In belt-tightening times, local jurisdictions look to suck as much extra money out of residents as possible. But what type of tax will bring in additional revenue without driving people away from that activity? Alcohol. more ›

If the powers that be think we're going to go easily or quietly, they're wrong. The Post today exposed a devious little plan to chip away at the District's identity, starting with phasing out the city's postmark and replacing it instead with one bearing the name of our northern neighbor, Maryland. According to a Post study, of 235 letters mailed from every quadrant and zip code within city limits, only 24 -- 10 percent --... more ›

>> In case you missed our full interview with Josh Ritter this morning, check it out before heading over to see the singer/songwriter at 9:30 club, with Old School Freight Train. $20 tickets are still available, doors 7:30 p.m. >> Renowned poet Simon Armitage is at Olsson's in Old Town for a free reading of his latest translation of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight". 7 p.m., read all about it in our preview.... more ›

A little patience resulted in this great photo by Flickr user epmd. He says the first night he shot this colorful playground in the evening, nothing was to his satisfaction, so, undeterred, he went out again a few nights later and came back with this wonderfully exposed shot. EXIF. more ›

Nicknamed "Waves and Gulls," the Navy-Marine Memorial on Columbia Island is probably among the least photographed monuments in D.C. Flickr user Leica Mark makes up for it with this technically and artistically fantastic shot of it with his, of course, Leica M7. In fact, he has a whole series of amazing monument shots that seriously put to shame what's out there displaying our city to the rest of the world. more ›

By now you must know how much DCist loves our photographers who contribute through Flickr. You're probably sick of hearing us talk about them really, like your co-worker with the fabulous new millionaire boyfriend she keeps gabbing on about. But we can't help it -- we just adore these folks for offering up such great work to share with us. So you can understand why we've been so upset after reading the following discussion from... more ›

What does a young graffiti artist brought down in his prime do? Go back to tagging of course, but this time for a living. Borf, the notorious Virginia-based graffiti artist that spent the better part of two years brazenly tagging everything in the District from garbage cans to highway signs (a sampling of his work is pictured here), may just have found his dream job. After being sentenced to a month in jail last February... more ›

One last list of picks from local arists as we look back on the year that was 2006. Today's final installment comes courtesy of W. Ellington Felton, Jukebox The Ghost, The Fake Accents, Telograph and the DCist Music Staff. W. Ellington Felton 1. Thom Yorke, Eraser This is an electronic record minus the noise that a lot of the others out there have. I can listen to this straight through. This is the perfect cd... more ›

Amanda Mattos contributed to this post. A recent tip from Dave at Indiefolkforever lead us to a rather unflattering portrait of our fair city. Norfolk & Western, a Portland band that visited D.C. last month, apparently didn't have a very nice time playing DC9 or visiting the U street/Shaw neighborhood in Northwest D.C. As part of a tour journal posted on Local Cut, the band wrote: Washington DC proved to be a less pleasant experience... more ›

For those of us who considered the idea of an electronic music massive dead, Omnipresent Syndicate has a prepared a compelling case as to why we should reconsider. Enter Gathering DC, a party tomorrow night at Love featuring some of the best house DJs in the world. The first class lineup includes David Morales, one of the first "Superstar DJs," Miami's Robbie Rivera, and New York's Todd Terry (known for his remix "I'll House You"... more ›

Written by DCist contributor Vince Wadhwani, of BuyIndie.net more ›

Being a political town, perhaps you've found your friend pool shrink drastically over the past few weeks, as politicos head to places near and far to spread the the joy of democracy to the people. You've noticed that Hill bars have felt rather empty during recent Thursday nights. Maybe you've found yourself lamenting over the fact that you're not feeling the rush of a campaign, and you're looking for local ways to get involved on the national level, even at this late date. DCist called up the Republican and Democratic committees for Maryland, Virginia and the District and tried to gather up ways to get involved. What we've pooled together are some volunteer resources, as well as a few specific events and contacts to help you hit the ground running during the last two weeks out of Election '06. Sure, it won't make up for your sudden dearth of friends, but you can make some new friends while phone banking for your candidate of choice. more ›

Many DCists' tango knowledge draws exclusively from sexy Antonio Banderas dance scenes, Scent of a Woman, or that Shakira video in constant rotation at Gold's Gym. But there's an entire world of tango out there, and the district is showcasing the sultry dance this week during the Washington DC Tango Festival. more ›

Compiled by Amanda Mattos, Kyle Gustafson, James Smalley and Chris Snyder more ›

Summer is here and with it comes wholesome outdoor entertainment for the whole family. The spotlit evening baseball games, campground marshmallow roasting, and of course, the subversive DC rock concert series that is Fort Reno. Boasting no alcoholic beverages but a lot of teens and a few strollers, the free concert rocks atop the highest point in DC every Monday and Thursday from 7:30-9:30 throughout the summer. During the civil war, the Parrot heavy rifles... more ›

Rusty, it was your wingman post. more ›

For the past two days, Washington DC’s 9:30 club has played host to two of indie rock’s most well regarded bands—The New Pornographers and Belle and Sebastian. While you’d never mistake one band for the other, the common traits of both acts on this nominally co-headliner tour are their highly inventive songwriting and dextrous musical arrangements. Over the past two days, fans of both bands came out in force, but it was clear after two days that the Belle and Sebastian partisans caught the better end of the deal. Hampered by an illness to a critical band member, the New Pornographers struggled to match the high-flying pyrotechnics of their most recent studio album, Twin Cinema. DCist came out to cover the show on its second night. This brief review of the New Pornographers’ truncated and star-crossed performance will be followed tomorrow with a review of Belle and Sebastian’s appearance. more ›

It was just last week that the City Paper debuted a new, snazzier website, and a little further down memory lane that the Washington Times undertook its own online upgrade. Now the Examiner has followed suit, presenting the District with its fresh yet simple new website today. more ›

Dybbuk, the term for a spirit that enters the body of someone who is living, is derived from the Hebrew word "to cling". Appropriately, the Washington DC Jewish Community Center's (DCJCC) production of S. Anski's classic Jewish text, The Dybbuk, focuses on characters who cling to things a little too tightly. Leah's father Sender (Irakli Kavsadze), for example, clings to the idea that a marriage full of material riches, in contrast to one formed by love, is best for his daughter. Leah's (Irinia Tsikurishvili) love interest, Chonnon (Andrew Zox), clings to his scholarly works and becomes entranced by the mysticism of Kabbalah as a way to seek explanation for that which cannot be explained. more ›

Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, took a rare swipe at the United States, saying he was puzzled why residents in the capital of the world's oldest democracy have no Congressional voting rights. more ›

Nike says "oops," according to Pitchfork Media. The shoe giant has apologized for blatantly ripping off imagery from the cover of hardcore band Minor Threat’s 1981 self-titled album. Last week, it was reported that Nike Skateboarding was using a design eerily similar to the Minor Threat album to promote its "Major Threat" 2005 East Coast skateboarding tour. D.C.'s own Dischord Records was pissed and said as much, but it wasn’t until yesterday that Nike expressed... more ›

Stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before. Bloggers, always getting down to work in their pajamas. With tacky, fluffy bunny slippers, quaffing ranch dressing right out of the bottle as they issue their diatribes. Okay, okay. I hear you shouting, "Enough already." It’s a cliché, to be sure, but the last time I checked, a Google fight between "bloggers and pajamas" and "bloggers and three-piece suits with stylish wingtips" was a decided rout in favor of the hoary old chestnut. more ›

With the city's red-hot housing market showing no signs of easing, dozens of luxury condominium projects are either under construction or opening soon throughout the city, especially downtown and near Metro stations. On the web, DCGentrification.com has listings of projects along U Street and in Columbia Heights, JD Land's Near Southeast webpage contains an impressive compendium of information about development in that region, and DCLofts.com has an exhaustive listing of "Lofts, loft-style, and urban condo living in Washington DC, Northern Virginia, and Maryland." more ›

When we saw the headline on the BBC's homepage "Educating America: How the Christian Right is attempting to transform US culture" we clicked through, interested to find out precisely what our friends across the pond had discovered about America. We were even more interested when it turned out the story was a profile of a school just 50 miles from D.C., Patrick Henry College, founded in 2000 by a home school activist for primarily evangelical... more ›

Although D.C. has a growing group of dedicated photobloggers (see our list on the bottom left) there are many photographers who would like to share their photos online but who don't have the technical skills -- or the time -- to run a full time photoblog. For them there is the Washington DC/Metro Area photo sharing group on the popular photography website Flickr. Flickr can best be described as a super-charged Friendster (or TheFacebook) for photos, where users upload their photos to share with friends, browse photos by topic, and create or join thematic groups. Rumors have been flying lately about the site being purchased, perhaps by online titans Yahoo or Google. more ›

It's not clear if Elissa Silverman, the City Paper's Loose Lips columnist, knew that her "Secret Santa" column late last year would be her final piece criticizing and poking fun at D.C. political figures. If she had known, we would have liked her to 'present' us with an announcement of her upcoming departure. Then we could have immediately applied for her awesome former job. According to the today's print version of the City Paper, applicants... more ›

You know what? D.C. gets a bum rap sometimes, but there really is a ton of great stuff constantly going on in this town, and not just on the weekends. With that in mind, DCist brings you Out and About: Hump Day -- events dedicated to Wednesday, that most humpable day of the week. Check out what's happening this evening: more ›

In the interest of trying to be relatively neutral, we here at DCist cannot normally go off into the sort of ranting and raving reviews of shows and bands that we might like to. (Also because it would probably put you to sleep to hear all of our pretentious ramblings.) But that doesn’t mean we can’t point you toward a couple of great sites that know their stuff about the local music scene. So we hereby give the linkage love to recently-revamped local music sites Big Yawn and Here’s a Hint. more ›

DCist spotted this nifty little button on the bus today. The owner, who conveniently had an extra when we expressed interest, said it was from the new Adidas store in Georgtown. more ›