If two sex shops are able to remain open in the relatively small Old Town Alexandria commercial district, someone must enjoy patronizing them. Yet Alexandria city planners proposed to ban further sex shops from opening in the historic district, according to ABC7. That decision that would have grandfathered in Le Tache but forced the more recently opened Lotus Blooms to close. Both stores are located on King Street. (Those links are potentially NSFW, especially if you work in Old Town Alexandria.)

This time last year, the Washington Redskins were fresh off an election-eve home beatdown by the Super Bowl champs–elect, the Pittsburgh Steelers, in a game noted for the stunning prevalence of Steelers fans at FedEx Field. A little past the halfway mark of the season, that game officially kicked off the team's late-season demise, where they'd go 2-6 and labor to put up points in virtually every game. The offensive line looked slow, tired, and hurting, and so did Clinton Portis -- whom we all hoped only looked like that because he was behind that slow, tired, and hurting o-line. The defense, for the most part, manfully willed the team into games before the offensive ineptitude just became too great a burden to bear.

Free concerts are the headliner again this week, followed by a few concerts, of far too many on the schedule, that will require some money.

           

Every so often a songwriter emerges who captures something about the city he calls home. Elliot Smith was as Portland as fixies and strollers. There is something free and unmistakably flyover about Omaha, Nebraska's Conor Oberst. Kurt Vile -- who finished a tour to support his latest record (and first release on Matador Records), , at the Black Cat on Thursday -- is making his claim as a lo-fi laureate of Philadelphia.

WUSA9 has it that parents and kids waited hours to get the H1N1 vaccine in Cheverly, MD. Yet the Washington Business Journal reports that 55% of Washington-area adults don't plan to inoculate, nothing that a full "one-third of parents with children living at home do not plan on getting the vaccine this year."

Here philliefan99 has captured this tribute to the Fort Hood shooting incident, whose local connection the Washington Post explored yesterday. NBC Washington further notes that Maj. L. Eduardo Caraveo, among the victims in the shooting, was a Woodbridge, VA, native. President Barack Obama (pictured here, kind of) ordered that flags fly at half-mast staff until Veterans' Day, calling the shootings "crimes against our nation."

Mornin', Washington. Hope you're awake, because Montgomery County needs your help.

Round House Theatre's production of rises well above the realm of mom-daughter drama.

There's a lot of weird things in the world: Snuggies, hairless cats, Glenn Beck's Christmas book for kids, for example. And some things just defy explanation.

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