Washington City Paper (February 2, 2018)

CITYPAPER Washington

Politics: The race for council chair may noT be boring. 5 food: JerKS Scamming barS 13 Arts: Hamlet geTS a playmaTe 17

Free Volume 38, no. 5 WaShingTonciTypaper.com feb. 2-8, 2018

When doctors cut me off from my 10-year opioid prescription for chronic pain, the implications were swift, excruciating, and confounding. P. 8

By Kaarin Vembar

Photographs by Darrow Montgomery

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INSIDE on tHe CoVer: PreSCrIBeD PaIn 8

cracking down on opioid prescriptions might help keep pills off the street, but the consequences for chronic pain patients are severe.

DIStrICt LIne 5 Wear and chair: Progressive wonk Ed Lazere wants to chair the D.C. Council.

6 Savage love 7 gear prudence

FooD 13 cashing in on chips: Can pricey and time-consuming chip readers stop bars from being scammed?

15 rare form-ula: What $40 buys you at six area sushi spots 15 top of the hour: Convivial’s long list of discounted snacks 15 hangover helper: Stable’s fondue grilled cheese

artS 17 theater: Klimek on Hamlet at Sidney Harman Hall and Sovereignty at Arena Stage 19 curtain calls: Ritzel on Jefferson’s Garden at Ford’s Theatre 20 Sketches: Robinson on The Newseum’s 1968: Civil Rights at 50 21 Short Subjects: Gittell on In the Fade 22 Discography: West on the Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra’s Bohemiana and Fischer on Bat Fangs’ self-titled release.

CIty LISt 25 city lights: See R&B star SZA at the Fillmore on Monday.

25 Music 27 Theater 29 Film

DIVerSIonS 30 Classifieds 31 Crossword

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EDITORIAL

eDitOr: AlexA mills Managing eDitOr: cAroline jones artS eDitOr: mAtt cohen fOOD eDitOr: lAurA hAyes city lightS eDitOr: kAylA rAndAll Staff Writer: Andrew giAmbrone Staff phOtOgrapher: dArrow montgomery MultiMeDia anD cOpy eDitOr: will wArren creative DirectOr: stephAnie rudig cOntributing WriterS: john Anderson, morgAn bAskin, VAnce brinkley, kriston cApps, chAd clArk, rAchel m. cohen, riley croghAn, jeffry cudlin, eddie deAn, erin deVine, tim ebner, cAsey embert, jAke emen, jonAthAn l. fischer, noAh gittell, lAurA irene, AmAndA kolson hurley, louis jAcobson, rAchAel johnson, chris kelly, steVe kiViAt, chris klimek, priyA konings, julyssA lopez, Amy lyons, neVin mArtell, keith mAthiAs, j.f. meils, triciA olszewski, eVe ottenberg, mike pAArlberg, pAt pAduA, justin peters, rebeccA j. ritzel, Abid shAh, tom sherwood, Quintin simmons, mAtt terl, dAn trombly, kAArin VembAr, emily wAlz, joe wArminsky, AlonA wArtofsky, justin weber, michAel j. west, diAnA yAp, AlAn zilbermAn

ADvERTIsIng AnD OpERATIOns

publiSher: eric norwood SaleS Manager: melAnie bAbb SeniOr accOunt executiveS: renee hicks, Arlene kAminsky accOunt executiveS: chAd VAle, brittAny woodlAnd SaleS OperatiOnS Manager: heAther mcAndrews DirectOr Of Marketing, eventS, anD buSineSS DevelOpMent: edgArd izAguirre OperatiOnS DirectOr: jeff boswell SeniOr SaleS OperatiOn anD prODuctiOn cOOrDinatOr: jAne mArtinAche publiSher eMerituS: Amy Austin graphic DeSignerS: liz loewenstein, melAnie mAys

LELAnD InvEsTmEnT cORp. OWner: mArk d. ein

lOcal aDvertiSing: (202) 650-6937 fax: (202) 650-6970, Ads@wAshingtoncitypAper.com Find a staFF directory with contact inFormation at washingtoncitypaper.com vOl. 38, nO. 5 feb. 2–8, 2018 wAshington city pAper is published eVery week And is locAted At 734 15th st. nw, suite 400, wAshington, d.c. 20005. cAlendAr submissions Are welcomed; they must be receiVed 10 dAys before publicAtion. u.s. subscriptions Are AVAilAble for $250 per yeAr. issue will ArriVe seVerAl dAys After publicAtion. bAck issues of the pAst fiVe weeks Are AVAilAble At the office for $1 ($5 for older issues). bAck issues Are AVAilAble by mAil for $5. mAke checks pAyAble to wAshington city pAper or cAll for more options. © 2017 All rights reserVed. no pArt of this publicAtion mAy be reproduced without the written permission of the editor.

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DistrictLine Wear and Chair

Ed Lazere is coming for the left flank of D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson.

Darrow Montgomery

that have made it hard to put investments in other things,” says Lazere. “As progressives, we should be fighting on behalf of working families, not fighting on behalf of big businesses already doing well in D.C.” Mendelson had a different take on his re-election bid.

“My race is one about leadership,” he says. “Because that’s what the chairman of the Council is, a leader. We can argue over degrees of progressivity, but this is about more.”

“I don’t believe there’s been a chairman who’s been elected who has not served on the Council,” adds Mendelson. “That’s what the job is all about—being a chief administrative officer to pull together the votes.”

So if the race for D.C. Council chairman becomes a question of experience versus progressive bona fides, who has the advantage?

“The argument over who is a progressive is really sort of a Democratic version of what Republicans are having over the establishment versus anti-establishment issue,” says George Derek Musgrove, an associate professor at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and co-author of Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital.

“If in a local race, someone can claim the mantle of progressive over establishment and there’s a legitimate grievance that people have, for instance yawning wealth inequality, gentrification, and displacement,” explains Musgrove, “then you [the challenger] have a better chance of dictating the terms of the race.”

Despite having passed the majority of the so-called “progressive agenda,” which includes things like marriage equality, a minimum wage hike and paid family leave, the District still boasts constituent groups that are not universally down for every cause du jour on the left.

By J.F. Meils When ed Lazere, former executive director of the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, announced last week that he will challenge Phil Mendelson, chairman of the D.C. Council, the race became the de facto title fight in this year’s local elections.

With Mayor Muriel Bowser yet to draw a credible opponent, the Mendelson-Lazere matchup could be the clearest glimpse into the District’s political headspace in 2018. And since this is D.C. and both candidates are Democrats, the chairmanship of the D.C. Council will likely be decided on June 19, when the primary is held.

Lazere, who is well-known in D.C. policy circles—but not nearly so by the general public—confirmed to City Paper that he will initially focus his campaign on what many consider his signature issues—homelessness, gentrification, and racial equity. He described the latter as: “Making sure we have a growing economy that works for everyone.”

Though Hillary Clinton won 90 percent of D.C.’s vote in the 2016 election, local contests often reveal the stratification in the city’s ideological ranks. And it’s clear that Lazere, whose progressive positions are no secret, will be campaigning to Mendelson’s left.

“Over the last several years, the chairman [Mendelson] has put a high priority on tax cuts

“There’s no question that a lot of the new millennial residents in the District embrace progressive social ideas,” says Keshini Ladduwahetty, chair of DC for Democracy. “But when it comes to their views on economic issues, there’s quite a bit of conservative thinking.”

The Lazere-Mendelson primary also holds some intra-council intrigue.

“There’s definitely discontent within the Council and I’m hopeful the chair race will be a good opportunity to bring those issues to light,” says Ladduwahetty, whose group plans to announce its endorsement decisions on all the council races in mid-February.

One of the councilmembers who will no doubt keep one eye on Lazere’s campaign, in addition to her own, is At-Large Councilmember Elissa Silverman, who once worked at DCFPI for Lazere. Silverman ran as an independent on many of the same issues Lazere has raised as both a candidate and advocate when she snagged one of the District’s two open at-large seats in 2014 with about 41,000 votes, less than half of those cast for Anita Bonds, winner of the other at-large seat.

“It’s not rocket science,” says Silverman, about her 2014 strategy. “I talked about the big issues that mattered. I talked about affordable housing, homelessness, and about equity in our schools. And I talked about it with some level of depth.”

Silverman, who ran for and lost a special election for an at-large council seat in 2013, blames that defeat on what she says was a shared belief in the media that she couldn’t actually win.

“A real lesson I learned [in 2013] was that there has to be a perception that you can win in order for voters to think you can win and then vote for you,” she says.

Lazere could face the same hurdle, as questions remain about his ability to raise enough money to compete with Mendelson, about why he only took a leave of absence from DCFPI instead of quitting, and if his campaign is simply an effort to push Mendelson left on certain issues.

“Just by Lazere running, he’s opening up the opportunity for the progressive left part of the council to have more political say,” says Der-

ek Hyra, founding director of the Metropolitan Policy Center at American University and author of Race, Class, and Politics in the Cappuccino City.

“Of course it could all backfire,” adds Hyra.

“If his [Lazere’s] vote total comes in low, that makes it more difficult [politically] for Elissa Silverman and At-Large Councilmember David Grosso and others.”

Regardless of how the District is leaning on the issues, it’s important to keep in mind that Lazere is running against Phil Mendelson, who has served for two decades on D.C.’s Council and who City Paper contributing writer and veteran local political watcher Tom Sherwood recently described as “an iceberg.”

“He seems to be somewhat quirky and odd and frustratingly detailed and slow on the surface,” says Sherwood. “But he has a wide and deep following beneath that image.”

The chair of the D.C. Council is also a more powerful position than it was under, say, Mayor Marion Barry, whose political machine could bring more grassroots pressure to bear than Mayor Bowser’s can, giving Mendelson far more power than he tends to project.

“I think one of my strengths as chair of the Council has been the fact that I don’t grandstand or get hyperbolic,” Mendelson says. “I work to find consensus and pull people together.”

And lest we forget, Mendelson cut his political teeth in D.C. by winning ANC elections going back to the ’70s, then working for former Ward 3 Councilmember James Nathanson and former D.C. Council Chairman David Clarke. So Mendelson’s oft-cited mastery of council rules and handling of legislation is well-schooled, to say nothing of his experience winning elections in the District. Mendelson won his first race for council chairman with nearly 140,000 votes in 2014, about 40,000 more than Mayor Bowser received.

As for what the two hold in common: Mendelson and Lazere are policy nerds who look— and act—the part. Both call themselves “progressive.” Neither is known for setting rooms ablaze with their speechifying skills.

“There’s not a lot of space between us when it comes to where we stand on issues,” claims Mendelson.

The sentiment is not shared by Lazere of course.

“Why did we give $80 million in subsidies to developers in a gentrifying neighborhood?” asks Lazere, referring to what developers for the Union Market project recently received via the District. “That’s not too wonky. People get that.”

CP

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I am a 38-year-old lesbian, very femme, very out.

I have a coworker I can’t figure out. We’ve worked together for a year and gotten very close. I never want to put out the wrong signals to coworkers, and I err on the side of keeping a safe but friendly distance. This is different. We are each other’s confidants at work. We stare at each other across the office, we text until late at night, and we go for weekend dog walks. Her texts aren’t overtly flirty, but they are intimate and feel more than friendly. I’ve never had a “straight” girl act like this toward me. Is she into me? Or just needy? Is it all in my head?

—Workplace Obsession Roiling Knowing-If-Nervous Gal Five weeks ago, a letter writer jumped down my throat for giving advice to lesbians despite not being a lesbian myself. Questions from lesbians have been pouring in ever since—lesbians apparently don’t like being told who they may or may not ask for advice. Three weeks ago, I responded to a man whose coworker asked him if he might want to sleep with the coworker’s wife—a coworker who was “not [his] boss”—and people jumped down my throat for entertaining the idea because it is NEVER EVER NEVER EVER okay to sleep with a coworker and/or a coworker’s spouse. And now here I am responding to a question from a lesbian who wants to sleep with a coworker. Farewell to my mentions, as the kids say.

Here we go, WORKING… Your straight-identified workmate could be straight, or she could be a lesbian (lots of lesbians come out later in life), or she could be bisexual (most bisexual women are closeted, and others are perceived to be straight despite their best efforts to identify as bisexual)— and lots of late-in-lifers and/or closeted folks don’t come out until some hot same-sex prospect works up the nerve to ask them out. If your coworker isn’t currently under you at work, and you’re not an imminent promotion away from becoming her supervisor, and your company doesn’t incentivize workplace romances by banning them, ask your coworker out on a date—an unambiguous ask for a date, not an appointment to meet up at the dog park. And this is important: Before she can respond to your ask, WORKING, invite her to say “no” if the answer is no or “straight” if the identity is straight. Good luck!

—Dan Savage I’m a lesbian, and my partner recently reconnected with a childhood friend. At first I felt sorry for him, as he was having a health crisis. But he’s better now, and his pushy behavior really gets to me.

He texts her at all hours—and when he can’t get in touch with her, he bugs me. When I refused to go on a trip with him and his husband, he guilttripped me for weeks. He constantly wants us to come to his house, but they’re chain-smokers.

6 february 2, 2018 washingtoncitypaper.com

I’m going to Los Angeles to interview a celebrity for a project, and now he’s trying to insert himself into this trip because he wants go starfucking!

He also wants to officiate at our upcoming wedding! My partner won’t stand up for me when I say no to this guy. How can I get my partner to listen to me or get her jackass friend to leave me be?

—Can’t Think Of A Clever Acronym Burn it down, CTOACA. Call or email your partner’s old friend and tell him you think he’s a pushy, unpleasant, smelly asshole and that you don’t want to hang out with him— not at his place, not on a trip, and not at your wedding, which he not only won’t be officiating but, if you had your druthers, he wouldn’t be attending. That should do it. You can’t tell your soon-to-be wife who she can’t have as a friend—that’s controlling behavior—but she can’t force you to spend time with someone you loathe.

—DS

There are lots of non-Emmy/SAGAward-winning lesbians out there in relationships with significant age gaps—and at least one lesbian in Alabama who desperately wants to be in one.

I’m a 40-year-old lesbian in Alabama, and I work with a woman I find impossible to resist. The catch is she’s 66, straight, and has two children. I love her deeply, she loves me, but we don’t have sex. She has given me a pass to sleep with whomever I like, but I’m one of those weirdos who requires an emotional connection to sleep with someone. The odd thing is that she vacillates between heavily making out with me every time we are alone together and saying, “No, I can’t, I’m straight!” Why does she do everything but sex if she’s straight?

—Feeling Really Unsure Since This Remarkably Amazing Temptress Entered Domain That nice straight lady from work is making out with you because she likes it (the thirst is real), FRUSTRATED, or she’s making out with

you because she wants you in her life and believes—perhaps mistakenly—that this is the only way to hold your interest/fuel your obsession (the thirst is faked). If she likes it, then she’s a lesbian or bisexual but so invested in her heterosexual identity that she can’t “go there.” (Alabama, you said? Maybe she doesn’t feel safe being out in your community.) If she’s making out with you only because she’s lonely and values your friendship and/or enjoys the ego boost of being your obsession, then you don’t want to keep making out with her—for her sake (no one feels good after making out with someone they’d rather not be making out with) and for your own sake (those makeout sessions give you false hope and prevent you from directing your romantic and erotic energies elsewhere).

—DS I’m a woman in my early 60s with a healthy lifestyle and an even healthier libido. I’ve had almost exclusively hetero relationships, but I’ve been attracted to women all my life and all of my masturbation fantasies involve women. The older I get, the more I think about a relationship with a woman. The thought of being in love with a woman, making love with her, sharing a life with her—it all sounds like heaven. The trouble is that it’s really hard to see how I’ll meet women who would be interested in me. There’s rarely anyone my age on dating apps. I don’t even know what age range is reasonable. What’s a reasonable age difference for women with women? Also, who is going to be interested in a rookie? Advice?

—Energetic Lonely Dame Envisioning Relationship

Emmy-Award-winning actress Sarah Paulson is 43 years old and Emmy-Award-winning actress Holland Taylor is 75—and Sarah and Holland have been girlfriends for almost three years. Emmy-Award-winning talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres is 60 years old and ScreenActors-Guild-Award-winning actress Portia de Rossi is 45 years old—and Ellen and Portia have been together for 13 years and married for almost 10. There are lots of non-Emmy/SAG-Award-winning lesbians out there in relationships with significant age gaps—and at least one lesbian in Alabama who desperately wants to be in one. So don’t let the lack of older women on dating apps prevent you from putting yourself out there on apps and elsewhere, ELDER. As for your rookie status, there are two examples of lesbians pining over rookies in this very column! And remember: If you put yourself out there, you might be alone a year from now—but if you don’t put yourself out there, you’ll definitely be alone a year from now.

—DS Email your Savage Love questions to mail@savagelove.net.

Gear Prudence Gear Prudence: I’m not sure if this is a widespread problem or if it’s just me, but it’s about those dockless bikes. They’ve been around for a few months, and even though I’m a huge bike person, love Capital Bikeshare, and am a Washington Area Bicyclist Association member and everything, I just don’t have positive feelings about them. I don’t hate them, but I can’t really say that I like them either. If they went away tomorrow, I’m not really sure that I would care very much. I used them once or twice when they first came here, but my reaction was mainly, “So what?” I’m normally all about everything having to do with more biking, but dockless bikes leave me cold. Am I wrong to feel this way? Am I not getting something about why they’re actually good?

—Me: Epic Hypocrite?

Dear MEH: GP isn’t going to police your feelings. You get to decide what you like and what you don’t, and you shouldn’t feel obligated to gush over every single aspect of anything having to do with bicycles just because you are a “huge bike person.” For as relatively small as the subculture of bicycling is, it’s pretty variegated, and you’d be hard-pressed to find universal agreement among those who bicycle on any issue beyond “bicycle=good,” and even then the trike and unicycle people would say “Actually, …” and you’d have a regular donnybrook trying to sort things out.

Dockless bike sharing is new here, and novelties aren’t always immediately embraced. If you’ve got your own bike or you’re happy with Capital Bikeshare, it’s no wonder that you’re not wowed by dockless. It doesn’t really solve any problems for you. But then, it might not be for you, and that’s OK too. Not every product or innovation is for every person, and to suppose that each new bicycling advent should be specifically targeted for your approval is pretty blinkered (and really egocentric!)

The case for dockless bike share for the non-DoBi lover is this: If it’s not reaching you, then it’s reaching someone else. And since you’re already biking anyway and someone else might not have been until dockless bike share came along, you didn’t really need to be reached anyway.

The advantage of someone else biking is the “safety in numbers” effect, whereby cycling becomes safer for all users as more people do it. That’s a selfish reason to support it, but there’s a selfless one too: Dockless bike share expands the joy and functionality of bicycle travel. This is certainly something you can get behind, even if you don’t use these particular bikes.

—GP Gear Prudence is Brian McEntee, who tweets @sharrowsdc. Got a question about bicycling?

Email gearprudence@washcp.com.

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How can you be an addict if you are taking the medicine that doctors have prescribed to you, never exceeding the dosage?

By Kaarin Vembar

Bugs crawled under the surface of my skin. They kept moving, swarming, crawling in a never-ending loop under my collar bone.

Down the side of my leg. Scuttling all over my back in places I couldn’t reach.

I was in hour 17 of withdrawal from prescription opioids. It was my third shower of the day, and I couldn’t shake a sensation that felt like live bugs all over my body. When I turned up the water as hot as possible, it felt like their movement slowed.

My parents had designed and built a beautiful shower. It was large, with a floor made of different shaped stones instead of sterile porcelain or tile. The smooth stones under my feet gave me focus.

There was a wooden stool in the shower.

My sister, Carey, told my parents to put one in there after visiting. The shower was so stylized that it lacked practicality. How could she possibly shave her legs in that thing? There was no way to prop up a foot without falling over.

The stool became my saving grace. I didn’t have enough energy to stand, so I sat on the stool and let the hot water cascade as I waited for the bugs to slow down, and during the shower I took at hour 17, the stool became my altar. I knelt on the floor and bent over it, and begged God to remember me. To release me.

To give me strength.

I was in hell.

Three monThs earlier, in July, I had trouble getting through to my neurologist to schedule my semi-annual checkup. I was on the phone on hold with her office, but kept getting disconnected.

I’d had the same neurologist for five years.

She was fine enough, but every time I saw her she made me tell the story about how I ended

up with chronic pain. She would ask how I was doing, and I would tell her there had been no changes. She would then write a prescription for pain medication. I would be in and out of her office in 10 minutes.

That night I checked the mail. There was a letter explaining that my neurologist didn’t work for the hospital anymore and that I should get a new doctor. There was no forwarding address.

She was gone and I had a problem—my pain medication was running out. The chronic pain in my leg was too intense to go without medicine. I had 35 pills left and I needed a new doctor. That gave me five full days to find another neurologist in D.C., schedule an appointment, get in to their office, hope they believed my medical history, and leave with a new prescription.

Shit.

I made an appointment with my general practitioner, and as I sat in her office the letter from the disappearing neurologist was on her desk. Even though I had only seen this GP twice, I hoped that she would give me a stopgap in pills—just enough to get me through the next month while I found a new neurologist.

After scanning my records and listening to me describe my medical history, she said, “You know you are an addict, right?”

“Wait, what?” I almost laughed.

“Do you think you are an addict?” she asked.

“No. Wait. I’m just taking my prescription meds.”

“What happens if you don’t take them?” she asked.

“The pain is so overwhelming that I can’t walk.”

“And, how long have you been on them?”

8 february 2, 2018 washingtoncitypaper.com

Photographs by Darrow Montgomery

She looked at my record on her computer.

“Five years?”

I’ve been on them for 10 years.

“You can’t be on opioids for five years.”

Ten. Ten years.

She sighed. “You are going to have a hard time finding someone else to prescribe these to you.”

She wrote a prescription for 180 pills.

I left her office in a daze. How can you be an addict if you are taking the medicine that is prescribed to you? imagine Being locked in a room. You have freedom to move around in the space, but you can never go outside of it. There is a door, and the door has a window. You can see out the window but you can’t open the door.

You can merely observe what is happening on the other side. You must remain in the room.

Sure, you are living life, but your life is small and confined.

That’s what my chronic pain is like.

Now imagine someone giving you a stick of dynamite with a lit fuse. Use the stick and you won’t merely open the door, but blow it off its hinges.

That dynamite, for me, is a drug called Tramadol. It’s an amazingly effective synthetic opioid. It’s cheap. And you better believe it gets the job done.

When people speak of the opioid crisis they typically frame it in terms of overdoses and deaths, and with good reason. The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that more than 90 Americans die every day from opioid overdoses. In my city, D.C., there were 231 opioid-related deaths in 2016. It is, without question, a crisis.

Yet there is another story happening simul-

taneously. For more than two decades it was an unremarkable tale about people with chronic pain using opioids in a legitimate manner to manage their physical pain. In the late 1990s, drug companies went on a marketing spree to convince doctors that opioids were not addictive. The rebranding of opioids significantly increased the number of doctors writing prescriptions. Opioids were presented as a safe option for controlling, alleviating, and managing pain.

That’s how the drug was first presented to me in 2007. My neurologist at the time explained that, although we didn’t understand why my leg hurt, we would try a drug that may reduce the pain. He told me that the drug was non-addictive.

He wrote a prescription for a pain medication called Tramadol and told me that if it worked, then we’d know my pain was neurological.

I filled my prescription. I took a pill. And my life instantly changed.

The door to the room was blown off, and I could join what was on the other side. I found so much life there waiting—love, marriage, work, friendships. All of the boring, wonderous, exceptional, tedious things that make up a life.

It was two years before I read the fine print on Tramadol. It was a synthetic opioid—something that didn’t register as important at the time. The fact that did stick, however, was that getting off of it mimicked heroin withdrawal. But that didn’t bother me too much, either. My doctor found a successful way to manage my pain through pills.

Plus, I could stay on them forever.

The pain firsT started one morning when I was 25. I woke up and felt tingling in the left side of my body. First it was my foot. By the

end of the day the tingling had spread to my arm. A trip to the emergency room and an EKG yielded no results.

Over the next year and a half, the symptoms spread dramatically. I was in constant, excruciating pain. When I spoke my speech was slurred. I contemplated learning sign language to communicate until I began having trouble moving my fingers. I could walk, but my steps were labored.

Doctors tested me for everything imaginable. I had scans, MRIs, a spinal tap. One doctor told me that I should lift weights because my problem was that I lacked upper body strength. Another professional said psychological problems were causing the pain. An acclaimed female neurologist suggested that I didn’t have to make up symptoms to get attention.

My neurologists were honing in on a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis when something extraordinary happened. I decided to stop taking the birth control pills I had been on for five years. Within two weeks most of my symptoms went away, and I discovered that every one of them were listed as possible side effects of the birth control.

The return of my health was fast and dramatic. It was a revelation.

But as the other symptoms lifted, the pain in my leg remained, and my initial excitement dissipated when I realized that I still had trouble walking. The extreme pain settled into a chronic roar that never went away. Until I was offered Tramadol.

Ten years later I was still on Tramadol, on a dosage I’d never increased. I used it as prescribed, frequently taking fewer than my allotted number of pills per day. I never experimented with party drugs or mixed anything else in my system. The pain in my leg never disappeared, but the medication numbed it enough that I could function in my life. Everything plugged along. Until I found myself smack in the middle of the opioid crisis. my husBand and I booked a weekend trip to New York a few days after my general practitioner called me an addict. I had enough pills to get through the month, and I wanted to travel with Navin while I was still on medication— to make memories while life was somewhat normal. It was obvious that my days with Tramadol were numbered, and we had no idea what was going to happen when I went off the drug. It felt like an abyss.

I had forgotten the full, raw force of pain, but I had experienced hints of its power over the course of a decade on Tramadol. Once or twice a year I wouldn’t time a pill correctly, or would forget the medication at home, and a door into the past would open as pain ripped through my body. I would crawl into the fetal position, breathing deeply while I waited an hour for the medicine to make its way through my system. If Navin was around he would crawl into bed, curl up next to me, and read outloud to distract my brain as we waited the hour.

It was penance for being forgetful, for not bowing down to Tramadol and giving it the re-

acter, Jack McCoy, might say, then slamming down a glass of bourbon. “The Russians were twins. We weren’t seeing double,” Navin said, then took a swig of his drink and slapped it on the table.

We walked over the bridge to Brooklyn, stopping at a farmers market where we bought doughnuts so big I held mine with both hands.

They dripped with gobs of chocolate. We sat on the sidewalk eating, getting chocolate all over our faces. I took a deep breath in. This was happiness.

spect it demanded.

My largest and most frightening question as I prepared to go off the medicine: Would I be able to walk? Before going on Tramadol I could walk, but the act was labor-intensive.

The right side of my body was continuously overcompensating for the weakness and pain in the left. It was as if I was only given a specific number of steps per day, and even those steps were tainted by pain—its barbed, continuous hum never stopping, never letting up.

Those were my thoughts as Navin and I packed for New York. I grabbed my bottle of Tramadol and tossed it in the direction of my bag. But as it landed, the top flew off. Pills spilled everywhere—in and on my bag, within the folds of my bedspread, on the floor, under the bed. Pills scattered like confetti.

The panic was immediate. I scrambled to the floor, picking up Tramadol with shaking hands, sobbing. Navin came up behind me, threw his arms around me and pulled me into a tight hug.

“We’ll get them. We will get all the pills,” he said.

“But what if we don’t? What if I don’t find

them all?” I shrieked.

“I will help you. We will get them all.”

“Every pill is four-and-a-half hours! That’s four-and-a-half hours I can walk. If I lose one I don’t walk for four-and-a-half hours,” I screamed.

Navin pulled me in tighter, telling me to breathe. “We will find them,” he whispered in my ear. “I will help you, I will help you.” With his help I found them all.

Manhattan was a wonderful distraction.

I invented games for us to play as we walked through the city. “The Passing By” game was born of hearing snippets of conversations as we walked by people. The objective was to say the weirdest thing possible as we passed a group.

“That’s why they gave her four tentacles instead of six!” I yelled to Navin as we crossed the street. “And that’s why giraffes can never be friends with dogs,” I yelled at another intersection.

I invented the Sam Waterston game at a bar after we recognized a location from a Law & Order episode. We took turns saying ironic or punny lines that Waterston’s char-

Back in d.c., my next appointment was with another doctor in the same practice as the disappearing neurologist. In a perfect world I would have loved to have branched out—to have gotten the name of a brilliant doctor. The opioid crisis, though, had changed the tenor of being a patient. It was about playing the odds: Who was going to believe my story?

And my story wasn’t tidy. I had no official diagnosis. Every test had always come back within a normal range. Even though the starting point of my pain was known as a reaction to birth control, doctors were quick to question if it had actually happened.

I needed to go to a doctor who had access to my files and relationships with my past doctors. Being a known quantity was a factor in my favor.

What was not in my favor is that I don’t “look sick.” You would have to look at the soles of my shoes to see that I drag my left foot. In group settings I always manage to find a chair or a counter to lean against. Only my husband knows that I jump whenever my legs or feet are touched. I may meet friends for dinner, but afterwards I clear my schedule to compensate for the exhaustion caused by pushing myself beyond my regular routine. These are normal, not piteous, parts of my daily life.

When I met with the new doctor I told him that I was a previous patient of the disappearing neurologist. I explained my background as he looked into my files. I told him I was on an anti-inflammation diet as a way to help with pain. He rolled his eyes.

He spent 10 minutes with me and prescribed another drug that is used to treat unexplained neurological pain. I instantly recognized its name: Lyrica.

I said yes to the prescription, but when I got home I looked up Lyrica’s side effects. The federal government classified it as a Schedule V Controlled Substance. Tramadol was classified as a Schedule IV Controlled Substance.

If I took the new drug I’d just be just trading one controlled substance for another.

Would I be in the same place in five years?

Would I end up in another doctor’s office facing accusations of being an addict?

I filled the prescription, put it in my medicine cabinet, and decided not to touch it.

Feeling desperate for some professional guidance, I made a second appointment with my general practitioner. The scheduling service prompted me with a question: What’s the reason for this visit? My answer: “In need of a plan regarding Tramadol.”

washingtoncitypaper.com february 2, 2018 9

Two days later I received a call from an administrative assistant at my doctor’s office.

“Why do you need this appointment?” she asked.

“I need a plan. I’m not sure what to do regarding my Tramadol prescription and I know the rules regarding the drug are changing. I need guidance.”

The day of the appointment I walked into my doctor’s office and pulled out a notebook where I’d written out questions. I told her about starting an anti-inflammation diet. She approved, and said it was a great idea.

I told her that I was headed to North Carolina, where my parents live, for an intensive acupuncture session, that I had seen a neurologist and he had given me a new drug, but I was hesitant to try it.

“Should I take it?” I asked.

“Do whatever you want.” she replied.

It wasn’t an answer I was expecting. I was confused, but continued on. Was there more I could be doing? What were my options? Did I need to start from scratch and pursue the source of the pain? Did I need more testing?

She pushed her chair back from her desk and stared at me. She crossed her arms.

“I’m not going to give you any more pills.”

“I’m not asking for drugs.” I took a breath.

“I’m here for a plan.” I pointed to my notebook full of questions.

She continued to stare me down.

“Are my questions bothering you?” I asked.

“That’s a weird thing to ask.” She pulled her chair back up to her desk. “I just have to say it’s weird. It’s weird that you’ve been on Tramadol for that long.”

“I’ve been taking that drug because my neurologist prescribed it for my pain. It worked.

There was no reason to question it. I used it exactly as it was prescribed.”

“You need to go to a pain clinic. Pain clinics are for getting off of opioids. They are going to tell you to get off of them.”

“That’s what pain clinics do?”

“Make an appointment.” She closed my folder. Our discussion was over.

It took me a couple of hours to realize that she thought that I was there to score drugs, that I was scamming pills. It threw me into a rage. i Took my dwindling Tramadol supply to North Carolina.

My parents moved to an island off the Carolina coast when they retired. They also, to my surprise, started going to an acupuncturist, Cheryl Blankenship of Island Acupuncture & Massage. They raved about her intuitive understanding of pain and how to alleviate it. My father especially encouraged me to try electroacupuncture—the process of applying an electrical current to acupuncture needles to more deeply penetrate acupoints.

Perhaps an intensive two weeks of electroacupuncture would interrupt my pain cycle.

After so many years my brain was on a type of pain loop. There was a deeply entrenched pathway that was ingrained in my body and kept expressing pain the same way.

It was a desperate, end-of-my rope, why-

the-hell-not move. The island was quiet. I didn’t have to worry about dealing with logistics or public transportation. I was lucky and I knew it. My parents would handle meals and had a quiet room where I could sleep, I had savings to pay for the acupuncture treatments, and I could take two weeks off of work to tend to my health.

Cheryl believed me. I saw her three times a week and she didn’t judge me for taking pain medication. She mirrored my own frustration. “The medical community got you fixed on those pills and then they just left you there,” she said.

Perhaps it was all of the factors coming together. My mom’s optimism. My dad’s strength.

Cheryl’s anger on my behalf. The ability to take time to deal only with my health. Whatever the combination of factors, I decided to start spacing out the time between my pills.

The Tramadol prescription was 50 mg per pill, and I could use up to six per a day. On a typical day I used four or five pills, depending on my activity level.

I started out small, experimenting to see if I could go an hour past what felt comfortable.

Could I go three hours? Five hours? Twelve?

Fifteen? The repercussions were swift and excruciating. At first it felt like a mild flu—body aches, chills, shaking. But I didn’t take a pill.

his face was on television, on Twitter, on Instagram. His face floated in and out of my consciousness. He hovered as I went from sleeping to a state of pain so acute that the edges of my sight went fuzzy. I found myself singing the lyrics of “I Won’t Back Down” over and over again.

It was Mom who figured out that the waves of electricity were coming every four-and-ahalf hours. It should have been obvious—four and a half hours was roughly how often I took one pill of Tramadol during waking hours.

My body was having a temper tantrum when it didn’t get medicine. The highest point of the cycle of electricity would endure for a little over half an hour. That meant all I had to do was outlast it.

The pain would push and push until I thought I would lose my mind from anguish.

Then it would back off and settle. I would breathe, wait for the next cycle, and sing with Tom Petty, Patron Saint of Withdrawal.

Three months later news broke that Petty died with opioids in his system. aT my parenTs’ house, one thought stayed with me as a touchstone of hope: At least I have kratom when I get back to D.C. I’d stumbled across kratom in August, two months before I went to North Carolina, while

Pills spilled everywhere—in and on my bag, within the folds of my bedspread, on the floor, under the bed. Pills scattered like confetti.

When I prayed to God in the shower at hour 17, I decided there was no way I could go back and start over. The gulf of pain was too great.

What started off as an experiment to see if I could lengthen the time between pills turned into going off of them completely.

For the first few days it felt like bugs were crawling under my skin. Then the pain turned.

The bugs went away, and in their place came electricity.

At random intervals a current would shoot up the left side of my body, electrocuting me from the inside. I would grab the sides of the bed, the sheets, the walls, and hold on as the pain bounced and pinged its fire from corner to corner internally.

Tom Petty had died a few days earlier and

10 february 2, 2018 washingtoncitypaper.com

working on my Buy D.C. column for this newspaper. As a retail reporter, my days often consisted of finding products in independent stores to feature each week.

While running an errand on U Street NW I passed by a new shop called Qi Kratom CBD Tea. It had an entire wall of glass jars filled with green powder. What was this stuff?

I introduced myself to the co-owner, ee (who has specified that his name is lowercase) and asked questions about the products. What was the green stuff in all the jars?

That, ee explained, was kratom, a ground leaf from a plant grown in Southeast Asia that was closely related to the coffee plant. It was known for its positive effects on the body including its ability to help people with energy,

sleep, and pain.

Kratom is effective but controversial. For some people with chronic pain it can be a godsend—an affordable substance that calms pain and is an alternative to prescription drugs. It also acts on some of the same brain receptors as opioids, but isn’t an opioid. That’s where the controversy comes in.

Kratom critics rail against the substance, calling it potentially addictive and citing a handful of cases where people were found dead with kratom in their systems. (ee quickly told me that almost everyone that died had other substances in their systems besides kratom.)

A 2017 resource guide by the U.S. Department of Justice Drug Enforcement Administration named kratom as a “drug of concern” and stressed that the Food and Drug Administration hasn’t approved the substance for any medical use. But I learned that it was legal in most states and the District. The most common methods of ingestion are to swallow it in capsule form or to put the powder in tea and drink it.

I left the store with small amounts of two kinds of kratom—a green and a red strain.

Kratom tastes like dirt. The first time I tried it I swirled half a teaspoon in a tepid cup of earl gray tea, took a sip, and immediately started coughing. It tasted like muddy, gunky sludge. I forced down the rest of the drink, packed some Tramadol in my bag, and set off for the day.

Three hours later I still hadn’t reached for a pill. Tramadol was a drug I needed in my system at all times in order to function. Yet, here I was hours after taking kratom and I still hadn’t taken meds.

I used kratom sparingly in the following weeks. I didn’t want to overwhelm my body or put myself in any danger. I still didn’t quite understand what kratom was or the technicalities of what it was doing in my body. I could take one dose of kratom (½ teaspoon) and wouldn’t have to take one pill. There were zero side effects. I didn’t feel sluggish or high. There was no fuzzy, far off feeling. Everything about how I operated was exactly the same, except the pain dramatically decreased through the magic of a plant versus prescription medication.

Government concerns about kratom mirror my own. Its classification with the FDA is in flux. Research on the long-term effects of the leaf is limited. Not enough resources have been allocated to clinical trials.

After preliminary research I realized that Qi Kratom CBD Tea was essentially the Tiffany’s of kratom distribution. Most people find kratom at smoke shops or even gas stations. It is sold online, but it can be difficult to find out who is actually selling the product. At Qi Kratom, ee knew his supply chain.

In short, I felt safe. Here was a store within walking distance of my apartment that provided a solution. If I couldn’t find a doctor to prescribe Tramadol, if the government outlawed opioids, if I was down to my last pill and had nothing else, there was an ace up my sleeve.

I had kratom.

I came back from North Carolina with two

problems. 1. Withdrawal. 2. The original pain.

Kratom is known for calming withdrawal symptoms. For many people getting off of opioids, it acts as a bridge. I was nearing the end of my supply, so I went down to just ¼th of a teaspoon in the morning and again in the evening. It didn’t make the withdrawal symptoms go away completely, but it rounded its sharp corners. I could function during the day. It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough for me to think, “OK, I can do this. I can be on kratom for a while as things get figured out.”

I dropped by Qi Kratom CBD Tea to restock my supply. As I opened the front door I noticed that the word “kratom” was covered in their store sign. I took two steps inside and saw that the kratom was gone.

I heard the woman behind the counter explain to other perplexed customers that WUSA9, a local news station, had aired a story on kratom, framing it as controversial. That report delved into a number of issues regarding the legality and potentially addictive properties of kratom. After the story came out, Qi Kratom CBD Tea’s owners decided to take all of the kratom off their shelves.

There was no ace up my sleeve. There was no Plan B. Hell, there wasn’t even a plan to help my withdrawal that night.

A few weeks later Kellyanne Conway was announced as the point person for the opioid crisis within President Donald Trump’s administration.

When I found out, I laughed so hard I cried. i ordered a stool for our bathroom because I couldn’t stand up for the length of a shower. I was living life, but back in the small room with the door, observing what was on the outside.

The thought that kept me going was that I’d scheduled an appointment with a chronic pain doctor. The day before seeing her for the first time I made a list of each drug I’d tried over the past decade, and my reason for giving it up.

(Spoiler alert: It was always due to heart palpitations). I wrote out a timeline of my pain then gathered every single test result I could find—every note, every piece of paper given to me by a previous doctor.

It was all armor as I prepared myself for a game of “Do You Believe My Pain Is Real?” Preparation, I hoped, would show that I was worthy of being believed.

I opened a new document on my computer to copy and paste the side effects of birth control pills for when I was inevitably asked, “How did your pain start?” It had been a few years since I reviewed this information. When I got to a section listing “possible side effects” I noticed that the information was the same, but it was categorized in a different way.

My side effects were now under a section called “Signs of a Stroke.”

Signs of a Stroke • Sudden numbness or weakness (especially on one side of the body)

• • • •

Sudden severe headache Slurred speech Problems with vision Problems with balance

I read the list over again. I read the heading.

Suddenly, that whole period of my life clicked into place. Holy shit. Had I had a stroke? Birth control pills have been known to increase the risk for stroke. I remembered reading about the connection so many years ago the information had faded into the background.

The next day I was still attempting to digest what I had read as I waited to see my new chronic pain specialist. But mostly I was just nervous. I had been off of opioids for six weeks, which meant the doctor could skip the addiction part and go straight to figuring out how to deal with pain.

I handed over my timeline, the list of drugs I had tried other than Tramadol, the side effects of birth control, and all of the records I had on hand.

She walked briskly into the room and launched into a discussion about my pain. I liked her instantly. She talked so fast it was hard to keep up. She was straightforward and

upbeat. But, most of all, she believed that I was in pain.

After I’d laid out all of the information and history, and answered her questions, she said: “I think you need to go back on Tramadol.”

I always thought the expression “I almost fell out of my chair,” was hyperbole. But I almost fell out of my chair.

“You need to go back on Tramadol,” she repeated.

My brain did not comprehend her words.

“Doctors called me an addict. I was told that I wasn’t supposed to be on this drug. I just spent weeks getting off,” I explained.

“Yeah, you were talking to other doctors.

I’m a pain specialist. All of those pills were prescribed for years by people who shouldn’t be

prescribing them,” she said.

She went on to explain that there were only a handful of drugs on the market that could help, and that my heart palpitations on other drugs already eliminated four of them. The lowest hanging fruit, the most logical course of action, was simple.

The prescription came with rules. I needed to go on a time-release version of the pill.

No more of this taking one every four-and-ahalf hours nonsense. I would start on the lowest dose, 100mg, and have one pill each day.

The prescription would only be for 30 pills, so every month I’d have to trek back in for an appointment for a new prescription. There were to be random drug tests. If anything else was in my system I would immediately be taken off the opioids.

She handed me a cup to urinate in. The drug testing started now. so ThaT’s iT, right? I got back on opioids, they took care of the pain, and I could ride off into the sunset, correct?

Not quite.

This past month I went to a CVS pharmacy on 14th Street NW where I have been go-

ing for years. I turned in my prescription and waited for the order. A pharmacist called me to the counter and informed me that the pills weren’t in stock. They would be in the store in three days, and would I mind coming back?

I explained that no, I couldn’t come back. I had one pill left for the next day and couldn’t have a gap in coverage. No problem, they said. They would transfer my prescription to another CVS where they had the pills.

I walked to another CVS on U Street NW. The pharmacist there informed me that she couldn’t help me because a new rule had gone into effect in D.C. where prescriptions of a controlled substance couldn’t be transferred between pharmacies.

It took running back and forth between the

two pharmacies and a call to my doctor to figure out how to get the medication.

And that was just this month.

In February I go out of town around the 30day mark when I should be renewing my prescription. At my last appointment I asked if I could get five more pills to make it through the trip. Turns out, I can’t. I have to go in prior to the trip to renew the prescription. It wouldn’t be a problem, but insurance may not cover the cost because I’m renewing the prescription before 30 days.

Also, I only get a couple of travel-related passes. Every 30 days I have to see my doctor. There is some leniency, but I can only go outside of those parameters a few times each year.

The state of Florida is considering a bill that would restrict opioids to a seven-day, rather than a 30-day, prescription limit. For those suffering from chronic pain, the implications are cruel. It’s a sentence that would drive people back into that small room, held captive by their own pain. It would also set a frightening precedent.

According to the National Institutes of Health, one out of every 10 people in America deals with chronic pain. People live with it all of the time. Now those same people also live with a government that prolongs their suffering through its late, sloppy, and misguided crusade.

The government’s attempt to stop feeding the monster crisis that pharmaceutical companies created is also serving as punishment for patients who dare to need a drug that is suddenly taboo. Chronic pain patients suffer as pharmaceutical companies back away with their fingers pointed at patients. The patients are the ones to blame. They are addicts.

And the drug companies are getting away with it, just as they got away with the epidemic they created.

There is one other possibility of how I can manage pain without drugs.

It involves an implant that blocks the signal of pain to the brain. It consists of two parts that would be inserted in my body. One part looks like a thin wire that would run along my spine.

The other looks like a remote control that is about half of the size of my palm. That part is typically inserted into a patient’s butt, but because I’m petite, I would have to have the device implanted in my back.

The idea of placing an implant in my back scares me. So I will wait because there is no other choice. I pray that the technologists will make a smaller implant or that a new drug will come out.

Today I have one pill. I will take it and walk out of my apartment and onto the street. I will be able to take a shower tonight without sitting on a stool. I don’t know if I will have access to pills 30 days from now or 30 days after that, but at this moment, I have relief.

CP

washingtoncitypaper.com february 2, 2018 11

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DCFEED

Mayahuel Cocina Mexicana opens next week in Woodley Park replacing Bar Civita.

The restaurant is from the duo behind District Kitchen, which is around the corner.

Expect pitchers of margaritas and a menu that’s heavy on Mexican seafood specialties.

Cashing in on Chips

Customers used to scam restaurants by using counterfeit bills. Now they’re taking advantage of bars that don’t use chip readers.

By Laura Hayes It was one of those weird nights that are hard to forget. Amy Dunki was working behind the bar at Bin 1301 on U Street NW. A customer came in and asked for a chicken sandwich with nothing on it. “He literally just wanted chicken on bread,” she says. “He tried to pay for it before the food even came. He spilled all of his money on table—there were fives, ones, and twenties.”

Instead of using one of the smaller notes to pay for the naked chicken sandwich, the customer handed over a $100 bill. “As soon as I picked it up, I could tell it wasn’t real. I was like, ‘That’s not real man.’ He then started picking up all of his other bills, asking me if they weren’t real too.” He eventually gathered his money and slipped out.

When cash was king it was easier to tell when someone was scamming a bar or restaurant. You could look for odd behavior, like a patron in a hurry who wanted to pay for a single Bud Light with a big bill and rake in the change. Or you could simply use a counterfeit detector pen to draw a thin black line on suspected funny money to see if it turned amber, indicating a fake. But times have changed.

As cash becomes increasingly obsolete, patrons have found a new way to enjoy a night out without paying.

It’s called a chargeback. After racking up a big bar tab, patrons wake up regretful the next morning—or find themselves unable to cover expenses weeks later—and call their bank to dispute the charges, fraudulently claiming they were never at the bar and are therefore not responsible for paying.

In the past, the bar would get a chargeback notification from a credit card processor or bank and have a few days to mail in a signed receipt as proof of purchase, settling the issue. “I used to have the girls collect all of the signed receipts and put them in big manila envelopes with the date on them,” says Scott Auslander, the owner of Ventnor Sports Cafe in Adams Morgan. Now he doesn’t care if his bartenders haphazard-

Stephanie Ruidg

Young & hungrY

ly toss them in a box because the receipts now have little merit.

Everything changed when chipped credit cards, also known as EMV cards, hit the market. In October 2015, major U.S. credit card companies including Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover shifted the card-related fraud payment responsibility to whichever party is least compliant with using the new chip technology. Some have criticized the “liability shift” because of uneven implementation and how much longer it takes to insert a chip than swipe.

“If you’re hearing more about chargebacks now it’s probably because now if a place doesn’t have a chip reader, you can’t fight it,” Auslander says. If a customer uses a chipped credit card to settle their bar tab and the bartender swipes the card instead of inserting it into a chip reader, the bar won’t have a dog in the fight if the customer issues a chargeback. The bar automatically loses the battle.

Sam Buis is the general manager at Kingfisher DC in Logan Circle. His most recent experience with a chargeback was in mid-De-

cember. A customer was tormenting one of the bartenders—a Jewish woman named Jackie— at the subterranean haunt.

“The guy was singing Little Orphan Annie carols and saying some anti-semitic stuff to her,” Buis recalls. “When it came time to close down he said, ‘I know I’ve been a dick to you, what’s a good tip?’” Jackie said 20 percent would suffice. The bill was $99. He tipped $150. “A couple of weeks later we get a chargeback for the $150 tip,” Buis says. “It seemed they had fully planned to contest the charge.”

Buis says he has twice filled out the necessary paperwork after receiving a chargeback.

“I immediately got a notification that said, ‘Chip card not used at a chip-reading terminal.’ You lose even if you can provide signatures and documented information.”

The solution seems so obvious: Stop swiping and switch to a chip reader. But it’s more complicated than that. The first hang-up is that implementing chip reading can require buying and installing a new point of sale (POS) system. Then there’s the fact that chip readers don’t mesh well with how a bar business is run.

“If you pony up for the card reader, it solves a lot of these issues,” Auslander says.

“But it’s a matter of putting in a new POS system and the thin margins [in bars] is why nobody wants to change.” He footed the bill for a new POS system back in 2004. It cost the bar about $20,000 because Ventnor Sports Cafe needed multiple terminals.

“There aren’t a ton of places that have been open as long as we have that are all of the sudden switching to these iPad systems because they have chip readers, but eventually I’ll have to get one.”

Erik Holzherr purchased such a system for his bar Wisdom a year and a half ago. He was happy with his POS system, LAVU, but not with the credit card processor or the chip reader. “I got the only chip reader that was available for a portable device,” he says. “I used the PayPal reader when it first came out but it was a nightmare.” Customer support wasn’t adequate, among other issues. “It was driving the staff nuts,” Holzherr continues. “It was so delayed and time consuming … You can’t have

washingtoncitypaper.com february 2, 2018 13

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DCFEED that in a bar or restaurant environment. Tips went down.”

“There’s no way to keep both the speed of a swipe situation and maintain a level of protections for yourself,” Buis adds. “A lot of bars, busier ones, will go with card swiping to speed things up.” He says this is especially true when a bar is trying to close out multiple checks at the same time. He’s considering inserting a card into a chip reader once a tab goes above a certain amount such as $50 or $100.

Tony Tomelden says he gets about one chargeback a month and some of them can be sizable. He operates The Pug on H Street NE and Union Trust on 15th Street NW near the White House. When the liability shifted in 2015, Tomelden installed a chip reader at The Pug. His credit card machine crashed. “They were like, ‘You need to buy this new $700 chip-compliant machine,’” he says. “When I got it, it wasn’t programmed. You had to ask the customer for the tip first and you had to enter it.” It wasn’t a good fit, so The Pug no longer uses a chip reader.

At Tomelden’s other bar they have a chip reader but it also frustrates the staff. “You can’t open a tab with a chip card,” he says. “That’s one of the stumbling blocks.” Bartenders there have to remember to swipe the card to open a tab then cancel the “pre-swipe” and enter the chip when customers close out.

Bartenders and bar owners are overwhelmed trying to decide whether to protect themselves and slow down service or take a chance that customers aren’t going to scam them. When a customer complains, the money returned to their card comes from the bar, not the bank. “I don’t think people care whether they’re getting the money back from the bank or the restaurant,” Auslander says. “They just want their money back.”

Frustration is mounting. Buis wants credit card companies to share what protections and penalties they have in place to safeguard bars and restaurants from customers who abuse the system. “There has to be some way for businesses to be protected,” he says. He’s even toyed with the idea of only accepting cash, even though he says 90 to 95 percent of sales are paid by credit card.

When The Pug receives notifications about chargebacks, they come from a payment solutions company called TSYS. Andrew Benjamin, a contact center director in the company’s merchant solutions section, confirms that a business has little recourse if they don’t use a chip reader. “The October 2015 move was to increase security and reduce risk of fraud,” he says.

Benjamin couldn’t provide information about what measures are in place to protect a bar or restaurant from a cardholder that abuses the system. But, he points out, “It doesn’t take too many chargebacks to pay for that terminal.”

CP

DCFEED Rare Form-ula

Grazer

To find out how far your dollars stretch at six area sushi restaurants we tallied up how many pieces of nigiri sushi you can score for $40 using three popular selections: yellowtail, salmon, and tuna. By our count, KAZ Sushi Bistro offers the best total value, but where does your favorite spot land?

—Laura Hayes Sushi Taro 1503 17th St. NW

Sushi Gakyu 1420 New York Ave. NW

what we ate this week: Horse bread with whole wheat, sorghum, millet, legumes, camelina seeds, mustard seeds, $11 per loaf, Seylou (Saturdays and Sundays). Satisfaction level: 5 out of 5. what we’ll eat next week: Goan halibut with coconut milk, tamarind, and turmeric paste, $19, Karma Modern Indian.

Excitement level: 3 out of 5.

Top of the Hour Kaz Sushi Bistro 1915 I St. NW

Scott Suchman

10 pieces of yellowtail or 10 pieces of (king) yellowtail or

10 pieces of yellowtail or

Where: Convivial, 801 O St. NW; (202) 525-2870; convivialdc.com

10 pieces of salmon or

10 pieces of salmon or

14 pieces of salmon or

10 pieces of tuna

8 pieces of tuna

12 pieces of tuna

rakuya 1900 Q St. NW

Umaya Izakaya 733 10th St. NW

Sushiko 5455 Wisconsin Ave., Chevy Chase, MD

10 pieces of yellowtail or

10 pieces of yellowtail or

12 pieces of salmon or

11 pieces of salmon or

10 pieces of tuna

8 pieces of tuna

8 pieces of tuna

The Dish: Fondue grilled cheese served with a side salad Where to Get It: Stable, 1324 H St. NE; (202) 7334604; stabledc.com Price: $15 What It Is: Chef David Fritsche prepares a decadent fondue made with three types of Swiss semisoft cheese—Schlossberger Alt, Schlossberger Jung,

Tim Ebner

and Fribourg Vacherin. The fondue is cooked in a garlic white wine sauce and finished with just a hint of nutmeg and Etter Kirsch, a cherry brandy from the sleepy village of Zug, Switzerland.

The gooey fondue is then sandwiched between thickcut farmer’s bread that Fritsche makes in house.

And don’t worry, this dish isn’t all carbs and dairy— there’s a perfectly portioned side salad to help you detox. It’s a special and available

Drink specials: $5 DC Brau Pilsner or Allagash White; $7 wines by the glass; $7 house-made juices; and an $8 Kir Royale cocktail Food specials: $3 cheeses; $5 desserts; more than two dozen savory dishes, including house potato chips with onion dip, $4, fried chicken coq au vin mini bites, $8, and a fried fish sandwich, $11.

10 pieces of yellowtail or

12 pieces of salmon or

HangoverHelper

Hours: 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays; 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays; 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Sundays and Mondays

as a shareable appetizer at brunch and dinner.

How It Tastes: Grilled cheese is notoriously simple, but this rendition is so much more complex. The white wine and garlic sauce seeps into the bread, giving the grilled cheese an earthy flavor.

Meanwhile, the fondue oozes from the slices of stacked bread, delivering an ohso ooey, gooey mess of Swiss salvation.

Why It Helps: You can say guet nacht (good night) to all those other grilled cheeses. Once this fondue hits your lips, you’ll never go back to Wonder Bread and Kraft Singles.

—Tim Ebner

Pros: If you’re on a budget, a $17 quiche lorraine with a salad seems pretty steep. When you turn up for happy hour, however, the price is knocked down to a very reasonable $9. With so many food options and the expanded hours on Sundays and Mondays, you can tailor this happy hour to be whatever you need—a place to grab appetizers and a drink while catching up with friends or a spot to treat yo’self to dessert and a glass of wine on the way home from a lousy date.

Cons: You have to pay $4 extra for fries since they don’t come with the discounted sandwiches, but the math still works in your favor. The raclette burger with fries on the regular menu costs $18 and only costs $10 on the happy hour menu, so you’re still getting a $4 discount if you add fries. More cocktail options would also be nice. Note that happy hour pricing is only available at the bar and the high-top tables surrounding it.

—Rina Rapuano

washingtoncitypaper.com february 2, 2018 15

EXPLORE Brand New HilariouS moving revolutionarY GRIPPING UNFORGETTABLE

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Hamlet

The current dramas at Arena Stage and Sidney Harman Hall are heavy with importance but light on entertainment.

Hamlet

By William Shakespeare Directed by Michael Kahn At Sidney Harman Hall to March 4

Sovereignty

By Mary Kathryn Nagle Directed by Molly Smith At Arena Stage to Feb. 18

By Chris Klimek Hamlet is one of those roles frequently cursed to be occupied by actors who are too old for it. This longevity gap between the part and its occupant is not as vast nor as chronic as is typical of most Romeos and Juliets, but it persists.

The least fanciful interpretations of the text indicate the melancholy Dane should be about 30, and one wonders if age-appropriate talent is too often perceived as lightweight. Naturally, there’s a range: Ben Whishaw was a mewling babe of 23 when the 2004 Old Vic production announced the arrival of a major artist who would one day become the voice of Paddington Bear. Laurence Olivier was 41 by the time he directed himself on film in the part. (And age 41 in 1948 would be at least 60 now, adjusting for inflation.)

Thirty-seven appears to be the magic number. Jude Law donned Hamlet’s “inky cloak” at that age. So did David Tennant. Kenneth Branagh directed himself in his movie version (all four hours of it) at 36, though he’d already played the role at 28 and 32. Mark Rylance did it at 28 and 40. Benedict Cumberbatch was 39. Richard Burbage would’ve been in his early thirties when he became the first actor to play the conflicted prince as we’ve known him. (There was a Hamlet before Shakespeare’s, now lost.) Three centuries later, Sarah Bernhardt was praised for the youthful vigor she brought to the blue-chip role at the tender age of 55.

Anyway, Michael Urie—a stage veteran most famous for the 2006–2010 ABC series Ugly Betty, and now the anchor of the last Hamlet that Shakespeare Theatre Company head Michael Kahn will direct before his announced retirement next year—is 37. He looks younger. And the biggest bummer about the Hamlet Kahn has built around him isn’t Urie’s twitchy but inviting performance, which seems calibrated for maximum legibility—it’s everyone else’s. The director appears to have issued standing orders that the company temper their wattage so as not to outshine the star, whether he’s in the scene they’re playing or he isn’t. Kahn notes in the program that he taught Urie at The Juilliard School,

TheaTer

and that he’d privately resolved to direct Hamlet again when and if his former pupil became available to do it. That’s quite a compliment, but Kahn does Urie no favors by giving it publicly, because it primes us to expect some revelatory interpretation that just isn’t in the cards.

Kahn has reshuffled the first act slightly so that the show now opens with the first of Hamlet’s seven big soliloquies. Don’t bore us, get to the chorus, as another balladeer (probably Kit Marlowe) once mused. But you wonder, as the long evening snaps back to its familiar shape, if the “too too solid flesh” is not the play itself. Sure, it seems vaguely topical, with the adulterous, openly untruthful, thrice-married patriarch of a family of infighting snakes occupying the White House. A discreet poisoning just seems so dignified now, especially when the king could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and he wouldn’t lose any subjects. Claudius, that usurping kingslayer, is played by Alan Cox, and he alone manages to subvert expectation just a little. Elsewhere, this is the Hamlet you remember. Or rather, all the Hamlets you remember. Never seen a Hamlet? Go with God. This production would be an excellent My First Hamlet.

Robert Joy, who was superb in STC’s King Charles III at this time last year, feels doddering and inert as Polonius, the interfering father of Hamlet’s lover Ophelia. Oyin Oladejo, a regular on Star Trek: Discovery, makes Ophelia less simpering than in some portrayals, but she and Urie just don’t spark off of one another; the mutual wounds with which the play credits them seem out of reach. As Gertrude, Madeleine Potter seems like she hasn’t decided whether or not the queen knows that Claudius offed her former husband.

The production’s present-day techno-authoritarian motif doesn’t go far enough, either. Scenic designer John Coyne’s Elsinore looks like a prison, with the guards wearing windbreakers and police-style equipment belts, guzzling coffee and staring at closed-circuit monitors. (Jess Goldstein designed the costumes.) It’s via these screens that the ghost (Keith Baxter, who also plays the Player King and eventually, the gravedigger) makes his first appearance. He’s very scary. But a scene in which Claudius orders Hamlet bound and tortured dismisses the threat as quickly as it is introduced.

On a brighter note, Ryan Spahn and Kelsey Rainwater bring a smiling malice to their roles as as a male and female Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, respectively, snapping selfies in Claudius’ anteroom before he emerges to brief them on their mission

to betray their friend the prince. I missed them every time they left the stage. Someone should write a play about those two.

610 F St. NW. $44–$125. (202) 547-1122. shakespearetheatre.org.

Sovereignty, a world premiere play that Arena Stage presents as part of the Women’s Voices Theatrer Festival, is all dramaturgy and no drama. It’s dowdy, fibrous, educational, well-meaning, and has an entertainment value that can be measured in microns.

The shameful history it publicizes—of white supremacy as U.S. policy—should unquestionably be a louder part of the national conversation than it is. And the author, Mary Kathryn Nagle, is no tourist: She’s a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, a direct descendant of two of the major characters in her play, and an attorney. Her caseload involves matters of tribal sovereignty, and more specifically the high incidence of domestic violence and sexual assault suffered by Native women, in part because of a 1978 Supreme Court ruling that took away tribal nations’ power to prosecute crimes committed by non-Natives on tribal land. Nagle has another play about Native Americans, Mawashingtoncitypaper.com february 2, 2018 17

CPArts nahatta, set to receive its world-premiere production at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in March, and no plans to withdraw from her full-time legal practice. She’s driven, she’s smart, she’s altruistic. It brings me no joy to observe that when it comes to playwriting, she’s one hell of a lawyer.

Sovereignty’s parallel narrative bounces back and forth between the 1830s and the near future. In the 19th century scenes, Kalani Queypo plays John Ridge—Nagle’s direct ancestor—who marries a white woman, Sarah Bird Northrup (Dorea Schmidt). Along with his father, Major Ridge (Andrew Roa), he negotiates the Treaty of New Echota, agreeing to vacate tribal land east of the Mississippi.

Both Ridges were assassinated in 1832 as retaliation for what some in their tribe saw as capitulation to the U.S. government.

In the contemporary portion, Kyla Garcia plays Sarah Polson, an Ivy League-educated attorney who comes home to Oklahoma to work for a Cherokee Nation prosecutor who is descended from the Rosses, who opposed the Ridges and their treaty. She begins dating Ben, an Oklahoma Highway Patrolman (I think), played by Joseph Carlson, who’s much stronger in the 1830s scenes where he portrays President Andrew Jackson.

In each part of the story, the Cherokees fight to implement legal rulings that have theoretically bolstered their rights: In the 1830s, its Worcester v. Georgia; in the contemporary part its the Violence Against Women Act, which is in fact up for reauthorization this year. In the second act, Nagle makes the political personal—well, even more personal—by having Sarah fall victim to an assault. Her notion of equating the invasion of tribal lands with the violation of a Native woman by a white man is either an inspired idea or a hoary one, but in narrative terms it requires a

character who up until that point has shown no predilection for drunkenness or violence to get abruptly loaded and beat and rape his spouse. Implausible? Surely not; seemingly polite men commit acts of sexual violence all the time. Nagle may have worked on cases like this one. But it still feels schematic, like the characters are just doing what the playwright needs them to do.

The problem, I think, is that Nagle’s characters—both the historical figures she’s reanimated and the ones she’s invented for the half of the play that’s set in the years 2018 to 2020—are all abstractions. In the contemporary scenes especially, they walk around like sentient PowerPoint decks, spouting legal precedents and statistics without pausing for breath. Having the cast address the audience directly rather than pretending to talk to one another might be a better way to get through the reams of legal and historical exposition Nagle has given them to chew through. (It worked in Lisa Loomer’s Roe.) These big, sticky fact-dumps make good professional actors sound like amateurs, and it isn’t fair. And Nagle has a nasty habit of ending each scene on its clunkiest line.

“If I’m correct, this is the first time the Cherokee Nation has ever won in the Supreme Court,” someone declaims near the end of the evening. But that’s not how people who know one another talk to one another, and it’s proof that Nagle has chosen the wrong medium to deliver her very worthy message. I hope she’ll write an op-ed, or a nonfiction book, or a series of op-eds promoting her nonfiction book about the mistreatment the Cherokee Nation has suffered at the hands of an indifferent and complicit U.S. government. And I hope it’s a bestseller.

CP

Sovereignty

Father. Son. And the space in between.

1101 6th St. SW. $56–$91. (202) 554-9066. arenastage.org.

“LAUGH-OUT-LOUD FUNNY”—BroadwayWorld HHHH “VISUALLY RAVISHING” —DC Theatre Scene

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A NEW COMEDY WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY

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TheaTerCurtain Calls

Liberty, Not MutuaL Jefferson’s Garden

By Timberlake Wertenbaker Directed by Nataki Garrett At Ford’s Theatre to Feb. 8 Pity the Playwright whose Revolutionary War play must compete with Hamilton.

Just three weeks after Lin-Manuel Miranda’s juggernaut musical opened off-Broadway in New York, Timberlake Wertenbaker’s own 18th century epic premiered in suburban London. Both 2015 shows devote their opening acts to the uprising against King George II, while after intermission, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and company get busy forming a more perfect union and debating how to ensure domestic tranquility.

In Hamilton, that means rapping cabinet meetings. The long, drawn out discussions about federalism in Jefferson’s Garden are much less catchy and occasionally get interrupted by female characters prattling on about the flowers.

Jefferson’s Garden is the latest commissioned drama or new(ish) play that Ford’s has produced for an audience that includes the least sophisticated of Washington theatergoers: Tourists. In 2016, Ford’s landed a Broadway tryout for the rollicking, moving 9/11 musical Come From Away. More often, the plays that debut there dive deeper into American history, sometimes featuring Mr. Lincoln onstage. You always learn something when you go to Ford’s, but you are not always entertained.

Wertenbaker began researching Jefferson’s Garden in 2005, when she was a visiting professor at Georgetown University. The original production scored a rave review in The Guardian, but she revised the script during the rehearsals at Ford’s, aiming to make the play more resonant for American audiences. Perhaps that’s where things got bungled, or perhaps—and this is great but so unfair—Hamilton has raised America’s standards for social studies plays.

Jefferson’s Garden runs for two-and-a-half hours but feels longer, as substantial exposition and competing sideplots vie for brain space. A cast of nine actors plays more than two dozen roles. For the most part, telling the

characters apart isn’t a problem, but parsing their complicated backstories is.

The unwieldy play begins with some cheeky direct addresses to the audience. “We have to ask you to be color blind, gender blind, shape blind, etc., but in all other ways, very perceptive,” one actor quips. Then the narrative shifts to a ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean circa 1740, where an English Quaker family befriends a fleeing German scholar with a fiery temper. The rest of the play follows those fictional family members as their lives become intertwined with the real-life Founding Fathers.

Director Nataki Garrett, whose local credits include the antebellum comedy An Octoroon at Woolly Mammoth, does her best to keep the show moving. Actors make all their costume changes onstage; Ivania Stack did a bang-up job designing the linen base outfits for the actors and the contrasting crinkly overcoats and bustled skirts they don when, for example, Jefferson travels to Paris.

The best performances come from Maggie Wilder and Katherine Tkel, who reunite after starring in An Octoroon. In Jefferson’s Garden, Tkel takes on the role of Sally Hemmings while Wilder plays Imogen, a Quaker girl who for falls for a charismatic British soldier played

by Thomas Keegan. Keegan doubles as Madison and Wilder shows even greater range by hollering for liberty as Patrick Henry. Kimberly Gilbert completes the girl power trio as both Imogen’s grandmother and the manipulative matriarch Nelly Rose Madison.

It’s problematic that a young doctor named Christian (Christopher Dinolfo), the son of those immigrants who met on the ship, is supposed to be the central figure in Jefferson’s Garden. The plot is too meandering, and Dinolfo doesn’t play his part with much gravitas. The Jefferson confidante falls for a slave (Felicia Curry) serving cured ham at the Raleigh Tavern. (Actually, that whole scenario seems like an advertisement for Colonial Williamsburg, a possible stop on some tourists’ agendas.)

Christian’s storyline ends with a melodramatic estranged son/baby mama reunion that seems more appropriate for the set of Maury than a historical drama. If only at that point Gilbert, Tkel, and Wilder could bust loose with some of the Schuyler sisters’ moxie, burn the bad boy’s letters, and try to ban slavery. Work!

Whoops. There come the Hamilton comparisons again. That musical arrives for its first Kennedy Center engagement in June, and in all likelihood, will keep circling back to D.C., just like Wicked and The Book of Mormon, but better.

By all means, playwrights should keep writing shows that seek to illuminate early U.S. history.

They should just know—as Wertenbaker could not—that those plays will now be held to a very high standard.

—Rebecca J. Ritzel 511 10th St. NW. $25–$62. (202) 347-4833. fords.org. washingtoncitypaper.com february 2, 2018 19

Happy Valentines!

GalleriesSketcheS

Big Game Sunday - Football Championships - February 4th $3.00 Appetizer and Drink Specials & Specially Priced Dinner Selections During The Game! ***

Valentine’s Day Four Course Dinner Choices Priced From $37.95 to $49.95 per person” Unlimited Champagne!!

Amuse, Appetizer, Entrée and Dessert Choice

Courtesy of Newseum

***

Nightly “S teak Dinner” $18.95 ***

Under $10 - Daily Lunch Specials ***

Happy Hour $3-$4-$5-$6-$7 Appetizers, Martinis & Drinks - 4PM-7PM ***

Champagne B runch Weekends Unlimited Champagne by the Glass Saturdays – A-La-Carte $30.95 Sunday – Buffet $39.95 Voted 2017 “TOP TEN” Best Brunches

Unique Spaces and Menus For Social Events 17th & Rhode Island Ave. NW 202-872-1126 www.BBGWDC.com

DEBUSSY & SIBELIUS

Featuring Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2

SATURDAY, FEB. 10 AT 8 PM SUNDAY, FEB. 11 AT 3 PM JOSÉ-LUIS NOVO, Guest Conductor

ADULT TICKETS: $20-$80, $5 YOUTH, $10 STUDENT

Photo by Michael Adams

703-548-0885 WWW.ALEXSYM.ORG 20 february 2, 2018 washingtoncitypaper.com

The RighTs sTuff 1968: Civil Rights at 50 At the Newseum to Jan. 2, 2019 EvEnts happEnEd at a rapid pace in 1968.

One moment, the country had hopes for a better future spurred by Martin Luther King Jr.’s oratory, and the next, his death—intended to suck the life out of a movement, but was instead met with defiance. And while riots ensued after King’s death, destroying black communities across the country, the loss of King could not be undone, and communities were left in shambles. The resilience of a people was tested, and they became more vigilant than before.

At the Newseum, the exhibition 1968: Civil Rights at 50 takes a look at this pivotal year in American history, as part of a series of exhibitions the museum has curated over the past three years to explore the civil rights movement in the United States. Beginning with 1965: Civil Rights at 50, which explored the marches in Selma, Alabama, and the Voting Rights Act, the museum continues the series this year with a lens on 1968—a year of significant social unrest.

The nation was divided by supporters and protesters of the Vietnam War, which was at its height. Veterans were returning home maimed and jobless. Low-income and sanitation workers were protesting for human rights. And two major civil rights leaders, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated.

There’s a lot of information packed into the small gallery space in comparison to the space granted to the Newseum’s other exhibitions— and it’s a bit overwhelming. The wall text gives way to accompanying pictures for a bit of context about what you’re supposed to read. The annex to Civil Rights at 50, where more general information about the civil rights movement is housed, provides space for a large timeline of events occurring in 1968. The density of the

exhibition illustrates the number of cataclysmic events that occured in the short span of a year (a two-day pass is worth it to try and take in the overwhelming amount of information in the Newseum).

A short Newseum-produced documentary, Justice for All, placed prominently in the entryway of the exhibit, illustrates how concerted efforts by athletes can provoke change. The film focuses on the work black athletes have done and continue to do to bring about justice for black Americans.

The documentary draws parallels between the symbolic gestures of the 1968 Olympic gold medalist John Carlos and bronze medalist Tommie Smith and Colin Kaepernick— the former performing the black power salute, while the latter made headlines when he started taking a knee at NFL games during the National Anthem.

A lot of the injustices of 1968 explored in the exhibition draw clear parallels to many of today’s social and economic issues. The economic disparity that spurred the Poor People’s Campaign is as relevant today as gentrification forces many people of color and low economic status out of their homes. The current governmental leadership is overrun with a cohort of politicians trying to gut beneficial programs previous administrations put in place to help those same people being forced out of their homes. And veterans, some of whom have shown Kaepernick support, still feel slighted by the lack of compassion they receive when they return home.

In 50 years, a lot has changed: Social movements now spur from a hashtag, the President calls for boycotts of the NFL over peaceful protests, and people are marching in the streets almost every week. 1968: Civil Rights at 50 does a fine job of demonstrating the varied ways and the tremendous effort put into the fight for equal rights—and, in turn, the humanity of black Americans.

—Shantay Robinson 555 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. $16.96-$21.20.

(202) 292-6100. newseum.org.

FilmShort SubjectS

Justice For All In the Fade

Directed by Fatih Akin Grief is not one thing but many things, a cavalcade of desperate emotions anchored by a fundamental loss of agency. The pain of losing everything is crippling, but it’s the helplessness—the overwhelming certainty that you are powerless to get it back—that can be fatal.

In the Fade, a Golden Globe-winning film from Germany, chronicles this loss of agency with devastating acuity. Diane Kruger is Katja, a loving wife to ex-con Nuri (Numan Acar) and mother to their 6-year-old son, Rocco (Rafael Santana). Their life together is a shining example of love conquering all.

They met when she bought hash from Nuri, a drug dealer, in college. He went to prison, but they persevered and got married while he was behind bars. When he gets out, Nuri tries to go straight. They have a son and build a life together.

So when Nuri and Rocco are killed in a terrorist attacks Katja’s world crumbles. It’s not just the loss of love. Even her history is questioned. The police are convinced the attack was related to Nuri’s drug dealing, but Katja swears he had left it behind. They find drugs in her home, which Katja procured from a friend to help ease her grief, and don’t believe they belonged to her. She is convinced that Nazis were responsible, so when the true culprits are caught—a pair of young Aryans, one of whom Katja saw at the crime scene—we think she will find the peace she needs.

Yet catharsis never comes. Fatih Akin, di-

rector and co-writer, shifts the scene to the courtroom, where Katja must endure yet another series of indignities. A snide defense attorney shames her for her drug use and questions her mental state. She must sit silently in same room with the people responsible for her child’s murder. The most harrowing sequence is when a medical examiner explains exactly what the bomb did to her son’s body. Katja must endure all this, her grief and terror on display for the courtroom to see.

In the Fade manages to stay attuned to this emotional frequency, leaning on Kruger’s deeply vulnerable performance, even as it ticks off the boxes of a satisfying courtroom drama. Katja’s lawyer, a family friend, passionately defends her against the attacks of the defense, and while these scenes are cathartic for the viewer, Katja still has no agency. She sits by while her life—both her past and her future, which very much hangs in the balance—is debated by two men in suits.

A greater indignity is still to come when the judges render their verdict.

It’s a marvelously complex story supported by Akin’s thoughtful filmmaking. Consider the musical score by Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, who lets us inside Katja’s head at times when the truth is too painful to show. When she visits the site of the attack—her husband’s office—the tense, plinking piano gives way to strings of sadness. In the courtroom, when the co-conspirators are led in, Kruger’s eyes burn and industrial music pounds through her head and ours. It’s a masterful synergy of courageous acting and thoughtful filmmaking that returns agency to a grieving woman and humanity to a senseless world.

—Noah Gittell In the Fade opens Friday at Landmark West End Cinema.

A world premiere Kennedy Center commission, part of the Women’s Voices Theatre Festival Written by Laura Schellhardt Directed by Rives Collins

Age 10+

From dinosaur bones to hidden memories, the world is filled with buried treasures just waiting to be uncovered. One 21st-century girl sets out to dig up some super-sized discoveries with help from a remarkable friend—the pioneering English paleontologist Mary Anning.

February 3–18 | Family Theater The Feb. 11 at 1:30 p.m. performance is sensory-friendly.

The Kennedy Center welcomes people with disabilities.

Jackie Renée Robinson as Mary Anning and Alina Collins Maldonado as Dessa explore THE LAST AMERICAN DINOSAURS at Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, photo by Yassine El Mansouri

TICKETS ON SALE NOW! KENNEDY-CENTER.ORG | (202) 467-4600 Tickets also available at the Box Office. Groups call (202) 416-8400.

For all other ticket-related customer service inquiries, call the Advance Sales Box Office at (202) 416-8540.

Bank of America is the Presenting Sponsor of Performances for Young Audiences.

Funding for Access and Accommodation Programs at the Kennedy Center is provided by the U.S. Department of Education.

Additional support for Digging Up Dessa is provided by A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation; The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation; Paul M. Angell Family Foundation; and the U.S. Department of Education.

Major support for education programs at the Kennedy Center is provided by David M. Rubenstein through the Rubenstein Arts Access Program.

Kennedy Center education and related artistic programming is made possible through the generosity of the National Committee for the Performing Arts and the President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts.

washingtoncitypaper.com february 2, 2018 21

MusicDiscography in accompanying them); part II a moving, delicate ballad with Roberts playing a twinkly music-box solo. Part III is nearly a rocker—as filtered through Duke Ellington, with a tune both hook-filled and intellectually intriguing and barn-burning solos from tenor saxophonist Xavier Perez (in fascinating contrast to the preceding narrative poem from trumpeter Leo Maxey) and drummer Kevin McDonald.

It’s intended as a memoir of sorts to the band’s six-year Bohemian Caverns residency.

Most of those sets weren’t Roberts showcases.

Still, “Bohemiana”—and Bohemiana—come as close as possible to BCJO’s Monday nights at their superb peak—at least until Vol. 2.

—Michael J. West Listen to Bohemiana: The Compositions and Arrangements of Dan Roberts, Vol. 1 at washingtoncitypaper.com/arts.

MeMorieS of Monday nightS Bohemiana: The Compositions and Arrangements of Dan Roberts, Vol. 1 Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra Bleebop

the fact that pianist/arranger Dan Roberts’ name is in the title of the Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra’s first (non-Christmas) album by itself speaks volumes. The BCJO pointedly named themselves for their venue of residence, not its co-leaders—trumpeter Joe Herrera and baritone saxophonist Brad Linde—or featured soloists. He must do something extra special to warrant billing in Bohemiana: The Compositions and Arrangements of Dan Roberts, right?

The answer is an ecstatic yes. Roberts is no newbie arranger, penning years’ worth of charts for U.S. Army Band ensembles, as well as local artists like vocalist Lena Seikaly. But his writing for the BCJO is something else again: stunningly creative, smart, lyrical, and swinging like mad. Admittedly, that’s easier with some tunes than others. As the name of Thelonious Monk’s “Gallop’s Gallop” implies, for example, boisterousness is baked into it, as are the smarts and lyricism.

Ah, but that’s where the creativity enters in: Roberts makes it a feature for the saxophones, but can’t neglect the BCJO’s

peerlessly burnished brasses. They make witty, pithy responses to the reeds’ calls in the melody—not unlike the party chants on a Parliament-Funkadelic record. (Linde adds to that feel with a low, carnal growl on his bari solo.)

He also uses the six-part sax voicings to thicken the already dense harmonies, and then, in the ending reprise, brings the brasses in again to thicken them further still.

At other points, though, Roberts has his work cut out for him. As he points out in his liner notes, Brad Mehldau’s chromatic composition “Trailer Park Ghost” was conceived and created as a solo piano piece—and a pianist might be tempted to highlight himself on it. But this particular pianist isn’t heard at all until nearly a third of the way in, and then only as chordal support for guitarist Josh Walker and trumpeter Griffith Kazmierczak’s incisive solos.

Instead, Roberts attacks the piece with acuity, breaking it down into component parts for horns, rhythm section, and reeds, often voicing Walker’s guitar with the last. The one piece he writes for a featured soloist is “Autumn Nocturne,” a standard that trumpeter Mike “Bags” Davis consumes with both passion and zeal.

The pianist isn’t entirely egoless, though: Roberts takes the album’s first solo, an interpolation on Seikaly’s enchanting “Written in the Stars” that maintains the song’s cadence while retaining virtually nothing of its melody.

The album’s centerpiece, of course, is “Bohemiana:” Roberts’s three-part original suite that adopts the sonata’s fast-slow-fast structure. Part I is a convincing swing-era throwback, from the percussive riffs of its theme to the language of Kazmierczak and alto saxophonist Marty Nau’s improvisations (not to mention Walker’s light Freddie Green-isms

22 february 2, 2018 washingtoncitypaper.com

Club Shred Bat Fangs

Bat Fangs Don Giovanni Records Music this duMb and square isn’t supposed to be this smart and cool. A veteran of local acts like Child Ballads and Chain and the Gang, Betsy Wright is best known these days as the rock-kicking bassist of Ex Hex, Mary Timony’s power-pop power trio that released its debut in 2014. We’ll have to keep waiting for new Ex Hex music, but in the meantime, Wright has her own vehicle for summoning kind spirits from the used-record bin. Where Ex Hex nodded to perennially hip forebears like Television and Tommy James, Bat Fangs, Wright’s duo with drummer Laura King (of

Flesh Wounds), has a hand on the late-’70s/ early-’80s FM dial. In the best possible way, it’s the Cheap Trick to Ex Hex’s Big Star.

“Rock the Reaper” beckons someone to “be my little runaway,” a choice of noun that can’t be an accident, nor could be the line “if you hang on the telephone,” a reference to a beloved Nerves song that Blondie covered in 1978. Bat Fangs is all about the spaces between garage rock and arena rock—the music blasted by the kids who smoked in the high school parking lot, but also the music that bellowed from the roller-rink P.A. Come to think of it, the title “Rock the Reaper” feels right, too, if you take it as a command and a wink: If you grew up air-guitaring to Blue Öyster Cult and kept the right priorities, you might come up with an album set in the same teenage wasteland as this one.

Not that you’d come up with hooks this canny or riffs this hard. Opener “Turn It Up” takes a familiar rock trope—to increase the volume—and makes it a kissoff to a disposable, distracted lover: “Come on, turn it up/ I don’t care if you stay.” “Bad Astrology” is what happens when punk-rock kids get their hands on classic Sabbath or early Maiden. “Boy of Summer” sounds like its title was spit out by a neural network trained on highway-freedom anthems, but its pastiche of the form is so precise—and its subversion of the theme so gratifying, dismissing rather than reifying the titular boy—that it gets passing marks. “Wolfbite” could be Heavy Metal Parking Lot: The Song, but it summons up older, richer forces, lending some Blue Cheer oomph to its Judas Priest drive.

So yes, this is a throwback record, but Bat Fangs’ distillation of what made this kind of dirtbag rock so appealing—and its eschewing of the misogyny, pomposity, and thematic predictability that could make it grating— works because of the band’s talent for tight songcraft, the album’s spacious but strippeddown production, and the gusto (Wright’s Joan Jett deadpan, King’s galloping percussion) the duo brings to the mix. And retro shamanism isn’t Bat Fangs’ only trick, anyway. “Mercury,” a simultaneously wiry and hazy slow burn, would be great in any radio era. “If you want to be alone, sleeping in another zone,” Wright opens, suggesting that while her band mostly wants to take us to some old, cherished places, it doesn’t mind exploring some new astral planes, too.

—Jonathan L. Fischer Listen to Bat Fangs at washingtoncitypaper. com/arts.

D I S C O V E RY A RT I S T

ARCOIRIS SANDOVAL’S SONIC ASYLUM QUINTET

SUMMER

TICKETS ON SALE FEB 17

S AT. , F E B . 3 AT 7 & 9 P. M .

T E R R A C E G A L L E RY Pianist, composer, and educator ArcoIris Sandoval returns to the Kennedy Center with her quintet Sonic Asylum.

JUN 10 + 12

ROGER DALTREY PERFORMS THE WHO’S TOMMY

JUL 1

JUL 20

AUG 18

REBA MCENTIRE

ERIC HARLAND, VOYAGER F R I . , F E B . 9 AT 7 & 9 P. M .

T E R R A C E G A L L E RY Drummer Eric Harland returns to the Kennedy Center with his band Voyager to showcase their “continuously inventive and artful” style (Buffalo News).

QUEEN LATIFAH COMMON NEA JAZZ MASTER

RANDY WESTON’S AFRICAN RHYTHMS: A TRIBUTE TO JAMES REESE EUROPE S AT. , F E B . 1 0 AT 7 P. M .

T E R R A C E T H E AT E R NEA Jazz Master Randy Weston and his African Rhythms Octet salutes James Reese Europe, the musician often credited for helping introduce jazz music to Western Europe.

TICKETS ON SALE NOW! KENNEDY-CENTER.ORG | (202) 467-4600

JAKE OWEN

CHRIS JANSON JUN 3

FITZ AND THE TANTRUMS X AMBASSADORS JUN 7

BARRY MANILOW JUN 8 + 9

WAIT WAIT...

DON’T TELL ME!

THE AVETT BROTHERS NICOLE ATKINS

JASON ISBELL AND THE 400 UNIT

HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER JUL 24

CHARLIE PUTH

THE VOICENOTES TOUR

HAILEE STEINFELD JUL 25

KIDZ BOP LIVE 2018 AUG 25

JUL 19

JAWS IN CONCERT

NATIONAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA JUL 21

Premier Sponsor 2018 Summer Season

Tickets also available at the Box Office. Groups call (202) 416-8400.

For all other ticket-related customer service inquiries, call the Advance Sales Box Office at (202) 416-8540.

Discovery Artists in the KC Jazz Club are supported by The William N. Cafritz Jazz Initiative and The King-White Family Foundation and Dr. J. Douglas White.

Support for Jazz at the Kennedy Center is generously provided by Elizabeth and C. Michael Kojaian.

washingtoncitypaper.com february 2, 2018 23

THIS WEEK’S SHOWS ALL GOOD PRESENTS

Greensky Bluegrass w/ Billy Strings

Merriweather Post Pavilion • Columbia, MD

Attendance included with purchase of tickets to 2/3 Greensky Bluegrass @ The Anthem .. F FEB 2

STEEZ PROMO PRESENTS

Emancipator Ensemble w/ Blockhead ..................................................... Sa 3

JUST ANNOUNCED! M3 ROCK FESTIVAL 2018 TAL ME T! ES

F

FEBRUARY

MARCH (cont.)

J. Roddy Walston and The Business w/ Post Animal ..........Th 8 White Ford Bronco: DC’s All-90s Band .......................F 9 COIN w/ The Aces ......................Sa 10 Múm ..........................................Su 11 Sleigh Bells w/ Sunflower Bean ......................W 14 U STREET MUSIC HALL PRESENTS

Matoma w/ Elephante & Youngr .............Th 15 ZZ Ward w/ Black Pistol Fire

No Scrubs: ‘90s Dance Party

with DJs Will Eastman and Brian Billion .........................F 9

Beth Ditto w/ SSION ................Sa 10 J Boog w/ Jesse Royal & Etana .............Su 11 K.Flay w/ Yungblud ...................M 12 I’m With Her w/ Andrew Combs (Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan) ....................Tu 13

Mason Bates’s Mercury Soul ........................Th 15

STRFKR w/ Reptaliens .............Sa 17

AN EVENING WITH

Ganja White Night w/ Dirt Monkey & Subtronics ....Su 18 The Oh Hellos w/ Lowland Hum .........................W 21 U STREET MUSIC HALL PRESENTS

Lane 8 w/ Enamour .................Th 22 ALL GOOD PRESENTS

Railroad Earth w/ Roosevelt Coliler .......F 23 & Sa 24 Rhye w/ Boulevards ....................M 26 Lights w/ Chase Atlantic & DCF .Tu 27 MARCH

Kelela .........................................Th 1 Galactic (F 2 - w/ Butcher Brown) .... F 2 & Sa 3 Hippie Sabotage w/ Melvv & Olivia Noelle ..............Su 4 LP w/ Noah Kahan .........................M 5 Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark w/ GGOOLLDD ......Tu 6 Cornelius ....................................W 7

Nils Frahm ...............................F 16 Jon Batiste (Solo in the Round) Early Show! 6pm Doors ..................Sa 17 STEEZ PROMO PRESENTS

The Floozies w/ Anomalie Late Show! 10:30pm Doors .............Sa 17 Moose Blood w/ Lydia ............Su 18 Coast Modern..........................M 19 Wild Child w/ The Wild Reeds . Tu 20 D SHOW ADDED!

FIRST SHOW SOLD OUT! SECON

Betty Who w/ Pretty Sister

ERN

H

SOUTOCK R

EST!

F

The Marshall Tucker Band • Blackberry Smoke • The Outlaws and more! .................................................................. MAY 6 2 and 3-day tickets on sale Friday, February 2 at 10am

JASON ALDEAN

On Sale Friday, February 2 at 10am

Dierks Bentley w/ Brothers Osborne & LANCO .......................................... FRI MAY 18 Sugarland w/ Brandy Clark & Clare Bowen ................................................. SAT JULY 14 • For full lineups and more info, visit merriweathermusic.com • 930.com

Lincoln Theatre • 1215 U Street, NW Washington, D.C.

PostSecret: The Show ...... MAR 24 Sucker For Love ................... FEB 10 Pod Save the People (Live) . FEB 18 Rob Bell w/ Peter Rollins .......... MAR 27 Max Raabe SHOW ADDED! FIRST SHOW SOLD OUT! SECOND Andy Borowitz ........................ FEB 24 & Palast Orchester.............APR 11 George Ezra .............................APR 26 Dixie Dregs STORY DISTRICT’S

(Complete Original Lineup with Steve Morse, Rod Morgenstein, Allen Sloan, Andy West, and Steve Davidowski) ..................MAR 7 AEG PRESENTS

Calexico w/ Ryley Walker ............APR 27 Robyn Hitchcock and His L.A. Squires

Bianca Del Rio ...................... MAR 15 w/ Tristen .......................................APR 28 • thelincolndc.com • U Street (Green/Yellow) stop across the street!

& Spencer Ludwig........................W 21

Dan Auerbach & The Easy Eye Sound Revue feat. Robert Finley and Shannon Shaw

w/ Shannon and the Clams ........Th 22 Godspeed You! Black Emperor w/ KGD .......................................Sa 24 of Montreal .............................Su 25 Turnover w/ Mannequin Pussy & Summer Salt ...........................Tu 27

MANY MORE SHOWS ON SALE!

9:30 CUPCAKES

M3 SOUTHERN ROCK CLASSIC FEATURING

w/ Luke Combs & Lauren Alaina .............................. MAY 24

ALL GOOD PRESENTS

& Billy Raffoul ..............................F 16

U STREET MUSIC HALL PRESENTS

Cinderella’s Tom Keifer • Queensrÿche • Kix • Ace Frehley and more! .............................................................. MAY 4 & 5

930.com

The best thing you could possibly put in your mouth Cupcakes by BUZZ... your neighborhood bakery in Alexandria, VA. | www.buzzonslaters.com

9:30 CLUB PRESENTS AT U STREET MUSIC HALL Flint Eastwood w/ NYDGE ..............F FEB 2 Anna Meredith w/ Flash Frequency ..... Sa 3 Why? w/ Open Mike Eagle ........................F 9 Anti-Flag & Stray From The Path .. Sa 10 Wylder w/ Virginia Man ....................... Sa 17 MAGIC GIANT w/ The Brevet .............. Su 18 MAKO w/ Night Lights .......................... Sa 24 Gabrielle Aplin w/ John Splithoff & Hudson Taylor ......... Su 25 Sevdaliza ........................................... Tu 27

• Buy advance tickets at the 9:30 Club box office • 930.com

TICKETS for 9:30 Club shows are available through TicketFly.com, by phone at 1-877-4FLY-TIX, and at the 9:30 Club box office.

9:30 CLUB BOX OFFICE HOURS are 12-7pm on weekdays & until 11pm on show nights, 6-11pm on Sat, and 6-10:30pm on Sun on show nights.

HAPPY HOUR DRINK PRICES impconcerts.com AFTER THE SHOW AT THE BACK BAR! 24 february 2, 2018 washingtoncitypaper.com

Missio w/ Welshly Arms ...................F MAR 2 Ella Vos w/ Freya Ridings ....................... M 5 Amy Shark w/ MILCK .......................... M 12 The Hunna & Coasts ....................... Sa 17 The Strypes ......................................... F 23 The Marmozets ................................ Sa 24 Vinyl Theatre & Vesperteen ......... Su 25 Hollie Cook ......................................... M 26 Albert Hammond Jr ........................ Tu 27 Digitalism ........................................... W 28

PARKING: THE OFFICIAL 9:30 parking lot entrance is on 9th Street, directly behind the 9:30 Club. Buy your advance parking tickets at the same time as your concert tickets!

930.com

CITYLIST

thh

NEW MUSIC VENUE

NOW OPEN THE WHARF, SW DC

DINER & BAR OPEN LATE!

Music 25 Theater 27 Film 29

Music

CITY LIGHTS: FRIDAY

ROSE MCGOWAN

FRIDAY COuNtRY

9:30 Club 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Greensky Bluegrass. 7 p.m. $75–$95. 930.com.

Fillmore Silver Spring 8656 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. (301) 960-9999. Chase Rice. 8 p.m. $25. fillmoresilverspring.com.

DJ NIGhtS

Songbyrd muSiC HouSe and reCord CaFe 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. DJ KB. 11 p.m. $5. songbyrddc.com. u Street muSiC Hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889.

Joe Kay. 10:30 p.m. $12. ustreetmusichall.com.

ElECtRONIC

eCHoStage 2135 Queens Chapel Road NE. (202) 503-2330. Datsik and Sullivan King. 9 p.m. $25–$40. echostage.com.

JAzz

blueS alley 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Art Sherrod Jr. 8 p.m.; 10 p.m. $32.50. bluesalley.com.

ROCk

pearl Street WareHouSe 33 Pearl Street SW. (202) 380-9620. Black Masala. 8:30 p.m. $15. pearlstreetwarehouse.com. u Street muSiC Hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889.

Flint Eastwood. 7 p.m. $15. ustreetmusichall.com.

SAtuRDAY BluES

pearl Street WareHouSe 33 Pearl Street SW. (202) 380-9620. Eric Scott and Jonathan Sloane. 8:30 p.m. $20. pearlstreetwarehouse.com.

COuNtRY

Fillmore Silver Spring 8656 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. (301) 960-9999. Walker Hayes. 8:30 p.m. $15. fillmoresilverspring.com.

Rose McGowan is beloved by those who came of age in the ’90s and early aughts for her sardonic and witty turns in Scream, Jawbreaker, and Charmed. Her acting image has been the Queen Bee tough girl but she proved herself to be a heroine in real life as one of the loudest voices to speak out about sexual harassment at the hands of Harvey Weinstein. In the wake of Weinstein being exposed in articles in the New York Times and the New Yorker, McGowan has become a ringleader in the #MeToo movement. While she may alienate some with her bold and brash way of taking celebrities to task, she’s nothing if not a modern warrior. That’s why the title of her new memoir Brave is so fitting. Rose McGowan is unafraid to speak her mind and if the cover photo featuring her shaved head is any indication, she’s ready for battle. She will be in conversation with Madhulika Sikka, formerly of NPR News, at the GW Jack Morton Auditorium. With the start of another viral women’s movement, #TimesUp, and the impending Academy Awards, there’s no doubt that Rose McGowan has something to say. Be there to hear her. Rose McGowan speaks at 7 p.m. at the GW Jack Morton Auditorium, 805 21st St. NW. $12– $35. (202) 364-1919. politics-prose.com.

—Diana Metzger

ElECtRONIC

9:30 Club 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Emancipator Ensemble. 8 p.m. $25. 930.com. roCk & roll Hotel 1353 H St. NE. (202) 388-7625.

Beauty Pill. 8 p.m. $15. rockandrollhoteldc.com.

Songbyrd muSiC HouSe and reCord CaFe 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. Wafia. 8 p.m. $15. songbyrddc.com.

hIp-hOp

u Street muSiC Hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889.

Julius Jetson. 10:30 p.m. $5. ustreetmusichall.com.

JAzz

blueS alley 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Art Sherrod Jr. 8 p.m.; 10 p.m. $32.50. bluesalley.com.

ROCk

dC9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. Venray. 9 p.m. $10. dcnine.com. u Street muSiC Hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889.

Anna Meredith. 7 p.m. $15. ustreetmusichall.com.

SuNDAY

MONDAY FuNk & R&B

tHe international Student HouSe oF WaSH-

Fillmore Silver Spring 8656 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. (301) 960-9999. SZA. 8 p.m. Sold out. fillmoresilverspring.com.

ner. 4 p.m. $20–$40. ishdc.org.

JAzz atlaS perForming artS Center 1333 H St. NE. (202) 399-7993. All The Things You Are: Jerome Kern.

2:30 p.m. $20–$40. atlasarts.org.

kennedy Center millennium Stage 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. Backbeat Underground. 6 p.m.

Free. kennedy-center.org.

ROCk

p.m. $15–$25. rhizomedc.org.

birCHmere 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. Pat Benatar. 7:30 p.m. $115. birchmere.com.

OpERA

WORlD

rHizome dC 6950 Maple St. NW. Ken Vandermark. 6

kennedy Center millennium Stage 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. Peabody Opera. 6 p.m. Free. kennedy-center.org.

TU 13

barnS at WolF trap 1635 Trap Road, Vienna.

(703) 255-1900. Ladysmith Black Mambazo. 8 p.m. $40–$42. wolftrap.org.

JOIN THE SECOND LINE: FAT TUESDAY PARTY AT PEARL ST. WAREHOUSE!

THE GRANDSONS

FREE SHOW AFTER WHARF PARADE & FIREWORKS

W 14 TH 15 F 16 SA 17

THE EMPTY POCKETS w/ UPTOWN BOYS CHOIR ROBERT LIGHTHOUSE w/ ELI COOK THE PLATE SCRAPERS & COLEBROOK ROAD SURPRISE ATTACK w/ SAUCE

F 23

AMERICAN IDOL WINNER

SA 24

DAVID COOK

THE JAMES HUNTER SIX

w/ 3 MAN SOUL MACHINE

MARCH CONCERTS F2 SA 3 TH 8 F9 SA 10 SU 11 TU 13 W 14

ClASSICAl ington dC 1825 R St. NW. (202) 232-4007. Shai Wos-

FEBRUARY CONCERTS F2 BLACK MASALA w/ SWIFT TECHNIQUE SA 3 ERIC SCOTT & JONATHAN SLOANE W7 GRAND PRIZE WINNING LOCAL SONGWRITER CIRCLE BEN MASON•KIPYN MARTIN•TONY DENIKOS F9 AZTEC SUN w/ THE JOGO PROJECT SA 10 ALL GOOD PRESENTS: THE LIL’ SMOKIES w/ JORDAN AUGUST

F 16 W 21 TH 22 F 23

THE MIGHTY PINES NO SECOND TROY w/ TOMMY GANN RIVERS AND RUST BUMPIN UGLIES w/ DUB CITY RENEGADES & JOINT OPERATION CRYS MATTHEWS w/ ECHO BLOOM CURLEY TAYLOR & ZYDECO TROUBLE ZYDECO DANCE 3PM DOORS

FY5 SHERMAN EWING w/ SPECIAL GUEST JOHN JO JO HERMAN AN EVENING WITH

GRANT LEE PHILLIPS & KRISTIN HERSH THE FABULOUS THUNDERBIRDS FEAT. KIM WILSON MARTY O’REILLY AND THE OLD SOUL ORCHESTRA THE REVELERS ZYDECO DANCE LESSON INCLUDED!

TICKETS ON SALE! pearlstreetwarehouse.com

washingtoncitypaper.com february 2, 2018 25

3701 Mount Vernon Ave. Alexandria, VA • 703-549-7500

CITY LIGHTS: SATURDAY

For entire schedule go to Birchmere.com Find us on Facebook/Twitter!

Tix @ Ticketmaster.com 800-745-3000

Feb 1

Allen TODD SNIDER (Solo)Thompson

2

FRI, FEB 2

NEW YORK FESTIVAL OF SONG BERNSTEIN AT 100

In the

!

COREY SMITH Shingleton 6&7 TOMMY EMMANUEL CGP with special guest

9

CHAMBER MUSIC AT THE BARNS

George

RODNEY CROWELL

BURLESQUE-A-PADES

In Loveland! featuring Angie Pontani & much more! Hosted by Murray Hill!

WILL DOWNING CARLA BRUNI

11 13

PHIL VASSAR HL 16 ERIC ROBERSON 17&18 ARLO GUTHRIE exie ayden

15

SAT, FEB 10 + SUN, FEB 11

MASTERS OF HAWAIIAN MUSIC THE SEAMUS EGAN PROJECT FRI, FEB 16

MARTIN SEXTON WED, FEB 21

CHERISH THE LADIES

WED, FEB 28 + THU, MAR 1

MARC-ANDRÉ HAMELIN, piano CHAMBER MUSIC AT THE BARNS

FRI, MAR 2

ENTER THE HAGGIS

Re:Generation Tour 2018 w/Arlo, Abe & Sarah Lee Guthrie

THE S.O.S. BAND 20 THE ASSOCIATION 22&23 JEFFREY OSBORNE 19

HARMONY SWEEPSTAKES

24

A Capella Festival

KEIKO MATSUI 26 ANA TIJOUX presents

JOHN EATON

INDIANA ON OUR MINDS: THE MUSIC OF COLE PORTER & HOAGY CARMICHAEL FRI, MAR 9

SHOSTAKOVICH AND THE BLACK MONK: A RUSSIAN FANTASY CHAMBER MUSIC AT THE BARNS

SUN, MAR 11

BARRY FLANAGAN OF HAPA WITH SPECIAL GUEST ERIC GILLIOM THU, MAR 15 + FRI, MAR 16

SPHINXtravaganza

CHAMBER MUSIC AT THE BARNS

Roja y Negro

27

1 6 3 5 T R A P R D, V I E N N A , VA 2 2 1 8 2

THE MUSICAL BOX

performs ‘The Black Show’ version of Selling England By The Pound

Mar 1

An Intimate Evening with

GRAHAM NASH 2&3 RACHELLE FERRELL DWELE

4

DAVID ARCHULETA 6 SWEET HONEY IN THE ROCK 7 PAT GREEN 5

8

SUN, MAR 18

AND MANY MORE!

Named for the money-saving technique of filming night scenes in daylight, director François Truffaut’s 1973 comedy-drama Day for Night, or La nuit américaine, follows the creative chaos of a fictional movie shoot, and is one of the best movies ever made about making movies. Truffaut himself plays Ferrand, the frazzled director trying to maintain control of a complicated production that runs into such obstacles as conflicting personalities, forgetful actors, and a cat that won’t drink milk on cue. The film also features Truffaut regular Jean-Pierre Léaud and Jacqueline Bisset as a marquee actress who will make or break the film’s box office chances but upsets the cast’s already fragile equilibrium. Instructive, perhaps to a fault, Day for Night turns the art of movie-making into an entertaining, soap operatic circus. The film screens at 4 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art East Building Auditorium, 4th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW. Free. (202) 737-4215. nga.gov.

—Pat Padua

25

PIGEON KINGS WED, MAR 7

DAY FOR NIGHT

9

An Evening of

EDWIN McCAIN Newmyer Flyer Presents

LAUREL CANYON:

Golden Songs of Los Angeles 1966-73 10

THE FOUR BITCHIN’ BABES

26 february 2, 2018 washingtoncitypaper.com

CITY LIGHTS: SUNDAY

THE ANTISUPER BOWL

There’s a good chance that, if you’re as excited as I am for a bill featuring Ken Vandermark, HMN, Heart of the Ghost, Brian Settles and Jeremy Carlstedt, and Sarah Hughes (pictured) and Corey Thuro, you’re equally apathetic about the Big National Sporting Event taking place on this particular Sunday. Look, I’m not saying that the intersection of people who are into professional football and experimental free jazz is nonexistent, but, well, it’s probably a pretty slim overlap. So, if you fall into that latter camp, you best be at Rhizome. Ken Vandermark—a long time vet of Chicago’s avant garde and free jazz scene—is currently on the road with his newest ensemble, Marker. Joining him is Norwegian trombonist HMN, who manipulates amplification with his unstructured improvised solo trombone compositions. But what really makes this bill a special one is the lineup of local talent: Heart of the Ghost, the trio of alto saxophonist Jarrett Gilgore, bassist Luke Stewart, and percussionist Ian McColm, the sax-drum duo of Brian Settles and Jeremy Carlstedt, and the duo of Sarah Hughes and Corey Thuro. And if you’re worried about missing out on Big Game grub, fear not: Local noise heads and foodies Mike Bernstein and Patrick Cain will be cooking up a storm.

The show starts at 6 p.m. at Rhizome, 6950 Maple St. NW. $15–$25. rhizomedc.org. —Matt Cohen

tuESDAY

roCk & roll Hotel 1353 H St. NE. (202) 388-7625.

Tiny Moving Parts. 7:30 p.m. $15. rockandrollhoteldc. com.

9:30 Club 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Lauv. 7 p.m.

Sold out. 930.com.

thuRSDAY

ElECtRONIC FOlk

blaCk Cat 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. Letitia VanSant. 7:30 p.m. $10. blackcatdc.com.

JAzz

blueS alley 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Polly Gibbons. 8 p.m.; 10 p.m. $22. bluesalley. com.

ROCk

birCHmere 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. Tommy Emmanuel. 7:30 p.m. $59.50. birchmere.com. roCk & roll Hotel 1353 H St. NE. (202) 388-7625.

High On Fire. 8 p.m. $17–$20. rockandrollhoteldc.com.

WEDNESDAY ElECtRONIC

u Street muSiC Hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889.

Jerry Folk. 10 p.m. $15. ustreetmusichall.com.

JAzz

blueS alley 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Marcus Mitchell, Marcus Young, and Marcus Canty. 8 p.m.; 10 p.m. $22. bluesalley.com.

BluES

Songbyrd muSiC HouSe and reCord CaFe 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. Joanna Teters. 8 p.m. $10–$12. songbyrddc.com.

ElECtRONIC

ten tigerS parlour 3813 Georgia Ave. NW. (202) 506-2080. Jeremy Olander. 10 p.m. $15–$20. tentigersdc.com.

hIp-hOp

u Street muSiC Hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889.

DJ Sliink. 9 p.m. $10. ustreetmusichall.com.

JAzz

blueS alley 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Lena Seikaly and Steve Herberman. 8 p.m.; 10 p.m. $25. bluesalley.com.

pOp

dC9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. Paperwhite. 8 p.m. $12–$14. dcnine.com.

ROCk

9:30 Club 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. J. Roddy Walston and The Business. 7 p.m. $30. 930.com. blaCk Cat 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. Blue Plains. 7:30 p.m. $10. blackcatdc.com.

2 Feb 8pm - 11pm

pOp

9:30 Club 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Grace VanderWaal. 6 p.m. Sold out. 930.com. pearl Street WareHouSe 33 Pearl Street SW. (202) 380-9620. Ben Mason. 8 p.m. $12. pearlstreetwarehouse.com.

ROCk

blaCk Cat 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. Girlpool.

7:30 p.m. $16–$18. blackcatdc.com. dC9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. Dry Country. 8 p.m. $10. dcnine.com.

Theater

4,380 nigHtS Tackling what it means to be American, D.C. playwright Annalisa Dias delivers 4,380 Nights, a play about a man being held without charge at the Guantanamo Bay prison. A timely critique of fear, power, and humanity itself the play is presented as part of the 2018 Women’s Voices Theater Festival.

10 Feb – Mardi Gras CITY LIGHTS: MONDAY

SzA

After independently releasing t w o m i xtapes recorded in a closet with stolen beats and writing for artists like Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Nicki Minaj, SZA signed to Kendrick Lamar’s record label TDE, and finally released her debut studio album, Ctrl, last year. Frankly and unapologetically, SZA revealed her truest and rawest self on Ctrl and transformed the narrative for black women. Through tracks like “Love Galore,” “Supermodel,” and “Broken Clocks” (which President Barack Obama selected as one of his favorite songs of 2017), she granted permission for young black women to take control and be whatever they want, whether a vengeful lover or a little needy and insecure. But as she has discovered and shared via her music, true contentment, acceptance, and opportunity arise when one actually relinquishes control. In a recent interview with Pitchfork, SZA credits her defiant existence to this emotional surrender: “In a weird way, my acceptance of a lack of control gave me the gift of control.” SZA performs at 8 p.m. at The Fillmore Silver Spring, 8656 Colesville Rd., Silver Spring. Sold out. (301) 960-9999. fillmoresilverspring.com.

—Casey Embert

13 Feb – Sip and Paint 16 Feb – Black Alley 18 Feb – A Sunday Kind of Love 2 Mar – Revival 10 Mar – Manu Chao & Fabulosos Cadillacs 13 Mar – Sip and Paint

washingtoncitypaper.com february 2, 2018 27

CITY LIGHTS: tuESDAY

F E B RUA RY S3

JOE CLAIR & FRIENDS COMEDY SHOW

YARN W/ WILLIAM MATHENY FRIDAY FEB

the

(2 SHOWS 7/10PM)

SU 4 M5

T6

SHI-QUETTA-LEE’S BIG GAME DRAG BRUNCH (1PM) DC BLACK HISTORY MONTH CONCERT CELEBRATING DC MUSICIANS BOB MARLEY “ONE LOVE” BIRTHDAY BASH WITH I&I RIDDIM

TH 8

F9

SU 11

THAD WILSON JAZZ ORCHESTRA’S 20TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION W/RUSSELL MALONE DARYL DAVIS PRESENTS: THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES 2017 KEITH ‘SHOWTIME” BUSEY’S 70’S BEST / PREVALENTINE DAY SHOW (1/7:30PM)

T&W VALENTINES DAY W/ 13&14 JEFF BRADSHAW & FRIENDS “A LOVE SUPREME” W/ AVANT & MAIMOUNA YOUSSEF TH & F THE SPINNERS 15&16 S 17 SYLEENA JOHNSON F 23 TRIBUTE TO THE FUNK BANDS

JUST ANNOUNCED

2

POSIES - DUO W/ PARTHENON HUXLEY SATURDAY FEB

3

TUES, FEB 6

DOCTOR DREAD & WALLY KINGS PRESENT

A CELEBRATION OF THE BIRTHDAY OF BOB MARLEY FEAT. SISTER CAROL

W/ CARL MALCOM POSITIVE VIBRATION BAND WED, FEB 7

NATHAN & THE ZYDECO CHA-CHA’S FRI, FEB 9

AN EVENING WITH

AZTEC TWO STEP SAT, FEB 10

NEWMYER FLYER PRESENTS

LOVE SONGS: THE BEATLES VOL. 5 SAT, FEB 10

TEDESCHI TRUCKS BAND AFTERPARTY

Signature Theatre. 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. To Feb. 18 $40–$65. (703) 820-9771. sigtheatre.org.

WED, FEB 14

MY FUNNY VALENTINE AN EVENING OF

FRANK SINATRA’S MUSIC STARRING TONY SANDS THUR, FEB 15

AN EVENING WITH

CORY WONG & MR. TALKBOX FRI, FEB 16

AN EVENING WITH

MARK O’CONNOR FEAT. THE O’CONNOR BAND

WED & THURS, FEB 28 & MAR 1

BILLY OCEAN CELEBRATES BBJ’s 5TH ANNIVERSARY HOSTED BY JOE CLAIR

FRI, FEB 16

SUN, MAR 4

HAROLD MELVIN’S BLUE NOTES

FEATURING THE RON HOLLOWAY BAND

(2 SHOWS 2/7:30PM)

http://igg.me/at/bethesdablues 7719 Wisconsin Ave., Bethesda, MD

(240) 330-4500

LATE NIGHT

SAT, FEB 17

THE WAILERS W/ SIGNAL FIRE SUN, FEB 18

ALSARAH & THE NUBATONES

www. BethesdaBluesJazz.com

Two Blocks from Bethesda Metro/Red Line Free Parking on Weekends

THEHAMILTONDC.COM 28 february 2, 2018 washingtoncitypaper.com

Some of the world’s best cultural ambassadors of contemporary dance are making their way back to D.C. The late African-American activist and choreographer Alvin Ailey birthed in the 1950s what would become a beacon of opportunity for black dancers from around the world in the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Ailey’s most famous works were politically groundbreaking and displayed an artistic range that the dance world had never seen before. His masterpiece, “Revelations,” did just that as both a dance of reverence and journey of cultural heritage, a celebration of the deepest grief and holiest joy of the African-American experience through spirituals, songsermons, gospel songs, and blues. Among Ailey's many accomplishments and accolades is a 1988 Kennedy Center Honor. His legacy, at least this week, lives on at the Kennedy Center Opera House.

The show begins at 7 p.m. at the Kennedy Center Opera House, 2700 F St. NW. $49–$175. (202) 4674600. kennedy-center.org.

—Mikala Williams

LATE NIGHT

FEATURING THE RON HOLLOWAY BAND

TEDESCHI TRUCKS BAND AFTERPARTY

AlVIN AIlEY AMERICAN DANCE thEAtER

aubergine As part of the Women’s Voices Theater Festival, the Olney Theatre Center presents a story of family, food, and memories. Written by Julia Cho and directed by Vincent M. Lancisi, Aubergine focuses on a Korean family, in which a son leaves his job as a chef to care for his dying father and strives to gain acceptance from him. Performed in English and Korean with English supertitles. Olney Theatre Center. 2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Road, Olney. To March 4 $49–$74. (301) 924-3400. olneytheatre.org. everytHing iS illuminated Based on the bestselling novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, this stage adaptation tells the story of a young man—also named Jonathan Safran Foer—who sets out to find the woman who might or might not have saved his grandfather. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of war, an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Jr. Jr., and a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in butchered English, Jonathan takes a journey into an unexpected past. Directed by Aaron Posner. Theater J. 1529 16th St. NW. To Feb. 4 $24–$69.

(202) 777-3210. theaterj.org. tHe great SoCiety As civil rights protests and the horrors of the Vietnam War divide the country, President Lyndon B. Johnson struggles to maintain his relationship with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stave off his political opponents, and put forth ambitious social policy projects. Playwright Robert Schenkkan’s lauded production makes its highly-anticipated D.C. premiere. Arena Stage. 1101 6th St. SW. To March 11 $56–$111. (202) 488-3300. arenastage.org. guilt The Scena Theatre presents this world premiere Robert McNamara-directed production about a charming, philandering priest named Urbain Grandier who stands accused of witchcraft and is ultimately condemned to be burned at the stake, based on historical events. From Australian writer John Shand, the

play seeks to explore intolerance, xenophobia, and the power of persecution. Atlas Performing Arts Center. 1333 H St. NE. To Feb. 4 $15–$45. (202) 399-7993. atlasarts.org.

JeFFerSon’S garden In this sweeping American Revolution drama, playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker explores the contrast between the ideals and realities of freedom in the United States. As two characters on their own separate journeys, Quaker pacifist Christian and enslaved woman Susannah, cross paths with founding fathers, they are forced to examine and confront America’s promise of equality. Ford’s Theatre. 511 10th St. NW. To Feb. 8 $20–$62. (202) 347-4833. fords.org. ligHt yearS Robbie Schaefer, of the acclaimed indie rock band Eddie From Ohio, crafts a world premiere musical that is a touching and funny personal tale of music, immigration, and the bond between father and son. The story centers on Schaefer’s journey from a childhood in India to the struggles of growing up and raising a family, and how his father’s dark past impacts their relationship. Signature Theatre. 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. To March 4 $40–$65. (703) 820-9771. sigtheatre.org.

SometHing rotten! Set in the 1590s, Something Rotten! tells the story of two brothers desperate to write their own acclaimed play, who eventually begin to write the world’s first musical. Directed and choreographed by Tony Award-winner Casey Nicholaw, who was the director of the world premiere musical Mean Girls, The Book of Mormon, and Aladdin, this original new musical also features music and lyrics by Tony Award nominees and brothers Wayne and Karey Kirkpatrick. National Theatre. 1321 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. To Feb. 18 $48–$118. (202) 628-6161. nationaltheatre.org.

Sovereignty From director Molly Smith, Sovereignty is a production of playwright Mary Kathryn Nagle’s daring new work that travels the intersections of past

TATTOO PARADISE

CITY LIGHTS: WEDNESDAY

GIRlpOOl

About 50 seconds into Girlpool’s sophomore album, Powerplant, best friend duo Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad abandon their usual deadpan, guitar-driven harmonies and explode into drum-banging female angst.

The two self-proclaimed soulmates have been making DIY lo-fi indie music together since high school, and 2017’s Powerplant marks a significant emotional evolution for the duo. Together they perfectly harmonize on poetic ruminations about toxic relationships, debilitating vulnerabilities, and the frustration that comes with trying to figure out the meaning of life as twenty-somethings. It makes sense that the pair amped up the volume: These are feelings that warrant a bigger and louder sound. So with heavy-hitting percussion, punchy one-liners, and practically telepathic harmony, Girlpool created a sound that can nearly drown out the rest of the world. Girlpool performs at 7:30 p.m. at Black Cat, 1811 14th St NW. $16–$18. (202) 667-4490. blackcatdc.com.

—Casey Embert

ADAMS MORGAN, DC 2444 18th St. NW Washington DC 20009 202.232.6699

WHEATON, MD

2518 W. University Blvd.

Wheaton, MD 20902 301.949.0118

THE ONLY TATTOO SHOP IN ADAMS MORGAN THAT MATTERS

tattooparadisedc.com myspace.com/tattooparadise

Please recycle this paper.

CITY LIGHTS: thuRSDAY

DJ SlIINk

Back in 2012, DJ Sliink burst onto the underground music scene as an ambassador of Jersey club music, a frenetic derivative of the Baltimore scene that has its own palette of synth squeals, bed squeak sound effects, and rap samples.

That summer, he teamed with trendsetting New York producer Brenmar for “Bait,” a siren-filled club smash that chopped up and syncopated the vocals from the Wale song of the same name.

Since then, Sliink has been playing clubs and festivals around the world, watching Jersey club and the larger EDM world evolve and expand. That evolution, as well as Sliink’s own growth as a producer, is evident on “Saint Laurent,” which teams Sliink with EDM godfather Skrillex and Wale. The producers fuse Jersey club, EDM, and trap rap into a seductive jam, and, in a sign of how far Sliink has come, the D.C. rapper contributes original vocals this time around. DJ Sliink performs at 9 p.m. at U Street Music Hall, 1115 U St. NW. $10. (202) 588-1889. ustreetmusichall.com.

—Chris Kelly and present, and personal and political truths. It centers on a young Cherokee lawyer fighting to restore her Nation’s jurisdiction, who must then confront the ubiquitous ghosts of her grandfathers. Arena Stage.

1101 6th St. SW. To Feb. 18 $41–$101. (202) 488-3300. arenastage.org.

McShane, and China Anne McClain. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information) tHe leiSure Seeker Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland star as a couple traveling on an unforgettable journey in the RV they call The Leisure Seeker.

Co-starring Janel Moloney. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information)

Film

bilal: a neW breed oF Hero A boy who dreams of becoming a great warrior is stolen and taken to a far off land, and must find the courage to overcome his obstacles. Starring Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Ian

maze runner: tHe deatH Cure Dylan O’Brien’s Thomas leads a team on their final and most dangerous journey to find a cure for the “Flare,” a deadly rapidly-spreading disease. Co-starring Rosa Salazar and Thomas Brodie-Sangster. (See washingtoncitypaper. com for venue information)

washingtoncitypaper.com february 2, 2018 29

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FILE NUMBER 271941) HAS DISSOLVED EFFECTIVE NOVEMD.C. BILINGUAL PUBBER 27, 2017 AND HAS FILED LIC CHARTER SCHOOL ARTICLES OF DISSOLUTION OF NOTICE: REQUEST DOMESTIC FOR FOR-PROFIT CORFOR PROPOSAL PORATION WITH THE DISTRICT D.C. Bilingual Public OF COLUMBIA CORPORATIONS DIVISION School in acCharter cordance with section A2204(c) CLAIM ofAGAINST TRAVISA the District of OUTSOURCING, INC.Reform MUST Columbia School INCLUDE THE NAME OF THE Act of 1995 solicits DISSOLVED CORPORATION, proposals forNAME vendors INCLUDE THE OF THE to provideINCLUDE the following CLAIMANT, A SUMMAservices SY17.18: RY OF THE for FACTS SUPPORTING ·THE Third Party CLAIM, ANDInspections BE MAILED TO 1600 Material INTERNATIONAL and TestingDRIVE, SUITE 600, MCLEAN, VA 22102 Services Proposal Submission ALL CLAIMS Document WILL BE BARRED A Portable UNLESS A PROCEEDING Format (pdf) election TO ENFORCE THE CLAIM IS COMversion of your MENCED WITH IN 3proposal YEARS OF must be received latPUBLICATION OF THISno NOTICE er than 3:00 p.m.

EST IN ACCORDANCE WITH SECTION on Thursday, 29-312.07 OF THEFebruary DISTRICT OF 15, 2018. Please email COLUMBIA ORGANIZATIONS ACT. Elle Carne ecarne@ programmanagers.com Two Rivers PCS is soliciting or call 202-540-2425 proposals to provide project manfor more information agement services for a small conor to receive a copy struction project. For a copy of of the RFP, please the RFP. email procurement@ tworiverspcs.org.

Deadline for No phone call submissubmissions is December 6, 2017. sion or late responses please. Interviews, samples, demonstrations will be scheduled at our request after the review of the proposals only.

MONUMENT ACADEMY PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS Executive Search Firm Seeking an Executive Search Firm to fill a

senior level leadership Legals position at Monument Academy Public Charter DC SCHOLARS PCS REQUEST School. Monument FOR PROPOSALS – ModuAcademy, located in lar Contractor Services - DC Ward willCharter serveSchool ScholarsSix, Public 160 5th solicitsstudents proposals in forthe a modular through grades in contractor to8th provide professional the upcoming management and school construction servicesTotorequest construct the a modular year. full building to house four classrooms RFP, please reach out andJeff one faculty offi ce to McHugh atsuite. jeff. The Request for Proposals (RFP) mchugh@mapcsdc.org. specifi cations can be obtained on Responses are due by and after Monday, November 27, 5pmfrom on 2/2/2018.

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Request Proposals All questionsfor should be sent in Cleaning Services writing by e-mail.

No phone calls regarding this RFP will be acLAYC Career Academy cepted. Career Bids mustAcadbe received by LAYC 5:00 PM Thursday, December emy is on advertising the 14, 2017 at DC to Scholars opportunity bid onPublic Charter School, ATTN: for Sharonda cleaning services one Mann, 5601 E. Capitol St. SE, (1) year starting Washington, DC 20019.March Any bids 1, 2018 withallpossibility not addressing areas as outof renewal.

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Security Services LAYC Career Academy Rooms for Rent LAYC Career Academy is advertising thefurHoliday Special- Two opportunity to short bid on nished rooms for or long Security term rental services ($900 and for $800one per (1) year starting month) with access March to W/D, WiFi, Kitchen, Den. Utili1, 2018 withand possibility tiesrenewal. included. Best N.E. location of Additional along H St. Corridor.

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