Photo by philliefan99

The District’s roads: They’re crumbling! All those cracks and divots, ruining your tires and tossing you off your bike. But every spring, the D.C. government makes a big show of responding to requests for pothole repairs, with the aim of fixing up thousands of faults in the asphalt in the span of about a month.

Since its 2009 founding by Gabe Klein, then the director of the District Department of Transportation, the annual “Potholepalooza” campaign has patched up more than 21,000 potholes, DDOT claims. The idea is that over the next month, DDOT will respond to requests to fix up the roads within 48 hours, rather than the typical 72 hours.

Mayor Vince Gray, DDOT Director Terry Bellamy, and road crews will begin this year’s campaign on the 1500 block of Whittier Street NW, which is an ugly patchwork of cracked road plates, pockmarked concrete, and other tire-shredding obstacles. But to get something fixed up during Potholepalooza, DDOT is asking residents to email or tweet at the agency, or call the city’s 311 line.

Potholepalooza is a silly name for some important roadwork, however, it’s no longer indigenous to D.C. With Klein now running Chicago’s Department of Transportation, the Windy City now has a Potholepalooza, which started earlier this month. And the formal announcement of Chicago’s roadwork was filled with far more puns and musical references than DDOT’s dry, gravelly press release.