Results tagged “blogs>”

We wanted to extend our hearty congratulations to Prince of Petworth, aka Dan Silverman, who announced on his site last night that he has quit his day job in order to devote himself full-time to neighborhood blogging. Dan's been talking about making this move for a long time, so it's great to hear that his dream is finally coming true. As a 2+ year veteran of the Guild of Professional Bloggers, I can tell you that Dan is about to join an elite group of individuals who find themselves spending a preposterously high percentage of their time searching for coffee shops with reliable wireless internet, and far less time worrying about showering or putting on pants. Way to live the dream, Dan!

Don’t get in Hagan Blount’s way this weekend if you run into him in a D.C. bar or restaurant. He’s got mouths to feed—or more accurately, one mouth, 24 times: his own. Blount, who blogs under the name “Wandering Foodie,” is invading D.C. this weekend in an attempt to test 24 of the area’s eateries in 24 hours. He performed a similar feat in Boston last month—video footage available here and here—and has now been scouting D.C. for the better part of the last two weeks: testing routes, interviewing fellow foodies, and talking with some of D.C. food industry insiders. Some of his interview footage is already posted here.

You know, a wise man once told me that if you make it really easy for someone to do something they feel compelled to do, then they'll probably do it -- despite all warnings to the contrary. Put a warm cookie in front of a child and tell them it will burn their mouth, and the kid will still grab and chomp. Put a cocktail in front of an alcoholic in distress and he'll probably drink it. Make it incredibly easy for someone to siphon your work for a few extra pageviews despite all conventional mores, and damn it, they'll be slapping Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V faster than you can get the words "fair use" out of your mouth.

Credit goes to the increasingly excellent local blog Unsuck DC Metro for the news that a Metrobus operator will soon be fired for talking on a cell phone while driving a bus.

I would bet a pretty large sum of money that Deadspin's Tommy Cragg has never set foot inside Nationals Park, despite having attempted to tear it apart in a feature he's started called "Why Your Stadium Sucks." Not that there aren't plenty of legit reasons to complain about Nationals Park, but Cragg bases his entire post on stuff other people have written about it or the team, and fails to talk about the most crushingly obvious complaint anyone who's ever actually attended a game there would mention: the horrible, horrible service you get at the concession stands. The long, slow lines and rude service haven't really gotten better this year with the new caterer, Levy Catering, either. Now of course, not every single concession worker at the stadium is terrible. You can luck into a short line or a competent cashier every once in a while, and the staff at the Red Porch Restaurant is actually top notch when it comes to service with a smile. But go to virtually any other ballpark in the country and you (gasp!) don't have to wait 20 minutes to buy a hot dog and aren't treated to disdain and/or total incompetence at the majority of snack counters.

UPDATE: Wow, huge apologies for directing anyone to this site, as an alert tipster points out that much of it appears to be blatantly plagiarized from The Phat Phree's Look at My Striped Shirt!. We weren't familiar with that particular work, but you should definitely not count on the DC Summer Interns blog for anything good after all, based on this evidence.

Last year, local NBC news affiliate WRC/NBC4's web site got a major facelift. Gone was the relatively dull NBC4.com, and in its place was a nationally-launched web site template, in this case nbcwashington.com, that's trying to be both a home for the news content of WRC, as well as its own online brand, offering aggregated and exclusive content on top of the station's regular stories.

Local blog 14th & You has been doing a pretty good job of keeping tabs on the conflict between nightclub The Space and ANC2F, as any quality neighborhood blog would do. But proceedings between the two took an interesting twist when, during the ANC's monthly meeting last week, the proprietors of the much-maligned hotspot at 9th and N Streets used a comment from 14th & You's post on the subject to solidify their club's case.

Just in case you hadn't yet checked out Prince of Petworth this morning, we feel it is our editorial obligation to point out that the prince has penned a brief profile, complete with photo, of resident commenter and enfant terrible Monkeyrotica. Having met Monkey and his lovely wife before, nothing much in the article was a surprise to DCist — apart from the fact that he appears to be wearing jeans, and not leather pants, with his signature Hawaiian shirt. Now don't get us wrong, we love us some Monkey more than anyone, but we couldn't help thinking while reading the piece that this sort of public ego-stroking only serves to encourage him. We'll admit that the phrase "don't feed the animals" ran through our minds more than once. Then again, if this sort of exposure ends up producing one of the funniest, foulest, most expletive-laden comment threads DCist has even seen, who are we to question. So congrats on your moment in the sun, Monkey. This post is cursed. Maybe!

Yesterday afternoon, the Examiner's Leah Fabel first reported that Ward 1 Council member Jim Graham planned to introduce legislation today that would allow D.C.'s bars and restaurants to serve alcohol until 5 a.m., and to keep doors open 24-hours per day, between Jan. 17 and Jan. 21 to accommodate inauguration tourists. We then linked to it in our end of the day roundup. D.C. Wire posted its own version this morning. Then about an hour later, D.C. Shadow Representative Mike Panetta posted the following message to his Twitter feed:

DC Council extends "last call" to 5 am during inauguration week. Sounds fun, but I'll be happy to stay awake past midnight :)

DCist has been requiring comment registration as a spam-prevention measure for quite some time now, so hopefully our readers won't be too surprised to learn that washingtonpost.com will begin requiring it on every one of their blogs sometime next week. Steven Goff first mentioned it on his Soccer Insider blog today, and Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive spokesperson Molly Gannon tells us that while registration has already been required in order to comment on news stories on the WaPo web site, they are only now implementing that same requirement on the Post's blog properties. Seems like a lot of changes are afoot at washingtonpost.com this week; the Going Out Gurus got a redesign today as well.

We already knew the Capital Weather Gang was our wonderwall, but today they've unveiled a new 'weather wall' feature that makes us heart them even more. Check out the Weather Wall for yourself; it's got a live webcam view of D.C. from Arlington, a radar loop of the mid-Atlantic region, an interactive map with clickable temperatures and wind information, two different satellite loops, and a standard weather map of the United States. For local weather geeks, it's certainly convenient to have all those maps in one place.

The Washington City Paper launched a new "sex & gender" blog on its web site this week, called The Sexist, penned by staffer Amanda Hess. Hess will leave behind her old Show & Tell column to helm the new feature. The blog is just getting rolling, but mercifully it looks nothing at all like the weekly's now defunct, dreadful confessional sex and dating diary, Melanie Boyer's About Last Night. Hess tells us she intends this new venture to be "something else entirely" from the old sex blog, "a blend of snarky feminist commentary, alternative scene reporting, and in-depth coverage of District health and identity issues." One recent post identifies the price tag rape victims had to pay for a rape kit in Wasilla while Sarah Palin was mayor ($300 to $1200!). We look forward to reading more.

The Department of Consumer & Regulatory Affairs is officially launching a new blog next week associated with its Collegiate Off-Campus Housing Initiative, called ThisShouldBeIllegal.com. The basic idea of the web-based program, according to DCRA spokesperson Michael Rupert, is "to try and get college kids to make sure they are being rented to legally." Under D.C. law, your landlord is required to have a business license, and the process of obtaining one prompts an automatic safety inspection to check for things like working smoke detectors and fire exits.

On Tuesday we noted the death of Free Ride, the Washington Post Express blog that covered local D.C. news formerly helmed by DCist co-founder Mike Grass. Free Ride came to an end just a few months after Grass exited for Politicker, which took him to New York City. We also meant to note that Rob Goodspeed, the former DCist editor who co-founded this web site with Grass, is also moving away from the District. Goodspeed posted the news on his blog earlier this week that he's moving to Boston next month to pursue work in urban planning while his girlfriend begins law school at Harvard this fall. For all of us here, it's bittersweet news that the people responsible for DCist's beginnings will no longer be D.C. residents. It's terribly exciting that they're both moving on to new arenas, but their absence in the local blogosphere is and will be deeply felt. Godspeed, Goodspeed! Good luck in Boston.

On Monday Express re-launched its web site, dubbing it anew as ExpressNightOut, which will focus exclusively on D.C. area arts and events coverage. The old Read Express url now points to the new site. The Express folks also put up a post formally announcing the end of Free Ride, the local news-focused blog that had been dying a slow, painful death since the departure of former DCist editor and Free Ride founder Mike Grass, who went to work for Observer start-up Politicker, a few months back. Many times since then saw Free Ride with only one or two posts up per day, so word that it's officially dead comes as no big surprise.

We'd be remiss if we didn't mention that our friends over at DC Metblogs decided to jump ship from the Metroblogging network and start their own web site, We Love DC. Metblogs chief Sean Bonner wrote a pretty sarcastic response to the move, and is advertising for someone to take over the site. Former D.C. Metblog leader Tom Bridge told us that the decision came about when the D.C. crew wasn't asked to provide input on the latest network redesign, and that they wanted the opportunity to stand on their own. Some of the first posts on We Love DC concern why the various contributors love D.C. Best of luck to them!

These days when most people label someone as a home cook, instead of a culinary professional, they tend to imagine someone along the lines of Rachael Ray or Paula Deen. And while those two TV personalities have done a lot to get people interested in food, there is another side to home cooking. A whole world of serious, dedicated, and adventurous home cooks are putting down the can opener, stepping away from the bags of pre-washed lettuce and trying to recreate the elegance, art, and skill of haute cuisine at home.

The WWII Memorial just celebrated its fourth anniversary, and a little meme has popped up on several blogs over the last couple of days that paints a picture of almost universal loathing for its design.

National security and nuclear arms control blogger Jeffrey Lewis of ArmsControlWonk was on the Red line this morning when he noticed a rather odd new sign prohibiting certain behavior on Metro. Next to the usual diagrams picturing how you must not block, crowd around or lean on Metro doors, someone had affixed another warning: No "Rapture," with a little businessman about float up to Heaven, and the universal symbol for "don't do it," the red circle with a line through it.

We're just getting into the thick of wedding season, and so apparently are the Washington Redskins. Somewhat infamous bachelor and Pro Bowl tight end Chris Cooley settled down with his ex-'Skinette fiancee Christy Oglevee this coming weekend in Landsdowne.

It might have made us say, "huh?", but Metro produced quite a hubbub with its recent presentation on future solutions to the system's capacity needs - turns out, the transit agency has some pretty major upgrades in mind. David Alpert, curator of the local development blog Greater Greater Washington and a former Google Product Manager, produced a map to display all the changes that WMATA wants to make. We took the chance to grill David on these changes and see what he thinks about the ideas the agency is floating around for the next 20 years.

Michael Calderone over at the Politico broke the news today that D.C.'s original foul-mouthed political blog, Wonkette, is leaving the Gawker media empire. Managing editor Ken Layne will personally take the helm of the newly independent Wonkette, as he confirmed in a post on the site today.

There have been a lot of interesting, local ideas about the future of public transportation in the D.C. metro area floating around the internet this week, so Transit on Thursday has gathered them all up for your perusal.

>> Congress has taken away D.C. CFO Natwar Gandhi's pay raise in the wake of the Office of Tax and Revenue embezzlement scandal. Happy Holidays, Mr. Gandhi! [WaPo]

Big news from the Washington Post: D.C. Attorney General Linda Singer has resigned after less than a year on the job.

If you think the Montgomery County 911 system has problems, D.C.'s 911 office isn't likely going to be having an easy time of it this week either. On Saturday the Examiner ran a small story about how D.C. Council member David Catania (I-At large) had to make a 911 call early Friday morning and says he received "textbook badgering treatment" from the operator.

Up until last year, the D.C. Council's weekly breakfast meetings were closed to the press and the public. The meetings, which then council Chair Linda Cropp claimed were merely social in nature, were thought of by local reporters as the place where city politicos hammered out sensitive deals -- and did so away from the prying eyes of the District's residents. Even though that has now changed, we've never really gotten much of a sense...

>> The law firm that uncovered widespread fraud at Enron is now investigating the tax fraud case at the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue. [WTOP] >> The swear word directed at Mayor Fenty by Council member Marion Barry, revealed. [City Desk] >> "So if giving CNN yet another chance to screw up major debates is the first mistake, then allowing Wolf Blitzer to moderate one of them (Anderson Cooper the other, meh) is...

The cold weather - and holiday festivities - descended upon Gothamist. The Rockefeller Christmas tree was lit, Broadway stagehand finally ended their strike, and NASCAR decided to run their victory lap through Times Square. There were disturbing photographs revealing the working conditions in which many city manholes are produced and ninjas were also a hot topic, either robbing homes or entering into alibis. But the city was really rocked by how Rudy Giuliani's visits...