The Georgetown Metropolitan

Photo by Daniel Lobo.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Ever wonder about that sculpture of a hand on N St.? Wonder no more.
• New play about the Georgetown “peeping Rabbi”.

2900 block of M St.

From the Washington Harbour:

Later a shrine was established to the beloved, deceased robot cop. Gone too soon:

https://twitter.com/peterwsinger/status/887429152420352000

If you, like GM, are confused about all this. This story sort of explains it. But not really.

Photo by Mike Maguire.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• GM forgot another recent closure that happened while he was gone: the Calvin Klein Underwear.
• The fancy Blue Bottle coffee is now open.

3000 block of P St.

GM ran his annual State of Georgetown before he left town last week. But he didn’t get around to publishing some of the more interesting raw data. Today he’s going to publish was stores opened and closed since his last census in 2016. Here it is:

Here are the stores that closed: Continue reading →

Photo by Ehpien.

Good morning Georgetown. GM is glumly back from the beach. Here’s the latest:

• Family and friends mourn the man shot to death on K St.
• The new Sweet Green (in the old Eagle Bank building south of M) will be a lot bigger than the old one (which is being refurbished).
• A couple changes that happened when GM was out: BCBG closed and Marine Layer will be moving into the old Godiva Chocolate building.

Yes, GM just had a long Fourth of July weekend, but he’s knocking off again nonetheless. He’ll be at the beach all next week. See you soon!

1500 block of 33rd St.

As previewed yesterday, GM has performed his annual census of stores and restaurants around Georgetown and is ready to present the State of Georgetown 2017:

Before going further, GM should insert his typical caveat. First, it’s important to know that it’s more of an art than a science. The term “shop” as used here refers to just about all commercial establishments: retail stores, restaurants, salons, gyms, etc. GM doesn’t count pure office space. The rule of thumb GM uses is if you can walk in without an appointment, it’s a shop. But again, sometimes it’s a close call. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

GM also has no capability to measure square footage or annual sales, etc. Check out the BID’s annual report for that sort of detail. This is more a pure head count.

That said, here we go:

Overall Picture

This year GM counted 512 shops in Georgetown. That’s a slight increase of last year’s count of 498. As described yesterday, the numbers of pure closings and openings is this:

• Closings – 36
• Openings – 30
• Moves within Georgetown – 6

And, as mentioned yesterday, this year’s census comes 14 months after last year’s census. So the increase in openings and closings over last year is partially explained by the longer period. Both this year and last year are pretty slow in terms of openings and closings compared with some previous years. For instance, 2015 had 43 openings and 51 closings. 2014 had 42 openings and 32 closings. So things have appeared to have stabilized. (They’re so stable that GM simply took last year’s article and only had to make a handful of adjustments for this year.)
Continue reading →