Welcome back to work, Washington. This week promises not only to feel longer than normal thanks to its coming on the heels of a holiday, but also hot enough that you might want to consider setting up an ad-hoc shower in your office, as there’s little chance you’ll get there without breaking into a sweat first. The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments has issued a Code Orange alert because of the heat wave, and…

By DCist Contributor Matt Pelkey On the Fourth of July you light fireworks, on Memorial Day you grill hunks of meat, and on Labor Day you grill more hunks of meat. But how should you celebrate Emancipation Day this Monday? The voting rights march leaves little excuse for perverting another holiday into reason for a meaningless leisure activity. But if for some reason you can’t be at the march, make up for it by heading…

This stinks. Literally. D.C.’s Emergency Management email alerts report that a truck lost “its entire load of trash” on outbound Interstate 395 just before the 6th Street SW exit. They say “expect delays” and we assume some bad smells as well. Looks like a bad time for those drivers heading east from the city on 395, unless they can get this picked up. If you’re in the area, let us know what they spilled. Hopefully…

Just a little public service announcement for our readers who drive. If you by any chance need to initiate or renew your vehicle registration this month and require an inspection, you’ll need to get to the SW Inspection Station earlier than normal. The Half Street SW station will be observing code red heat advisory service hours beginning today and at least through Wednesday, which means they’ll be opening at 5 a.m. and closing at 1…

Yesterday the lineup for this year’s edition of the HFStival was announced and headlining the two day festival will be Kanye West and…Counting Crows? Kanye is a no brainer but the addition of Counting Crows, in a headlining slot no less, seems to be a curious one. The band hasn’t released an album of original material since 2002 and tends to have a fan base that skews much older than the Clear Channel approved…

We once had a housemate who had a winter internship at the Smithsonian and worked in the Arts and Industries Building, that “2 1/2-acre fairy tale castle in polychrome brick” (according to an AIA guide) at Seventh Street SW and Independence Avenue. But during that winter, there was some concern that the 125 year-old roof couldn’t support the weight of the snow. The building was closed to visitors, but was still somehow safe for workers,…

Amid the media attention focusing on last week’s Inauguration, the Congressionally chartered home mortgage loan giant Fannie Mae announced it pulled out of its plans to move some of its staff to Southwest D.C. Hailed as one of the key pieces to spur redevelopment in the vicinity of the Waterside Mall on M Sreeet SW, a Fannie spokesman says “[t]he decision is one of several actions Fannie Mae has taken to reduce future costs in…

We apologize if we’re going into Inaugural overload. But when your city is effectively shut down, it is difficult to really avoid it. So last night, this DCist did a little tour to see what was going on around town. At dinner in Dupont Circle, a friend said of the regular stream of helicopters circling the city’s central neighborhoods: “Is this like the Tet offensive? Limos of all sorts of flavors and colors (black, white,…

A federal contractor was taken to the hospital yesterday with non-life threatening stab wounds after some sort of confrontation with another employee. The USDA complex at Independence Avenue and 14th Street SW was put on lockdown as the situation was brought under control. But the details behind the stabbing are still quite sketchy, the Post reports. Like many federal departments and agencies, security at Agriculture is farmed out to private security contractors, but is overseen…

Veterans Day is tomorrow and the official observance of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month will bring a whole host of closures and modified schedules. Check out the District’s rundown of Veterans Day events and closures. Veterans Day is rooted in Armistice Day, which remembers when the guns fell silent on the Western Front during the first World War. In a city that has memorials dedicated to Armenian earthquake victims,…