themail.gif (3487 bytes)

August 8, 2007

Hot Food

Dear Hot Foodies:

Thank goodness for Restaurant Week. Not only does it give us an opportunity to try those new restaurants that we somehow never visited, it gives us an excuse to get out of the house during a week when we otherwise (well, when I otherwise) would do nothing but stay indoors lying directly under the air conditioner vent. You may be one of those people who jog on 100 degree days; I saw one today, killing himself by running on blazingly hot downtown sidewalks at lunch hour. But I’m not one of those people. In fact, I’m not one of those people who jog, ever, and if I can avoid it I don’t do anything on 100 degree days. So Restaurant Week has been worth it to me, in only in terms of getting me out of the house.

If you’re searching for restaurants to go to, the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington has the list of participating restaurants at http://www.washington.org/restaurantwk/. The Post, Times, Examiner, Washingtonian, and Washington City Paper all have searchable databases of their restaurant reviews online, and the InTowner also has several restaurant reviews (on http://www.intowner.com, click on Restaurants), but there are other good, lesser-known resources that are well worth consulting. DCFoodies (http://www.dcfoodies.com)  has a home-page article with links to Restaurant Week menus and a list of restaurants that will be extending Restaurant Week for an extra one, two, or three weeks. Don Rockwell (http://www.donrockwell.com) has both a forum for discussing food and restaurants and his personal guide to restaurants, which is available to registered users. Tyler Cowan maintains a very valuable guide to ethnic restaurants in our area at http://www.gmu.edu/jbc/Tyler/tyler_cowen.htm. Most of the restaurants on his list aren’t ever as expensive as Restaurant Week prices ($20 for lunch, $30 for dinner), but once the Week has expired his guidance will be useful. Cowan will be speaking at the Cleveland Park library on October 30; a full notice for this event will be published in themail in October.

I can’t resist an I-told-you-so moment. When I speculated in the last issue of themail about DC Public School’s plans to improve textbook distribution, I didn’t have any inside knowledge, but I apparently was psychic about DCPS’s consultant’s recommendations, although I vastly underestimated the amount of money involved. According to the Washington Times, “Mrs. Rhee, 37, also said that increasing the staff of the textbook department from one to five persons — as recommended by a school-system consultant — and raising its budget from $1.5 million to $8 million is ‘not my solution’” (http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20070807/METRO/108070064/1004). As Chancellor, Rhee will apparently try to reduce the bloated size of the mid-level school bureaucracy at DCPS headquarters, so that she can better afford the obscenely bloated salaries of high-level school bureaucrats.

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

###############

RFK Stadium a World-Class Soccer Facility
Ed Delaney, profeddel@yahoo.com

From Pravda to the South African news, RFK Stadium is making headlines for selling out 45,000 seats ahead of David Beckham’s anticipated Major League soccer appearance against DC United on August 9 (http://english.pravda.ru/news/sports/07-08-2007/95765-beckham-0, http://www.news24.com/News24/Sport/Soccer/0,,2-9-840_2160194,00.html). The wire story notes that this in fact will only be the third largest crowd to see a Major League Soccer game at RFK Stadium, as the stadium has had a capacity (and can again) of over 57,000 for soccer. The stadium has also reached capacity for international matches and World Cup qualifying matches held there.

All this is to note the continued benefit to the community of having a top-caliber facility such as RFK Stadium with its recent multimillion dollar renovations ready and able to host major events like this, unlike the 20,000-something capacity, cut-rate facility proposed by the blackmailing out-of-town owner of DC United. It’s apparent that the city would be best served by insisting on keeping RFK Stadium and the benefits it provides as the home for DC United.

###############

Hopeful for DCPS
Marc Borbely, borbely@FixOurSchools.net

I’ve been involved with DCPS as a teacher, concerned citizen, and (unsuccessful) school board candidate over the last few years, and I’ve never been more hopeful about its future. I’ve heard the new DCPS Chancellor, Michelle Rhee, speak at and participate in two community forums in the past week. I’m impressed by her commitment to listen, and think, and act, and by what former UDC head Timothy Jenkins called her "humanity," at the forum on Saturday.

At that forum, cosponsored by DC ACORN and others, in response to questions from the audience, Rhee committed to responding to every E-mail from people giving her input, at least until there are better systems in place to funnel communication. For so long, no one has really listened. She committed to releasing the draft schools budget this September to the public before submitting a final version to the mayor. She committed to "lobbying very hard" to make sure the per-pupil funding follows the child, when a child leaves a charter school midyear and returns to DCPS. She said she is not interested in selling our school buildings but wants underused buildings to be leased out short-term. She said she is hiring a special-education czar. She said she will push for the wraparound services that have been promised for schools.

Of course we need results, not just promises and good feelings. But I think she means it when she says she plans to harness the ideas and energy of the tens of thousands of District residents (parents, students, teachers, neighbors) who are ready to make DCPS a world-class school system, and that’s what gives me hope. People across the city may be ready to give her, and DCPS, a chance. She’ll need our help. Help can be criticism and complaints and feedback and anger, or it can be just plain offering our time or suggestions. All of that is needed. She’s at michelle.rhee@dc.gov.

###############

Minimum Distance of Parking from an Intersection
Jack McKay, jack.mckay@verizon.net

It seems so simple. There’s a “no parking to intersection” signpost; and there’s a car parked extending well beyond that signpost. Must be a violation, right? So many Parking Enforcement aides, and some Metropolitan Police officers, think.

But it’s not that simple. District law specifies that the minimum distance of a parked car from an intersection is forty feet, and that’s where the signposts are put. But the minimum distance for cars with RPP (residential permit parking) stickers, on RPP blocks, is twenty-five feet, not forty. Ergo, an RPP car on an RPP block can extend up to fifteen feet beyond the “no parking” sign, and still be legally parked. For some years this has been true at night, between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. Since last November, courtesy of DC Law 16-0186 (thank you, Councilmember Schwartz), such parking is allowed at all hours.

But just try to get those Parking Enforcement folks, and even some MPD officers, to understand that cars parked beyond the “no parking to intersection” signposts might actually be legally parked. The parking tickets keep coming, and no one seems to be able to put a stop to this unintentional harassment of DC drivers. DMV readily dismisses these tickets, for drivers who know and can cite the law, but this remains a great waste of everybody’s time.

###############

Help Bring Trader Joe’s to 3rd and H Streets, NE
Alan Kimber, ANC 6C05, alan@alankimber.org

As part of our ongoing effort to encourage Trader Joe’s to open a new location at the corner of 3rd and H Street, NE, we have created an online petition. Please take a moment to follow the link and sign the online petition: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/TraderJoesHStreet/. Our effort is similar to that which helped bring Whole Foods to 14th and P Streets, NW. We are preparing economic, demographic, and other information to present a business case to Trader Joe’s, which has been in discussions with the developer of the project. Having a large, direct indication of support helps put a human face on the effort.

This is not just a pipe dream. The proposed location is on Capitol Hill, at the heart of the rejuvenating West end of H Street, NE, steps from Union Station and proximate to almost two thousand new mid- and upper-tier condos and apartments that will begin delivering in a couple months. Even if you do not live in the immediate area, please help out if the location would be at all helpful to you. Many people travel across the District to the Foggy Bottom Trader Joe’s location, so we expect the same will be true of a location that is more convenient to the eastern side of the District.

(iPetitions requests a donation immediately after you enter your name, E-mail, and comments, and appears that it will not let you move forward without agreeing. Making a donation is not necessary. Your signature is still recorded; this is just an annoying "feature" of the site. I did not encounter this when I first signed the petition, and I also tested it with my wife’s signature, which did register. Just hit the back button on your browser, and your name still registers. Sorry for the inconvenience and confusion.

###############

Community Voices Blog on PCWorld.com
Phil Shapiro, pshapiro@his.com

For those who might be interested, I’ve started blogging on the PCWorld.com web site under their new Community Voices group blog. My first blog posting shares info and ideas about the upcoming $199 Linux ultraportable laptop that was designed by Intel and is being manufactured by Asustek, in Taiwan. (See http://tinyurl.com/2ewgkz.) The topics I’ll be most frequently covering are free software solutions, consumer tech issues, citizen journalism tools, and the rise of a more participatory society. If you have issues or topics you’d like addressed in my blog, feel free to send me E-mail at philshapiroblogger@gmail.com

My editor at PCWorld.com tells me that this web site gets about 30 to 35 million page views per month. I’m hoping the blogging I do gets people the information they need to know. And on this journey I’ll be learning a lot, too.

###############

Incommoding
Will Grant, wsgrant@his.com

In answer to Raven McKlintock’s question about whether blocking pedestrians or the street is against the law [themail, August 5], yes, it is. DC Code 22-1307 ("Unlawful assembly; profane and indecent language.") allows the police to cite individuals for blocking the free use of sidewalks or roads. They use the shorthand "incommoding" to refer to the charge, which is a misdemeanor. So if a group is blocking the sidewalk or road, either physically or by their behavior, the police may disburse them under this section.

###############

DC House Voting Rights Act
Lars H. Hydle, larshhydle@aol.com

As approved on June 13 by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, S. 1257, the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2007, which Jeff Norman refers to as the Norton-Davis Bill [themail, August 5], does have a provision for expedited judicial review, as he suggests it should. This provision, submitted as an amendment at the Committee by Republican Ranking Member Susan Collins and other Republicans, and accepted by Senator Lieberman, provides that any legal challenge to the bill must be filed with a three-judge panel of the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and that any appeal from that court’s decision must go directly to the Supreme Court. As Jeff says, expedited judicial review does make it more likely that some Senate Republicans who say that the bill is unconstitutional will vote for cloture to bring the bill to the floor of the Senate, where proponents of S. 1257 think they do have the votes to pass it.

If the House accepts expedited judicial review, that would also increase the chances that the President would not veto it.

The DC Republican Committee, of which I am a member, has been working to support this bill in its various versions ever since Republican Congressman Tom Davis introduced it in 2004. The DCRC’s platform for that year says “support DC voting rights in Congress, starting with the House of Representatives.” We have been working with DC Vote to persuade Members of Congress, and now Senators, to support the bill. I tell you this because the mainstream media in DC, indeed, also the alternate local media, has given little or no recognition to our efforts.

###############

CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS

West End Film Club, August 14, 28
Randi Blank, randi.blank@dc.gov

Tuesdays, August 14 and August 28, 12:00 p.m., West End Neighborhood Library, 1101 24th Street, NW. West End Film Club. Bring your lunch and enjoy a film. Call 727-8707 to find out which film will be shown.

###############

CLASSIFIEDS — HOUSING

Room for Rent
Tolu Tolu, tolu2books@aol.com

I have a very nice room for rent. Call 263-6806.

###############

themail@dcwatch is an E-mail discussion forum that is published every Wednesday and Sunday. To subscribe, to change E-mail addresses, or to switch between HTML and plain text versions of themail, use the subscription form at http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/subscribe.htm. To unsubscribe, send an E-mail message to themail@dcwatch.com with “unsubscribe” in the subject line. Archives of past messages are available at http://www.dcwatch.com/themail.

All postings should also be submitted to themail@dcwatch.com, and should be about life, government, or politics in the District of Columbia in one way or another. All postings must be signed in order to be printed, and messages should be reasonably short — one or two brief paragraphs would be ideal — so that as many messages as possible can be put into each mailing.


Send mail with questions or comments to webmaster@dcwatch.com
Web site copyright ©DCWatch (ISSN 1546-4296)