The annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund begin on Friday, and the city will see a number of changes in traffic patterns and road closures this weekend as a result. Here's what you should plan around: Streets closed to vehicles: Beginning at 8 p.m. on Friday, October 19, until 2 a.m. on Sunday, October 21 * Pennsylvania Avenue, NW between 17th Street and 20th Street, NW * 19th Street, NW......

It's round two of the official opening of the fall art season. If you didn't get to check out all the openings last week (and who humanly could have?), spend part of your Saturday afternoon perusing the rest -- our reviewer particularly enjoyed the show at Flashpoint. But block off your evenings for the parties to celebrate the following openings: >> Up in Bethesda, it's the big night for the Trawick Prize finalists, as they......

In the summer of 2003, Chef Ed Hanson opened a pizzeria on the western edge of a neighborhood that had just renamed itself Penn Quarter. Four years later, Ella’s Wood Fired Pizza, named for Hanson’s young daughter, remains a rarity in downtown Washington: it is an independently owned--and not the least bit pretentious--place to enjoy a drink and a bite to eat. Located at 901 F Street, Ella’s features neither a unifying decorative theme (Matchbox)......

Back in September, we told you all about how you, too, could walk in the footsteps of legions of spiky-haired, leather jacketed youths armed with just your cell phone and the force of memory. The Yellow Arrow Capitol of Punk tour gives participants an interactive walking tour of the people and places associated with D.C. punk’s salad days, and has received an enthusiastic response, according to organizers. This Saturday at the Warehouse Theater, you can......

TUESDAY Dreckifying The Shop Around the Corner notwithstanding, Nora Ephron has a solid track record of bringing the funny. Why so wistful, then, Nora? Find out tonight at Politics and Prose as she discusses I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman. 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW., 7 p.m. If you can’t make it, she’ll be making another D.C. stop Wednesday at the District of Columbia Jewish Community Center, 16th &......

Watch carefully in the coming weeks and you may see them. People roaming the streets of Chinatown, Adams Morgan, Mt. Pleasant. They'll stop to check their cell phone, punch the keys, wait, check again, then move walk down the street looking with strange interest at empty buildings, houses and random Starbucks. Yellow Arrow's Capitol of Punk tour, which we previewed in May, kicked off this week, turning D.C. streets into an impromptu museum for a......

H&M, that bastion of trendy and cheap clothing (and we mean both price and quality) on Friday will host the "grand re-opening" of its downtown store at 1025 F Street, NW. Grand? Re-opening? Now, it’s been a while since we’ve been to H&M, but we weren’t surely we hadn’t missed some huge overhaul? When we asked an H&M sales associate what constituted this “grand” re-opening, he motioned to a new coat of paint on the......

This weekend is not only the last of January, but the last of the Chinese calendar year. We had some lewd jokes about fireworks and "The Year of the Rooster" prepared, but given that our last attempt at ethnic humor almost ended with us being chased out of D.C., we’ll play it safe this time and simply wish you all a Happy Lunar New Year. FRIDAY >>The key to a vibrant local music scene is......

When Verizon purchased MCI back in February 2005, Ask DCist pondered what would become of the MCI Center's name. Wonder no more; the MCI Center is slated to become -- **gasp** -- the Verizon Center by the end of March 2006. We were hoping for a more creative name, really. The MCI Center website has yet to post news of the name change. We figure that their strategic branding folks are working on a way......

We logged on our work computer first thing this morning to an email from Mayor Williams' Director of Communications, Vincent Morris, with the subject line "fyi." What, we wondered, could he be emailing us about? Gunning for Grass's job? Thoughts on kickball? Sending us his pics from Unbuckled? Nope. The message was far more boring -- or, depending on your point of view, a statement about our esteemed mayor:MAYOR WILL RIDE METRO TODAY, INSPECT SAFETY......

In case you missed your previous chances to check out native DC filmmakers Tarik Dahir and Jeff Gaul’s documentary “930 F Street” in the past couple of months, 9:30 Club is serving up one more opportunity to get your 1980s DC nostalgia on tonight, and admission is free (as we mentioned in the Weekend Picks post). How rad. See, back in the 80s, 9:30 Club lived over on F street, and bands like Minor Threat,......

We've been following the drama over the liquor license for Club U for quite some time now, but there are of course numerous other establishments that must deal with the Alcohol Control Board in one way or another. The ABC has a full plate today. Much of it is just normal procedural stuff, but then there are some other interesting items. From the Alcohol Beverage Regulation Administration we learn that the Grog and Tankard on......

(Editor's Note: Earlier reports of this DCist's loss of an arm are unfounded. It was actually our big toe.) DCist loves Fun Street. You ask: "Where might that be?" In what seems to be an aborted late 1990s marketing rebranding attempt, F Street near the MCI Center was given a Botox injection in the form of "Fun" Street to place emphasis on the strip's funness quotient. It never caught on, but the signs remain.......

In case you thought the end of Inauguration festivities was going to be the end of street closures downtown, think again. The Archdiocese of Washington's Rally for Life & Youth Mass 2005 at the MCI Center (with hip-hop artist Fr. Stan Fortuna) on Monday will have a march west on F Street and south on 15th Street to the Ellipse, essentially cutting downtown into two parts for about an hour. From the Ellipse, the march......

Our friends over at Gothamist have reported on the opening of the second Juan Valdez Cafe coffee shop in the U.S., which just opened at 140 East 57th Street at Lexington Avenue in New York City. The first has been open since mid September here in D.C., in the Organization of American States building on F Street NW. Although we haven't been to the store, it is wholly owned by the National Federation of Coffee......

Be aware that on Friday, meetings at the headquarters of the World Bank will cause the closure of streets in the vicinity of the White House and Foggy Bottom. From the AP, via WJLA/ABC-7: The traffic troubles begin right smack in the middle of Friday morning's rush hour. At 8:30 a.m., police will shut 18th, 19th and 20th streets, between Pennsylvania Avenue and F Street. And G Street will close between 17th and 21st. We......

FRIDAY: The five Canal Square Galleries (MOCA, Fraser, Parish, Alla Rogers and Anne C. Fisher) are having the monthly 3rd Friday openings tonight with five new shows to formally open the DC art season. Wine and sangria will abound! Mmm. Sangria. 6-9 p.m. Looking for a low-key night because you still have a hangover from the DCist happy hour? Oh, is that just us? There are plenty of flicks opening up tonight; we're partial to......