We’ve always known that the city’s many community email lists are beehives of communication. Whether being used to promote neighborhood awareness or flush out arguments over local zoning ordinances, the email lists represent the best, the worst and the funniest of living in a densely populated urban area. This weekend the MPD-1D email list, used by police and residents living and working in the First District, was alive with controversy over a suspect ice cream…

Good morning, Washington. It looks like California’s still on fire, and likely to remain so. Most versions of the aforelinked AP story include the phrase “firefighters all but concede defeat,” and the Post is calling the resulting evacuation the largest in modern history. It all sounds pretty grim. Good luck, West Coast. Yet More Stadium Parking Controversy: The Post reports on the latest in a seemingly neverending series of deliberations over parking at the…

Long after the official fireworks display had ended last night, the District’s neighborhoods cracked and popped as residents of all types took to the streets with fireworks of their own. The city’s DIY fireworks culture isn’t anything new — we reported on it last year — but its opponents seem to have gotten much more vocal. Over the last week, residents have taken to neighborhood listservs to decry the July 4th tradition, arguing that the…

Yikes. Someone just forwarded us a disturbing e-mail from Commander Diane Groomes of the MPD’s First District. Anyone who walks around the Eastern Market area in the morning hours, or really probably at any hour, will want to know about it. On Friday morning at 0645 hours — a male citizen was walking to Navy Yard when he saw a male dancing in the street — he walked by and then felt a burning sensation…

This afternoon a loyal DCist reader sent us along a complaint, and some pictures to boot. Apparently police officers at a First District substation on Capitol Hill have a tendency to ignore the very parking rules District residents are forced, by fear of ticket, to follow. He writes: A typical day at the First District Substation. Their jobs are so important, they can park their private cars anywhere they darn well please. Think about…

Interminably troubled Council member Marion Barry suffered a minor traffic incident last night, which resulted in a traffic ticket but also, predictably, some speculation about his behavior. Shortly after midnight, Barry wrecked his car after pulling out of a parking space into an oncoming car. The collision took place near First Street and K in Southeast, near nightclubs and fast food restaurants and the site of the new Nationals baseball stadium. Barry was given a…