Have you ever walked south on 16th Street on the right hand side across U Street? You have a light there, but then you have to cross New Hampshire with a crosswalk and no light.
View Larger Map The wife and I do it just about every day on the way to work. It’s not a problem to cross U Street, but crossing New Hampshire is a little dicey. Almost every day, someone assumes that, because they aren’t turning at a 90 degree angle, they don’t have to yield to pedestrians. Twice in the last month or so, we’ve had a car actually slow down or pull over to yell at us for getting in the way. This is all while walking in a crosswalk, by the way. The wife, being more confrontational than I, has exchanged words with some of these drivers. I emailed Jim Graham yesterday, and he has tasked a staff member with looking into it. I want them to put up a sign reminding people that they have to yield. I know it’s a funny intersection, but it’s an area with a lot of foot traffic, and it’s dangerous. It doesn’t help that many pedestrians will yield their right of way to cars. I understand the reasoning there – if you get hit by a car, your broken bones and whatnot don’t really care about the stand you were making for pedestrian’s rights. However, when you give up your right of way, you are also taking mine, because now the drivers think they’re right. So stand up for your right of way. And if you’ve ever had this trouble at this intersection, or any other, write to your councilmember. I don’t actually know who’s in charge of that area – Ward 1 and Jim Graham’s turf ends just north of there at Florida Avenue. But your councilmember would no doubt be aware of who needs to be notified. I’ll keep you posted on what he intends to do about it.
Tag: dc
Rainout
The Nationals game was rained out last night, so I didn’t get to see Albert Pujols. It was fun anyway – we wandered around the stadium, stopped at Ben’s Chili Bowl, and then came home. I actually saw someone wearing a McGwire shirt. I’m kind of surprised – I thought he was pretty much disgraced and forgotten. I mean, he was my favorite player growing up, and I wouldn’t wear a McGwire shirt. There was also a tiny girl in an Eckstein jersey, probably about the size of Eckstein himself. I’d guess she weighed about 95 pounds. I almost took a picture of her to send to Fire Joe Morgan, but then I thought she might not appreciate it. Edit to add: They’re making up the game today at 1, which doesn’t really work for my schedule, but Pujols isn’t playing. I don’t really mind missing a game between the awful Nationals and the Pujols-free Cardinals. Edit again to add: Pujols pinch hit in the 7th and hit one out in a 4-1 Cardinals win. Now I’m annoyed. I should have gone to the game.
Best Buy electronics recycling comes to Columbia Heights!
Via Gizmodo, our new local Best Buy in Columbia Heights is part of the free electronics recycling test.
Starting June 1, 117 stores in the Baltimore, San Francisco, and Minnesota markets are inviting customers to bring in no more than two (2) units per day, per household, for recycling at no charge. Customers can bring items such as televisions and monitors up to 32”, computers, phones, cameras, and other electronics devices and peripherals in for recycling.
This is really great for DC residents, because while the dump does take electronics to be recycled, my one experience there ended with a never-ending line that I soon abandoned. And now the old and busted computer sitting in the trunk of my car can finally have a new home!
My happy hour was a success
A couple weeks ago, I started planning a happy hour for the Columbia Heights Forum because people were starting to argue a bit too much, as people tend to do on forums. I figured it would be more friendly if people met each other in person. So the happy hour was last night at Wonderland, and it was pretty cool. I met a few people I “know” from the forum, and we had some local blog coverage (The Heights Life has a picture of our group at that link). There was a bit of discussion about making these meetups a little more regular, so we’ll see what happens. There are still a few forum regulars I’m dying to meet in person. Edit to add: In the comments to the Heights Life post, there is a discussion EXACTLY like the discussions that prompted me to plan the happy hour in the first place. People get angrier discussing things on the internet because you can’t see a person’s face, you can’t hear the tone of their voice, you can’t get the non-verbal cues that tell you what the person is really saying. And it’s anonymous – it’s much easier to hate someone you don’t actually know. So I think it’s kind of amusing that the post about the happy hour generated exactly the sort of discussion that the happy hour was supposed to prevent.
Saturday Night at Nationals Park
We went to our first game using my company’s season tickets. The seats are great, just past first base. The results of the game weren’t too great – a 5-2 loss to the Brewers. Luckily, I’m an Orioles fan, and I don’t really care too much if the Nats lose. Not many others seem to care, either – 30,029 was the announced attendance, just shy of 3/4 full. For a beautiful Saturday night over Memorial Day weekend, I expected a full house. There were a ton of kids there – the lines for ice cream were crazy, but it was easy to get a beer. The rest of the pictures are here. They’re probably only really interesting to me, but you’re welcome to look at them, too. 
I’m looking forward to our next game – the Cardinals are in town, and we’ll get a good look at Albert Pujols at first. Always nice to see a future first ballot Hall of Famer in the prime of his career. And we saw Charlie Manning’s major league debut. He gave up a hit and struck out two, so I imagine he’s pleased with that. Finally, we made a return trip to Ben’s Chili Bowl, fantastic as usual. For $7, the veggie chili cheese fries are a deal by ballpark standards. Going to the stadium and skipping Ben’s is just crazy.
Thanks, Mount Pleasant Mainstreet
The banner is gone! Apparently the contractors fixed their mistake, and our street is no longer mistakenly identified as Mount Pleasant. Nice turnaround time on the fix, too. Isn’t it nice when everything goes your way?
Mount Pleasant misplaced a banner
Many of you in the DC area have probably seen the street light banners advertising various neighborhoods around the city. I think it’s a cool idea. It can help you identify a neighborhood, and I think they try to contain a little bit of the unique elements of each neighborhood. But Mount Pleasant, an otherwise lovely neighborhood, is infringing on our turf. The eastern edge of Mount Pleasant is 16th Street. This makes it a little surprising to see one of their banners proudly displayed on the 1400 block of Harvard Street. I’m not sure if I should really be so annoyed about this. The wife tells me that, back when Columbia Heights was getting its Metro stop, they wanted to call it Columbia Heights/Mount Pleasant. At the time, Mount Pleasant was a much nicer neighborhood, and wanted nothing to do with Columbia Heights. Now that Columbia Heights has a new infusion of shopping and restaurants, apparently we’re not so distasteful anymore. I emailed Mount Pleasant Mainstreet, the organization that sponsors the banners, to see what the big idea was. I’ll let you know what they tell me. Edit to add: I got a reply from them already.
If that’s true then it’s a huge mistake from the contractor. Thanks for pointing that out. I’ll bike over and take a look and have them correct this. We’re missing several on Mt Pleasant St. Thanks, [Mount Pleasant Mainstreet guy]
Damn you, loose bricks!
The wife and I took the bus today (Stupid rain on Bike to Work Day), thinking that would keep us dry. We slept with the window open, and it was raining pretty steadily when we woke up. When we walked out of the house, it really wasn’t raining much. We could have walked, but then we would have had to go back inside so I could change. So we continued on to the bus. Three of them came right away, so we managed to get a seat together, and were off. Then it started to drip. Inside the bus. Luckily, we were wearing our handy matching raincoats, so that wasn’t too big a deal. Then we got off the bus and went our separate directions. I turned onto 15th, and just before I crossed New York Avenue, I stepped on a loose brick in the sidewalk. It splashed a substantial amount of dirty rainwater onto my right pant leg and shoe. The moral of the story is that rain sucks and we should have just walked.
Awful website, great restaurant
The wife and I had dinner at Rumba Cafe in Adams Morgan last night. It was a 1000 point reservation at Open Table, which puts us almost to a $50 gift certificate to any restaurant that deals with Open Table, which is awesome. The Rumba Cafe website seems to be under maintenance this morning (I think it should be euthanized, personally (And did you know that “euthanized” isn’t in the default Firefox dictionary? Weird)), but no matter. We sat outside, since it was so nice last night. The service was very good, the beer mediocre, and the food was excellent. I had the steak with a fried egg on top, served with rice and black beans and a fried plantain. Reminded me of Costa Rican “casados”, which I love. The wife had some kind of fish, I forget what, but it was good, too. I highly recommend Adams Morgan when it’s not overrun with kids (By kids I mean 23-year-olds). 8PM on a Tuesday it’s alive with people (Plenty of kickballers and others just out for dinner or a drink) but doesn’t have that “everyone around you is wasted” vibe that it gets on the weekend. It was just a nice spring evening.
DDOT is a pain
The parking saga continues. A response today from DDOT, and the email I sent back are here. The wife wrote the email that I sent back. I may be the complainer in the household, but she’s better at snippy. We make a good team.