This weekend the Black Cat invited old D.C. music stalwarts and promising new bands to celebrate the club’s 20th anniversary. Across the board, the performances from the weekend were spirited and the joy and reverence for the space, genuine. However, throughout the weekend-long party a few moments stood out.

Via The Examiner, it looks like it’s finally been long enough that we can start to measure the financial impact of the District’s smoking ban, thanks to reported tax revenues on both alcohol and cigarettes for the fiscal year now being available. Overall, the news is good: alcoholic beverage tax revenues are up 1.6 percent for fiscal 2007, while cigarette tax dollars are down a whopping 7.5 percent for the year. Taken at face value,…

As you’ll recall from last summer’s round of Crime Emergency-associated legislation, teens in the District were forced to obey a curfew of 10 p.m. throughout the summer months in an effort to stem the tide of law breaking that was often blamed on youths being out on the streets, up to no good. Did it help? Not particularly as far we could ever tell, though it did allow police to release figures about how many…