BUSINESS

INS & OUTS

BY ROBERT DEVANEY

REOPENING: GLOVER PARK WHOLE FOODS

The red-brick facade has been painted gray. The clock above the garage entrance is gone. A fresh set of Whole Foods signage has been erected. The door is open, but a sign reads: “Store is Closed.” Construction workers are moving about the store. Peeking inside, those who have shopped at the market since its opening in 1996 can detect the outline of an emerging store.

Yes, the long lament — since March of 2017 — by Glover Park, Burleith and Georgetown residents over the closure of the Whole Foods Market at 2323 Wisconsin Ave. NW has come to an end. Although not confirmed by Whole Foods, rumors are flying that its Glover Park store could reopen during the summer.

“We are thrilled to announce that Whole Foods Market will be returning to Glover Park,” said a Whole Foods spokesperson in a statement last year. “We will be completing a remodel of the store before reopening our doors, so stay tuned for more details on timing. We look forward to returning to serving the community we’ve been part of for more than 20 years.”

Last year, the two parties in a lawsuit — the grocer and the landlord — settled before the case was to go to trial over the issue of rodents. Whole Foods is owned by Amazon. men’s tailoring service is also available.

The company writes that “it will also operate as a community space by opening up their second-floor lounge for public and private events tailored to the Budd & Co. customer, Georgetown and the Washington area as a whole. Independently from the store, the upstairs lounge is Budd & Co.’s opportunity to engage the local community through a series of social events — more info to come in the coming weeks.”

REOPENING: LANTERN BOOK SHOP ON P

The Lantern — the used and rare book store at 3241 P St. NW run by volunteers, most of whom are local Bryn Mawr College alumnae — will reopen on May 13 after being closed for more than a year. Its days of operation are Thursday through Sunday. There may be a limit on the number of shoppers at any one time, so call ahead to 202-333-3222 or email lantern@hers.com. All of the Lantern’s profits go to the college to support students’ summer internships.

IN: FIRST U.S. LOCATION FOR U.K.’S BUDD & CO.

Budd & Co., a new concept house of British brands, bespoke suiting and fine leather accessories, opened on May 6 at 2824 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, near the Four Seasons Hotel. Budd & Co. Washington, the brand’s first foray into the U.S. market, is an extension of Budd Shirtmakers in London’s Piccadilly Arcade. It replaces Sterling & Burke, a luxe British clothing and gift store that was at the address for eight years.

In addition to the full range of shirting, nightwear and accessories from Budd Shirtmakers, the store offers leather goods from Tusting, fine luggage from GlobeTrotter, timepieces from award-winning British watchmakers Bremont and products from the ultra-exclusive Florentine apothecary Santa Maria Novella. An in-house love for simply prepared, high-quality ingredients.

“In a way, Georgetown’s Rose Park farmers market is where it all started, so it’s like we’ve come full circle,” says Onal, whose first name roughly translates to “green almond” in her native Turkey. “And with spring here and all the beautiful ingredients that come with the season, this just feels right. We’re really excited to be back and to be cooking again.”

The rotating menu will feature a mix of Green Almond Pantry classics, including freshly made focaccia, salads and dips, sandwiches, braised lamb and roasted fish, and an array of cakes—hours will span Thursday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

See more Business Ins & Outs online at Georgetowner.com.

Under reconstruction: the Whole Foods Market at 2233 Wisconsin Ave. NW on April 19. Georgetowner photo

IN: GREEN ALMOND PANTRY

The Mediterranean cafe counter and market from chef-owner Cagla Onal reopens Georgetown on May 13. Located within the Grace Street Collective at 3210 Grace Street NW, the new location offers nearly double the seating and takes advantage of an open kitchen concept to bring forward Onal’s

Back on the Mat at Down Dog Yoga: Interview with New CEO

BY CARRINGTON C. TARR

If Down Dog Yoga’s new CEO, Daniel Brindley, could convey one message to the Georgetown community, it’s that after 13 months of pandemic shutdown, the popular yoga studio has reopened for business and is here to stay.

“Down Dog is not going anywhere,” said Brindley, 42. “We are committed for the long haul. There is no doubt in my mind we are back and going to keep at it.”

The studio — which opened in a converted garage by the C&O Canal in 2003 — thrived in its current spaces at 1229 34th St. NW (formerly home to Govinda Gallery) until the pandemic struck last year. Ultimately, the flagship studio, along with Down Dog’s Virginia locations in Herndon, Bethesda and Clarendon, were forced to shut their doors. So, like many exercise studio owners, founder Patty Ivey pivoted to offer classes online.

A year later, with the Bethesda and Clarendon studios still closed, Ivey believes she found in Brindley the perfect person to helm Down Dog Yoga and oversee the return to in-person classes. “He is the ONLY person I trusted to have my back, who loves DDY as if it is his own,” Ivey wrote in an email. “He had the smarts and the grit to navigate DDY and the teams through the past year. He has been a blessing.”

Brindley co-owns music venues Jammin’ Java in Vienna, Virginia, and Union Stage at the Wharf, while managing several other establishments. An avid yoga practitioner, his love for Down Dog’s brand of hot yoga began more than a decade ago.

“I walked into the Herndon studio for first time in 2010,” said Brindley, who lives in Reston, Virginia, with his wife and 3 ½-year-old. “The rest is history. I was hooked pretty much immediately.” He went on to train with Baron Baptiste, founder of the vinyasa power yoga method practiced at Down Dog, and then with Ivey. He also became a yoga instructor himself.

Brindley’s new position was a logical career progression. “Patty and I have always compared notes,” he said. “We own smallto-medium businesses and have a lot in common. We’ve had coffee a dozen times over the years. We chatted in the early days of the pandemic. It was a natural thing — some people left, and I ended up coming in.”

For Brindley and Ivey, it was a tough decision to close two studios for in-person classes. He received emails from clients who were “heartbroken,” he said. However, the decision allowed their other two studios to stay open. “Daniel and I took a deep breath on the daily, and committed to oneday-at-a-time and kept making decisions — some harder than others — that served the greater mission of DDY,” Ivey wrote. Fortunately, for students who can’t attend in-person classes, Down Dog Yoga still offers virtual classes at downdogyoga.com and via the Down Dog app.

“All along I was thinking, ‘I’m not gonna let the yoga die,’” said Brindley, who’s also teaching classes at the studio. “I’m not doing this for money, [or] for personal ambition — I’m not letting this yoga, in particular, go away.”

And while he wears two hats, working in the worlds of music and yoga, Brindley noted that it’s yoga that changes people’s lives. “My real love is yoga — in terms of beliefs and what I share,” he said. “What we do [at Down Dog] isn’t just a workout. We’re not doing gym yoga.”

Brindley has been hard at work these past months prepping the Georgetown studio for the reopening, including deep cleaning, adding a fresh coat of paint and overhauling the HVAC system. Not only is the space much improved, but Greenheart Juice Shop is opening next door. “What a corner that’s going to be,” he said, proudly.

Passionate as Brindley is about Down Dog Yoga, he recognizes that even with mask-wearing and limited capacity (10, as of this writing), it may take time for clients to reacclimate to in-person classes. But that passion is what impels him to persevere.

“Nothing is normal right now,” he said. “But here we are, reopening. We are going to make it. And we are giving ourselves a minute to get our feet under us … People want and need and appreciate what we’ve got,” he continued. “It’s kind of a miracle that we are still here. I just hope people say, ‘Let’s get out and support these guys and not take it for granted.’”

Down Dog Yoga’s new CEO, Daniel Brindley

Philip Bermingham The Power of Photography

BY RICHARD SELDEN

Some of the people photographed by Philip Bermingham — Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip with George H. W. and Barbara Bush, for instance — are figures known the world over. The ones he poses for covers of The Georgetowner tend to be prominent Georgetown residents or business owners. And then there are those … well, even he doesn’t know who they are.

As Bermingham noted in a recent interview at his home in Watergate West, certain clients are “incredibly private.” For those commissions, he is “approached by a lawyer with a nondisclosure form.”

In recognition of Bermingham’s work over the years for The Georgetowner, on the occasion of his 70th birthday (surprise!) — with his daughter’s wedding coming up, then service as a judge of our summer photography contest — we pay affectionate tribute to a true master of portraiture.

He has shot some 30 covers for The Georgetowner, describing its publisher Sonya Bernhardt as “quite a force.” (They met because of a story on Sarah Williams purses.) A book featuring a selection of his black-and-white and color portraits, including several of those cover images, will be published this September.

Bermingham began his career by training to become a Liverpool bobby. He still has a slight Beatles accent (and speaks Scouse with old friends, no doubt). Starting at age 15, he spent three years as a police cadet, then two on the regular force.

Of “unquestionable sobriety and single,” he proceeded to land one of 20 open spots for a five-year contract as a police officer in Bermuda. There were 800 applicants. “The salary was about two-and-a-half times what I was getting in Liverpool,” he explained.

Bermingham met his wife Ann, a nurse from Allentown, Pennsylvania, in Bermuda; they moved to Washington, D.C., late in 1978. Having made the transition from policeman to commercial photographer — it began with fingerprint and crime-scene photography — he decided to relocate to the nation’s capital since “anybody who’s anybody is going to go to D.C.” There were (and are) “such a variety of people,” he said, “lobbyists, politicians, diplomats … not like a bunch of lawyers and doctors.”

Back then, the boutique Smith’s of Bermuda had a store in Alexandria, Virginia. (A location in McLean, Virginia, recently closed.) Leveraging that connection, Bermingham showed his portfolio to the manager, “a very affable Scots guy,” who “bought about 25 large scenes of Bermuda and put them up in the store.” After doing “some photography sessions of the clothes,” he was permitted to set up a studio on the second floor of Smith’s, where his work was displayed to shoppers. “I was also bringing clients,” he pointed out, so it was “a win-win.”

In 1987, Bermingham bought a building in McLean. Why McLean? For one thing, “the families tended to be bigger in McLean.” For another, that studio drew not only from Alexandria but from Great Falls, Virginia, and Potomac, Maryland. Even better, the McLean clients “would order a 30-by-40 portrait,” larger than the typical Alexandria size. “Do the math,” he said.

The one person Bermingham counts as “the most influential” in his career development. He photographed her family and then went on to take portraits of almost ambassador in Washington. Those VIPSs he can name include Richard Nixon, Charles and Camilla, Gen. Colin Powell, some rockn-rollers and, most recently, our very own Mayor Muriel Bowser.

Bermingham maintained the McLean studio for 30 years, along the way relocating from Alexandria — his daughter Scarlett was “a lifer” at St. Stephen’s & St. Agnes School — to the Watergate.

Moving into Watergate South, where he first lived in the complex, required an interview with the board, represented by Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s husband Martin. The other candidate at the time was Plácido Domingo, then artistic director of Washington National Opera.

Bermingham later photographed the justice in her chambers, with his daughter, “a big RBG fan,” flying in from California to meet her. He didn’t photograph “Marty,” he said, “but I did see him a lot in the Safeway, because he would buy the food,” as the cook for the Ginsburg household.

The connection to Domingo bore fruit, too. Over 10 years, Bermingham photographed some 500 WNO singers, also going along on the company’s Japan tour in 2002.

Though he says, “I mentally rehearse every session,” Bermingham has found from long experience that “it never happens that way.” A portrait session relies on “sort of an unspoken tacit complicity” that sometimes isn’t there at the start. For example, Washington Speakers Bureau hired him to photograph George Will in his Georgetown office — and “George Will didn’t want to be photographed.” Luckily, Bermingham was able to “get him engaged in baseball and Margaret Thatcher.”

Connecting through conversation and eye contact is important to how he works. “You can watch people change,” he said. “They’re almost like a brick wall … you watch the hand movements.” And he enjoys the interaction: “There’s nothing more exciting than being in a portrait session. I have to come down after a session.”

Apart from portraiture, Bermingham is devoted to photographing the landscape of Biddeford Pool, Maine. The tiny seacoast community, between Kennebunkport and Portland, is within the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. After summering in Bermuda for years, he visited the area with a friend for the weekend and, captivated, ended up buying two cottages. Bermingham takes about 10,000 photographs in and around Biddeford Pool every summer. In June, his daughter will get married there. Though he has sold some large Maine landscape photographs, it’s “something you do for your soul,” he said.

After all these years, remarked the ex-cop from Liverpool: “I’ve never tired of photography, never said, ‘That’s enough.’ ”

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THE GEORGETOWNER ber 16 May 4-17, 2011

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SEND US YOUR BEST PHOTO FOR A CHANCE AT SEPTEMBER’S COVER!

Inspired by Philip Bermingham and our love of DC, The Georgetowner is bringing back our Summer Photo Competition. Want to be on the cover of The Georgetowner? This is your chance to be our next cover artist by being the winner of our Summer 2021 Photography Competition, June 1st through August 15. The winner will be on the much-anticipated September 2021 cover. Spend this summer photographing DC and especially Georgetown then submit up to THREE photos of local landscapes, monuments, historic or favorite homes, shops, or restaurants. The photos will be judged by world-renowned photographer Philip Bermingham, who inspired us to bring back the contest and Laura Paterson, head of photography at Bonhams and others yet to be announced. Start snapping and keep an eye on georgetowner.com for more details to come!

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