CITYPAPER WASHINGTON
at our best, we create communities that overflow with dynamic possibilities
The love for music and togetherness is a fond memory I will never forget
my heart is fil ed daily with the beautiful warmth of everyone I meet in my wonderful city
I AM INDEBTED TO THE NATIVE PEOPLES WHO GROUNDED US IN THIS PLACE AND NAMED OUR RIVERS
I grew up right here
Whenever I have wanted to create something— whether it be a store, a radio show, or a party, I have been supported by my city we rose from the dust and reinvented ourselves with a stronger sense of community that embraced your rich diversity like never before
DEAR D.C. I LOVE YOU, D.C.
MY CAREER HAS NOW TOUCHED SEVEN DIFFERENT DECADES, SIX OF THEM IN D.C.
YOU HAVE EVERYTHING I NEED AND I changed ANYTHING I COULD POSSIBLY WANT, You changed D.C., AND I LOVE YOU FOR THAT I grow You grow I know you
I LOVED YOU FROM THE VERY BEGINNING
I soon learned the difference between MY FEELINGS OF AWE AND “Washington, D.C.” GRATITUDE AT THE SITE OF THE and “The District”— CAPITOL DOME the former is a place HAVE BEEN REPLACED BY on a map, the latter is MY FEELINGS OF INCLUSION AND a place in our hearts
It’s a place where politics is the cover story, but life is teeming underneath
THERE IS NO PLACE I’D RATHER BE
it wasn’t long before the Chocolate City adopted me as its own
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the best part has always been your people
IT WAS LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT
those of us who live in D.C. are made of some strong stuff
I’ve always thought D.C. is unassumingly cool
THE CITY TAUGHT ME HOW TO LIVE, HOW TO LOVE, BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY HOW TO FIGHT
IT IS MY HOME
The flowers of D.C. continue to be a wonder for me
We love transplants that love us back, like Marion Barry and Chuck Brown
It means that we absolutely, COMMUNITY I CAN SEE HOW THE I LOVE THAT 100 percent PUBLIC STOICISM OF BEAT, OUR MONUMENTS don’t give a STANDS IN GREAT drive up Georgia CHERISH shit about MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE DISTRICT REALLY BEGAN That first TO THE Avenue NW was like CONTRAST RICH EMOTIONAL WITH MY LOVE AFFAIR FOR GOOD R&B MUSIC THAT BEAT, heading into my future being LIVES OF OUR COMMUNITIES HONOR something THAT BEAT we’re not. We’re doing LOVE LETTERS TO THIS SPECIAL, our own thing A TRUE LOVE STORY MANY-SIDED CITY FROM and, if that’s under the FOR THE AGES 12 NOTABLE LOCALS PAGE 10 radar, so be it MY ROOTS FEEL STRONGEST HERE
2 february 14, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com
INSIDE
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COVER STORY: DEAR D.C.
10 Twelve locals compose love letters to the District, just in time for Valentine’s Day.
DISTRICT LINE 4 Lawyer Up: Tenant advocate Will Merrifield is known for fighting for his clients in the Wilson Building. Now he’s launching a campaign for an at-large Council seat. 6 Loose Lips: The shadow of Jack Evans’ ethics scandal continues to cause quarrels among councilmembers.
SPORTS 8 An Xtra Chance: The XFL’s second iteration is giving football players another go at the game they love.
FOOD 16 La Dulce Vida: Grab your fill of sweet treats at the area’s local Latin bakeries.
ARTS 22 Music Notes: What should be represented in a go-go museum? Musicians and community members weigh in. 24 Curtain Calls: Klimek on 1st Stage’s The Royale, Croghan on Rorschach Theatre’s The Toxic Avenger: The Musical, and Ritzel on Signature Theatre’s Guns & Powder 26 Speed Reads: Sarappo on Rachel Vorona Cote’s Too Much 27 Short Subjects: Gittell on What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael 27 Liz at Large: “Skip”
CITY LIST 29 32 32 32
Music Books Theater Film
DIVERSIONS 33 Savage Love 34 Classifieds 35 Crossword
SPR AR ING GU TS INS IDE IDE !
DARROW MONTGOMERY 1300 BLOCK OF G STREET NW, FEB. 12
EDITORIAL
INTERIM EDITOR: CAROLINE JONES ARTS EDITOR: KAYLA RANDALL FOOD EDITOR: LAURA HAYES SPORTS EDITOR: KELYN SOONG LOOSE LIPS REPORTER: MITCH RYALS CITY DESK REPORTER: AMANDA MICHELLE GOMEZ CITY LIGHTS EDITOR: EMMA SARAPPO STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER: DARROW MONTGOMERY MULTIMEDIA AND COPY EDITOR: WILL WARREN CREATIVE DIRECTOR: JULIA TERBROCK ONLINE ENGAGEMENT MANAGER: ELIZABETH TUTEN DESIGN ASSISTANT: MADDIE GOLDSTEIN EDITORIAL INTERN: KENNEDY WHITBY CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: MORGAN BASKIN, MICHON BOSTON, KRISTON CAPPS, CHAD CLARK, MATT COHEN, RACHEL M. COHEN, RILEY CROGHAN, JEFFRY CUDLIN, EDDIE DEAN, CUNEYT DIL, TIM EBNER, CASEY EMBERT, JONATHAN L. FISCHER, NOAH GITTELL, SRIRAM GOPAL, HAMIL R. HARRIS, LOUIS JACOBSON, JOSHUA KAPLAN, CHRIS KELLY, AMAN KIDWAI, STEVE KIVIAT, CHRIS KLIMEK, PRIYA KONINGS, NEVIN MARTELL, KEITH MATHIAS, BRIAN MCENTEE, CANDACE Y.A. MONTAGUE, BRIAN MURPHY, BILL MYERS, NENET, TRICIA OLSZEWSKI, EVE OTTENBERG, MIKE PAARLBERG, PAT PADUA, JUSTIN PETERS, REBECCA J. RITZEL, ABID SHAH, TOM SHERWOOD, CHRISTINA STURDIVANT SANI, MATT TERL, IAN THAL, SIDNEY THOMAS, HAYWOOD TURNIPSEED JR., JOE WARMINSKY, ALONA WARTOFSKY, JUSTIN WEBER, MICHAEL J. WEST, DIANA MICHELE YAP, ALAN ZILBERMAN
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DISTRICTLINE Lawyer Up
Tenant attorney Will Merrifield wants to rout out developer influence at the Wilson Building. So he’s running for office. By Andrew Giambrone
Darrow Montgomery
For the last eight years, Will Merrifield has fought on the front lines of D.C.’s gentrification wars. As an attorney at the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, he represented the tenant associations at two large, affordable complexes in Congress Heights and Brentwood, both slated for redevelopment into denser, mixed-use projects on valuable land. Fed up with feeling like an expendable part of their landlords’ redevelopment plans, the tenants, with help from Merrifield, organized to stay put. They resolved to prevent their feared displacement from their homes, taking their demands to their landlords, District officials, and, ultimately, court. Now, Merrifield must make the case for himself and the kind of movement he hopes to marshal with community activists and working-class residents: He’s running for an at-large seat on the D.C. Council in the November general election, he tells City Paper. Specifically, he’s targeting the non-majority-party seat currently held by David Grosso, whose choice not to seek re-election has sparked the city’s most competitive race of 2020, at least in terms of the number of candidates. Merrifield, 41, is running as an independent and has left the Legal Clinic to focus on his first-ever campaign. He joins a dozen declared candidates in the at-large race, and, like most of them so far, intends to use D.C.’s new public financing program, which provides start-up and matching funds to those who meet certain thresholds for small-dollar donations. Having advocated for his clients at multiple Council hearings and in lawmakers’ offices, he’s also a known quantity at the Wilson Building. But unique to Merrifield is the experience of going toe-to-toe with powerful real estate developers and their lawyers—one that leads him to promote a vision for economic development in D.C. other than what he says is the “socialism for the very rich, stark austerity for the middle class, and victim-blaming [for] the people working two jobs who can’t keep a roof over their heads” that defines the current system.
Will Merrifield
For Merrifield, housing is a human right, and a necessary step for guaranteeing this right is deconstructing the myth that a rising tide automatically lifts all boats. “What we should know from the Reagan era is that wealth does not trickle down,” he says. “You have to build it from the bottom up. You have to invest in people.” Given the District’s $15.5 billion bu dget and two months worth of savings to run the government in case of an emergency or e c o n o m i c do w n turn, that shouldn’t seem fanciful or outrageous. But according to Merrifield, too much of the public’s money is entering the hands of developers who have used it to subsidize luxury housing stock that exacerbates the city’s affordability crisis. “Make absolutely no mistake about this,” says Merrifield. “In Washington, D.C., developers are in complete control of housing policy. Politicians … do as they’re told by developers,” because developers donate in huge sums to incumbents’ campaigns.
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Merrifield is anchoring his platform around a New Deal-style jobs and infrastructure program that would train un- and underemployed residents to build “housing that eliminates the profit motive” for land-banking real estate. Known as “social housing,” this model exists popularly in European countries like Sweden and Austria. The city would own such developments, which would house people of various incomes, and the residents would spend only a quarter or so of their incomes on rent. Anybody could apply for a unit, and any excess profits at the end of the year would be recycled back into public programs. “It would operate like a co-op operates now,” says Merrifield, who adds that with social housing, the income mix lowers the need for the sort of operating subsidies required by traditional public housing. Upfront capital costs would likely be significant, but after that point, it’s a virtuous cycle. Merrifield hails from just outside
“They weren’t looking at the people currently living there as human beings. To them, [the tenants] were just numbers in those buildings.”
Youngstown, Ohio, and lives in Deanwood with his wife. (They recently married.) After working for a legal services organization in Ohio, where he defended people facing evictions and medical debt, he came to D.C. in 2011 to join the Legal Clinic. He cuts a svelte figure, has a distinct gravelly voice, and is a major college basketball an d football fan. He seems just as at ease wielding a megaphone at a protest as he is laying out a case in court. As a trained attorney, he knows how to make a convincing argument, citing evidence and data like someone who’s done their homework but isn’t pedantic about it. (A sampling from City Paper’s recent interview with him: “You have to make almost $133,000 a year to live here comfortably in a two-bedroom apartment.” “We have one of the highest unemployment rates for African Americans.” “Washington, D.C., is the most intensely gentrifying city in the United States.”) Still, Merrifield says the reason he’s running for office is that he’s learned, by working closely with lowincome people of color across the District, that land decisions—and the processes governing them—are inherently political. Says Merrifield: “We tried through the legal process to make sure that people can control land in their own community and avoid displacement.” But their efforts were repeatedly frustrated by the interests of the “developer class” he says dominates official zoning reviews for projects requiring relief from land-use rules, such as height restrictions and prohibitions on building types. In the case of Congress Heights, dozens of tenants were living in a group of neglected buildings owned by a Bethesda-based company called Sanford Capital, which—along with a development partner—had plans to redevelop the site into new apartments, retail, and offices. Merrifield says that when he first visited the complex, located directly above the neighborhood’s Metro station, he was “pissed off that people were in those conditions,” which included roach and rat infestations, plus “raw feces” in the basement. “The owners of Sanford Capital were looking at those buildings just as warehouses,” he explains. “They were sitting on those warehouses, and at some point in the near future
MELISSA ALDANA QUARTET SAT, FEB 15, 8pm SIXTH & I
THIS WEEKEND!
The first female winner of the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition, Chilean-born tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana dazzled a WPA audience in last season’s Monterey Jazz Festival on Tour concert. Now, she showcases her trademark harmonic sophistication with her own ensemble. Special thanks: Susan S. Angell, GalenaYorktown Foundation. Honorary patron: His Excellency Alfonso Silva, Ambassador of Chile
“One of the seven wonders of the artistic universe” —The Washington Post
MATTHEW WHITAKER
with special guests WPA Children of the Gospel Choir Michele Fowlin, artistic director
SAT, FEB 29, 8pm SIXTH & I A piano and Hammond B-3 organ wunderkind, 18-year-old Matthew Whitaker is steeped in tradition yet pushes the music forward into a groove-infused space of his own. Special thanks: Lydia Micheaux Marshall; Galena-Yorktown Foundation; Jacqueline Badger Mars and Mars, Incorporated
Leslie Andrea Williams in Martha Graham’s Chronicle © Hibbard Nash Photography
they knew they were going to demolish those buildings and that they were going to push the people who lived there out. “They weren’t looking at the people currently living there as human beings,” Merrifield continues. “To them, [the tenants] were just numbers in those buildings,” there to generate revenue—partly thanks to government rental subsidies for people exiting city shelters—while the redevelopment plans moved forward. When the proposal made it to the D.C. Zoning Commission for review, the tenants went to the public hearing on the project and raised their concerns. But their complaints “fell on deaf ears,” Merrifield says, and the commission later approved the plans. “There was nothing we could have said that wouldn’t have allowed that process to go through,” he adds. “It is a completely rigged process.” The tenants did eventually receive help from D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine, who sued Sanford Capital for allowing the complex to fall into disrepair out of “willful neglect.” In 2018, they scored a key victory, when, after a multiyear saga and persistent news coverage, the company formally agreed to stop doing business in the District. (The future of the site is still being worked out.) Ruth Barnwell, the president of the tenant association for the buildings, describes Merrifield both as honest and encouraging. “He’s going to get the job done,” she says of his campaign. “Will is not doing it for profit, he’s doing it for the people.” Chuckling, she says they’ve grown close over the years: “That’s my son, you know … We have become friend and family.” Merrifield insists that his Council bid isn’t so much a campaign as an organizing fulcrum for working-class priorities and people doing on-the-ground activism around housing, jobs, and education. He talks about getting to the “root causes” of the city’s social ills— homelessness among them—by proposing solutions that are outside of “existing power structures” and not what voters will probably hear from other candidates in the race. “It’s a battle of ideas,” he says. “There’s a real duty with people to continue to work, to continue to organize, to use the public resources to benefit the common good. And if we’re not doing that, then what are we doing?” Merrifield also supports repairing D.C.’s public housing to green standards, in conjunction with would-be federal funding from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and New York Representative Alexandria OcasioCortez’s proposal for a “Green New Deal for Public Housing.” This need is urgent, he contends, “because there’s a bunch of children living in unsafe public housing units right now, and that is not acceptable.” If his ideas sound extreme, Merrifield argues they shouldn’t: It’s not just low-income residents who are exploited by the city’s scarcitydriven rental market, or failed by its inequitably funded schools. “I’m not afraid of making political enemies, because I think the system is so irrational,” he says. “To fight back against it, you have to speak out against it.” CP
TICKETS: WashingtonPerformingArts.org (202) 785-9727
WE’VE HAD LOOSE LIPS SINCE 1981. BECOME A MEMBER.
Martha Graham Dance Company The EVE Project March 5–7 | Eisenhower Theater Kennedy-Center.org (202) 467-4600
washingtoncitypaper.com/membership
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washingtoncitypaper.com february 14, 2020 5
DISTRICTLINE LOOSE LIPS
Quite Quarrelsome The D.C. Council is rid of Jack Evans (for now), but his scandal looms as lawmakers get testy. All wAs well during the D.C. Council’s routine breakfast meeting last week—an informal huddle on Tuesdays before some legislative sessions—except for the spinach quiche, which looked dry as hell. An empty seat at the head of the table, usually occupied by former Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans, was a glaring signal of a new normal for the D.C. Council. After the body’s most business friendly lawmaker resigned in disgrace for his cozy connections to monied interests, Evans’ colleagues are still left to sit in the stench of his scandal. It appears that stench has raised the hackles of some members. As the breakfast discussion turned from emergency legislation that would prevent the closure of Washington Metropolitan Opportunity Academy to a more trivial matter, Ward 5 Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie got a little riled up. At issue was his recent Sense of the Council resolution, which is simply a statement from the Council in support of a particular position. In this case, McDuffie was proposing support for the Federal City Council’s Langston Initiative, and At-Large Councilmember Elissa Silverman expressed some concerns, as she often does. A little background: The Federal City Council (FC2) was founded in 1954 by then-Washington Post publisher Philip Graham. It’s currently run by former Mayor Anthony Williams and counts among its board members many wealthy, powerful, and politically connected individuals. (City Paper owner Mark Ein sits on the body’s executive committee.) FC2 is considered one of the most important voices for business interests and economic development in D.C. The Langston Initiative is the FC2’s effort to take over operations of three local golf courses—Langston Golf Course, Rock Creek Golf Course, and East Potomac Golf Course—which are on National Park Service land. NPS put out a request for proposals last summer asking for bids to run and maintain the courses. At the breakfast meeting, Silverman, the Council’s resident instigator, questioned why the body would weigh in on a federal procurement. They haven’t seen the other bids, she argued, and does the FC2 have any experience managing golf courses? (They don’t, but they’ve hired someone, according to Mau-
Darrow Montgomery
By Mitch Ryals
At-Large Councilmember Elissa Silverman ra Brophy, the FC2’s director of transportation and infrastructure, to oversee the Langston Initiative.) Silverman suggested that McDuffie’s resolution amounted to the Council “putting our thumb on the scale” of a federal procurement process in favor of a group of well connected people who have easy access to councilmembers. She then invoked the name of Rusty Lindner, the CEO of the Forge Company and a member of the Langston Initiative’s planning committee, who played a supporting role in the Jack Evans ethics scandal. McDuffie, who chairs the Council’s Committee on Business and Economic Development, did not care for that one bit. “One of our colleagues just resigned in shame,” a peeved McDuffie said to Silverman. “When you do that in the context of a bill that I introduced, I think it’s very well to be in context for me to think that you’re associating our efforts with a single board member, very controversial board member.” “Yes, and I said the optics aren’t good,” Silverman interrupted, to McDuffie’s further annoyance. “Everybody can ask questions, and that’s fair enough,” he said. “But when you do it the way you just did it, maybe I’m a little sensitive about this, but I think we need to be mindful of some of the examples in the context of a conversation that I had.”
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McDuffie clarified that his goal was to improve the courses’ conditions and expand access to them for kids and parents in the surrounding community who “don’t even see Langston Golf Course as an opportunity … and that’s important.” Langston is one of the country’s first integrated golf courses and was a “mecca of black golf on the east coast,” Ernest Andrews, a professional instructor at Langston, told City Paper last year. McDuffie did not agree to a formal interview for this story. Instead his spokesperson emailed a statement nearly as dry as that spinach quiche. “The very existence of Langston Golf Course is because golfers of color in the District wanted equal access to facilities, and it is important that history is not lost in the National Park Service’s outsourcing of these facilities,” McDuffie’s statement says. “I am proud to have introduced the Council resolution in support of the Langston Initiative, which passed with overwhelming support of colleagues, because of its commitment to local engagement and increased economic opportunity focused on District residents.” Silverman raised similar concerns from the dais later that day, drawing a measured response from fellow progressive Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, who supports the FC2’s application and McDuffie’s resolution, and an agitated response from Chairman Phil
Mendelson, who nearly came out of his seat as he defended McDuffie. “It’s a wrong message to say to folks that the Council of the District of Columbia cannot advocate on an issue,” Mendelson said. “We can advocate and if the decision by the majority of the members here is that we want to advocate for that initiative, then it’s completely appropriate. And if I’m sounding a little annoyed, I am.” The resolution passed with 10 “yes” votes. Silverman voted “no” and Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau bravely voted “present.” The Council may be rid of Evans for now, but the snippy Langston Initiative debate is a reminder that Evans’ scandal still looms large in his colleagues’ minds. How the Council should navigate a post-Evans world is a matter of perspective. While Silverman would err on the side of making an insinuation in search of a scandal, Mendelson prefers a quieter, more collegial relationship. “I think we do a disservice to the institution when we suggest to the public that we’re being corrupt or our colleagues are being corrupt in putting our thumb on the scale,” Mendelson says. “Words have meaning, and [the public says] ‘This is outrageous! They’re trying to steer a contract!’ It’s just unnecessary. It hurts the institution.” “[The scandal is] gonna be with us for a while, but it plays itself out in different ways,” he continues. “I don’t think Councilmember Silverman’s position would have been different absent the scandal, but because of the scandal she was using loaded rhetoric from the scandal.” Mendelson says Silverman’s comments about McDuffie’s resolution hurt her relationship with some colleagues, and he notes her distinction as the councilmember who is least likely to vote in line with the rest of her colleagues, according to an analysis of 128 divided Council votes. “And this didn’t help,” he says. “It was part of the same behavior.” Silverman insists that she, too, has the Council’s best interest at heart. If she has to rub some dirt on a fellow legislator, so be it. “I’m very focused on rebuilding the public’s trust and making sure Council doesn’t appear like we are just doing what big business says for their benefit,” she says. “We need to make every decision in the public’s benefit. Private interests are not the same as the public’s.” CP
Photo by Cade Martin
He’s spent his life betraying women. Now time’s up.
Don Giovanni February 29–March 22 | Opera House Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte In Italian with Projected English Titles
Kennedy-Center.org (202) 467-4600
Groups call (202) 416-8400 For all other ticket-related customer service inquiries, call the Advance Sales Box Office at (202) 416-8540
Major support for WNO is provided by Jacqueline Badger Mars.
WNO’s Presenting Sponsor
Jason Moran and The Bandwagon + Cassandra Wilson & Marvin Sewell Friday, February 28 at 8 p.m. Eisenhower Theater Join Jason Moran and his bandmates, bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits, as they celebrate the 20th anniversary of their superlative, chance-taking trio, The Bandwagon. They’ll reflect on their musical journey with a special concert experience featuring some of their most creative friends: singer/ songwriter Cassandra Wilson and blues/jazz guitarist Marvin Sewell.
Kennedy-Center.org (202) 467-4600
This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts
Groups call (202) 416-8400 For all other ticket-related customer service inquiries, call the Advance Sales Box Office at (202) 416-8540 Major support for Jazz programming at the Kennedy Center is made possible by The Buffy and William Cafritz Family Foundation.
David M. Rubenstein is the Presenting Underwriter of WNO. WNO acknowledges the longstanding generosity of Life Chairman Mrs. Eugene B. Casey.
Don Giovanni is a production of the Clarice Smith Opera Series.
washingtoncitypaper.com february 14, 2020 7
Kelyn Soong
SPORTS
The DC Wave Swim Team brings diversity to competitive swimming. washingtoncitypaper.com/sports
FOOTBALL
An Xtra Chance
Kelyn Soong
DC Defenders players see the XFL as a second chance to play the game they love at a professional level.
By Kelyn Soong InsIde the press box at Audi Field last Saturday, former NFL All-Pro wide receiver Santana Moss watched intently alongside 17,163 football fans at the game between the DC Defenders, the city’s newest professional football team, and the Seattle Dragons. On the field below, he saw former NFL peers and coaches competing in the game they love: Jim Zorn, the Dragons’ head coach, coached Moss during his tenure with the local NFL team, and Defenders head coach Pep Hamilton overlapped with Moss when they were both with the New York Jets. Even an ex-NFL teammate, Defenders wide receiver Rashad Ross, was on the field. Moss wasn’t going to miss the debut of the rebooted XFL in his adopted hometown. “I just wanted to see the atmosphere,” says the 40-year-old Moss, who retired from the NFL after the 2014 season. “I was going to pay attention regardless because I love foot-
ball. I wanted to see how different it was from the last time around and how different it was from the NFL.” Wrestling mogul Vince McMahon first launched the XFL in February 2001, taking the NFL, already criticized for its celebration of violence, and infusing it with his appetite for manufactured entertainment. New rules like eliminating fair catches on punt returns and implementing a “scramble” instead of a coin toss to start games meant the league encouraged the potential for more violence. Cheerleaders in outfits considered revealing by NFL standards, roamed the sidelines. Players had a wrestling-inspired penchant for using nicknames like “He Hate Me” and “Baby Boy”
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on the back of their jerseys. The league, which consisted of eight teams located mostly on the east and west coasts, initially garnered interest for its gimmicks, but ceased operation in May 2001 after NBC pulled out of its broadcast contract. Other attempts at a spring outdoor football league have also failed. The Alliance of American Football (AAF) league, founded by film and television producer Charlie Ebersol and football executive Bill Polian, filed for bankruptcy before the completion of its inaugural season in 2019. But this year, the XFL is back. The league’s second act has focused more on the product on the field with the tagline, “For the Love of Football.” Team rosters include former NFL
“It’s better to have something else to give these guys a shot to live out their dreams and make a living doing it.”
players and collegiate stars. Cardale Jones, who led the Ohio State University to a national championship in 2015, is the Defenders’ starting quarterback. “To me, [it’s] similar to what we watch on Sundays compared to back in the day where it was more entertainment like WWE, where it wasn’t giving football fans what they need,” Moss says. “But this time around, it’s allowing guys to play football.” In its new iteration, which includes eight franchises scattered across the country, teams have a 25-second play clock compared to 40 seconds in the NFL, with the goal of completing games under three hours. Instead of kicks, teams have the option of running a play from the 2-, 5-, or 10-yard line after a touchdown; each is worth a different number of points. Coaches are mic-ed throughout the game, and sideline reporters chase down players after a big play for interviews, giving fans watching on TV behind-the-scenes access that the NFL doesn’t allow. Moss hopes the new version of the XFL can give ex-NFL and collegiate players another chance to prove their worth to NFL teams. Moss has stayed close to football since retiring from the NFL. He’s worked as an analyst for NBC Sports Washington, has his own podcast, The Santana Moss Show, makes regular appearances on sports talk radio, and served as the color commentator for the Washington Valor, the local team in the Arena Football League, which folded last year. “I want to [see] a league that’s more than what we know. That can be clutch for us in the spring. If it stays around longer, that’s great,” Moss says. “I think it’s another tool we can use for guys who need another year after school and for guys to have that second chance again. I’m all for football being yearround. The NFL itself can’t be that long. It’s better to have something else to give these guys a shot to live out their dreams and make a living doing it.” On that front, the XFL might already be succeeding––a handful of players on the DC Defenders’ 52-man roster were previously selected in the NFL Draft, and the majority of
players have at least been on an NFL practice squad roster. And the league’s debut showing indicates there’s a local appetite for more football. Fans wearing Nationals World Series gear, Capitals jerseys, and NFL hoodies showed up well before the 2 p.m. kickoff at Audi Field for the inaugural game and watched the Defenders beat the Dragons, 31-19. According to Darren Rovell of The Action Network, the XFL surpassed ticket sales revenue for the entire AAF season before kickoff on Feb. 8. “I think you had a good sense just based on the energy in the stadium that we all love football,” Hamilton said after the game. “We all love football, we all were dying to have an opportunity to come together and enjoy something that’s been a favorite pastime for us for quite some time. And I mean, D.C. is a great sports town, and the energy was great.” It doesn’t hurt to have ESPN, Fox Sports, and ABC as broadcasting partners and McMahon’s deep pockets. Sports Business Journal’s Austin Karp reported that ABC’s XFL opener averaged 3.3 million viewers, and ESPN reported in 2018 that McMahon expects to spend “closer to $500 million in the league’s first three seasons.” Not many upstart leagues, particularly in women’s sports, have that type of support or investment. “The XFL provides us yet another reminder that in men’s sports, the rules are simply different,” wrote sports journalist Lindsay Gibbs in her Power Plays newsletter. Players on the DC Defenders recognize the opportunities the XFL offers. On Saturday after the game, safety Rahim Moore and wide receiver Eli Rogers sat together in a post-game press conference and spoke about their affinity for the sport. Both players have competed in the NFL and aren’t taking anything for granted. Rogers, who played for the Pittsburgh Steelers after going undrafted in 2015 out of the University of Louisville, chose to play on Saturday, just a few days after his mother passed away. He never considered skipping the game. “She would want me to play,” Rogers said. “I love football, so football has always been a haven for me to be free.” The Denver Broncos drafted Moore in the second round of the 2011 NFL Draft, and he bounced around the league before the New York Giants released him in 2017. Moore also played for the Arizona Hotshots of the AAF last season. The Defenders selected him in the seventh round of the 2020 XFL Draft. Moore said he doesn’t know what he’d be doing right now if the XFL didn’t exist. “Definitely a second chance for your career,” he said of the league. “I mean, ball is ball. We have an NFL coaching staff. We got a lot of NFL players ... A lot of guys I feel like on our team should be in the NFL, but this is where we are now and we got to take care of business here now. I mean, I love it. I have no complaints.” CP
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washingtoncitypaper.com february 14, 2020 9
DEAR
D.C.
HOW DO WE LOVE D.C.? LET A DOZEN WASHINGTONIANS LIVING AND WORKING ACROSS THE CITY COUNT THE WAYS.
I’ve been told that D.C. natives can be a bit territorial. And I have to admit, I’m a guilty party. But when you were born and bred in such a powerful city, you can’t help but be a little overprotective. We can’t have just anyone setting up shop where our ancestors planted roots, worked tirelessly to provide for their families, and sent their kids off to college or into the workforce, only to have their grandchildren displaced at the height of the city’s economic growth. But with age, I’m also realizing that D.C. and its people are not a monolith. The city is a cauldron of cultures. People settle here daily, whether to pursue work, school, love, or a cosmopolitan lifestyle. They bring new perspectives, valuable ideas, and innovative solutions that make the city even more alluring. As transplants pour into D.C., the city and its natives pour into them. And at our best, we create communities that overflow with dynamic possibilities. As we approach Valentine’s Day, I’m overwhelmed with a sense of love for my city. From childhood adventures on the banks of the Anacostia to paddle boat rides with family on the Potomac, my memories of D.C. carry far and wide. And I know others’ do too. That’s why I asked some folks—some who you may know and others who you should get to know—what the District has meant to them. As you read these love letters to D.C., meditate on who or what brought you here and how you can show this city and its people some love.
Christina Sturdivant Sani
To my beloved city, Washington, D.C.: I loved you from the very beginning. From the day I first moved here in 1952, I knew there was something special about you. Your streets felt different from other cities, and I still appreciate seeing the natural beauty of trees and sky instead of long, cold shadows cast by heartless skyscrapers. Your buildings have always had character, with architecture that reflects ancient as well as modern times. Your great monuments and wondrous museums live and breathe a vibrant history that connects us to the past in ways that help us build a better, brighter future. Your communities are quaint and charming, radiating with the warmth of growing families and wonderful people who reflect the deep beauty of harmony in diversity. Ben and I raised our boys in one of these communities, and we created beautiful, lifelong memories. D.C., I love your energy. How many summer afternoons have I spent with friends and family enjoying the warm summer breezes of Rock Creek Park while listening to singing birds as water rushed over the rocks in the stream? How many nights have I watched talented performers at the Howard Theatre, Bohemian Caverns, Warner Theatre, Constitution Hall, or the Kennedy Center after being wined and dined in one of your fabulous local restaurants? Throughout the years, your cherry blossoms kept blooming each spring, and your music filled the streets every summer. On Sundays, many of us gathered for prayer in your multitude of churches, and our days only became brighter. You have everything I need and anything I could possibly want, D.C., and I love you for that. Yes, I’ve experienced your challenges as well. I remember segregation, and I remember the sorrow of Dr. King’s tragic assassination. I lived through the anger and fear of those times, yet we overcame them together. It wasn’t easy, but we rose from the dust and reinvented ourselves with a stronger sense of community that embraced your rich diversity like never before. We grew beyond the tragedy, and lived to see much of Dr. King’s dream become our reality. We even welcomed President Barack Obama, both in the White House and when he visited us at Ben’s! With all that I love about you, the best part has always been your people. When Ben and I opened Ben’s Chili Bowl in 1958, we only wanted to serve our D.C. community. How could I imagine that I would receive so much more than I could ever give? The people of D.C. have given me so much love, laughter, and great conversation over the years! I’ve met politicians and celebrities, workers and students, locals and guests from around the world. Each individual is special in his or her own way, and my heart is filled daily with the beautiful warmth of everyone I meet in my wonderful city, my home, my Washington, D.C.
Love you always. Virginia Ali, owner of Ben’s Chili Bowl
10 february 14, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com
I’LL NEVER FORGET BARTENDING IN ADAMS MORGAN WHEN THE GODFATHER OF GO-GO, CHUCK BROWN, CAME INTO MY BAR.
When I first arrived in D.C. in 1977, I wasn’t sure how I would be accepted. At 23, I was coming from Detroit where my homies had given my career a start fit for a moving picture screen. But it wasn’t long before the Chocolate City adopted me as its own and took me to #1 ratings just like the Motor City. That doubt I had in ’77 has now turned into a 44-year run of a movie that at times seems fictional. The love D.C. gave me opened the door to a television career that took me to national and international fame that I couldn’t have imagined. I had a TV show in Detroit when I was 19, but it was so bad my mother wouldn’t watch it. Video Soul on BET was a whole different level and my mom did watch this one in Detroit while her mom watched in Alabama. I have been blessed to meet presidents from Carter to Obama, mayors from Barry to Bowser, and celebrities from Michael Jackson to Mick Jagger. But I have also been blessed to meet so many people who weren’t famous. They were janitors, school teachers, bus drivers, police officers, and waiters who had engaging eyes and smiles that blessed me with encouragement and hope. Like LeBron and Kobe, they were also known by one name, like Leroy and P-Funk. My career has now touched seven different decades, six of them in D.C. While Detroit is home and always will be, I could not have picked a better place to be my home away from home. I love you, D.C., and I’m eternally grateful that God placed me here with you to go-go on this leg of my journey.
He didn’t drink, so I asked if I could make him a non-alcoholic drink and he graciously accepted. There wasn’t one iota of “rock star” in his demeanor apart from the effortless style he exuded. Or the time at The Passenger in Shaw—my brother’s bar—when local punk icon John Stabb from Government Issue was hanging out. Stabb also didn’t drink—when I offered him a shot, he chose a shot of water instead and cheered along with us. Though both Brown and Stabb have passed away, they loom large over the legacy of the District as a place of musical innovation and unpretentious critical acclamation. I’ve always thought D.C. is unassumingly cool, and moments like those cemented that for me. We have these amazing music icons and they’ve remained rooted in the communities and priorities of the city rather than rushing off to Los Angeles or New York City to be a generic cast for stardom. Washington, D.C. music icons are our icons, and though they’ve influenced the rest of the world, they’re still here. There are plenty of people who think D.C. isn’t cool. But they’re generally referencing the black-pant, brown-shoed lobbyists, staffers, and politicians. And perhaps they’ve missed the point: Those people are from everywhere else. That’s not my Washington, D.C. Mine has throbbing rhythms blaring from corner stores and passing cars during the summer, and is a place that I used to leap off the stage and land amid screaming, moshing kids in gritty clubs like the Safari Club. It’s a place where politics is the cover story, but life is teeming underneath. I fell in love with the city. Not just because I came from a family of Washingtonians that came from a family of Washingtonians. I realized what it means to be a Washingtonian, a real Washingtonian, not just someone interning here for a year. It means that we absolutely, 100 percent don’t give a shit about being something we’re not. We’re doing our own thing and, if that’s under the radar, so be it. When I opened my cocktail bar, there was only one name that would do: the Columbia Room. Named after the District of Columbia, I wanted it to be clear we’re rooted in our city. In 2017, we won “Best American Cocktail Bar” from Tales of the Cocktail’s Spirited Awards. It’s a wonderful accolade, but after the glow wore off, the people who kept showing up and the people we aspire to be were, quite simply, the people we aspired to be all along: Washingtonians.
Derek Brown, owner of the Columbia Room
Donnie Simpson, radio/television personality
washingtoncitypaper.com february 14, 2020 11
“I LOVE YOU, YOU B@#%@!” is yelled outside my window on this typical Friday night. I live across the street from the gay bar JR’s in Dupont Circle. It is packed and there are a lot of feelings. I keep my windows open to enjoy the cacophony, and the expletive smacks me in the face with its energy, affection, and contradiction. D.C. is filled with contradictions. Those contradictions are at times inexplicable but always thrilling and completely magnetic to me. I can see how the public stoicism of our monuments stands in great contrast to the rich emotional lives of our communities. Communities like the Indigenous community, whose families have resided in this region despite extraordinary hardship since before the founding of our country, and whom I am getting to know through the friendship of the brilliant historian and curator Dr. Gabrielle Tayac and her equally exceptional son, Sebi Medina-Tayac. Or like our arts community, which can be quite intimidating to a newcomer with its wealth of talent and heavyweight leadership, and yet has been nothing but welcoming, generous, and open to me. Like Molly Smith, artistic director of Arena Stage, who flies to Cairo to have tea with Mrs. Anwar Sadat and win a prestigious award from the Egyptian Minister of Culture and still responds to me within a few hours if I ever find myself in need of her advice. She has been in my corner from the moment I got to this town, and I am incredibly grateful for her. And no one more so exemplified that generosity of spirit than the beloved Victor Shargai, a former actor turned leading patron of the arts who passed away a little over a month ago. Victor valued the care and feeding of the arts in D.C. in invaluable and foundational ways. He didn’t view art as a commodity to be consumed, but as a community to be nourished. And he loved hearing about the melodramatic breakups and the impromptu sing-alongs happening right outside my window. D.C. may be a “government town,” but there are so many people who have made their lives here who make it so much more than that … declarations of love, expletives, and all.
Maria Manuela Goyanes, artistic director of Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company
Oh, Washington, D.C. Like any 20-year relationship, I’ve seen many sides to you. And by now I know your secrets: how to avoid the crowds and stick to hidden gems like the Anacostia Community Museum and the Frederick Douglass house. DPR is the gold star government agency with its street parties and free pools: Banneker in the summer, Wilson in the winter. I don’t need a car, I don’t need traffic. The MBT is my fast lane. The rent is still too high, but everything else is free: concerts at the Millennium Stage, the Malcolm X Park drum circle on Sundays, the Arboretum and the trails in Rock Creek Park. When Washington is filled to the brim with tourists, the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens is just my speed. There’s never a line for boat rentals in Bladensburg because the masses are on the Potomac in Georgetown. I am indebted to the native peoples who grounded us in this place and named our rivers: Thank you Piscataway, Anacostans, and Pamunkey. We long-time District residents and you native Washingtonians didn’t need gentrification or a news scandal to know that go-go is our music or that the intersection of Florida and Georgia is the best spot in town. I love to meet our elders who grew up in D.C. The stories they tell about the gardens and food being grown in our neighborhoods make me aspire to bring us back to our former glory. Be proud of our mayor for life, the late, great Marion Barry, who had the vision to pass the first farm and food security bill in 1986 and finally has a statue on Pennsylvania Avenue NW. But the best part about you is that ‘they’ don’t know you. The ones who watch the news every day but only see the Capitol building have no idea how lush and green our city is. If they think our cuisine can be summed up by the offerings in the Dirksen cafeteria, they have no idea. And if they think we live to vote in presidential elections even though we’re not even a state? On primary day, I think I’ll hear the carousel at the zoo calling my name—the flamingo is my favorite.
Gail Taylor, owner/operator of Three Part Harmony Farm
12 february 14, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com
A City With Leaves I know and remember you You know me As a kid, loving your trees As a kid, running And cutting your grass As a kid, walking your streets Dreaming in your pools As a kid, spraying your walls As a kid, visiting your churches As a kid, growing up In your violence As a kid, finding my place In this place I leave, I return You’re still here I leave, I return You’re still here I changed You changed I grow You grow I know you
BK Adams, artist
Darling District, it was the summer of 1995 when we first met.
I CAME TO D.C. TO INTERN FOR MY HOMETOWN CONGRESSMAN THE SUMMER AFTER MY FRESHMAN YEAR IN COLLEGE. It was love at first sight as my taxi sped down the GW Parkway on its way to my summer dorm in Foggy Bottom. The only thing I’d ever wanted to do was work on the Hill—so much so that I finished my political science major halfway through sophomore year. There was no need to find myself: I knew exactly where I belonged. That summer exceeded my expectations. I was able to work on campaign finance legislation and had the time of my life playing Congressional softball on the Mall on Thursday nights. Watching the Capitol illuminate as the sun set, and then diving into a plate of wings at Cap Lounge to commemorate our inevitable defeat on the field quickly became my favorite tradition. I came back to D.C. for another internship the next summer, and then moved here as quickly as possible after graduation. When the call came that there was a position open on my congressman’s policy staff, I called my mother immediately: “I need you to get on the next shuttle to DCA and find me the closest apartment to Kramerbooks ... it’s Wednesday and I start on Monday.” Sure enough, she pulled it off, and I spent the next couple of years living in the Bristol House in Dupont. I worked on the Hill for the following decade, with a brief detour to New York for law school. Eventually, my bosses/heroes were defeated or retired and it was time to chart a new path. Logically, I opened a grocery store. On Earth Day of 2013, we opened the doors to Glen’s Garden Market in the very neighborhood where my D.C. journey began: Dupont Circle. Every day since, we’ve worked to nourish our neighbors while growing local, small, sustainable food businesses along with our own. Over the past seven years, we’ve given 89 budding food entrepreneurs their start in retail. My feelings of awe and gratitude at the site of the Capitol dome have been replaced by my feelings of inclusion and community as I walk onto our bustling patio to find neighbors relaxing in each other’s company while they enjoy the bounty of our region. At a time when Congress has forced incremental change in the absence of large-scale legislative action, this small but mighty grocery store has given me hope that our community can come together to respect our environment: one sandwich, pint or jar of jam at a time.
I was a young woman of 18, fresh out of a North Carolina high school, invited to spend the summer taking a math course at Howard University. As I don’t even recall applying for that program, I like to believe some unseen hand must have intervened and blessed me with free housing, a meal plan and a chance to get a fake ID in the back of a Georgetown shop. A true love story for the ages! That first drive up Georgia Avenue NW was like heading into my future. Me, in the passenger seat of my father’s sedan, vibrating with excitement and anticipation. My father navigated D.C. traffic while taking in the sights of a pre-gentrified Shaw. As his anxiety grew, so did his enticements (bribes) for me to change my mind and return home. Few things could come between a teenage girl and a new car, but the idea of a summer in D.C. did just that. My love affair with the District really began with my love affair for good R&B music. One of my favorite music groups at the time, Shai, went to Howard—or so it appeared in their music videos—so Howard and D.C. was where I wanted to be. That summer in the District was not only the best time of my life, it became the demarcation line of my life as a student of an institution and becoming a student of the world. I soon learned the difference between “Washington, D.C.” and “The District”—the former is a place on a map, the latter is a place in our hearts. Life as a D.C. resident (not to be confused with a native Washingtonian, I know better) taught me so much about myself and my place in the world. I stared wide-eyed at your magnificence, I laughed at your quirks, I roared with pride at the little “big moments” like taking the train by myself and getting off on the right side of Metro Center. That summer was also the first time I heard warnings of traveling east of the river, something I would spend over a decade trying to change. The city taught me how to live, how to love, but most importantly how to fight. And over the years as I evolved from Nikki Peele to The Advoc8te and back again to Nikki Peele, I’ve come to realize it’s as much about where you live as how you live. And those of us who live in D.C. are made of some strong stuff. So while I look at you now through the eyes of a woman in her forties, I’m still just as excited about you as that young woman of 18. So if I ever fall in love again I hope it will be with a place that taught me just as much as you.
Nikki Peele, blogger, Congress Heights on the Rise
Danielle Vogel, owner of Glen’s Garden Market
washingtoncitypaper.com february 14, 2020 13
In March 2013, I first met you upon arriving back in the country from Australia. You had big shoes to fill coming from a country where life happens at the beach. But I sit here today and can honestly say there is no place I’d rather be. For starters, your reach is wide. The metropolitan D.C. area is vast and fast-paced. In a few minutes, I can escape the hustle and bustle of the tech, health, finance, and political industries and experience the outdoor beauty that you have to offer. That remains one of my favorite parts about you: your outdoors. Soccer is the vehicle by which I arrived, and fortunately for me, most days are already spent outside, but the C&O Canal bike path, George Washington Memorial Parkway during the fall, full spectrum sunsets in the summer, kayaking and hammocking on and near the Potomac River, picnicking at the National Mall surrounded by cherry blossoms, shopping at markets, coffee and brunch at the outside patio at Little Red Fox, or an afternoon Del’s Shandy at The Salt Line have been my favorite ways to spend time with you. While most people say they grew up where they were born, it’s more accurate to say I grew up right here. And although it hasn’t been without its challenges, whether due to losses on the field, injuries, heartbreaks, or flat tires on the Beltway, you have unequivocally become home. As I stumbled along the way to becoming who I am today, you were with me the whole way, introducing me to people who have effectively changed, shaped, and ultimately improved my life. There have been powerful, charismatic, and loyal teammates who I have had the pleasure of sharing the field with and dedicated owners Bill Lynch and Steve Baldwin, men who recognize that women are worthy of more than we are given. In a career that provides more of a revolving door than a safe haven, my roots feel strongest here. I’m grateful that we crossed paths with one another, hopeful to share many more years with you, but with the equal desire to strive for the constant better that’s always on the horizon.
Tori Huster, Washington Spirit player
AS A KID GROWING UP IN D.C., MAYOR BARRY’S SUMMER YOUTH EMPLOYMENT PROGRAM CHANGED MY LIFE. From 10th grade to 12th grade when I was at Wilson High School, I was given environmental jobs. At one point, I worked for the EPA and the Executive Office of the President. This propelled me into wanting to study meteorology and graphic design in college. Shouts to Mayor Barry! Going to Fort Dupont Park is a hidden gem in Southeast. The summer festivals gave me so much appreciation for jazz. My elders were on lawn chairs under the warm summer night sky and everyone on the same frequency. People brought their own meals and blankets— it was so beautiful. I once met Roy Ayers and got all my records signed by him. The love for music and togetherness is a fond memory I will never forget. So much nostalgia. Whenever I have wanted to create something—whether it be a store, a radio show, or a party, I have been supported by my city. As a DJ who has played around the world, I realize that if you can make a D.C. crowd dance, you can play anywhere. My sets are diverse and unpredictable and D.C. crowds have taught me to have more equity in knowing multiple genres of music. It’s no joke!
DJ Underdog
14 february 14, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com
A Native Love: I belong to an illustrious group of people. A people with southern roots, northern sophistication, and international influences. We call ourselves D.C. natives.
I arrived in Washington, D.C. as a young holder of a bride’s visa in April of 1972— I came to marry a man I had met in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The first thing that I saw coming from what was then known as Washington National Airport were the flowers. I could not believe the tulips in particular, which were not very well known in Brazil at the time. There was row after row of tulips in a variety of colors. The flowers of D.C. continue to be a wonder for me. Every spring, I feel like there is renewed energy and beauty in the air because of the flowers. Another thing that entranced me about D.C. was access to places like the Library of Congress and the National Archives. My husband was writing a book, and I helped with the research. I used to joke as a young wife that I must have been the only bride who spent her honeymoon at the Library of Congress and the National Archives! Joke apart, I cut my teeth doing research in those first months in Washington, D.C., which were very useful for my later career. Don’t let me start about the Smithsonian museums—what a wonder! I spent many hours with my son at the Smithsonian museums. And to think that in my later career, I would come to be a curator at the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum—an absolute gem of a museum away from the National Mall. If you have not visited it yet, come. It is worth a trip to Southeast. Why do I love D.C.? Because I raised my wonderful son here. Because I created a very successful professional career here, and because it is where I plan to spend the twilight years of my life. It is my home!
We are confident and assertive. We use jargon that only we understand. We say the number street before the letter or name (First and O instead of O and First). Unfortunately, too many of our family members are scattered across the country in federal prison for breaking local laws. Upon return, many of them face barriers that at times seem insurmountable. Too many of our families have been forced to relocate. We have essentially created a “District Diaspora.” We don’t have a gun store and we don’t have a port, yet we have been marred by drugs and violence and we are the only individuals held accountable. That reality has given us a horrible reputation, a false narrative about who and what we are. This one-dimensional, monolithic stereotype does not fairly contextualize us. We are so much more. We are mayors, councilmembers, teachers, first responders, police officers, artists, professors, intellectuals, entrepreneurs, activists, advocates, sanitation workers, bankers, doctors, lawyers, athletes, authors, researchers, and scientists. We love government jobs, and careers at Metro. We love Pop Warner football. We love going to the games over the Farms or down Watts. We love going to Church or Jummah. We love cookouts. We love going to the Wharf to get crabs and shrimp. We love Horace and Dickies. We love MLK Deli. We love The Spice Suite. We love The Museum and EAT. We love ANC meetings, libraries, and community events. We miss Georgia Ave Day and Unifest. We love transplants that love us back, like Marion Barry and Chuck Brown. We need to vote more, organize more, and own more. We forge our own path, march to a different beat. Our beat, go-go, is percussion driven, akin to the sounds played by our ancestors. That beat is the soundtrack to survival. A beat that is symbolic of the soul of the people born in this city. A beat that crack couldn’t silence, a beat gun violence couldn’t silence. A beat hyper-policing couldn’t silence. A beat gargantuan economic disparities couldn’t silence. A beat mass incarceration couldn’t silence. A beat gentrification couldn’t silence. That beat is representative of the D.C. Native. You feel its vibrations near and far. It grabs you and pulls you toward it. It causes you to move in some way. You have to react to it, even when you try to ignore it. The beat and the people are synonymous. I love that beat, cherish that beat, honor that beat. It fuels me, grounds me, inspires me, and humbles me. I shall do my best to protect it, amplify it, and preserve it at all costs.
D.C. or nothing. Tony Lewis Jr., activist/author
Alcione Amos, curator at the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum
washingtoncitypaper.com february 14, 2020 15
DCFEED
Albi from Chef Michael Rafidi opens Feb. 20 in Navy Yard serving Middle Eastern cuisine cooked over an open hearth. Rafidi tapped Brent Kroll from Maxwell Park and Chris Francke from The Green Zone to pair drinks with his menu.
YOUNG & HUNGRY
La Dulce Vida
Try the sweeter side of the D.C. region’s robust Salvadoran and Mexican cuisines at panaderías sprinkled across the city. By Morgan Baskin
Mi Pueblito 1812 East-West Highway, Hyattsville; (301) 4220008 Mondays through Saturdays from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Sundays from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Darrow Montgomery
There are few good things that growing up in Miami taught me, but chief among them is the pleasure of a savory pastry and small cup of strong coffee in the morning. For as long as I’ve lived in D.C., I’ve griped that there are only a precious few places to grab a pastelito, or Cuban pastry, on the way to work. Nothing inspires religious fervor in me quite like a pastelito de carne—a biscuit-sized pocket of caramelized ground beef and onion, wrapped in layers of slightly sticky, laminated puff pastry. The D.C. region is ripe with its own pastry tradition, largely owed to the diaspora of Mexican and Central American immigrants who live in D.C., where nearly one-fifth of the immigrant population comes from El Salvador. Several of those bakeries, or panaderías, are concentrated in the Northwest quadrant of the city and its neighboring Maryland suburbs. In them, you’ll find some of the most diverse arrays of sweet and savory bread products in the region, all of them reflecting the different flavor profiles and baking techniques of countries like Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. “Food businesses play a pretty big role in the Latino community, and we see that in our client base,” said Marjorie Nemes-Galarza, the Chief of Development and Strategy at D.C.’s Latino Economic Development Center, which has funded five of these bakeries in the last fiscal year. “They create a good number of jobs in the community, and jobs that pay a living wage and allow people to move up the [managerial] chain.” More than just an economic engine, they’re also social anchors of the immigrant community. Eddy Campos-Molina, whose mother owns Veronica’s Bakery & Cafe in Silver Spring, calls the region’s Central American bakeries “a kind of sanctuary” for the Latinx community. “Things are a little different in Latinx countries than they are here. Here, it’s work, work, work. But in the Latinx community we’re very into the family and the home and creating a safe space.” He calls D.C.’s panaderías comforting places where people can be themselves. He also loves the vibrant colors of sweets like Maria Luisa cake with its signature hot pink topping.
baked bread hits you from the sidewalk before you step inside. For more than 15 years, the family business has been making bread and pizza— its true calling card—fresh, in-house, every day. While they serve a classic cheese pie, the store’s more popular option is a carne asada pizza, which comes topped with slices of charred skirt steak, raw iceberg lettuce, and avocado. The bread options are wide-ranging too. Find croissants, loaves of sweet Salvadoran bread, sesame rolls, and anise-flavored Guatemalan buns. If you’re not looking for a sit-down meal, El Arbol Del Pan has a robust take-out menu. Pick up sweets ranging from torta seca, a Salvadoran dried apple cake, to festive shortbread cookies known as polvorones, which have a crumbly texture and are laced with cinnamon and vanilla. Take them to go with a cappuccino or coffee for a breakfast that costs less than $3.
Pan Lourdes Bakery Notice, too, that the prices for most of the pastries at these panaderías range from $0.50 to $1.50. Consider these bakeries a chance to branch out and try something new, like salpor de arroz, shell-shaped cookies made with rice flour, or novias, sweet bread rolls topped with a cookie crust. Better yet, bring a mix of them to build out a dessert table at brunch or a friend’s baby shower. Though D.C. might not boast the most robust bodega breakfast sandwich culture—I’m looking at you, AOC— its other offerings are just as worthy. Pan Lourdes Bakery 5121 Georgia Ave. NW; (202) 722-1229 Mondays through Fridays from 6:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.; and Sundays from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. One of the city’s most prolific bakeries, Pan Lourdes Bakery has three storefronts across the D.C. area. Its main bakery on Rhode Island Avenue in Mount Rainier doubles as its production facility. The two offshoots located in D.C. proper are on Georgia Avenue NW and 14th Street NW. While the Salvadoran bakery serves dozens of pastries to-go, it’s the store’s cakes, which
16 february 14, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com
you can custom order, that really shine. Pan Lourdes makes them for every occasion, from sheet pan-sized hearts dripping in strawberry jam for weddings to picnic basket-shaped cakes for children’s birthdays. In its Georgia Avenue NW store, a half-dozen ready-made options—think layers of vanilla and buttercream topped with fruit, nuts, or chocolate glaze—are stacked in a display case. Consider Pan Lourdes if you flubbed your plan to order a cake ahead of time elsewhere, or just need a last-minute celebratory dessert. The ground-level 14th Street NW store, sandwiched between Gloria’s Pupuseria and a hookah lounge, is best for grab-and-go orders. A handful of glass display cases tucked against its blue and pink painted brick walls offer some of the store’s most popular items. A cashier says most people come in for slices of milk and pineapple cake, which sell for $0.60 each. Even better? The store is now on Postmates. El Arbol Del Pan 8545 Piney Branch Road, Silver Spring; (240) 595-9649 Mondays through Sundays, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. At El Arbol Del Pan, the smell of freshly
Just off East-West Highway, the sevenyear-old Mi Pueblito—or “my little town”— looks like the inside of a piñata. Floor-toceiling pastry cases and refrigerators line the back wall, with dozens of Mexican and Salvadoran pastries piled in. It’s do-it-yourself at Mi Pueblito: Grab a tray, use tongs to load up and bring your bounty over to the register. By the day’s end, most of what’s left are crumbs. Seek out some popular desserts from Mexico and El Salvador: sweet empanadas with guava, pineapple, mango, or strawberry cream cheese filling ($1–$1.50); elephant ear-shaped puff pastry sprinkled with cinnamon and nuts ($0.80); Mexican sweet bread ($0.70); and caramelized puff pastry ($0.50). It’s the second bakery for its owner, Juan, who says its positioning on the major thoroughfare has attracted more clients who are commuting. The original location in Cheverly is a bit farther from the District. Juan says his favorite items are the Mexican sweet breads. But the best grab is Mi Pueblito’s tres leches cake, which Campos-Molina calls “kind of the universal pastry of Latinx countries.” The richly layered milk cake is topped with slices of candied fruit. Its moist sponge and dense whipped cream topping are unapologetically sweet—just as tres leches should be. CP
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Voices of Now: Mentor Ensemble & Mead Ensemble Voices of Now: Mentor Ensemble & Mead Ensemble FEB 29 2:00 PM Lab Theatre 1 | $15
City at Peace City at Peace: In Performance FEB 29 4:30 PM Lab Theatre 2 | $15
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SECOND WEEK Therese & Elizabeth Gahl FEB 27 8:00 PM
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TVAMEVA with Neha Misra Upakrama The Beginning FEB 27 8:00 PM
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Furia Flamenca Dance Company Ritmos Españoles (Spanish Rhythms) MAR 1 2:30 PM
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Ben Buergel Electroacoustic Oboe: The Intersection Of The Mythological And Corporeal
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Misto di Voci Ensemble Mysticism, Music and Celebration
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ABOUT THE ATLAS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
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1333 H STREET NE | WASHINGTON, DC 20002 | 202.399.7993, EXT. 2 The Union Station Metro Stop is the closest MetroRail station. It’s about a 20-25 minute walk from the Metro.
DIRECTIONS Reserve your parking in advance! Use SpotHero! To reserve your parking spot, visit the Atlas Performing Arts Center SpotHero Parking Page and book a spot with rates up to 50% off drive-up.
DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities
MAR 1 3:00 PM
HOW TO GET HERE:
BY CAR
Jane Lang
BY STREETCAR FROM UNION STATION
The free DC Streetcar departs from the Hopscotch Bridge every 15 minutes. To get there from Union Station, use the elevators or escalators to go up one level from the Amtrak waiting area and go north through the Union Station parking structure toward H Street. Disembark the Streetcar at 13th and H and walk to the Atlas.
WE’RE THE ART BEAT OF H STREET
The Atlas Performing Arts Center is a non-profit performing arts venue in a historic theater. We’re the cultural anchor of the H Street, Northeast community in Washington, DC. The Atlas fosters and presents stellar art in film, dance, music, theater, vocal and choral work, spoken word, and beyond.
BY METROBUS
X2 Bus: Runs along H Street from Lafayette Square (16th Street) to Minnesota Avenue and connects with Metrorail at Gallery Place/ Chinatown Station.
BIKING
The Atlas now has convenient access to the new Capital Bikeshare program. The closest station is at 13th and H Streets NE across the street from the theater.
PARKING
There is extremely limited street parking in our neighborhood. We encourage patrons to take public transportation, use SpotHero, walk from the streetcar (there is a stop one-half block away) or take taxi cabs/Lyft/Uber.
Millennium Stage A celebration of the human spirit
Free performances every day at 6 p.m.
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No tickets required, unless noted otherwise.
February 13–26 13 Thu. | Mike Casey Trio
A unique group not only in their approach but in instrumentation (saxophone, drums, bass), the NYC-based trio is one of the hottest rising young bands in jazz today.
14 Fri. | National Hand Dance Association: Dancing in the Name of Love
In the Skylight Pavilion at the REACH from 6–9 p.m. Come learn the moves of native Washingtonians and the Official Dance of D.C., the Hand Dance, which has been recognized as one of America’s cultural revolutions. Free general admission tickets will be distributed in the Freedom Corridor starting at approximately 5 p.m., up to two tickets per person.
15 Sat. | Liberated Muse
The local arts company pays tribute to American novelist Toni Morrison through the music and culture of the African diaspora. Jazzy blues, spoken word, and soulful a cappella ballads speak of both tumultuous times and optimistic reverence for the future.
16 Sun. | Tom Thakkar
Free general admission tickets will be distributed in the Peace Corps Gallery starting at approximately 5 p.m., up to two tickets per person. This performance contains mature themes & strong language.
The Millennium Stage was created and underwritten by James A. Johnson and Maxine Isaacs to make the performing arts accessible to everyone in fulfillment of the Kennedy Center’s mission to its community and the nation. Generous support is provided by The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation and the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates. Additional support is provided by Kimberly Engel and Family-The Dennis and Judy Engel Charitable Foundation, The Gessner Family Foundation, The Irene Pollin Audience Development and Community Engagement Initiatives, The Isadore and Bertha Gudelsky Family Foundation, Inc., The Meredith Foundation, Dr. Deborah Rose and Dr. Jan A.J. Stolwijk, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Millennium Stage Endowment Fund. The Millennium Stage Endowment Fund was made possible by James A. Johnson and Maxine Isaacs, Fannie Mae Foundation, the Kimsey Endowment, Gilbert† and Jaylee† Mead, Mortgage Bankers Association of America and other anonymous gifts to secure the future of the Millennium Stage.
24 | Jacob Tobia and Casey McQuiston
17 Mon. | Library x REACH: LGBTQ + Changemakers: Queering the Visual: From Memes to Queens
22 Sat. | Opera NOVA
In the Justice Forum at the REACH The Kennedy Center teams up with Library of Congress to present a series of discussions featuring writers, poets, activists, historians, and creative voices from across the LGBTQ+ spectrum. Free general admission tickets will be distributed in the Welcome Pavilion starting at approximately 5 p.m., up to two tickets per person. Limited seating.
18 Tue. | Levine Music
Students from the community school’s Town Hall Education Arts Recreation Campus (THEARC) perform rock music.
19 Wed. | The Washington School of Ballet TWSB presents a class concert as well as a mix of classical and contemporary repertoire.
20 Thu. | Catholic University of America Chamber Ensemble
The group plays works by Robert A. Baker, Mozart, and Beethoven. Presented in collaboration with the Embassy of Canada.
21 Fri. | Emilio Teubal
Born in Madrid, the awardwinning Argentine pianist and composer performs in recital.
The volunteer-run company presents an educational operatic experience for both audiences and young performers. This program celebrates African Americans past and present in opera.
23 Sun. | Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program
Members of the WNO training program perform excerpts from WNO’s upcoming masterpieces, Don Giovanni and Samson and Delilah.
24 Mon. | Library x REACH: LGBTQ + Changemakers: Jacob Tobia in Coversation with Casey McQuiston: Red, White, and Royal Blue In the Family Theater Join a series of discussions featuring creative voices from across the LGBTQ+ spectrum.
Free general admission tickets will be distributed in the Hall of States starting at approximately 5 p.m., up to two tickets per person.
25 Tue. | Raaginder
Raaginder implements improvisation, rhythmic patterns, and the sounds of Indian Classical music on a modified five-string violin. Presented in partnership with District of Raga.
26 Wed. | People of Earth Project
The global music collective performs an explosive blend of the music of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Brazil, and beyond.
Her will is more powerful than his strength.
Samson and Delilah March 1–21, 2020 | Opera House
For details or to watch online, visit Kennedy-Center.org/millennium.
Music by Camille Saint-Saëns / Libretto by Ferdinand Lemaire
Daily food and drink specials | 5–6 p.m. nightly | Grand Foyer Bars
In French with Projected English Titles
Take Metro to the Foggy
Free tours daily by the Friends of
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the Kennedy Center tour guides. Tour hours: Mon.–Fri., 10 a.m.–5 p.m., and Sat./ Sun. from 10 a.m.–1 p.m. REACH tours available Mon.–Fri. at 11 a.m. & 2 p.m. and Sat./Sun. at 11 a.m. For information, call (202) 416-8340.
Bottom/GWU/Kennedy Center station and ride the free Kennedy Center shuttle departing every 15 minutes until Metro close.
fan of KCMillenniumStage on Facebook and check out artist photos, upcoming events, and more! The Kennedy Center welcomes guests with disabilities.
Please note: Standard parking rates apply when attending free performances. All performances and programs are subject to change without notice.
Photo by Cade Martin
In Studio K at the REACH A comedian living in Brooklyn by way of Indiana and Chicago… or so he says. His alibis include co-hosting Comedy Central/ SiriusXM’s You Up with Nikki Glaser, creating popular podcast Stand By Your Band, and appearing at numerous comedy festivals.
14 | National Hand Dance Association
Groups call (202) 416-8400
Kennedy-Center.org
For all other ticket-related customer service inquiries, call the Advance Sales Box Office at (202) 416-8540
(202) 467-4600
Major support for WNO is provided by Jacqueline Badger Mars.
WNO’s Presenting Sponsor
David M. Rubenstein is the Presenting Underwriter of WNO. WNO acknowledges the longstanding generosity of Life Chairman Mrs. Eugene B. Casey.
washingtoncitypaper.com february 14, 2020 21
Little Leaf
CPARTS
Music Notes
Members of the go-go community open up about what they’d like to see in a potential museum for the music.
Darrow Montgomery/File
Ron Moten with Backyard Band
By Alona Wartofsky As the city government moves closer to designating go-go as the official music of Washington, D.C., what that will mean for the culture remains unclear. In the meantime, longtime community activist Ron Moten, who has been at the forefront of the DontMuteDC movement since last year, is working to launch a new go-go museum. And he’s doing it the go-go way—not waiting on institutional support. Instead, Moten is banking on go-go’s strong DIY ethos and powerful sense of community to help create the museum, which he aims to open by late spring in Check It Enterprises, the business and community development center on Martin Luther King Jr Ave. SE where he is a partner.
“That’s how the go-go community has always been,” says Moten. “It’s organic. When you just get in there and you start it, people respond. It’s a call and response. That’s what we’re doing with this museum. We call, and people respond.” In the time-honored go-go tradition of call and response, a band’s lead talker exchanges chants with the audience, thereby emphasizing go-go’s essential sense of community. In the case of the museum, Moten is seeking grassroots fundraising and soliciting donations from the community of gogo artists and fans. At press time, Moten’s GoFundMe page for the museum reached $17,041, and recently collected nearly $10,000 in a single day when WPGC-95.5. FM broadcast a 12-hour fundrais-
22 february 14, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com
er from the Central Communications Metro PCS store that was the epicenter of the DontMuteDC movement last spring. As the museum dream moves closer to reality, City Paper asked some folks in and around go-go what their museum might look like, and what items they might be willing to loan or donate. Experience Unlimited bandleader Gregory “Sugar Bear” Elliott is one of several go-go stars hoping that the museum will feature footage from the 1987 Go-Go Live at the Capital Centre all-go-go concert with “Godfather of Go-Go” Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers, Rare Essence, Experience Unlimited, Little Benny & the Masters, Junkyard Band, D.C. Scorpio, Go Go Lorenzo, and Hot, Cold Sweat.
Here’s 10 places to shop locally for last-minute Valentine’s Day gifts. washingtoncitypaper.com/arts “That right there was an epic moment in gogo history,” says Sugar Bear. He plans to donate some of the items that he was unable to get into the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s collection—“one of my bass guitars or the Experience Unlimited hat that I wore in the video for ‘Da Butt,’” he says. Promoter Darryll Brooks, who presented that concert and released the VHS recording of the show with his partner Carol Kirkendall, agrees. “Go-Go Live in the Capital Centre is gonna be integrated in there some way, somehow,” he says. Brooks will also donate some of the Go-Go Live flyers. “I’m thinking I’ll also get my hands on some of the radio spots we recorded back in the day,” he says. Be’la Dona keyboardist “Sweet” Cherie Mitchell-Agurs, is one of many who would like to see a Madame Tussauds-style figure of go-go founder Chuck Brown. She would donate various items, including personalized Be’la Dona drumsticks and one of the band’s Wammie Awards. Back in the day, Rare Essence producer and keyboardist Roy Battle served as a coproducer for Pleasure, the first all-female go-go band. “What I’d really like to see is a classic Reo Edwards PA system stack,” says Battle, referring to the Trouble Funk founding manager, co-producer, and sound engineer who played a key role in the band’s early powerhouse sound. “That was really the start of the whole go-go sound that went across the city.” Trouble Funk bandleader and founder “Big” Tony Fisher is one of several artists who stressed the importance of historical accuracy. “I definitely would love for them to have the true story of how this thing actually began,” he says. “We’re talking about a museum, so I don’t want to see this thing be a popularity contest. A museum shows the history of art and its significance.” Big Tony has an original recording of Trouble Funk’s “E-Flat Boogie” to donate as well as a poster for his 9:30 Club birthday party that featured the Foo Fighters’ top go-go fan, Dave Grohl. Like Big Tony, Junkyard Band’s Dave “32” Ellis, former rapper with the Northeast Groovers, hopes for veracity. “I just want it to be authentic and the truth,” he says. “Too many people never do the proper research and get it half-ass.” He is not sure if he has anything to donate. “Hats, jerseys, uniforms—I can’t keep that stuff because I always end up giving it away. I gave it away to the streets already.” Rare Essence band leader and guitarist An-
CPARTS drew “Whiteboy” Johnson looks forward to seeing the old Day-Glo Globe posters advertising the shows as well as ticket stubs from historic shows at Wilmer’s Park, the Howard Theatre, and the Washington Coliseum. He may donate one of the tuxedos the band wore at the Coliseum. Whiteboy’s bandmate James Funk “would love to see the official proclamation of go-go as the sound of the city in a glass case, such as the Constitution at the National Archives,” he says. Funk plans to frame and donate an old poster of Rare Essence standing around the red Mercedes that belonged to the late drummer Quentin “Footz” Davidson, a founding band member whose drumming style influenced dozens who came after him. “Lil” Chris Procter, leader of bounce beat band TOB, envisions statues of go-go’s greatest, including Chuck Brown, Anthony “Little Benny” Harley, and Reggie “Polo” Burwell, the bounce beat pioneer and lead talker of TCB. Lil Chris will donate a 2011 video from a sweet 16 party in a Maryland club, where TOB was joined by a party guest, Chuck Brown. “We played one set and didn’t even know Chuck was there listening to us,” says Lil
Chris. “We found out during the break, and we were like, now we all gotta tighten up. Chuck says in the video, ‘y’all the funkiest band I have played with in a long time.’” His TOB bandmate, keyboard player Larenzo “Loso” Barber hopes the museum will include go-go’s more recent manifestations. “Big names from the early generations for sure, but also the bounce beat generation, TOB, TCB, and all the others,” he says. Loso has plenty to donate, including TOB T-shirts, lighters, and phone covers. Recently retired Donnell Floyd, a veteran of Rare Essence and Team Familiar, wants the museum to display instruments played by the go-go greats, like “Footz’s drumset and Chuck’s guitar.” He plans to donate one of the glittery jackets he wore to his bigger shows. Floyd’s longtime bandmate, drummer Domo “Youngman” Lee, looks forward to “the behind-the-scenes history,” he says. Lee will loan some of the jewelry given to the members of Team Familiar by Yoruba king the Ooni of Ife during the band’s trip 2017 to Nigeria. Go-go writer and advocate Jill Greenleigh thinks the museum should educate tourists with nightly band showcases, “maybe at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., so tourists can experi-
VOTE
ence go-go,” she says. Also, she says, a museum shop should sell music for tourists to take home. Greenleigh has many items to donate, including permits from a 1991 D.C. Committee to Save Our Music protest against the decision by WOL 1450-AM to cut its only regular go-go time slot. Lovail Long, co-creator of the go-go musical The Giz, says he doesn’t “want to just see the bands, because there’s a whole community that supports go-go—the clothing lines, the films, the theater, the dancers.” He’ll donate promotional posters and costumes from The Giz, a go-go adaptation of The Wiz presented last year at the MGM National Harbor, including a pair of bedazzled red Chucks worn by Dottie, the Dorothy character. Experience Unlimited vocalist Mia Moscato wants to see “more history into how bounce beat and gospel go-go started,” she says. GoGoRadio Live owner Nico Hobson hopes to see the congos played by Tyrone “Jungle Boogie” Williams, an early and influential member of Rare Essence. Hobson, who sold go-go PA tapes downtown for years, may donate his best marketing tool from those days: “My original boombox that I used to sell my go-go tapes on F Street,” he says. Rare Essence rapper Calvin “Killa Cal”
Henry offers up an excellent idea for those musicians who can’t fully support themselves financially by performing—having the museum employ past or current band members. He will donate the Rare Essence jacket that he was given when he joined the band. Bandleader Matt “Swamp Guinee” Miller of Afro-go-go roots ensemble Crank LuKongo hopes the museum will highlight go-go’s social conscience. “The works of bands, songs, and albums in the genre from past to present that have specifically concentrated on social justice, activism, and education....will give evidence to go-go’s voice as a whole,” he says. He will contribute a video from the 2018 album release party for Crank LuKongo that featured Experience Unlimited’s William “Ju Ju” House on drums and guitarist Junior Marvin of Bob Marley & The Wailers, a night he describes as “a moment in history when a legendary icon in go-go collaborated with a legendary icon in reggae.” Most important of all, notes Sugar Bear, is to foster understanding of this precious regional culture. “I would like for people who may patronize the museum to understand go-go,” he says. “They need to see what they been missing all this time.” CP
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THEATERCURTAIN CALLS
PUNCHING ABOVE ITS WEIGHT
es. While a few of these mishaps, like a character flubbing the first line of the play, are scripted, most aren’t. The core audience likely won’t care to know the difference. Those who overlook or even savor such flubs—and certainly a lot of them are among the original Toxic Avenger’s fanbase—will find these missteps to be the cherry on top of an enjoyably wacky show. The rest may have a good time as well, but should carefully consider a warning (given in jest) in the musical’s prologue: “The next few hours are a part of your life you’re never getting back.” —Riley Croghan
The Royale
By Marco Ramirez Directed by by Paige Hernandez At 1st Stage to Feb. 23 When heavyWeight boxer Jack Johnson defeated Jim Jeffries on July 4, 1910, rioting and deadly violence nationwide was a predictable side effect. Jeffries—retired, overweight, and white—had been coaxed back into the ring to face the reigning black champion Johnson with a big payday, but his publicly declared motive was more sinister: “I am going into this fight for the sole purpose of proving that a white man is better than a Negro.” The younger, fitter Johnson punished Jeffries for 15 rounds, and the country went crazy. It would not be the last time the ascendancy of a black man drove white America into violent psychosis. The Royale, playwright Marco Ramirez’s imagining of Johnson’s inner life in the weeks leading up to that title fight, has had dozens of stagings since 2016, and Paige Hernandez’s svelte, powerful version for 1st Stage— a co-production with Olney Theatre Center, which hosted the show last fall—makes it easy to see why. Using only five actors and occupying less than 90 minutes, the show compresses the life-threatening challenge of asserting black excellence in a nation founded on slavery into the 20 foot by 20 foot confines of a boxing ring. (That ring, by the way, designed by Debra Kim Sivigny, who also did the unobtrusive period costumes, looks downright cinematic under Sarah Tundermann’s sawdustfiltered lights.) Ramirez, who has written for Netflix’s Daredevil series and for the most recent The Twilight Zone reboot, takes advantage of the shroud of fiction: He has named his Johnson stand-in Jay “The Sport” Jackson— “the man who casts a shadow in the dark,” in the racebaiting banter of his promoter. Jeffries is called “Bixby” and is never seen at all. Bulky but light on his feet, Jaysen Wright is perfectly cast as Jackson, the hungry challenger who bobs, weaves, and parries his way through press conferences as comfortably as he does through his fights. When Clayton Pelham Jr.’s Fish becomes the first opponent in memory to lay a glove on him—fight choreographer Cliff Williams III has each opponent face the audience but react to one another’s moves—Jackson and his trainer Wynton, played by James J. Johnson, hire the man to be Jackson’s sparring partner. Chris Genebach brings his usual pained assurance to the role of Max, the promoter whom Jackson has charged with getting him a fight with the swollen white
8641 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. $10–$40. rorschachtheatre.com.
POWDER BLUES champ. Representing an elite black athlete in 1910, not to mention one who makes little secret of his appetite for the company of white women, also means quietly protecting his client from harassment and far worse. As Wynton, Johnson has a knockout monologue that reminds us of the savagery at the core of the oldest sport, and Lolita Marie is equally strong in her late appearance as Jackson’s sister, Nina, who pleads with him to consider the dire consequences of his victory. Individually and as an ensemble, they make The Royale pound-for-pound as compelling as anything you’ll see this season. —Chris Klimek 1524 Spring Hill Road, Tysons. $15–$42. (703) 854-1856. 1ststagetysons.org.
SLIME TIME The Toxic Avenger: The Musical Book and lyrics by Joe DiPietro Music and lyrics by David Bryan Directed by Tracy Lynn Olivera At the Silver Spring Black Box to March 1
rorschach theatre has a reputation for charmingly offbeat productions, and has always been willing to go a little darker and a little weirder when selecting shows. It seems only fitting that, when picking Rorschach’s first musical, director Tracy Lynn Olivera would turn to an adaptation of The Toxic Avenger, a 1984 B-movie about a geek who turns to a life of fighting crime and cleaning up grime after being horribly burned in toxic slime. Devotees of either Rorschach’s quirky aesthetic or of ’80s cheese will find a lot to enjoy about The Toxic Avenger: The Musical, but the production stumbles with an outdated book and a host of technical issues. Such missteps can be treacherous when open barrels of toxic waste are lying around. When the musical debuted more than a
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decade ago, book writer Joe DiPietro boiled down the Toxic franchise to its most basic elements. Lonely nerd Melvin Ferd the Third (Ricky Drummond) is pushed into a vat of toxic sludge and gains mutant powers, with a side of horrible disfigurement. He emerges as Toxie, a hero set on foiling the looting and polluting mayor of his New Jersey town (Tess Higgins), and winning the heart of a blind librarian (Emily Levey). The story isn’t so much a plot as it is a setting for a few hours of pretty funny songs from DiPietro and Bon Jovi keyboardist David Bryan, and lots of jokes, mostly about New Jersey. A bare-bones plot is no problem—the source material hasn’t achieved a cult classic status by emulating Shakespeare—and Rorschach’s staging wrings out a few solid belly laughs, especially in its use of physical comedy. But in his script, DiPietro made the shortsighted decision to update Toxie’s world from the ’80s to 2008. Many of the “modern” jokes, like references to the omnipresence of Starbucks, feel dated. Worse, some jokes are now flatly in poor taste—not in the fun, shockingly irreverent way of the original movie, but just blandly and blindly offensive, as in the case of multiple jokes whose sole punchlines are that a male actor is wearing a dress. On that note, Toxic does indeed call upon its five actors to make dozens of quick costume changes. This impressive trick reaches its zenith in a hilarious scene where two of the best, hammiest characters in the play—Toxie’s mom and the evil mayor—must engage in an epic onstage battle. The twist: Both characters are played by Higgins, who may not play the musical’s titular hero but who surely has superhuman strength, given how much of the play she carries on her back. Unfortunately, even with a dedicated and tireless cast, the production, at least on press night, was plagued by technical issues, from malfunctioning mics to missed audio cues to problems with the multitudinous quick chang-
Gun & Powder
Book and lyrics by Angelica Chéri Music by Ross Baum Directed by Robert O’Hara At Signature Theatre to Feb. 23 so much great talent on stages. So many great new plays. So many new musicals that are not particularly well written. That’s the state of American theater writ large in Arlington this winter, as Signature Theatre debuts the musical Gun & Powder. There’s lots in this show’s DNA to love, with direction by Robert O’Hara (Slave Play) and Solea Pfeiffer and Hamilton original ensemble cast member Emmy Raver-Lampman starring as the real-life biracial twins Mary and Martha Clarke, respectively. Hearing Pfeiffer and Raver-Lampman sing Ross Baum’s jazz-inflected Americana tunes comes with all the thrills of a high-end pops concert. If only the onstage sisters had better dialogue and lyrics to tell their story. Gun & Powder is the grad school pipe dream of Baum and playwright/screenwriter Angelica Chéri, who met at New York University’s musical theater program. About five years ago, Chéri told Baum about her great-great aunts, Mary and Martha, who in photo albums always looked too white to be blood relations. In fact, the sisters passed as white, and the family passed down stories of their scams and bank robberies. In Gun & Powder, the sisters turn to crime after the landlord orders an exorbitant cotton harvest from their mother, Tallulah Clarke (Marva Hicks). The musical’s best between-song moments come early, when the Clarke sisters set out in search of an honest living and are shocked that white train passengers allow them to sit down. These early scenes deserve a bit more savoring, and maybe a song about donning costume designer Dede Ayite’s puffed-sleeve blouses and high-waist skirts, one that’s directly connected to the story and gets the ensemble involved.
Baum and Cheri employ the non-white members of the ensemble as a Greek chorus they call “The Kinfolk.” At the top of the show, seven outstanding singers belt a gorgeous gospel lament while mimicking the movement of cotton pickers. Later on, Yvette Monique Clark and Awa Sal Secka return to chew scenery as hotel maids who are onto the Clarke sisters’ schemes, but for long stretches of time, the Kinfolk disappear. Pfeiffer won raves last fall for her portrayal of Evita at New York City Center; she has a rich, resonant alto that seamlessly leaps a full octave, and her voice neatly winds below and above Raver-Lampman’s colorful soprano. (Baum did the marvelous vocal arrangements himself.) Yet with all due respect to these leading ladies, they spend too much time alone onstage in Gun & Powder singing about their love lives, sorrows, and “too dark” powdered skin. While Act 1 does end with a good old-fashion intermission cliffhanger, the musical’s second act gets bogged down with romances that are problematic as cast, as directed, and as written. To borrow a quote from former City Paper theater critic Bob Mondello, it’s as if Signature invested so heavily in its leading ladies, they ran out of money to buy them boyfriends. Dan Tracy plays Jesse, a wealthy Texas hotel owner with the all the charisma of a bored, racist concierge. Love may be blind, but why create such a strong, interesting female character like Mary Clarke only to have her fall for an average Joe Weasel? It’s a waste of time and not believable. Donald Webber Jr.’s Elijah at least seems
kind, but he can barely make eye contact with his co-star, and eye contact is the match that ignites fireworks, in real life or onstage. On YouTube, performers Jelani Alladin and Stephanie Umoh sing Elijah and Martha’s love duet, “Under a Different Sun,” with more convincing ardor than Raver-Lampman and Webber can muster. “Why don’t we find a place where our love can be free, where you can hold my hand in the light of day?” is typical of Chéri’s notso-complex lyrics, but the music exemplifies Baum’s facility with memorable melodies, clever orchestrations, and subtle key changes. That YouTube clip was filmed at a Ross Baum song showcase at Lincoln Center, which bodes well for his career. Gun & Powder has been workshopped at SigWorks, Theater Latté Da in Minnesota, and at a National Alliance for Musical Theatre festival. Signature’s Gun & Powder premiere feels like another workshop step along the crosscountry development road. (In addition to a script workshop, Jason Sherwood’s shallow stage and projection-heavy set for Gun & Powder should get a rethink.) It’s a credit to Washington audiences that the entire Gun & Powder run has sold out. Signature audiences are smart, know their stars, and are willing to experiment. But the creative team shouldn’t let box office numbers stop them cold, not when this musical still has a chance to spark. —Rebecca J. Ritzel 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. Sold out. (703) 820-9771. sigtheatre.org.
Moonshot Studio
FREE! Open every Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. | The REACH In the Moonshot Studio at the REACH, you get to think as big as President Kennedy when he dreamed of travelling to the moon. From dance and beat making to poetry and animation, the Moonshot Studio offers activities for people of all ages to explore their artistry and learn something new.
tkc.co/moonshot (202) 467-4600
Major Supporter: U.S. Department of Education
No tickets required! For more info, call (202) 416-8540
Additional Support: The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation
David M. Rubenstein Cornerstone of the REACH
washingtoncitypaper.com february 14, 2020 25
BOOKSSPEED READS
NOT ENOUGH Too Much: How Victorian Constraints Still Bind Women Today
By Rachel Vorona Cote Grand Central Publishing, 343 pages “A weeping womAn is a monster,” writes Takoma Park-based author Rachel Vorona Cote in the first line of her new book Too Much: How Victorian Constraints Still Bind Women Today. “So too is a fat woman, a horny woman, a woman shrieking with laughter.” These women are “too much,” in the language of the book. By her own admission, Vorona Cote is one of them, and she is tired of being told she’s too much: too loud, too talkative, too crazy. Too Much, her response, is an impassioned defense of “too muchness” (her terminology) in women, blending literary analysis from the Victorian era with meditations on pop culture from the last century. But in 2020, the book feels like an anachronism, and it offers few new insights into how misogyny circumscribes women’s presentation and emotional lives. Vorona Cote weaves into her work the classics of 2010s feminist writing on “muchness,” like Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams, Jess Zimmerman’s essay “Hunger Makes Me,” and Anne Helen Petersen’s Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman, which Too Much deeply resembles. Their writing paved new ground for what feminism could be outside of the academic sphere, and much of it remains deeply relevant and affecting—obviously, the problems of entrenched sexism have not been banished by their naming. But as Vorona Cote acknowledges her debts, it forces the reader to wonder what Too Much is attempting to add to that canon in 2020. A singular focus on the Victorians would be distinguishing, but instead it covers a wide range of pop culture, touching on Britney Spears, Moonlight, Demi Lovato, and Beezus and Ramona. Because Too Much fails to decide which tonal register—academic or pop-feminist—it would like to live in, it neither works as a showcase of Vorona Cote’s scholarship or of her emotional, personal work. The unfortunate fact is that the book comes a few years too late. What would have been a sharp work in 2016 is blunted by the fact that, by now, women have been asserting their claim to unruliness for years. The book also doesn’t push past the genre’s traditional focus on white womanhood, though it tries. Vorona Cote often mentions how race and class complicate how women are percieved, but sometimes her attempts at a broader worldview fall flat. In her chapter on fatness, the ultimate “too muchness” of the body, she mentions how black women are punished socially and professionally for
wearing their hair naturally. These are not unrelated issues, of course, and decades of feminist scholarship encourage us to consider their intersections, but comparing the experience of a fat white woman and a thin black woman facing racism is not as easy as Vorona Cote would like readers to assume. While white supremacy has a hand in discriminating against fat bodies, discrimination against fat people can’t be swapped out for antiblackness. Likewise, Vorona Cote spends much of her penultimate chapter, “Loud,” discussing sexist double standards for women in the workplace; to help broaden her gaze, she circulated a questionnaire to a diverse group of cis and trans women and nonbinary people. Because of that, the chapter constantly
transgender people, the sudden inclusion feels wedged in at the end. Too Much’s biggest problem is treating individual transgression as a substitute for collective liberation. A side effect of the feminist thought Vorona Cote is drawing on has been the growth of the idea that, because women are so often prevented and discouraged from doing things coded as masculine, a woman doing those things is by definition good, and doing so is automatically a feminist act. In “Cheat,” a chapter detailing female promiscuity, sexuality, and Vorona Cote’s own infidelity, she tries to tell an unabashed tale of leaving an unhappy marriage without defending her bad choices. Unfortunately, she is too often seduced by what the writer Jia Tolentino has
gestures at “women and femmes,” attempting to add some gender expansiveness into the book. But because she doesn’t interrogate the category of “woman” as it’s been constructed anywhere else and rarely makes overtures toward the differing experiences of
called “the cult of the difficult woman.” It’s a legitimately brave chapter that attempts some ambitious work. Vorona Cote understands that she’s portraying herself in a negative light; in the spirit of the book’s project, she says, she doesn’t care. “I expect some
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others might protest that for me to take such a defiant tone in this chapter is both insolent and unremorseful. If I am not confessing my sins, what here is worth telling? And why should I, then, the perpetrator, be the one to tell it? … I say that a woman’s volatility is her prerogative, and that her happiness is not for others to adjudicate,” she declares. Though she makes the unhappiness of her first marriage obvious, she declines to linger on her ex-husband’s character or faults to justify her actions. This resolve is admirable: Vorona Cote is uninterested in making herself palatable or attractive to the reader. But because she declines to meditate on her first husband, she also declines to reckon with the pain she certainly caused him. Similarly, she refuses to engage with the tossed-off revelation that her sister refused to talk to her for a year after her cheating. Sometimes, behavior is censured not because of Victorian mores or institutionalized misogyny, but because we owe consideration to our loved ones and our society at large. On some level, Vorona Cote is aware of this: “Making space for too muchness does not mean we can fully disregard the needs of others, but it does demand more flexibility than we are currently afforded,” she writes. Had this intelligent statement been the thesis Too Much’s analysis actually built toward, it would be a much more useful book. A 2017 essay by Bridget Read for VICE on Petersen’s Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud is instructive here. Read criticizes Petersen’s intense focus on the “unacceptable” behaviors performed by some of the wealthiest, most powerful women in the world, including Hillary Clinton and Kim Kardashian. How does their aesthetic unruliness create systemic change? It doesn’t, Read argues. “We have a pantheon of rowdy, truth-telling, brash, sexy women who we can claim as our WCWs, but our love for them has failed us politically. If the pinnacle of unruliness is ultimately the consolidation of ‘power, stature, and attention,’ it cannot—logically, philosophically, syntactically—also be an ideology through which we achieve equality,” she writes. The comparison is apt considering how closely Too Much resembles Too Fat in style and substance (it even got a blurb from Petersen). Both books argue that individually bucking the curtailed expectations for women is an act of liberation. But true liberation means dismantling the limitations in the first place, not fetishizing transgression, which is unavailable to those who can’t afford the very real costs of breaking the rules. Too Much works on many levels. It’s written with passion for the subject and sustained attention, full of compelling prose and observations that will surely resonate with any woman familiar with straining against the edges of the shape she’s expected to fit in. But its failure to go further means it treads old ground. It is simply not enough. —Emma Sarappo
FILMSHORT SUBJECTS
TALK THE TALK What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael Directed by Rob Garver
With her pithy prose and unshakeable confidence, Pauline Kael, the groundbreaking female film critic of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, was a trailblazing force in a field dominated almost entirely by men. In What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael, an edifying new documentary, we learn that Kael suffered harassment, received death threats, and struggled to earn a living wage even when she was at her most influential. The more things change for women in film criticism, the more things stay the same. A celebratory chronicling of Kael’s career and influence, the documentary by Rob Garver offers an opportunity to revel in a time when film really mattered and when critics, rather than superfans, held the power in the public discourse. Kael’s popularity at The New Yorker coincided with the era of New Hollywood, when fresh, young voices like Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg were making their first flawed attempts at feature filmmaking. They relied on critics of Kael’s insight and passion for film to see their potential and champion their careers. Kael loved Mean Streets and The Sugarland Express. The film convincingly argues that, without her support, there might never have been a Taxi Driver or Jaws. As elated as Kael was to champion a filmmaker who needed her backing, Kael felt equally betrayed when they failed to meet her standards. In one shocking scene, David Lean recalls how Kael berated him at a film critics’ lunch. He was so shaken by the experience that
he quit filmmaking for a time. Notably, none of the old masters she advocated for appear in the film, as each one of them ran afoul of her eventually. The only directors who do speak on her behalf, David O. Russell and Quentin Tarantino, the latter of whom cites one of Kael’s reviews as inspiring his entire aesthetic, came later and never had to endure her criticism. While the film follows a standard cradle-tothe-grave template that leaves little opportunity for creative flourishes, a consistent and provocative theme still emerges: liberation. Kael fought the establishment and sought freedom in her writing and her personal life. Early in her career, she avoided desk jobs to pay the bills because “the main thing [was] fighting off the successes that trap you.” Her three marriages, each ending in divorce, are portrayed as relationships of convenience, casually cast off without remorse. Her one attempt at crossing the critical divide came when Warren Beatty lured her to Hollywood to co-write a film for him. She quickly abandoned the project when it became clear she would not have enough influence over the final product. This unquenchable need for freedom occasionally led her toward provocation, like when she panned The Sound of Music, which got her fired from her first staff critic job. Later, she trashed Shoah, the universally praised Holocaust documentary. “A woman with opinions offends macho men,” she says at one point, explaining with her trademark concision, and perhaps some self-reflection, why she remains a controversial figure after all these years. It might also explain her pugnacious style. If you’re going to offend everyone regardless, you might as well get your money’s worth. —Noah Gittell What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael opens Friday at Landmark E Street Cinema.
LIZ AT LARGE
“Skip” by Liz Montague Liz Montague is a D.C.-based cartoonist and cat mom. You can find her work in The New Yorker and City Paper. washingtoncitypaper.com february 14, 2020 27
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CITYLIST
The Club at Studio K
Music 29 Books 32 Theater 32 Film 32
Fitz and the Tantrums at The Anthem, Feb. 14
SPOTLIGHT ON IMPROV COMEDY
Baby Wants Candy: Historical Hip Hop Edition F E B . 2 0 | 7 : 3 0 & 9 : 3 0 P. M .
A fully improvised, epic Hip Hop musical based on a historical figure of your choosing!
The Black Version F E B . 2 1 | 7 : 3 0 & 9 : 3 0 P. M .
Wild Horses F E B . 2 2 | 7 : 3 0 & 9 : 3 0 P. M
M A S O N B AT E S ’ S KC J U K E B OX
Ekhodom and Mason Bates F E B R U A R Y 2 7 | 7 : 3 0 P. M . L
AVA IMITE Story District’s ILAB D ILIT Y Funnier Than Fiction
F E B R U A R Y 2 8 | 7 : 3 0 & 9 : 3 0 P. M .
Music FRIDAY BLUES
SONGBYRD MUSIC HOUSE AND RECORD CAFE 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. Lower Dens. 8 p.m. $15. songbyrddc.com.
SUNDAY
SATURDAY
SIXTH & I HISTORIC SYNAGOGUE 600 I St. NW. (202) 408-3100. Amanda Shires with L.A. Edwards. 7:30 p.m. $29.50–$35. sixthandi.org.
CLASSICAL
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS THOMAS JEFFERSON BUILDING 101 Independence Ave. SE. (202) 707-5000. Perfection: The Laurent Crystal Flute, 1807-1848. 2 p.m. Free. loc.gov.
Jason Palmer, “Upward”
COUNTRY
F E B R U A R Y 2 9 | 7 : 3 0 P. M .
ELECTRONIC FOLK
ELECTRONIC
ELECTRONIC
U STREET MUSIC HALL 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889. Octave One. 10 p.m. $10–$20. ustreetmusichall.com.
PIE SHOP DC 1339 H St. NE. (202) 398-7437. Lyle Brewer. 8 p.m. $20. pieshopdc.com.
FUNK & R&B
FUNK & R&B
FUNK & R&B
HOWARD THEATRE 620 T St. NW. (202) 803-2899. Bridget Kelly. 8 p.m. $30–$35. thehowardtheatre.com.
GO-GO
CITY WINERY 1350 Okie St. NE. (202) 250-2531. Secret Society. 7:30 p.m. $25–$30. citywinery.com.
JAZZ
9:30 CLUB 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Galactic feat. Anjelika Jelly Joseph. 8 p.m. $30. 930.com. HILL CENTER AT THE OLD NAVAL HOSPITAL 921 Pennsylvania Ave. SE. (202) 549-4172. Shacara Rogers. 6:30 p.m. $25–$28. hillcenterdc.org.
POP
THE ANTHEM 901 Wharf St. SW. (202) 888-0020. Fitz And The Tantrums. 8 p.m. $45–$75. theanthemdc.com.
CITY WINERY 1350 Okie St. NE. (202) 250-2531. Dwele. 6:30 p.m.; 10 p.m. $45–$65. citywinery.com.
HIP-HOP
SONGBYRD MUSIC HOUSE AND RECORD CAFE 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. Jasiah and $not. 8 p.m. $20–$60. songbyrddc.com.
JAZZ
9:30 CLUB 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Galactic feat. Anjelika Jelly Joseph. 8 p.m. $30. 930.com. BLUES ALLEY 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Marion Meadows. 8 p.m.; 10 p.m. $35–$90. bluesalley.com. SIXTH & I HISTORIC SYNAGOGUE 600 I St. NW. (202) 408-3100. Melissa Aldana Quartet. 8 p.m. $30. sixthandi.org.
POP
SONGBYRD MUSIC HOUSE AND RECORD CAFE 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. Alem Worldwide. 9 p.m. Free. songbyrddc.com.
GO-GO
UT
D I R ECT C U R R E N T
jaimie branch’s Fly or Die M A R C H 1 1 | 7 : 3 0 P. M .
Kennedy-Center.org (202) 467-4600
CITY WINERY 1350 Okie St. NE. (202) 250-2531. Rare Essence. 9:30 p.m. $30–$35. citywinery.com.
Groups call (202) 416-8400
ROCK
For all other ticket-related customer service inquiries, call the Advance Sales Box Office at (202) 416-8540
SONGBYRD MUSIC HOUSE AND RECORD CAFE 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. 1 Trait Danger. 8 p.m. $12– $15. songbyrddc.com.
WORLD RHIZOME DC 6950 Maple St. NW. Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble. 7 p.m. $20. rhizomedc.org.
Major Support for Comedy:
Major Support for Jazz: The Buffy and William Cafritz Family Foundation Major support for Hip Hop, KC Jukebox, and DIRECT CURRENT: The Irene Pollin Audience Development and Community Engagement Initiatives
PIE SHOP DC 1339 H St. NE. (202) 398-7437. Rocknocerous. 10 a.m. $5. pieshopdc.com.
MONDAY
BLACK CAT 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. Mean Jeans. 8 p.m. $12–$15. blackcatdc.com.
BLUES ALLEY 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Anita King. 8 p.m.; 10 p.m. $22. bluesalley.com.
ROCK
DO
M A R C H 5 – 7 | 9 : 3 0 P. M .
SOUNDCHECK 1420 K St. NW. (202) 789-5429. Spencer Brown. 10 p.m. $15–$20. soundcheckdc.com.
WARNER THEATRE 513 13th St. NW. (202) 783-4000. Tedeschi Trucks Band. 8 p.m. $69.50–$129.50. warnertheatredc.com. ECHOSTAGE 2135 Queens Chapel Road NE. (202) 503-2330. Subtronics. 9 p.m. $25–$99. echostage.com.
SOL
BGR!Fest Secret Shows
Additional Design Support: Vicente Wolf of Vicente Wolf Associates and Margaret Russell
JAZZ
David M. Rubenstein Cornerstone of the REACH
washingtoncitypaper.com february 14, 2020 29
Amanda Shires at Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, Feb. 16
2
Patti Smith, Jesse Paris Smith, and Rebecca Foon March 21
ROCK
UNION STAGE 740 Water St. SW. (877) 987-6487. Pepper. 8 p.m. $25–$35. unionstage.com.
TUESDAY BLUES
BLUES ALLEY 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Special EFX featuring Chieli Minucci. 8 p.m.; 10 p.m. $35. bluesalley.com. Camila Meza and the Nectar Orchestra March 14
jaimie branch’s Fly or Die March 11
March 8–21, 2020
POP
SIXTH & I HISTORIC SYNAGOGUE 600 I St. NW. (202) 408-3100. Bat for Lashes. 8 p.m. $25–$29. sixthandi.org. UNION STAGE 740 Water St. SW. (877) 987-6487. Mark E. Bassy. 8 p.m. $22–$40. unionstage.com.
A two-week celebration of contemporary culture featuring women creators in honor of the 100th year of suffrage
WEDNESDAY
Featuring Patti Smith, Ava DuVernay, jaimie branch, Camila Meza and the Nectar Orchestra, and more!
HOWARD THEATRE 620 T St. NW. (202) 803-2899. Kamasi Washington. 8 p.m. $50–$55. thehowardtheatre.com.
For a full listing of events, plug in at direct-current.org DIRECT CURRENT is presented as part of The Irene Pollin Audience Development and Community Engagement Initiatives.
JAZZ
BLUES ALLEY 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Emmaline. 8 p.m.; 10 p.m. $25. bluesalley.com.
POP
SONGBYRD MUSIC HOUSE AND RECORD CAFE 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. Super Whatevr. 7:30 p.m. $15–$17. songbyrddc.com.
ROCK
CITY WINERY 1350 Okie St. NE. (202) 250-2531. Andrea Gibson. 8 p.m. $25–$35. citywinery.com.
30 february 14, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com
UNION STAGE 740 Water St. SW. (877) 987-6487. Bambara. 8 p.m. $13–$15. unionstage.com.
WORLD BOSSA BISTRO 2463 18th St. NW. (202) 667-0088. João Fênix. 9 p.m. $15. bossadc.com.
THURSDAY ELECTRONIC
SOUNDCHECK 1420 K St. NW. (202) 789-5429. Matroda. 10 p.m. Free–$10. soundcheckdc.com. U STREET MUSIC HALL 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889. Josh Butler. 10:30 p.m. $10–$18. ustreetmusichall.com.
HIP-HOP HOWARD THEATRE 620 T St. NW. (202) 803-2899. Cam’Ron. 9 p.m. $27.50–$35. thehowardtheatre.com.
POP ATLAS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER 1333 H St. NE. (202) 399-7993. MALINDA. 8 p.m. $25–$45. atlasarts.org.
ROCK BOSSA BISTRO 2463 18th St. NW. (202) 667-0088. The Kyle Lacy Band. 9:30 p.m. $10. bossadc.com. CITY WINERY 1350 Okie St. NE. (202) 250-2531. Andrea Gibson. 8 p.m. $25–$35. citywinery.com. COMET PING PONG 5037 Connecticut Ave. NW. (202) 364-0404. The Shivas, The OSYX, and Cinema Hearts. 9 p.m. $12. cometpingpong.com.
Merriweather Post Pavilion • Columbia, MD JUST ANNOUNCED!
SAM HUNT Kip Moore
• Travis Denning • Ernest • Brandi Cyrus (DJ Set) ................. SAT JULY 25
w/
FEBRUARY
On Sale Friday, February 14 at 9am
MARCH (cont.) ALL GOOD PRESENTS
THIS WEEK’S SHOWS
M3 ROCK FESTIVAL FEATURING
Railroad Earth w/ Kyle Tuttle Band
Kix • Tesla • RATT • Night Ranger and more! ..................MAY 1-3
2-Night Passes available! ....F 20 & Sa 21
ALL GOOD PRESENTS
Big Something and Andy Frasco & The U.N.
For more info and a full lineup, visit m3rockfest.com
Caribou
w/ Kyle Ayers ...........................Th 13
Galactic feat. Anjelika Jelly Joseph and special guest Chali 2na (Sa 15 - w/ Southern Avenue).F 14 & Sa 15
Luke Bryan w/ Morgan Wallen & Caylee Hammack................. JUNE 20 Halsey * w/ blackbear & PVRIS ................................................................. JULY 19 Rod Stewart * w/ Cheap Trick ................................................. AUGUST 15 Daryl Hall & John Oates * w/ Squeeze & KT Tunstall .. AUGUST 22
w/ Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith ............Th 26
L’Impératrice
Early Show! 6pm Doors .....................F 27
STEEZ PROMO PRESENTS BASS NATION FEAT.
Blunts & Blondes
w/ SubDocta & Bawldy Late Show! 10pm Doors ...................F 27
AN EVENING WITH
Super Diamond -
Soccer Mommy w/ Tomberlin
Refused
Bruno Major w/ Adam Melchor
The Neil Diamond Tribute ....Th 20
w/ Youth Code & Racetraitor ........F 21
Wolf Parade w/ Jo Passed
Early Show! 6pm Doors ..................Sa 22
Early Show! 6pm Doors ...................Sa 28 Late Show! 10pm Doors ...................Sa 28
Late Show! 10pm Doors ..................Sa 22
Josh Abbott Band • Randy Rogers Band • Pat Green ..Th 27 Drive-By Truckers w/ Buffalo Nichols............F 28 & Sa 29
MADELEINE ALBRIGHT - Hell and Other Destinations .. APRIL 27 On Sale Now
Manic Focus + Mersiv w/ Russ Liquid.............................Th 2
THIS FRIDAY!
STORY DISTRICT’S
STEEZ PROMO PRESENTS
Sucker For Love ................... FEB 14 Jonathan Richman & Bonnie “Prince” Billy ........ MAR 7 Brian Fallon & The Howling Weather
Minnesota
Pussy Riot w/ Deli Girls ............Sa 4 The Glitch Mob Drink the Sea- 10th Anniv. Tour
w/ Justin Townes Earle & Worriers .MAR 13
w/ Ivy Lab ....................................Su 5
Whindersson Nunes .......... MAR 16 Welcome to Night Vale
Deafheaven
w/ Inter Arma & Greet Death ........M 6
STEEZ PROMO PRESENTS
PEEKABOO
w/ MoodyGood • ZEKE BEATS • ISOxo Late Show! 10pm Doors ..................Sa 7
The Districts w/ And The Kids .Tu 10 Dead Kennedys w/ D.O.A. ......W 11 Radical Face w/ Axel Flóvent ..Th 12 ALL GOOD PRESENTS
The Motet & TAUK ................F 13 ZZ Ward w/ Patrick Droney.......W 18 Best Coast w/ Mannequin Pussy ..................Th 19
w/ Dessa .............................................APR 2
Aterciopelados & Los Amigos Invisibles ..........W 8 Delta Rae w/ Frances Cone &
Walk Off The Earth w/ Gabriela Bee ..................................APR 5
Carrie Welling ..............................Th 9
thelincolndc.com • impconcerts.com •
The Lone Bellow
Kurt Vile with Cate Le Bon .............................APR 24 Watch What Crappens........ MAY 2 AEG PRESENTS
Russell Brand: Recovery Live
16+ to enter. ....................................MAY 28 BYT’S FUTURE IS FESTIVAL PRESENTS
The Lily’s Nora Knows What To Say feat. Nora McInerny
Matinee Show! 2pm Doors .............MAR 28
NPR’s Ask Me Another
feat. Ophira Eisenberg, Jonathan Coulton & More TBA
Evening Show! 5:30pm Doors ........MAR 28
U Street (Green/Yellow) stop across the street!
w/ Early James...........................Sa 11
Little Dragon ...........................W 15 Margaret Glaspy w/ Kate Davis
9:30 CLUB PRESENTS AT U STREET MUSIC HALL
Early Show! 6pm Doors ......................F 17
AEG AND U STREET MUSIC HALL PRESENT
Dabin
w/ Trivecta • Nurko • Last Heroes Late Show! 10pm Doors ...................F 17
MANY MORE SHOWS ON SALE! 930.com impconcerts.com
9:30 CUPCAKES
POLITICS AND PROSE PRESENTS
STEEZ PROMO PRESENTS
of Montreal w/ Lily’s Band ........M 2 Koe Wetzel w/ Read Southall ...Th 5 Early Show! 6pm Doors ....................Sa 7
w/ Eddy Kwon and DC Youth Orchestra Program .. APRIL 22
On Sale Friday, February 14 at 10am
Leslie Odom Jr.........................W 1
MARCH
The Lil Smokies & Joe Pug
jens lekman
APRIL
w/ Of the Trees • Eastghost • Thelem • Abelation ........................F 3
ALL GOOD PRESENTS
Lincoln Theatre • 1215 U Street, NW Washington, D.C. JUST ANNOUNCED!
Poliça w/ Wilsen .......................Su 29
White Ford Bronco: DC’s All-‘90s Band
merriweathermusic.com • impconcerts.com • Ticketmaster.com * Presented by Live Nation
The best thing you could possibly put in your mouth Cupcakes by BUZZ... your neighborhood bakery in Alexandria, VA. | www.buzzonslaters.com
Anna of the North Tall Heights w/ Victoria Canal .......Tu 10 w/ Dizzy Fae ........................ Th FEB 13 Shing02 & The Chee-Hoos: 9:30 CLUB & ALL GOOD PRESENT A Tribute to Nujabes .................W 11 Moon Hooch w/ Paris Monster ......Sa 22 City of the Sun w/ William Wild .....Sa 14 VÉRITÉ w/ Arthur Moon ..................F 28 Social House w/ Cobly O’Donis ....... M 16 GARZA Mondo Cozmo (Rob Garza of Thievery Corporation) .Sa 29 w/ Reuben and the Dark ...................W 18 Audrey Mika w/ Souly Had ..... W MAR 4 Colony House w/ Tyson Motsenbocker ..................Sa 21 9:30 CLUB & ALL GOOD PRESENT The Soul Rebels .........................F 6 Dorian Electra ........................Th 26 • 930.com/u-hall • impconcerts.com • Buy advance tickets at the 9:30 Club box office. •
TICKETS for all shows are available at IMPconcerts.com, and at the 9:30 Club, Lincoln Theatre, The Anthem, and Merriweather Post Pavilion box offices. Check venue websites for box office hours.
HAPPY HOUR DRINK PRICES impconcerts.com AFTER THE SHOW AT THE BACK BAR!
PARKING: The 9:30 Club parking lot is now located at 2222 8th St NW, just
past the Atlantic Plumbing building, about a 3 minute walk from the Club. Buy your advance parking tickets at the same time as your concert tickets!
930.com washingtoncitypaper.com february 14, 2020 31
! 3701 Mount Vernon Ave. Alexandria, VA • 703-549-7500
For entire schedule go to Birchmere.com Find us on Facebook/Twitter! Tix @ Ticketmaster.com
Feb 13
In the
!
DURAND JONES & THE INDICATIONS with Y LA BAMBA
14
in BURLESQUE-A-PADES LoveLand
feat. ANGIE
PONTANI, The Maine Attraction, Gal Friday, Ben Franklin, Joshua Dean & more! Hosted by MURRAY HILL!
15
Daryl Davis Presents
THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES 2019! DC’s Finest Talent Honors The Artists We Loved & Lost in 2019
with Daryl Davis, Tommy Lepson, Patty Reese & many more!
16
CHANTÉ MOORE
21
THE KENTUCKY HEADHUNTERS
HARMONY SWEEPSTAKES A CAPELLA FESTIVAL 24 DIGABLE PLANETS
22
25 Peter
Asher & Jeremy Clyde
PETER & JEREMY (of Peter & Gordon/Chad & Jeremy)
26
SARAH HARMER
28
ARLO GUTHRIE
Mar 1
HAYES CARLL (Solo)
CHRIS PUREKA
20/20 Tour featuring 'Alice's Restaurant' with Folk Uke with ALLISON
5
MOORER
SQUIRREL NUT ZIPPERS The Inevitable 25th Anniversary Tour
Performing the entire debut album in concert, along with other hep musical stylings!
6
THE OAK RIDGE BOYS
7
On A Winter's night With
Christine LAVin, JOhn gOrKA, CherYL WheeLer, PAttY LArKin, & CLiFF eBerhArDt Plus Sp. 8 TODD SNIDER guest! 12 THE HOT SARDINES 13&14 THE HIGH KINGS 17
THE DIRTY KNOBS
20
10,000 MANIACS
21
with MIKE
CAMPBELL
An Evening with
TOM RUSH
with Matt Nakea 'First Annual Farewell Tour!'
WATCH Awards Ceremony -7pmRachael 24 HOWARD JONES Sage
22
Acoustic Trio Tour
RAUL MALO 25 HOLLY NEAR & CRYS MATTHEWS 25
Kamasi Washington at The Howard Theatre, Feb. 19
Books
ALEXANDER HERBERT Herbert will discuss his book What about Tomorrow?: An Oral History of Russian Punk From the Soviet Era to Pussy Riot. Politics and Prose. 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW. Feb. 16, 1 p.m. Free. (202) 364-1919. DAN PFEIFFER The co-host of Pod Save America, President Obama’s former communications director, and the author of Yes We (Still) Can offers a political playbook for fixing our democracy with Un-Trumping America. Sixth & I Historic Synagogue. 600 I St. NW. Feb. 20, 7 p.m. $35–$50. (202) 408-3100. DONNA RIFKIND Rifkind will be discussing her book The Sun and Her Stars: Salka Viertel and Hitler’s Exiles in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Politics and Prose. 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW. Feb. 15, 3:30 p.m. Free. (202) 364-1919. ERICA ARMSTRONG DUNBAR Dunbar will discuss her book She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman in conversation with Dolen Perkins-Valdez. Politics and Prose at Union Market. 1270 5th St. NE. Feb. 15, 6 p.m. Free. (202) 364-1919. JERRY MITCHELL Mitchell will discuss his book Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights. Politics and Prose. 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW. Feb. 17, 7 p.m. Free. (202) 364-1919. JILL SANTOPOLO Santopolo discusses her new book More Than Words with local writer Abby Maslin. East City Bookshop. 645 Pennsylvania Ave. SE, Suite 100. Feb. 15, 4 p.m. Free. (202) 290-1636. LIDIA YUKNAVITCH Yuknavitch will discuss her book Verge: Stories. Politics and Prose at Union Market. 1270 5th St. NE. Feb. 14, 7 p.m. Free. (202) 364-1919. MARGARET KIMBERLEY Kimberley discusses her book Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents, presented by IPS, WPFW, and Black Alliance for Peace. Sankofa Video, Books & Cafe. 2714 Georgia Ave. NW. Feb. 15, 3 p.m. Free. (202) 234-4755. MEG LITTLE REILLY Reilly discusses her book The Misfortunes of Family. Solid State Books. 600 H St. NE. Feb. 18, 7 p.m. Free. (202) 897-4201. R. ERIC THOMAS Thomas discusses his new book of essays, Here For It: Or, How To Save Your Soul in America. Atlas Performing Arts Center. 1333 H St. NE. Feb. 19, 7:30 p.m. $35–$45. (202) 399-7993. ROMANCE AUTHOR PANEL East City Bookshop presents a panel of romance authors, featuring Andie J. Christopher, Tracey Livesay, Tif Marcelo, and Mia Sosa, moderated by historical fiction author Denny S. Bryce. East City Bookshop. 645 Pennsylvania Ave. SE, Suite 100. Feb. 20, 6:30 p.m. Free. (202) 290-1636.
32 february 14, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com
SARA ARNOLD Arnold will discuss her new children’s book, The Big Buna Bash, with activities for adults and children. Letena Ethiopian Restaurant. 3100 14th St. NW. Feb. 16, 4 p.m. Free. (202) 733-4830.
Theater
THE AMEN CORNER James Baldwin’s play The Amen Corner examines the role of the church in black communities as a 1950s Harlem pastor must confront a figure from her troubled past. Sidney Harman Hall. 610 F St. NW. To March 15. $35–$120. (202) 547-1122. shakespearetheatre.org. BOY Based on a true story, Boy depicts a misguided doctor who convinces new parents to raise their infant son as a girl after a botched circumcision, and the consequences that ripple through their lives. Keegan Theatre. 1742 Church St. NW. To March 7. $41– $51. (202) 265-3767. keegantheatre.com. EXQUISITA AGONÍA (EXQUISITE AGONY) A middleaged woman tries to find love with the young man who got her dead husband’s transplanted heart in this witty and poignant play. In Spanish with English supertitles. GALA Hispanic Theatre. 3333 14th St. NW. To March 1. $40–$48. (202) 234-7174. galatheatre.org. THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR Falstaff has a plan to woo Windsor’s wealthy housewives, but they team up to teach him a lesson, and his comedic comeuppance is well-deserved. Folger Elizabethan Theatre. 201 E. Capitol St. SE. To March 1. $27–$85. (202) 5447077. folger.edu. MOTHER ROAD William Joad is ill, and he wants to pass his plot of Oklahoma farming land down to a descendant who moved West. When he learns his only living descendants are Mexican American, the bits of the family must confront racism and who they really are. Arena Stage. 1101 6th St. SW. To March 8. $51–$95. (202) 488-3300. arenastage.org. PHANTOM OF THE OPERA Synetic’s movementdriven adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera features a female Phantom enraptured with the ingenue Christine. Synetic Theater at Crystal City. 1800 South Bell St. , Arlington. To Feb. 29. $19–$65. (866) 811-4111. synetictheater.org. PILGRIMS MUSA AND SHERI IN THE NEW WORLD Egyptian immigrant Musa hooks up with waitress Sheri after her shift ends, and a night of passion becomes a night of undermining cultural assumptions. Mosaic Theater Company at Atlas Performing Arts Center. 1333 H St. NE. To Feb. 16. $20–$65. (202) 399-7993. mosaictheater.org. THE ROYALE Jay “The Sport” Jackson wants to be the heavyweight champion of the boxing world, but 1905 boxing is racially segregated, and the odds are
against him. 1st Stage. 1524 Spring Hill Road, McLean. To Feb. 23 $15–$42. (703) 854-1856. 1ststagetysons.org. A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS This adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s novel focuses on two Afghan women in Kabul who become unlikely allies in the face of brutality and must make a dramatic decision. Arena Stage. 1101 6th St. SW. To March 1. $56–$105. (202) 488-3300. arenastage.org. TIMON OF ATHENS Timon lives in an opulent, uppercrust Athens world, but when she loses her money, status, and friends, she takes to the forest to plan her revenge against the society that ousted her. Michael R. Klein Theatre. 450 7th St. NW. To March 22. $35– $120. (202) 547-1122. shakespearetheatre.org. THE TOXIC AVENGER Melvin Ferd the Third falls into a vat of radioactive waste and emerges as a sevenfoot-tall freak called The Toxic Avenger, who’s ready to clean America up. Rorschach Theatre at the Silver Spring Black Box. 8641 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. To March 1. $10–$65. (202) 399-7993. rorschachtheatre.com.
Film
THE TRAITOR This Italian film follows the real story of Tommaso Buscetta, the first mafia informant in 1980s Sicily. Starring Pierfrancesco Favino, Luigi Lo Cascio, and Fausto Russo Alesi. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information) THE RHYTHM SECTION After a plane crash kills her family, a woman seeks revenge on the people behind it. Starring Blake Lively, Jude Law, and Sterling K. Brown. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information) THE PHOTOGRAPH A woman finds her mother’s old belongings and viewers see a series of intertwining love stories from the past and present. Starring Issa Rae, LaKeith Stanfield, and Chelsea Peretti. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information) BIRDS OF PREY The Joker’s sidekick Harley Quinn leaves him behind and teams up with superheroes Black Canary, Huntress, and Renee Montoya. Starring Margot Robbie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Ewan McGregor. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information) SONIC THE HEDGEHOG A small town police officer must help a super fast blue alien hedgehog defeat an evil genius. Starring Jim Carrey, James Marsden, and Neal McDonough. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information)
SAVAGELOVE M DOOGALS THE FAMOUS
C
My boyfriend and I were having relationship issues until we tried something new: pegging. He wanted to try it, but he was afraid and sometimes said the idea disgusted him. Then we tried it, and it was better than normal vanilla or even kinky bondage sex. It was the most emotionally connected sex we’ve ever had. I actually pegged him three times in 24 hours. He says now he wants to be “the girl” in our relationship. He doesn’t want to transition to become a girl, but to be more “the girl” sexually and emotionally. I see this as sexy and loving. I’ve always taken care of him in a nurturing way, but this adds so much more. I feel bad about sending this long story just to ask a simple question, but … how do I be more “the guy” for my boyfriend who wants to be more “the girl?” Not just sexually, but in everyday life? —The Boyfriend Experience “It’s amazing these two found each other,” said Key Barrett, a trained anthropologist. “They communicate and obviously create spaces to be vulnerable together and explore.” Barrett has studied female-led relationships (FLR) and written books—fiction and nonfiction—about them, TBE, and his first concern was your boyfriend succumbing to “sub-frenzy,” or a burning desire to realize all his fantasies at once. You guys aren’t new to kink—you mention bondage—but you’ve found something that taps into some deepseated desires, and you don’t want to move too fast. “Pegging opened up a huge box of shiny new emotions and feelings,” said Barrett. “That’s great, but they should take it slow, especially if they want this dynamic to be a part of the day-to-day relationship.” You also need to bear in mind that pegging, while wonderful, won’t solve your underlying (and unspecified) “relationship issues.” Unless, of course, the issue was your boyfriend feeling anxious about asking you to peg him. If he was worried about walking back his previous comments, or worried you would judge, shame, or dump him over this, that could have been the cause of your conflict, and the pegging—by some miracle— was the solution. But, hey, you didn’t ask about those other issues—you didn’t even name them—so let’s focus on your actual question: you being “the guy” and your boyfriend being “the girl.” “The boyfriend wants TBE to be ‘the guy’ in the relationship to reinforce his desire to be ‘the girl,’” said Barrett, “and she seems okay with this, although she does acknowledge that this would require more than the nurturing and caretaking she’s already showed toward him. That’s a valid
concern. His desire to take the kink out of the bedroom and merge it with the day-today risks turning her into a kink dispenser. There’s also the aspect of the boyfriend’s gender stereotyping. Being dominant isn’t unique to men, and being submissive isn’t a ‘feminine’ trait. There are a lot of alpha men in FLRs who shine in support roles for the women they trust. Female-led relationships don’t rely on stereotypes. Indeed, they often flout them by relying not on stereotypical behaviors but on what is a natural dynamic for the couple. In that sense, each FLR is unique.” While it’s possible that “I want to be the girl” are the only words your boyfriend has to describe the dynamic that turns him on, for some men, sacrificing their “male” power and privilege is an intrinsic part of the eroticism of submitting to a dominant woman. And that’s okay, too. “If he legitimately wants to take on a role of supporting her and being her adoring submissive partner while thinking of that role as ‘feminine,’ it could work for them,” said Barrett. “He might really enjoy supporting her decisions and being more of a domestic partner. She might enjoy the support and validation that comes from having a partner who revels in her successes and strength. This could fulfill the ‘caring for him as if I were the boyfriend’ portion (what a loving statement!) while still feeling natural for TBE.” So how can you get started as “the guy” in this relationship? “They should, again, start small,” said Barrett. “Maybe delegate a few tasks that were ‘hers’ to him, and she can tell him how she wants them done,” whatever it is (dishes? laundry? cocksucking?), “as this will help ensure the outcome they both want. I would also recommend they both read about what FLRs are and aren’t. FLRs are often kinkfriendly, but kink is not required. And they need to remember the key word in ‘femaleled relationship’ is ‘relationship.’” Follow Key Barrett on Twitter @KeyBarrettMSc. —Dan Savage I’m a woman, and I was contacted on an app by someone claiming to be a “guydyke.” Based on their profile pictures, I was basically looking at a white, cis, masc-presenting man who’s said he is queer but only attracted to women. And by masc-presenting, I mean I could not pick him out of a lineup of the most average of average-looking straight dudes: drab clothes, a week’s stubble, bad haircut. Granted, nobody is obliged to announce their gender identity through clothing or grooming choices, but how is this guy not straight? —Perplexed
“I happen to be one of those ‘old-school’ lesbians, despite not actually being what most consider to be old,” said Arielle Scarcella, a popular lesbian YouTuber (youtube.com/ arielle) with more than 600,000 subscribers. “Back when I was coming out in 2005, if a male person who lived as a man—a male who lived in such a way that he was always perceived to be a man—claimed he was a lesbian or a dyke, we’d shut them down. But in 2020, it’s only acceptable to accept everyone for what they say they are. I disagree. Part of being a lesbian, being a woman, is also cultural and societal. It’s not simply an identity. Living in the world as a woman matters. A biological male who presents as a man and has sex only with women will never know what it’s like to be treated as a woman or a lesbian. He can identify however he likes, of course, but he will be perceived as a straight man who’s fetishizing queer women.” —DS I’m in my late 20s and genderfluid. I have a male physique, but at times I feel more feminine. I suddenly can’t shake the desire to have more feminine breasts. I’ve been looking at women with C or D cups and wishing I had boobs that big. I’ve spent time looking into breast enhancement, but I live in the Midwest. It’s not as bad as the South, but there are still plenty of people who believe violating gender norms is a sin. I guess I don’t know what I’m trying to ask other than whether this is normal. —Bro Obsessed Over Bust Size It’s not normal—in the literal, non-pejorative sense—for an “assigned male at birth” person who presents as male to want to slap large boobs on his otherwise male-presenting physique. But so what? If you’re worried about how your boobs will be received there in the Midwest, perhaps you could get yourself a pair of what drag queens call “chicken cutlets,” i.e., silicone breasts enhancers that tuck into a bra, and try wearing them out. For the record, kids, I’m not equating being genderfluid with drag, even though many drag queens (but not all) identify as genderfluid and many genderfluid people (but not all) do drag. (I never get tired of tap-dancing my way through this minefield.) But back when I was doing drag, BOOBS, a pair of chicken cutlets artfully placed under my pecs created a pretty realistic looking set of big ol’ titties. Think of chicken cutlets as a temporary, nonsurgical breast-enhancement option—to test the locals as well as your desire to have breasts. —DS Email your Savage Love questions to mail@savagelove.net.
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applicant tracking, compliance, and records. Proposals are due via Adult . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 SUPERIOR COURT email to Kristin Yochum OF THE DISTRICT OF no later Auto/Wheels/Boat . . . .than . . . 5:00 . . . .PM 42 COLUMBIA on Friday, February 21, Buy, Trade . . 2020. . . . . We . . .will . . .notify . . . .the . . Landlord andSell, Tenant Branch final vendor of selection Marketplace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 2019 LTB 027674 and schedule work to be DC Housing Authority . . . . . completed. Community . . . . . . . .The . . .RFP . . 42 Plaintiff, with bidding requireEmployment . . . . ments . . . . .can . . .be . .obtained . . . 42 v. Ruth Cummings Health/Mind . . . . by . . contacting: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Defendant. Kristin Yochum NOTICE TO HEIRS OF Body & Spirit . . . . E.L. . . . Haynes . . . . . .Public . . . .Char42 RUTH CUMMINGS ter School Housing/Rentals . . . . .kyochum@ . . . . . . . . 42 Ruth Cummings, who Email: lived at 1845 Harvard Legal Notices . . . elhaynes.org . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Street, NW, 623, Washington, DC 20009, at Row . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Music/Music the time of his reported SUPERIOR COURT . . . . . of . . . . . OF . . .THE . . .DISTRICT . . . . . . . OF 42 death,Pets is the .subject an action for a ComCOLUMBIA Real Estate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 plaint for Possession PROBATE DIVISION by Plaintiff DC Housing Shared Housing . 2019 . . . .ADM . . . .001396 . . . . . 42 Authority in the LandName of Decedent, Services . . . . . . . . Thelma . . . . . .Fagin . . . Hyman. . . . . 42 lord and Tenant Branch of the Superior Court of Notice of Appointment, the District of Columbia, Notice to Creditors and Case No. 2019 LTB Notice to Unknown 027674 . A judgment for Heirs, Darryl H. Fagin, possession may lead to whose address is 4506 eviction and the loss of Avonsale Street, Apt, personal property in the Bethesda, Maryland residence. 20814, was appointed Any interested person, Personal Representative including but not limited of the estate of Thelma to creditors, heirs, and Fagin Hyman who died legatees of the deceon November 24, 2019, dent, shall appear on with a Will and will serve March 19, 2020 at 9:00 without Court Superviam in Courtroom B109, sion. All unknown heirs in the Landlord and and heirs whose whereTenant Court, located abouts are unknown at 510 4th Street NW, shall enter their appearWashington, DC, to ance in this proceedshow cause if there be ing. Objections to such any reason why the appointment shall be complaint for possession filed with the Register should not be granted of Wills, D.C., 515 5th and the plaintiff take Street, N.W., Building possession, dispose of, A, 3rd Floor, Washingor take any other acton, D.C. 20001, on or tion as ordered by this before 8/6/2020. Claims Court of any personal against the decedent property contained in shall be presented to the unit. Inquiries may the undersigned with a be directed to: copy to the Register of Wills or to the Register Jillian K. Lewis, Esq. of Wills with a copy to Musolino & Dessel PLLC the undersigned, on or 1615 L Street, NW Suite before 8/6/2020, or be 440 forever barred. Persons Washington, DC 20036 believed to be heirs or (202) 466-3883 legatees of the decedent who do not receive a copy of this notice by E.L. Haynes Public mail within 25 days of Charter School its publication shall so REQUEST FOR PROinform the Register of POSALS Wills, including name, Human Resources address and relationInformation System ship. Date of first Development publication: 2/6/2020 Name of Newspaper E.L. Haynes Public Charand/or periodical: ter School (“ELH”) is Washington City Paper/ seeking proposals from Daily Washington Law qualified vendors to Reporter. Name of Perprovide a cloud-based sonal Representative: human resources inforDarryl H. Fagin mation system (HRIS) TRUE TEST copy Nicole with excellent customer Stevens Acting Register service to upgrade our of Wills Pub Dates: current systems. We’re February 6, 13, 20. seeking a solution that offers improved efficiencies in areas including but not limited to payroll, time, benefits, employee management,
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DISTRICT OF COLUMAdult Phone BIA INTERNATIONAL Entertainment PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL Livelinks Lines. Flirt, chat NOTICE- Chat OF INTENT and Talk toSOLE sexy real singles TO date! ENTER in your area. Call now! (844) SOURCE CONTRACT 359-5773 District of Columbia International School Legals (“DCI”) intends to enter into a sole NOTICE IS source HEREBY GIVEN contract with NYU’s THAT: Teacher resident pro- INC. TRAVISA OUTSOURCING, (DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA DEgram, a highly effective PARTMENTTraining OF CONSUMER Teacher AND REGULATORY AFFAIRS Program for teacher FILE NUMBER 271941) residents to be placedHAS at DISSOLVED EFFECTIVE NOVEMDC International School. BER 27, 2017 AND HAS FILED NYU fellows receive a OF ARTICLES OF DISSOLUTION master’s degree fromCORDOMESTIC FOR-PROFIT the NYU School EduPORATION WITH THEofDISTRICT cation, and become OF COLUMBIA CORPORATIONS DIVISION to teach in eicertified ther elementary educaAtion, CLAIM AGAINSTEnglish TRAVISA secondary OUTSOURCING, INC. and, MUST or secondary math, INCLUDE THE NAME OF THE Social Studies, Science, DISSOLVED CORPORATION, or special educaINCLUDE THE NAME OF THE tion. The INCLUDE NYU Teacher CLAIMANT, A SUMMAResidency is built on RY OF THE FACTS SUPPORTING the core beliefs THE CLAIM, AND BE that MAILED TO 1600 INTERNATIONAL every child deservesDRIVE, an SUITE 600, MCLEAN, VA 22102 excellent education and that our diverse schools ALL CLAIMS BE BARRED must have WILL a teaching UNLESS A reflects PROCEEDING force that localTO ENFORCE THE CLAIM IS COMcommunities. MENCED WITH IN 3 YEARS OF The decisionOFtoTHIS soleNOTICE PUBLICATION source is due WITH to the fact IN ACCORDANCE SECTION that theyOFprovide excel29-312.07 THE DISTRICT OF lent teacherORGANIZATIONS training COLUMBIA ACT. that is unmatched in DC and us toishire Two allows Rivers PCS soliciting residents and have proposals to provide projectthem mansupport students while agement services for a small conthey are enrolled in of the struction project. For a copy RFP, please email procurement@ school and getting their tworiverspcs.org. education. DCIDeadline wishesfor submissions is December 6, 2017. to enter into a contract with NYU Steinhardt for teacher fellows that we can place as full time teachers in our classrooms as our school continues to grow. The fee to provide these services will be contingent upon how many teacher fellows DCI secures for each school year, at $5,000 for each teacher fellow paid to NYU. SUPERIOR COURT OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Landlord and Tenant Branch 2019 LTB 027671 DC Housing Authority Plaintiff, v. Dianne Painter Defendant. NOTICE TO HEIRS OF DIANNE PAINTER Dianne Painter, who lived at 1845 Harvard Street, NW, 425, Washington, DC 20009, at the time of his reported death, is the subject of an action for a Complaint for Possession by Plaintiff DC Housing Authority in the Landlord and Tenant Branch of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, Case No. 2019 LTB
34 february 14, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com
027671. A judgment for Legals possession may lead to eviction and the loss of DC SCHOLARS PCS REQUEST personal property in the FOR PROPOSALS – Moduresidence. lar Contractor Services - DC Any interested person, Scholars Public Charter School including but not solicits proposals for alimited modular to creditors, heirs, and contractor to provide professional legatees the decemanagementof and construction servicesshall to construct modular dent, appeara on building to house four March 19, 2020 classrooms at 9:00 and one faculty offi ce suite. The am in Courtroom B109, Request for Proposals in the Landlord and (RFP) specifi cations can be obtained on Tenant Court, located and after Monday, November 27, at 510 Street 2017 from4th Emily Stone NW, via comWashington, DC, to munityschools@dcscholars.org. show cause if there be in All questions should be sent any why the calls writingreason by e-mail. No phone regarding thisfor RFP will be accomplaint possession cepted. Bids received by should notmust be be granted 5:00 PM on Thursday, December and the plaintiff take 14, 2017 at DC dispose Scholars Public possession, of, Charter School, ATTN: or take any other Sharonda acMann, 5601 E. Capitol St. SE, tion as ordered by Any thisbids Washington, DC 20019. Court of anyallpersonal not addressing areas as outproperty contained in will lined in the RFP specifi cations thebeunit. Inquiries may not considered. be directed to:
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NOTICE OF PUBLIC SALE OF PERSONAL PROPERTY: Public Must see!ofSpacious semi-furauction items presnished owned 1 BR/1 by BAAngelika basement ently apt, Deanwood, $1200. Sep. enBeverly, Darneisha trance, W/W carpet, kitchHammond, Carl W/D, Brown, en, fireplace near Blue Line/X9/ Synethia Broadnax, and V2/V4. Shawnn 240-343-7173. Janae Henry to compensate for storage charges Rooms for Rent thereon. Items were stored in Washington, Holiday Special- Two furDC onrooms behalf customnished forof short or long ers Washington, termfrom rental ($900 and $800 per DC andwith the access surrounding month) to W/D, WiFi, and Den. UtiliareasKitchen, and include bins, ties included. Best N.E. location mattresses, tables, along H St. Corridor. Call Eddie sofas, and other miscel202-744-9811 for info.items. or visit laneous furniture www.TheCurryEstate.com The auction will open for bids on March 7, 2020 at 10:00am at [Storagetreasures.com](http:// storagetreasures.com/), and will close as a final sale on March 17, 2020 at 1:00pm. Purchases must be made with credit card and paid at the time of sale. Buyers will coordinate with MakeSpace to pick up purchases from our facility at “3370 V St. NE, Washington, DC 20018” within 3 days of winning the lot. All goods are sold as is and must be removed by the end of the scheduled pick up appointment. Buyers must pay an additional $10 for each green plastic storage bin or moving blanket they choose to keep. MakeSpace reserves the right to refuse any bid.
Order of Publication Construction/Labor Commonwealth of Virginia Charlottesville Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court The object of this POWER DESIGN NOWsuit HIR-is to: parenINGTerminate ELECTRICALthe APPRENOF of ALLthe SKILL LEVtalTICES rights Mother, ELS! Joy Michelle Brown, of a female child born to about the position… Joy Brown on December, Do 2018. you love working with 06, your hands? Are you interItested is ordered the the and in construction defendant in becomingJoy an Michelle electrician? Brown, appear the Then the electrical at apprentice above-named position could beCourt perfectand for protect her interests on you! Electrical apprentices able to3-11-20 earn a paycheck orare before @ and full benefi ts while learn2:30pm. ing the trade through firstAmy C Shifflette hand experience. Deputy Clerk what we’re looking for… Motivated D.C. residents who WASHINGTON YU want to learn the electrical YING PUBLIC CHARtrade and have a high school TER SCHOOL diploma or GED as well as reliable transportation. REQUESTS FOR PROPOSALS a little bit aboutfor us… Bus Vendor Student PowerTrips Design is one of the Field top electrical contractors in RFP for Bus Vendor for the U.S., committed to our Student values, toField trainingTrips: and to givWashington Ying PCS ing back to theYu communities isinrequesting which we live proposand work. als for a bus vendor to more details… support the transportaVisitof students powerdesigninc.us/ tion to and careers or from schoolemail fieldcareers@ trips. powerdesigninc.us! Vendors should include: a copy of their driver’s safety manual, including driver Financial requirements, Services Motor Vehicle Record Denied Credit?? and Work to Rerequirements, pair Credit Report With The anyYour forms associated Trusteddriver Leader evaluation in Credit Repair. with Call Lexington LawInforyour a FREE and discipline. credit reportplease summary & credit proposal address repair consultation. 855-620the questions: 9426.following John C. Heath, Attorney at Are inspected Law, buses PLLC, dba Lexington Law on a regular schedule? Firm. Who administers the inspections? Who con-
ducts bus repairs? Are Auctions drivers drug tested? If so, is this a part of the vendor’s hiring requirements? Washington Yu Ying’s insurance requirements for bus vendors are outlined below: ● Bus vendor should have an Insurance Carrier AM Best rating of “A” or better Whole Foods Commissary ● Auction Automobile liability DC Metro Area limits of $5,000,000 – Dec. 5 Injury at 10:30AM Bodily and Prop1000s S/S Tables, Carts erty Damage Combined & Trays, 2016 Kettles up Single Limit to 200 Gallons, Urschel ● Cutters General& liability Shredders inlimits of 1,000,000 per cluding 2016 Diversacut occurrence, a 2110 Dicer, 6with Chill/Freeze $2,000,000 Cabs, Doubleaggregate Rack Ovens Ranges, compensa(12) Braising ●& Worker’s Tables, 2016 (3+) Stephan tion, with statutory limVCMs, 30+ Scales, its, including Employer’s Hobart 80 qt Mixers, Liability Complete Machine Shop, ● Umbrella liability, inand much more! View the cluding: catalog atAutomobile Liability, General Liability, www.mdavisgroup.com or and Employers Liability 412-521-5751 in the underlying schedule, with Umbrella limit Garage/Yard/ of $2,000,000 ● Rummage/Estate Provide copies of Sales insurance policyevery loss runs Flea Market Fri-Sat for the past 5 years 10am-4pm. 5615 Landover Rd. Bids must also include Cheverly, MD. 20784. Can buy evidence of experience in bulk. Contact 202-355-2068 in field, qualifications, or 301-772-3341 for details or if intrested in being a vendor. and estimated fees. Deadline for submissions is close of business on February 27, 2020. Please e-mail proposals and supporting documents to RFP@ washingtonyuying.org. Please specify “RFP for Bus Vendor” in the subject line.
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whose whereabouts are Events unknown shall enter their appearance in this Christmas in Silver Spring proceeding. Objections Saturday, 2, 2017 to such December appointment Veteran’s Plaza shall be filed with the 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Register of Wills, D.C., in Come celebrate Christmas 515 5thofStreet, N.W.,at our the heart Silver Spring Building A, 3rd Floor, PlaVendor Village on Veteran’s Washington, za. There will be D.C. shopping, arts 20001, and crafts on for or kids,before pictures with Santa, music and entertainment 8/13/2020. Claims to spread holiday cheer and more. against the decedent Proceeds the market shall be from presented to will provide a “wish” toy for children the undersigned with a in need. Join us at your one stop copy to the Register of shop for everything Christmas. Wills or to the Register For more information, contact of Wills with a copy to Futsum, the undersigned, on or or info@leadersinstitutemd.org before 8/13/2020, or be call 301-655-9679 forever barred. Persons General believed to be heirs or legatees of the decedent Looking Rent yard space who dotonot receive a for hunting copy ofdogs. thisAlexandria/Arlingnotice by ton, VA area only. Medium sized mail within 25 days of dogs will be well-maintained in its publication shall temperature controled dogso housinform Register ofcare es. I havethe advanced animal Wills, including experience and dogsname, will be rid address free of feces,and flies,relationurine and oder. Dogs will be in of a ventilated ship. Date first kennel so they will not be2/13/2020 exposed to winpublication: ter and harsh weather etc. Space Name of Newspaper will be needed as soon as possiand/or periodical: ble. Yard for dogs mustPaper/ be Metro Washington City accessible. Serious callers only, Daily Washington Law846call anytime Kevin, 415Reporter. Name of Per5268. Price Neg. sonal Representative: Charlese Points Jennings Counseling TRUE TEST copy Nicole Stevens MAKE THEActing CALL Register TO START of Wills CLEAN Pub Dates: GETTING TODAY. Free 24/7 Helpline13, for alcohol & drug February 20, 27. addiction treatment. Get help! It is time to take your life back! Call Now: 855-732-4139 KIPP DC PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS Pregnant? Considering AdopREQUEST PROtion? Call us fiFOR rst. Living expenses, housing, medical, and continPOSALS ued supportContractor afterwards. Choose General adoptive family of your choice. Services Call 24/7. KIPP DC877-362-2401. is soliciting proposals from qualified vendors for General Contractor Services.
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The RFP can be found on KIPP DCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s website at www.kippdc.org/ procurement. Proposals should be uploaded to the website no later than 5:00 PM ET on February 28, 2020. Questions should be addressed to kevin. mehm@kippdc.org. I Dream Public Charter School Request For Proposal: Install four ECE bathrooms. Open wall between two rooms and install a partition in its place. Proposals should be emailed as PDF documents no later than 5:00 PM on February 14, 2020. Contact mwhitnall@idreampcs. org
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