Click To Play The 911 phone call placed by At-large Council member David Catania last week -- the one during which he claims he received "badgering treatment," but the 911 office said he was frantic and unintelligible -- has been released by WTOP. Take a listen to the audio. The recording is slightly warbled and Catania was clearly upset, but we can't help but side slightly more with the operator on this one. Responding to......

All of the DCist editors get hundreds of press releases every week, but Music Editor Amanda Mattos and I probably get more than most. We're always happy to receive information from publicists about events or stories affecting the D.C. metro area -- they often make our jobs easier, in fact. But fairly often, we receive press releases that, to put it lightly, cause us to question the mental faculties of certain publicists. For months now,......

You may have already heard about the small group of ANSWER Coaltion members who staged a lunchtime event Thursday to protest the District's attempts to get them to stop gluing posters on to utility boxes. Two demonstrators, one an Iraq war veteran and the other the mother of another veteran, were arrested on charges of defacing public property. DCist Tom stumbled on to the scene and snapped these images with his phone -- it's......

After only two days since the official start of the school year, the police have already been called to Southeast D.C.'s Ballou Senior High School. WUSA reports that a fight broke out in the school's cafeteria on Tuesday. No one was seriously injured, but the incident resulted in five arrests. It's just the latest problem for one of D.C.'s most chaotic schools. Back in 2003, you'll remember that Ballou was closed for more than......

In case you're working downtown and wondering what the heck is going on with all those ambulances, turns out firefighters were rescuing a man who had a medical emergency while operating the crane pictured at right at about 150 feet in the air. It's unclear what kind of emergency the man was having, but according to eyes on the ground, at just after 12:30 p.m. rescuers finally had the man down from the crane and......

Last Chance for A.V. Sad, we know. Get it before it becomes a half-empty office building. Restaurant Week Starts August 6 There are a few good things about Washington in August. First, it's so damned hot and soupy that there are about 100 times fewer tourists. Second, Congress leaves town and tons of governmental types take vacation, so town slows down considerably, leaving rush hour slightly less enraging. Third, it's when the summer version of......

Starting today, the funnies page in the Washington Post will be looking a little different: Mary Worth, Cathy and Broom Hilda have been given the boot to make room for Agnes, Brewster Rockit: Space Guy! and Brevity. Who could have foreseen that America's appetite for comics about stupid, nosy and/or shrew-like women would ever subside? We guess that Cathy's audience eventually found reading the strip to be a little too self-deprecating. There'll be a......

Because nothing says "fun times" like terrifying giant panda-costumed folks traveling in a motorcade and handing out single-use cameras across the metropolitan area, we just had to alert you folks to the zoo's newest promotional event. Starting Friday, October 13th, in order to celebrate the grand opening of the Fujifilm Giant Panda Habitat and Asia Trail, the fine folks at the Zoo and FONZ will be taking the panda show on the road. Apparently, the......

If you do, or just enjoy hearing them, you may want to attend the Roast of Anthony Williams on October 18th at the Marriott Wardman Park. The event is part of a Southeastern University gala, and for the low price of $250, will feature jokesters like Adrian Fenty, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Councilmembers David Catania and Jack Evans, GWU President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and Broadway actor and D.C. native......

Tonight is the night -- we'll be celebrating Butterstick's one-year of cuteness at Chief Ike's Mambo Room in Adams Morgan, 1725 Columbia Road, NW. And in his honor, we've gotten some good drink specials lined up -- $5 Captain Morgan drinks, $4 Paulaner Hefeweizen's, and $3 Pabst drafts. From what the zoo folks tell us, Butterstick loves his Pabst. There will also be some good music on both floors. And yes, we do have a......

Written by DCist Technology Editor Tom Lee. Between the nearly-biblical rains, eruption of explosions and massive scheduled work stoppage, you may not have noticed the recent changes to our humble corner of the Internet. But the folks at Gothamist have been hard at work, furiously wiping sweat from their brows with labcoat-clad arms (the pajamas go underneath). And now you can see the fruits of their labor. Behold: the mighty "Recommend this!" link now lies......

Happy Fourth of July, Washington! We hope you've got a good spot staked out for watching the fireworks. And we hope you've been having a good time not working — your morning roundup writers certainly have. That's because there's practically nothing to round up. With the local media mostly off for the holiday, the news is slooow. But that's not such a bad thing; we should all be manning grills, not computers. Here's to......

Written by DCist Tom Lee, on the road in the wilds of western North Carolina. It seems like there's been a lot of taxi-related news this week. Today the trend continues: the Post is reporting on the latest footnote to D.C.'s byzantine taxi system. It seems that Yellow Cab is testing out meters in its fleet -- but not the time & distance-based kind enjoyed by other cities. Instead, the new devices stick with......

This week saw the official introduction of our newest service to make all of our social lives that much easier -- Last Call. For those of you that missed the news, our tech guru Tom Lee has set up a system through which you can check Metro arrival times, movies, weather and open tables at area restaurants by simply sending us a text message with your query. We're working to iron out any hiccups, so......

An alert DCist reader directs our attention to the above graffiti (captured on her Verizon phone), which she found on the sidewalk at 15th and K Streets in Northwest. We're certainly not fans of corporate graffiti, although our own Tom Lee suggests the graphic may have been produced with spray on chalk, which would be tacky, but not destructive. However it was produced, this doesn't seem to beautify the city, exactly. Tsk, tsk, Verizon.......

Today's Opinion comes to us from proud biker and DCist's tech guru, Tom Lee. You've probably never met me, but odds are that you have a grudge against me anyway. It's not that I'm a particularly objectionable guy. I'm generally pretty friendly, and if you and I were to run into each other I'm sure we could make some pleasant smalltalk about music or movies or the Redskins. But eventually my horrible secret would be......

Today and tomorrow, we'll be taking the opportunity to look back at the year in D.C. and the year in DCist. We'll retrieve for you what we've determined are the best and most interesting DCist pieces in dining, arts, music, and news. This year we've written over two thousand posts (generating over ten thousand comments), and we figured the best way to start the reminiscence was to bring back for you the most read DCist......

Editor's Note: This week's agenda was compiled by DCist staffers Kyle Gustafson, Tom Lee, and Sommer Mathis. This week kicks off at the 9:30 Club with a doubleshot of artists from Wales. One is legendary, one should be (and might be yet). One is proud of their Welsh heritage, one not so much. One has panties thrown at him on a regular basis, the other throws carrots at their audience on a regular basis. Tuesday:......

This post is by DCist contributor Tom Lee. Free wifi is coming to Dupont Circle. Today's Post reports that area consulting firm TechAssist LLC will begin offering free wireless access this Friday. Web users will fire up their laptops or PDAs, select the network with an SSID named "FreeDupont Wireless," accept the license agreement that appears in their browser, and commence pretending that they're actually indoors. Hurray! But browse with care. You're sharing that signal......

Happy Thursday, D.C. Well, if another day of high humidity and the threat of thunderstorms could be "happy"... In good travel-related news, scheduling your restroom trips on flights to and from Reagan National Airport just got easier: the restrictions on leaving your seat within thirty minutes of takeoff or landing have been lifted in the wake of a restructuring of the Department of Homeland Security. Created in response to the 9/11 attacks, the regulations......