By DCist contributor Celeste Dawn Mitchell Any time’s a good time for barbecue — it’s one of the few foods I have a perpetual hankerin’ for. And the saving grace in working in the outer reaches of Northeast is my proximity to Hogs on the Hill, home of “DC’s Best Hickory Smoked Pit B-B-Q.” The venerable “Hogs” is nowhere near the Hill, and the number “3” on the storefront is a holdover from its franchise…

Today’s Opinionist comes to us from local freelance writer Lisa Gschwandtner. DC is frequently described as “Hollywood for ugly people.” People who live here tend to resent this characterization. I am not one of those people. Before I came to DC, I lived among the fashionable and the glamorous in New York, and I can say this: You can’t compete with the 20-something girls employed by Conde Nast publications whose outfits belie their $30,000-a-year salaries….

Shalom, readers. The Washington, D.C. area welcomes competing Jewish Literature Festivals to town: The Hyman S. and Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival at the DCJCC and the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington’s 36th Annual Book Festival. Both festivals offer exciting programs. On 16th Street, the DCJCC kicks things off Monday with Nick Olcott, one of the leading lights in the local theater scene, paying special tribute to Arthur Miller and Saul Bellow. It continues…

Last night over 250 District voting rights activists attended an event they probably all wished they wouldn’t have to celebrate — DC Vote’s Champions of Democracy 2005 award ceremony. Held in the Madison Hotel along 15th Street, attendees came together to share in food, drink, and mutual indignation over an undeniable and odious injustice forced upon the city’s 600,000 residents — the inability to vote for members of Congress. Beneath the pleasant social atmosphere ran…

For a while there, we thought D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams was regretting having started a blog — two of his first three posts involved apologizing for his slow pace of posting, a huge no-no in a fast-paced information society that demands at least one new post a day. Since then, though, Williams has picked up the pace, offering unfiltered opinions on everything from public schools to the benefits of the power of eminent domain. In…