Despite the fact that there's little that's truly Chinese about the District's Chinatown, the annual celebration of the Chinese New Year -- 2012 is the Year of the Dragon -- took place yesterday. Plenty of the city's great photographers were on hand to capture the color and character of the parade, and here's but a small sampling of yesterday's festivities. more ›

The City Paper has the scoop -- Capitol Hemp's Chinatown location, which recently feared that it would have to close for good if it couldn't get its merchandise back, will re-open next week; in addition, all charges against employees stemming from the October 27 raids have been dropped. more ›

Despite avoiding the fate of many of their counterparts across the country, Occupy D.C. protesters expressed solidarity with their evicted brethren last night with a raucous march through downtown D.C. which included a brief storming of a private building. more ›

Like many of you, we at DCist love historic photography of our town. So when a reader sent us a link to this collection of rare negatives from news photographer Alexander Lmanian, we couldn't wait to dive in. more ›

Good morning, Washington. For those of you with an extended holiday weekend, it's going to be a beautiful three days. For those of us looking at no more than our perfunctory time-off, relish Saturday and Sunday’s sunshine. Monday’s certain to arrive sooner than we’d like. more ›

According to an eyewitness, fire trucks have blocked off access to H Street NW between 6th and 7th Streets due to a report of a chimney fire at Ming's Restaurant. more ›

Good morning, Washington. Today is Slutwalk DC, the latest in a slew of protest marches triggered by a Toronto cop’s comment at a safety forum in January claiming that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.” more ›

After a commercial tour bus flipped over on Interstate 95 in Virginia yesterday morning, killing four people and injuring dozens more, WAMU decided that they'd take a trip down to Chinatown to ask about safety on the buses which operate from there. The result is hardly assuring. more ›

Ah, Chinatown buses: chariots of the frugal, the thrifty, the person looking for the cheapest possible way to get up and down the Eastern Seaboard. It's almost a rite of passage to take at least one spin on the various bus lines which originate from and stop in the District -- and even with the ascent of corporate-backed, low-cost, modern-amenity lines like BoltBus and Megabus, people are still scraping out a Jackson to get to New York on the fly. But while more competition might not have sunk the dirt-cheap bus business, a new District law just might. more ›

Earlier this week at The Atlantic, Damien Ma took D.C. proper and Chinatown, in particular, to task for having a "wholly disappointing Chinese food scene." And as anyone knows, it's been like that for well over 20 years, as the area's increasingly affluent Chinese community fled to the suburbs. Ma rails against the American food chains that have taken over Chinatown and argues that Chinatown could be an ethnic food paradise, recommending that China subsidize restaurants as a method of diplomacy. I completely agree with the assessment that Chinatown lacks what I consider to be good Chinese restaurants. But this failure is not solely a result of big bad chains pricing restaurants out of the area. more ›

Walking down H Street NW in D.C.'s small Chinatown, I don't give much consideration to the past of the buildings. While surely the few block stretch wasn't always Chinatown, I didn't realize that one of the buildings, that now hosts restaurant Wok and Roll, is where John Wilkes Booth conspired to kill Abraham Lincoln. more ›

One of our favorite February traditions, the Chinese Lunar New Year Parade and Festival, took place yesterday around the streets of Chinatown. Things sound like they went a little smoother this year than during the previous two editions of the event -- in 2009, the traditional five-story firecracker display was delayed and eventually cancelled due to a suspected gas leak in the area, while in 2010, the presence (or lack thereof) of the Taiwanese flag was a source of serious contention. But the lack of drama was just fine with DCist staff photographer Kevin Carroll, who was able to focus his lens on the joyous aspects of the celebration. more ›

Ready for some football D.C.? And all of the junk food and beer that goes with it? Super Bowl Sunday is upon us, and all of the reveling that's involved. Beyond that, it's pretty nice out today - so maybe you should take a walk to preemptively burn all of those calories you're going to consume tonight. more ›

Several streets will close in and around Chinatown on Sunday for the annual Chinese New Year Festival and Parade. The parade itself will run from approximately 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., while the Festival -- including the setting off of a Giant Firecracker at 3:45 p.m. -- runs all afternoon. more ›

Penn Quarter Living and the Internationalist are hopeful that Wagamama, the U.K.-based noodle shop, might finally be opening in Chinatown after years of speculation. The store, which first announced it was coming to 418 7th Street NW back in March 2008 has been close lipped about the location since the initial announcement. more ›

This editor had been hearing rumblings that Quan Chu, the elderly man who died on Tuesday after he was struck by a bicyclist in an alley near the Convention Center in late November, was a figure many were familiar with. According to some who live in the neighborhood, Chu had been a fixture for years on the streets of Chinatown who -- along with his wife -- was one of the few remaining fixtures remaining from the era before Chinatown developed into the entertainment district it is today. more ›

Some fascinating photographs came across my computer screen the other night -- images taken from the recent history of D.C., but ones that showed how far the city has come, or, in some cases, hasn't. The images are the work of Michael Horsley, who had a rare eye for the future when he set off through the streets of the District of Columbia in the mid to late 1980s with his camera, hoping to capture a scene which is, despite being only a little over twenty years old, feels totally foreign today. more ›

There's a whole lot of media here in Washington, D.C., and we all fill our little niches. As a result, there's rarely any one thing that we universally agree on. Politics, sports, even the behavior of our fellow reporters -- there's always a dissenting voice at some point about, well, everything. more ›

Prince of Petworth lets us know that the new Rita's Water Ice at 608 H Street NW, which opened over the weekend, is giving out free small Italian ices this week. more ›

More information has now come to light regarding the assault of an NPR intern in Chinatown on Wednesday morning. Melodie A. Brevard, 24, has been charged with assault with intent to kill and aggravated assault while armed after stabbing Annie W. Ropeik four times on the corner of 7th and I Streets NW at about 9:30 a.m. Wednesday. According to the Post, Brevard has a history of mental illness and stopped taking her medication a month ago. The attack was apparently "totally unprovoked." Scary stuff -- Ropeik is certainly fortunate that there were so many bystanders and police who responded with haste. more ›

Two separate investigations have created a big scene within a block of one other on the north side of Penn Quarter this morning. more ›

Cuba Libre, a new Cuban restaurant and rum bar taking over a spot at the corner of 9th and H streets NW, has pushed back its opening date to September, a spokesperson for the bar has confirmed. The restaurant's owners had hoped to open their doors first in June, and then by the end of July, but the date has been postponed for reasons not detailed on Monday. more ›

You kinda had to see this one coming. With the advent of a Barnes Dance-style pedestrian crossing at 7th and H streets NW, a handful of locals have planned a whimsical "Barn Dance"-themed flash mob at the spot. Courtesy the DCist tipline, here's the Facebook page to sign up for tonight's hoedown, during which participants sporting "overalls, plaid and straw hats" will "do-se-do" through the busy Chinatown intersection. more ›

The intersection at 7th and H streets NW is one of the busiest in the city. Heavy pedestrian traffic combined with lots of vehicles (including a handful of major Metrobus routes) has led to a major gridlock situation that has only gotten worse as Chinatown's popularity has increased. One only need wait for a bus at some point above or below the spot to know how difficult it can be pass through; you can watch a single bus sit and miss three green lights in a row before it finally moves forward. more ›

Apologies, golf nerds and gossip mongers, but there aren't any Tiger Woods photos in this post. No Tiger puns, either. (Alright -- maybe just one, a taxonomy. Tiger: Lion Cheetah.) It's the Year of the Tiger But Not That Tiger. Today in Chinatown, thousands of people partied like it's 4708, throwing pops into the street and paper streamers in the air. And standing in large, milling crowds. more ›

Julia Corker, the daughter of Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), was carjacked Wednesday night at an intersection near the Verizon Center, WJLA is reporting. Corker was reportedly driving her Chevy Tahoe in D.C.'s Chinatown neighborhood at about 9:30 p.m. last night when a suspect allegedly got her to roll down her window before pulling her out of the car and throwing her to the pavement. Politico has more, noting that she was not seriously injured in the incident, and that Sen. Corker was apparently eating dinner at a nearby restaurant at the time. more ›

The intersection of 7th and H Streets NW in Chinatown has to be one of the best retail spots in the entire city in terms of foot traffic, yet the boarded up windows at the large building on the northeast corner remain, over two years since the CVS that used to live in the ground floor closed. Back then, we were told to expect a renovated CVS in 2010, but as the Washington Business Journal explained last Friday, the "Gallery Square" construction project appears indefinitely stalled, bogged down in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings that were finally filed on Nov. 16, just a day before the entire building was meant to go up for sale at a foreclosure auction. So don't expect to see that new CVS, or anything else in the building, anytime particularly soon. more ›

Penn Quarter Living gives us a heads up that there is a not very well publicized public meeting scheduled tonight to discuss a proposal to install a large mural at one entrance of the Gallery Place/Chinatown Metro station. The Chinatown Community Cultural Center is 'proposing a “large-scale Chinatown mosaic mural” for the 7th & F St Metro entrance, otherwise known as the Verizon Center entrance. The proposal will be presented by Martha Jackson Jarvis, who painted the mural for the Anacostia metro station,' says PQL. If you're the sort of resident who likes to complain bitterly about not having input on public art installations you deem to be ugly, these are the sort of meetings you need to start attending. Tonight's meeting is at 6 p.m. at the CCCC. more ›

Chinatown's famed Friendship Arch got a bit of a sprucing up this summer, and today city officials gathered to formally reintroduce the landmark. more ›