Photo by nevermindtheend

Good morning, Washington. This passive-aggressive winter shows its soft side again today, with temperatures to hit the mid-50s by the afternoon. It’s not like it snowed yesterday or anything.

Metro Opens Wallets: With a $116 million budget deficit looming, Metro is proposing all kinds of fare hikes that would take effect later this year, the Post reports. Top among the changes would be a big hit on riders who use paper Farecards, which would be put on flat rates for one-way trips of $6 during rush hour and $4 for off-peak times. SmarTrip users would see smaller increases, starting with a 10-cent jump in the base fare to $1.70.

Murdered Over Shoes: It appears that David Lee Robinson, a 19-year-old from Northwest D.C., was killed early Sunday morning at 58th and Foote streets NE over his sneakers. An MPD official tells WTOP investigators “don’t have any information that suggests that this was not a stranger-on-stranger robbery.” Sadly, this looks like a real-life version of an Internet hoax last month that claimed a D.C. teen was killed while trying to buy Air Jordans.

Don’t Gloat, Yglesias: The building at 52 O Street NW has, for years, been a kind of artists’ colony, offering living and working quarters to generations of D.C. artists since 1978. But now it appears the first floor of the structure is going to be cleared out and converted into a single-tenant space, forcing the evictions of several current resident artists, City Paper reports.

Briefly Noted: Gray and Kwame finally get mad … Disabled drivers to get parking meters … Northern Virginia torn over McDonnell’s schools plan … Caps lose again … Anti-Joe Mamo bill still alive, Cheh says.

This Day in DCist: In 2011, D.C. Democrats passed the bag around for low-dollar donations, and Washington was the most literate city in the country. In 2010, Joe Theismann and Joe Gibbs were not cut out for broadcasting.