The Georgetown Metropolitan

1400 block of Wisconsin Ave.

Just a reminder: The rescheduled Volta Park Day will take place this Sunday from 1pm-4pm. Wear you’re costume on and keep the Halloween party rocking through the weekend! The annual East v. West softball game will take place at 12 pm. See you there!

Photo by Urban Bohemian.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Some more info on that “technical cashmere” shop that’s coming. (Which, by the way, GM reported on back in September).
• The search for the missing partner to the famous Yarrow Mamout painting hanging in the Georgetown library.

3200 block of O St.

In this week’s Georgetown Current there is a note from the publisher, Davis Kennedy, asking for donations for the newspaper. As he explains in the letter, with the closing of the Gazette Newspapers (by the Post) it took with it a regional advertising syndicate. And the Current Newspapers relied on that syndicate.

Seven years ago, the Washington City Paper wrote admiringly about the Current’s intentionally anti-modern business model. In a world where most other papers were strugglingly to keep afloat as they expanded into online news sources, the Current refused to do much more than dip a toe in the world wide web. And it worked.

At least it did. Continue reading →

Photo by Wendy Huff.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Hear some smart thinking on good drinks tonight with Derek Brown at the Q & A Cafe.
• Don’t forget the Rose Park tennis court dedication to the Peters Sisters tomorrow at 3 pm.

Dumbarton Oaks

As GM discussed yesterday, a mausoleum is being constructed in Oak Hill Cemetery for Ben Bradlee. This has alarmed preservationists, particularly those focused on landscape architecture. But was there anything to stop it?

Bureaucracy finds a way. After hearing some complaints about the construction, DCRA took a look and yesterday decided that a building permit is required after all.

For much of the city, that wouldn’t be a particularly big deal. Work would have to stop–perhaps for as little as a few hours–while someone ran down to the permitting office in  SW and get the permit.

But in Georgetown it awakens a long, patient beast who will slowly sit up and squint his eyes, and stroke his chin, and perhaps go back to sleep for a few months, then wake up again, squint his eyes, and stroke his chin, and open his giant maw and announce “too big”, and go back to sleep.

The giant, in this tortured metaphor, is the Old Georgetown Board. And once a building permit is applied for that affects an external structure in Georgetown, the application is routed to the OGB for approval.

It is not a fast procedure. Continue reading →

Photo by BKL.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Reminder: The Rose Park tennis courts will be dedicated for the Peters Sisters this Saturday at 3 pm.
• Author of the Georgetowner piece on the “secret app” suspected of being used for racial profiling is angry that the Post ripped him off (or basically re-reported his story without giving him credit) and, more troubling, got the story wrong.

1500 block of 33rd St.