Results tagged “dupontcircle”

WJLA ran a piece last night on a sudden spike in shoplifting in the Dupont Circle neighborhood, citing a 70 percent increase in just the last month. That's a pretty shocking number, and reporter Stephen Tschida lays the blame mostly on the same sort of large groups of teens who have been caught on tape recently at Logan area stores like Rue 14 and Universal Gear. Small retail operators have little defense against a large group of determined young thieves apart from installing seriously expensive theft-deterrent systems, something most small businesses likely can't afford.

City workers on Friday collected and removed what remained of the 22 "ghost bikes" that had been placed around Connecticut and R Streets, the Post is reporting, including the locked-up bike that was put in the spot where the original memorial to Alice Swanson was located. Activist Legba Carrefour, the Columbia Heights resident behind the bikes, had pledged to ensure that the single memorial bike was replaced each time the city removed it, and he says he plans to keep his word. It just might take him a couple days.

Head over to why.i.hate.dc for a photo and update on the 22 ghost bikes that were placed all around the intersection of Connecticut and R NW a week ago. Looks like someone decided to let activist Legba Carrefour know they aren't fond of his bikes.

All of the remaining ghost bikes near Connecticut and R have been piled up at two locations, outside of the Cosi and at the site of the original ghost bike. It's a mess, and the pile near the Cosi is blocking the crosswalk. It appears as though some of the bikes that had been locked are in the pile or missing, as well. It's unclear who may have done this, but I would imagine DPW will be removing the bikes very soon given the state of the street. I urge Legba Carrefour or the Washington Area Bicyclist Association to clean this up as soon as possible. This is no longer a tribute to Alice Swanson or bicycle safety.

       

Early this morning, 22 new ghost bikes appeared around the intersection of Connecticut Avenue, R and 20th Streets NW. There were put there by Columbia Heights resident Legba Carrefour, in an effort to protest the city's recent removal of the Alice Swanson ghost bike by the city. Alice's original ghost bike was placed in front of the La Tomate restaurant by the Washington Area Bicycle Association shortly after her death a little over a year ago, though WABA as an organization is not taking credit for this latest, much larger stunt.

MoveOn.org is organizing a candlelight vigil in honor of Sen. Edward Kennedy tonight in Dupont Circle at 7:45 p.m. They are asking participants to treat it as a solemn affair, meant to be a tribute to "a true movement hero" and not as any kind of political rally. Those who would like to attend are asked to bring extra candles if they have them.

       

As we noted in Go Home Already, the cast members of the Real World house officially made their way to their new Dupont Circle home today. And I was not the only "reporter" waiting for them on the corner of 20th and S Streets NW. There was videoblogger elizabethany and her friend, along with self-proclaimed soon-to-be blogger Martin, who was keeping us informed of all the latest RWDC news (presumably via tweets from #RealWorldDCNEWZ), and a couple of other random stalkers. They brought me up to speed on what I'd missed a couple of hours earlier, principally that six cast members had arrived, without much fuss at all, despite some reports to the contrary.

A tipster just texted that the D.C. Real World cast appears to be arriving as we speak -- she reports seeing a blonde girl with a suitcase walking through Dupont Circle, looking clueless and being trailed by a camera crew. Of course, there have been apparent dry-runs previously, but this one could be the real deal, and the RealWorldDCNewz Twitter feed reports similar sightings. Yikes?

      

We're getting tantalizingly close to confirming that the house for MTV's The Real World is, in fact, in Dupont Circle. We had heard numerous tips that 2000 S Street NW was the place, but without much solid evidence to back those claims. Yesterday afternoon, we walked over the much-talked about house, which is located at the corner of 20th and S. There were construction people working on the exterior -- when asked what was going on there, one worker said "we're building a house, I dunno who lives there." When asked if it was related to MTV, he frowned.

We get a little bit tired of telling you to take these tidbits with a grain of salt, but -- you might want to take this tidbit with a grain of salt: We Love DC is reporting through Twitter-sources that the Real World's D.C. drunkfest season will begin filming based in a Dupont Circle house on June 20. We had previously thought that the reality show's producers were simply beginning to look for assistants, but if this piece of news turns out to be accurate, then the oncoming storm is far more closer than any of us imagined. While a little less than three weeks is obviously not enough advance time to build an appropriate bunker with appropriate rations, this is (likely) the hand we have been dealt.

       

Hundreds gathered in Dupont Circle last night to protest the California Supreme Court's decision to uphold Proposition 8, as we noted yesterday. Among others, Councilmen Phil Mendelson spoke to the crowd; you can see a video taken of some of the speakers at EricaAmerica. Check out some images from our photographers, and read more about whether or not the people should vote on marriage rights in our post earlier today.

We've noticed in recent days that there are many more teens running around Dupont Circle than you'd normally expect. Local eateries have been extra crowded, pretty much every Starbucks is a no-go zone and the usual resident-enforced rules of Metro are violated at will. What gives?

     

James Calder reports from Dupont Circle:

WJLA has a story about a recent uptick in the number of residential burglaries in the Dupont neighborhood — there have been at least eight burglaries in the area in the last week, and police are warning residents about thieves entering their homes through skylights and upper-floor windows via rooftops.

WJLA reports an increase in armed robberies in the neighborhood east of Dupont Circle, an area that some residents have been drawing attention to over the last six months by campaigning to get people to start calling it Borderstan. The folks behind the Borderstan movement roughly define the area as lying between 14th and 16th Streets NW and P and S Streets NW, which happens to be split down the middle between ANCs 2F and 2B, and PSAs 307 and 208.

K Street NW is currently closed between 14th and 15th Streets in both directions due to a police investigation. Unconfirmed reports we've gotten so far suggest that there was a bank robbery at the PNC Bank at 14th and K. This would be the second daytime bank robbery in the middle of a busy workday in downtown D.C. in two days. Yesterday, the SunTrust on Dupont Circle was robbed at around 1 p.m. by a man claiming to be carrying a bomb in a duffel bag. This DCist editor was coincidentally making a withdrawal from the ATM outside the same SunTrust at about 1:10 p.m. yesterday, but was unaware anything had just happened at the bank other than noticing that a woman who tried to enter the branch found the door to be locked. The SunTrust robber got away, according to the Post. We'll update when we hear more about what happened today.

             

Written by DCist contributor Shauna Miller

AlertDC says that every single escalator at Dupont Circle Metro's Q Street entrance is currently out of service. The station is still open, unlike when it was closed during a power outage in June; all of the escalators were down then too, and WMATA decided that since people were having such a hard time getting into and out of the station, they would temporarily close it until the power came back on. If you can't handle hoofing it up the station's long elevators today, we recommend using the south entrance on the other side of Dupont Circle. UPDATE: The escalators are back in operation.

   

How many rocket scientists (and their friends) does it take to serve frozen yogurt? Just about 21 or so if you ask Mr. Yogato, the anthropomorphic mascot of a new shop opening tomorrow in Dupont Circle. Yes, rocket scientists. Steve Davis, the company's founder and "Man of Yogurt" is also an employee of SpaceX, a space exploration company with an office in D.C. Struck by the lack of "froyo" options when he transferred here (though that is increasingly no longer the case), Davis conceived of the operation with his rocket launching pals as his partners. Their vision: bringing yogurt and delicious toppings to D.C., and bringing fun and goofiness back to frozen yogurt.

The electricity is back on! Traffic was more or less flowing normally through downtown just after 11 a.m. Pepco reports that power has now been restored to the entire affected area.

WMATA has officially closed the Dupont Circle Metro station as a result of the power outage. The station was closed at 9:25 a.m. because there wasn't enough electricity to power the station’s lengthy escalators.

While trains can serve the Red Line station, the escalators are extremely long, and customers were experiencing difficulty exiting, so officials closed the station for safety reasons. Trains will pass through Dupont Circle and not stop there.

Continue reading "Dupont Circle Metro Station Closed Due to Power Outage"

              

It doesn't take a background in PR or advertising to know that Pinkberry, Red Mango, and other similar frozen yogurt brands are, at the moment, red hot. For those of you unfamiliar with the product, the concept is simple: take low or non-fat yogurt, freeze it, and top it off with your choice of fresh fruits or other toppings.

Flickr user Nivad caught some great detail of the St. Thomas Parish's decaying architecture near Dupont Circle. Though we love to see great pictures taken with any kind of camera, I'm sure the high-powered Nikon D300 didn't exactly hurt the quality of this image here. (Mom? Christmas, hmm?) EXIF.

This past Friday night and with little fanfare, Alberto’s in Dupont Circle restarted its ovens and pizza-making operations, less than four months after a fire seriously damaged the P street location and left a pizza shaped hole in many pizza lovers' hearts. The same fire also forced the closure of the DJ Hut located above Alberto’s and the Subway next door, both of which remain closed.

A new report from the Brookings Institution shows that the D.C. metro area has the most “walkable places” per capita of any American city -- one for every 264,000 people, beating out even New York City for walkability. Visiting Fellow Christopher B. Leinberger says that the Washington region could serve as the model for the direction the country’s other metro areas are heading over the next generation. The Associated Press already picked up on the...

>> One of the funniest comedic performers out there today, Amy Sedaris is at the Historic Sixth and I Synagogue tonight to promote her recent book, I Like You, at 8 p.m. Advance tickets are no longer available, but a few seats can apparently still be had at the door for $25 -- a small price to pay to be entertained by the woman who brought us the wonder that is Jerri Blank. >>...

According to one observer, when the monument the Revisiting Series examined this week was unveiled on M and Connecticut Streets NW, the place was absolutely buzzing. The heroic bronze figure sat draped in his academic robe, book in hand, and looked out on the streets packed with the wide spectrum of adoring fans: men, women, and children “of all races and nationalities.”

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Indie: War/Dance Sometimes you need an antidote before the poison even arrives. Next week Hollywood releases yet another of those diabetic-shock-inducing films about musically gifted youngsters and how they can be an inspiration to us all, designed to make soccer moms everywhere weep into their hankies. One week prior to that, though, comes a documentary from...

Pour Out a Forty for the Childe Harold The pilgrimage is at its end. After 40 years nestled on 20th street NW in Dupont Circle, the Childe Harold has closed its doors for good. A victim of increasing rents and lessors unwilling to negotiate, the Harold is one more example of how the face of Dupont Circle is ever-changing. The venerable institution held a lot of history, partly because of its ties to the music...

We knew it was just a matter of time, but sure enough, there in our inbox this morning was the first announcement of an online petition begging D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty to change his mind about the $4 taxicab flag drop fee. A group calling themselves D.C. Residents for Reasonable Taxi Fares claim that the fares proposed by Mayor Fenty will mean that taxi fares in D.C. will be the highest in the country--higher than...

We're certainly woe to make the poor soul who was evicted from the tony condo building The Flats at Dupont Circle, at 20th and N Streets NW, this morning feel any worse. But after being tipped off by a resident of the building to the eviction and subsequent dumping of all of this woman's worldly belongings on the street corner, we couldn't help but feel it makes a rather striking image when you consider...