Results tagged “spymuseum”

DCist's guide to lectures and discussions in the D.C. area

This month the area's museums are chock full of celebrations, openings, anniversaries and festivals. Enough to keep your dance card filled and your brain active.

>> Recently opened on July 18 and running through January 3 is Dig It! The Secrets of Soil at the Natural History Museum. The exhibit covers a massive 5,000 square feet with interactive learning activities which explore fungi, bacteria, worms, and other organisms often hidden from view. Check the website for a wealth of related learning materials for the kiddies.

>> The Rock and Roll Hotel hosts Austin's electro-indie Octopus Project and Shout Out Out Out Out. $10, 8:30 p.m. >> Rustico in Alexandria is bringing back its delightfully insane Don't Hassel the Hof Brau party, which honors Munich's famous Hofbrau Oktoberfest beer as well as perennial German favorite and noted drunk entertainer, David Hasselhoff. Free Hofbrau mugs with every beer, and our own beer guy, Eric Denman, will be tending bar and sporting...

Would you be willing to pay $25 for a photograph of yourself standing next to someone who looks eerily similar to your favorite celebrity? That's the question you'll want to answer before venturing in to the new Madame Tussauds wax museum at 10th and F Streets NW, which opens to the public today. Last night, DCist attended the opening party for the attraction. We say attraction purposefully, because Madame Tussauds isn't a museum at...

We wanted to remind you about this weekend's upcoming photo contest sponsored by DCist and non-profit Cultural Tourism DC as part of the semi-annual WalkingTown DC event. On Sept. 29, photographers are encouraged to attend any of the free walking tours on offer as part of WalkingTown DC, and enter their photos to win great prizes. Details and rules below, and also feel free to sign up for the unofficial Flickr group.

DCist is once again an official media sponsor of the free walking tours offered twice a year by non-profit Cultural Tourism DC. This time around, WalkingTown DC, a day-long event scheduled for Sept. 29, is teaming up with us to sponsor a photo contest to encourage people to come out to the free tours and snap photos as you explore new neighborhoods.

Remember the days of the Cold War, when Soviet and American diplomats would slyly meet in D.C. restaurants to share some moo shu in between bringing the world to the edge of nuclear annihilation? It seems the days of Spy vs. Spy aren't as far in the past as we'd like to think. As you've no doubt heard, on March 1 Paul Joyal, an expert on Russian intelligence, was shot outside his Adelphi, Maryland home,...

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 &...

If you haven't made your way down to Gallery Place today, you're missing quite the celebration. The Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery opened their doors today after a six year renovation. Dancers, puppet-masters, Andy Warhol impersonators and live bands are ushering in the new era for the former Patent Office Building. Oh, and the free ice cream is nice, too.

Adjacent to the International Spy Museum, Zola features a modern, cool interior that only nominally follows the theme of subterfuge. Walls are decorated with various lines of what we think was code, either in Cyrillic, English, or some unidentifiable alphabet. Though the space is cramped -- barely five feet separate the bar from the dividing wall into the restaurant -- it fits the bar well, and a larger seating area at the front lets lucky patrons sit in comfort while enjoying the specialty cocktails.

Since the death of Visions, the District has been sorely lacking in genuine art house cinema fare. But a brief sweep of the summer film landscape has turned up a much more eclectic and inviting set of mid-week options than we would have guessed, from well chosen special screenings at familiar venues to intriguing, less obvious options. Get it while the gettin's good: art houses everywhere seem to be going the way of the gray wolf.