THIS WEEKEND, Dance Place is celebrating the African diaspora with the 21st year of DanceAfrica, two days filled with African dance.
Besides the ticketed performances on Saturday and Sunday, there will also be a variety of free outdoor shows and $15 master classes available to the public. Bring the kids to enjoy the marketplace, a street fair celebrating African crafts and food.
» Dance Place, 3225 8th St. NE; Sat. and Sun., 3 p.m. and 8 p.m., $10-$30; 202-269-1600. (Brookland)
Photo by Enoch Chan
IF FOLKS UP near Catholic University have felt left out of the city's development boom, that feeling won't linger much longer.
The university has reached an agreement with developer Jim Abdo that, if approved by the city, would "create a destination across from the Brookland/CUA Metro Station in a neighborhood that developers have largely ignored during the recent real estate boom," NBC4 reports.
The school would bulldoze three dorms to make room for the development, but officials say student housing will be rebuilt on its main campus.
PERFORMANCE ARTIST and culture warrior Tim Miller would prefer his next project be something about gardening or dogs — his "weird passions."
But the core subject of his work — life as a gay American man — is made perpetually pertinent by an indolent democracy and slow-to-accept social fabric. And Miller is too much of an activist not to respond to each new discriminatory quirk in the system.
"As an artist, I have to respond to inequality ... to talk about it," Miller says. He's been talking about it for some time now.
As one of the notorious "NEA Four" group of artists whose National Endowment for the Arts grant proposals were sensationalized in 1990 after being resoundingly repulsed by a Republican chairman, protest is primary to Miller's life-as-art art form.
FOR YEARS, the escalators at the Brookland Metro station have been regularly out-of-service. In fact, a 2005 investigation by The Post found that the station's escalators were among the most problematic in the system.
Since the transit agency began to install canopies over many station entrances to protect equipment like escalators from rain, snow and other inclement weather, Metro's overall escalator performance has improved. But one of Brookland's problematic escalators — the one at its eastern entrance near the Metrobus bays, pictured at right — never got a canopy. And recently, amid continued breakdowns, residents are wondering why.
One neighbor, Alex Mathews, wrote a letter to Metro and posted it to Brookland's neighborhood message board, which has been discussing the situation:
The escalator on the bus lot side of the Brookland station has been out of service for [approximately five] months. Prior to the latest outage, it suffered numerous breakdowns each year previous to this most recent and lengthy one. There is only one escalator at this exit site and therefore the inadequate stairway and equally inadequate elevator must be used. This escalator does not have a covering above it as many stations now do. ... When will a cover be placed over that escalator?Probably not anytime soon, Metro spokesman Steven Taubenkibel told Express. "There are no funds," he said, for a new canopy.
Continue Reading "Escalator Canopy Not Coming Brookland's Way" »
Metro to Set Up Special SmarTrip Sales Kiosks
Map It:
Anacostia Ballston Brookland Columbia Heights Minnesota Ave Potomac Ave Silver Spring Union Station
AS METRO GEARS UP to make its fare hikes a reality next month, the transit agency is also working to make it easier to buy one of its rechargeable SmarTrip fare cards.
Bus riders will be especially interested in SmarTrip cards. After the new rates go into effect on Jan. 6, riding the bus will still cost $1.25 if you pay with a card, but fares will rise to $1.35 for those paying in cash.
No surprise, then, that the special kiosks Metro officials are setting up to sell the cards next week will be in rail stations that they say cater to a large number of bus riders. The special sales of SmarTrip cards, which cost $5 to buy, are scheduled from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at these dates and locations, according to a Metro press release:
» Jan. 3 at the Anacostia Metrorail station (near the bus bays)
» Jan. 4 at the Minnesota Avenue station
» Jan. 7 at the Columbia Heights station
» Jan. 8 at the Union Station and Potomac Avenue stations
» Jan. 9 at the Silver Spring and Ballston-MU stations
» Jan. 10 at the Brookland-CUA station
Riders can also pick up SmarTrip cards online, as well as at Metro sales offices, some Giant stores, commuter stores and vending machines at Metrorail stations that have parking facilities, Metro says.
ALTHOUGH D.C. POLICE arrested 419 people over the weekend in the Metropolitan Police Department's latest "All Hands on Deck" push on Friday and Saturday, criminals returned to work after the increased police presence wound down.
On Sunday night, the YES! Organic Market on 12th Street NE in Brookland was robbed by two masked men brandishing a handgun. The pair ordered employees to the ground as they raided the cash register. There were no injuries.
Continue Reading "Brookland Store Is Robbed After Upped Patrols End" »
ROCK CREEK CHURCH ROAD to the east of Petworth is one of the District's more beautiful, but quiet, thoroughfares. On one side are blocks of rowhouses, on the other is the aging fence that rings one of the city's largest open spaces. The Armed Forces Retirement Home sits on a 272-acre site to the north of the Washington Hospital Center and to the west of North Capitol Street — and for the most part, it's closed to the general public.
While some planners dream of creating a "Central Park" for the District — tying together the Armed Forces home property, Fort Totten Park and the McMillan Reservoir and abandoned sand filtration plant — a new draft final master plan for the property released this month calls for the introduction of some mixed-use development to the hilly, shaded space where President Abraham Lincoln escaped the downtown heat in 1862 to pen the Emancipation Proclamation.
Part of the reason: Money. The cash-strapped Armed Forces home sold off 46 acres of its land to the Catholic University of America in 2004 for $22 million — and officials are looking to a similar land sale to ensure its financial survival. Although the home is overseen by the Defense Department, it does not receive taxpayer dollars, just "50-cent-a-week paycheck deductions from enlisted military personnel," The Post's Petula Dvorak reported in 2005.
So, parcels of the home's land are slated for redevelopment. The draft final master plan calls for areas at the edge of the property, along its Park Place border with the Park View neighborhood east of Columbia Heights and its southeastern quadrant, pictured at left, adjacent to the cloverleaf interchange between North Capitol and Irving streets near the Washington Hospital Center and Catholic University.
Continue Reading "Big Plans for D.C.'s Armed Forces Retirement Home" »
WHILE HE WON'T BE throwing out the first pitch on Opening Day at the Nationals' new baseball stadium, Pope Benedict XVI will be gracing the ballpark with his presence in April.
At this morning's meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore, the details of the pope's upcoming visit to the United States were announced. As Jacqueline L. Salmon and Howard Schneider report, the pope will arrive in Washington on April 15 with a visit to the White House and will celebrate Mass at the ballpark on April 17 before meeting with leaders of the nation's Catholic colleges and universities at the Catholic University of America in Northeast.
» "Pope Set to Visit Washington, New York in April" [WaPo]
Photo by Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images
RESIDENTS IN BROOKLAND often bemoan the lack of restaurants, bars and other retail amenities in their Northeast neighborhood. But a new bar on the 12th Street NE strip, The Library, is causing a stir. From one posting on the neighborhood's message board:
I don't expect many people to agree with me, but I feel I have to say this: I don't think naming the new bar on 12th Street 'The Library' is cute or clever. I'm a librarian, and it's offensive to me. Is this a quiet place to read and study? No, it's another bar for students who want to drink a lot of cheap beer, get disgustingly drunk, and then annoy the neighbors with their noise and trash. It's a sports bar, with multiple TV screens.Worst of all, some other neighbors complain, is the "lack of decent beer." And the brew that is available? It's served in lowbrow plastic cups. On Tap recently noted last month that "The Library serves $5 Busch Light pitchers and $4 Captain Morgan pints all the time and each day they have an additional special." Busch Light. Classy.
Continue Reading "Name of Bar, Cheap Beer Spark Brookland Battle" »
DID YOU HAVE plans to participate in one of Saturday's free Walking Town D.C. tours offered by Cultural Tourism D.C.? You might want to consider going on one of the six tours of Brookland. Why? Saturday is also the 11th annual Brookland Day.
The hour-and-a-half tours start at 9 a.m., 10:30 a.m., noon, 1:30 p.m., 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. They convene at the St. Anthony's School cafeteria at 3400 12th Street NE, just south of the bulk of the Brookland Day activities on 12th Street NE between Monroe and Otis streets, the heart of the area's commercial district.
At 10:30 a.m., a parade featuring the Archbishop John Carroll High School marching band, local dogs and other colorful Brookland residents will march up 12th Street from Franklin Street NE to Michigan Avenue. Between noon and 5 p.m., performance and exhibit pavilions, local organizations, artists and others will set up shop on 12th Street between Monroe and Otis streets. Expect performances by the Archie Edwards Blues Foundation, the salsa group Movimiento and demonstrations by Northeast Taw Kwon Do, pictured here, and the D.C. World Beat Ensemble, among others.
It might be a nice time to explore the Franciscan Monastery, which we profiled this past winter ...
EARLIER:
» "A Few Hours ... in Brookland" [Free Ride/Express]
» "Free Walking Tours Across D.C. Set for Saturday" [Free Ride/Express]
Photo courtesy Brookland Main Street
Addison Road