Fans of Petworth bar Temperance Hall better get up there for their Sazerac cocktails as soon as possible—the bar is on its way out. Don't throw out your arms in plaintive questions to the heavens yet, though. While the bar will go, a bar will stay; the property has been sold to the folks behind Columbia Heights' The Wonderland Ballroom. Following a tip from Prince of Petworth, we caught the Wonderland owners, Matthew McGovern......

Harry Jaffe: As the fallout from the shooting of 14-year-old DeOnté Rawlings continues, it's now Mayor Adrian Fenty taking some of the heat. According to Jaffe, Fenty's decision to pay for Rawlings' funeral and invite his sisters to speak at a press conference has soured some police officers on the young mayor, who saw the moves as an indication of where Fenty's allegiances were. "How can Fenty rebuild trust with the police?" asks Jaffe. “'Let......

Harry Jaffe: In writing something of a goodbye column to RFK Stadium, Jaffe recounts the many struggles the District overcame to attract a baseball team. And though plenty of people played important roles, he feels that one deserves extra attention -- former Mayor Anthony Williams. "The hero of the piece has to be Williams, an unpopular mayor who — despite his wandering attention span — kept swinging away at an unpopular crusade to use public......

Jonetta Rose Barras: In a powerfully introspective column, Rose Barras details a recent trip to her destroyed family home in New Orleans. In recounting her visit to the site, Rose Barras writes of the struggles endured by her mother and sister in trying to return and rebuild, drawing comparisons to the District's own troubles. "Truth told, New Orleans looks and feels like Ward 8 circa 1985: few quality retail outlets, high crime, high unemployment, poor......

Tom Knott: Once again, Tom Knott has managed to take what seems to be an isolated incident and turn it into evidence that liberalism of any sort is just evil. This week, Knott recounts the badly-handled trial of a Liberian immigrant accused of raping a seven-year-old girl in Montgomery County. Due to some bad decision by the trial judge, the charges were eventually dropped, though the county has stated that it will appeal. Regardless, it's......

Jonetta Rose Barras: "The District government is spending millions to send children to a controversial special education residential facility in Massachusetts that uses electric shock to discipline students." Wow. Talk about an opening sentence. Rose Barras dedicated her column this week to the 10 District students who have been sent to the facility -- the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, Ma. -- arguing that its unorthodox methods of treatment are reason enough to bring......

As Sommer mentioned earlier this week, I was fortunate enough to have been invited to speak on a panel on D.C. voting rights at the YearlyKos Convention, a huge gathering of progressive activists and bloggers in Chicago. This morning I will be sitting alongside D.C. Shadow Rep. Mike Panetta, Danny Rose from DC Vote and Kesh Luddewhetty of DC for Democracy, all of whom will detail the current fight for voting rights, where it stands......

For all you liberal/progressive internet/Netroots types in town who are heading to Chicago later this week for the behemoth 2nd annual YearlyKos Convention — and we know there are more than just a few of you — allow us to recommend some programming. On Friday, August 3 from 9:15 a.m. to 10:15 a.m., the panel you'll want to make sure not to miss is Taxation Without Representation: Alive and Well in the Nation's Capital, which......

Since 1983, Loose Lips, the City Paper's weekly local politics column, has been the place to get quirky news and commentary on the District's political figures. But today, James Jones, Loose Lips columnist for the last two years, bids farewell to the paper. Jones came to the City Paper after a stint at WAMU, and his first column was published on March 11, 2005. According to the folks at the City Paper, Jones has taken......

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......

It's not over yet folks: April is about to culminate with the biggest art weekend in recent memory. Artomatic and ColorField.remix continue to bring us a healthy helping of visual and performance art, and now we get one big, fat cherry of an art fair to top it all off this weekend, sprinkled with about a billion other shows placed to coincide with it, including one at a particular venue that deserves your attention. >>......

With all that went down this week, we thought we thought we'd cheer everyone up by giving everyone a double dose of dogs. It was a rollercoaster ride of emotions this week at DCist. Like the rest of country, we were floored by the news of so many dead coming out of Virginia Tech, and with so many of the victims and their relatives from the D.C. area, we felt it important to pay......

Once upon a time, in a dirty and slightly sticky corner of the motion picture industry, there were films produced purely for the sake of feeding audiences' seemingly endless appetite for gaudy sex and near pornographic violence, often slathered with buckets of unnaturally red viscera and always with a splashy title and equally eye-catching poster. The rise of independent cinema in the 1970s made for an explosion of these low-budget features, and audiences hungry for......

Hyperbole can be dangerous, but it’s hard to think of a more laugh-inducing scene that we’ve seen on the DC stage this season than Kate Eastwood Norris’s exchange with, well, herself, during Woolly Mammoth Theater’s uproarious production of She Stoops to Comedy. Kate is playing two lesbian lovers, Kay Fien and Jayne Summerhouse. The wonderfully self-aware She Stoops is more than conscious of the fact that the actress has been on double duty, and keeps......

Good morning, D.C. Thanks to all of you who came out to the Voting Rights Happy Hour last night. We had a great time meeting everyone and chatting about the future of full voting rights for D.C. Our friends and co-hosts at DC Vote were thrilled to be able to sign up so many new interested members and volunteers for their upcoming Voting Rights March on April 16, so thanks to them for coming out......

Though a puzzling choice for director, Chris Columbus' screen adaptation of Rent worked because it took a show that hadn't aged well and set it firmly in the 80s, easing its audience from the outset through the parts that felt dated. The same trick works for Sherry Glaser's one woman show, Family Secrets, now being staged at Theater J. In this production, in which the actress plays five members of a Jewish family in......

Back to the feeding trough, all. After spending a weekend in the beautiful and delicious Bay Area, it's nice to be back to the reality of dirty campaigning, impossible political prognostications, and the constant braying that the turrists are going to blow us up. I wouldn't be here if I didn't love it… Restaurants in Anacostia? Is it time to put a sit down restaurant in the middle of Anacostia? That's the question Washington Business......

While it's not unusual to see a solid cast backed by a capable ensemble in a typical D.C. theatrical production, your average show probably is only going to deliver one or two magnificent performances. Clearly, Theatre Alliance's production of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye is not your typical D.C. production. One after the other, we see the members of this graceful group of actors offer remarkable turns, particularly by the show's female contingent. The Bluest......

By DCist contributor Mehan Jayasuriya Having never been to a film screening at the Black Cat's backstage before, I must admit that I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I showed up on Monday night. As I found out, I was in for a night of uncomfortable zebra-print chairs, chain-smokers in linen pants and a seven-year old film on DVD, projected onto a pull-down screen. So yeah, exactly what I should have expected. The......

We know that many of you are skeptical that worthwhile culture could somehow bloom amidst the barren asphalt expanse of suburbia. But for those of you willing to maintain an open mind about such matters, we propose an evening raid of three of Annandale’s cultural gems in a series of lightning strikes that will enable you to get in, get out, and be back in your Mt. Pleasant basement apartment just in time for Charlie......

The new gallery season celebrations continue tomorrow, with openings galore. If you can't make the parties at night, take a Saturday afternoon stroll and check out the shows that opened last week. Friday >> Lycra's not just for undergarments anymore — now it's art! Visit Project 4 and see how Alex Gutierrez turns ass-molding spandex into a site-specific installation that is "a sort of 'bodyscape' architecture ... that is both prison-like and protective." Who doesn't......

What a night, eh Washington? If you're like us, you were up late listening to Kojo and Jonetta break down the election results as they came in on WAMU. Our favorite moment of the evening came just before 10 p.m., when Mayor Williams told co-host Jonetta Rose Barras she was crazy to suggest that anyone believed he had waited too long to decide if he would seek a third term. For the record Jonetta —......

FRIDAY: >> We don't usually hype big studio movies in the Picks, but when faced with a certain kind of reptile on a specific form of transportation — there's not much you can do but cross your fingers it doesn't turn out to suck and jump on the hype train (err, plane). More specifically, literally dozens of local D-list Internet celebrities will be attending the 10:10 p.m. screening of Snakes on a Plane at the......

Yesterday, we brought you the first half of our Georgetown markets series. We explored Sara's issues with pooches, Scheele's fixation on sticky reminders and the holy grail of a beer fridge in the deepest recesses of Georgetown Wine and Spirits. Today, we're tackling three new corner shops, and though collectively they still don't size up to a TJ's (or even have logoed brown bags), they do involve Leave It To Beaver, Turkish Delights (worthy of......

This post was written by DCist contributor Salima Appiah-Kubi. Warning: Some links contain nude photographs. This Saturday some of the leading ladies of modern burlesque will be taking it off for a good cause. Warehouse Theater will present Burlesque...As It Was, a night of classic striptease benefiting the Exotic World Burlesque Museum and Hall of Fame in Helendale, California. Produced by Kitty Victorian, the force behind much of D.C.’s burlesque scene, the benefit will......

Inside the House is a DCist feature offering an insider's view of fine dining issues by the hostess at a D.C. restaurant. By DCist contributor Nadya S. Nikiforova As you probably know by now, a positive dining experience is a two-way street between the diner and the establishment. And the first step toward that is a phone call you make when asking for a reservation. Sounds simple, right? It is. But anyone who has ever......

The truth is, on the cusp of the 20th and 21st centuries, you’d have been hard-pressed to find many people outside of the 212 area code talking much about a New York City rock “scene.” But when the Strokes emerged in late 2000 to play a pair of dates at the Mercury Lounge and the Bowery Ballroom, it touched off a period during which it often seemed that few could talk about anything else. Coupling......

FRIDAY: >> Here at DCist we like to pimp scrappy locals and industrious indies who are charging hard against the establishment. When it comes to stand-up comedy however, sometimes we have to make an exception. This isn't to say you shouldn't support up-and-coming local comedic talent. You should. But we'd be the first to admit that there's something particularly distasteful about amateur stand-up done badly -- when a comic punts on stage, you just have......

The District has an official flower (American Beauty Rose), tree (Scarlet Oak), and bird (Wood Thrush). But oversight of oversights, we don't have an official fruit. WJLA is reporting that the D.C. Council will consider a measure tomorrow to name an official fruit for the District, placing us alongside 26 other states with similar designations. Word has it that local elementary school students pointed out the omission to members of the council, who, recognizing future......

Remember all those times we've off-handedly mentioned that this winter would be slow for concerts? Well, the time is here. And comparisons to molasses or sloths or other slow moving things aren't far off. We all need some down time though, right? Those three concert weeks were starting to wear me down, and I want to be all fresh and shiny for the new year. There are a few things afoot, however, so take note......