because coffee shops and bookstores go so well together. And in Georgetown specifically, opening a coffee shop seems like a no brainer for generating foot traffic. Maybe they’re planning on adding one later?

One section I was pleased to find was the magazine section:

In the old Barnes and Noble you could find a huge variety of magazines. Moreover you could find a good selection of dry political journals that hardly anyone read. Since my girlfriend (now wife) worked for one of those journals that hardly anyone read, it was nice to at least see them on the newsstand. The selection of magazines at the new store is much smaller than the old one, which probably reflects a decline in publishing generally rather than a choice by B&N. It does have a tiny vestigial dry political journal section though!

Overall, the store certainly is a genuine full service bookstore. It’s not a sparse and token offering of books like the short-lived Amazon bookstore was or what you’ll find in airports these days. But without a cafe, I don’t know that it will restore its place as a prime “third place” like it once was. We’ll see…

Photo by M.V. Jantzen.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Call Your Mother receives thumbs up from BZA.
• I keep on linking to news about Ostera Mozza, apologies. But it is really a big deal for the neighborhood’s dining scene. Here’s one more.

There will be a Volta Park clean up this Sunday morning from 8:30 to 10:30. See you there!

Photo by M.V. Jantzen.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Osteria Mozza is now open.
• Round up of last week’s ANC meeting.

Well, last week’s election likely disappointed a lot of my readers. But win or lose, it’s important that we all vote when we can. And here is how Georgetown voted:

President

Harris and Walz carried Georgetown comfortably with 82% of the vote. Trump got about 13%. That’s about the same split that Biden and Trump got in 2020 (Biden actually got 84% last time, while Trump was right on the same 13%).

Despite dropping out and endorsing Trump, RFK Jr. still got 39 votes (which was about 0.75%). There were 178 write-ins and 49 people just didn’t choose a candidate.

Trump only got about 7% of the vote city-wide, which makes Georgetown a more Trump-favoring neighborhood than the average. But it’s far from the Trumpiest neighborhood in DC. That is, surprisingly, Hill East.

Council

The only ostensibly competitive election for DC Council this year was for the two At-Large seats. One can go to a Democrat and the other has to go to someone not registered as a Democrat. In recent years that’s meant it goes to a former Democrat who just pretends to be an independent. That trend continued this year. Robert White was the Democratic nominee and won one of the seats easily. Citywide he garnered 62% of the vote. In Georgetown he also was the leading vote getter, but only received 30% of the vote. (This is a weird vote to tally. Voters are given two votes, so if everyone voted both votes the most any one candidate could get is 50%. With White winning 62% of the vote citywide, it’s clear a lot of people just vote once and stop there.)

Christina Henderson is the faux-independent for this election cycle. She got 23% of the citywide vote to secure the second At-Large seat. In Georgetown she got a lot closer to White with 11% of the vote.

By far the biggest vote getter for this seat in Georgetown was “undervote” (i.e. didn’t vote for one or both the slots). That came in at 46% of the vote.

For the Ward Two seat, the race was even less competitive. Brooke Pinto ran unopposed and won 81% of the vote in Georgetown (which is about what she got Wardwide). Her biggest “competitor” was undervote, which got 15% of the total. The 81% tally is an increase over Pinto’s Georgetown total she received four years ago when she got 77%. That, however, was a contested election, with Dupont’s Randy Downs making an independent run.

Initiative 83

The only really competitive ballot line for DC this year was for Initiative 83. This would change how we vote in DC by introducing ranked choice voting and semi-open primaries. Ultimately though, it wasn’t even close. The initiative won easily across the city, with 73% of the vote. (Which really should not have come as a surprise since literally no ballot initiative has ever lost in DC). This came despite opposition to the measure from the DC Democratic party, which (probably correctly) views this change as a minor erosion of its power in the city.

Georgetown backed the measure by a similar share. Of the people that voted either yes or no, the yeses totaled 71% of the vote. (Honestly given that Georgetown has a higher number of non-Democrats, you’d think it would do even better.)

As someone who has long been advocating for a change along these lines, I was thrilled to see it win. But unfortunately it is no self-activating. The Council needs to actually ratify the change via the budget. There was some talk that if the initiative passed without getting support from African-American voters that the Council could use that to ignore the results. However, even in Ward 8 the measure won with 71% of the vote. The lowest ward-wide vote for it was Ward 4, which is historically a Black ward (although lesser so these days) and it still gave the measure 68.5%.

So if the Council nonetheless chooses to ignore the will of the voters, it won’t have much of a leg to stand on to do it.

ANC

Oh, I almost forgot the ANC. Six of us ran for reelection and were all unopposed. Not surprisingly we all won with North Korea-like voting totals.

The student commissioners are graduating in the spring and thus did not run again. No one made the ballot given the difficulty in getting qualified signatures on campus in the middle of the summer. But at least two students announced write-in candidacies. Who actually won those contests will be announced soon.

Photo by M.V. Jantzen.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Dikembe Mutombo’s legacy at GU.
• Call Your Mother’s building just sold. (This shouldn’t impact the still pending zoning case).