The Georgetown Metropolitan

GM can no confirm that the four new applicants for liquor licenses in Georgetown are the four he identified last month. Those include:

• The Georgetown AMC
• Lady Camelia
• Chaia
• Kouzina (GM didn’t have the name last month, but this is the applicant he identified)

Here’s what each applicant has planned:

Georgetown AMC:

The theater doesn’t have really any changes planned, except presumably the sale of alcoholic drinks. They plan to sell drinks right up to the legal deadline: 2 am weekdays and 3 am weekends. They are applying for a Class C restaurant license, which allows for the sale of beer, wine and liquor.

What’s somewhat interesting for this applicant is that they’re pursuing a restaurant license (a C/R license). Other theaters in DC that sell alcohol, such as E St. Cinema, use a Multipurpose Facility license (a C/X license). Multipurpose facilities are theaters and art galleries, etc., which Georgetown AMC would appear to qualify as. And C/X licenses don’t require the licensee to receive a certain minimum amount of its revenue from food sales, whereas C/R licenses require the establishment to get at least 45% of its gross revenues from food sales.

Can a movie theater really get 45% of its revenues from popcorn, especially once it start selling booze? Why doesn’t the theater just get a C/X license? Because the moratorium prohibits them. (Yet another reason to ditch the moratorium).

We’ll see how this plays out… Continue reading →

Photo by Alan Kotok.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• It’s not technically in Georgetown, but it’s great news for the neighborhood that the recently closed West End Cinema is getting bought by Landmark Theaters.
• How’s the cat cafe going?

As part of his annual survey of Georgetown stores, GM likes to tally up the restaurants by style and see, in effect, what does Georgetown taste like. Not much different than last year, really.

American food and sweets continue to dominate, which 19 and 17 respectively. American food would dominate even more if GM hadn’t separated out “grill” restaurants from the category.

French continues to hold up third place. Although Italian would be third if GM didn’t count “pizza” as a separate category. The only new category this year is Irish, with the opening of Ri Ra.

Either way, there is still a lot of variety of Georgetown restaurants.

Photo by Mike Maguire.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Lots of tall trees have fallen in the last week. GM saw one on Volta and one on Pennsylvania, just across the bridge. Any other big losses?
• Want to watch a Pop artist at work?

1200 block of 35th St.

Last Thursday GM was passing by the construction at the old Georgetown Theater and saw that the workers were finally taking down the scaffolding. You can now see the restored stucco facade, with all the awful formstone stripped away.

The facade is meant to restore the theater to how it appeared for a short time in the mid-20th century, before the Heon family purchased it in 1949. Before that time it was called the Dumbarton and looked like this:

Continue reading →

Photo by Marc Andre.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Evermay would be the most highly appraised home in DC, if it were actually a home.
• St. Elmo’s Fire is 30 years old. Come down to the Waterfront to watch it again tonight.

Washington Harbour