The Georgetown Metropolitan

3400 block of N St.

For so long the cupcake has dominated the cheap luxury food market around DC. With Georgetown Cupcake snagging a national reputation, and others-most notable Baked and Wired-staking a claim on the hearts of locals, the cupcake has stood alone.

Except, wait, no. The macaron was supposed to have dislodged it right? Well, no bother, because a new pretender is due to arrive: the cream puff.

GM has heard that a chain bakery that specializes in that treat is going to open at 1332 Wisconsin Ave. (most recently the home to a series of failed frozen yogurt shops). GM was not told the name of the chain, but was told it was coming from New York. The only restaurant that fits that bill is actually an originally Japanese chain known in the U.S. as Beard Papa. GM has no verification for this, of course. So take it with a grain of salt. Continue reading →

Photo by Daniel Lobo.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Georgetown home rents for over $10,000 a month, but is perfect for sun worshippers.
• It’s always fun when Butler, and its mascot, come to town.

Rose Park

Soon to occupy the old Georgetown Antiques space on O St. is apparently a location of Vaporfi. This is a store selling electronic cigarettes, the smoking of which is referred to as “vaping”.

Vaping is super lame. Seriously, look at this idiot:

Continue reading →

Photo by Ehpien.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• GM reported on this a while back, but the old Fillmore School is now for sale for $14 million.
• Discount clothier, Forever 21, opens this weekend.

Georgetown Waterfront

It is all the rage these days to be extremely pessimistic about the city’s plan for a streetcar network. The single section that has been constructed is extremely late and keeps getting later. The council has rewritten how the whole project is to be financed, throwing the scope and timetable of the complete network into question. But GM is an optimist, and he still believes the streetcar will be built to Georgetown, and it’s important for us to plan for it.

Setting aside the question of “if” a streetcar is coming to Georgetown, the largest issue surrounding it is “where” it is coming. There are three conceivable possibilities, but only one truly makes sense: the Whitehurst. Here’s why:

M St.

The streetcar line that would come to Georgetown is an extension of the line about to open on H St. As you can see in the above map, the city has settled on a route from Union Station up to K St., across downtown all the way to Wisconsin and K St.

Arguably a better route to serve residents and visitors alike would take the streetcar to M St. in Georgetown (via Pennsylvania Ave. from Washington Circle). In a perfect world this would be the best option. But there’s no way overhead wires will be allowed on this stretch. And without overhead wires, the streetcar needs to run on batteries. This is a feasible technology, but it almost certainly requires the streetcar to have its own lane, otherwise it can run out of power sitting in traffic. Moreover, the success of the streetcar would be greatly enhanced with more dedicated lane miles.

And while it would please a transit fan like GM to have transit lanes down M St., the political will to do so is probably not there (even though the vast majority of people causing the congestion on our streets are simply suburbanites who don’t pay income taxes here and who view M St. as simply something between them and their home.)

So M St. is not an option.

K St.

K St. appears to be the city’s preferred option at this point, although it has some obvious drawbacks.

First of all, K St. and Wisconsin Ave. is not a terribly convenient terminus for residents or visitors. While the BID has ambitious plans to liven up lower Georgetown, for now other than the park, there’s not much going on down there.

Second, this would essentially eliminate any possibility of the streetcar continuing on to Georgetown University, despite the school’s wish for it to do so. There are some theoretically possible ways the streetcar could get from K St. up to the campus, but they’re all extremely impractical and/or expensive.

But all in all it wouldn’t be the worst option. But it wouldn’t be the best either. Continue reading →

Photo by Oren Levine.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• The Graham hotel, which is named after former Georgetown resident Alexander Graham Bell, is naming something else after him: a new restaurant.
• The waterfront’s Orange Anchor is targeting a January opening.

Georgetown Waterfront