The Georgetown Metropolitan

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• A call for artists for Georgetown’s Art All Night.
• Some nice discounts to enjoy with Fringe.

Having found Sparrow a forever home, GM and fam have another new furry friend looking for theirs. Meet Keko (we’ve been pronouncing that “Keek-O” btw).

Keko is a female calico siamese. The foster org estimates that she’s about a year old.

She is quite long and athletic. She can easily jump four feet or more, although she is not particularly hyper at all. Mostly she enjoys batting around a small bit of foil that came off the top of a whiskey bottle.

She loves most of all curling up in your arms and getting a nice deep shoulder rub.

So if you’re looking for a beautiful and elegant cat, come bring her home!

Permit GM a small indulgence today. He has a tiny garden that he nonetheless packs with plants and flowers. And it’s reaching its summer peak these days. So allow him to show off a few pics:

A new mural will be unveiled next week (July 20th to be exact) in Georgetown. It will be the work of the Bring Our Families Home organization and it will be aimed at spreading the word about the dozens of Americans being held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad. The mural is going up on a wall in the alleyway between Levain Bakery and the former Ri Ra.

From the organization’s press release:

The mural, designed and installed by Iowan artist Isaac Campbell, will use the wheat paste technique to capture the faces of 18 Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad. According to the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, there are actually 64 publicly known cases of Americans being held hostage or wrongfully detained around the world. Given families are often reluctant to publicize or inform the U.S. government that their loved ones have been taken, there are likely even more. With this public mural, families of American hostages and wrongful detainees hope to increase attention to the plight of their loved ones, to educate the public about hostage diplomacy, and to create community advocacy that will encourage the Biden administration to use all tools available to them to urgently bring them home.

GM understands that the organizers are hoping that residents and passersby will participate in applying the mural to the wall as a part of the outreach. So stop on by in the days leading up to it to see if you can give a hand!

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• The soon to be ex-Nike store can be yours for the right price!
• GM’s got a new adorable foster cat if you’re looking for a new furry family member.

In writing his article yesterday, GM discovered that there are a new set of old Georgetown matchbooks for sale on Ebay. He wrote about a similar collection last November. Here are the new ones available:

The first is seen above. It’s for Tom Ross’ Charcoal Hearth. It once stood where the Citibank is, just north of the Safeway. It appears to have been open as early as the early 1960s, as this menu from 1962 suggests:

Here’s a bit from a 1969 review in the Washington Post:

An obituary from 1987 suggests that the restaurant may have moved to Arlington at some point:

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Some signage discouraging drivers from driving west of 34th on Water St.
• What a great place to celebrate Bastille Day!

This week for Georgetown Time Machine, GM is checking out a postcard again. The postcard comes from an Ebay listing. It shows the steamboat Bartholdi plying the Potomac.

The back of the postcard offers a bit more information:

The small notes indicate that the card is actually only from 1977. The credits say: “The steam launch Bartholdi on the Potomac River near Georgetown College, ca. 1900. (Courtesy of the D.C. Public Library, Washingtonia Division)”

This is not the first time GM has discussed a boat named Bartholdi. Last year he discussed the Bartholdi powerboat, that ran on the canal:

The boats appear to be different, as you would expect, since canal boat and river boats had different jobs. (For one, a river boat would probably have too deep a hull to ride in the canal.) In fact, in GM’s previous article, a source specifically discusses the fact that there was another boat at the time also called the Bartholdi.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Tomorrow the Q & A Cafe dives into the history of Gay DC.
• Everything you need to know about the Fringe Festival, which is taking place in Georgetown this month.