The Georgetown Metropolitan

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Reflection’s on Rose Park’s role in black history.
• Are robbers targeting fancy jackets?

1200 block of Wisconsin Ave.

A new bagel shop is opening in Georgetown. It will be called Cafe con Bagel (i.e. coffee with a bagel) and be located at 1332 Wisconsin Ave.

Other than a sign announcing a March opening, I can’t find any additional information about the shop. It would appear to be a fully independent shop without any sister stores (yet, at least).

This location has had a long string of casual food eateries, some seeing better success than others. A tart frozen yogurt shop operated here for a while under a couple different names. Then Beard Papa ran a few years. The Cookie Dough Jar cycled through a bit faster. Then the promising Petite Soeur closed almost immediately after opening. So fingers crossed that this new bagel shop can break from the trend!

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• On the ongoing efforts to recognize the people enslaved by Georgetown University.
• Huge bummer! Ching Ching Cha left Georgetown for Dupont after a rent hike.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Film about the man memorialized playing chess on a Georgetown University bench.
• Demolition to resume at old Latham Hotel.
• Cybersecurity expert Chris Krebs at the next Q&A Cafe.

It’s time again for an update from Georgetown’s Hyde-Addison school:

It’s time for the monthly update for neighbors of Hyde Addison Elementary School!  2023 is off to a great start at Hyde.  My children were so excited to return to school after winter break and continue on with the great learning and friendships they’ve developed.  This past weekend my daughter the kindergartner authored her first “book” (a total of three sentences about a log my wife sat on that was actually a crocodile—a work of fiction fyi) and though it had several spelling mistakes, I was so proud of her.  Back in the 80s, I didn’t reach her literacy level until near the end of 1^st grade; she (and her classmates in kindergarten) impress me.

Last week there was a special event held at Hyde (open to parents of current students, teachers etc), the Student Success Showcase, which was a celebration to honor the “Standing Ovation Award” Hyde received from the DC Education Fund this past fall.  In addition to good food and fun, Hyde’s PTA ran a silent auction and raised thousands of additional dollars for Hyde. 

There are some current and upcoming opportunities for Georgetown and Burleith neighbors to support Georgetown’s only public elementary school!

1)      Through Monday February, 6, buy comfort food through Hyde Addison PTA’s Pot-Pie-athon (courtesy of Georgetown’s 1310 Kitchen & Bar chef Jenn Crovato)! 25% of all sales go to Hyde and thousands of dollars have already been raised (sales are brisk!). 

2)      On Wed February 8, Hyde PTA has lined up a fundraiser through In Bocca Al Lupo (2400 Wisconsin Ave), an amazing new pizzeria in Glover Park. 25% of all sales go to Hyde.  More details to come.

PK3 and PK4 Lottery and Prospective Family Open Houses

As a reminder, the lottery for PK3 and PK4 (and grades K-5) at Hyde has opened. You can apply now for PK3 and PK4 at Hyde at myschooldc.org (the deadline to apply is March 1; results will be posted on March 31).  Hyde has one PK3 class (16 students) and two PK4 classes (19 students in each class). Please message me if you are interested in learning more about the school! I have one child in PK3 and one in K and we love it.

Hyde Addison has two upcoming Prospective Family Open Houses this winter (a virtual on on Feb 15, an in-person one on March 10).  Please RSVP at: bit.ly/haeopenhouses; it will begin with a presentation, so plan to be on time!

Hyde’s PTA is now on Instagram! Follow it to keep in touch about all the goings on at Hyde!

instagram.com/hydeaddisonpta

Here’s your February Northwest Georgetown ANC update:

Leaf Collection

The city’s leaf collection continues to disappoint as much as the snow gods have. Residents dutifully piled leaves in tree-boxes or packed them into garden waste bags, but the DPW crews came weeks late. In the meantime the leaves scattered and the paper bags disintegrated in the weather. The ANC sent a letter to DPW in response that stated in part:

It was extremely frustrating for our residents to rush to have leaves neatly raked into tree boxes only to wait for weeks for them to be collected with no updates from your agency. Furthermore, the deteriorating situation became dangerous at a certain point when leaves became wet and froze in clumps causing dangerous conditions for pedestrians. As you may or may not be aware, Georgetown has very old infrastructure and older/narrower pipes can become clogged from uncollected leaves.

Lastly, many of our neighbors have bagged their leaves into paper bags (as required by the District of Columbia) and called 3-1-1 for pick up only to have the paper bags sit for weeks and ultimately break down with leaves scattering the sidewalks and roads. For the remaining weeks left, we request DPW pick up the paper bags with Christmas trees.

Moving forward, DPW needs to roll out an entirely new communications and collection plan for Fall 2023 based on experience to date.

The focus going forward will be not on expecting DPW to perfectly predict months in advance how the collection will pan out, but rather on getting alerts much closer to the actual pick-up days. This will allow residents to wait to collect or put out leaves until just before they get collected, thus maximizing how many leaves actually get into their trucks and off our sidewalks and streets.

Quick Bites

Before I get to a somewhat lengthy summary of our ANC meetings, here are a couple quick bites of information you might like to know:

• The Volta Park field restoration is set to commence this fall. I am scheduling a meeting soon in the park with DPR officials and members of the Friends of Volta Park. I will pressure the city to keep to the schedule and ensure that the scope of the project is as broad as possible, given the budget.
• Parking tickets happen, but sometimes you don’t realized they happened to you until it’s too late. To avoid this, you can sign up for the DMV’s ticker alert system. This way you’ll get an email when you get a ticket, and you can pay it on-time (or contest it if you’re feeling lucky) and not get hit with the fine doubling after 30 days.
• No turn on red signs were added to Reservoir and Wisconsin, helping protect pedestrians from drivers who often don’t come to a stop or look to the right before turning.
• If you are interest in enrolling your children at Hyde-Addison for Pre-k next year, you’ll have to sign up at My School DC by March 1st.
• 🍩District Donuts🍩 are coming back to M St.!
• New Açai bowl shop opens in our district!
• Volunteers painted new pickleball court lines in the Volta Park basketball court.
• Georgetown is cool again!!

Up and Running

Since my last update, we’ve actually squeezed in two ANC meetings. The first was our January session, which was dominated by administrative matters. Most notably, we elected Elizabeth Miller to serve as chair, with Gwen Lhose serving as vice-chair, John DiPierri as secretary and Joe Massaua as treasurer. Elizabeth is dedicated to running a tight ship, so anyone speaking before the ANC better get their “elevator pitches” down pat!

On the substantive side, we took several actions we hope will lead to improvements around the neighborhood. This includes deciding to send the letter regarding leaves discussed above. Additionally we supported a proposal to remove several parking meters on N St. along the north side of Foxtrot Market. This stretch often gets gridlocked due to the fact it’s a bit too narrow for two-way traffic and the parking lanes. Removing those metered spaces should help ease the flow without limiting residential parking on the block.

Further we voted to send a letter to the city asking it to address crosswalks that are in disrepair around the neighborhood. We want the city to ensure that all crosswalks are high-visibility with the “ladder” style paint jobs. I walked throughout our district and found only one crosswalk that lacked some high-visibility crossings (34th and Q) and added it to our list of deficient crosswalks. Hopefully the city will address all the deficient crossings and pedestrian safety will be suitably improved.

Since the Old Georgetown Board didn’t meet in January, we had no OGB projects to review and the meeting ended at a reasonable hour. The February meeting was a horse of a different color however.

But before we got to the OGB calendar we had several notable items to discuss. One is the arrival of a new high-end sushi restaurant in the former L2 space across from Kafe Leopold. It will be called Kyojin Sushi and it will be the sister restaurant to Yume Sushi in Arlington. The proprietors are asking for late hours, but they say they are aiming for less of a club vibe than L2. And physically speaking, this is a location that is unlikely to cause many issues with late hours. So I believe they will open with the hours they ask for.

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Reminder, tonight is the February ANC meeting. It begins at 6:30 pm. Access it via Zoom.

Tonight I anticipate proposing my first resolution, which I hope is the first of many. The topic is actually a bit of an unusual one for the ANC, but a very important one nonetheless. Residents on Q St. are proposing to purchase part of their neighbor’s back yard to add to their own. And part of their plans is to construct a swimming pool.

It will be my recommendation not to object to the subdivision (the legal term for changing the property lines) nor the pool. But I am very concerned that any construction for the pool be done with extreme care and respect for the fact that these properties once made up a graveyard that was primarily used by Georgetown’s black community. The applicant has expressed a willingness to commit to that goal, and I hope the resolution will help hold them to it. There will be more in the resolution itself, and I will share it here once it has been finalized and adopted.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Georgetown developer Anthony Lanier on the challenges that downtown DC faces.
• Meeting this Wednesday night sponsored by CAG on the African American history of the C&O Canal.

Last week Washingtonian magazine asked whether Georgetown was actually cool again. There are lots of conflicting opinions on that question, but I thought it fitting that for today’s Georgetown Time Machine we visit an era when there wasn’t really any question that Georgetown was just about the only place to be. The time is the 1960s (or about) and the place is Rive Gauche.

Rive Gauche was an elegant French restaurant that stood at the corner of Wisconsin and M (the recently vacated Banana Republic building). And it set the standard for fine dining in the nation’s capital during the Kennedy years (and beyond). For generations of Washingtonians, Rive Gauche was often their first experience with an elevated “white linen cloth” restaurant. As Washingtonian wrote in 2020:

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