Before delving too deep into the National Building Museum’s newly installed mini-golf course, let’s dispense with a few ground rules. There are no windmills or fairy-tale castles. Nor will you find any clowns’ mouths, pirates’ galleons or loop-the-loops.

We’ve talked about D.C.’s walkability before a bit, but have yet to delve into the implications of the online tool at Walkscore.com, which rates the walkability of cities and neighborhoods around the country. Walkscore launched in late May, and many other local bloggers noted the site then. The online tool allows you to plug in your own address in order to receive a “walkability score” based on the closeness of amenities like grocery stores, bars…

Over at Reason’s Hit and Run blog, Katherine Mangu-Ward dips in to a book review she found in European Affairs that describes an aspect to Pierre L’Enfant’s original idea for the federal city that we’d never heard of before. We all know about how the District’s elaborate grid system of numbers, letters and states was intended to create lots of little squares, triangle parks and other such public spaces in between. But did you know…

>> D.C. United and Chivas Guadalajara renew their budding rivalry this evening. The match is part of the Copa Nissan Sudamericana, a 34-team invitational tournament featuring the best clubs of South America and several North American teams looking to crash the party. The match could be one of the most entertaining, competitive affairs this season. United aims to atone for their first round exit from the tournament two years ago; they also seek to…

DCist Jeff Beam contributed to this post. Drew McManus, who writes about the orchestra business at the ArtsJournal blog Adaptistration, has dubbed April Take a Friend to the Orchestra month. For the second year now, Drew has lined up names in the classical music world to write pieces on how ordinary people who love classical music can invite a friend who does not regularly go to hear live music to a concert. This year’s articles…

>>It’s 5:00 and already time to set our Snowpocalypse meters to “high.” Some schools are closing early with the mere mention of precipitation. [NBC] >> In reality, this whole event looks like a dud to us. NWS has moved the winter weather advisory up to end at 5 a.m. tomorrow and place accumulation of 1 inch as an outside chance at the best. All we can really expect at this point is a “light wintry…

You have to give Steven Pearlstein credit. It’s easy to be wrong about stuff: to call Tysons Corner a choice address, to fault Reston for not having bums and graffiti, or to assert that building churches is a better use of public money than constructing a tunnel for the Orange Line extension. Anyone can pen those garden variety inanities. It takes balls to compare Route 7 to Midtown Manhattan. That’s some grade A crazy; we’re…

This morning, the Post reminds us that in cities, as in everything, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. The paper covers a new study from the Center for Housing Policy today, which finds that the advantages of cheaper suburban housing are quickly offset by the expense of longer commutes. The report goes on to note that even so, there is no question of living near the central city for lower income residents;…

Yesterday, the Post declared support for 1960s-style urbanism dead. No longer, they say, are we to be held hostage by soaring freeways, concrete office blocks, and the utter deadness of the streets and neighborhoods ushered in by the age of the car. Finally, we’ve learned how vital it is to encourage pedestrian traffic and to take advantage of our waterfront resources; We understand that you cannot design cities around automobile use. Except where the Whitehurst…

The District has become expert at approaching public issues with an ambivalence approaching schizophrenia. We want and don’t want development, fear and don’t fear gentrification, and embrace and disdain our suburbs. Perhaps nothing encapsulates our status as capital of the love-hate relationship more than our approach toward big-box retail. Many of us looked on with approval at Annapolis’ decision to require more health care spending from Wal-Mart, and residents of Northeast D.C. waged an all-out…