The Georgetown Metropolitan

Photo by Elaine.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• As first reported by GM back in September, Kit and Ace will open in the Levi’s space and sell something called “performance cashmere”.
• Baked and Wired is a good place to pick up some holiday treats.

3200 block of O St.

Last week, GM wrote about what happens when people ignore street signs. This week he’s back with another street sign on a cobblestone street that people routinely ignore: the stop sign at O St. and Potomac.

The sign, seen above, is for eastbound traffic on O. And if you stand there for a few minutes you’ll notice that not even half the drivers even bother to slow down for the sign. They don’t even see it.

And there’s a reason for that: because the street is cobblestone (well, technically Belgian block) there’s no paint on the street. There’s nothing on the road surface itself to inform drivers that there’s a stop sign. There’s no painted crosswalk and there’s not even a simply painted white line. Continue reading →

Photo by Mike Maguire.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Carol Joynt checks out Via Umbria.
• (Speaking of Carol, the sign she criticized on the skating rink is gone. If you’re a sign, don’t mess with her.)

2700 block of P St.

In this week’s Current newspaper, there is an op-ed by Ward 3 resident (and former DC Council candidate) Matt Frumin arguing for a complicated land swap deal involving the old Hardy School on Foxhall (not Hardy Middle School on Wisconsin), the Lab School–which occupies it–and the lower school of the Georgetown Day School.

GDS is planning on consolidating its lower school with its upper school in a new building on upper Wisconsin Ave. near Tennleytown. And the Lab School, which leases the Hardy School from DC, has been unable to obtain a longterm deal from the city and is consequentially unwilling to sink much money in the old building. Frumin sees this an an opportunity. He suggests that the Lab School should take over the old GDS space on MacArthur Blvd. and for the city to reopen an elementary school in the Hardy building.

GM has no idea what sort of package the city would have to put together to encourage this move, but GM is sure of one thing: it makes no sense to reopen the Hardy school as a new elementary school.

Frumin cites overcrowding at the Key School as justification for the creation of a new school. And he’s right, Key (located in the west Palisades) is overcrowded with 383 children attending a school with a capacity of 360. But if the children were split into two schools, there would only be 191 children per school. DCPS will not accept schools that small. Only two elementary schools in DC have fewer than 200 children, and if DCPS had its druthers, those would probably wouldn’t be open either. It was only because Georgetown’s Hyde-Addison grew its population substantially that it avoided closing years ago. Continue reading →

Photo by Ehpien.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Don’t forget Breakfast with Santa this Sunday morning at Volta Park!
• Georgetown GLOW will be ten days long this year and start next weekend.

1600 block of 30th St.

GM was walking on P St. last week when he came on this scene. What’s here is a contractor’s pickup truck (with trailer) that is parked on the south side of the street. On the left is a G2 bus trying to make a right turn off of Wisconsin.

Trying is the operable word here. That’s because neither the trailer nor the truck are parked in legal spaces. And it probably seems odd to have such a long stretch of curb not allow parking so far from the intersection (although there is a curb cut right in the middle too). But the reason these are not legal spaces is because the bus–which has been making this turn literally since streetcars were also making the turn–needs a wide turning radius to make it (mostly because Wisconsin intersects P at a slightly skewed angle). Continue reading →

Photo by LaunchOurRocket.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• La Chaumerie is truly a cozy place to eat a great meal by the fire.
• Georgetowner Bob Woodward at the next Q&A Cafe, (at the George Town Club)(hosted by Georgetowner Carol Joynt)(Georgetown).