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After 10+ years in Georgetown, the Five Guys is closing this Sunday. GM has heard rumors of this impending closure for at least a year, and the rumors picked up a lot more in the last couple days as the employees started informing the customers.

GM spoke with one of the employees who said that he believed that the lease was up and that the company was making a business decision to close. He (rightly) complained that the company, which more than likely has known about the closure for a long time, only informed its employees last week. He also said that they were all being let go and the company was making no attempt to find them positions at the millions of other Five Guy locations around DC. Booooo. Continue reading →

Photo by Mike Maguire.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Two of the three top Major League Soccer draftees are Hoyas.
• Robert Taft’s house is for sale.

1400 block of 31st St.

Another item GM missed while he was taking his holiday break is that the liquor license moratorium appears to be on the way out.

After the initial agreement between the BID, the ANC, and the Citizens Association failed to get endorsed as written back in December, it appeared that all that remained was some last minute haggling before a final agreement could be reached. But the whole arrangement could have just as easily fallen apart. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed and a modified agreement between the parties was struck and subsequently endorsed by vote. (Full disclosure: GM is on the board of CAG, but was not involved directly in the negotiations and was even out of town when the board voted yes.)

All that remains now is for the ABC board to accept the agreement and end the moratorium. Continue reading →

Photo by Fiat Luxury.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• When Georgetown was full of “Communists, ballet-dancers and economic planners.”
• Ri-Rá Ri-Opened.

C & O Canal

Photo by Ehpien.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Come hear from the author of the great Capital Losses book, James Goode, at Dumbarton House this Thursday.
• Annapolis-based coffee roaster opening a “coffee training space” in Georgetown.

Today on Now and a Long Time Ago, GM stops by what was once the oldest saddle shop in the DC area: Stombock and Son Compay. The store stood at 3278 M St.

According to Capital Losses, the store opened in Georgetown in 1895 across the street at 3293 M St. But only a few years later it moved into 3278 M St. (which now houses J. McLaughlin).

At the turn of the century, a saddle shop in the middle of the city wasn’t an odd thing, seeing as so many people still got around by horse and buggy. But as the automobile took over, the shop switched to the equestrian sport business. Continue reading →

1000 block of Wisconsin Ave.

The Georgetown BID announced yesterday that it was entering into a new year-long arrangement with DDOT to perform routine maintenance of the sidewalks. As CEO Joe Sternlieb explained in the release:

“There are over one million bricks on Georgetown sidewalks, some of which are loose, broken, or missing at any given time. This agreement allows DDOT to use the BID’s staff and ‘eyes on the street’ to quickly identify and fix problems on a daily basis.”

Continue reading →