A year ago, we geeked out over the possibility that Google Maps would soon include its Street View feature in D.C. area maps. Google has indeed collected Street View imagery for Washington, DC, but still no launch date has been announced for the feature. In the meantime, we've got something a little cooler – or at least something with a comparable "gee whiz, that's neat" factor – to tide us over. On Tuesday, Google announced......

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......

Where have you gone, Louie Gohmert? Way back, you said that "Washington, D.C. is also the only city in the entire country that every senator and every member of Congress has a vested interest in seeing that it works properly, that water works, sewer works, and no other city in America has that." The only reason we ask is to see if you could kinda tap on Sen. Tom Coburn's office door and sorta ask......

It's probably little surprise to you that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) won the District of Columbia's Democratic presidential primary. Is it a surprise that the Senator won every last of the District's 142 voting precincts? According to preliminary results from the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics, that's the case. Though the map may appear as if Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) did well in many Northwest neighborhoods, she only managed to keep Obama under......

With the opening of its ongoing Exploring the Early Americas exhibit today, the Library of Congress marks the beginning of a transformation that by the Summer of 2008 will “merge cutting-edge technology with the knowledge and inspiration embodied in the Library’s unparalleled collections and curators.” The exhibit features some of the 3,000 items representing the "beginning" of America (that is, the beginning of European documented America), that Jay I. Kislak has been collecting for more......

We were taken aback by this beautiful photo by Samer Farha in the DCist Flickr pool this morning. After only a quick glance at the tag "Library of Congress," I was trying to place this building somewhere in the city, but then realized this is a shot of the gorgeous architecture of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, out in Culpeper, Va. Tucked in the Blue Ridge Mountains, both American and international film, television, and......

Fall leaves have lingered on trees much later than normal this year, leading to slippery conditions all over the city. Metro once again had to place speed restrictions on all trains passing through above-ground stations over the weekend, and we spotted more than a few people stepping carefully through wet and leaf-covered sidewalks this morning after last night's storm. Seems like a good time to remind everyone how fall leaf collection works in the District.......

>> The holiday gift season is officially here, which means we're going to start seeing a little more emphasis on the latter half of "arts and crafts" around the city, when the search for the perfect present for Aunt Sallie ends with you standing in front of a pile of handmade tea kettle cozies. You might want to start with the high quality stuff, and get to the Washington Craft Show this weekend at the......

>> Starting in January, the so-called Humpback Bridge on the George Washington Parkway will be revamped to be hump free and more pedestrian friendly. [WTOP] >> Mayor Fenty's administration tripled the number of employees making $175,000 or more from this time last year. Five of those employees, including the mayor himself, make over $200,000. [Examiner] >> Last night's fatal shooting of a man in the Barnaby Terrace neighborhood brings D.C.'s 2007 homicide total for......

My mother and I used to think we were so clever sneaking out of the house after the post-pumpkin pie haze to spend our tryptophan relaxing time at the movie theater, while our extended family lay sprawled on the couches in front of the boob tube ... until a few years later when the entire world caught on and every theater had lines around the block on Turkey Day. Lucky for you, we're in Washington,......

Still in the office, D.C.? Yeah, us too. We hope you're only sticking around because you don't need to travel this holiday season. If so, enjoy the empty halls, bask in the quiet, and call it a day early. If not — well, good luck on the roads and at the airport. It sounds like they're going to be predictably nasty. There Seems To Be Some Sort of Holiday Occurring: And consequently you can......

We missed this when it happened a couple of weeks ago, but is it really ever too late to point and laugh at New Yorkers? We didn't think so. So, people are probably aware that Five Guys franchises are proliferating across the Eastern U.S. like nuclear weapons in central Asia. The greasy, peanut-laden fingers of our locally born burger stand have spread as far as Delafield, Wisconsin; Nashville, Tennessee; and Miami, Florida. They've even broken......

The name may be unfamiliar, but the players behind Club Tiger Promotions are highly recognizable to any one who follows the D.C. music scene. Local artists Carol Bui and Jay Smith of Middle Distance Runner have started an all-ages venue, The Lab in Alexandria, which will both give under-age bands a place to play with their more seasoned peers and serve as an environment where, as Bui puts it, "kids feel totally comfortable and safe......

WMATA has put out a release to remind everyone that the first in a series of six planned public hearings on the proposed Metro fare hike is tonight. All six hearings start at 7 p.m., with open-houses beginning at 6:30 p.m. before each one. Tonight's hearing is in Reston, at the Bechtel Conference Center, which is at 1801 Alexander Bell Drive. To get there, take the Orange line to the West Falls Church station, and......

You'd think potentially violent criminals would know by now: if you injure someone anywhere near your favorite hang out spot in Ward 1, Council member Jim Graham is going to swoop in and ruin the fun for everyone else. If the possibility of being locked up in the terrifying confines of the D.C. Jail isn't enough of a deterrent, having all your friends be totally pissed at you for getting the place where they like......

Over the weekend the Post published an update to the Adams Morgan water pressure saga. Turns out firefighters did not tap into a much closer hydrant connected to a larger water main due to a false assumption about which main it was connected to. The fire department continues to point the finger at WASA, however, saying that it is nearly impossible for firefighters in the field to know which hydrants are connected to what kind......

Written by DCist Contributor Elisabeth Grant It was the best of times (for pumpkin lovers), it was the worst of times (for pumpkin haters). It's that time of year again; the leaves are starting to change, the weather's promising to get a little cooler (finally), and everything is starting to taste a little more pumpkin-y. But eaters and drinkers beware, not all pumpkin flavors are created equal. They can range from too-sweet fake to more......

WTOP's Adam Tuss asks an important question: When the new Nationals stadium opens in the spring, fans will head to the Navy Yard stop on the Green line -- even though the Stadium-Armory station on the Orange and Blue lines will be the only stop with the word "stadium" in it. Couldn't there be a lot of confusion on game days? Apparently, WMATA hadn't thought of this until Tuss asked them about it. It does......

We mentioned the nearly completed documentary film about the award-winning Ballou High School marching band, called simply Ballou, in a previous, less up-beat post about some fights that broke out there during the first week of the school. The film is still in its final post-production stages, but while the filmmakers are busy mixing audio tracks, the student musicians who are featured in the film are getting ready for a visit from The Ellen......

Firefighters took almost eight hours to put out a four-alarm blaze overnight in Adams Morgan on the 2600 block of Adams Mill Rd., across from Pierce Park. The fire started at about 1:15 a.m., gutting a four-story apartment building and displacing residents of more than 30 units. The length of time it took to battle the blaze is being blamed on low water pressure in Adams Morgan. WTOP explains that the firefighters originally tapped......

>> There's a new webcam available showing the progress of Monument Realty's Half Street project, which includes the expansion of the Navy Yard Metro station. [Near Southeast DC Redevelopment] >> Georgetown student pleads not guilty in hate crime investigation. [WJLA/AP] >> Members of the Metro board representing D.C. are pushing for higher parking fees at suburban stations in order to avoid increasing bus fares. [Examiner] >> A bunch of streets will be closed this......

View Larger MapView Larger Map We've long been concerned with the dangers of exploding manholes, and this morning one such explosion has disrupted electricity to businesses and residences in an area of downtown just north of Sherman Circle, in the 900 block of Farragut St. NW. The Associated Press says that Pepco has been notified and crews should already be on the scene. Thankfully, no injuries have been reported. Anyone seen anything down there?......

For the last eight years, Conner Contemporary Art has been one of the creative hubs of Dupont Circle with its focus on emerging and experimental artists. Located on the north end, it has served as a entryway to the neighborhood, leading into the plethora of neighborhood galleries, bookstores, and craft shops. But the gallery announced today that it will soon be shifting homes to Trinidad, in the large, 12,000 sq. ft. former auto body shop......

It was the colors in this photo that caught my eye; they present a nice contrast against the cloudy sky. The low perspective on the shot is also appealing in that it gives the old gas station a sense that it is looming above the street, deserted and monolithic--even though it's not. The subject is the Kensington Service Center, part of Kensington's Antique Row, which chip py the photo guy visited on Saturday. I......

Londonist are starting to think their city is getting just a little bit too expensive, when even Christian Slater can't afford to go out there. And there's no escaping, as local singer Lily Allen discovered when she was barred entry to the US. The British mapping agency caused further bad karma, by blocking a 3-D representation of London in Google Earth. But the smiles returned to Londonist's faces as they interviewed Baroness von Reichardt,......

Weather Forecast | Weather Maps | Weather Radar All right, so we promise to shut up about the heat after this, but our favorite weatherman in the whole world seems a little down in the dumps this morning, D.C. He's just not his usual screaming, over the top self, perhaps suffering from some kind of humidity-related depression. Judge for yourself -- does Accuweather.com's Jim Kosek need our help?......

>> Author Paul Karasik will be at Politics and Prose to talk about his book, I Shall Destroy All Civilized Planets, which chronicles the life of Fletcher Hanks, old school comics illustrator from the 1930s and creater of Stardust, and why he disappeared from comics. 7 p.m. >> Catch up on your parking lot loitering tonight to see Colombian born artist Kata Mejia perform Healing at 1622 14th Street NW. Presented by the Randall......

The day has finally arrived -- the official release of J.K. Rowling's final installment in her Harry Potter book series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is scheduled for midnight tonight (unless of course you received one of those magical early copies that have been floating around). For all you D.C. area Potter nerds out there (and as we already know, there are a whole lot of you) looking to celebrate tonight, here's some area......

After receiving a tip from a DCist reader and fellow foodie (thanks, sophiagrrl!), we headed to the Petworth neighborhood to check out El Limeño. El Limeño opened its doors only five months ago and offers up Mexican and Salvadorian bites in a cozy atmosphere. At 201 Upshur St. NW, it's relatively close to the Georgia Avenue/Petworth Metro, but street parking is usually available as well. Upon entering we were immediately greeted by the owner, and......

>> Since Tuesday is the new Thursday, we'd recommend heading over to Rock and Roll Hotel for a stellar line-up of DJs including Ken and Juan of East Coast Boogiemen, Lexus King, Devin Byrnes of Exit Only, Aaron Sparks and Keenan. 8:30 p.m.- 1:30 a.m., free all night long. >> Montreal's The Besnard Lakes play with Dirty On Purpose at the Black Cat's backstage, 9 p.m., $10. If you can't get enough of the......