Did D.C. just claim a small chunk of Arlington County? Sure, if you believe Google maps. And we do, so let's welcome Arlington, D.C. to the city! more ›

Good morning, Washington. No, your blurry eyes from last night's drinking are not deceived, there is a small dusting of snow on the ground. It's mostly sticking to rooftops of buildings and cars from my vantage point in the District, but southern and western suburbs have gotten up to an inch or two. Seems like the sun today will melt most of it. more ›

Google today unveiled its long-awaited bicycle directions feature for Google Maps. more ›

Bars will close at the usual time of 3 a.m. for the nights of Friday the 16th and Saturday the 17th. On Sunday and Monday, they'll be allowed to stay open an extra hour and close at 3 a.m. And on Tuesday, inauguration day, they'll keep partying until 4 a.m. instead of the usual 2 a.m.

Nearly every D.C. street is captured, with the exception of Pennsylvania Avenue and E Street NW by the White House, some military areas, and the Hillandale gated community in Burleith. Outside of the District, coverage is a little spottier — most of eastern Montgomery County has Street View, but large portions of western Montgomery and most of Prince George's don't. Arlington and Alexandria are nearly complete and some of the streets elsewhere in Northern Virginia, and around Baltimore, Annapolis, and Fredericksburg have been captured. You can even recreate the boring I-95 journey from the North Carolina border to Philly. more ›

>> We tragically forgot to mention in About Tonight that all left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers will gather on the Mall for Screen on the Green's first showing of the summer, Annie Hall. The movie starts just after sunset on the screen between 4th and 7th, NW. Bring an umbrella and/or a Faraday cage, as the thunderstorm watch goes until 9 p.m., but the screening is more or less rain or shine, unless lightning... more ›

Some of you may remember our venerable DCist Maps project, which provided an overlay of the D.C. Metro system in the classic WMATA style, plus the ability to build your own customized maps. We were proud of the li'l guy, but he had clearly begun to show his age: designed in an era when 800x600 was still a common screen resolution, the map window was ridiculously small. And although we spent an awfully long time... more ›

There's been all kinds of crazy stuff found on Google's new StreetView application, which we wrote about before - guys who appear to be peeing on the side of the road, climbing fences into houses, and so on. While D.C. won't be getting StreetView for a little while longer, there is still some strange stuff to be seen with good ol' Google Maps. Joyriding has long been a problem in D.C., where (usually) kids steal... more ›

Holy smokes! Giant fish on the MTA, Paris Hilton in jail, then out, then in again, Al Gore, goatses, blumpkins, Matt Damon, and baby art critics! It's been a busy week across the Ist-A-Verse, and here's a smattering of what's been going on. In Gothamist's neck of the woods, they found out that many things are possible: A man caught a 40+ pound fish off the Rockaways and took it home on the subway. Graffiti... more ›

If you're anything like us, you've been experiencing major geek covetousness ever since Google Maps launched its Street View functionality late last month. The feature (which may seem similar to past users of Amazon's A9.com) shows street-level photos of locations. Users can move smoothly from spot to spot, rotating their view and taking in the sights. Unfortunately, Google Maps' coverage of D.C. doesn't feature any of the blue outlines that signify Street View-equipped roads. But... more ›

Who needs government when we have Google? more ›

Good morning, Washington. We really wish we had some good news to share in regards to the local weather forecast, but it's starting to seem as though the more often we refresh the weather page, the worse the predictions actually get. So new rule this morning. We'll only talk about kittens and lollipops and pretty pretty ribbons until we get at least two days in a row with sunshine. Our strategy is clear: annoy the... more ›

Back in the day, people would gather to lobby, write letters and protest for a cause. These days, all it takes is access to a computer and a creative approach to using online tools. And while the fight for District voting rights has involved a good amount of old-school tactics, online activists have more resources at their disposal than ever before. Newly-elected Shadow Representative Mike Panetta has been leading this fight in recent years, employing... more ›

It's a pretty neat little app, and Welsh practically read our mind, since DCist really likes Google maps. He also has his own happy hour map, which is also a topic we wrote about. more ›

What's better than happy hour? Maps with lots of happy hours. Thanks to Google Maps, there are a few drunken mashup sites that map bar specials in D.C. for that special time of day. The two we've found, Unthirsty.com and Drinktown.com show user-submitted happy hours around the country and detail the food and drink specials each day. Unthirsty even says if there's patio seating or wi-fi, in case you want to do some tipsy instant... more ›

Debating Where to Debate: It was big news a few weeks back when Marie Johns challenged Adrian Fenty to a duel...errr...debate during a phone call she placed to a radio show Fenty was guesting on. The ambitious one-on-one challenge by Johns was set for August 12 at high noon...errr...9 a.m. But WTOP is reporting today that both Fenty and Johns may end up debating themselves, because they can't seemingly agree on a location for their verbal joust to the death. Fenty claims that the deal was always that the debate would be held somewhere in Ward 8, where he promises to be on the set day. Johns, however, has countered, arguing that since Fenty chose the time and date, she should at least get to choose the location, which she did, opting for the Human Rights Campaign headquarters on Rhode Island Avenue and 17th Street. Neither seems willing to concede, so August 12 may see the two standing miles apart asking an empty podium questions about crime, education, economic development, and affordable housing. Inside sources tell us that the two might meet later this week to settle the dispute, though neither can seem to agree whether they should order in from Domino's or Papa Johns. more ›

As you have hopefully heard (or at least read in Wikipedia), it's not Adam's Morgan -- Adam doesn't own the Morgan. The neighborhood was given its name during D.C.'s school desegregation in the 1950s, when the all-white John Quincy Adams School and the all-black Thomas P. Morgan School were both integrated. Adams School still exists on 19th Street just north of the Washington Hilton, but Morgan School, which was located at the corner of California and 18th Streets where the Marie Reed tennis courts and ball fields are, was demolished around 1971. more ›

We're a pretty wired bunch here at DCist, and we imagine that you are, too. Do you get appointments in iCal from Upcoming.org via RSS and use Google Maps to plot your path there? Of course you do. But what about those odd occasions when you're not by a computer? It's a living hell, we know. Well, we're here to help. Toward that end, we're happy to present LastCall Beta, our effort to make the... more ›

More on the church parking issue, you say? Today we find the Washington Times reporting that some Logan Circle residents are fuming at what they see as a concession to the neighborhood's powerful churches, a day after D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams put off enforcement measures and instead appointed a taskforce to study the matter. After close to a year of complaints, city officials promised to start enforcing the city's double-parking laws on Sunday, going... more ›

As some of you already know, yesterday was a big day on 9 1/2 Street, crime-wise at least. Yesterday afternoon a man was beaten and robbed in front of my house (around 4pm). I heard and saw part of the ruckus and called 911. The incident was a bit horrifying but one of the scariest parts was the fact that I spent quite a few minutes trying to walk the 911 dispatcher through the process of entering our street address. Finally, she got someone from the ambulance dispatch to explain to her (via conference call) that she needed to override the standard address feature and type it manually. Even after that, I received multiple calls when the police could not find our street (she kept saying that he was in front of our house but the only man in front of my house was unconscious and bleeding). Eventually, police and ambulance responded and the man was taken to the hospital.

To do so, you simply visit the venerable Google Maps page and type in a location. Then, zoom. Ultimately, you should find yourself staring at what the G-men consider the center of the entered municipality. As you can see above, Washington's lies just north of the Ellipse. Quite accurate, it seems, as that is the location of the Zero Milestone, the point at which distances from D.C. are measured. more ›

Damn it. Someone beat us to the punch on a new and very cool Google Maps hack. These days, pretty much everything is plugged into Google Maps. We even developed our own nifty little Google Map with the Metro system overlayed on it (which WMATA promptly ripped off, or so we'd like to think). Late last year, we figured it'd be cool to find a way to plug in the District's list of criminal incidents... more ›

Today's Transit on Tuesday brings you WMATA's Google Maps hack, a sexy take on area commuting, and another chance for you to vent your frustrations at WMATA's top brass. more ›

We've written before about D.C.-related Google Maps hacks, including several excellent efforts to represent the Metro system. It looked like so much fun that we decided to give it a shot ourselves. So today we're happy to announce DCist Maps, our very own Google Maps application. As you can see from the graphic, we've programmed an overlay of the Metro system over Google's map of the region. Our map also lets you plot addresses, find... more ›

When DCist theorized that Mt. Vernon Square was ripe for hotel development last month, we realized we were stating the obvious. And an article that appeared yesterday on real estate website GlobeSt.com confirmed what many knew was coming: the effort to secure space for a hotel serving the new Convention Center has begun. The Washington Convention Center Authority has purchased a half-acre at 901 Massachusetts Ave. NW, including the offices of the United Association of... more ›

If you're anything like us, you've been using Google Maps for a little while now. Since launching their mapping service earlier in the summer, Google's simple, intuitive, and efficient means of finding your away around town (and beyond) has been giving MapQuest a run for their money as the web's preferred mapping website. Google keeps refining the website, recently adding a hybrid-view mode to their map service, allowing one to view road overlays on the satellite imagery. more ›

This photo was posted to DCist photos by Dave Lantner. Today will be mostly cloudy with a chance of rain due to thunderstorms in the afternoon. Tonight the Doves play the 9:30 Club. more ›

Coming on the heels of a weekend in which a well-known volunteer traffic officer was critically injured after being hit at the intersection of M Street and Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown, the District Department of Transportation has released a draft report detailing the city's most dangerous intersections. more ›

Amazon.com and their search engine A9 has announced they have completed photographing many of the streets in D.C. for the "block view" feature of their online yellow pages. (Our friends at Gothamist wrote about their New York photos in January) Users can now view photographs of the storefronts of many District businesses alongside their telephone number and address. Like most online mapping, the photo alignment is far from perfect and sometimes requires scrolling down the street a bit before locating the business you're looking for. Since Amazon has incorporated a feature where they record we consider is the best photos, we assume the index will become more accurate in time. more ›

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