The Georgetown Metropolitan

Photo by M.V. Jantzen.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s your weekly news round-up:

• Greek ice cream shop coming.
• Lutece has new pastry chef.
• CNN piece on Georgetown mural concerning hostages.

As part of Georgetown University’s effort to keep the neighborhood tidy during student move out, the school hauls all the bulk trash that the students need to get rid of. And if you have bulk trash you need to dispose of as well, they’ll take that too!

The pick up will take place between May 5 and June 2. Sign up to be on the pick up list here.

This is just one of the many fruits of the cooperation that the Georgetown Community Partnership produces for the neighborhood. So rather than students facing the daunting challenge of getting rid of couches and whatever, giving up, and leaving it to the frustration of the neighbors, the trash gets cleared and the neighbors get a bonus service for free. And the school gets massive brownie points and avoids angry missives. Win-Win-Win.

The Friends of Volta Park are celebrating their 30th year with their spring cocktail party on June 7th at Visitation. The celebration will be kicked off with a field day in the park that morning from 10 am to 1 pm. Come and celebrate with your neighbors!

Photo by M.V. Jantzen.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s my new weekly news round up:

• New temporary mural by the waterfront.
• Some business ins-and-outs
• Reminder, French Market this weekend!
• Two Nine sushi is now open.
• Georgetowner and former FDA leader at next Q&A Cafe.

This week for Georgetown Time Machine I’m checking out one of the many music clubs that once dotted Georgetown. This particular club was down on K St. and it was called the Hideaway Club.

The photo comes courtesty again of the DC Historical Society. The photo description is brief, merely stating that it’s of the “Hide-Away Club on north side of K Street NW, under the Whitehurst Freeway.” and that it’s from 1951.

But it only took some light historical research to realize that this club was infamous.

What other Georgetown club could be tied to an “underworld killing”???

A mobster called “the Greek”?? White slavery?? 45-caliber slug?? This is out of a film noir.

The story continues:

You can read the rest of the story here. Essentially, the city was moving to close the club down, but it was attempting to stay open. This all took place in January of 1951. The story continued the following day, with the club patrons staying away as police continued to monitor the establishment.

Josephy Nesline was indicted for the murder but was acquitted by a jury based upon his claim of self-defense:

It appears the city’s efforts to close the club were more successful.

Two years later the vacant club was purchased by the Tramonte brothers and turned into the legendary Bayou. The club lasted for decades hosting such luminaries as U2 and Bruce Springsteen. It closed in 1998 and later demolished as part of the Ritz development.

The ANC is meeting for its May session next Monday night at 6:30 at Georgetown Visitation (Zoom option here). The full agenda is below, but here are a couple interesting items:

One item is to discuss the problem of drag racing along Water and K St. by the waterfront. This is a perennial problem, whereby racers show up late at night and do their thing. Their thing being illegal car racing with incredibly loud cars. The commission will be considering a resolution aimed at getting DDOT and MPD to solve the problem.

Speaking of drag strips, another item on the agenda will discuss a proposal to remove the rush-hour lane reversals from Rock Creek Parkway. NPS is proposing to do so primarily for safety reasons and because they concluded that it would not have significant detrimental impacts on traffic. (The argument is basically that while there will be fewer lanes for cars going in the rush hour direction [i.e. 4->2], there will be infinitely more lanes [i.e. 0->2] going in the reverse directions and so the spillover traffic from the fewer lanes will be at least partially offset by drivers shifting to Rock Creek from the side roads because they’re going in the other direction and can now use Rock Creek when they couldn’t before).

If that interests you, join the meeting and have your say!

Here is the full agenda:

Keen-eyed readers may have noticed that recently I haven’t been publishing morning link posts quite as consistently. It hasn’t really been from lack of trying. The problem is that there just hasn’t been a lot of Georgetown-related news to link to. This has largely to do with the collapse of local news. DCist is gone. Washington City Paper is a shell of its former self. Tons of small and local news outlets have closed up shop. Added to that is that I used to rely heavily on Twitter to find links, and, well, you know what happened to that cesspool.

As a result, I have struggled to find even just two interesting links on a daily basis. As a result, I am going to try to shift to a weekly links round-up. I think I can still pull together a handful of items each week. So I’ll try that for now. If I start finding more links, I’ll reconsider, but for now that’s how I’ll proceed.

Next weekend the annual French Market will return to Book Hill. The events kick of Friday 11 am to 5pm, and continue with the same time frames Saturday and Sunday. Fingers crossed for great spring weather!

It’s that time of the month when new applications for the Old Georgetown Board reveal new shops on the horizon. And there are two I’ve noticed this month.

The first is for 3025 M St. This Eastbanc-owned property most recently housed Outdoor Voices. Keeping with the DTC brand theme, a store called Staud is aiming to open. It’s a women’s clothing store with only a handfull of physical locations, which could be said of roughly 90% of the stores that have opened in Georgetown over the last couple years. Although this might be the first to sell luxury pet beds:

The second shop is coing to 1211 Wisconsin Ave. It is On Running. That’s not a brand name I was not familiar with until I saw their logo:

I even own a pair of shoes from this brand and I had no ideal that that was what the company was called. I assumed it was a Q and an N.

Anyway, they appear to be taking over this space, which was a Tori Burch for a long time. It has been a Sezane for a bit, but that was technically a pop-up. This appears to be a longer term lease.

As I have mentioned multiple times over the last year or so, WMATA is in the process of completely overhauling the Metrobus system. By the middle of this summer, every single bus line will have a new name and most will have a new route.

I walked through all the changes that directly affect Georgetown in January. I definitely recommend you read that to get up to speed on the new routes.

Today I can give an update on the timing of the change. Right now WMATA is in the process of installing temporary signs for bus stops that will see a new route name. A couple examples are above. I’ve not seen any up in Georgetown yet, but I may have missed it.

More importantly, WMATA has announced that the day that the new system will become effective in June 29th. I had previously wondered if they were planning on phasing it in, but apparently not. Come midnight June 28th, the agency will snap its fingers and a completely new map will be in effect.

If you at all use Metrobus, you really need to start to get familiar with the new routes asap. In some cases, your reliable bus stop that you’ve been using for years will vanish (this is especially likely if you take the G2). So be prepared!