Sommer joined DCist in 2005, and became Editor-in-Chief in 2006. Before coming on board as DCist's first full-time employee, she served as an associate producer on the feature-length documentary film, Orange Revolution. Sommer settled in the Shaw neighborhood by way of Los Angeles, Vancouver, Phoenix, and originally, Tucson, Ariz., but considers D.C. the only city she's lived in that truly feels like home. She has contributed to the Guardian, Campus Progress, WTOP and WAMU, and has been profiled by The Wall Street Journal, Washingtonian magazine and the Examiner. Before she started blogging and documenting, Sommer was a barista, a valet, a writer and editor, a transcriber of romance novels, a house sitter, and a prop department coordinator. She also enjoys wearing sweaters, drinking bourbon, and falling asleep with the TV on.

Heather made her way to the nation's capital in 2002 from Southern California, after a short stint in the Midwest where she attended college and worked in politics. She now makes a living as a lawyer at Mayer Brown LLP, a firm at which her fellow attorneys, thankfully, support her need to spend as much time involved in art as the law. In addition to her regular duties for DCist, Heather runs the annual DCist Exposed Photography Show, through which she met the talented photographers and voracious photography lovers that would enable the creation of Ten Miles Square, her solo venture to promote new artists in the D.C. region. Heather was heavily involved in the first Fotoweek DC festival, as a juror for the contest and editor of the blog, as well as co-producing a successful exhibition that was recognized in the Washington Post both before and after the festival. When not organizing photog events or looking for the wine table at art receptions, Heather can usually be found attempting to renovate her fixer-upper in Columbia Heights; she wrote about her adventures in renovating in a weekly column for Washingtonian.com in 2008.

Martin came to the District by way of Switzerland, Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela, and the thriving mecca of State College, Pa. In between blogging, selling bikes, and playing ultimate frisbee, he works the role of jack-of-all-trades at an embassy in D.C. (though he doesn't benefit from the high-roller diplomat lifestyle). He rides his bike almost everywhere, including on every street and avenue in the city named after a state. He lives in Mt. Pleasant.

Kyle Gustafson moved to D.C. in the summer of 2004 after seven years in New York City. He spent his time in the shadow of the Evil Empire slaving away in the music industry, working on projects with artists like R.E.M., Beck, William Orbit and Beth Orton as well as movies like Fight Club and School of Rock. Tired of being paid in CD's and concert tickets, he decided he needed a change and eventually ended up in D.C. He now works in e-media and has no regrets about giving up his rock and roll lifestyle. He served as co-sports editor of Gothamist in early 2004 before becoming a founding member of DCist later in the year. Born in Massachusettes (Go Sox!), he grew up in North Carolina and calls the Cackalack his home, NASCAR be damned. He graduated from East Carolina many moons ago, where he was a club DJ as well as music director of the campus radio station. He spends most of his spare time updating his own blog and uploading concert photos and pictures of his cat to his Flickr account.

Ian spent his wasted youth in "the other D.C." (Dale City, VA), and after his first horrific taste of beltway traffic at the age of 17, vowed to never live in the 'burbs again if he ever returned to the area after college. Four years of higher education deep in Amish country later, he did return, and has called the District home for a decade now. Much to his own surprise, he now finds himself working in I.T., despite all his best efforts to claim that he is, at heart, an artsy luddite. He also used to be in a band you've probably never heard of, harbors a deep love for smoky dive bars with cheap beer and loud music, and used up the entirety of his 15 minutes of fame on a failed Jeopardy! appearance.

Amanda grew up at the end of the Orange Line and spent four years in Charlottesville earning a degree in English from UVA before settling back in the D.C. area. Ad woman by day, concert rat by night, she has a singular talent for spending all her money on trendy necklaces and iTunes, finding the deeper philosophical meanings behind Buffy The Vampire Slayer and The O.C., and tenuously straddling the line between the hip and the nerdy.

Matt, a Southern California native, moved to the district in 2004 in order to experience the East Coast and take advantage of decent public transportation. While he still holds Los Angeles near and dear to his heart, he keeps his schedule busy with his day job as a web content producer and many extracurricular activities, such as playing guitar, writing, going to shows, reading plenty of Cormac McCarthy and watching quality horror flicks.

A native of D.C.'s Maryland suburbs, Sriram spends his days as a beleaguered federal employee but would not-so-secretly rather be playing drums as a career. As a result, he spends far too much of his disposable income on CDs (yes, he still buys CDs) and concert tickets. He keeps the dream alive by playing out in his spare time and has performed at The Millennium Stage, Blues Alley, Twins, Bohemian Caverns, the East Coast Jazz Festival, the 8x10, and the Black Cat. Sriram is proud to join the DCist staff where he will spend his time writing mainly about D.C.'s visual arts and jazz scenes.

Jacarl was born and raised in Houghton, an old copper mining town off Lake Superior’s south shore in Michigan’s rustic Upper Peninsula. It was there he developed his appreciation for pasties, a local delicacy, and hip-hop (go figure). Upon arriving in Ann Arbor to attend the University of Michigan for undergraduate studies, he began writing as a means to spread his notion of “good” hip-hop to the masses (the creed of any devout backpacker). He moved to the District in 2005 to become a local government bureaucrat after picking up two Michigan graduate degrees (they keep him warm at night). When he’s not working to get citizens more bang for their buck, he’s trying to match beats between ‘80s electro-boogie records on his 1200s.

Valerie originally hails from Virginia Beach, VA and after graduating from Wake Forest University in 2006 with a degree in running-the-college-radio-station and a minor in sleep deprivation, decided that she was tired of driving for 90 minutes to see a decent concert. So she moved to Atlanta, interned for Paste Magazine for the first half of the year and then in June of 2007 moved up to DC. She joined the staff of the DCist in the hopes of both fulfilling her need to write compulsively and finding other people in the area who dig music and late-night road trips.

A veteran of many a cold winter, Mehan was born in Montreal and reared in Southeastern Wisconsin. After four years spent earning a degree in Japanese literature at the University of Chicago, he spent a year living in Japan before finally landing in the D.C. area. A technology columnist by day, Mehan spends his nights listening to, watching, photographing and writing about music. You can visit his personal web site here.

Eli Resnick grew up in the Virginia suburbs. He has been educated in Annandale, Alexandria and Fairfax. He has studied poetry with John Ashbery, Peter Klappert and E. Ethelbert Miller. He has published his writing in The Bard Papers, Tempo, Urbancode, Bleacher Report, Expulsion and the Falls Church News Press. His favorite hockey player of all time is Al Iafrate. He once played hockey with the Reston Raiders, and took a lot of dumb penalties. Eli plays guitar and upright bass. He tutors homeless children and works in a bookstore. He enjoys the works of of Charles Mingus, Jorge Luis Borges, Tony Kornheiser and John Flansburgh.

Graham comes to D.C. from his beloved Bluegrass region of Central Kentucky. After playing soccer and expanding the easily-expandable world of American Studies at Carleton College in Minnesota, he moved to the District last year in search of gainful employment. He found it. The son of two DC-area ex-pats, Graham has an untold number of grandfolks, aunts, uncles, and cousins in the area, and lives and dies by the fortunes of his beloved Redskins. A big music fan, he's sworn off listening to it on the radio and sticks to sports talk. Graham also founded the ill-fated Power Pop Preservation Society, plays bocce, frequents the Afghan Restaurant on Route 1 in Alexandria, and almost exclusively shops at Trader Joe's.

A true Baltimoron, Jamie grew up cracking Baltimore blue crabs with her teeth and sprinkling Old Bay on popcorn and fries. She was raised on thousand year-old duck eggs, her dad's home-cured and roasted meats, and exploring nearly every Chinese restaurant in the DC and Baltimore metropolitan areas. She also recalls a time when her mother and sister held her down while the other shoved her food in her mouth because she refused to eat. That's no longer a problem. Jamie spends her time running to eat, harassing Duke fans, cheering on Arsenal at Lucky Bar, exploring the fine arts scene, and writing for her own blog, synaesthesia.

Andy was born and raised in Bell Labs-built suburb of Holmdel, NJ where he was brought up on the xenophobic principle that you'll never know the taste of good pizza or bagels. He also spent most nights helping Mom in the kitchen, starting with curly-dogs and beans in the microwave and progressing to penne with sausage from a Ziggy-themed cookbook. College brought him to the Deep South (well, Atlanta), where his Food TV viewing was briefly interrupted by studying and video games. Alton Brown once advised his broke ass to eat flank steak and eggs, advice that Andy took to heart before giving up the cow (and other land-roving animals) for a 2-year span. Andy now lives in D.C.'s Northern Virginia suburbs, where he works in the intellectual property industry, worries about your taste in beer and your adoration of the Olive Garden, and harbors delusions of one day being a rock star.

Josh moved from Brooklyn to Washington to work on environmental policy… and check out the local food scene. He quickly became the go-to restaurant recommender for friends, an organizer of D.C.'s Taste of the Nation culinary benefit, and active in many non-food related community activities. All this has reawakened his journalistic roots and affinity for freelance food writing (with some sports, arts, and culture sometimes thrown in for good measure). Josh's favorite haunts to explore are the Eden Center and all other ethnic food enclaves surrounding D.C.

Rebecca's professional involvement in food began at Angelo's bagel store in her hometown of Hampton Bays, NY—the first in a long line of food service jobs. The child of a cooking school graduate and a nutritionist, her early memories include the smell of tomato sauce cooking on Sundays, peeling mountains of shrimp with her siblings and the Great Butter vs. Margerine War of 1988. An energy reporter by day, she spends her free time experimenting in the kitchen and learning how to grill over charcoal. She comes from a long line of women who believed they could bake their way into people's hearts, and she sets out to prove that theory as often as possible.

Alicia hails from the great white north--Minnesota, to be exact--and grew up surrounded by large, Scandinavian people who enjoy a diet of primarily bland, white-colored foods. Despite such inauspicious surroundings, a love of food was practically encoded in Alicia's DNA, thanks to her Italian and Chinese heritage. In college, she gleefully ate her way through several Asian countries, much to the shock and occasional horror of her Midwestern classmates. In 2006, Alicia made a break for D.C. in the hopes of finding dining companions who wouldn't mind when she ate the heads on her steamed prawns. When she's not beating the pavement in search of honest grub at an honest price, Alicia also enjoys being a humble government worker, dancing the Lindy Hop, and chronicling her cooking and baking adventurous on her blog.

Andrew was born on Andrews Air Force Base, though his parents say they didn't name him after it. Being a military brat, he moved around a lot, finishing high school in Tennessee. Andrew's been in DC for 8 years, graduating from GW in 2002, and makes maps for a living. He has yet to find any pirate treasure, but is still happy he can bike to work. He has lived in various basement apartments since graduation and hopes to some day live on the Earth's surface. In the meantime, he likes beer and writes a blog about GW basketball.

Fredo (short for Alfredo) was born and raised in the Bronx, NY, but descended upon the D.C. area when he started high school in 1992. During those teenage years, he developed a taste for writing, acting, and banging on a drum in a kilt. He continued the writing and drumming parts (sans kilt) at Fordham University in the Bronx, but returned to the Beltway within two years. Since then, he's held a few occupations including pinball machine repairman, human resources gopher, and mail room dude. Currently, Fredo pushes pixels full time for a gay non-profit's web site, and works part time for some geeky fruit company based in California. When not in front of a computer, he's taking photos, playing board or video games, acting, or collecting fun desk tchotchkes. Fredo shares a Capitol Hill rowhouse with three housemates and is the proud adoptive poppa of a cranky kitty.

Rachael moved to D.C. from Boston in 2005 to teach 11th grade English in DCPS, and was a 2007 recipient of the Symantec Award for Innovation in Teaching.  Now a magazine editor, Rachael covers schools for DCist and has written about education for a number of outlets, including The Guardian and The Atlantic. She enjoys reading, cooking, and proofreading her former students' college papers. A Texas native, she currently lives in Columbia Heights.

Classical music contributor and Midwestern expatriate Charles Downey grew up in the Great State of Michigan but has lived in Washington since 1991, except for a year doing research for his doctoral dissertation in Paris. Although he briefly tried living in Maryland and Northern Virginia, there is only one neighborhood for him, and that's Capitol Hill, where he lives with his wife and two children. He teaches music and art history at a tony private school, is a professional choral singer, plays the piano and organ when he gets the chance, and keeps his blogging finger on the pulse of the classical music world at Ionarts.

Missy's thrilled to be writing about theater again after interviewing "Rocky Horror Show" cast members such as Jerry Springer for the now-defunct Broadway Online, and dodging crank calls from angry actors in Fordham University's production of "A Chorus Line". Her work for DCist helped her earn a spot as one of the NEA's 2008 fellows in theater journalism. A reporter by day, Missy's bounced around a number of D.C. media outlets, from CD Publications to Space News to the Examiner; she now writes about restaurants, retail and tourism for the Washington Business Journal. If you see her at a happy hour, get her talking about Cleveland, fencing, Aaron Sorkin, or board games - she'll probably challenge you to a round of Scrabble, Encore or Taboo: name the time and place.

Amy came to D.C. in 2006 after living in Western Massachusetts for 22 years, and finds the District a welcome change of scenery. She's in the final months of her Master's degree program English Literature at the University of Maryland and writes about the arts for a D.C. newspaper. In her free time, Amy likes watching Boston sports, finding perfect Indian food in the city, and holding Arrested Development marathons.

Born in Topeka, Kansas but taught to fear Jesus in the mighty Northern Virginia suburbs, Chris quit the East Coast after college for an extended stay in the placid surfer's paradise of Ventura, CA, where he wrote for an alternative weekly and took up boxing. After earning a screenwriting degree from UCLA, he worked for a magician for a while, but was eventually seduced back east by the District's pedestrian-accessible charms. Chris writes about pop music for the Washington Post, teaches a little boxing, and idolizes Orson Welles. Loves: running, comic books, thunderstorms, microbrews, old time radio drama. Hates: treadmills, reality TV, techno music, PDAs.

After a few hops around the country in her younger years, Lynne Venart settled in the Philadelphia suburbs at age 12 and later attended Penn State University, where she earned a bachelors in Art and Advertising. A graphic designer and studio artist, she moved to D.C. in 2000 for a job at a young and fledgling web firm, where she was promptly laid off in the dot com crash months later. Free from the ties of a 9-to-5, Lynne has been freelancing ever since. Her workaholic alter ego is relentlessly obsessed with school, filling her time with a year of post-grad study in painting and a soon-to-be-completed Masters in Arts Management at GMU. In her spare time, she’s always up for a game of Ms. Pac Man and loves a good brown ale.

Another person from away, Kelly felt the need to move to the District to infiltrate the world of non-profits and to give up her vote in Congress. An environmentalist by day, and super hero by night, Kelly spends her free time by pursuing crafty endeavors and volunteering for numerous causes. To get some use out of her degree in fine arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design, Kelly covers the visual arts for DCist.

Ben hails from the North Side of Chicago and decided he liked D.C. when he realized the Smithsonians cost free-ninety-nine. Currently studying at GW, he has spent three years doing research on Eleanor Roosevelt while trying as hard as possible to hide the fact that he's just an undergrad. Ben saw Arsenal beat Chelsea at Highbury in 2001 and dares you to ask him the starting lineup from any Arsenal game since then. Despite passions for turntablism, nightly monument jogging, and making eggs, Ben spends a lot time worrying about what will happen if he marries someone else with a hyphenated last name...

After earning a degree at the University of Texas at Austin, Kriston betrayed a long line of native Texans and moved to the decadent East Coast in hopes of pursuing a job with the liberal elite. He took with him a lifetime love for smoked brisket and Longhorns football as well as his dog Wreck, who has been profiled in the New York Times. Kriston contributes art news and reviews to the Guardian, Dallas Morning News, Huffington Post, and a bunch of glossy art magazines you might thumb through at the book store. He's also a contributing editor for UN Wire and a dilettante barista. He plays the tenor sax around town and the oboe in his bedroom. In 2007, he cheated to win an Internet beauty contest, a fact that would move his uncles to permanently disown him if they ever find out. 

Aaron ended up settling in DC after earning his degree at the University of Pittsburgh in creative nonfiction. But after writing essays about getting lost in Ikea and the fanciful world of professional wrestling pay-per-views, he wanted to settle down and figured, hey, why not here? (Read: was broke, had no prospects, and counted on getting an easy job in non-profits. Mission accomplished.) Things to note: a) he eats his PB&J with three slices, covered thickly on all sides, and cut diagonally; b) additionally, he has a shower routine - rinse, soap, shampoo, repeat if needed; c) and he wakes up at 7:30 am on weekends to watch British football (Gooner 'till he dies). A fan of Jonathan Lethem, Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout, and briskly walking down - but not up - the escalator, feel free to berate him on his month-long droughts between personal blog posts.

Tom was born and raised in Arlington, picked up a degree from UVA, mooched off his girlfriend for a while in Italy, and now lives in D.C. Along the way he's been nerding it up consistently and thoroughly. He blogs, knows every acronym of three letters or less, and fears natural light.

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