Washington City Paper (Jan. 21, 2022)

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The Other

Essential Workers Five people doing odd, ordinary, or otherwise un-thought-of D.C. jobs Photographs by Darrow Montgomery

NEWS: WOMEN EMPLOYEES SUE MPD FOR ALLEGED DISCRIMINATION 4 SPORTS: SIDWELL FRIENDS GIRLS’ BASKETBALL IS NO. 1 6 ARTS: NEW BOOK CELEBRATES THE BIRCHMERE 15

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TABLE OF CONTENTS COVER STORY 8 The Other Essential Workers: Meet the people who keep the ordinary and extraordinary parts of D.C. running.

NEWS 4 Loose Lips: Current and former Black female employees are suing MPD over allegations of harassment and racism. They’re making their voices heard on the campaign trail as well.

SPORTS 6 Friends Zone: The undefeated Sidwell Friends girls’ basketball team is making a national impact.

FOOD 13 Fashion Forward: D’Angelo Mobley fought hard to get his first executive chef position. Now he’s determined to help others succeed in the kitchen.

ARTS 15 All Roads Lead to the Birchmere: A new book tells the story of the legendary Alexandria music hall.

16 Cop Killer, an American Story: A play by a former MPD officer has been adapted for the screen and is now streaming online.

17 Lightmare Reimagine Power: The local soul-punk sextet have honed their craft on their second release.

18 Film: Gittell on Jockey

CITY LIGHTS 19 City Lights: Celebrate the Lunar New Year with a cooking demonstration, check out an intimate play at Signature Theatre, and honor the memory of Stephen Sondheim at AFI.

DIVERSIONS 21 Crossword 22 Savage Love 23 Classifieds

Darrow Montgomery | 1700 block of Lamont Street NW, Jan. 3 Editorial

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NEWS LOOSE LIPS

Protest and Serve

Darrow Montgomery

Black women cops have spoken out against harassment and retaliation in MPD for decades. Now they’re filing lawsuits and injecting themselves into the 2022 elections.

Felicia Carson, Leslie Clark, Lisa Burton, and Tabatha Knight

By Mitch Ryals @MitchRyals Tabatha Knight and Leslie Clark were leaving the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice in October 2019 when a staffer caught up with them.

“Her exact words to us were, ‘If you’re looking for any justice from this office or the mayor’s office, you’re looking in the wrong direction. They’re not going to help you,’” Knight recalls in a recent interview with Loose Lips.

The two former Metropolitan Police Department officers visited then-Deputy Mayor Kevin Donahue’s office that day three years ago to report a culture of harassment, retaliation, and discrimination they observed and endured during their long careers. Donahue, who now works as Mayor Muriel Bowser’s city administrator, was unable to meet with the two women, but they made their case to an employee in the office.

In the hallway of the Wilson Building

after the meeting, the deputy mayor’s staffer directed the women to Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, who, as chair of the D.C. Council Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, oversees MPD. Knight and Clark went directly to Allen’s office, where they were told they needed to make an appointment, Knight says. She sent an email requesting an appointment before she left, but says she never received a reply.

(Knight later also reported to Allen that MPD was allegedly manipulating its crime statistics, prompting the councilmember to hold a hearing at which Knight testified in 2020.)

Fast-forward to 2021, when Knight and Clark joined a group of 16 current and former Black female MPD officers who are plaintiffs in three lawsuits filed last year. Together, the suits allege MPD leadership has discriminated and retaliated against Black female officers. The suits are collectively seeking monetary damages and back pay as well as a court-supervised investigation into

4 JANUARY 21, 2022 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM

MPD’s internal affairs division. The women who were fired or forced to retire are seeking reinstatement.

Each of the officers “has had to endure the victimization of an MPD enterprisewide culture of race and sex discrimination and intense pervasive retaliation” for reporting or opposing unlawful discrimination, according to one lawsuit that has 10 plaintiffs and is seeking class action status.

“This is about ignoring Black women and ignoring the issues raised by Black women,” says the women’s attorney, Pam Keith.

MPD did not respond to LL’s specific emailed questions about some of the allegations in the three lawsuits. The department does not comment on pending litigation, but a spokesperson says via email that MPD is committed to fair and equitable treatment and will review the allegations thoroughly.

The allegations come at a time when D.C., like many other parts of the country,

is reimagining the role police play in society. Keith offers these alleged patterns of retaliation and a lack of accountability for superior, often White officers, as examples of why police reform is slow and difficult.

“It feels on the street like nothing’s changing because nothing is changing,” Keith says. “A deep-seated police mindset tells them they don’t need to change.”

Knight says she and other female officers have raised concerns for decades to people in and outside the department, but they’ve gotten little traction. Now, with their claims pending before a judge, Knight and her fellow plaintiffs are also looking to inject themselves into the local 2022 elections.

“We’re trying to bring awareness to how the police department operates … and help with police reform,” Knight says. “What better way to reform the police department than to hear how we operate and hear the things that go on? We are trying to let the world know … [change isn’t] going to work from within the police department.”

Knight, who retired from MPD in 2021 after more than 30 years as a sworn officer, says she and others plan to attend as many campaign events for the mayoral and D.C. Council races as they can to raise awareness about their cases. One of their first trips, to a Ward 5 Council candidate forum, ended in a shouting match.

In December, Officer Kia Mitchell, joined a group of fellow former officers, and asked the five candidates running for the Ward 5 Council seat for their reactions to claims that Black women inside MPD have been discriminated against for years.

Every candidate expressed their version of support (anything else would have been political suicide) and escaped the question unscathed, except for Vincent Orange.

Sinobia Brinkley, one of the officers who joined Mitchell at the Church of the Redeemer on Girard Street NE, confronted Orange during the forum, saying they had reached out to him several times while he was previously in office but never received a response. Orange served as the Ward 5 councilmember from 1999 to 2007 and as an atlarge member from 2011 to 2016.

Later, as Orange was on his way out the door, he challenged the group of former officers to post the letter they had sent him.

Brinkley followed him outside.

“I went outside to question him as to why did he make that statement. Because we were not lying,” Brinkley tells LL. “He went on and on and he really acted in an aggressive manner toward me, and I didn’t like it. I said, ‘If this is how you treat the women, I can’t imagine what you do to the citizens.’ I said, ‘I wish I had recorded this interaction.’”

Knight says she and others could hear the heated exchange from inside the church.

NEWS LOOSE LIPS “He was screaming. We were inside of the church and everyone inside of that room heard him,” Knight says. “He was like, ‘You just prove it. Y’all a bunch of liars!’ Pointing his finger. It was terrible.”

Orange disputes the women’s descriptions of the incident and says he supports their case. He notes during an interview with LL that they still haven’t posted the letter that they claim to have sent him.

Knight and Brinkley say they have sent letters to councilmembers for years, dating back to when Orange was in office. But they haven’t been able to find any that they sent to Orange specifically.

Keith says they have also asked Allen, who is up for re-election this year but does not currently have any challengers, to hold a stand-alone hearing on the accusations raised in the lawsuits. So far he has declined.

Instead, Knight says, they were told they could testify during MPD’s annual oversight hearing in February. But she fears their concerns will get lost among the testimony of other witnesses. “You get three minutes to speak instead of allowing each one of us to bring forth our complaints,” she says.

“They’re trying to bury us in that process.

Again we will be ignored.”

In an emailed statement sent via a spokesperson, Allen says several members of his staff have met with multiple plaintiffs in these lawsuits. He says the oversight hearing is a “good opportunity to address their allegations directly to the chief.”

The three lawsuits spanning hundreds of pages contain details dating back to the 1980s, touch on several divisions within the department, and include allegations from cadets, senior officers, and an assistant chief.

Two stories that stand out are those of Felicia Carson and Lisa Burton. Both women worked as investigators in MPD’s Internal Affairs Division, which is responsible for investigating officers accused of violating internal MPD policies and breaking the law. Carson, a sworn officer for nearly 30 years, claims her contract was not renewed in retaliation for taking time off to care for her daughter and in order to prevent her from participating in a disciplinary hearing where a White male officer faced potential termination. Burton, a civilian, is still employed with MPD. In 2019, Carson was handed a case involving Officer James Craig, who was accused of grabbing a Black man by the throat and lying about the reason for that man’s arrest.

Craig and other members of MPD’s Narcotics and Special Investigations Division were searching a building on First Street SE. They recovered some ammunition, and as Craig exited the building, he walked past a group of men and said, “Beep beep,” according to Carson’s internal investigation, which is attached to the lawsuit. One man who lived nearby but was

not a suspect told Craig to “Say ‘excuse me,’ you don’t say ‘beep beep,’” according to the investigation.

Craig confronted the man, saying, “What you gonna do?” and “Handle your business,” according to Carson’s investigation.

“Not with that badge on,” the man replied.

“Scared ass,” Craig said to the man before continuing to his police vehicle.

Craig then returned from his vehicle to confront the man again and told him to go into his house. The man did not, and “without provocation, Officer Craig stood in front of [the man] and ordered him to back up several times.” The man refused to put his hands behind his back, so Craig “grabbed [the man] by his throat and physi-

ones. Carson says Craig’s disciplinary hearing was canceled after MPD decided not to renew her contract. Craig is still an officer patrolling the streets. It’s unclear what discipline he faced.

“I worked at IAD for 19 years. There is not one case that I had where I felt like a member should be fired,” she says. “This member should have been fired.”

Burton, for her part, also watched the body camera footage of Craig’s interaction with the man and echoes Carson’s description. She asserts in the lawsuit that an officer found to have made a false statement—a mortal sin for police officers—almost always ends up in front of the trial board.

“This is about ignoring Black women and ignoring the issues raised by Black women,” says attorney Pam Keith. cally turned [him] around” and handcuffed him, according to Carson’s investigation.

Craig charged the man with resisting arrest.

Prosecutors dismissed the case due to insufficient evidence.

In an interview with Carson, Craig insisted the man was trying to intimidate him and was interfering with his investigation. But Carson notes several discrepancies between Craig’s written report and the body camera video, which shows Craig as the aggressor and does not show the man interfering or resisting arrest.

Carson sustained two policy violations against Craig: one for lying and another for conduct prejudicial to the reputation of MPD. The investigation was sent to Assistant Chief Wilfredo Manlapaz, who, Carson says, added more charges to the list, including excessive force. A captain returned the altered investigation to Carson for her signature and said, “Felicia, I’m sorry, Manlapaz said he didn’t want to hurt this guy. Those were his exact words,” Carson tells LL. Carson says the proper procedure would have been for Manlapaz to add a cover letter, not alter her investigation. The changes Manlapaz made allowed Craig to skirt the trial board, MPD’s internal disciplinary tribunal. Instead, Carson says Craig was allowed to strike a deal that she believes allowed him to cop to the lesser charges in exchange for dismissal of the more serious

Burton has worked in IAD since 2016.

During her time there, she says she’s listened to officers regularly tell racist jokes. She usually ignored them, until August of 2019 when she thought Officer John Hendrick went too far. Burton says Hendrick teased another colleague by saying they “had more excuses than a Black man going to jail.”

As he was walking out of the room, Burton says Hendrick added that the “actual joke” is “you have more excuses than a n—r going to jail.” He didn’t say the offensive slur because, Burton recalls Hendrick saying, “I don’t think I should say that word.”

Burton reported the offensive joke to MPD’s equal employment opportunity office, which the women’s lawsuits describe as one of the roots of MPD’s alleged retaliatory and discriminatory culture. The EEO office is supposed to keep complaints confidential. But Burton believes the office’s director, Alphonso Lee, leaked her complaint, and word eventually got back to Hendrick.

Current and former MPD EEO employees provided sworn affidavits in the women’s lawsuits. Rosemarie Lucero, who is still listed as an EEO investigator on MPD’s website, says in an affidavit that Lee “repeatedly expressed to me that women police officers are liars, conniving, deceptive and will do whatever to get what they want.” Lucero says in her affidavit that “Mr. Lee is vocal

and blatant in his disregard of women. Mr. Lee does not fear being disciplined for his sexism because he has stated that he is protected by the Assistant Chief of the Internal Affairs Department … Wilfredo Manlapaz and by the executive management of MPD.” In his own sworn affidavit, former EEO investigator Harry Carter echoes Lucero and says that Lee interfered in Carter’s investigation of Knight, Brinkley, and Officer Karen Carr’s claims of gender and race discrimination, saying they were “liars, and that he believed that MPD would be better off if EEO could find a way to move them out of their employment.”

Neither Lee nor Manlapaz responded to emails seeking comment.

After the EEO office allegedly leaked her complaint, Burton says she endured 18 months of bullying and harassment before she was transferred out of IAD. She says Hendrick now has a lead role on the Force Investigations Team, which is responsible for investigating officers who kill or seriously hurt civilians.

“Even if I take myself out of it, it’s highly inappropriate because if you have a White male agent who has these kinds of implicit biases, then how can he conduct internal affairs investigations where most of our targets are Black and Brown?” Burton says. “I can’t trust you to investigate anything with our children because this is how you feel about Black men.”

Other allegations in the women’s three lawsuits include a male officer undressing down to his boxers in an office where a woman was working, and another male officer pulling out his penis and peeing into a bottle while riding in a van with a female officer. The suits allege that the women were retaliated against for reporting misconduct, were sexually harassed, and were propositioned for sex. Knight says physical and emotional stress due to treatment from her supervisors and fellow officers caused her to go into premature labor several years ago, and she lost her twin daughters.

Keith says she plans to file a fourth lawsuit by the end of this month that will focus more directly on Lee and the EEO office.

The alleged mistreatment and retaliation has gone ignored for so long, several of the women tell LL, that they intend to seize their moment in the spotlight while their cases are pending.

“If you want justice, the concept of justice is political,” Keith says. “Why would we only fight this in the court of law?”

Campaign events and candidate debates are their primary targets.

“Personally, I plan to attend as many as I can,” Knight says.

WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM JANUARY 21, 2022 5

SPORTS BASKETBALL

Friends Zone Kelyn Soong

Sidwell Friends girls’ basketball is the latest local team to be ranked No. 1 in the nation.

Kendall Dudley, Kiki Rice, and Jadyn Donovan

By Kelyn Soong @Kelyn Soong Tamika Dudley’s voice rises above the sound of squeaking shoes on the basketball court. “Offense, you need to make them work!” she shouts. “Sprint!” It’s a few minutes after 3:30 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, and the players for the Sidwell Friends girls’ basketball team are split into pairs—one plays offense, the other defense—for the “corner deny” drill. They move their feet quickly side to side, mimicking a game situation in which the defense forces turnovers and denies the opposing team’s offense a clear passing lane.

Less than 24 hours ago, the team had beaten Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School, 73-57, to improve to 7-0 in the season. But Dudley, the team’s head coach, isn’t satisfied.

The team didn’t put enough defensive pressure on its opponent and allowed Visitation to keep pace throughout the first half. “We were late and we were resting on defense, instead of being early and getting the steal,” Dudley says.

Sidwell has high expectations for the season.

ESPN ranks the Quakers as the No. 1 girls’ basketball team in the nation, a first for a program that has not been historically considered a powerhouse in the sport, locally or nationally. Three Sidwell players are ranked in ESPN’s top 10 for their class: senior Kiki Rice, a UCLA commit, junior Jadyn Donovan, and sophomore Kendall Dudley, Coach Dudley’s daughter. In her first season with Sidwell three seasons ago, Dudley led Sidwell to a 25-6 record—“I thought we overachieved,” she says—while the COVID19 pandemic prevented players from competing as a high-school team last season.

With the hot 8-0 start, Sidwell is looking to

make history this season and joins a rich tradition of top-ranked girls’ basketball programs and players from the D.C. area. Three other local schools, all private, are currently in the ESPN high-school girls’ basketball top 25 ranking: New Hope Academy in Landover (No. 10), Bishop McNamara in Forestville (No. 15), and St. Paul VI Catholic in Chantilly (No. 22). New Hope won the girls’ title at the GEICO National High School Basketball Nationals in 2019, and the year before, McNamara and St. John’s College High School both consistently ranked within the top three best teams in the country.

Dudley’s team is calling next.

“Every day in practice we compete, and I think knowing that we’re the No. 1 team, it reminds us that we have a target on our back and everyone’s gonna bring their A game against us,” Rice says. “But it’s great to see the work pay off and the recognition.”

The middle school at Sidwell Friends is located on the same campus as its high school in Northwest D.C., so young kids who attend the school have close access to one of their heroes: Kiki Rice. “Middle school kids come up and get her autograph,” Dudley says. “She’s like a superstar around here.”

Rice lives in Bethesda and has been playing basketball since she was 5 or 6 years old. She started playing because of her older brother.

She wanted to do everything he did. Whenever her dad and brother would go down to a neighbor’s house to shoot hoops, Rice begged to join. She also practiced with her aunt, Susan Rice, the current director of the Domestic Policy Council, and a former National Security Advisor for President Barack Obama. Susan played basketball while attending Oxford

6 JANUARY 21, 2022 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM

University.

“She’s definitely been like a great role model for me as a leader and just a really strong woman that I look up to,” Rice says of her aunt.

As for basketball, the 5-foot-11 point guard currently ranked the No. 2 player in the Class of 2022 by ESPN also had plenty of players to admire growing up in the D.C. area. Rice attended basketball camps at St. John’s College High School and remembers watching Ashley Owusu play while she competed for Paul VI. Owusu is currently a junior guard at the University of Maryland and one of the best college players in the country.

“Just constantly hearing about all the top talent and all the great players in the area, it was like, ‘I want to be like that,’” says Rice, who has goals of eventually playing in the WNBA. Owusu also credits older players as an inspiration. Talent and a passion for the game of basketball surrounded Owusu everywhere she went.

She believes that obsession for the sport can partially explain why the DMV has produced so much basketball talent. It wasn’t just high school competition that fueled Owusu. She experienced the competitive atmosphere at the Dale City Recreation Center in Woodbridge, where she trained.

“Every night you go in there, there’d be like 100 kids in there just training, yelling at each other, just playing pickup, having fun,” Owusu says.

Local basketball trainer and coach Katie Fudd is hard-pressed to think of an area in the country that develops and produces the same amount of talent as the D.C. area, at least not one of its geographical size. Fudd considers Northern Virginia, Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland, and D.C. proper all part of the sometimes vaguely defined area.

“When you think about it, it’s really not that big comparatively,” she says.

To Fudd, the resources, access to elite training, competition, and variety of strong private school basketball programs are unmatched.

Private schools, unlike public schools, can recruit players outside school boundaries, and often have the money for extra resources, like a dedicated strength and conditioning staff, that draw in talented basketball players. It can be hard for public schools to retain that talent when there are so many strong private school programs in the area.

“You get kids looking at schools and you’re looking at academics and you’re looking at what can the coach bring, what can your teammates bring, it’s essentially like picking a college but in high school,” Fudd says. “And you’re trying to find the best fit and the best place for your kid and the public schools typically just don’t have that; they don’t have that high level of competition … It’s just really hard to field the kind of teams that private schools can.”

Plus, young athletes here love to play basketball. Fudd’s daughter, Azzi, currently plays for the women’s basketball team at the University of Connecticut, and was the top-ranked player in her class while competing for St. John’s. In 2019, she was named the Gatorade National Girls’ Basketball Player of Year—the first sophomore to win the award.

“I think we have what you call a hotbed,” Katie says. “I think there’s a lot of kids playing.

There’s a lot of athletes and a lot of kids who decide basketball as their sport and work on that craft. And that creates a lot of competition.

And then the cream rises to the top with that ...

You get some good players from smaller areas, but it’s hard to be the best player around all the time. I mean, it’s easier to raise your level when other people are raising theirs too.”

Like Fudd, Dudley has seen the talent grow even more in recent years with the popularity of Amateur Athletic Union and other youth basketball circuit leagues such as the Nike Youth Basketball League. Dudley is a 1999 graduate of Woodbridge High School in Prince William County. She attended Long Island University in Brooklyn, where she became one of the program’s best players. Dudley recalls that in high school, there was only one AAU team in all of Prince William County. Now companies such as Nike, Under Armour, and Adidas all have their own basketball travel team circuit leagues. Fudd is the founder of the GTS Fusion team that competes in the Girls Under Armour Association circuit.

“I definitely think there’s more opportunity and kids are no longer just shut out because they couldn’t make the best team,” Dudley says. “Even like a middle-of-the-road kid now can play on a team and still have opportunity to play and grow and then maybe kind of grow their talent, where people may not have seen it in the past.”

The Sidwell Friends practice lasts for more than two hours. When they’re done, the coaches and players huddle in the center of the court.

“We were out of sync,” Dudley says, referring to the Visitation game. “I was not pleased with our defensive effort.”

“There is no place in this gym for people stuck in their ways,” she continues.

Before the huddle breaks, one of the players recites a quote that is often credited to Vince Lombardi that Dudley included in the practice itinerary: “Winning means you’re willing to go longer, work harder, and give more than anyone else.” She shares a quote every day, based on how the team has played or what she wants them to take away from practice.

Dudley is back in her office, not far from the court, when her daughter, Kendall, walks in to heat up her dinner. Kendall tells her mother that the Overtime women’s basketball Instagram account, with half a million followers, recently posted videos of Sidwell from the Visitation game and tagged her, Rice, and Donovan.

“They call us the Big Three,” Kendall says. “Oh, that’s fun,” Dudley replies.

Dudley doesn’t want her team to get too high just yet. She has goals for Sidwell to win the Independent School League AA title, its first D.C. State Athletic Association title, and receive an invitation to the national high-school tournament.

“To me, we don’t really solidify who we are as a team until the end,” she says. “At the end of the season is when we can say, ‘Oh damn, we were pretty good.”

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1/13/2022 3:14:15 PM WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM JANUARY 21, 2022 7

NADINE SEILER

The Other

Essential Workers Photographs by Darrow Montgomery

“What do you do?” is often the first question asked in D.C., where the federal government workers turn over like it’s, well, their job.

Consultant, lobbyist, policy researcher, strategist, legislative staffer. Yawn. They’re a dime a dozen in this town.

But as any good native Washingtonian or longtime resident knows, there’s another side of work that keeps the city going. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted fields that we absolutely cannot do without: medical care, emergency services, education, food production, infrastructure, transportation, and, ahem, journalism to name a few.

But there are also the less obvious jobs that are equally important to the function and character of the District.

The following profiles are stories of odd, ordinary, and otherwise un-thought-of local jobs, and the people who do them. —Mitch Ryals

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NADINE SEILER

Black Lives Matter Memorial Fence Guardian and Curator Nadine Seiler had no idea when she showed up at the Women’s March in 2017 that four years later she would be a lead guardian, and ultimately the preserver, of artifacts on what would become the BLM Memorial Fence.

Seiler wasn’t a member of any activist group then, but she felt in each bone of her 5-foot, 5-inch frame every antiBlack, anti-woman, anti-immigrant restriction and rant under President Donald Trump’s leadership. She felt she had to do something. So Seiler started going to the White House holding a regular rotation of provocative signs.

Her favorite activities included shouting obscenities at Trump supporters who got in her face and educating elementary school kids who chanted “Make America great again!” about the history behind their statements. “Make America great again to when?” she would ask. “When they were lynching Black people?” Her Trinidadian accent both offended and riled up such visitors.

Seiler joined the 2017 and 2018 global women’s protests and most daily Kremlin Annex protests that started after Trump’s 2018 Helsinki visit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. A shy activist she mentored at the Kremlin Annex rallies called her “Warrior Goddess for the Resistance,” an alias that still motivates her. Seiler had started protesting at Lafayette Square by herself when a White police officer murdered George Floyd in Minneapolis. She joined the ensuing protests against systemic racism and police brutality in front of the White House. When law enforcement put up the first fence, amid the rattling of steel bars, Seiler glimpsed the beauty of Black Lives Matter signs, art, and

photos left behind.

During the pandemic, Seiler lost her odd day jobs as a personal concierge specializing in helping local residents organize their homes. (“IF the clutter makes you shudder, get you a Nadine,” the tagline on her LinkedIn profile says.)

Soon Seiler started leaving her Waldorf home at night to stay by the fence typically from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. and do what she does best: organize and protect the things that had shown up.

During one of these shifts, word got around to Seiler that the fence was coming down. Seiler and other night-shifters acted on preservation instinct, taking photos and signs off the fence and sorting the items into categories based on material type and size. The processing made for an easier transfer to institutes such as the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which was notified about the collection and came to collect items on June 9, 2020.

While Lafayette Park reopened to the public the next day, law enforcement soon fenced off the area again after some protesters sought to topple the Andrew Jackson statue. This second structure became the BLM Memorial Fence, which Seiler and a few others guarded for the next seven months. But as stunning as the stories and protest artwork posted there were, they weren’t properly secured to the fence, so they made for a messy second home. The home organizer in Seiler couldn’t stand it.

“It just looked bad,” she says. “I didn’t want to be part of the [messiness]. So I just started picking up the stuff and putting them back on the fence as best as I could.” Others also helped secure the items with zip ties and duct tape.

The reorganization effort “just grew and grew and grew — and then [the fence] became a focus of Trump supporters,”

says Seiler. “They were coming in mad … they wanted to see White House and all this stuff that was negative against [Trump] is on the fence, blocking them.”

In the months that followed, conflicts arose between the fence guardians and anti-BLM activists on a mission to tear down protest art. But the fence was also a site of community and allyship with volunteers and unhoused residents. In late January 2021, Seiler and others organized the memorabilia into more permanent resting places. They couldn’t keep watch over the fence forever. The work didn’t pay the bills.

Seiler and fellow activist Karen Irwin had reached out to museums to see if any institutions were interested in taking the mementos. They received lukewarm responses until a Howard University alum finally connected Seiler to a Howard employee who took 75 pieces for the school. The Library of Congress took 36 fence items, including two pieces Seiler created. Then Jodi Hoover, a digital resources specialist at Enoch Pratt Free Library, exceeded Seiler and Irwin’s expectations. Enoch Pratt would scan the items in batches through its high-tech scanner, which has the ability to keep every piece of debris intact on 3D items.

The D.C. Public Library, Enoch Pratt’s partner in the project, would then create metadata to display the items in online archives.

The Black Lives Matter Memorial Fence Poster collection is a project spanning libraries and departments throughout the District. After training in metadata, volunteers spend most of their downtime creating titles, descriptions, and subject headings for collection items. The project will culminate in an archives launch in fall 2022. Meanwhile, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library is hosting a Black Lives Matter Describe-A-Thon on Feb. 9 from 6:30 to 8 p.m.

where the public can help create descriptions for fence materials.

Enoch Pratt specializes in archival projects, and most of its collections are historical, so documenting contemporary history such as the BLM protests is rare. For Laura Farley, digital curation librarian at DCPL, the ingenuity of activists and allies takes us back to the moment when it began.

“If you remember back to early, early in the pandemic, when people first started … to contribute these posters and all kinds of items … people were using whatever they could find at home,” Farley says. “Because nobody was going to the stores, nobody could get supplies. So the creativity of what people used that they had on hand to get their message through … it’s pretty amazing.”

Pro-Trump and other political items aren’t part of the preservation efforts and remain in storage; no organization has shown any interest in them, according to Seiler.

These pieces might get scanned after BLM-related items are scanned at Enoch Pratt and if there’s any funding left, but not as a part of the BLM Memorial Fence Collection.

Nowadays Seiler’s daily uniform incorporates souvenirs from the first and last movements she joined. On a recent Wednesday evening, she wears a pussy hat with black ears and a hoodie that says “The Black Guy Did It” during an impromptu video call. Behind her is a poster with her animated likeness photographed at the fence. Both the hoodie and the poster image are for sale in her Tee Public store, Subversive-Ware, which she created to help with the monthly storage fees she pays to keep mementos from the BLM Memorial Fence.

Seiler keeps a running list of institutions and individuals interested in taking items. She says it’s vital that folks

value every memento—both the more pristine items as well as those battered by wind and sleet and debris—as a story in their own right and as part of a mosaic of the moment.

“Some of them are torn, and I know why … when … the circumstances under which it got torn,” Seiler says.

“Everything has a story.”

The work of preserving the fence mementos, and memories born there, hasn’t ended for Seiler. She’s planning to form a diverse committee of D.C.-area residents in late spring to decide how to parcel out the remaining mementos.

“The fence was a concerted effort, it wasn’t [just] me. … It was … this community effort of goodwill … and it was magical.” —Ambar Castillo

WILLIAM REED AND WOODY

Gas Station Attendant and Manager at the Exxon at 4th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue SE Imagine you are a young person. Old enough to drive but not old enough for much else. You possess all the ignorance that comes with that age and, while driving through New Jersey, you stop for gas. A man approaches your car, saying he will pump it for you. You decline his offer. He insists; it’s his job, he says. And you, who should know better but don’t, respond, “This isn’t a job!”

But it is a job. All over New Jersey, in portions of Oregon, and at one Exxon at the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and 4th Street SE on Capitol Hill.

A man who goes by Woody watches a tow truck navigate the gas station’s narrow curb cut as a dog barks from inside the small office space. He started in 1994 as a mechanic

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and now manages this place, its two pumps and adjoining garage. Operating for more than half a century, it’s the last full-service gas station in D.C. Some customers, he says, come here specifically because it’s full service. They don’t want to get out of the car or can’t pump their own gas. These are the people who have been coming here for decades. The ones he and his fellow workers know by name. “This is their station. We’re the neighborhood shop,” he says. Others stumble upon it and some don’t want full service or understand how it works. They think they have to pay the attendant and don’t want to. “Or they think they’re getting robbed.” To preempt that, the attendants wear uniforms.

Woody says the station will stay full service as long as they can find people to do the job. Which isn’t easy, he says. “It’s cold in the winter, it’s hot in the summer. It’s demanding. You’ve got to deal with the public, and they’re not always very nice.” Nevertheless, as cars pull up to the pumps, an attendant arrives without fail, ready to provide whatever services the driver needs. One of those attendants is Mr. Reed.

William Reed, 74, stands tall and his gray uniform bears his last name. He has worked at this gas station for “too long,” which equals roughly 37 years. He used to work days for DC Public Schools and nights here before retiring from DCPS. But he’s still pumping gas. “It’s something to do,” he says. “Most people, when they retire, they die. I work and keep the body going.” When his kids ask him when he’ll retire, he says, “What am I gonna do? Stay home and die?”

The key to being an excellent attendant, according to Mr. Reed: “Wait on the people and see what they want.” Some people don’t want you to use their credit card, he explains.

Sometimes you have to let people pump their own gas, even though it’s your job and they’re paying you to do it.

It doesn’t hurt to know something about cars, too. Woody makes sure to note that you’ll learn about cars on the job.

What person at his age can do what he does, Mr. Reed asks rhetorically. It’s a good question, and pumping gas is not all he does. Here they’ll put air in your tires and check your oil too, if you want it. (In New Jersey, they just pump your gas, Reed is quick to point out.) You pay a premium on the gas here, but you get a service for it.

Which is fortunate, because young people, you will remember, are ignorant. “Most young kids nowadays don’t know nothin’,” Reed says. Nothing useful, anyway. They don’t know how to “check oil, put air in the tires. The only thing they know is smokin’ weed.” —Will Warren

CHELSEA PACE

Intimacy Choreographer In a scene in the musical A Strange Loop, Usher, the story’s protagonist, has sex with an older White man. The graphic scene involves anal foreplay. It’s an intense scene for the characters and an incredible moment of physical intimacy for the actors.

Enter Chelsea Pace. As the show’s intimacy choreographer—a relatively new role in live theater productions— she works with actors to tell the story authentically while respecting their personal boundaries.

“Theater is super uncomfortable,” she says. “That’s what makes it worth making a play out of.”

For the scene from Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company’s production of the Pulitzer Prize winning musical, Pace worked with Jaquel Spivey, who plays Usher, on where he’s open to being touched and where his counterpart, Antwayn Hopper, is open to touching. She coached them

on specific movements and gestures, showing Hopper how to move his hand and arm to simulate digital penetration without actually moving his fingers.

Pace is currently the resident intimacy choreographer at D.C.’s Studio Theatre and Arlington’s Signature Theatre and is an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her journey to intimacy choreography started with a six-week streak of wearing “good underwear.”

As an undergraduate at Binghamton University, she was cast in a farcical play as a character who spent a lot of time running around in their undies. She came prepared to rehearsal for more than a month because she never knew when she would be asked to perform without clothes.

As a young actor, she didn’t want to ask the director when she’d be able to rehearse without clothes for fear of appearing overeager or ignorant. She notes that she had a good relationship with the director, who was also her professor, and says her reluctance to ask the question was due to her own nerves.

But it also speaks to the power imbalance that can exist between directors and actors, who are often told they’re replaceable, Pace says. Those who ask questions, make demands, or speak up in defense of their personal boundaries can be labeled as “difficult,” which could cost them work.

It’s that dynamic that Pace seeks to address.

“Actors are always in a position of ‘Yes. Yes, we’ll do that,’” says Tatiana Williams, an actor working with Pace on Studio Theatre’s production of White Noise. “You finally got the job, beat out the other people, and you want to make it work, but sometimes you may not have the language or feel comfortable to say, ‘Hey that’s a trigger spot for me’ or ‘I’m going to get there, but I need more time.’”

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ROBERT SHAUT After college, Pace pursued an MFA in theater performance at Arizona State University, and she remained curious about consent, boundaries, and power dynamics.

Friends in the theater came to her for informal advice with intimate scenes they were working on.

Eventually her curiosity became part of her research, and a few years after she graduated, she co-founded a company called Theatrical Intimacy Education with her colleague Laura Rikard. The company offers workshops, choreography, and consultations for students and professionals. Pace has also written a book on the topic: Staging Sex: Best Practices, Tools, and Techniques for Theatrical Intimacy.

Intimacy choreography involves sex scenes, sure, but there’s a spectrum. At one end are moments where characters appear as if they’re in love but never actually touch.

“There are physical ways to make people look like they’re in love with each other without them having to actually fall in love with each other,” Pace says. “Which is better for everybody, including those individuals and their respective relationships.”

Williams says that’s one major way intimacy coaches have helped her.

“You might come out of a scene, and you can’t shake off what you’ve done,” Williams says. “So how do you separate yourself from that moment? They’re not your therapist, but they do have a good way of checking in in a different way: ‘Are you comfortable with what we just blocked? Do you feel comfortable in your costume?’ It’s just another voice in the room that’s championing the actors.”

At the other end of the spectrum are scenes of graphic or hyper-realistic physical and sexual intimacy.

Before Pace begins working with actors on individual scenes, she instructs them on how to speak up for their

boundaries. It typically includes introducing a self-care cue, which acts like a safe word. It’s a tool for an actor to stop the scene and ask for what they need: a hand to be placed a little higher, for example, or less pressure in an embrace.

Then she has them do a “show, guide, tell” exercise.

Each person physically shows a partner where they’re open to being touched, then guides their partner’s hand on their own bodies, and finally reinforces those boundaries verbally.

When rehearsals begin, actors walk through that same exercise before a scene.

“I’d be working with them to make a touch here, or make that touch just a little bit longer because it will help us understand that [the characters] have been together a long time,” Pace says.

When it’s time to try a kiss for the first time, Pace first has the actors stage it with a high five in place of locking lips. That allows them to talk through the movements that make the moment feel authentic.

“Who closed the distance? What was the duration of the kiss? What was the depth of touch on the kiss? What’s the destination of your hands on your partner’s back?

What was the power shift there when you pushed him down?” Pace says. “We craft all of that, but they’re finding it through palm to palm.”

The work also extends beyond sex and romance.

Onstage intimacy also includes scenes where actors are asked to draw from their personal experiences to tell a story. That could be experience related to race, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or other aspects of their identities that can come with vulnerability.

“That vulnerability has been really poorly managed,” Pace says. “We put actors in these ridiculous and impossible situations without acknowledging that we’re asking

them to do something impossible by being both a sponge and having the world’s richest inner life and having absolutely no qualms about bringing any and all of yourself into the room. But please don’t bring yourself into the room if you’re having a bad day.”

When Pace first started this work more than a decade ago, she says most professionals were defensive. Directors were resistant to the idea of ceding control and insisted that they could create a trusting relationship where actors could say “no.” She noticed a shift leading into 2017 that accelerated around October of that year, shortly after the story broke about movie producer and serial sexual abuser Harvey Weinstein.

These days, Pace works on about 20 productions a year spanning film, television, and live theater. Her job is part of a cultural shift that’s giving more attention to actors’ boundaries.

“I’m not the sex police,” she says. “I’m just here to support.” —Mitch Ryals

ROBERT SHAUT

Director of Tree Operations, Casey Trees If you ask Robert Shaut what his favorite tree is, he doesn’t hesitate. The question, which is perhaps too easy, elicits not just a reply, but a memory. He remembers one tree that stood out to him when he was younger. When he reminisces about the platanus occidentalis, or the American sycamore, it brings back memories of the tree that grew outside his childhood home in Glen Echo. He remembers the way the trees grew along the bank of the Potomac River, thriving along the edges. He would climb the trees and swing into the river water, he says. The giant sycamore

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CHASE RIEDER inspired Shaut to build a life and career around trees.

Since February of 2018, Shaut has worked as the director of tree operations at Casey Trees, a D.C.-based nonprofit committed to restoring, enhancing, and protecting D.C.’s tree canopy. His role often entails tons of prep work and logistics, while facilitating leads to plant new trees, and ensuring that the field crews have nice, smooth days of planting, pruning, maintaining, felling trees or “whatever the job calls for that day.” His staff plants trees whenever the weather is “reasonable,” and despite the recent snow, the winters have been “more and more plantable,” he says.

Shaut notes that he’s the one who has to consider which trees will still be here in 20 years, or even in 100 years. To determine this, Shaut and his team research and study tree species’ climate adaptivity and resiliency regarding temperature and precipitation variance. Certain trees that have more “Northern nativity” are “maybe starting to fade out of the District,” says Shaut, while trees that have more “Southern nativity” are starting to phase in.

Casey Trees was established in 2001 and works with several organizations including the National Park Service, the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation, and DC Public Schools, as well as cemeteries and places of worship. Shaut says that many clients want crape myrtles, dogwoods, or cherry trees. But when it makes sense, he may sway them to “larger, environmentally impactful trees.”

“There’s a right place for every tree,” Shaut says, “but if the situation calls for a larger tree—can allow for a larger tree—that’s absolutely what we’re pushing to put in.”

Part of this push is the organizational and citywide goal to cover 40 percent of the District in tree canopy by 2032.

At one point, D.C. had the moniker the “City of Trees” thanks to its diverse array of native flora, with about half of the city covered by trees in the early 1950s, according to the Washington Post. By 2001, the tree canopy fell to just over 35 percent, WAMU reports. As of January 2022, Shaut tells City Paper that the most recent satellite imagery shows the current tree canopy in D.C. is now at 38 percent, a growth of 424 acres of tree canopy since 2006. In 2021 alone, Casey Trees planted 4,543 trees throughout the region. While Casey Trees may be close to its goal, Shaut notes that 1 percent of the District’s tree canopy is on the National Mall, which is substantial.

To meet this goal, Shaut has been allocating a lot of the organization’s efforts to lower-canopy areas. He says that 75 percent of the tree plantings in 2021 were in wards 5, 7, and 8, areas that are also susceptible to the urban heat island effect. Planting trees in these and other similar areas can help reduce stormwater runoff and carbon

footprint, improve air quality, add wildlife habitats, help reduce energy bills, and increase property values, according to the “District of Columbia Urban Tree Canopy Plan,” published by the D.C. government in January 2013.

Since Shaut took the reins as Casey Trees’ director of tree operations approximately four years ago, his vision hasn’t changed. His goal has always been to “be as impactful as we can, to really just make as much positive impact on local communities and to our environment, and I think we’ve been able to grow.”

When he started, Casey Trees was planting 2,500 trees per year, but the organization’s target for this year is 5,000 trees.

“I think that every tree offers something,” says Shaut.

—Michelle Goldchain

CHASE RIEDER

Washington Wizards Team Attendant Getting from the visiting NBA team’s locker room to the bus entrance inside Capital One Arena requires a lengthy walk, so Chase Rieder hops into a utility cart and drives it to meet the first of three buses carrying Philadelphia 76ers players, the team’s staff, and their luggage. He loads the cart with three layers of suitcases from the bus, then navigates back through the arena corridor, past the Washington Wizards dancers practicing their routines, and parks it in front of the locker room. Rieder and his colleague Royce Reed then unload the cart and line the various equipment bags and personal belongings along the hallway before repeating the trip two more times.

It’s 10:53 a.m. on Jan. 17, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and the Wizards are facing the 76ers in a 2 p.m. tip-off game. Rieder has been at the arena since 10 a.m. For the past 15 years, this has been a regular routine for the 30-year-old from North Bethesda. Rieder is a Wizards team attendant and contributes to the vast game-day production that largely takes place out of public view and away from cameras.

As Rieder prepares for the next bus to arrive, he goes on a quick walk-through of the visiting team’s locker room. Headshots of Rieder and Reed adorn a wall near the entrance below the words “TEAM ATTENDANTS.” Popcorn, fruit, coffee, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches await the players. The bathroom is stocked with mouthwash and deodorant, and towels and heat packs are piled nearby.

Shirts, pants, and jerseys hang on each individual locker.

Rieder describes this part of the job as similar to a hotel concierge service. “When they come in, I want them feeling

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like they’re in their home locker room at their city,” he says.

Being a team attendant isn’t always glamorous. The Wizards have about 10 to 12 part-time staffers who work under Brandon Mango, the team’s recently hired director of equipment and logistics, and the job involves long hours on your feet, whether it’s rebounding for players during warm-ups or mopping the floor during time-outs. Team attendants are essentially on call throughout their entire eight-hour game-day shift. But for die-hard NBA fans such as Rieder, it can be a dream job. Rieder, who is a special education teacher at North Bethesda Middle School and the boys’ varsity basketball head coach at Northwest High School in Germantown, started as a Wizards team attendant when he was 16. (Applicants now must be at least 18.)

He worked all 41 home games of the 2007-08 NBA season during his junior year at Walter Johnson High School, forgoing the opportunity to play varsity basketball to be a Wizards team attendant.

Rieder served as a home team attendant for his first seven seasons with the Wizards, and has been working in the visiting team’s locker room for the past eight seasons.

The biggest misconception about the job, both Rieder and Mango believe, can be derived from the sometimes dismissive names that team attendants are called: “ball boys” and “ball girls,” “court moppers,” “water boys.”

“Some people think we’re just there to watch,” Rieder says. “But we feel like a lot of the games wouldn’t run if there weren’t any team attendants.”

Mango agrees: “Without my locker room and team attendants, the show does not go on at Capital One Arena. I can be honest with that.”

It’s 2:11 p.m. when the game tips off, and Rieder takes his position on the court next to the 76ers bench. The coolers behind the players are packed with water and Gatorade bottles. A hydrocollator is stocked and ready for whoever needs a heat pad.

The 76ers, including 7-footer Joel Embiid, tower over Rieder, who isn’t exactly short at 6-foot-1. As each player checks into the game, Rieder picks up their warm-up gear and neatly folds it into a stack. When the players return to the bench, he has a towel and their clothes ready. The players’ shirts and pants are all labeled with their jersey numbers. Rieder is no longer on mopping duty due to his senior status, but his current role calls for constant vigilance and a familiarity with the sport. He bounces back and forth between his “seat” on the court and the scorer’s table, and is so close to the action that he can hear players trash talking and the conversations between coaches and players during time-outs. It’s one of Rieder’s favorite perks of the job. Team attendants may go unnoticed to the general viewer or fan, but for an NBA player accustomed to routine, having a team attendant nearby allows them to focus on the task at hand. Visiting NBA teams tip team attendants after each game, and Rieder has befriended several players over the years.

As the final buzzer goes off, marking the Wizards’ 11798 victory, Rieder heads back to the visiting team’s locker room, where he will stay until the last player leaves. He packs their bags and transports their luggage back to the bus with the utility truck. Around the same time, Wizards acting head coach Joseph Blair is speaking to media members in a postgame press conference. Blair was thrust into the position for the first time because head coach Wes Unseld Jr. and assistant coach Pat Delany are both out due to health and safety protocols.

After the game, inside the home team’s locker room, Wizards forward-center Montrezl Harrell doused Blair with a bucket of ice cold water in celebration. The coach needed a new shirt, quickly, and so he turned to the person he knew would come through. Blair thinks about that moment while answering a reporter’s question.

“My back is pretty soaked right now. Big ups to Brandon Mango for getting me another shirt to put on,” he says with a laugh.

The show, as Mango and his team attendants made sure, went on. —Kelyn Soong

FOOD YOUNG & HUNGRY Darrow Montgomery

Fashion Forward D’Angelo Mobley’s journey to landing his first executive chef job is one of passion and perseverance.

By Laura Hayes @LauraHayesDC “An Utz potato chip with caviar on it, that’s me,” D’Angelo Mobley says. But the metaphor the executive chef of La Jambe uses to describe himself has less to do with food than it does with fashion. He defines his personal style as refined rugged. “I’ll buy a $600 pair of jeans and put them on with a shirt I have from high school. I spend more time looking at clothes than I do recipes if I’m being brutally honest.”

Mobley, 30, fantasizes about one day being able to afford to wear $900 designer shirts in the kitchen and not giving a damn if he stains them, kind of like brides who intentionally trash their wedding gowns. “Beautiful pieces and I don’t care if I get ketchup or tomato sauce on them,” he says.

Part of his look is the mosaic of cheffy tattoos that cover his body, among them a cleaver, bluefin tuna bones, a broken plate, kitchen tape, and shot of whiskey. “WELL DONE” is scrawled across his knuckles in a green font that belongs on a retro microwave display. It’s his favorite, even though the first “L” scuffed off after several kitchen accidents. “Oui,” what he’d say while taking an order from a French chef, is inked just below his right eye.

Mobley always thought he’d have a future in the arts and was eager to get started when he graduated from Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt in 2010. But shortly after he got his diploma, while celebrating in Ocean City, Maryland, with friends, he made a mistake that altered the course of his life.

“I got locked up during beach week,” he says.

“The offense was a stolen vehicle. A friend of mine took it, but I knew it was stolen when I got in the car. We went to a hotel party and he must have stolen one of the girls’ keys. I was 17 when I got caught and I turned 18 in jail.”

He spent those two months reading 10 books and completing 5,000 push-ups.

Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power left a lasting impression. Although his incarceration was relatively brief, Mobley walked out with a felony on his record. “Somebody told me that kitchens don’t check your background,” Mobley says. “OK, if you’re not going to check, boom.”

La Jambe Executive Chef D’Angelo Mobley Mobley took a job at Carolina Kitchen in Hyattsville, but was assigned to the dining room. The local chain asks employees to greet customers with an enthusiastic “Welcome, welcome, welcome!” Mobley was having none of that and grew determined to find work in an actual kitchen.

About a decade later, Mobley has his first executive chef job at a French wine bar in Shaw where he’s plotting his future and bringing cooks with similar backgrounds up with him.

His journey to this point has been a self-led odyssey through some of the District’s most popular restaurants and the kitchens of its most demanding chefs.

After his first cooking job at the former Gordon Biersch in Navy Yard, Mobley caught his first break. Without knowing Erik BrunerYang, he walked into Maketto as it was preparing to open on H Street NE in 2015. “I said, ‘Man, I’d love to work in this kitchen,’” Mobley says. Bruner-Yang told him to come back Tuesday ready to work. Soon enough, Mobley was manning the fry station, responsible for the restaurant’s addictive fried chicken with five-spice caramel.

“I had in the back of my head that I have a felony on my record now so I have to do a little more so people don’t pay any attention to it,” Mobley says. “I’m trying to make this go away and have my work overshadow the mistake I made at one point. [Bruner-Yang] opened the door for me and I just ran through it. I was coming in early and leaving late.”

“For D’Angelo, it was the passion that was really there, but he hadn’t had a lot of

opportunities to work in a kitchen,” BrunerYang says. “He had all that desire. My goal with him was that it’s more than just cooking.

It’s about structure. It’s nice to see him work his way through kitchens—he’s always had a lot of potential and I’m excited to see it all come to fruition.”

Mobley’s next big job was as a line cook at Arroz under executive chef Michael Rafidi.

The downtown restaurant that served inventive Spanish cuisine was short-lived because Mike Isabella owned it. The restaurateur gradually lost all of his restaurants after a top manager alleged “extraordinary” sexual harassment in a lawsuit. “It was probably the roughest year of my life, but I know so much thanks to Rafidi,” Mobley says.

Instead of going to cooking school, Mobley learned on the job. “A lot of chefs who went to culinary school suck,” he says. “Those years of school, I promise you, I got a trick from my experience that will cut that shit in half.” If anything, Mobley argues that aspiring chefs should get a business degree. But his education came from “Rafidi, reading, and YouTube University.”

“Anything I know gastronomically, like fluid gels and reverse fluid gels, I learned on YouTube,” Mobley says.

He gets anxious when he doesn’t recognize terms his peers use. “Back at Arroz, I was still kind of green,” he says. “People were using words I didn’t know what the fuck they meant, so I’d ask to go to the bathroom and I’d go google it and come back and act like I knew what they were talking about. Words

like ‘brunoise’ and ‘confit.’ All these French terms. I knew how to do it, but I never heard the words.”

Rafidi is now the chef and owner of Albi in Navy Yard. He says Mobley’s thirst for culinary knowledge reminded him of himself as a young cook. “He had tunnel vision a little and wasn’t always seeing the big picture,” Rafidi says. “Like, ‘Get out of my way, I want to learn.’ He had that same attitude that I did, a little brash at times, but I love that he’s taken the next step.”

Mobley worked at a couple other Isabella restaurants, first as a junior sous-chef at Requin at the Wharf and later as the souschef at Graffiato in Chinatown. “I was at Graffiato when they handed everybody the [Washingtonian] magazine and said, ‘Do you see this shit? Yeah, we’re done.’” The 2018 cover depicted Isabella’s face peeking out from behind a fried egg. The story inside took readers through how Isabella’s empire fell. “He’s an idiot,” Mobley says now.

Before the pandemic hit, Mobley passed through the kitchens of American Son, Maialino Mare, and Shibuya Eatery. When restaurants closed their dining rooms because of COVID-19, Mobley launched a home popup called Dirty Birds. “One reason I had to move out of my old apartment is because they thought it was drug traffic when it was just me literally selling chicken wings and lo mein and tacos,” he says. “It probably did look a little suspicious, but mind your own business. It’s a pandemic.”

Now he lives in Columbia Heights, not

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far from his current post. When La Jambe reopened in May 2021 after a pandemic-related break, it did so with Mobley at the helm. His goal was to make cookout food French. Instead of barbecue ribs, he plates short ribs with a white bean miso puree and raisin barbecue sauce. He presents fish and chips with mushy peas as stuffed smelts swimming in a vadouvan pea puree.

La Jambe owner Anastasia Mori took her time hiring a chef after she scoped out competing French wine bars and decided she wanted to stand out with a menu that had more of an edge. In her native Paris, bistros are modernizing their menus with more global flavors and ingredients. “D’Angelo hit the spot with that,” Mori says. She says Mobley was up against a “classically trained chef,” but ultimately won out after the taste test.

Mobley texted Mori in June 2021 and convinced her to put a hot dog on the menu. “I was so excited and so curious about how that would translate on a French wine bar menu,” Mori says. He used a Toulouse sausage, which Mori says she appreciates because the French prefer pork over beef sausages. “He made a mango sauce that was off the hook and the slaw was perfect.”

According to Mori, Mobley isn’t “your typical scream-at-the-staff chef.” Sometimes she thinks he’s a little too relaxed, but that’s better than the alternative. “He’s very much into hiring people in the kitchen that have little to no experience and building them from the ground up, which I find amazing.”

“I’m understanding if someone has to pick up their kid and they’re running 30 minutes late,” Mobley says. He gets it—he and his partner, Sade Sweetney, have a 5-monthold daughter named Roux-Rae. “I try to be very understanding of real-life things because that’s not something I had the benefit of when I was coming up in my career.” As a result, he says he doesn’t have a high turnover rate or cooks sabotaging the food to exact revenge.

“I’m lucky to have found him,” Mori says.

“He should have had the chance to shine way before us. I’m nervous that someone is going

to realize that and steal him away from me.”

Mobley doesn’t have plans to leave, but he’s considering his future. “I always wanted to be one of those super asshole chefs with a two- or three-star Michelin restaurant,” he says. “But a two-star Michelin restaurant is having a hard time right now.” The pandemic has him considering running a more casual pop-up again: “Something like Ralphie’s,” he says.

Ralphie’s was the restaurant Mobley’s mother, Raphael, owned in North Carolina when he was young. It burned down after a couple of years. “I was always close to the kitchen,” he says. “My mother is still one of the best cooks I know.”

Growing up in North Carolina and the D.C. area, Mobley didn’t think he’d follow in his mother’s footsteps by choosing restaurants over art or fashion. He hasn’t ruled out trying to break into those industries in the future, but for now he’s trying to hone his craft and uplift others.

“If you come to work and you try hard, I’m going to give you a shot,” Mobley says. “Say there’s a White guy who’s better on paper, but if you have the drive, I’m going to give you the opportunity to show me what you got first, because if someone didn’t do that for me, I wouldn’t be here.”

The restaurant industry has always been a place for people searching for a fresh start.

Mobley thinks there are more opportunities than ever for cooks to get their foot in the door because so many bars and restaurants need staff. “If you’re looking for your way out of your situation, I suggest finding a kitchen, even if you have to start in the dish pit, and find someone who is passionate and successful and stay up under them as much as you can and mimic greatness.”

Eventually you won’t have to fake it to make it. The budding cook version of Mobley, who was preoccupied by burying his past and furiously googling in the bathroom, is now a calm, confident leader. His Instagram handle and nickname is “mr86it.” “I’m Mr. Sell out,” Mobley says. “You bring me in there and I’m guaranteed to sell something. It’s going to be gone.”

ARTS BOOKS

All Roads Lead to the Birchmere Gary Oelze and Stephen Moore’s new book captures the magic of Alexandria’s musical landmark over five decades of history.

Sometimes, the best moments are unplanned. For Rosanne Cash, the eldest daughter of Johnny Cash, an impromptu show at the Birchmere several decades ago was one of those moments. For four hours, Rosanne Cash, alongside Rodney Crowell and Guy Clark, performed songs and shared stories on a night the Washington Post described as “a genuine highlight of Washington music in 1985.”

That piece also described the venue as “the finest showcase club in the Washington area, and, many believe, the finest club for contemporary acoustic music in the country.” A statement many continue to agree with.

Cash, Crowell, and Clark’s performance may be a momentary highlight for some, but it will forever be recorded, thanks to a new publication by Gary Oelze and Stephen Moore, All Roads Lead to the Birchmere: America’s Legendary Music Hall. Oelze is the owner and operator of the Birchmere; Moore is a music writer, musician, and retired Georgetown University technologist.

“With the Birchmere, it’s always like a homecoming, always welcoming,” Cash is quoted in the book. “They’re always enthusiastic. They give you a lot of slack to make mistakes. They’re so present. It’s one of the great venues in the country.”

Cash is one of more than 160 artists who were interviewed for All Roads. While each artist may differ in their histories, their lyrics, and their legacies, they all have one thing in common: They only have good things to say about the Birchmere.

Located in Alexandria, the part-restaurant, partmusic and comedy venue opened its doors in 1966 with Oelze as co-founder.

For those who have graced the halls of the venue, one can’t help but notice that the Birchmere walls do talk. As described in the book, a major hallway runs through the venue densely packed with hundreds of framed posters, signed by some of the many artists that have performed there over the decades. Since opening, the venue has hosted more than 3,300 nights of music and “probably 9,000” artists, Moore tells City Paper.

Regarding the book, which was published in November 2021, Oelze says, “It’s about music … even if you’re not familiar with D.C. or this area, you’ll appreciate the music stories from the artists.”

All Roads details the many performances the Birchmere has hosted, from bluegrass, country, folk, and rock to blues, R&B, Celtic, and Cajun. Comedy shows also frequently take place at the venue. Performers have included Rosanne and Johnny Cash, Ray Charles (who played his final show at the Birchmere), B.B. King, Little Richard, Leon Russell, Julian

Photos courtesy of Gary Oelze

By Michelle Goldchain @goldchainam

Gary Oelze (third from the right) with Kenny Vaughn (far left) along with the Clintons and the Gores, among others.

From left: June Carter Cash and Johnny Cash at the Birchmere; Gary Oelze and Stephen Moore. and Sean Lennon, Billy Bob Thornton (with his six-piece band The Boxmasters), John Waters, The Bacon Brothers, Paula Poundstone, Steven Seagal, Isaac Hayes, and David Byrne of Talking Heads. The Birchmere is also known for its famous guests such as former President Bill Clinton, former First Lady Hillary Clinton, and former Vice President Al Gore.

Over the course of nearly 500 pages, the book outlines the history of many of these pioneering figures, bands, comedians, and other artists who’ve graced the Alexandria stage. Local musician “Stumpy” Brown, who played mellow jazz with a Hammond B3 organ on Sundays, was the first to play the restaurant venue. Many of the earliest entertainers were bluegrass bands—the genre had a large following in the D.C. area from the late 1960s to early ’70s. Because of this trend, the book explains, local public radio station WAMU premiered the Bluegrass Unlimited radio program in 1968. And one band is specially credited for being a major

reason why the Birchmere became such a successful venue.

The Seldom Scene was “the most exciting act in bluegrass music” and “the driving force for modern bluegrass” by 1976, according to All Roads. The Birchmere became the band’s home for approximately 20 years, growing the venue’s popularity alongside the Seldom Scene’s own success.

“I always say this: There wouldn’t have been a Birchmere if it weren’t for the Seldom Scene.

They made me a legitimate club,” Oelze says in the book. “In return, I made a decent club for them, too.”

While bluegrass helped the Birchmere gain its footing as a local venue worth keeping a keen eye on, folk and Celtic music solidified the place as a multi-genre success. At the 2006 tribute to Woody Guthrie, singer Pete Seeger performed, which, according to the Post, received “multiple standing ovations, the first simply for showing up.”

In an interview with City Paper, Moore says,

“It’s not just an oldies club … The reason why it’s endured … is because Gary has always featured the best sound. The sound of that hall is superb.”

He adds, “It is an older model because it’s a dinner theater type model … I think that model might just continue because who doesn’t want to have a nice meal and see a show?”

While All Roads Lead to the Birchmere starts with a brief introduction to Oelze, the majority of the book discusses the life and legacy of the artists who performed, as well as their thoughts on what it was like to play the Birchmere. But time and time again, Oelze remains omnipresent.

“I got the sense that [Oelze] had that ability to understand, to experience his role without being hands-on, without being too interactive, but that he knew what his role is,” singersongwriter Dar Williams says in the book.

Born and raised in Owensboro, Kentucky, Oelze has a storied past: musician, Air Force veteran, and manager of a barbecue restaurant.

Before he opened the Birchmere, he was managing a Peoples Drug store in a Seven Corners shopping center. It was here that he eventually befriended Baltimore native William Hooper, who helped direct the Maryland and Virginia Milk Producers Association. Hooper offered Oelze the job of managing and operating a restaurant he planned to buy. Together they took over the Birchmere, officially, on April 4, 1966.

(Hooper died of a heart attack in 1980.)

If Oelze had his way, though, he would remain the man behind the curtains. “I don’t want anyone to think that I started the Birchmere as some vanity project,” Oelze writes in All Roads.

Oelze tells City Paper, “I was always afraid to put it on paper … I go to work every day. I love it.

Never have I ever not wanted to go to work. So, I never had a job, I always say.”

Though uninterested in being the face, Moore was able to eventually sway Oelze into collaborating on creating what Moore describes as an “honest book.” The two met in 1984, but Moore didn’t suggest writing the Birchmere’s history until after he interviewed Oelze for the book John Duffey’s Bluegrass Life, which was published in 2019. Initially, Oelze wanted to create a photo book, but Moore wanted to write the history of the venue. The two compromised.

The Birchmere has outlasted its original contemporaries, including Georgetown’s long-gone Cellar Door music club and Bethesda’s Red Fox Inn, which was once known as the epicenter of bluegrass in the D.C. area before the Birchmere swooped in and landed the Seldom Scene as a regular act. Moore tells City Paper the band is “the greatest success story” of the venue.

“I’m going to be 80 years old this year,” says Oelze, adding, “I’m healthy, and so I expect the Birchmere to be around for another 55 years.”

All Roads Lead to the Birchmere can be found at booklocker.com. $24.95–$36.95.

WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM JANUARY 21, 2022 15

ARTS FILM

Cop Killer, an American Story Photos courtesy of Flying Scoop Productions

From stage to screen: Spook, the one-man play by former MPD officer Meshaun Labrone, has been made into a film airing on Tubi TV.

By Ruben Castaneda Contributing Writer In the summer of 2018, Meshaun Labrone, a former officer with the Metropolitan Police Department, performed his intense oneman play, Spook, as part of the Capital Fringe Festival. Labrone played Daryl “Spook” Spokane, an MPD cop on death row for murdering five fellow officers. The play takes place the hour before Spook’s scheduled execution when he’s interviewed on live TV, speaking for the first time about why he went on his killing spree.

Spook explores racial dynamics within the police department and on the street, along with the pressures and frustrations that weigh on Black officers as they try to enforce the law while navigating racism within their own ranks. The Capital Fringe performances drew good crowds, and Labrone says officers of all backgrounds—Black, White, Latino, Asian— gave it good reviews: “They said the play captured the pressures of being an officer.”

Now Labrone’s story is available to a much broader audience. In December, the movie version—which runs a few seconds north of an hour—began airing on Tubi TV. “As an independent artist, the opportunity to put out a film on this platform makes me very happy,” says Labrone, 48. “It’s been a long, rough journey.”

Spook became a movie thanks to a word-ofmouth recommendation from a law enforcement officer, Labrone says. But getting to this point was slow going.

Buoyed by the positive reception Spook received at Capital Fringe, Labrone hoped to take the play to other venues, but didn’t get any traction. He performed it only once, during the festival, at Arena Stage. “We performed to a sold-out venue and got a great reception,” Labrone says. But the positive showing didn’t lead to additional performances.

A year later, during Labrone’s brief time working as a Department of Energy officer, he mentioned his play to a colleague, who encouraged him to continue trying to reach a wider audience. Months later, in 2020, the same officer reached out to Labrone; he’d mentioned Labrone’s plays—including one on Tupac Shakur—to someone potentially interested in his work, who could possibly help him find a wider audience.

Nate Starck and Mark Finkelpearl, founding partners of the D.C.-based media and entertainment company Flying Scoop, were filming a TV special on hip-hop impresario Sean “Diddy” Combs and the murders of Shakur and Biggie Smalls when they were introduced to Labrone, the ex-cop who’d

Meshaun Labrone

written and performed a play about Shakur.

“We immediately recognized his talent as a storyteller and on-screen talent,” Starck says.

“We invited him to participate in our filming because of his law enforcement background and the play he’d written on Tupac. Then we started kicking around ideas to collaborate on a separate film project.” Due to the pandemic’s shuttering of most live theaters, the three began exploring Labrone’s one-man plays as potential projects. Starck figured, “We could turn [one] into an innovative film that’s relatively safe during COVID-19.”

The same day Starck and Finkelpearl interviewed Labrone as an expert for the TupacBiggie project, massive protests broke out nationwide in response to the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Labrone mentioned Spook and showed the two producers a taped performance. The recording wasn’t high-quality, but Starck and Finkelpearl were enthralled by the story and Labrone’s performance.

16 JANUARY 21, 2022 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM

“His messages about race relations and law enforcement are so provocative and unique that you just can’t stop talking about this story for days or weeks later,” says Starck. “His play exploring privilege and police brutality should be required viewing for anyone entering law enforcement as a career or interested in police reform.”

Labrone says the bulk of Spook was filmed in one day last September at the Silver Spring Black Box Theatre.

The film is bracketed by brief remarks by a character named Keith Glover, a corrections officer who knew Spook. Glover is portrayed by Lawrence Glover, Labrone’s former MPD colleague and mentor. In his fleeting screen time, Glover is world-weary but determined, representing what Spook would have become if he hadn’t snapped.

Like the play, the film consists almost entirely of Spook’s pre-execution TV interview monologue. Labrone is charismatic and, at moments, an unsettling presence. His performance—and

the story—is devoid of sentimentality and easy answers. Spook speaks as he’s strapped to the death chair, awaiting a lethal injection.

“Every person that puts on the badge and then violates the public trust should be charged with treason, dragged out in the middle of the streets where they patrolled, and beheaded,” Spook says, matter-of-factly. “Spike their heads upon a stake in the middle of First and Main as a warning to all who violate the public trust. That is not anger. That is American.”

Photos of Spook’s victims are flashed during the film: The four officers, three of them White, that he shot to death during a roll call in which he wounded 11 others, along with a picture of the fifth officer, his Black woman partner, who he bludgeoned to death.

Labrone was inspired to write Spook, in part, by the 2013 shooting rampage by former Los Angeles police officer Christopher Dorner, who allegedly shot five police officers, killing two, after accusing the department of firing him for reporting excessive force. Dorner, who died in a shoot-out with law enforcement, also killed the daughter of a retired police captain and her fiancé, according to authorities.

Labrone also drew on his own experience as an MPD officer from 2013 to 2016, as well as stories he heard from fellow cops. He hopes the film will inspire viewers to “talk and act” about the issues of race and law enforcement that are raised in Spook.

“He was a monster created by society and his environment,” Labrone says. “Until we come to understand there’s no black and white world— it’s gray—and start to communicate with each other, his ending will happen to us. We have to understand we are all part of the human family.

This is not just a cop story, it’s a human story, an American story.”

Spook can be streamed online at Tubi TV. tubitv.com/movies/628911/spook

ARTS MUSIC

Lightmare Reimagine Power On their second album, the local sextet find new confidence in their ever-expanding soul-punk sound.

By Paul Veracka Contributing Writer Lightmare are a band that thrives in the undefined space. As far as genre and expectations go, they’re not afraid of rocking the boat.

“We don’t have to check boxes,” bassist Matt “Matty K” Kirkland tells City Paper. “There’s yourself, there’s your heart, there’s your beliefs, and there’s no compromise.” On their second album, Dirt, released in October, the D.C. group embrace this “no compromise” mentality and honed their craft, both as individuals and as a band. The record highlights each member’s talent as well as the power of their collective voice.

The six band members are loose, funny, and eloquent even over Zoom, their energy palpable. Mike “Beck” Beckage and Vitamin Dee play a flourishing guitar and chameleonic keyboards. Kirkland plays an in-your-face, ever-present saxophone. Powerhouse Shady Rose fronts the group with lead vocals and gripping, poignant lyrics. Bringing crackling bass and drums, Yousef Karim and Frankie Goodbye are the newest additions; they joined the band in 2019.

The original four members came together by chance five years ago with Hat Band, a lightning-strike event that placed musicians together randomly via lottery to raise funds for Girls Rock! DC. After the gig, Beckage, Dee, Kirkland, and Rose decided to make it a real band. On their bouncing revolt of a debut, 2018’s Dream Glitch, Lightmare worked to settle into their new skin, attempting to mix their diverse styles and influences into something people could really get down with. Since then, they have blossomed, their voices coalescing in more confident ways on Dirt. On this album, Kirkland says, “We got to trust people, starting to play to who we are.”

Dee agrees, the way the band wrote together felt different this time around. “I feel less like I have to sound like someone else or something else. I can do what serves the music,” says Dee. The result is a cohesive album with fiery vocals and harmonies, propulsions of chugging bass, and far more liberal group improvisation. There’s even a big-band style breakdown in “All Cats Are Beautiful,” in which featured brass multi-instrumentalist Alice MayneAshworth ascends with winding, jazzinfluenced solos. Lightmare are firing on all cylinders. They defied the sophomore slump, driven by a thematic rootedness, and a fearless embrace of necessary confrontation, both musically and lyrically.

Rebellion and resistance are key to the group’s collective power. “We are all people who understand deeply that this is not the world as

we would will it,” says Beckage. “We are dreaming together. … Making music together and putting the words to the music is a process of dreaming up the world we want to live in and making it tangible in some way.”

This is soul-punk. As Beckage explains, it’s the band’s world that “expands with us.” It is a fluid genre of voice, heart, and, especially gut, of marching through the streets, then whispering soft, simmering charms directly to oppressors.

Each member’s hunger to channel this energy of rebellion and resistance while making something bigger, rawer, is the current heart of Lightmare.

Dirt is filled with unceasing urgency, propelled by the self-liberation found in the rhythm and lyrics, and stirred with a “shared sense of discontent and outrage,” says Rose. “When it comes to making music together, we somehow understand each other better than when we talk.”

The common cause for systemic change unites them. Rose’s lyrics on this album are beautiful and revelatory, often tying the political to the intimate on tracks such as “Fatestring” and “Catching Fire.”

“All of our songs are political in some way… in the sense that every act of self-liberation is political,” they say. The instruments accent Rose’s writings with a raucous and deft musicality.

But Lightmare are at their best on fluid breakdowns, tracks such as “Chanson de Peur” and “ACAB,” where no instrument is overly present, and everything blends into a wordless, Modest Mouse-style voltage.

The group are deeply connected, unafraid to take risks and get lost together. “There are a lot of different minds in this group,” says Frankie. “Things can turn one way or another and there’s no specific road map of where it goes. We have this golden opportunity to go wherever we want to go.”

Perhaps this confidence comes from the band members’ relationships beyondLightmare. A couple bandmates work with Girls Rock!, the organization that supports girls and nonbinary youth in local music programs. Individually, the members participate in community activism and organizing (some recall being hit by rubber bullets and tear gas at recent protests). “We couldn’t be a band and be honest with each other if we weren’t expressing our discontent with what’s going on around us,” says Karim.

Lightmare are currently planning an East Coast tour (and hoping it doesn’t get derailed by the latest pandemic surge). And there is always new music to look forward to. Kirkland says album three will be radically different and even more explosive. At this point, the power grid for the group seems limitless.

Lightmare will play with Spud Cannon at 10 p.m. on Feb. 18 at Comet Ping Pong.

SAM BUSH, MIKE MARSHALL, EDGAR MEYER, GEORGE MEYER

MAVIS STAPLES

FEB 2 + 3 | 8 PM

FEB 21–23 | 8 PM

THE SPANISH HOUR SHARON ISBIN, guitar

CHAMBER MUSIC AT THE BARNS

1964 THE TRIBUTE FEB 11 + 12

JAN 23

AMY HELM

AN EVENING WITH BRANFORD MARSALIS

NELLA

JAN 26 + 27

FEB 17

FEB 18

BOB MOULD SOLO ELECTRIC: DISTORTION AND BLUE HEARTS!

ANA POPOVIC FEB 4

INTERNATIONAL GUITAR NIGHT LUCA STRICAGNOLI, JIM KIMO WEST THU LE, LULO REINHARDT FEB 9 + 10

H.C. MCENTIRE MAR 2

AND MANY MORE!

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Jockey Lives in the Golden Hour Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

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Horses have a way of turning us all into poets. “I saw her in the stall, and I knew,” says a character in Jockey about a thoroughbred she bought at auction. “It’s the way she watches the world.” Another explains his horse is named Hello Sunshine because, at the moment he was born, “an arc of sunlight landed on his head.” Jockey, by first-time feature director Clint Bentley, leans in to the poetry of the equine, finding both tragedy and redemption among the racetracks and trailers of the American Southwest.

Viewers will notice that nearly every scene in Jockey is set during the magic hour, those fleeting moments of stillness just after the sun has risen or before it has set. For Bentley, it might be a shortcut to aesthetic beauty, but thematically, it tracks. Athletes will tell you that those are the hours in which champions are made, and Jockey certainly features its share of pre- and post-race training scenes. More than that, everyone in Jockey is facing either the dawn or dusk of their career. Jackson Silva (Clifton Collins Jr.) is an aging legend whose time in the saddle is nearing its end. His partnership with trainer Ruth Wilkes (Molly Parker) is solid, but he knows she’ll move on from him as soon as his body, which has suffered too many violent falls to count, quits on him. When Gabriel (Moises Arias), a young jockey working his way up, arrives claiming to be Jackson’s son, it inspires a rush of complicated feelings. Jackson wants a legacy, but he’s not ready to let go.

It’s a story we’ve heard before. While Jockey might have benefited from a little more creativity in its plotting, its conventions are imbued with feeling by the earnest, committed performances of its cast. There’s a neat symmetry between Collins, a veteran character actor in a long-overdue lead role, and Jackson; neither knows when they will get another shot and are determined to make the most of this one. Jackson is a smooth talker who can charm trainers and owners, but Collins teases out a

hard-earned vulnerability behind his languid Texas cool. The people he chooses to keep nearby seem to draw it out of him. Arias plays Gabriel as a boy learning the rules of a man’s game, trying to match his father’s macho posturing but inevitably falling short, while Parker’s earnestness cuts through alpha-male bullshit like a hot knife through butter. The unabashedly romantic way Parker’s Ruth gazes at Jackson helps us see him as a person who might have value even after his racing days are over.

With a strong trio of central performances, Jockey could have simply been an engaging character piece, but it’s further enriched by its naturalistic flourishes. Certain exchanges feel improvised, with stumbles and interruptions that are far too awkward to have been scripted.

Bentley wisely cast real-life jockeys in supporting roles, which gives the film an authentic, almost documentary-like feel, and makes the slightly undercooked script easier to forgive. In one of the film’s most affecting scenes, Jackson and the other jockeys sit in a circle, sharing their stories about horrific injuries and economic hardships. If you ever doubted that jockeys are not serious athletes, this scene quiets those thoughts. It shows that, while horse racing is clearly a brutal sport for its unwilling animals, it’s only marginally less punishing for its humans.

Although it finishes strong, Jockey stumbles a little in the final straightaway. Its pace is so leisurely, perhaps as a purposeful subversion of other sports movies, that it never picks up any speed, and the final moments lack the drama we have been conditioned to expect. There is no buildup of tension at the finish line. Instead, it basks in the stillness of its magic hour, gently retreating from even its defining conflicts so as to not spoil such a beautiful moment. We never know how many more we’re going to get.

—Noah Gittell Jockey is in theaters Jan. 21.

Courtesy of Hamiltonian Artists

CITY LIGHTS Through Jan. 29

new.now.

Courtesy of ARTECHOUSE DC

Hamiltonian Artists’ annual new.now. exhibition, showcasing the articulation of artists’ vision, returns with work from the five 2021-2023 distinguished fellows—Kyrae Dawaun, Cecilia Kim, Ara Koh, Samera Paz, and Matthew Russo—selected by an independent national jury of arts professionals. The mission of Hamiltonian Artists is to assist the city’s next generation of creators through mentorship and investment by providing access to a culturally prominent exhibition space located along the U Street Corridor. As part of that mission, the organization created the Hamiltonian Artist Fellowship to provide assistance to visionaries seeking careers as professional artists. This year’s new.now. offers a preview of selected artistic and creative work across various mediums such as painting, sculpture, and theatrical work. The artists explore family relationships, womanhood, gender, sexuality, and more. new. now. runs through Jan. 29; the closing reception starts at 4 p.m. on Jan. 29 at Hamiltonian Artists, 1353 U St. NW. hamiltonianartists.org. Free. Proof of vax and masks required.

—Nelea (Lea) Johnson

Open Now

Transient: Impermanent Painting After a successful three-month stint with Life of the Neuron, ARTECHOUSE DC is already on to its next immersive exhibit. Transient: Impermanent Painting, created in partnership with visual artist Quayola, is open to the public. Based in London, Quayola is known for creating immersive exhibits and using technology as a lens to explore the relationships between opposing forces—real and artificial, old and new.

Transient is yet another attempt to do so. Described as “a duet of motorized piano and hyperreal projections,” Transient: Impermanent Painting combines human and technological elements to show audiences the full artistic process. The exhibit consists of a series of audiovisual paintings, such as high-resolution, hyper-realistic digital brushstrokes that correspond to musical notes. Quayola hopes this experience will prompt attendees to reevaluate their conceptions about music and traditional artistic techniques. “This exhibition aims to blur the boundaries between image and sound,” Quayola says on ARTECHOUSE’s website. “Transient does not generate finite music and paintings, rather it presents the impermanence that lies behind its algorithmic potential.” Transient: Impermanent Painting will be on display daily through March 6, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., at ARTECHOUSE, 1238 Maryland Ave. SW. $17–$30. Proof of vax required.

—Hannah Docter-Loeb

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Jan. 24

Jan. 29

Photo by Tonje-Thilesen

Lomelda Courtesy of Politics and Prose

Kathryn Paige Harden

Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality might sound like a book written by a 20thcentury eugenicist, but its author, Kathryn Paige Harden, is far from that. A professor of clinical psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, director of the Developmental Behavior Genetics Lab, and co-director of the Texas Twin Project, Harden has spent years researching how DNA differences play a large role in educational and economic success to propose a new society where “everyone thrives, regardless of how one fares in the genetic lottery.” In her book, Harden chronicles the complicated history of genetics, sharing both her and other scientists’ findings, as well as personal experiences and analogies that help demonstrate how genetic inheritance can sometimes be sheer luck. Throughout Genetic Lottery, Harden challenges notions of racial superiority and eugenics to reclaim the field of genetics, arguing that we must acknowledge the importance (and power) of DNA to create a fairer world. On Jan. 24, at yet another Politics and Prose virtual event, Harden will be joined by Angela Duckworth, founder and the CEO of Character Lab, to discuss The Genetic Lottery and how it can be applied to making real-life social change. The virtual talk starts at 6 p.m. on Jan. 24. Registration required. politics-prose.com. Free.

—Hannah Docter-Loeb

Hannah is one of those albums that got some of us through arguably the worst chunk of the pandemic. Released in September 2020, the 40-minute, 14-track LP by Lomelda offers lo-fi, fuzzy beats, somewhat mumbled comforting vocals, and low-key but upbeat vibes. Hailing from Silsbee, Texas, Lomelda are led by Hannah Read, who originally formed the band with friends from high school and her brother. They released Lomelda’s first full-length album in 2015 (Forever). Over the years, the band have continued to evolve, sometimes expanding members, other times scaling down to become Read’s solo project. Hannah, Lomelda’s fifth album, takes its name from the band’s leader, and invites listeners in to find a safe spot to sing along. (In this writer’s house, “Kisses” has played on repeat many times during the past year.) Pitchfork hailed the album as one of the best of 2020, noting “there’s a sense that even at their most gentle, these songs are transmitting something deeply earnest and hard-won.” The final result is a comforting optimism for those of us who don’t find joy in bubbly music. Apparently no two Lomelda shows are alike, so fingers crossed that D.C. has a chance to see for ourselves at DC9 on Jan. 29; Alexalone opens. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. on Jan. 29 at DC9, 1940 9th St. NW. dc9.club. $15–$18. Proof of vax required. —Sarah Marloff

Jan. 29

Jan. 21 & 22

Guy Branum Courtesy of AFI Silver

Courtesy of Arlington Cinema and Drafthouse

The Last of Sheila

When Stephen Sondheim passed away in November, most people realized the world had lost a giant of musical theater. But true Sondheimites also realized that we lost a potentially great murder mystery writer, as shown in Sondheim’s screenplay The Last of Sheila. Now, as part of their Stephen Sondheim Remembered programming, AFI Silver will screen the 1973 cult classic murder mystery on Jan. 29. Co-written with Anthony Perkins (yes, that Anthony Perkins of Psycho fame), the screenplay was the first either had written and was borne from murder mystery parties they would host. The movie begins with Sheila Greene, a Hollywood gossip columnist, being killed in a hit and run. A year later, her husband, a Hollywood producer played by James Coburn, invites a group of friends for a weeklong cruise in the Mediterranean, certain that one of them is responsible for Sheila’s death and determined to reveal the killer. As with any great murder mystery, members of the ensemble (which includes Raquel Welch, Dyan Cannon, and James Mason) start dropping pretty quickly. In 2012, New Line announced a remake of The Last of Sheila, but that remake has never seen the light of day. In the meantime, Sondheimites and newbies can enjoy this cult classic at AFI Silver. The Last of Sheila screens at 3:30 p.m. on Jan. 29 at AFI Silver, 8633 Colesville Rd., Silver Spring. afi.silver.com. $8-$13.

—Christina Smart

Most people attend a stand-up show because they want to watch something funny, happy to see whomever happens to be on the bill. Others buy tickets because they’re fans of the performer in question. But Guy Branum stands out for his 2018 memoir, My Life As a Goddess, perhaps the best comedy memoir of the modern era. While he’s not quite a household name (he should be), Branum’s frequent appearances on Chelsea Lately, presence on the Maximum Fun podcast network, and his TruTV show Talk Show the Game Show put his work on screens and in earbuds for nearly a decade.

Still, his book is what took off, and continues to linger years later. Branum’s writing is genuine and funny and harsh. He’s entirely himself in the work, something sorely lacking in most memoirs by comics. There’s no glossing over uncomfortable truths. Similar to David Sedaris’ writing and Amy Sedaris’ sense of humor, Branum is a certain type of person’s favorite comic. If you’re one of the people that just want to see a comedy show, you’ll probably like at least some of Branum’s act. If you already love Branum, you’ll continue to love Branum. Maybe on your way to see him at the Arlington Drafthouse on Jan. 21 or 22, pick up a copy of his book. It’s available at the DC Public Library. Guy Branum performs on Jan. 21 and 22 at 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m at Arlington Cinema and Drafthouse, 2903 Columbia Pike, Arlington. arlingtondrafthouse.com. $25–$30.

—Brandon Wetherbee

20 JANUARY 21, 2022 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM

DIVERSIONS CROSSWORD

Jan. 31

Courtesy of the Smithsonian

Lunar New Year’s Eve Reunion Dinner

QUI COMPONENTS

By Brendan Emmett Quigley

Signature Theatre

Daphne’s Dive

After two years, the curtain will open once again on Signature Theatre’s smaller stage, where the cast of Daphne’s Dive will transform the Arlington playhouse into a north Philadelphia bar. Opening night will mark a return of live performances to the theater’s intimate venue and will also deliver a fitting tale for a world two years into a pandemic. As Signature’s Artistic Director Matthew Gardiner tells it, Daphne’s Dive is somewhat of an antidote to loneliness, a beautiful rendering of the “communal experiences” and “belonging” that so many have missed. Written by Quiara Alegría Hudes (author of In the Heights), Daphne’s Dive has earned comparisons to beloved sitcoms, thanks in part to its episodic nature, with scenes sometimes jumping multiple years. The show follows a group of regulars at a bar, run by Daphne, over the course of nearly two decades. Over time, they experience loss, career success, and many more moments of grief and joy. Their multicultural roots, including Daphne’s Puerto Rican heritage, are woven throughout. Actors Rayanne Gonzales, Yesenia Iglesias, James Whalen, Jonathan Atkinson, Quynh-My Luu, and Jyline Carranza are tasked with bringing these regulars to life, selling the stories of a group of “society’s outsiders.” Director Paige Hernandez says that several cast members have direct connections to Puerto Rico, helping bring “authentic storytelling” to the stage. Daphne’s Dive promises to welcome audience members back to the theater with a warm hug, and hopefully send them into the world reflecting on what they value most.

Daphne’s Dive opens Feb. 1 and runs through March 20 at Signature Theatre, 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. sigtheatre.org. $40-$66. Proof of vax and masks required.

—Sarah Smith

25. Balanced the levels

26. Tip over

35. Intertwined 37. Answer page

5. “That was hairy” 9. Skoal in the mouth 13. City on Nevada’s Humboldt River 14. Circle dance 15. Gravy, e.g.

16. It’s just for laughs 17. Closing paragraph?

18. Large key 19. Stop playing the Steinway?

43. Conversation topic among gal pals

6. Boxcar sleeper

44. Floating among an antimalarial drug?

7. Actor Ebouaney

48. Gary Numan new wave classic

9. Like a guaranteed winner

49. Some brown colors 50. Tough-to-chew piece of tobacco?

55. Last 56. Spitting sound

60. “I’ll take the blame”

24. “Sittin’ Up in My Room” singer stabbing others in the back?

61. Snowpiercer actor Bremner

29. Brand of mouthwash

63. It’s so yesterday

36. Word for word?: abbr.

38. Bonehead?

62. Nutrient in legumes 64. “It wasn’t me!”

65. Smug grunts

Down 1. Wizards head coach Unseld Jr. 2. Similar group 3. Isn’t allowed to play

40. Donuts in math class 42. Swimsuit that covers the head as well as the body

5. Frauds

23. Engage in moshing

33. Provençal beef stew

41. Pick up

22. Unified

31. Say firmly

4. Drink that might make you feel funny

57. Shakespeare character followed

by The Fool

30. Month that begins with American Chess Day

34. Gambling game with a punto banco variation

39. Off adventuring

28. Salad veggies 32. “I don’t like your ___, mister!”

1. Bit of smoke

27. Hockey goalies

Across

speaker 24. Issued, as a farewell

Opens Feb. 1

22. Jockey Eddie

Daphne played by Rayanne Gonzales

Learn to make three celebratory dishes in about an hour by tuning in to a virtual Lunar New Year’s celebration on Jan. 31, organized by Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. Kevin Tien of Moon Rabbit, Rosie Nguyen of Rose Ave Bakery, and Yuan Tang of Rooster & Owl will each conduct a cooking demonstration to coincide with discussion about the history and symbolism of food traditionally eaten during Lunar New Year by people of the Asian diaspora. Scholar Hyunjung “Crystal” Rie will also share insights about the customs that characterize the 15-day holiday that often reunites families. The ingredient list is published in advance—in case participants want to cook alongside the chefs. There’s also an option to preorder a “Lunar New Year in a Box” package featuring treats from the trio of chefs through Moon Rabbit on Tock. Tang is making a version of a glutinous rice cake dish he ate as a child, only he’s flavoring the mochi with carrot to make it orange and filling it with black sesame paste and crunchy sea salt. “I chose to do that because this coming New Year is the year of the Tiger,” Tang says. “And my oldest daughter is obsessed with tigers.” Those who pick up the box from Moon Rabbit will get to try it. “When I was growing up, people didn’t care about our culture, so it’s really cool that people now want to know more about it,” Tang continues. The museum’s goal is to highlight tastemakers in D.C. as a part of its mission to stop anti-Asian hate that has proliferated since the start of the pandemic.

Lunar New Year’s Eve Reunion Dinner starts at 6 p.m. on Jan. 31, via Zoom. Registration required. events.si.edu. Free, $45 for the Moon Rabbit box.

—Laura Hayes

8. Mashed potato alternative

10. Ethnic group of Burundi 11. Served perfectly 12. “We ___ just leaving” 15. Cross-reference phrase 20. Adding word 21. “Play it, Sam”

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WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM JANUARY 21, 2022 21

DIVERSIONS SAVAGE LOVE I’m a straight guy but my whole life I have wanted to be spanked by older men. Does this make any sense? Because I’m confused. I don’t like or want penis, yet I want to be spanked as a punishment by men. I don’t understand myself sometimes.

—Sincerely Pondering And Not Knowing

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The truly important question here isn’t why you want this, SPANK, but how much more time you’re going to waste sitting on your ass wondering why you want this when you could be out there getting that ass spanked?

And even if you came up with a neat and tidy answer, you’re still going to want older men to spank you. Because getting to the bottom of a kink—identifying some childhood trauma that explains everything—isn’t a cure. Instead of seeing the spankings you want as a riddle you need to solve, you should see them as a reward for all the wondering you’ve had to do. If you need a label, SPANK, just say you’re bisexual for spankings. Not bi for blow jobs, not bi for anal, not bi for JO or mutual masturbation. Just bi for spankings.

—Dan Savage I like the way you walk the talk because gay guys in women’s clothes get me hard and horny and when I see a gay guy dressed in sexy clothing it just makes me want to jerk off and maybe one day I’ll meet a gay guy like you and suck and blow him.

—Gooning About Gay Guys In Naughty Gowns Articles of clothing don’t have genders, GAGGING, because anyone can wear anything, as Billy Porter was sent down to earth to teach us. Also, not all gowns are naughty— think night, hospital, dressing, etc. That said, GAGGING, I don’t wear the kind of clothing the cishet patriarchy would have us believe is for women alone. Well, I don’t wear that stuff anymore. I used to drag, GAGGING, and the pictures are out there, but I haven’t worn so much as a skirt for years. So, you can stop thinking about sucking my dick.

—DS I’m hoping to get an objective POV on something. I’m a 31-year-old male bottom. I have been in an open relationship with an amazing 31-year-old male top for 12 years. One year ago, I started to suffer some gender dysphoria. At roughly the same time, he expressed a desire to be topped. I never had any desire to top someone, I’ve never even felt that male urge to thrust my hips, but I hate that I’ve let my BF down. I can do this, but only with the help of ED meds. How can I get some pleasure out of it?

—Topping Burden You could penetrate your BF with toys, or you could take one (or give one) for the team once in a while (by taking ED meds and topping him), or your boyfriend could bottom for other men, seeing as your relationship is already open. Or all of the above. And if it’s the thrusting and/ or being in control that turns you off (or tweaks your gender dysphoria), take an ED med and let your boyfriend ride your hard dick. Then, instead of you fucking him, he’ll be fucking himself. Power bottom, sub top!

—DS

22 JANUARY 21, 2022 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM

I’m wondering how AJ, the FinDom you quoted at length in your most recent column, wound up on your radar and got what amounted to free advertising in your column. You said he lives in the Pacific Northwest. Isn’t that where you live, Dan? And you said his bathroom is always spotlessly clean. How would you know that? Are you cleaning his bathroom?

—Dan’s Ethics Are Lacking I’ve never met AJ in person, there’s more than one city in the Pacific Northwest (and we don’t live in the same one), and I found AJ looking for gay FinDoms on Twitter who might want to answer CASHFAG’s question. That said, DEAL, while I’m far too cheap to be anyone’s finsub (or their sugar daddy, for that matter), I do enjoy cleaning bathrooms—but not in a pervy way. I enjoy cleaning bathrooms in an eat-an-edible-and-listen-to-musicalsand-zone-out-doing-housework-while-thehusband-and-his-boyfriend-are-at- the-gym sort of way. So, while I wouldn’t necessarily say no to cleaning AJ’s bathroom, I haven’t been asked, DEAL, and consequently haven’t had the pleasure.

—DS

Anyone can wear anything, as Billy Porter was sent down to earth to teach us.

and #SomeWomenToo—it turns out that men may not be lying about this. In addition to the textbook example you shared, STAT, other readers sent along a clip of Patrick Stewart on The Graham Norton Show. In it, Stewart tells Norton he got into an argument with his wife about his dick one day. He insisted he was circumcised, she insisted he was not. Stewart, who thought he knew his own dick, followed up with his doctor and it turned out his wife, who may have had a larger frame of reference, was correct: Contrary to what Stewart believed about his own dick, he was not circumcised as an infant or at any time in his life. The clip, which is easy to find on YouTube (and very funny), is yet more evidence— anecdotal, in Stewart’s case—that some men don’t know from their own dicks.

—DS In your reply to SADSON, you are clearly taking sides based on how comfortable you must be about withholding the truth from a partner.

You say the father should have “kept his mouth shut” about the affair he had! You know nothing about this couple’s values and decisions! Who are you to push your views on others? Many of us consider lying about cheating reprehensible! And the last sentence of your response (“I hope there were other women”) was astonishingly juvenile, mean-spirited, and vindictive—and for what reason? To take sides against a clearly tormented heterosexual woman! Disgusting and shameful!

—Thoroughly Appalling Take Enrages Reader

This is about your recent response to UNCUT, the guy who met men who believed they were uncut when they were very much cut. You suggested that these men were lying about being uncircumcised.

But not knowing might be more common than we assume. This is from Epidemiology, the authoritative textbook written by Leon Gordis of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health: “They asked a group of men whether or not they had been circumcised. The men were then examined by a physician. Of the 56 men who stated they were circumcised, 19, or 33.9 percent, were found to be uncircumcised. Of the 136 men who stated they were not circumcised, 47, or 34.6 percent, were found to be circumcised. These data demonstrate that the findings from studies using interview data may not always be clear-cut.”

—Some Truly Are Thrown

This is an advice column, TATER. People send in questions; I answer those questions.

So I’m not pushing my views on anyone here.

I’m sharing my views. That’s literally my job.

And I’m not the first advice columnist to urge a cheater to withhold the truth from a partner: “The adulterer who wants to ‘set everything right’ by telling all would be better advised to keep his mouth shut and work out his guilt by behaving in a more thoughtful, loving, considerate way and stay out of other beds in the future.” That’s from The Ann Landers Encyclopedia, which was published in 1978.

(Ann assumes all adulterers are male; I guess she could also be accused of “taking sides.”)

In the case of SADSON’s parents, TATER, don’t you think SADSON’s mom would’ve been happier if her husband had taken Ann Landers’ advice and kept his fucking mouth shut? Instead, SADSON’s dad told SADSON’s mom about the affair he’d had a decade after it was over. So, it wasn’t the affair that tormented SADSON’s mom, but knowing about it. As for my snarky postscript (“I hope there were other women”), SADSON’s mom has made her husband’s life a daily living hell for 30 years.

Why? Because he fucked somebody else 40 years ago. I don’t know about you, TATER, but I think the punishment should fit the crime. And there’s only one way that’s possible here: more crimes, lots of crimes, so many crimes.

—DS

While it’s true that men lie to prospective sex partners all the time—and, yes, #NotAllMen

Email your Savage Love questions to questions@savagelove.org.

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THE DC PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL BOARD (DC PCSB) GIVES NOTICE IT WILL NOT accept applications for new public charter schools in 2022. DC PCSB will resume accepting applications in 2023, in accordance with a schedule to be published at a later date.

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