The Georgetown Metropolitan

Photo by torbakhopper.

Tuesday the city held its primary elections, but also on the ballot was Initiative 77. The voter initiative would change the way tipped employees are paid by the employer. Right now they can be paid as little as $3.33 per hour, and the rest of their wages are expected to be paid via tips. Theoretically if an employer doesn’t make it up to the normal minimum wage (which is $12.50/hour right now in DC) the restaurant is supposed to supplement their wages to meet that. The initiative would scrap that system and say that once fully implemented over eight years, employers must pay their employees the minimum wage period. They can continue to collect tips on top of that, but the employer no longer gets to credit that against what it owes its employees.

Despite a vociferous campaign by restauranteurs and many tipped employees themselves, the initiative passed 55% to 45%. (It won’t necessarily become law, as the Council can simply overrule the initiative, and most of the councilmembers have already come out against it). Continue reading →

Photo by Daniel Lobo.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• GM received a tip about a sign on M St. announcing the “Apothecary Lounge”. This mysterious speakeasy appears to be a members only pot lounge above the Christian Science Reading Room on 31st. Anybody know anything about it?
• Great headline: “How an Harlem Native Ended up Making Mumbo Sauce at an Irish Bar in Georgetown“.

The Georgetown Waterfront

GM was browsing the fantastic site with lots of old photos of the Georgetown Branch railroad, when he came across a set of not that old photos. They are of the Georgetown Waterfront in July 2005. And it’s really hard to believe it looked so different so recently ago, even for GM who was already living in Georgetown at the time.

What is immediately striking about this “old” photo are the old crew murals. GM had a vague recollection of them, but it’s great to see the preserved in photo. Honestly it’s a bit of a shame they were not maintained in some form with the creation of the waterfront park.

GM also wonders how the murals came about in the first place? How did the various teams and clubs apportion the wall space? Why does Georgetown University get a huge space, but GW so little? Continue reading →

Photo by Bill Starrels.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• A Georgetowner reminisces about the old, genuine Commander Salamander.
• Muncheez has renovated and has a new menu.

3200 block of Reservoir St.

Photo by Timothy Wildey.

It’s hard to believe it, but right now a large number of bottlenose dolphins call the Potomac river home, for at least part of the year. In fact, hundreds of them have been spotted in the Chesapeake Bay, near the mouth of the Potomac River. And it’s from this large group that the Potomac sightings likely originate.

It’s viewed as an example of the great progress that the cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay has made that these dolphins have settled in. (In fact it was announced last week that the bay is cleaner than it has been for 33 years). But this isn’t the first time dolphins have swum the waters of the Potomac. In fact they came as far as Georgetown once. Continue reading →

Photo by Wayne Thume.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• All about the new ice cream shop at M and Prospect.
• The Restoration Hardware is expected to close as early as the end of this month, with construction of the Wawa to follow.

The C & O Canal

Trees can be surprisingly resilient. And a good example of that is a healthy London plane on 33rd St. just north of O St.

Today it appears like a nicely progressing tree with two primary trunks splitting off at about seven feet off the ground. But that split has a cause, and that’s a violent storm in the spring of 2015. It left the tree looking like this: Continue reading →