Washington City Paper (February 20, 2015) by Washington City Paper

CITYPAPER Washington

WCP 2015 CAMP GUIDE

FooD: We’re at Peak PoPuP 29

WCP remembers DaviD Carr 7

Free Volume 35, no. 8 WashingtonCityPaPer.Com February 20–26, 2015

Why is it always an apple?

Living the Dream How a local nonprofit helps college become reality for undocumented immigrants By Aaron Wiener

Minority Report

The D.C. Council isn’t sure what to think about a school for black and Latino boys. By Will Sommer

v Res o i s t!

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d Un k ite

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Rin

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INSIDE

14 The educaTion issue Stories on Title IX battles and District DREAMers photographs by darrow montgomery

4 chaTTer disTricT Line

7 City Paper alumni remember David Carr 10 City Desk: D.C.’s third graders’ school performance, by neighborhood 12 Gear Prudence 13 Savage Love 21 Buy D.C.

d.c. Feed

29 Young & Hungry: D.C. goes all in on pop-ups 32 Grazer: Where to slurp signature oysters 32 Brew in Town: Mad Fox Oaked Diabolik 32 Are You Gonna Eat That? A bowl of sperm and eggs

arTs

35 Comic Fans: The ‘zine scene helps indie comics thrive 37 Arts Desk: Clowns, poetry, and dance collide 38 Theater: Klimek on King Hedley II and Cherokee

39 Film: Olszewski and Gittell on the Washington Jewish Film Festival 40 Galleries: Cudlin on Man Ray at the Phillips Collection 42 Sketches: Capps on Maggie Michael’s paintings at G Fine Art 42 Discography: West on Jonathan Parker’s Interloper

ciTy LisT

45 City Lights: Why does Obama have an issue with Black Orpheus? 45 Music 50 Theater 53 Film

22 summer camp guide

“”

No sweariNg, Nudity, or graphic violeNce. —page 36

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CHATTER

Res FEB. 2 ist! 6 at B Uni lind W te! hin Drin o k!

The Audacity of TOPA

in which readers debate tenant laws and praise a deity for mobile beer canning

AAron Wiener’s lAtest

cover was a complicated but worth-

yp ap er.c om /ev en t s

while read on the latest way landlords may be able to get around tenant protection laws (“Opportunity Cost,” Feb. 13). At the center of this controversy is Richard Luchs, a local attorney well-known for representing landlord interests in tenants’ rights cases. “Tortutous laws make for tortured judicial interpreations,” tweeted Donald Holmes, an attorney who works with Luchs at the D.C. firm Greenstein DeLorme & Luchs. “[The Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act] is well intended, but bad policy awkwardly applied.” Mark L appeared to agree: “So DC Council writes vague legislation and/or doesn’t understand the legislation it writes, and attorneys representing landlords follow the law as written? Sounds like the gripe is with the everincompetent DC Council, not the landlords who are following the law.” Wiener appeared on WAMU 88.5’s Kojo Nnamdi Show to discuss the piece. “I live in a building that is going through the TOPA process right now,” said caller John. “What I’ve learned is that this process is so complicated that a group of tenants certainly couldn’t go through it without the help of an attorney—and they don’t come cheap.” But as Wiener wrote, the so-called voluntary agreements that landlords and current tenants settle on out

out owning the equipment. “Doing The Lord’s work,” tweeted @robpressly. “This is great - the Deep Ellum Brewery in Texas started to do something similar a few years back, and it had an enormously beneficial effect on the local craft-brewing scene,” commented some guy. “This can only be a good thing for the area.” One of Us. In “Protect and Preserve,” former Washington Post reporter Ruben Castaneda explained how the mother of a black D.C. police officer accidentally killed by a white cop kept the incident from becoming the “spark that lit a racial conflagration within” the Metropolitan Police Department. “Really interesting read,” tweeted local TV reporter Mike Conneen. “In @WCP , @ RCastanedaWP speculates that MPD Offcr Baker not shooting at white man has ‘nothing to do w/ racial bias,’” writer Tanya Paperny said on Twitter. “Not ‘speculation,’” Castaneda replied, “but an assessment based on years of covering the DC crime beat.”

of court can make the buildings much more expensive for future renters.

Love Stinks. Apologies to all who took issue with our food feature on smelly items to consume on Valentine’s Day (James Constant’s “I Love Eww”), not because of its conceit, but because it didn’t include the Arsenal’s beef-heart tartare. “how is @TheArsenalDC with their beef heart tartare not on that list?!” tweeted food photographer Samer Farha. “If you must [go out on Valentine’s Day...] you should prob get the beef heart tartare at Bluejacket, which is sadly missing from this list,” said line cook Tristyn Bloom on Twitter. We get it. Raw cow heart for all lovers next Feb. 14.

Can Do. Much less controversial was Jessica Sidman’s piece on the mobile River City Cannery (“Yes We Can”), which allows local breweries to package their product with-

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PUBLiSHeR: Amy Austin eDiTOR: mike mAdden Managing eDiTORS: emily q. hAzzArd, sArAh Anne hughes aRTS eDiTOR: christinA cAuterucci FOOD eDiTOR: jessicA sidmAn CiTy LigHTS eDiTOR: cAroline jones STaFF WRiTeRS: will sommer, AAron wiener STaFF PHOTOgRaPHeR: dArrow montgomery COnTRiBUTing WRiTeRS: john Anderson, mArtin Austermuhle, jonettA rose BArrAs, ericA Bruce, sophiA Bushong, kriston cApps, jeffry cudlin, sAdie dingfelder, mAtt dunn, sArAh godfrey, trey grAhAm, louis jAcoBson, steve kiviAt, chris klimek, ryAn little, christine mAcdonAld, dAve mckennA, BoB mondello, mArcus j. moore, justin moyer, triciA olszewski, mike pAArlBerg, tim regAn, reBeccA j. ritzel, Ally schweitzer, tAmmy tuck, joe wArminsky, michAel j. west, BrAndon wu inTeRnS: jAmes constAnt, morgAn hines OnLine DeveLOPeR: zAch rAusnitz DigiTaL SaLeS ManageR: sArA dick BUSineSS DeveLOPMenT aSSOCiaTe: kevin provAnce SaLeS ManageR: nicholAs diBlAsio SeniOR aCCOUnT exeCUTiveS: melAnie BABB, joe hickling, AliciA merritt aCCOUnT exeCUTiveS: lindsAy BowermAn, chelseA estes, mArk kulkosky MaRkeTing anD PROMOTiOnS ManageR: stephen BAll SaLeS evenTS ManageR: heAther mcAndrews SaLeS anD MaRkeTing aSSOCiaTe: chloe fedynA CReaTive DiReCTOR: jAndos rothstein aRT DiReCTOR: lAuren heneghAn CReaTive SeRviCeS ManageR: BrAndon yAtes gRaPHiC DeSigneR: lisA deloAch OPeRaTiOnS DiReCTOR: jeff Boswell SeniOR aD COORDinaTOR: jAne mArtinAche DigiTaL aD OPS SPeCiaLiST: lori holtz inFORMaTiOn TeCHnOLOgy DiReCTOR: jim gumm SOUTHCOMM: CHieF exeCUTive OFFiCeR: chris ferrell inTeRiM CHieF FinanCiaL OFFiCeR: glynn riddle COnTROLLeR: todd pAtton CHieF MaRkeTing OFFiCeR: susAn torregrossA CReaTive DiReCTOR: heAther pierce DiReCTOR OF COnTenT/OnLine DeveLOPMenT: pAtrick rAins CHieF TeCHnOLOgy OFFiCeR: mAtt locke CHieF OPeRaTiOn OFFiCeR/gROUP PUBLiSHeR: eric norwood DiReCTOR OF DigiTaL SaLeS anD MaRkeTing: dAvid wAlker LOCaL aDveRTiSing: wAshington city pAper, (202) 332-2100, Ads@wAshingtoncitypAper.com vOL. 35, nO. 8, FeBRUaRy 20-26 2015 wAshington city pAper is puBlished every week And is locAted At 1400 eye st. nw, suite 900, wAshington, d.c. 20005. cAlendAr suBmissions Are welcomed; they must Be received 10 dAys Before puBlicAtion. u.s. suBscriptions Are AvAilABle for $250 per yeAr. issue will Arrive severAl dAys After puBlicAtion. BAck issues of the pAst five weeks Are AvAilABle At the office for $1 ($5 for older issues). BAck issues Are AvAilABle By mAil for $5. mAke checks pAyABle to wAshington city pAper or cAll for more options. © 2015 All rights reserved. no pArt of this puBlicAtion mAy Be reproduced without the written permission of the editor.

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DISTRICTLINE

DaviD Carr, 1956–2015

The former Washington City Paper editor died suddenly last week. Here’s how we’ll remember him. From 1995 to 2000, David Carr ran Washington City Paper, inspiring a generation of journalists in D.C. and elsewhere. He left the District, and the paper, for New York 15 years ago, but even today, Carr still helps drive City Paper’s style and spirit. Here’s how some former City Paper staffers and contributors will remember Carr, who died last Thursday night of what New York medical examiners later determined was lung cancer. Read a longer version online at washingtoncitypaper.com/go/DavidCarr. —Mike Madden

Former Washington City Paper editor David Carr at his going-away party in April 2000.

Jonetta Rose Barras, freelance writer: i remember when i heard that David Carr, a former crack addict, was to assume editori-

Dave Nuttycombe

Brett Anderson, food writer at the New Orleans Times-Picayune: David hired me to write about pop music for the Twin Cities Reader in 1992. i’d recently failed out of college. He’d recently emerged from rehab. i’d never written a newspaper article or conducted an interview before. a few years later, he asked me, “What would you think about adding restaurant reviewing to your book of business?” (i don’t remember the exact sentence, but “book of business” was a Carrism i’m certain he used.) He was calling from D.C., where i would follow him to City Paper and start writing about restaurants. i didn’t eat rare meat or tomatoes at the time. i’d never tried sushi before, or even pho, and i thought foie gras was a vegetable. He named the column he gave me Young & Hungry. He insisted i learn how to properly hold chopsticks during an early review meal at a vietnamese restaurant in arlington. Later, we went to the Black Cat. The MakeUp was playing, if memory serves. Amy Austin, City Paper publisher: He was a master at unconditional love, unconditional wrath at fallacies, and unconditional gratitude.

my own personal search to understand how i became who i am. Sure there were fights; what writer hasn’t had a squabble with an editor? But in the end, what i produced was always better because of him—his insights, his mastery of language and command of the written word. During his tenure, City Paper began its relationship with the District’s african-american community. it had a storied history of getting up close and personal with black leaders, but many folks were really uncomfortable with the publication. David began a series of in-your-community lunches. City Paper staff went in the ‘hood to eat, but also to meet ordinary people, so we could write more authentically about them and the city. i think of City Paper under Carr as a glorious period for the publication, the city, and for me. i am devastated by his death.

al control of City Paper, i made up my mind i would not cooperate. i was going to hate him with a passion. it wasn’t just his addiction; he also was stepping into the shoes of an editor i believed to be irreplaceable—Jack Shafer. My decision to become a Carr hater lasted all of one week. i couldn’t help but like

him, mostly because he was a brilliant editor. He was fun and funny, warm and inspiring. He gave me the freedom to explore my ideas, guided me in making them clearer, stronger and, in some instances, more provocative. Under David, i wrote some of my best pieces about District politics, black leadership, and

Jelani Cobb, New Yorker contributor and director of the africana Studies Center at the University of Connecticut: One of the things i loved most about Carr was his utter lack of assumptions of judgment. He approached all kinds of stories as just what they were, chronicles of the hopes and failings of flawed people who at any other point in their lives may have had a completely different story to tell. He also diversified the newspaper without needing to make some grand pronouncement about it. He simply went out and found writers who could tell stories that weren’t being told, or at least not being told from that perspective, and brought us into the fold. There was a huge deal of animosity toward City Paper during that era, particularly from black Washingtonians. When i first heard from Ta-Nehisi Coates that the paper was looking for interns, i thought he was crazy for suggesting i apply. around that time, Carr ran a cover story called “Why BET Sucks,” and i braced myself for more white snark about black shortcomings, but i was surprised to see that it was written by Holly Bass, a black writer, and written from a perspective that articulated many of the criticisms people i knew had for the network. i didn’t expect to

washingtoncitypaper.com february 20, 2015 7

DISTRICTLINE see something like that in City Paper. I learned tremendously from Carr. He could be unsparing in criticism. I once wrote a piece with a quote from another writer, and he sent me an all-caps edit that said “THIS LINE AIN’T WORTH STEALING.” But he was also thoroughly encouraging and funnier than most people knew. I just checked my emails and realized that as late as 2013, Carr was still putting me in touch with editors who might be interested in my work. At that point I hadn’t written for him in at least ten years. He was sharply unsentimental in his writing, but he had a great capacity for sympathy as well.

Eddie Dean, freelance writer: Carr was a huge-hearted soul and an inspiration. He could yell like a crazed drill sergeant and in the next breath comfort you with the bear hug of a big brother. Having him as a boss, I always wanted to work my hardest, because I knew he was working even harder. He always made my stories better, asking questions and cackling with glee at a lede that showed promise, chopping my excess verbiage like a weed whacker, and adding a dollop of pure Carr to make a sentence sing. His gargantuan love of life was contagious and he stoked a flame in all us writers even while he drove himself to a frazzle. He was our guide, our fierce leader, and our tender friend. And as his post-City Paper career proved, he was a hell of a writer with a singular voice and made millions of readers his friends as well. John Dugan, freelance writer and editor: Carr was a master of the compliment. He offered up his jealousy for anyone such as I who could play in a band and write well. That’s the kind of compliment you keep in your pocket forever, just in case you need it. When closing the issue on Wednesday nights, the editor was supposed to flip through the layout pages to be sent to the printer and sign off on them. In a loose tradition, the cover story writer brought in beer for the remaining edit staff and production artists and took a final look at their story. At some point, Carr got in the habit of asking me to sign off on the pages instead, which was interesting as I was drinking and he wasn’t. It gave him a chance to visit with his family or jaw with the writer, but it also was like the captain standing on the deck saying, “Go ahead and take the wheel, this paper is as much yours as mine.” David Carr treated a lot of us like first mates and that’s something we’ll never forget. Garance Franke-Ruta, Yahoo News Washington editor: Though I don’t think I fully understand it at the time, in the late 1990s, City Paper

A City Paper edited by Carr from Jan. 30, 1998 functioned in the journalism ecosystem as the metro desk of the magazine world—a place where up-and-coming writers earned their chops and polished their styles covering local issues before launching careers writing for major national publications. As much of a mentor as he could be, I learned pretty quickly that his way of operating in the world could be no model for me as a woman making my way in journalism. Macho swagger is not a woman’s game, and women who are feared in the office are rarely, as Carr was, also loved. One female colleague at City Paper said she considered it a personal win if she managed to get through a meeting with him without tearing up. When he pushed his writers he wanted them to push back or take the tongue-lashing they deserved, not to collapse or cry, and toughness of spirit is something he cultivated in them. It’s no accident that in later years, many of those he worked with became figures in opinion media or cultural criticism, and that he himself emerged as a simultaneous critic of dunderheads in and outside the media and a powerful advocate for his paper and for his profession. And in many ways, Carr’s later journalism career, his post-WCP, post-editing career, allowed him to be his best self, continuing to mentor youthful hopes without having to confront youthful missteps or prose on a day-to-day basis. He was a hell of a writer, but that was as much because he was such an astute observer and creative thinker as because he was a gorgeous stylist. He was a great proponent of the “show, don’t tell,” school of journalism. But it was in his telling as much as his showing that he shone.

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Natalie Hopkinson, freelance writer: David battled personal demons and found redemption, just like Marion Barry, who made his comeback in the mayor’s office just when David was continuing his comeback in journalism after battles with cocaine. A Ph.D. might explain Barry’s rise with a phrase like, “challenged prevailing narratives of race and power and D.C.’s colonial status.” I remember David describing Barry as “a walking, talking middle finger to Congress.” I like his version better. Probably David’s biggest legacy was teaching me about the importance of voice and the power of first-person narratives. He put the final edits on one essay I published in City Paper about losing a local jazz station and losing a boyfriend in a D.C. snowstorm. My ex read the piece, and reached out to me after nearly two years of not speaking. We are still married today and have two kids here in D.C. Stephanie Mencimer, Mother Jones staff writer: David Carr was a bundle of genius wrapped up in the most unlikely packaging. Behind the guy who often looked like a derelict was a formidable intellect and an unmatchable gift for language. Carr has been a steady figure in my life for 20 years. For someone who had had such a messy personal history, he was a rock as a friend. Even after he launched into media superstardom, and it seemed he knew just about everyone worth knowing, he was always there when it counted. When I got engaged to my then-editor, Erik Wemple, Carr was the very first person we told. He was in my wedding, and gave the appropriately off-color rehearsal dinner toast. When my mother-in-law dropped dead in the supermarket unexpectedly, he was there for the funeral. He scheduled his whole summer last year to make sure he could be around to celebrate Erik’s 50th birthday. He loved my children and they love him. In spite of the manic pace of both his work and social life, David knew what was important. He was fiercely loyal and just generally fun to have around. Loud and outspoken, he was never afraid to put his foot in his mouth. Two summers ago, at a lake in the Adirondacks, I introduced him to a co-worker and her husband, who was wearing a life jacket on the beach. Carr razzed him mercilessly about sporting the vest on dry land—only to learn later that the guy couldn’t swim. He’d try speaking his loud, terrible Spanish to a street vendor, only to be told later that the vendor was from South Asia. At those moments, he could laugh at himself, and no one ever held those sorts of things against him because Carr’s gaffes were invariably accompanied by such enthusiasm and effusive interest

in whomever he was talking to at the time it was impossible not to love him. Over the past few years, Carr has had a bit of a haunted look about him. He’d lost weight. His health problems seemed to be dogging him more. I think everyone who knew him well recognized, at least subconsciously, that Carr was not going to be on this earth long enough to need a rocking chair. But I think we also had some collective denial about his mortality. To use a cliché he wouldn’t approve of, Carr genuinely was a force of nature. I think maybe we assumed he could go on like that forever, pulling the all-nighters, smoking, drinking gallons of coffee, working like a fiend, and talking, talking, and talking. But of course, he couldn’t. And so here we are, devastated, grieving, missing our irreplaceable friend. Brad McKee, editor of Landscape Architecture: Certainly, my vocabulary is richer for having known David Carr. In my early weeks starting to work for him in the winter of 1998, he’d let loose with one of his many idioms, or Carrisms (‘…over the windmill and through the clown’s mouth…’), and I’d stiffen and think, What did he just say?, and feel somewhat stupid. Then the first time I spent together with him and the lovely Jill Rooney Carr, I noted that she, too, didn’t seem to understand what he was saying half the time, and she had married him. So I quit worrying about it. I happened to text David the week before he died to tell him, “off of nothing,” as he would say—meaning unrelated to anything— that ever since I’d worked for him and went on eventually to run my own shop, I’ve tried, consciously and not, to be the kind of boss he was, and that I’d had a moment that day with my office family, never mind the details, when I felt as if I was at least partly there. He was above all an utterly decent person. When I was the arts editor at City Paper in the fall of 1999, I needed surgery suddenly that kept me out of the office for several weeks and away from the circus of freelance critics and reporters who needed various levels of handholding for each issue. I remember his words when I told him. He said: ‘You go. Don’t worry about us. We’ll worry about you.’ He came to see me at the hospital and brought me a decadent breakfast biscuit. Several weeks later, he called to say he was sending home a trifling make-work assignment for me to edit and send back. The reason was, if I recall correctly, it was Day 29 of my absence, and he wanted to keep me working, technically speaking, and off the disability pay that would kick in on Day 30. The next week, I said I was better and ready to come back. He differed. I was to stay home another week, he said, feel all better for

DISTRICTLINE a week, and then return to work. I was of course deeply touched, but I suppose not entirely surprised. Before the surgery, I’d been hobbling around for a few weeks sick and tired, not knowing what was up. One afternoon, I shut my office door and curled up the floor. There was a knock at the door. David opened the door and was holding a slice of pizza. ‘Oh, you’re sleeping,’ he said. ‘I’ll just leave this here for you.’

Elisa Nader, novelist: I joined City Paper around the same time David Carr did. I entered classifieds and matches ads into the system, and David gave me a an opportunity to write. I remember writing a piece on the band Clutch. One of the members asked me to delete the word “fuck” from all of his quotes, because he didn’t want his mom to get upset. I went to David’s office and asked him if I could (I was very young and totally inexperienced). David looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “Hell no,” he said. “You’re reporting the truth. And the truth is he says ‘fuck’ a lot.” Seemingly small interaction, but that has stuck with me. As a young writer, it was a profound lesson to learn. David was a wonderful, no bullshit guy. He taught me a lot, and also scared me a little. Sometimes the best do that. Dave Nuttycombe, journalist and filmmaker: Shortly after he was hired as City Paper’s editor, I found myself in the bathroom with David Carr. I was headed out and he was coming in, so I quickly detoured to the sink to wash up. Had to make a good impression on the new boss. As he took his place at the urinal, David made some comment about how my mother would be so proud of me, washing my hands like a good boy should. I made the witty response, “Yes, but 25 times an hour?” He laughed—much louder and longer than I thought the joke warranted. I didn’t know then about David’s battles and why a little joke about OCD and obsession might tickle him so. David was certainly obsessed. He was interested in everything, everywhere, all the time. David was FOMO before that was an acronym, and that’s how he ran the paper. One of David’s early innovations was to move City Paper, finally, into the digital age. The owners in Chicago hated the Internet. So initially, City Paper would not post any stories online. Rather, we created a music-centric site, inDC, which I oversaw. We launched a message board, inDCent eXposure, that quickly drew a crowd. Eventually, more content from the paper made it to the site, and the Web became a bigger and bigger deal. So, in true FOMO style, David moved on to a purely Internet business,

Kurt Anderson’s Inside.com. After bankruptcies, redesigns, and office moves, inDC has vanished. But what has survived for me are hundreds of friends I made through the site, many of whom I actually know in that thing we call real life. So, thank you very much, David Carr.

Tricia Olszewksi, City Paper film critic: Nov. 18, 1998, was not only my first day as a proofreader for City Paper, it was my first job in a newsroom of any sort. To ensure the day was as nerve-wracking as possible, I showed up late. David Carr sat me down before I started. I have no idea what he said. This was a Wednesday, a routinely bustling, boisterous day at the paper in an environment already foreign to this Buffalo-born rabbit. And I could sense I was having a (one-sided) conversation with someone formidable. The hours kept blurring until Carr approached my desk to look at the cover story— which was titled “I’m O.K. Eurotrash.” “What do you think?” he asked. Whatever my answer was, I guarantee it ended with a question mark. “Uh, I liked it? It’s good?” I’d been too frazzled hunting for errors to form an opinion. (I do seem to remember thinking the paper would be receiving lots and lots of letters.) Eventually I started getting small bylines, calendar picks and such. I never stopped feeling intimidated by Carr. But then the compliment came: “Your writing is gorgeous.” Those words meant everything to me, even before Carr’s talent, personality, integrity, and tenacity dazzled the New York Times and then the nation. They’ve kept me going, they renew me when my faith fades, they give me hope—particularly after reading his brutally honest memoir, The Night of the Gun— that when I’m feeling rock-bottom down, it doesn’t mean that I’m out. Guy Raz, NPR host: In 1998, I got my first break in journalism out of college as a freelancer for City Paper. David Carr was already a legend, and I was intimidated as hell by him. I mustered the courage to pitch a cover story. To my amazement, he bit. The piece was on the decline and fall of Georgetown University’s radio station and the lefties, drop outs and dreamers who ran it in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Carr was a fierce and demanding editor. My unedited story, filled with spelling mistakes and errors in detail, was a disaster just days before publication. Carr sat me down in his office and handed me a marked-up copy of the draft. I could barely see my typewritten prose. The margins were filled with questions, suggestions, clarifications and corrected spelling. I was mortified. He wasn’t gentle about it—

The City Paper cover from Oct. 8, 1999 he didn’t give me a pass for being a kid— but he was humane and tough and encouraging. I’d worked on the story for months and wondered what the hell I was thinking trying to do journalism. I felt like a complete fraud. Days later, it was published. I headed over to the office to thank him. “Good job, kid,” he said. “What are you working on next?” That’s all I needed to hear. It meant the world to me that he approved. Jandos Rothstein, City Paper creative director: David Carr did not send a writer or an editor a discreet email when he wanted to express displeasure, but instead barked them into his office—and then, even from behind the closed door, everybody knew what was being said—which I suppose at least offered a view of what to expect when your time in the hot seat inevitably came. His harshest criticism of me came early in my tenure: “So, people around here have noticed that your ego is a bit out of alignment with your talent”—a comment all the more cutting because it was true. That was not a threat of termination, though I might have taken it as such; David never minced words. But that’s how David managed the economics of an enterprise like City Paper that hires with a philosophy of “get them young, get them talented, get them cheap.” Like a lot of young City Paper employees, I had been hired for a position that I was, at least on paper, unqualified for. David was not going to let his ever-churning and inexperienced staff get in the way of excellence. In the process he helped many of us become excellent.

Deborah Rouse, freelance writer: David brought me in as an intern in 1996 when I was 26, and I went on to become an editorial assistant and contributing writer. I remember how no-nonsense he was, but still so very kind. I never doubted that I would become a better writer under his tutelage. One thing I loved about David is that he let you write what you wanted to write. He didn’t censor you or hold you back. It was pure joy for a writer. I had a bad habit of sprinkling curse words in my articles, and there was not one time David edited them out, unless they just didn’t fit with the story. The one compliment David gave me, I have carried with me my entire life. “You’re a semibeautiful writer,” he said to me one afternoon in front of his office. Semi-beautiful. He might as well have handed me a Pulitzer, because coming from David, those words were priceless to a young writer. Those words told me, “You’re good, you’re on your way, but you have more work to do.” David let me know I had what it takes, but I needed to refine my craft, practice it, make it the best it could be. Jake Tapper, CNN anchor and chief Washington correspondent: [Last week was] actually the 17th anniversary of the first mistake I made while working for David Carr. In the story “Rubbing Out Nine Lives,” about the debate over euthanizing cats, published on Feb. 13, 1998, I misattributed a quote. I had screwed up. And my brand-new boss in my first fulltime job in journalism, City Paper editor David Carr, made sure I knew this was no small thing. Think the Code of Hammurabi as voiced by Zuul with a Minnesota twang. “The language you’re looking for is ‘Due to a reporter error,’” he said when I tried to explain how I had confused the names of the two women in the piece. I remember the mistake to this day (obviously), and I hear his voice echoing with every journalistic error I have made since. And I know that each one of them is no small thing. Having him as an editor, a friend, and a mentor was a tremendous blessing. Those of us who worked for David knew when we did good, and we knew when we made a mistake. This was not always a pleasant experience. It was always an important and meaningful one. He stood for excellence in journalism. That did not mean he thought our job was all about boring lectures; quite the contrary. He wanted our prose to pop and crackle (his edits made me appear a much better writer than I was). He wanted our stories to grab readers by the ears and drag them into our pages. He wanted journalism to engage and entertain, CP and mostly he wanted it to matter.

washingtoncitypaper.com february 20, 2015 9

DISTRICTLINE

Tomorrow’s history today: This was the week it snowed for real.

City Desk

Litmus Test

For this map, DC Action for Children used a weighted scale “to provide more information in progress shifts over time in the four respective result categories”: below basic (1), basic (2), proficient (3), and advanced (4). Most schools have a weighted score between 2 and 3, and the scores are relative to other schools or clusters.

KI DS

CO U N T

This year, D.C. public and charter school students will take an assessment exam aligned with Common Core Standards for the first time. Gone is the District of Columbia Comprehensive Assessment System, or DC CAS, used since 2006 to measure how students were performing in math and reading and later in science and composition. While the tests were administered to children in the second to tenth grades, local education nonprofit DC Action for Children stresses the importance of scores for third-grade students. “Reading and math proficiency by the end of third grade can be a makeor-break benchmark in a child’s educational development,” the nonprofit said in a report. “If children do not achieve proficiency by the end of third grade, they are significantly less likely to graduate from high school.” With that in mind, DC KIDS COUNT, a data project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation managed by DC Action for Children, recently mapped the District neighborhood clusters where third-grade students made the largest gains in reading between 2007 and 2014 and the areas that saw the largest decline. Turner Elementary School—a public school in the Douglas-Shipley Terrace cluster that saw a drop in reading proficiency—is one of several elementary schools where DCPS now employs an assistant

principal of literacy and a reading specialist. Hours at Malcolm X Elementary School, located in the same low-performing cluster, and C.W. Harris in Marshall Heights, an area that saw a moderate decline, have been extended to provide additional instruction time in math and reading. The D.C. Public Charter School Board, meanwhile, plans to partner with the D.C. Public Library for a lending library pilot project aimed at improving student reading levels. —Sarah Anne Hughes

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Gear Prudence: I spend a lot of mental energy on my morning commute thinking about what kind of sarcastic things I can yell at the cyclists who whiz by me when I’m stopped at an intersection waiting for the light to turn green. Not only is it a safety issue, but if we cyclists want to be respected road users, then we should all follow the rules of the road. What can I say to publicly embarrass them and cause them to seriously reflect upon the impacts of their carelessness? I would also like the other cyclists stopped at the red light with me to shake my hand for being such a heroic advocate of safe bike culture. What can law-abiding cyclists do to promote better bike culture? —Slinging Nasty Insults Probably Protects You Dear SNIPPY: I get it. When cyclists act like jackasses, you can’t help but feel that you’re being tarred by their bad behavior. It’s like when a reckless speeding driver jumps the curb and crashes into a building, how every other driver thinks, “Gosh, this sure makes all drivers everywhere look bad. If only some stranger had called him a jerk once, he would have rethought his ways and this whole nasty business could have been avoided!” Oh, this doesn’t happen? Huh. If you want to call someone a dick, call him a dick. It’s a free country. Just don’t mistakenly think it will result in him reassessing his entire transportation life. A snide remark is far more likely to get you a snide remark in return than it is to bring about an epiphany. Bicyclists have been criticizing other bicyclists as long there’s been other bicyclists to criticize, and to little avail. I doubt bad bicycling has continued simply due to a lack of sufficiently mean retorts. It’s not your job to convince every bicyclist to not do reckless stuff. Model good behavior and others might follow your example. Or they won’t. Additionally, lobby for better bike infrastructure, which has been shown to lead to greater compliance with traffic laws and improve overall orderliness. Behavior on the road is born of complicated structural and societal factors, but just as honking at some wacko on the Beltway won’t ensure he uses a turn signal next time he changes lanes, cursing out someone for running a red light won’t guarantee that he’ll wait next time. While it can be frustrating to see others acting recklessly and antisocially, you can only control your own actions, so focus on those. If everyone who didn’t want to bike around assholes promised never to bike like an asshole, there’d be a lot fewer —GP biking assholes. Gear Prudence is Brian McEntee, who blogs at talesfromthesharrows.blogspot.com and tweets at @sharrowsdc. Got a question about bicycling? Email gearprudence@washingtoncitypaper.com. 12 february 20, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

SAVAGELOVE My father is 65 years old and has been a devoted husband to my mother who has been battling a medical condition for the past 30 years—a condition that prevents her from engaging in sexual activity of any kind. He has not had sex in all this time and is desperately frustrated. He’s not internet savvy—quite the opposite—and has taken to calling me across the continent from Michigan to ask for my help in getting him laid. At first, I just thought it was gross. But now, a couple of years and awkward conversations later, I wish I had some good advice for him—if only so that we never have to speak of this again. Is there a way that a man (once again, not internet savvy—it’s impossible to emphasize that point too much) can legally find someone to have sex with in Michigan? I will read your answer to him over the phone. —The Good Son “It’s awesome that TGS has gotten over his initial squick and is stepping up to help his dad,” said Savannah Sly, a “professional fantasy fulfiller” and a sex workers’ rights activist with the Sex Workers Outreach Project (swopusa.org). “His dad will have the best success by hooking up with an escort. Escorting is not technically illegal, as the money paid is for time and companionship only—and anything that happens sexually is a decision made by two consenting adults.” Sly recommends finding an independent provider whose website doesn’t use sexually explicit language and specifically states that payment is for companionship only. But Dad can’t look at websites—or Dad can’t be trusted to look at websites—so Sly suggests that you do the looking for Dad. “TGS could visit these sites and print out the advertisements of escorts in his dad’s area who have phone numbers: eros.com/ us/michigan/eros.htm and michigan.datecheck.com/escorts.asp,” said Sly. “Dad can look at the ads and then call a provider himself to arrange an appointment. TGS should let his dad know that some escorts will not see gentlemen who are new to the hobby.

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Everyone has their own methods of screening clients, and TGS’s dad should comply with the safety-screening standards of whomever he chooses to call. This is for the safety of the provider and her clients.” Is there a way for your dad—or for you— to do a safety screening of your own? “Some escorts have reviews online,” said Sly, “and reviews are a good way to verify that someone is a provider with a history of being professional and reliable.” A final thought from Sly: “There is nothing inherently wrong or violent about escorting, but our culture is really screwed up about sexuality and intimacy, and there is a lot of misunderstanding and stigma shrouding the adult industry. If TGS or his dad has cold feet about this, I suggest googling the phrase ‘sex worker.’ Read materials written by people who actually work in the adult industry—they’ll find there are many experiences and perspectives they probably did not know about, and a little reading may allay their apprehensions.” Follow Savannah Sly —Dan on Twitter at @SavannahSly.

“His dad will have the best success by hooking up with an escort.” I’m a heterosexual, cisgender male in college. I’ve been in a monogamous relationship with a girl (18, cisgender, bisexual, also in college) for a little more than two months, and the sex is not frequent enough for me—we’ve had sex three times total. The core of the issue is that I’m a 20-year-old guy with a typically high libido, and her libido is low to nonexistent. When she’s drunk, she suddenly gets very horny and craves my dick. When she’s sober, she is very mellow.

Is your girlfriend seeing a therapist? Because if she isn’t, LAAP, she should be—and I suspect she isn’t, because you probably would’ve mentioned it. Horny, 20-year-old boyfriends are wonderful things—I remember what those were like—but a horny, 20-year-old boyfriend (and the sexual hopes, expectations, and pressures that come bundled with one) may not be the best thing for a young woman struggling with body issues and the double head zap of having been both raped and in an emotionally abusive relationship. I don’t think you should dump her because she’s not putting out at the clip you’d like—don’t present it that way, LAAP, because you don’t want her fucking you under duress—but you should have a conversation about what she really wants from you. If she wants a fully intimate relationship, i.e., a romantic connection that’s both emotional and sexual, her inhibitions (her traumas) are preventing her from having that, and you’re right that booze isn’t a realistic long-term fix. And as boozing is as likely to lead to a depressive episode as it is to waken her libido, it’s not a great short-term fix either. But working with a therapist is a realistic fix—a good therapist can help her find the strength inside herself that she’s currently finding in a pitcher of margaritas. But if all she wants from you is your time, your attention, and your emotional support,

LAAP, tell her she can have all of that without the pressure of being your “girlfriend.” The last thing you should want—and the last thing she needs—is for her to be getting strategically drunk so that she can fuck you just enough to keep you by her side. Reassure her that you’ll be at her side whether you’re her boyfriend or not—but say that only if you mean it—and encourage her to get the professional help that she needs. —Dan I read last week’s column with disbelief progressing to full-on incredulity. Full marks to PANICKED—the mom whose son is looking at violent porn—for trying to be a good, understanding parent, but what the fuck was her 15year-old son thinking when he shared his violent gang-rape fantasies with his parents? I was enjoying bondage porn at 15, but I certainly didn’t talk to my mother about it—nor did I speak with her about the many illegal drugs I was consuming or my masturbation routines. There are some things that parents don’t need to know! Transitioning to adulthood means not telling Mommy everything—and the idea of growing up into a safe, sane, sensible BDSMer under Mommy’s watchful eye seems icky to me. Some things you just gotta do by yourself. —Sane Adult Consenting Kinkster Thanks for sharing, SACK, but let’s cut this kid some slack: PANICKED’s son may have opened up to Mommy because he was freaked out by his desires and wanted help. And speaking of help, here are two more recommendations from Savage Love readers: Scarleteen (scarleteen.com), a sex-positive, kinkpositive, queer-inclusive sex-ed resource/ oasis-of-sanity for teenagers and young adults, and the terrific book When Someone You Love Is Kinky by Dossie Easton and —Dan Catherine A. Liszt. Send your Savage Love questions to mail@savagelove.net.

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I suspect that she has some barriers up and alcohol disinhibits her. She has body issues, a history with a rapist, an emotionally abusive exboyfriend, and depression. With the barriers down, I suspect she has a high sex drive. The alcohol, however, is obviously not a long-term solution, especially because if it doesn’t make her horny, it can make her have a depressive episode. Do you think there is anything I can do to coax the barriers down while she’s sober? I like her a lot, so I’m not willing to dump her over this. —Libido And Alcohol Problems

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Living the Dream How a local nonprofit helps college become reality for undocumented immigrants By AAron Wiener College was out of the question for Sadhana Singh. It’s not that she wasn’t a strong student: She finished 11th in her high school graduating class. But as she moved through her senior year, her thoughts were on finding work after graduation. Her chances at postsecondary education, she was sure, were nil. “It was completely zero,” she says. “I knew from the beginning of our situation, and I was always thinking of another path that I was going to do after high school. I always figured that college was not in the cards for me.” Singh’s family immigrated to Monroe, Ga., from Guyana, in South America, in 1999, when she was 13. Her parents had gotten tourist visas for the family, which soon expired. “They weren’t educated enough to go through the proper channels to get even student visas,” she says. Instead, the family found itself living in the U.S. without legal authorization. Undocumented immigrants are ineligible for federal financial aid like Pell Grants. Singh also had the misfortune of landing in a state with particularly restrictive policies: Georgia prohibits undocumented immigrants from attending five of the state’s most competitive public colleges and universities, including the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech. At other public institutions, undocumented students are ineligible for in-state tuition. And so, lacking the funds to pay her own way through an expensive college, Singh found a job as a laboratory technician at an archaeological firm in Stone Mountain, Ga. Her father, the only member of the family who was able to get a driver’s license, drove her 45 minutes each way. She worked there for nine years. One day last year, a coworker of Singh’s was listening to NPR and heard a story about a new scholarship program for people like her. He told her about it, and she immediately applied. In the fall, she enrolled at Trinity Washington University, in Edgewood, where she’s now most of the way through her freshman year. At 28, she’s older than most of her classmates, and she’s found urban living—she resides on campus—to be an adjustment after her Georgia upbringing. But she’s loving her time at Trinity, and it’s loving her back. In her first semester, she earned a 4.0 grade point average and made the dean’s list. Singh’s story, or some version of it, is

shared by 22 other students at Trinity, and nearly 800 around the country. Those numbers should double next year and triple the year after. All of the success stories behind those figures were made possible by an unlikely alliance between an undocumented immigrant from Ecuador, a businessman and Democratic party activist from Texas, the former U.S. secretary of commerce under George W. Bush, and the chief executive of what at the time was D.C.’s most powerful media company. Don Graham wasn’t new to college-support programs for underserved populations. In 1999, Graham—the longtime publisher and CEO of the Washington Post, and the CEO of Graham Holdings Company since Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought the Post in 2013— became founding chairman of the District of Columbia College Access Program, which provides D.C. public high school students with counseling and financial support as they apply to and attend college. Early in the program, DC-CAP’s president, Argelia Rodriguez, brought to Graham’s attention the challenges faced by undocumented students who couldn’t obtain federal tuition grants. “I thought, ‘Well, that’s going to be super tough,’” Graham recalls. “Our aim was to get everyone in D.C. public schools to go to college.” At the time, Graham says, there still weren’t that many undocumented students in D.C. high schools. Over the years, though, the numbers rose, particularly in schools near heavily Latino Columbia Heights and Mount Pleasant. In 2001, Congress had first considered the DREAM Act, which would provide legal residency to certain immigrants brought into the country illegally as minors who later graduated from high school. Immigration activists increasingly focused their attention on assisting these so-called DREAMers, who had not themselves decided to immigrate and who could bring economic benefits to the country if they were permitted to attend college and work legally. “I became aware of how many DREAMers there were in D.C.,” says Graham, “which brought my attention to how many they were in the country.” (Estimates vary on the number of DREAMers in the country, but as of Dec. 31, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had approved nearly 640,000 ap-

washingtoncitypaper.com february 20, 2015 15

Photograph by Darrow Montgomery

plications for deferred deporDream On: Singh is completing tation under President Barack her freshman year thanks to a Obama’s Deferred Action for new scholarship program. Childhood Arrivals program, which has similar eligibility criteria.) Graham started talking about the DREAMers issue to Henry Muñoz III, a San Antonio, Texas, architecture and design firm CEO and Democratic party leader, and Carlos Gutierrez, who had run the Commerce Department under the second President Bush. Muñoz soon introduced him to a young activist named Gaby Pacheco, a native of Ecuador who in 2010 had led a 1,500-mile march from Miami to D.C. to promote the DREAM Act. Pacheco’s high school experience was similar to Singh’s. “My college counselor told me that I wouldn’t be able to go to college” due to her undocumented status, Pacheco remembers. “My adviser told me, ‘Just look forward to finding a job after high school.’” She eventually succeeded in attending Miami Dade College, where she began her activism. In February 2014, Graham, Muñoz, Gutierrez, Pacheco, and other partners launched TheDream.US, a scholarship fund that covers tuition, up to $25,000 over four years, for students who tracting low-income, largely minority stucan’t receive federal aid due to their immigra- dents from the D.C. area. Some alumni put tion status. It works with partner institutions up a fight, but McGuire is now widely credacross the country, principally public colleges ited with rescuing a school that was on the and universities where students must be eligi- verge of collapse. ble for in-state tuition in order to receive the McGuire also wanted to bring undocuscholarship. mented students into the fold, but she wasn’t Graham wanted to work with a school sure how, given the unavailability of federal in D.C., where he lives and the program is funding. “We don’t have a very big endowbased. But most local schools, like George- ment, so trying to figure out how to do that town and George Washington and American was a big challenge for Trinity,” she says. University, are private institutions that cost “And then two or three years ago, Don came far more than the scholarship can cover. to me and said, ‘Would you be interested in “We looked for a place with a low price but participating in this program?’ It was music a pretty high graduation rate,” says Graham. to my ears, because it was the solution to the “And year in, year out, Trinity has done really problem we’d been wrestling with.” well by D.C. public school students.” Now, 23 students with TheDream.US Trinity wasn’t a conventional choice. For scholarships attend Trinity, comprising nearone thing, it’s a private school with a $22,000 ly 10 percent of this year’s freshman class. annual tuition. For another, its full-time un- The school discounts the portion of their tudergraduate program is open only to women. ition not covered by the scholarships. These But under President Pat McGuire, Trinity DREAMers are mostly commuter students had long brought a social mission to its aca- from the D.C. area, since Trinity can’t afford to demic program. Founded in 1897 as a female comp their room and board. Some graduated counterpart to neighboring, then-all-male from predominantly Latino high schools where Catholic University, Trinity thrived for most Trinity had been recruiting previously, like the of a century and boasted alumni like Nancy Columbia Heights Education Campus. Pelosi (class of 1962) and Kathleen Sebelius But for a school that’s focused on local stu(1970). But with the advent of widespread dents—more than half of the student body co-ed higher education, enrollment plum- is from D.C., according to McGuire, and anmeted, and prestige went along with it. Upon other 30 percent is from Maryland—Trinibecoming president in 1989, McGuire sought ty is becoming something of a national draw to turn the school’s fortunes around by at- for DREAMers. That’s because for students 16 february 20, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

like Singh, who have no options in their home states and don’t qualify for in-state tuition elsewhere, Trinity is one of the few places that will actually take them. Andrea Pinillos fits the more typical mold for Trinity. After immigrating to Miami in 2002, when she was 11, her family soon settled in Manassas, Va., where they still live. Pinillos graduated from high school in 2010 and started taking classes at Northern Virginia Community College. But because her immigration status disqualified her from instate tuition, she could only afford to take one class at a time—“it was a crazy amount of money,” she says—and then she stopped going altogether. She worked as a waitress, hoping she could save up to take two or three more classes at the college. It didn’t work out. Last year, she found herself in her fourth year waiting tables. And then, one night, she was watching the news on Univision’s D.C. affiliate, and Pacheco appeared on her screen. “Gaby Pacheco was on TV promoting the scholarship and asking people to apply,” she says. “So I applied the next day.” Four days a week, she drives to Vienna and rides the Metro to Brookland. The round trip takes her three hours, but she says, “It’s nothing compared to what I’m getting, the full ride. It’s worth it.” Like Singh, she’s on the dean’s list. Graham isn’t surprised by the strong academic record of the DREAMers thus far. He

sums up their motivation with one word: deprivation. “They’d been told they can’t go to college,” he says. “And for at least some DREAMers, their reaction is, ‘I’m going to work harder and show you that I really deserve to go to college.’” TheDream.US has raised more than $45 million from individual donors and foundations like the New York-based Pershing Square Foundation, which pledged $10 million last month, and now works with over 50 partner institutions. Graham hopes to continue multiplying those numbers in future years, though he acknowledges he can never help the vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants who struggle to attend college. McGuire, for her part, plans to continue enrolling about 25 DREAMers a year, giving the school a total of around 100 once the program enters its fourth year. She hopes other private schools, those with greater resources than Trinity, will follow its lead. “If a school like Trinity can figure it out,” she says, “then surely much wealthier institutions can figure it out.” Singh and Pinillos are both majoring in communications and plan to become journalists. Singh wants to work as an investigative reporter, ideally in the Middle East. And Pinillos? She hopes to emerge from Trinity the same way she ended up there, on SpanCP ish-language TV news.

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minority report

Title Fight: Mary Cheh went public with her objections to the “Empowering Males of Color” initiative.

The D.C. Council isn’t sure what to think about a school for black and Latino boys. By Will Sommer There’s no controversy over whether the District’s black and Latino boys need help. They score worse on standardized tests than their white counterparts. They’re less likely to attend school, and even when they do, they take longer to graduate. Just how the District government should help them, though, has created a lot of con-

troversy. Last month, D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson, backed by Mayor Muriel Bowser, announced a $20 million plan to help minority boys. A currently undisclosed amount of money from the “Empowering Males of Color” initiative will go to starting an all-boys school in Ward 7 or 8. Who could object to that, right? As it turns

18 february 20, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

out, Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh. Three weeks after Henderson’s announcement, Cheh’s office published a letter she sent to Attorney General Karl Racine about Henderson’s new program. Her question for Racine: Is this even legal? The sight of Cheh, who represents many of the District’s wealthiest (and whitest) residents, questioning a program meant to help some of its poorest isn’t what LL would call a good look. The dispute has opened a gap between Cheh and other councilmembers, and threatens to quash one of the first major initiatives of Bowser’s administration. It’s also one of the first tests for the District’s first elected attorney general. Councilmembers whose seats aren’t as safe as Cheh’s, be warned: Don’t try this at home. The optics of a white councilmember from Ward 3 going after the Empowering Males of Color program should put to rest any questions about whether Cheh wants to run city-wide. “‘Someone from Ward 3, where you may

not have that many at-risk kids, well, why are you getting in this?’” Cheh says, paraphrasing her critics. “Well, I’m getting involved in this

because I’m concerned about all the children that are at-risk, not just boys.” Cheh thinks spending $20 million on minority young men is a great idea, she says. She just wants money for black and Hispanic girls, too. Without a similar program for females, Cheh suspects, the District could run afoul of Title IX, a section of federal law that man-

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Mayor Muriel Bowser backs the $20 million plan. dates students’ genders can’t affect their educational opportunities. “I think it’s pretty clear under the law that you can’t just have special program and millions of dollars for one gender and not the other,” says Cheh, who teaches constitutional law at the George Washington University Law School. Henderson declined to comment about Cheh’s letter, while Bowser administration spokeswoman LaToya Foster would only tell LL via email that they’re looking forward to Racine’s review. That means the most heated reactions Cheh’s letter has provoked so far have come from At-Large Councilmember David Grosso and Ward 5’s Kenyan McDuffie. Three days after Cheh’s letter, McDuffie and Grosso, who chairs the Council’s education committee, published press releases supporting Henderson’s school plan. McDuffie, who pushed Council legislation to give girls more athletic opportunities under Title IX, obliquely criticizes Cheh for not taking her questions directly to Henderson.

“If there’s anybody out there who has questions about a DCPS program, I think the first line of course would be to ask the chancellor and the representatives of DCPS,” McDuffie tells LL. Cheh counters that McDuffie, who has a law degree of his own, hasn’t offered up legal arguments in favor of the program. In his letter to Racine supporting the program, McDuffie wrote that there are “reasonable disagreements” about part of the initiative. “I asked Kenyan, because he’s a lawyer, ‘Did you offer a legal opinion to the attorney general?” Cheh says. “And he said, ‘No, I just offered a statement of support.” (Indeed, McDuffie tells LL he’ll leave the actual legality of the initiative to Racine). Another complaint about Cheh’s letter: that the public knows about it at all. Councilmembers who want a legal opinion from Racine can do it privately, raising questions about why Cheh opted to announce hers in a press release. (For example, the identity of the people who asked for Racine’s opinion on a re-

20 february 20, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

cent marijuana regulation hearing, which sent councilmembers scrambling to change the meeting into an officially “informal” discussion, has become one of the Wilson Building’s most amusing subplots. Racine’s office says staffers for three different councilmembers asked for the opinion, while Council Chairman Phil Mendelson isn’t so sure that’s accurate). Cheh, who describes herself as “a little surprised” by the backlash to her letter, said she publicized it to increase the chances of getting funding for similar programs for girls. “Why not have the attorney general decide whether this is legal or not?” Cheh says. “Do we just kind of bury our heads in the sand and not possibly have the opportunity to help atrisk girls?” Publicizing her request for an opinion may work out for Cheh, but it puts Racine in the unenviable spot of choosing between shooting down a popular program or potentially helping the District violate Title IX. Despite being the District’s first elected at-

torney general—and running a media operation fit for for a politician, complete with a press conference photo-op before he reported for jury duty last month—Racine hasn’t shown interest in currying favor with his opinions so far. (Robert Marus, a spokesman for Racine, declined to disclose Racine’s position on the minority youth program or say when the opinion will be ready.) His marijuana opinion irked politically active pot users and statehood types, while he stopped representing Bowser after she considered breaking with him and supporting a popular budget autonomy referendum. Considering Racine’s track record, Cheh’s letter fretting over Henderson’s initiative could either crush a potentially worthy program or expand its reach by requiring the same spending on girls. If it delays the new school, though, Professor LL has a lesson plan for the students in the meantime: Head down to the Wilson Building. They won’t learn about reading or responsibility, but they’ll get a lesson in how the sausage gets made. CP

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Sport Rock Climbing Camp

Washington City PaPer

Camp Guide 2015

Acorn Hill DAy cAmp

As the city

shovels out from snow, making plans for your kids’ summer may feel a bit unnatural. Though maybe thoughts of July are exactly what you need to take your mind off snow days, frozen pipes, and wind chills? Either way, this Washington City Paper guide is for you. You’re looking for a camp for your miniyogi, or for your future sports broadcaster? You’ll find that and more, as well as contact info, dates, and prices. So tell your kid to stop moping about being stuck inside in the cold; summer will be here sooner than they realize. —Mike Madden 22 february 20, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

Acorn Hill’s summer camp incorporates outdoor play and elements of Waldorf curriculum in the school’s wooded playground with indoor learning. Ages 3.5 to 6.25. Acorn Hill. 9504 Brunett Ave., Silver Spring. $525-$745. June 22–Aug. 31. (301) 565-2282. acornhill.org.

Active leArning cHess cAmp

Active Learning USA Chess Camp offers fulland half-day programs for chess players of all abilities. Campers can also participate in video game-creation workshops. Ages 5 to 15. National Cathedral School. 3609 Woodley Road NW. $285-$475. June 22–June 26. (281) 2570078. activelearningcamps.com.

ADventure tHeAtre mtc cAmp

Adventure Theatre’s summer camp is a fullday musical theater program. Campers work with D.C. theater professionals and finish up their summer by performing in a full-scale, main stage show. Adventure Theatre also offers a three week Musical Theater Training Program for teenagers. Ages 5 to 18. Adventure Theatre. 7300 MacArthur Blvd., Glen Echo. $800-$1,200. June 15–Aug. 21.(301) 634-2270. adventuretheatre-mtc.org.

AFDc summer cAmps

Elementary schoolers can practice their French language skills at this week-long, full immersion

camp. Sessions focus on fun topics like talent shows, Legos, and cooking. Camps for teenagers help students prepare for AP and SAT 2 exams; basic language courses are also offered. Ages 5 to 18. Alliance Française de Washington. 2142 Wyoming Ave. NW. $395-$485. June 22–Aug. 14. (202) 234-7911. francedc.org.

BArrie DAy cAmp

Barrie School’s outdoor summer day camp is based at the school’s 45-acre campus. Campers participate in a range of traditional activities, from athletics to the performing arts, and attend daily swim lessons. Speciality camps for riding, theater, nature, karate, digital video, sports, art, and counselors-in-training are also offered. Ages 4 to 15. Barrie School. 13500 Layhill Road, Silver Spring. $355-$570. June 15–Aug. 7. (301) 576-2800. barrie.org.

BeAuvoir summer cAmp

Beauvoir Summer Camp is a day camp for elementary school students that mixes outdoor exploration with science, sports, and art. Ages 3 to 10. Beauvoir School. 3500 Woodley Road NW. $285-$875. June 22–Aug. 7. (703) 9450408. summer.beauvoirschool.org.

BerrenD summer DAnce

Berrend Dance Centre’s Summer Intensive is a four-week program for advanced dancers. Campers will take classes in ballet technique, pointe, partnering, repertoire, modern, tap, jazz, hip hop, and Pilates from professional instructors. A one-week ballet camp is also available for younger dancers. Ages 5 to 18. Berrend Dance Centre. 3460 Olney-Laytonsville Road, Suite 210, Olney. $300-$1,325.July 6–Aug. 14. (301) 774-3032. berrenddancecentre.com.

BetHesDA Big trAin summer cAmp

Bethesda Big Train Camp focuses exclusively on baseball. Campers will receive instruction in the fundamentals of the game as well as the opportunity to play in a live game each day. Ages 5 to 12. Bethesda Big Train. Shirley Povich Field, Bethesda. $160-$395. June 15–Aug. 14. (240) 477-1222. bigtrain.org/summercamp.

BuDDing yogis summer cAmp

Budding Yogis offers both an active and relaxing summer day camp program for kids. Activities range from mindful yoga to arts and crafts. Ages 4 to 12. Circle Yoga. 3838 Northampton St. NW. $250-$365. June 22–Aug. 21. (202) 686-1104. circleyoga.com.

BurgunDy FArm summer DAy cAmp

Children participate in a variety of sports, swimming, performing arts, and photography activities at this day camp coordinated by Burgundy Farms Country Day School. Younger students enjoy story time, art projects, and scavenger hunts, while older campers can pick from one of six areas of interest to focus on. Ages 3.75 to 12. Burgundy Farm Country Day School. 3700 Burgundy Road, Alexandria. $375. June 15–Aug. 7. (703) 960-3431. burgundyfarm.org.

cAllevA

Calleva is a day camp centered on outdoor sports and outdoor education. Activities range from kayaking and rock climbing to understanding farming. Ages 4 to 17. Calleva Farm. 19120 Martinsburg Road, Dickerson. $495-$995. June 8–Aug. 28. (301) 216-1248. calleva.org.

cAmp ArenA stAge

Camp Arena Stage is a D.C. day camp dedicated to theater, music, visual arts, and dance. Campers choose their own activities, which range from knitting to a cappella to stop motion animation, and attend a daily show featuring the work of faculty, guest artists, and fellow campers. Ages 8 to 15. Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School. 1524 35th St. NW. $950-$2,500. June 22–July 31. (202) 554-9066. arenastage.org.

cAmp Aristotle

Camp Aristotle is a day camp for students with social and communication challenges. Activities

range from crafts to science experiments and are designed to foster self-awareness and social success. Ages 5 to 16. Auburn School. 9545 Georgia Ave., Silver Spring. $275-$600. June 29–Aug. 14. (301) 588-8048. theauburnschool.org/camp.cfm.

ties. Ages 7 to 17. Camp Twin Creeks. 9235 Huntersville Road, Marlinton, W. Va. $2,645$5,190. June 2–Aug. 15. (914) 345-0707. camptwincreeks.com.

cAmp gAn isrAel

Camp Watonka is a sleep-away science camp for boys in a traditional summer camp setting. Activities range from archery and canoeing to computer and astronomy. Ages 7 to 15. Camp Watonka. 328 Wangum Falls Road, Hawley, Penn. $2,700-$7,300. June 27–Aug. 22. (570) 226-4779. watonka.com.

Camp Gan Israel is a traditional day camp for Jewish children. Campers have the opportunity to participate in sports, crafts, drama, and swimming. Ages 3 to 10. American Friends of Lubavitch Center. 2110 Leroy Place NW. $250$750. June 22–July 10. (202) 332-5600. ganisraeldc.org.

cAmp HiDDen meADows

Camp Hidden Meadows is a traditional co-ed overnight camp located in the Allegheny Mountains. Activities range from farm work to boating to arts and crafts. Ages 7 to 16. Camp Hidden Meadows. 17739 Potomac Highland Trail, Bartow, Md. $855-$6,850. June 14–Aug. 15. (800) 600-4752. camphiddenmeadows.com.

cAmp wAtonkA

cAmps Airy AnD louise

Campers explore the outdoors, swim, and make new friends at this overnight camp for Jewish

youth. Camp Airy. 14938 Old Camp Airy Road, Thurmont. Camp Louise, 24959 Pen Mar Road, Cascade. (410) 466-9010. airylouise.org.

cApitol Hill Arts worksHop summer cAmps

Campers can explore their interests in dance, ceramics, photography, and fashion design at a variety of programs offered by CHAW. Older students with an interest in theater can collaborate with teaching artists and ensemble members from Taffety Punk Theater Company. Ages 4 to 18. Capitol Hill Arts Workshop. 545 7th St. SE. $275-$1,200. June 22–Aug. 21. (202) 5476839. chaw.org.

cAmp Horizons

Camp Horizons is a co-ed overnight camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Campers live in cabins and can participate in sports, swimming, crafts, rocketry, gardening, and hiking. Special programs in adventure, horseback riding, and leadership are also available. Ages 7 to 17. Camp Horizons. 3586 Horizons Way, Harrisonburg, Va. $1,200-$2,950. June 14–Aug. 16. (540) 8967600. camphorizonsva.com.

cAmp imAginAtion stAge

Camp Imagination offers a range of day camp programs in drama, musical theater, dance, and filmmaking. Ages 1 to 18. Imagination Stage. 4908 Auburn Ave., Bethesda. $249-$1,195. June 8–Aug. 28. (301) 280-1660. imaginationstage.org.

cAmp rim rock For girls

Girls participate in sports, water activities, horseback riding, and the performing arts at this residential camp in West Virginia. Camp Rim Rock for Girls. 343 Camp Rim Rock Road, Yellow Spring, W. Va. $1,350-$4,450. June 28–Aug. 15. (347) 746-7625. camprimrock.com.

cAmp twin creeks

Camp Twin Creeks is a co-ed overnight camp in the Allegheny Mountains. Campers live in cabins and participate in a range of outdoor activi-

SUMMER PROGRAM

� � ��

Featuring our Fantastic Playground and New Pool! A GE S ��

HALF & FULL DAY OPTIONS

Create Adventures and Lasting Memories. Swimming, Outdoor Adventures, Gymnastics, Languages, Music, Drama, Cooking, Science, Field Trips and MUCH, MUCH more.

For more information visit www.beauvoirschool.org/summer 3500 Woodley Road, NW • Washington, DC 20016

washingtoncitypaper.com february 20, 2015 23

city oF gAitHersBurg summer cAmp

The City of Gaithersburg offers more than a dozen different summer day camps, ranging from a toddler camp to art and sports camps for older children. Ages 5 to 14. City of Gaithersburg’s Department of Parks, Recreation, and Culture. 506 S. Frederick Ave., Gaithersburg. $125-$352. June 16–July 31. (301) 258-6350. gaithersburgmd.gov.

clArA BArton center For cHilDren summer cAmp Clara Barton Center for Children offers a co-ed summer camp for preschoolers. Led by qualified teachers, campers participate in crafts, water play, and other activities. Half-, full-, and extended-day programs are available. Ages 2 to 5. Clara Barton Center for Children. 7425 MacArthur Blvd., Cabin John. $340-$775. June 15–Aug. 21. (301) 320-4565. clarabartoncenter.org.

Camp Scientific Chesapeake introduces students to science through fun, hands-on adventures at locations throughout suburban Maryland. Activities range from crime scene investigation games to learning about meteorology. Ages 4 to 14. St. Peter’s School. 2900 Sandy Spring Road, Olney. $259-$299. June 13–Aug. 3. (443) 928-6772. clubscientificchesapeake.com.

columBiA Horse center

Columbia Horse Center is a camp designed to give students horsemanship skills. Activities range from horseback riding and training to learning about horse care and the functions of a barn. Ages 8 to 16. Columbia Horse Center. 10400 Gorman Road, Laurel. $310-$860. June 15–Aug. 21.(301) 776-5850. columbiahorsecenter.com.

concorD Hill cAmp

Concord Hill Camp is an educational day camp taught by Concord Hill preschool teachers. Campers participate in crafts, water play, science experiments, and other activities. Ages 3 to 5. Concord Hill School. 6050 Wisconsin Ave., Chevy Chase. $225-$280. June 15–July 24. (301) 654-2626. concordhill.org.

congressionAl cAmps

Campers can enroll in day, travel, and sports camps housed on the campus of the Congressional Schools. Older students participate in ropes courses, while younger students learn about horses. Ages 3 to 15. Congressional Schools of Virginia. 3229 Sleepy Hollow Road, Falls Church. $400-$825. June 22–Aug. 28. (703) 533-0931. congocamp.org.

creAte! summer cAmp

CREATE! Summer Camp is a co-ed arts day camp. Each session, campers experiment with a range of art forms, and they bring home a portfolio of their work at the end of the week. Ages 6 and up. CREATE! Arts Center. 816 Thayer Ave., Silver Spring. $295-$540. June 8–Aug. 28. (301) 588-2787. createartscenter.org.

Leslie Mansour

cluB scientiFic cHesApeAke

Capitol Hill Art Workshop

curiosity zone summer cAmps

Young children with an interest in science and engineering can participate in a variety of fulland half-day science camps. Session themes this year include Legos, magic, veterinarians, and medicine. Ages 4 to 8. Curiosity Zone. 43135 Broadlands Center Plaza, Suite 123, Ashburn. $229-$380. June 22–Aug. 24. (703) 723-9949. curiosityzone.com.

DAr summer cAmps

The DAR Museum offers two week-long day camps for kids this summer: The Junior Historian program teaches campers about history and preservation, while Colonial Camp lets participants reenact the War of 1812 while learning about colonial life. Ages 8 to 13. DAR Museum. 1776 D St. NW. $345-$395. July 13–Aug. 7. (202) 628-1776. dar.org.

Dc Fencers cluB summer Fencing cAmp

DC Fencers Club Summer Fencing Camp is a day camp designed to teach kids the sport of fencing. Camps are open to beginner through intermediate fencers, and equipment and uniforms are provided. Ages 7 to 16. DC Fencers Club. 9330 Fraser Ave., Silver Spring. $330. July 6—Aug. 21. (301) 562-1990. dcfencing.com.

DynAmite gymnAstics cAmp

Dynamite Gymnastics Center offers a day camp centered around fun and flexible activities. Activities are a mix of gymnastics instruction, games, crafts, and free play. Ages 3.5 to 17.

24 february 20, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

Dynamite Gymnastics Center. 4956 Boiling Brook Parkway, Rockville. $150-$345. June 8–Aug. 28. (301) 770-2700. dynamitegc.com.

eArtH treks rock climBing summer cAmp

Earth Treks Rock Climbing Summer Camp teaches kids how to rock climb, both indoors and out in nature depending upon the particular program. Ages 6 to 18. Earth Treks Rock Climbing. 725 Rockville Pike, Rockville. $110-$425. June 15–Aug. 7. (240) 283-9942. earthtreksclimbing.com.

esF summer cAmp

ESF (Education, Sports, and Fun) is a co-ed day camp at Georgetown Prep School. Campers participate in a traditional range of camp activities, including daily swim instruction. A speciality sports camp is also offered. Ages 4 to 15. Georgetown Prep School. 10900 Rockville Pike, North Bethesda. $990-$4,295. June 15–Aug. 14. (301) 493-2525. esfcamps.com.

evergreen summer cAmp Evergreen is a co-ed creative arts summer camp held on the campus of Evergreen Montessori School. Campers participate in programming aimed at promoting teamwork and life-skills along with traditional camp activities. Ages 2.5 to 10. Evergreen School. 10700 Georgia Ave., Silver Spring. $295-$1,035. June 8–Aug. 14. (301) 942-5979. evergreenschool.com.

FAirFAx collegiAte summer progrAm

Campers prepare for the upcoming school year at this enrichment-based summer program held at 12 locations throughout Northern Virginia. During breaks in instruction, students play basketball, soccer, and other sports. Ages 8 to 14. Fairfax Collegiate. 722 Grant St., Suite J, Herndon. $425-$760. June 22–Aug. 28. (703) 481-3080. fairfaxcollegiate.com.

Flying kick Fitness center

Flying Kick Fitness Center is a day camp centered on giving kids a fun, educational experience in taekwondo. Other activities include swimming, dodgeball, and arts and crafts. Ages 4 to 16. Flying Kick Fitness Center. 4711 Chase Ave., Bethesda. $299-$2,125. June 15–Aug. 21.(301) 951-0543. flyingkicktkd.com.

genevA DAy summer cAmp Geneva Day School’s summer camp offers a range of outdoor and indoor activities for young children, from playground games and picnic lunches to baking and block building. Ages 2 to 5. Geneva Day School. 11931 Seven Locks Road, Potomac. $225-$275. June 1–Aug. 7. (301) 340-7704. genevadayschool.org/summer-camp.

georgetown Hill summer cAmp

Georgetown Hill offers summer day camps at campuses in Potomac, Rockville, and Darnestown, Md. Camp activities include sports, water play, crafts, and more. Ages 3 months to

11 years. Georgetown Hill. 12154 Darnestown Road, Suite 622, Gaithersburg. $280-$380. June 15–Aug. 21. (301) 527-1377. georgetownhill.com.

axy” to a counselor-in-training program. Ages 9 months to 18. International School of Music. 10450 Auto Park Ave., Bethesda. $108-$498. June 1–Aug. 14. (301) 365-5888. ismw.org.

green HeDges cAmp

kiDBAll BAseBAll

Young children can explore science, nature, and the performing arts at this week-long day camp held at Vienna’s Green Hedges School. Ages 3 to 7. Green Hedges School. 415 Windover Ave. NW, Vienna. $275-$350. June 22–July 31. (703) 938-8323. greenhedges.org.

HigHwooD’s summer in tHe Arts

Highwood’s Summer in the Arts is a day camp that lets kids explore all aspects of the theater, from acting to lighting and sound. Younger campers choose classes and participate in activities with special guest artists, while high schoolage campers in the Artist in Training program help teach classes and serve as apprentices for professional artists leading activities. Ages 7 to 17. Highwood Theatre. 914 Silver Spring Ave., Suite 102, Silver Spring. $250-$1,000. July 6–July 31. (301) 587-0697. thehighwoodtheatre.org.

inDoor sports cAmps At micHAel & son sportsplex Dulles

Michael & Son Sportsplex offers an indoor sports day camp, with activities that include flag football, soccer, wiffleball, volleyball, basketball, kickball, and team handball. Ages 6 to 12. Michael & Son Sportsplex Dulles. 21610 Atlantic Blvd., Sterling. $50-$310. June 8–Aug. 28. (703) 430-9966. dullessportsplex.com.

inDoor sports cAmps At micHAel & son sportsplex rockville

Michael & Son Sportsplex offers an indoor sports day camp, with activities that include flag football, soccer, wiffleball, volleyball, basketball, kickball, and team handball. Ages 6 to 12. Michael & Son Sportsplex Rockville. 60 Southlawn Ct., Rockville. $50-$310. June 8–Aug. 28. (301) 838-4455. rockvillesports.com.

ism summer music cAmp

The International School of Music offers seven summer day camps exploring all aspects of music. Camps range from “Toddler Music Gal-

Kidball Baseball offers a day camp focused on a variety of sports, mainly baseball. Other activities include flag football, basketball, and soccer. Ages 4 to 12. Burning Tree Elementary School. 7900 Beech Tree Road, Bethesda. $190-$285. June 22–Aug. 7. (301) 983-0543. kidballbaseball.com.

lAngley summer stuDio

Campers take a variety of classes in extracurricular categories like performing arts, robotics, and cooking, as well as academic categories like Spanish and chemistry at this immersive camp hosted by the Langley School. Langley School. 1411 Balls Hill Road, McLean. $215-$1,300. June 15–July 31. (703) 356-1920. langleyschool.org/summerstudio.

longAcre

Longacre is an overnight teen leadership camp located on a farm in rural Pennsylvania. Campers choose from an array of activities ranging from traditional swimming and crafts to carpentry and farming. Ages 8 to 18. Longacre. 6514 Creek Road, Newport. $1,799-$6,799. June 28–Aug. 17. (717) 567-3349. longacre.com.

range from learning about life in the form of cells and organs to learning how the science behind life can help solve crimes. Ages 6 to 12. Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital. 921 Pennsylvania Ave. SE. $190-$325. June 22–Aug. 22. (301) 593-4777. dc.madscience.org.

mArylAnD youtH BAllet summer progrAms

The Maryland Youth Ballet offers a range of summer workshops for dancers of all ages and experience levels. Auditions are required for some advanced programs. Ages 2 to 25. Maryland Youth Ballet. 926 Ellsworth Drive, Silver Spring. $35-$1,900. June 13–Aug. 21.(301) 608-2232. marylandyouthballet.org.

mAtHtree, inc.

MathTree day camps use a variety of teaching tools, games, toys, and activities to help kids develop an appreciation for math, grow academically, and gain confidence in their math abilities. Ages 5 to 15. Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital. 921 Pennsylvania Ave. SE. $84-$400. Aug. 10–Aug. 21. 877-MATH-987. mathtree.com.

my gym cHilDren’s Fitness center

My Gym Children’s Fitness Center offers a day camp centered on physical activity. Activities range from gymnastics to group sports such as soccer and basketball. Up to age 13. My Gym Bethesda. 5110 Ridgefield Road, Bethesda. $25-$45. July 7–Aug. 29. (301) 652-2820. mygym.com/bethesda.

pAssport to summer At wAsHington internAtionAl scHool

Washington International School’s Passport to Summer is a co-ed multicultural day camp. The camp offers language immersion; art, science, and music workshops; and a counselor-in-training program. Ages 3 to 15. Washington International School. 1690 36th St. NW. $165-$890. June 22–Aug. 7. (202) 243-1727. wis.edu.

pinecrest summer pAvilion

Campers can investigate a variety of ideas, from yoga and magic to oceans and cooking, at this program hosted by Pinecrest School. Ages 5 to 12. Pinecrest School. 7209 Quiet Cove, Annan-

lopez stuDios perForming Arts cAmps

Aspiring performers can participate in a variety of intense musical theatre programs that focus on dance, singing, and acting. Ages 5 to 18. Lopez Studios Performing Arts Preparatory School. 11425 Isaac Newton Square, Reston. $290-$1,475. June 22–Aug. 21. (703) 7870071. lopezstudiosinc.com.

lowell scHool summer progrAms

The Lowell School offers a general summer day camp and 16 speciality programs where campers can swim, act, play sports, and acquire new skills. Ages 2 to 15. Lowell School. 640 Kalmia Road NW. $375-$1,575. June 22–July 31. (202) 577-2000. lowellschool.org.

mAD science

Mad Science is a day camp that gives kids hands-on opportunities with science. Activities

washingtoncitypaper.com february 20, 2015 25

dale. $225-$240. June 22–Aug. 14. (703) 3543446. pinecrestschool.org.

plAy By plAy sports BroADcAsting cAmps

Play By Play is both a day and overnight camp centered on teaching kids the art of sports broadcasting. Ages 10 to 18. College of Notre Dame. 4701 N Charles St., Baltimore. $575$1,195. July 22–July 26. (800) 319-0884. playbyplaycamps.com.

potomAc Horse center

Potomac Horse Center offers a day camp for young horseback riders. Kids will also learn about horses, specifically the history of the horse, breeds, colors, and grooming techniques. Ages 5 to 13. Potomac Horse Center. 14211 Quince Orchard Road, North Potomac. $525$5,050. June 15–Aug. 21. (301) 208-0200. potomachorse.com.

reDDemeADe equestriAn cAmps

Reddemeade offers a horseback riding day camp, with activities ranging from daily riding lessons to hands-on experiences with grooming and handling. Ages 7 to 14. Reddemeade Equestrian Center. 1701 Ednor Road, Silver Spring. $475-$825. June 15–Aug. 21. (301) 421-4481. reddemeade.com.

reston Fencers cAmp

Campers learn the basics of fencing from professional coaches at this camp sponsored by the Reston Fencers Club. Ages 7 to 12. Krav Maga First Defense. 291 Sunset Park Drive, Herndon. $420. Aug. 3–Aug. 14. (240) 424-0749. restonfc.com.

reston montessori cAmp Young campers play and participate in a variety of science-themed activities at this Montessori day camp. Reston Montessori School. 1928 Isaac Newton Square West, Reston. $530-$875. June 30–Aug. 22. (703) 481-2922. restonmontessori.com.

rounD House tHeAtre summer progrAms

Students in elementary school explore their imaginations in the Summer Destinations program; middle school students learn how to write and design a performance in the Summer Playmakers program; and high school students participate in a variety of intensive institutes covering clowning, improv, and musical theatre at this long-running series of theater camps. Ages 5 to 18. Round House Theatre Education Center. 925 Wayne Ave., Silver Spring. $300-$500. June 15–Aug. 21. (301) 585-1225. roundhousetheatre.org.

silver stArs gymnAstics cAmp

Silver Stars is a gymnastics day camp, where kids can learn cartwheels, navigate the monkey bars, and climb the ropes. Ages 3.5 to 15. Silver Stars Gymnastics. 2701 Pittman Drive, Silver Spring. $245-$310. June 8–Aug. 28. (301) 589-0938. gosilverstars.com.

Valley Mill Camp

sport rock climBing cAmp

These indoor climbing gyms offer day-long courses that introduce students to climbing techniques, as well as week-long day camps that send advanced students outside to climb at Great Falls National Park and Harpers Ferry. Ages 6 to 16. Sport Rock Climbing Center– Alexandria. 5308 Eisenhower Ave., Alexandria. $70-$450. June 22–Sept. 4. (703) 212-7625. sportrock.com.

sport rock climBing cAmp

These indoor climbing gyms offer day-long courses that introduce students to climbing techniques, as well as week-long day camps that send advanced students outside to climb at Great Falls National Park and Harpers Ferry. Ages 6 to 16. Sport Rock Climbing Center–Sterling. 45935 Maries Road, Sterling. $70-$450. June 22–Sept. 4. (703) 212-7625. sportrock.com.

stone riDge summer cAmps

Stone Ridge summer camp is a co-ed day camp offering a range of traditional activities, including sports, crafts, and swimming. Ages 4 to 16. Stone Ridge School. 9101 Rockville Pike,

26 february 20, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

Bethesda. $375-$736. June 15–July 24. (301) 657-4322. stoneridgesummercampus.org.

strAtHmore Fine Arts cAmp

The Strathmore offers two separate fine arts day camps for kids and teens this summer. Older campers will improve their technique in a program focused on form and color, while younger campers will participate in a range of hands-on art activities. Ages 6 to 17. Mansion

at Strathmore. 10701 Rockville Pike, Rockville. $382.50-$425. July 27–Aug. 14. (301) 5815100. strathmore.org.

stu vetter’s BAsketBAll cAmp

Stu Vetter’s Basketball Camp is a day camp that teaches kids the fundamentals of basketball at locations in Maryland and Virginia. Campers have the privilege of learning under one of the most iconic and respected high school bas-

ketball coaches in America. Ages 6 to 17. Stu Vetter’s Basketball Camp. 1849 Clover Meadow Drive, Vienna. $175-$225. June 22–July 31. (301) 770-6645. stuvetterbasketballcamp.com.

Studio theatre Youth actor Summer intenSive

Young actors receive training in movement, voice, and improvisation at this three-week program. Admission auditions take place on June 13. Ages 12 to 17. Studio Theatre. 1501 14th St. NW. $865-$925. June 22–July 31. (202) 2327267. studiotheatre.org.

Summer art camp

The Art League offers full- and half-day camps that span the visual arts. Participants can choose to focus on a specific medium or dabble in a range of projects, from printmaking to sculpture. Ages 5 to 15. The Art League School Madison Annex. 305 Madison St., Alexandria. $155-$345. June 22–Aug. 21. (703) 683-2323. theartleague.org.

Summer at SandY Spring Summer at Sandy Spring is a co-ed day camp focused on academics and recreation. Children may sign up for the general camp or specialty sports and arts programs. Ages 4 to 14. Sandy Spring Friends School. 16923 Norwood Road, Sandy Spring. $65-$790. June 22–Aug. 14. (301) 774-7455. summeratsandyspring.org.

Summer at WeS

Summer at WES is a co-ed day camp offering a range of traditional and enriching activities, from swimming to robotics. WES also offers a week-long sleepaway camp. Ages 4 to 14. Washington Episcopal School. 5600 Little Falls Parkway, Bethesda. $290-$385. June 8–Aug. 7. (301) 652-7878. w-e-s.org.

tenniStar and SportStar campS

TenniStar and SportStar Camps are camps dedicated to teaching and practicing sports. Activities other than tennis include soccer, lacrosse and field hockey. Ages 6 to 15. Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School. 1524 35th St. NW. $175-$400. June 8–July 31. (301) 5305472. tennistar.com.

the theatre Lab Summer campS

The Theatre Lab offers three summer programs for kids interested in drama and musical the-

ater, each culminating in a final performance of campers’ work. Ages 6 to 19. Theatre Lab School of the Dramatic Arts. 733 8th St. NW. $315-$985. June 22–Aug. 21. (202) 824-0449. theatrelab.org.

WoodLand horSe center

tic Summer camp

land Horse Center. 16301 New Hampshire

TIC is a day camp that strikes a balance between sports and technology. Activities range from soccer and gaga to robotics and web development. Ages 7 to 15. Georgetown Day School. 4530 MacArthur Blvd. NW. $775$825. June 15–Aug. 14. (703) 876-2868. ticcamp.com.

timber ridge campS

Camps White Mountain and Green Briar are traditional co-ed overnight camps located in the Shenandoah Mountains. Activities include sports, visual and performing arts, and aquatics. Ages 6 to 16. Timber Ridge Camp. Route 1 Box 470, High View, W. Va. $3,400-$9,650. June 18–Aug. 7. (800) 258-2267. trcamps.com.

treeWiSe

Young people learn about trees and urban ecology at these day-long sessions sponsored by local non-profit Casey Trees. Groups can participate in on-site sessions in public parks or travel to the National Arboretum, where TreeWise counselors will lead lessons. Ages 6 to 10. Casey Trees. 3030 12th St. NE. Free. June 22–Aug. 7. (202) 833-4010. caseytrees.org.

vaLLeY miLL camp

Valley Mill camp offers the experience of a traditional sleepaway camp without the overnight stay. Participants in both the Boys’ and Girls’ program take part in activities ranging from boating to drama to athletics along with other campers their age. A co-ed junior camp are also available and counselor-in-training program are also available. Ages 4 to 15. Valley Mill Camp. 15101 Seneca Road, Germantown. $515-$4,635. June 15–Aug. 21.(301) 9480220. valleymill.com.

WonderS Summer camp

Wonders Summer Camp is a co-ed day camp that combines traditional camp activities with exploration of D.C. Ages 5 to 11. Edmund Burke School. 4101 Connecticut Ave. NW. $440. June 17–Aug. 16. (202) 362-8882. wonderschildcare.org.

Woodland Horse Center is a day camp focuses on teaching kids how to ride horses. Programs vary based upon skill level. Ages 8 to 15. WoodAve., Silver Spring. $400-$820. June 15–Aug.

SUMMER ROCK CLIMBING CAMPS

14. (301) 421-9156. woodlandhorse.com.

Writopia Lab Writopia Lab offers full-day and half-day sum-

đƫćĥĂĂġĊĥą đƫ #!/ƫćŐ đƫ ((ƫ!4,!.%!* !ƫƫ ƫ ƫ (!2!(/ đƫ 5ƫ * ƫ ƫ 3!!'ġ(+*#ƫƫ ƫ ƫ ),/ƫ ƫ ĨĊ )ġă,)ĩ đƫ 40!* ! ƫ ƫ .!ƫ 2 %( (!

mer camps for budding writers. All campers will participate in workshops with published authors and have an opportunity to read and publish their original work at the end of the program. Ages 8 to 18. Writopia Lab. 4000 Albermarle St. NW, Suite 308. $180-$560. July 6–July 31. (202) 629-9510. writopia.org.

VOTED BEST SUMMER CAMP

Ymca camp LettS

5ƫ /$%*#0+*ƫ %05ƫ ,!.ƫ.! !./ƫ%*ƫĂĀāą

YMCA Camp Letts is a co-ed overnight camp on the Chesapeake Bay. Campers live in cabins and participate in boating, crafts, hiking, and sports. Add-on programs in horseback riding, power boating, sailing, water skiing, and paintball, as well as day camp programs, are also available. Ages 6 to 16. YMCA Camp Letts. PO Box 208, 4003 Camp Letts Road, Edgewater. $325-$799. June 21–Aug. 21. (410) 919-1410. campletts.org.

The The atr e Lab ’s

summe r

drama camps

sions Jun–Aug kids entering grades 1–8, ses

Great teen programs too!

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many guests can we invite? Where can we rent tables? What kind of chairs? What’s our color scheme? And like wedding planning, “everyone’s equally as stressed out, nervous, cold feet, the whole thing,” Rubba says. Dolcezza, which has become a popular pop-up venue, has a six-burner stove-top with an oven underneath—plenty for a gelato operation, but not for someone preparing a sevencourse meal for nearly 60 people. Rubba tried to plan dishes— like a whole roasted duck—that wouldn’t require so much attention right then and there. He did most of his prep work at Neighborhood Restaurant Group’s commissary, right down the block. “I had like a 25-yard stretch to run warm food, so it wasn’t too bad,” he says. “But if someone from another group for hosts to put in 16 or 17 hours. And someone’s sister and was doing it, I’d feel bad for them.” While some sauces were her boyfriend (like Thomson’s) will inevitably be recruited as prepped a couple days in advance, Rubba worked from 8:30 handymen, bussers, and servers. If the event recoups its ex- a.m. to 3 a.m. the day of his pop-up. You might think it would be easier to prep for a pop-up in penses, that’s generally considered a success. “It’s kind of like throwing a mini-wedding,” says former an actual restaurant, or at least a bar with a full kitchen. But Tallula chef Rob Rubba, who recently held a one-night, that’s not necessarily that case, as Maison Dixon’s Adam multi-course pop-up previewing his forthcoming restau- Cox has found out. Cox, who works for the Department of rant Hazel in the Dolcezza gelato factor near Union Market. Homeland Security, and Granville Moore’s owner Teddy Aside from the food, there’s a long list of considerations: How Folkman co-host monthly-ish Southern comfort food popups featuring Nashvillestyle hot chicken at 51st State Tavern or Capitol Lounge, where Folkman is a partner. (Maison Dixon is unrelated to similarly named biscuit pop-up Mason Dixie.) “You don’t really think about this until you try to do something like a pop-up, but kitchens are set up to serve the food that’s normally on their menu,” Cox says. “You kind of have to figure out, ‘How do I do my mac and cheese in a pizza oven?’” Working out of an existing restaurant also means working around another restaurant’s schedule. Cox can’t just go into the kitchen at Capitol Lounge and start prepping whenever he wants, because they’re running their business. He’ll sometimes start cooking at Granville Moore’s, which is closed for lunch, and then move over to Capitol Lounge Limited Dine Only: Bartenders Jason Strich and Owen Thomson recreated a after their lunch service. Chicago tiki bar for one night. He’ll also store stuff at

Pop-Up Culture By Jessica Sidman

Bartender Jason Strich is gluing $100 worth of plastic human skulls to the inside of a black box—for the second time. The heads nearly rolled away earlier when a gust of wind knocked them over while he was loading his car. Meanwhile, fellow bartender Owen Thomson is measuring out straw thatching. They’ve got about four hours left until their Sunday night tiki-themed cocktail pop-up at Cafe Saint-Ex begins, and they still need to finish plastering bamboo to the walls, kegging up the draft drinks, assembling elaborate garnishes out of pineapple leaves and flowers, and crushing a few hundred pounds of ice. “Have we ordered ice?” Strich stops from working on his decorative skull box to ask. “Do we have a tablecloth for crushing?... Did you bring your baseball bats?” Thomson, who works at Cafe Saint-Ex, Bar Pilar, and Rose’s Luxury, and Strich of Hank’s Oyster Bar arrived at the basement bar at 11 a.m. with four carloads of stuff, including a smoke machine, plastic leis, dry ice, and power tools. But the DIY venture started long before that. Strict even found an old trunk on Craigslist, refinished it, and outfitted it with custom gold leaf tap handles from which to pour draft cocktails. The goal is transform the bare bones space not just into any tiki bar, but into Chicago tiki bar Three Dots and a Dash, one of Thomson’s favorite spots from his travels across the country. The one-night event is the first in a series of popups called Guerilla Drinks, in which the duo will attempt to recreate a bar from another place and/or time every other month. To do so, the bartenders spent somewhere around $3,000 on booze, equipment, and decorations. (For about the same amount, they could have also purchased about 10 roundtrip flights to Chicago.) “We were kind of tired of the more generic style cocktail party, and we wanted to do something bigger on a grander scale,” Thomson says. “We also just wanted to work together and have fun.” Turning a profit is not really the point: They just hope not to lose any money. That’s pretty much how it goes for most bar and restaurant pop-ups, of which there seems to be another one every day now. For something so fleeting, it requires an enormous amount of foresight and creativity to turn a space into something it’s not. The day of a pop-up, it’s not uncommon

Darrow Montgomery

Behind the scenes in D.C.’s temporary restaurants

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multiple locations, because the host kitchens most likely already have a full fridge. “You’re moving a lot of stuff around a lot,” Cox says. Which can cause other problems: “You end up spilling in your car as you’re moving… You’re always kind of [thinking], ‘Can I make it over this speed bump without spilling chili or spilling broth everywhere?’” Managing inventory is also a guessing game. A restaurant can buy chicken and use it the next day if it doesn’t sell out. For Maison Dixon, it’s a delicate balance of not over-ordering, which wastes product and money, and under-ordering, which can anger guests if everything sells out an hour into the evening. It’s always a gamble if people aren’t buying tickets in advance, because they don’t know if 10 people will come—or 200. Finding good help can be tricky, too. Capitol Lounge lets Maison Dixon use its staff, and they split the night’s revenue. Hazel’s Rubba had some non-cooks helping him in the kitchen and Neighborhood Restaurant Group’s Director of Operations running food. Pastry chef Tiffany MacIsaac, who’s hosted a couple of pop-ups at Cork Market and Navy Yard’s Ice Cream Jubilee in preparation for her Buttercream Bakeshop, occasionally recruits one of her former sous chefs to help bake some cookies or help assemble cakes. But MacIsaac sees much more potential for chaos with a restaurant pop-up as opposed to a retail pop-up: “You’re working with servers who don’t know your food. And you don’t necessarily know your food. And you’re pulling friends to help you cook.” Amateur or untrained service has consequences: MacIsaac recalls going to one unnamed pop-up where servers didn’t bring forks and the food started to get cold. “I can’t be mad at them, because they’re just doing this for a couple days, and there’s not that muscle memory of doing stuff over and over again,” she says. “But at the same time, you’re paying a premium to go to these dinners.” It’s not uncommon for relatively unknown chefs to host pop-ups where they charge $100 or more a seat. But even then, they’re not making enough to finance their future restaurant plans. “There are a lot of reasons to do [a pop-up], the least of which is making money,” MacIsaac says. The real goal is exposure or to test out recipes. In a best case scenario, pop-ups can help convince investors to help fund a permanent location. That was part of the thinking behind EatsPlace in Park View, which became D.C’s first “pop-uppery” when it opened in the fall. The food incubator gives chefs and restaurateurs a place to test drive their concepts for a couple weeks or months at a time. EatsPlace supplies a host, bartender, and dishwasher, but the restaurants bring their

Darrow Montgomery

DCFEED(cont.) Guerilla Drink’s skulls own servers and cooks. Meanwhile, crowdfunding platform EquityEats is in the process of opening a “pop-up megaplex” called Prequel in the former LivingSocial event space at 918 F St. NW. When it debuts this spring, the building will be able to house up to five restaurant or bar pop-ups at a time. The goal is to create an infrastructure that makes the behind-the-scenes workings of pop-ups as easy as possible. “It can be a process to take over someone else’s space and to come up with an agreement that makes sense… With Prequel, we want everyone to be able to come in and do their thing and not have so much overhead and legal back-and-forth,” says Steve Lucas, EquityEats’ VP of strategy and communications. Prequel will also have its own core staff of servers and cooks who can help execute a chef’s menu. That will theoretically help free chefs to come out and talk to guests during the meal—something many are too swamped with supervising cooking and serving to do at other pop-ups. After all, the mission of Prequel is to create a place where potential investors could check out (and then ideally want to fund) concepts using EquityEats’ crowdfunding platform. Then again, sometimes a pop-up is just a pop-up, not a means to an end. Guerilla Drinks’ Thomson and Strich aren’t planning to open a new D.C. outpost for Three Dots and a Dash; they’re not even planning to open a tiki bar. “It’s always good to have a bunch of bamboo laying around. My backyard might become very festive all of a sudden,” Thomson says of what he’ll do with the decorations. For them, it’s just a fun side project. I ask Thomson if it makes him sad that they’ve put all this work into something that will all get torn down tomorrow. “That’s kind of the cool part, right?” he says. “If you weren’t here today, you CP weren’t here.” Eatery tips? Food pursuits? Send suggestions to hungry@washingtoncitypaper.com

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DCFEED

what we ate last week: Butternut squash and celery root “noodle” salad, $10, Thally Satisfaction level: 3.5 out of 5 what we’ll eat next week: Cali-style cheeseburger, $14.95, Summer House Santa Monica Excitement level: 2.5 out of 5

Grazer

Signature

eater Oyster name

restaurants

The Big Daddy

DC Coast, PassionFish, District Commons, and Penn Commons

The Salty Wolfe

Hank’s Oyster Bar

Hayden’s Reef

Hank’s Oyster Bar (not available every day)

Are you gonnA eAt that?

Old Black Salt

The Dish: Cod milt and salmon roe Where to Get It: Sushiko; 5455 Wisconsin Ave., Chevy Chase; (301) 961-1644; sushikorestaurants.com Price: $15

“Signature” oysters have become a hot menu item for restaurants looking to bolster their seafood cred. Chefs partner with oyster farmers, who devote a section of their waterways to harvesting bivalves that are more or less unique to the restaurants and carry the name of their choice. Over the past three months, two more “private-label” mollusks have come on the market: the Big Daddy from Passion Food Hospitality and the Salty Wolfe from Hank’s Oyster Bar. Here’s the rundown of the signature oysters around town. —Jessica Sidman

All Black Restaurant Group restaurants except Black Market Bistro

Oyster Farm

Where they’re grown

Hollywood Oyster Company

Western shore of the Chesapeake Bay near Hollywood, Md.

War Shore Oyster Company

Price Per Oyster

Buttery and sweet

Near Virginia’s Chincoteague Island

Salty up front and mildly sweet and creamy to finish

$2.50 (10 percent of proceeds go to charity)

Dragon Creek Aqua Farm

Nomini Creek in Virginia’s Northern Neck

Meaty and mild

Rappahannock River Oyster Company

A small strip of waterway called Black Narrows in Chincoteague, Va.

What It Is: Fertilization in a bowl: sperm from cod (shirako), eggs from salmon (ikura), and a tongue of sea urchin (uni) just for fun. What it Tastes Like: This fishplosion of briny sea creatures is as much about texture as flavor. The ikura bubbles burst like the tapioca pearls found on a frozen yogurt toppings bar, but instead of fruit flavor you’re getting pure unfertilized fish. The sperm, which is also called milt, is a cool contrast with its smooth, claylike texture and mild flavor. The uni brings its distinctive buttery, umami flavor blast. The Story: When sperm of the sea is consumed in Japan, it’s usually from tora-fugu (a poisonous member of the blowfish fami-

32 february 20, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

Flavor

Salty with a sweet finish and hints of minerality from the limestonerich waters

$2.50

$2.50 ($2.35 at Republic)

ly). The imported specialty is extremely pricey and difficult to obtain in the U.S. That’s why Sushiko owner and creative director Daisuke Utagawa opts for cod milt, which is still considered a delicacy. “It’s not an everyday food,” he says. The combination of ikura, milt, and uni is uncommon. Utagawa added the dish to the menu around Valentine’s Day to be tonguein-cheek about romance. Sushiko will carry it through winter as long as they can get the milt. Call ahead before venturing in to try it. How to Eat It: Swap your chopsticks for a spoon and make well-composed bites containing all three ingredients. Eating each element separately means no magic will be made —Laura Hayes in your mouth.

brew in town

Mad Fox Oaked Diabolik Where in Town: Mad Fox Brewing Company, 444 West Broad St., Falls Church Price: $12/22 oz. Old Dog, Brew Tricks Clean European styles, killer American IPAs, properlytreated cask beer, big barrel-aged brews—Is there nothing Mad Fox’s Bill Madden can’t brew? Last week’s release of his first sour beer provided a good test case. Oaked Diabolik is Madden’s longstanding Belgian strong ale recipe, but it’s re-fermented with airborne yeast and bacteria and aged for six months in oak barrels. The 20-year veteran waited so long to launch a sour program for the same reason most brewers do: fear. Much time and energy is spent trying to keep wild yeast and bacteria out of breweries. These bugs can easily spread, contaminating equipment that must remain squeaky clean to make any other style of beer. Was it worth the risk? Yes! Pucker Up, Sweet Tart Oaked Diabolik has the deep gold color and frothy white head typical of Belgian-style strong ales. But bring it to your nose, and after a pungent sting, those bold enough to keep sniffing will detect tart apple and white grape. A sip starts out prickly and acidic but soon gives way to sweet fruit flavors and a rich warmth—thanks to the 9 percent alcohol content—followed by a dry, woody finish. But don’t drink this one on an empty stomach; instead, pair it with a chèvre or a creamy, rich soft-ripened cheese. Limited bottles of Oaked Diabolic are available at the brewpub in Falls Church and a few kegs have made their way to D.C.’s Meridian Pint and Smoke & Barrel. A few more might pop up at Mad Fox’s long-awaited Glover Park location, due to open this spring. Not into sours (yet)? That’s okay—pick up something heavier and sweeter at Mad Fox’s barleywine festival Feb. 21 and 22 at the brewpub. —Tammy Tuck

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CPARTS Comic Fans

Six reaSonS why Bowser should rethink her decision to nix the Franklin School contemporary-art kunsthalle: washingtoncitypaper.com/go/ICE

ed a shot at cartooning. So Dembicki, co-founder Evan Keeling, and others decided to collaborate on a printed graphic anthology: Doctor Dremo’s Taphouse of Tall Tales & Short Stories, a book of short, illustrated stories centered around themes like the Wild West and the horrors of war. Unlike the earlier Dremo “jambooks,” these were paperbacks meant for retail sale. The rule for contributing was simple: Pay your share of the publishing cost (usually $60 per contributor), write and draw your comic within the the chosen theme, and help By Tim Regan sell the book when it was printed. Matt Dembicki can hardly move But there were some smudgy dearound in his minivan. It’s packed, floor tails that caused problems. to ceiling, with stacks upon stacks of Printing was expensive, and divvyfreshly printed newspapers. “I have to ing up the book among nearly 20 conuse every single crevice,” he says. Loadtributors was complicated. “We’d try ing the van is hard work, and Demto keep it so that one person didn’t bicki spends about 20 minutes cramhave a lot more pages than another ming the papers in with the help of his one,” says Keeling, 38, who edited oldest son, Adam. Whenever he can the first few Taphouse books. Demfind time, Dembicki delivers bundles bicki recalls that the process someto book businesses, record stores, and times “felt like we were competing comic shops across town. for the same book sometimes.” “It’s a great feeling to walk in with a It was also risky, since there was no stack of newspapers and people immeguarantee the books would even sell. diately know what it is and are excited “We’d have to front a lot of money,” about it,” Dembicki says with a smile. says Dembicki. After the fourth isBut Dembicki, 44, isn’t a newspaper sue of Dremo, the group called that deliveryman, at least not in the traditionseries quits and took a radical new al sense. And the newspapers he’s delivapproach to publishing their stories: ering aren’t full of words—they’re full a cheap, disposable, mass-produced of pictures. Dembicki is hauling copies newspaper supported by ads, not of Magic Bullet, D.C.’s only free semimember contributions. annual newsprint comic. Since its creIn 2010, the group launched its first ation in 2010, Magic Bullet has served Magic Bullet Kickstarter with a goal as the main indie publisher for the hunof $600. Word got out. Money was dreds of local cartoonists in the growraised. The goal was met. One thouing D.C. comic-making scene. sand copies were printed. At first, Magic Bullet is the child of DC ConDembicki and the others had to really spiracy, a small-press cartoonist collechustle to distribute the paper. They’d tive formed by Dembicki and other lopass copies out at Metro stops, leave cal comic creators in the beginning of them at local businesses, take them to 2005 (an excerpt of Dembicki’s District comic book conventions—anything Comics ran in Washington City Paper in to get a new reader. September 2012). Back then, the group “There was a time when we’d show would meet on Sunday afternoons at Dr. Number 10 With A Bullet: Dembicki, Cohen, and Keeling celebrate a decade of comics. up with a bundle of newspapers, and Dremo’s Taphouse in Arlington. The people would look at us skeptically,” meetings were usually non-linear and informal, equal parts and comics, local artists, “some kind of a freakshow act,” and says Dembicki. Slowly but surely, people started to recognize discussing comics and drinking beer. Members drifted in and performances by local bands. the comic and its artists. In 2011, after three issues, the comout of the organization. Some people came to produce serious The members also started working on an “exquisite ic newspaper was accepted into the holdings at the Library work. Others were just comic fans who wanted friends. corpse”-style mini-comic based on their hangout’s Doctor of Congress. By the fourth Magic Bullet, there were enough “We didn’t want to have dues or membership,” Dembicki Dremo mascot. Dembicki describes the process: “We’d do advertisers to pay for each print run without a crowdfundfour pages and pass it onto the next guy, and they’d do four ing campaign. “Now, it’s not even a conversation,” Dembicki says. “If you want to participate, that’s great.” To pass the time, the group broke ground on some just- pages and pass it off to the next person.” Doctor Dremo, a says. “When I put it on the counter, [people] start reading it. for-fun projects. In the fall after the group came together, DC blue-faced wizard with snowy white hair, was a spoof of Mar- The newspaper has given us a lot of recognition.” Conspiracy hosted the first Counter Culture Festival, a free art vel’s famous sorcerer superhero, Doctor Strange. Today’s Magic Bullet is a lot like the original Dremo books, After its first few meetings, the group doubled, tripled, qua- but longer, and without the exquisite corpse hand-offs. A typshow that packed the house at Dr. Dremo’s. The atmosphere was similar to a miniature comic convention: tables of T-shirts drupled in size. Naturally, this meant more people who want- ical issue runs about 48 or 50 pages long, with about 42 pagDarrow Montgomery

Indie comics are alive and well in the District.

washingtoncitypaper.com february 20, 2015 35

CPARTS Continued

es of comics; the rest are taken up by ads. Between 55 and 60 comics usually get submitted per issue, so not everyone makes it in. Artists have just one page to work with, and only one rule to obey: No swearing, nudity, or graphic violence. That’s not for reasons of prurience, but rather because it might make it harder to distribute all 5,000 copies. Other than that, anything’s fair game. Andrew Cohen, 33, Magic Bullet’s current editor, says picking the cartoons can be a long, agonizing process. “It’s really hard to make decisions about what has to get cut,” he says. “Everybody’s always going to be interested in something different as a reader, so you want a broad base.” “I definitely see Magic Bullet as having the purpose of promoting artists, giving them an alternative outlet, giving them their first outlet, or bringing them some level of exposure,” says Cohen. For some artists, the paper is the only place their work will be seen in a mass-produced physical form. For others, it’s a place where they can get creative or just plain weird. When Teresa Logan, a 54-year-old local cartoonist and comedian, first submitted to Magic Bullet two years ago, she had little experience with drawing in comic-book form. “I had drawn cartoons, but I’d never really gotten into comic books or graphic novels,” she says. When her very first submission was accepted into the paper, she was elated. Today, she’s an avid comic drawer and one of DC Conspiracy’s most active members.

“We want people to feel like their skill level doesn’t matter,” says Cohen. “We want them to develop. I know my skill from 10 years ago until now has drastically changed, and it’s been largely because of interacting within [DC Conspiracy] and having it foster my growth.” “It’s nice to think about how many members of DC Conspiracy have over the years put out great work,” says Dembicki. “Art Hondros started working with us, and now he gets stuff published in the Washington Post. Carolyn Belefski had four or five cartoons the White House commissioned on the health care deadline.” And Magic Bullet isn’t only for up-and-comers. Brooke Allen, 26, illustrator for the popular nationally distributed comic Lumberjanes, says submitting to Magic Bullet can help her get outside her own head. “I remember illustrating one piece got me out of a funk I was in,” she says. “Just being able to work in a new format and do something for fun was very helpful.” And the comic has had contributions from other bigname artists, too: Nick Galifianakis, Jim Rugg, and Duckberg Times creator and DC Comics artist John K. Snyder. On his lunch break, Dembicki drops a big bundle of papers off at Fantom Comics in Dupont Circle. Store manager Esther Kim practically forces the paper onto newcomers—when she has a few extra copies, that is. It’s hard to come by these days, and the stack of papers is gone within a few weeks. “We just

keep increasing the amount we ask them for,” she says. “We pass it onto our customers and tell everyone.” This Saturday, Feb. 21, DC Conspiracy will turn 10. To celebrate, Dembicki and some of the other old hat Conspiracy members plan to host a big party at Fantom Comics, with plenty of copies of Magic Bullet’s 10th issue on hand. Dembicki has some lofty goals for the next decade of DC Conspiracy and Magic Bullet. “I would love to have D.C. recognized as its own kind of comic scene,” says Dembicki. “New York has its own recognition. Portland has its own recognition. Columbus has it. It’d be kind of cool if D.C. had it.” To achieve that, Dembicki says he’d like to snag more local authors and have a larger presence in local conventions like Awesome Con and the Small Press Expo. He’s even entertaining the idea of pursuing nonprofit status for the organization and applying for a local or national arts grant to start paying contributors and ramping up Magic Bullet’s production schedule. “We could publish quarterly and see where it goes,” he says. Dembicki knows there are risks and plenty of challenges ahead, but it doesn’t faze him. He’s up for another decade of making Magic Bullet. “We’ve had our bits of failure, but that’s part of the process,” says Dembicki. “It’s exciting. And it’s an adrenaline CP rush to publish.”

VISIT US AT CFA.GMU.EDU

Metropolitan Jazz Orchestra An Evening with Doc Severinsen SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21 AT 8 P.M. Trumpet legend Doc Severinsen joins some of the most remarkable jazz musicians in the D.C. metropolitan area for an evening of big band and jazz classics. From his incomparable talent to his unforgettable fashions, the former leader of The Tonight Show band is an act to catch, so don’t miss a great evening of high-ﬂying music! $50, $43, $30 ff

Christopher O’Riley and Pablo Ziegler Two to Tango SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22 AT 4 P.M. Christopher O’Riley, “… his melodies sang out with sweet clarity” (The Washington Post) and Pablo Ziegler, “[playing] straight from the beating, bleeding heart of nuevo tango with its Argentinian mix of swagger and sweetness” (The Guardian) get together for a completely unique and intriguing program of twopiano arrangements of tango music! $46, $39, $28

Mark Morris Dance Group SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 28 AT 8 P.M. SUNDAY, MARCH 1 AT 4 P.M. “There is no other choreographer today with Morris’s unbound imagination and the skill to realize it onstage.” (The Washington Post) This wonderful program includes two works set to music by Lou Harrison: Paciﬁc, by Mark Morris, being performed by MMDG for the ﬁrst time, and Grand Duo, called “intoxicatingly thrilling” by the Seattle Times; Words, a new dance set to Songs Without Words by Mendelssohn; and The “Tamil Film Songs in Stereo” Pas de Deux. $48, $41, $29

ff = Family Friendly performances that are most suitable for families with younger children

TICKETS 888-945-2468 OR CFA.GMU.EDU 36 february 20, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

Located on the Fairfax campus, six miles west of Beltway exit 54 at the intersection of Braddock Road and Rt. 123.

i o t n a t S SSov S o e o r r VING

Open Marley Night

EEP IT

the c K

The fifth annual Atlas INTERSECTIONS Festival begins on Feb. 20, bringing dozens of dance, music, and theater performances to the arts center on H Street NE. It aims to highlight performances that combine the genres in different ways, so unexpected collaborations run rampant. There’s a lot to take in—so let this Venn diagram guide you to your ideal entertainment, be it whimsical clowns or poetry with a social-justice bent. —Caroline Jones

Vision Contemporary Dance Ensemble

Mark H Taiko and Uprooted Dance, “REACTION”

Wit’s End Puppets, “Saudade”

Washington Dunhuang Guzheng Academy

Gin Dance Company

Nancy Havlik’s Dance Performance Group SOLE Defined, “The Phenix”

Metropolitan Youth Tap Ensemble, “Tap Dance: The Music of Rhythm” B-Fly Entertainment, “The Nayika Project” Jayamangala, “EKAKINI”

MOVEIUS Contemporary Ballet, “GLACIER”

Arts on the Horizon, “Sunny and Licorice”

Deviated Theatre, “creature”

Taffety Punk Theatre Company, “Enter Ophelia, distracted”

Dissonance Dance Theatre, “On the Fifth”

A K E

Pace Setters Dance, “If Money Were No Object” Company Danzante, “Snapshot Diaries”

E S O M E CHANG

City At Peace

FRESHH Inc., “For Us”

Folger Shakespeare Library, “Crowned in Power” Happenstance Theatre, “Pinot and Augustine” Arena Stage Voices of Now

AirBorne DC! and Zip Zap Circus, “Above and Beyond”

Jane Franklin Dance, “Niche”

Tehreema Mitha Dance Co., “Live the Live Performance”

Closer Look

dog & pony dc, “Toast”

National Hand Dance Association

Furia Flamenca, “Lorca”

H C U O A TWHIMSY OF

Olayimika Cole, “The Play of L’Ife”

JESSA, “Days without dates”

RAJAS

Rachel Ann Cross

Dix Out, “Dix Out Plays Fats Waller” invoke, “Souls in the Mud”

Imani

Verroneau, “Bossa Fever”

Split This Rock

Conciliation Project, “uncle tom:de-constructed”

Capital City Symphony, “Interactive Symphony”

Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, “Love Stinks!”

Goldie Deane, “Surrender”

SpeakeasyDC, “Show and Tell: True Stories by Photojournalists”

Chromatics, “Our Diverse Universe”

Asanga Domask, Robert J. Priore and Sarah J.Ewing, “Voices”

Not What You Think, “Our Love is Soaring”

Young Playwrights for Change

UrbanArias, “The Whole Truth”

Cheick Hamala Diabate Face the Music

Wytold

SynchroniCity

All Points West, “Bach and Brews”

T-S O - A S S CL

SIC

Arts Desk

washingtoncitypaper.com/go/samson

CPARTS

Listen to JD Samson’s electro-house remix of Coup Sauvage & The Snips’ “(Don’t Touch My) Hair”

L A IC

washingtoncitypaper.com february 20, 2015 37

TheaTer

Live and Yearn

An ex-con struggles and a pair of couples escape to the woods in two plays about people desperate for more. King Hedley II By August Wilson Directed by Timothy Douglas At Arena Stage to March 8 Cherokee By Lisa D’Amour Directed by John Vreeke At Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company to March 8 By Chris Klimek The last time burly Bowman Wright performed at Arena Stage, he played a very different King: Two years ago he showed us the private, interior side of Martin Luther King Jr. in Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop, set the evening before the civil rights leader’s assassination in Memphis. Now Wright is the title character in August Wilson’s 1999 King Hedley II, a man who would appear to have little in common with the reverend who gave his life to the cause of racial justice through peaceful protest. Wilson’s King—that’s the character’s first name—isn’t educated or eloquent, and he regards violence as an unchangeable fact of the hard world he lives in, as essential to his survival as air. He insists he doesn’t regret killing the man who cut his face, leaving a prominent scar as his dominant feature; only that it sent him to prison for seven years. If he kills again, he swears, it won’t cost him a day. “The next motherfucker who fucks with me is gonna get War World III!” he thunders at the end of the first act, too enraged even to get the sequence of the words right. The show had opened, 95 minutes earlier, with King on his hands and knees, fussing over some seeds in a barren little patch of what he says is dirt but looks to us like gravel. (Everything in Tony Cisek’s in-the-round set is the color of cracked concrete. Fourteen jagged slabs of the stuff hang from the ceiling.) That was before he learned his girlfriend, Tonya (Jessica Frances Dukes), is pregnant. Already a grandmother at 35, and trapped in a neighborhood where many kids don’t live long enough to become adults, she doesn’t want King’s baby. Subtlety is as irrelevant to what Wilson is up to here as it is in Greek tragedies written 2,500 years earlier. And King Hedley II feels very much like an ancient tragedy: in its imposing density and its grandiloquence; in the value it places on dreams and prophecies; in its reliance

on loud, athletic performances; and in the sense that it provides more nourishment than pleasure. Many critics have dismissed Othello as a silly play about a handkerchief over the last four centuries, so I don’t feel too thick for finding Hedley’s bloody denouement to be less of an existential gut-punch than a clumsy PSA about firearm safety. There’s still plenty to admire in the three-and-a-quarter hours (including one 15-minute intermission) that build to that deflating moment. It’s impossible to take your eyes off Bow-

cally by No Rules Theatre Company last fall. Chronologically, Hedley is the penultimate chapter in Wilson’s 10-play cycle examining the lives of black Americans in each decade of the 20th century. Like all but one of the others it takes place in Pittsburgh’s Hill District; the year is 1985, with unemployment high and violent crime rampant. But knowing all that context isn’t likely to make the show feel any less forbidding. Ronald Reagan shoulders much of the blame for allowing the inner cities to rot dur-

The Sounds of Violence: Hedley comes to a bloody end. man, for one thing. He’s volatile and unpredictable, undergirding his explosive anger with inarticulate sorrow. Kenyatta Rogers is almost as good as Mister, King’s fast-talking partner in petty crime. They’re selling stolen refrigerators and pooling their earnings in the hope of opening a video store together. (The lack of glamour involved in moving kitchen appliances as opposed to TVs is one of the scant sources of humor that briefly punctuate the overriding gloom.) Michael Anthony Williams has a serpentine physicality and delivery as Elmore, a 66-year-old hustler in a threepiece suit and a Stetson who has returned to the neighborhood to rekindle his long-ago relationship with King’s nosy, noisy mother, Ruby (E. Faye Butler). That relationship was addressed in Seven Guitars, set 37 years earlier and staged lo-

38 february 20, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

ing this era, but Hedley assigns divine origin to the abundant misery: “God’s a bad motherfucker,” says André De Shields as the memorable Stool Pigeon—the play’s wizened prophet—again and again. He’s the first to speak, reporting the news and reciting Scripture to the others. (All the players remain onstage for the duration of the show, sitting off to the side if they’re not part of the scene.) He’s also the one who sets the piece on its final, tragic heading, giving King a machete that belonged to King’s father, and which he used to kill Floyd Barton, another Seven Guitars character. Nobody knows what he’s supposed to do with it, but at least it occurs to Stool Pigeon and to Mister to ask the question. When Elmore sells Mister a derringer with a mother-of-pearl handle (“that’s better than pearl,” he explains), nobody bothers.

As tough a sit as Hedley is, it’s a more rewarding evening than Cherokee, another sorta-comedy about two couples from Lisa D’Amour. Her Detroit, which Woolly did a year and a half ago, looked at a pair of recovering addicts and a pair of felled-by-therecession professionals whose backyards adjoin. It eventually got lost in the woods, but it was funnier and more trenchant than Cherokee, which takes two pairs of Houstonites—one white and affluent, the other black and closer to the financial bone—and packs them off to a North Carolina campsite where strange but not terribly interesting events unfold. “I just want something to happen—something I have to endure,” John, an unhappy oil executive (Paul Morella) tells his schoolteacher spouse, Janine (Jennifer Mendenhall). Newlyweds Traci (Erica Chamblee) and Mike (Thomas W. Jones II) have come on the trip with the intent of conceiving a child, a pursuit that spares them conversations like this. When they can’t figure out how to light the stove they’ve brought from REI, the foursome opt for the buffet at the casino on the nearby reservation, where they befriend Josh, a young American Indian who waits tables and performs in a Disneyfied revue about the history of his tribe. Jason Grasl, the actor playing Josh, is new to Woolly; he’s strapping and handsome, and he wrings laughs from D’Amour’s not-quite jokes in a way that seems to elude the others. But the novelty of his presence isn’t enough to keep the coddled-suburbanites-go-native scenario from feeling overly familiar, or to make D’Amour’s watery observations about code switching profound. The other Woolly newcomer, Chamblee, finds herself rocked by a series of revelations about her husband, but plays them all with the same mild alarm. (The other three actors are all good without ever doing anything surprising.) The movie-style opening titles identify D’Amour as a white lady of European extraction, which is funnier and less ambiguous than anything that happens during the following two hours. Aaron Fisher uses projections to give establishing shots of the campground and some corny superimposed effects to put the two couples inside the casino. The stagehands wear an approximation of park ranger uniforms. Daniel Ettinger’s set and Colin K. Bills’ lighting design use bark-colored pylons and a pattern of leafy shadows to evoke the mighty deciduous trees of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. But for all that sylvan atmosphere, Cherokee doesn’t take CP us anywhere we haven’t been. Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth St. SW. $40-$90. (202) 554-9066. arenastage.org Wooly Mammoth Theatre Company, 641 D St. NW. $45-$88. (202) 393-3939. woolly-mammoth.net

Film

It Had to Be Jew

From parental politics to matzah balls, a kaleidoscopic view of Jewish life. The Washington Jewish Film Festival features more than 80 films screened over the course of 11 days, starting tonight. Here, a few reviews of festival standouts. Deli Man There exists a short but delectable list of movies that you should not watch on an empty stomach: Big Night, Chef, and now, Deli Man. A meditation and exploration of the Jewish delicatessen, Erik Greenberg Anjou’s documentary features ample footage of scrumptious Jewish nosh: sandwiches piled high with corned beef and pastrami, matzah ball soup, and even obscure delicacies like a stew made out of cow innards. Needless to say, vegetarians would be wise to look elsewhere. But even if a pile of meat is not your thing, Deli Man’s portrait of the deli as a fading subculture is worth savoring. Anjou traces the deli’s history from its humble New York City origins in the Old Fateful: Jacob’s neighbor a former Nazi? ’30s to its renaissance in the ’40s and ’50s up to its more recent precipitous decline. What emerges is a portrait of a people defined, for better and for worse, by their commitment to tradition and authenticity, which is a challenge in a marketplace that always values the hot, new dish. Featuring interviews with famous deli connoisseurs like Jerry Stiller and Larry King, Deli Man is consistently entertaining and —Noah Gittell surprisingly filling. Mr. Kaplan Movies about elderly protagonists who find a renewed sense of purpose late in life have formed their own genre these days, but Mr. Kaplan gives that familiar tale a grim and glorious new sheen. In Uruguay’s submission for the Best Foreign Film Oscar this year, Héctor Noguera plays Jacob, an octogenarian who fled the Holocaust as a boy and has built a successful life in Uruguay. Now struggling with age-induced depression, he is revitalized when he discovers that an old German man who lives at a nearby beach may actually be a former Nazi in hiding. Buoyed by the chance to do something important for his people, Jacob enthusiastically sets out to bring this escaped fugitive to justice, enlisting the help of a retired cop that his family recently hired to keep tabs on him. It is a perceptive story about the indignities of aging, is told with a youthful flair. Writer/director Álvaro Brechner displays great command of tone and genre, blending the mystery, comedy, and human drama of Mr. Kaplan into a cohesive —Noah Gittell and compelling whole. Little White Lie The lifelong mystery that Lacey Schwartz explores in her selfdirected film Little White Lie isn’t difficult to figure out—the answer is the most obvious one. Schwartz was born to and

Friend Repressed: Some pen pals are taboo. raised by white Jewish parents in Woodstock, N.Y. Despite nagging but quickly dismissed questions about her dark skin and hair (her Sicilian great-grandfather, she thinks, is to blame), Schwartz easily identifies as white and Jewish. Viewers won’t be surprised to learn that her mother’d had an affair, which Schwartz finally learns when she’s in college, spurring her to use the documentary form to examine race and how it defines us. While attending Georgetown University, Schwartz’s photo was enough to grant her an invitation to a black student group, the start of her exploration of a new culture with diverse friends. “I felt better as black,” she says, though the reasoning is nearly as difficult for her to articulate as it is for viewers who are certain of their race to understand. The truly jaw-dropping part of Schwartz’s documentary is the unrelenting denial everyone in her life maintained, as if Schwartz’s biraciality were as trivial a family matter as “Uncle Joe’s drunk again.” Though Schwartz’s true parentage is the film’s least surprising news, the runner-up is this: “That’s when I went to therapy.” —Tricia Olszewski

Almost Friends In Western society, Facebook is mostly a means of embarrassing yourself with half-naked photos and TMI, where most users accept friend requests from random strangers without giving it much thought. But Almost Friends, directed by Nitzan Ofir and Barak Heymann, offers a glimpse of virtual correspondence as the subject of heavy debate by mothers in the Middle East, where online relationships between Arab and Jewish grade-school children are taboo. Two schools—a secular one in Lod and a religious institution in Tlamim—attempt to foster some small-scale harmony by inviting their students to become pen pals. With the caveat that the girls’ messages will be monitored, the parents in this film agree to it with varying levels of comfort. (One mother says she wouldn’t want her Arabic child marrying a Jew, so why encourage connections now?) Soon, the girls—who are quite sophisticated about the conflicts that surround them—are allowed to meet, and though they see and enjoy each other through children’s eyes, the adults in their lives rein things in. In an ideal world, they would learn from their kids: When the Jewish Linor is asked what her pen pal is like, she says, “Every person would want such a friend.” —Tricia Olszewski My Favorite Neoconservative Like many young Americans, Chevy Chase resident Yael Luttwak has some political differences with her parents. But her father is Edward Luttwak, a renowned neoconservative who has, for the last 20 years, helped make the case for military action in the Middle East. In the short film My Favorite Neoconservative, Yael follows her father around with a camera for one long, uncomfortable month. From their family home to military conferences, she stays by his side, filming his every move and pestering him with questions. Her endgame seems muddled—in one scene, she makes a heartfelt attempt to connect with her father; in another, she rudely interrupts him during a private meeting—but there’s something universal in her intentions. In this era of deep political divisions, Yael’s ambivalence towards the other side resonates, and the deeply felt hostility between father and daughter is painfully authentic. The film is not the “subversive, left-wing propaganda” that Edward tells a colleague it is. Rather, it’s an honest attempt to engage with another side of political discourse and, though Yael’s efforts are not always successful, her actions could be a —Noah Gittell needed inspiration for the rest of us. Visit washingtoncitypaper.com/go/dcjff for more picks, showtimes, and venues. washingtoncitypaper.com february 20, 2015 39

Galleries

All Shapes and Surprises

Stripped of their meaning, are mathematical models Surrealist enough? “Man Ray–Human Equations: A Journey from Mathematics to Shakespeare” At the Phillips Collection to May 10 By Jeffry Cudlin When Man Ray fled the German occupation of Paris in 1940, he relocated to Hollywood—and created a body of work as weird and titillating as his new surroundings. In the resulting series of 23 paintings, mysterious curving forms that look like abstracted human body parts float in empty, theatrically lit spaces. The artist tagged these pieces with the titles of the Bard’s famous plays, sparking playful, erotic, and disturbing associations. “Hamlet” (1949) features a luminous white wedge, recalling either the skull of Yorick, exhumed in Act Five of the play, or doomed Ophelia’s breast: One bulging corner of the object has a pinkish, areola-like shadow. “Othello” (1948) confronts viewers with a shadowy visage, all hollowed-out eyes and protruding mouth, like an African mask wrapped in ropes or wires. And in “Antony and Cleopatra” (1948), two objects stand side by side, one composed of strong colors and sharp points like a crown or ceremonial headdress, the other resembling an armored torso sporting a giant drooping phallus. While the grotesqueries and staginess of Ray’s “Shakespearean Equations” fit his California exile, these paintings actually reflect a subject the artist had already explored years ago as an American expat in France. In 1934, Ray had visited the Institut Henri Poincaré in Paris to photograph its dusty collection of geometric models. Made of wood, wire, and plaster, these objects were meant to help students visualize mathematical concepts. “I went to see them, although I am not particularly interested in mathematics,” he said in a 1961 interview. “I didn’t understand a thing, but the shapes were so unusual, as revolutionary as anything that is being done today in painting or in sculpture.” On view at the Phillips Collection through May 10, “Human Equations: A Journey from Mathematics to Shakespeare” offers a thorough unpacking of the motifs Ray brought with him to Hollywood from Paris. Fourteen of the “Shakespearean Equations” are displayed alongside the photos on which they’re based, as well as the original mathematical models. With more than 125 pieces, the show chronicles the artist’s development and demonstrates how he operated across multi-

thetic contemplation isn’t a model at all: “…the object on the right has no more (or less) mathematical significance than the stretcher of a canvas does for a painting; it is in fact the supporting base belonging to another model…” When cropped versions of the photos were published in Cahiers d’Art in May of 1936, Breton himself thought the objects needed an extra Surrealist kick, and proposed giving them poetic titles like “Hypnotic Sleep,” “The Rose Penitents,” and “The Abandoned “Real Part of the Function w=e” from Novel.” Ray declined, but clearly the Institut Henri Poincaré (c. 1900) the idea stayed with him. A decade Breton thought Surrealist later and a continent away, he decided to see painting should focus on the im- what else he could squeeze from the series. itation of nature—a fairly conThe resulting “Shakespearean Equaservative notion to be tossing tions” include a few extraneous elements around in the 20th century. Sur- not in the original photos—the occasion“Shakespearean Equation, Julius Casesar” by realism’s revolutionary tenden- al butterfly or chess piece, for example. In Man Ray (1948) cies were all in the content. In the background of “Julius Caesar” (1948), ple mediums, from found objects to photog- his 1924 manifesto, Breton defined Surreal- a blackboard has a few algebraic formulas raphy to paint on canvas. ism as “pure psychic automatism by means scrawled across it; one appears to be the Perhaps more importantly, the show also of which one intends to express… the actual square root of the artist’s name. Otherindicates the limitations of Surrealism and functionality of thought.” Surrealists didn’t wise, the canvases are relatively faithful to modern art in the mid-20th century. For do away with representation, but they did the photos, and executed in an unglamorRay, the products of science, literature, and bring dream imagery and reality together. ous, matter-of-fact way. In Hollywood, Ray other world cultures existed mainly as interAs a Surrealist, Ray was committed to may have been eager to return to painting, changeable fodder for visual puns—no con- recording and depicting experiences with but he resisted the opportunities oil paint text or greater understanding was required. bodies and objects. Yet the actual subjects offers for delectation. Throughout the seAlthough he was trained as a draftsman he chose mattered very little to him; they ries, Ray marries loose, facile-looking black and worked as a painter, Ray sought auto- merely served as tools for his creative liber- outlines to thin scrubbed areas of washedmatic, de-skilled methods for image-mak- ties. Thus, in 1926, when he photographed out color or shadow. ing early in his career. His main focus was a mask from the Sepik River region of New Despite some clear affinities between the the weird, anthropomorphized aura of un- Guinea, his main concern was dramatic images and the plays, Ray seems to have familiar objects. “Composition with Key and lighting. In the photo, the mask appears to picked them with the same randomness Triangle” (1919) is an early breakthrough: a be emerging from the darkness, a disembod- Breton applied to his own suggestions. Appainting produced by placing tools on a small ied head defined by strong tonal contrasts parently Ray enjoyed asking viewers to try sheet of paper and spraying ink at them. and deep shadows. Similarly, in “Black and to match titles to paintings themselves. As When the tools were removed, the result was White” (1926), a mask from the Ivory Coast he said during a lecture in 1954: “Sometimes a page filled with ghostly silhouettes. is clutched by a bare-shouldered white fe- they got it right; sometimes, of course, they As Ray gravitated toward photography in male model; eyes closed, she rests her head didn’t, and it was just as well.” the 1920s, he developed Rayographs—cam- on a table next to it. Any critical acknowlShakespeare was likely not any more imera-less photos made by objects arranged edgment of either mask’s history or rela- portant to Ray than Dogon masks, disemon photosensitive paper. With light alone, tionship to French colonialism is absent. boweled lamp shades, or plaster casts of the Ray could generate inscrutable contours and Ray took the same approach to photo- Venus de’ Medici, all of which appeared in playful slippage between figure and ground, graphing the collection at the Institut. In his work over the years. At the Phillips Colpositive and negative. his original “Mathematical Objects” (1934- lection, viewers can follow the threads of Mind you, Ray’s goal was not abstrac- 35), models are depicted in pairs or on top Ray’s visual attractions and see how the arttion per se. In fact, in the Surrealist camp, of one another, partly enveloped in or ist wove them together. The resulting show non-objective art was a bit of a no-no. As emerging from shadow. As mathematics offers puns, puzzles, and plenty of charm— the movement’s founder André Breton once professor François Apéry explains in the ex- but one wonders if that’s really enough. CP said: “It is impossible for me to envisage hibition catalog, mathematically speaking, a picture as being other than a window… these paired models typically have nothing my first concern is then to know what it to do with one another. In fact, he points 1600 21st St. NW. $10-$12. (202) 387-2151. looks out on.’’ out that one form Ray singled out for aes- phillipscollection.org

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GalleriesSketcheS

March 3–24 A three-week, multidisciplinary, international festival showcasing the many cultures of Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking peoples, and their impact around the world

HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE: PICASSO CERAMIST AND THE MEDITERRANEAN

Exclusive U.S. exhibition!

Mar. 4–22 | Atrium & Atrium Foyers

GRUPO CORPO (BRAZIL)

Mar. 6 & 7 | Eisenhower Theater

BUIKA (SPAIN) WITH IVÁN “MELON” LEWIS & CONTINUUM QUARTET (CUBA)

Mar. 8 | Concert Hall

COMPAÑÍA MARÍA PAGÉS (SPAIN)

Utopía

Mar. 11 & 12 | Eisenhower Theater

EUGENIA LEÓN (MEXICO)

Eugenia León y Las Voces de Mujeres, Voces del Pueblo

Mar. 14 & 15 | Eisenhower Theater

CARMEN SOUZA (CAPE VERDE)

Live at Lagny Jazz Festival Tour

Mar. 16 | Eisenhower Theater Plus, more dance, music, theater, literature panels, forums, installations, and culinary offerings. IBERIAN SUITE: global arts remix is curated by Alicia Adams, Vice President of International Programming

Tickets on sale now!

(202) 467-4600 kennedy-center.org Tickets also available at the Box Office | Groups (202) 416-8400

For complete festival information, visit KENNEDY-CENTER.ORG/IBERIA IBERIAN SUITE: global arts remix Presented in cooperation with the governments of Portugal and Spain Presenting Underwriter HRH Foundation Festival Benefactors include the Portuguese Secretary of State for Culture, Ambassador Elizabeth F. Bagley, Natalia and Carlos Bulgheroni, Amalia Perea Mahoney and William Mahoney, and David and Alice Rubenstein Major Sponsors include Arte Institute, Caixa Geral de Depósitos, Camões – Instituto da Cooperação e da Língua, EDP, Fundação Luso-Americana, Marca España, SPAIN arts & culture, ThinkFoodGroup, and Wines of Portugal

42 february 20, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

“Perfect X Series: Undoing III” by Maggie Michael (2015)

InkIng of Someone elSe “Maggie Michael: Colored Grounds and Perfect Xs” At G Fine Art to April 4 Clarice Lispector’s fingerprints are all over Maggie Michael’s latest show. Quotations from the Jewish-Brazilian writer’s novels appear in the titles of Michael’s paintings, but the connection is closer than that. It’s as if Lispector’s lyrical urgency, her experimental perspective and sense for repetition, have taken physical form in Michael’s latest solo show, the local painter’s seventh in D.C. Longtime viewers who have seen her approach to abstraction advance and rebound and advance again might say no, these paintings are a return to form for Michael. The text is gone, the biomorphic imagery is back, the argument might go. And it’s true: The works in “Colored Grounds and Perfect Xs” call back to the paintings Michael made when she first got her start in the early 2000s. But she’s no less upfront about the way she processes her influences and ideas in her pure abstractions than in artworks with the words painted right on the surface for viewers to read. In “Colored Grounds and Perfect Xs,” two experimental cycles play out side by side. “Colored Ground Series: Grey Crosscutting

Silver (Delta)” (2014) and “Colored Ground Series: (Orange), How to Make (Frame) a Black Rainbow” (2014) are titles that fairly capture the way she arrives at those paintings. Which is to say, the “Colored Ground” paintings are logical, Maggie’s strategies nested and bracketed and stacked like compound clauses over a plain color base. On the other hand, “Perfect X Series: White” and “Perfect X Series: Nailing Tints and Wisps,” plus the three X paintings titled “Undoing,” each describe a singular form, with every iteration a new exercise. Both series remind me of Robert Ryman, the playful minimalist, with his love of jazz and monochromes. Another of Michael’s new paintings—“Melting Eyes and Stones ‘More than an instant, I want its flow.’ (Clarice Lispector, Água Viva),” a chewy title—appears to depict cellular meiosis, as two stained forms divide. If it looks familiar, that’s because she’s recycling something from her “Clone” series, paintings of twin latex pours. Maybe Michael’s found something in Lispector’s writings that she could only work through by returning to schemes from her past. That’s how Michael paints: like a problemsolver. Her abstractions are often musical and soaring, like landscapes, but she’s a methodical worker, one decision a segue to the next, plain and simple (yet not). Even her catholic interests in media—latex, enamel, spray paint, ink, oil, graphite, stencils, text, nails, even water from the Potomac River—seem to flow from first principles. Somehow, Michael is always working through other artists’ work, whether it’s paintings or poems or pop songs, and her paintings are inputs turned into outputs. Still, they add up to much more than the sum of their parts. “Deconstructing ‘A Lover’s Discourse’ (Fragments of a Long River)” is a means to an end. Standing in front of the painting, I feel like I’m on the wrong side of it, looking out; like the real painting is on the other side of the canvas, and only the people on the other side of the mirror can see it; what I am seeing instead is the inversion of processes, the reflection of tactics, the ways of painting instead of the painting itself. I like my side just fine. —Kriston Capps 4718 14th St. NW. Free. (202) 462-1601. gfineartdc.com

MusicDiscography

��

Antoine Lyers

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The Write Stuff: Parker’s an ambitious composer.

A TwisT of EighT Interloper Jonathan Parker One Trick Dog A jazz octet falls into the gray area between small and big band, and Jonathan Parker’s octet behaves like the latter. The piano, bass, drums, and rhythm section are joined by five horn players (including Parker, who plays alto and soprano saxophones, as well as the flute), begging for elaborate interplay and orchestrations. Accordingly, Parker’s debut album Interloper is, first and foremost, a showcase for the local leader’s writing in both arrangements and compositions. Lucky for us, that writing happens to be superb. It’s also quite ambitious. Parker gives notice of his big ideas with the opener, “Clearyisms.” The tune has two iterations of its introduction, followed by a horn melody with a complex form (AABACA) and even more complex chord voicings. It’s heady stuff, and Parker proceeds to top it with “Jim,” a long composition with separate melodic sections for flute, soprano sax (both by Parker), and trumpet (Dave Chisholm), then a final section for trumpet and soprano together—not counting the dense obbligatos that come in under Chris Pattishall’s piano solo or the full-ensemble variation of the theme near the end. And that’s just the first two of Interloper’s seven tracks; the extraordinary writing for bass clarinet (played by Owen Broder on “Tranquility” and Bill Mulligan on the closing “Lament”) hasn’t even come in yet. All the ambition in the world means little, however, if the music isn’t inherently compelling, and Parker is more than up to that task. Sure, melodies like “Jim” are compounds, but the component parts are simple and full of memorable hooks. (Some of the most mem-

orable in jazz history, in fact: The theme of “Gage” is ultimately a long build-up to and comedown from the opening lick of John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps.”) Still, they can be deceptive, as on the record’s best tune: “Tranquility,” written by bassist Curtis Ostle but arranged by Parker. It begins with a slow, dark, through-composed harmony line for Parker’s flute, Chisholm’s trumpet, and Paul Jones’ tenor sax, over the drone of Broder’s bass clarinet and Peter Nelson’s trombone. After 40 seconds—just long enough to wonder if this is all the whole track will sound like—Pattishall and Ostle, followed by drummer Alex Ritz, bring in a swinging groove to drive the tune’s intoxicating, hummable melodic phrases. (Those grooves are not to be underestimated, either: From beginning to end, whether in 4/4 time or the 6/8 of “Jim,” Interloper swings its head off.) Improvisations, while not Interloper’s top priority, are nonetheless high-caliber. Chisholm makes a particularly fine contribution on “King of the Hill,” starting with the four-note hook from the written theme and making it the springboard for a long charge. (Pattishall precedes him with another great solo, attacking Count Basie licks with aplomb.) Broder, meanwhile, tiptoes into “Gage” with a gorgeous, subtle baritone sound and discrete phrases that are sometimes stock, but he makes them work. Even Ostle does exquisite work on bass (“Sundown,” “Tranquility”). Interestingly, though, Interloper’s weakest solo is the leader’s, a soprano entry on “Jim” comprising arpeggios and easy licks. But Parker ably compensates with his gifts as a writer and bandleader. A team of eight can make a big splash. —Michael J. West Listen to Interloper at washingtoncitypaper.com/ go/interloper. Parker plays GWU on Feb. 26.

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CITYLIST

Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45 Theater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 0 Film . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53

SearCh LISTIngS aT waShIngTonCITYpaper.Com

Music

Friday

CITY LIGHTS: FRIDAY

BLACK ORPHEUS

2461 18th St., NW Washington, DC 202-667-5370

Rock

“Where the Beautiful

Black cat 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. Georgetown Cabaret. 9 p.m. $12–$15. blackcatdc.com.

People go to get

Ugly.”

Fillmore Silver Spring 8656 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. (301) 960-9999. Jencarlos Canela. 8 p.m. $38. fillmoresilverspring.com.

“One of the 25 best bars in America”

rock & roll Hotel 1353 H St. NE. (202) 388-ROCK. A Place To Bury Strangers, Ed Schrader’s Music Beat. 9 p.m. $12. rockandrollhoteldc.com.

- Playboy Magazine

Redheads always drink 1/2 price Shiner Bock!

Warner tHeatre 513 13th St. NW. (202) 783-4000. Tedeschi Trucks Band. 8 p.m. $57.50–$85.50. warnertheatre.com.

LIVE MUSIC EVERY NIGHT

Funk & R&B

Thu: Ladies Night

HoWard tHeatre 620 T St. NW. (202) 803-2899. Martha Reeves & The Vandellas. 8 p.m. $30–$55. thehowardtheatre.com.

ElEctRonic U Street mUSic Hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 5881880. Young Summer. 7 p.m. $15. ustreetmusichall. com. Treasure Fingers, Martin Roth. 10 p.m. $10. ustreetmusichall.com.

Jazz BlUeS alley 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Kim Waters. 8 p.m. & 10 p.m. $43. bluesalley.com. BoHemian cavernS 2001 11th St. NW. (202) 2990800. Aruán Ortiz Trio. 8 p.m. & 10 p.m. $20–$25. bohemiancaverns.com. tWinS Jazz 1344 U St. NW. (202) 234-0072. Alex Norris. 9 p.m. & 11 p.m. $15. twinsjazz.com.

BluEs madam’S organ 2461 18th St. NW. (202) 6675370. Eric Culberson. 9 p.m. Free. madamsorgan.com. 930.com.

WoRld BarnS at WolF trap 1645 Trap Road, Vienna. (703) 255-1900. HAPA. 8 p.m. $25–$30. wolftrap.org.

Vocal mUSic center at StratHmore 5301 Tuckerman Lane, Bethesda. (301) 581-5100. Harry Connick, Jr. 8 p.m. $65–$225. strathmore.org.

(No Cover For Ladies)

Patrick Alban & Noche Latina Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus is big on myths and even grander in spectacle. Taking Eurydice and Orpheus out of ancient Greece and placing them in Rio de Janeiro earned the director both praise and criticism. It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1959 and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1959, and it’s since been accepted into the canon by most film critics. But Camus’ oversimplification of black Brazilians and life in Rio’s favelas has drawn major scrutiny. Even President Barack Obama, whose mother counted the film among her favorites, chastised it in Dreams from My Father for its “depiction of the childlike blacks.” The film revolves around the poetic Orfeu, a guitarist and taxi driver in Camus’ hedonistic, spinning Rio. The film’s vibrant colors, rich score, and Carnaval backdrop make it an intriguing watch, especially at this topical time, but if Black Orpheus’ cinematography doesn’t appeal to you, it might be worth checking out to understand why POTUS has a few issues with one of Camus’ greatest accomplishments. The film shows at 7 p.m. at the Malsi Doyle and Michael Forman Theater at American University, 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW. Free. (202) 737-4215. nga.gov. —Jordan-Marie Smith

saturday

Warner tHeatre 513 13th St. NW. (202) 783-4000. Tedeschi Trucks Band. 8 p.m. $57.50–$85.50. warnertheatre.com.

Rock

Funk & R&B

BircHmere 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria. (703) 549-7500. Don McLean. 7:30 p.m. (Sold out). birchmere.com. Black cat BackStage 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. Coup Savage & the Snips, Gauzy, Hemlines. 9 p.m. $10. blackcatdc.com. comet ping pong 5037 Connecticut Ave. NW. (202) 364-0404. Br’er, Tone, Greenland. 10 p.m. $12. cometpingpong.com. iota clUB & caFé 2832 Wilson Blvd., Arlington. (703) 522-8340. The Dashing Pumpkins, Two Dragons and a Cheetah, Jonny Grave, Alex Vans. 8:30 p.m. $12. iotaclubandcafe.com.

tHe Hamilton 600 14th St. NW. (202) 787-1000. The Soul Rebels, Nth Power. 8 p.m. $20–$25. thehamiltondc.com. HoWard tHeatre 620 T St. NW. (202) 803-2899. Amel Larrieux. 7:30 p.m. $35–$70. thehowardtheatre.com.

Jazz

Latin & World Beat

Fri & sat Eric Culberson Blues

Saturday Opening Act: Robert Lighthouse Soulful Blues

7:00pm - 9:00pm Madam’s House Party On The Second Floor-Featuring DJ India 10:00pm

Sun: TheOldGood Thing Band School Band Mon: One Nite Stand Reggae, Funk & R&B Tue: TheR&B Johnny Artis Band & Rock & Roll Wed: The Human Country Jukebox Band Open Mic-8pm Second Floor

Sun, Tues & Thurs

Second Floor: Drunkaoke

BlUeS alley 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Kim Waters. 8 p.m. & 10 p.m. $43. bluesalley.com.

(Karaoke with Two Drink Minimum)

www.madamsorgan.com

washingtoncitypaper.com february 20, 2015 45

Bohemian Caverns 2001 11th St. NW. (202) 2990800. Aruán Ortiz Trio. 8 p.m. & 10 p.m. $20–$25. bohemiancaverns.com. Twins Jazz 1344 U St. NW. (202) 234-0072. Alex Norris. 9 p.m. & 11 p.m. $15. twinsjazz.com.

Jazz BirChmere 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria. (703) 549-7500. Stanley Clarke. 7:30 p.m. $45. birchmere.com.

Blues

Bohemian Caverns 2001 11th St. NW. (202) 2990800. Ethnic Heritage Ensemble. 7 p.m. & 8:30 p.m. $15–$20. bohemiancaverns.com.

arTisphere 1101 Wilson Blvd., Arlington. (703) 8751100. C.J. Chenier and the Red Hot Louisiana Band. 7:30 p.m. $20. artisphere.com.

Twins Jazz 1344 U St. NW. (202) 234-0072. Tuesday Project. 8 p.m. & 10 p.m. $10. twinsjazz.com.

zoo Bar 3000 Connecticut Ave. NW. (202) 2324225. Stacy Brooks Blues Band. 9 p.m. Free. zoobardc.com. Gypsy sally’s 3401 K St. NW. (202) 333-7700. The Larry Keel Experience, Walker’s Run. 9 p.m. $15–$17. gypsysallys.com.

World Barns aT wolf Trap 1645 Trap Road, Vienna. (703) 255-1900. HAPA. 7:30 p.m. $25–$30. wolftrap.org.

Vocal musiC CenTer aT sTraThmore 5301 Tuckerman Lane, Bethesda. (301) 581-5100. Harry Connick, Jr. 8 p.m. $65–$225. strathmore.org.

Sunday rock

zoo Bar 3000 Connecticut Ave. NW. (202) 2324225. Mike Flaherty’s Dixieland Direct Jazz Band. 7:30 p.m. Free. zoobardc.com.

Blues maDam’s orGan 2461 18th St. NW. (202) 6675370. Wink Keziah & Deluxe Motel. 9 p.m. Free. madamsorgan.com.

Folk 9:30 CluB 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Punch Brothers, Gaby Moreno. 7 p.m. $38. 930.com. ClariCe smiTh performinG arTs CenTer Stadium Drive and Route 193, College Park. (301) 4052787. Common Tone: Marian McLaughlin and Ethan Foote. 7 p.m. Free. claricesmithcenter.umd.edu.

World Gw lisner auDiTorium 730 21st St. NW. (202) 994-6800. Hugh Masekela, Vusi Mahlasela. 8 p.m. $30–$45. lisner.org.

DC9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. Leisure Cruise. 9 p.m. $10. dcnine.com.

Monday

Gypsy sally’s 3401 K St. NW. (202) 333-7700. Lauren Calve Band, Olivia Mancini and the Mates. 6 p.m. $5. gypsysallys.com.

9:30 CluB 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Ariel Pink, Jack Name. 7 p.m. $20. 930.com.

rock

CITY LIGHTS: SATURDAY

AMEL LARRIEUX No matter the era, Amel Larrieux’s music always seems to fit. The New York City-bred singer first found popularity during the mid-’90s as one-half of the R&B duo Groove Theory. Twenty years ago, the group’s single “Tell Me” hit No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100; it’s now regarded as a classic, in part because of the versatility of Larrieux’s vocals. Since departing Groove Theory in 1999, her solo career has been sustained by the clarity of her voice, extending from the lower notes she nailed on the neo-soul staple “Get Up” to the heights she reached on “For Real.” But Larrieux certainly isn’t living on the strength of her early work. Her most recent album, 2013’s Ice Cream Everyday, is a layered mix of everything that’s helped carry her career through two decades. She’ll breathe life into old favorites and more contemporary tunes for devoted fans and interested newcomers at the Howard Theatre. Amel Larrieux performs at 7:30 p.m. at the Howard Theatre, 620 T St. NW. $35–$70. (202) 803-2899. thehowardtheatre.com. —Julian Kimble

46 february 20, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

VelVet lounge 915 U St. NW. (202) 462-3213. In Your Memory, Fight the Fade, Sink In. 9 p.m. $8. velvetloungedc.com.

Funk & R&B MadaM’s organ 2461 18th St. NW. (202) 6675370. One Nite Stand. 9 p.m. $3–$7. madamsorgan.com.

Jazz BoheMian CaVerns 2001 11th St. NW. (202) 2990800. Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra. 8 p.m. & 10 p.m. $10. bohemiancaverns.com.

Tuesday Rock BlaCk Cat 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. The Dodos, Springtime Carnivore. 8 p.m. $15. blackcatdc.com.

Funk & R&B Barns at Wolf trap 1645 Trap Road, Vienna. (703) 255-1900. Bettye LaVette. 8 p.m. $45–$48. wolftrap.org.

CITY LIGHTS: SUNDAY

UPRIGHT CITIZENS BRIGADE

In her book Bossypants, Tina Fey recounts the time she and Amy Poehler spent touring the Midwest with a company of improvisers from the Second City comedy troupe. They slept in a van, ate a lot of fast food, and performed a lot of shows at half-empty town halls and high schools. After a few years on the road, Poehler went on to found the Upright Citizens Brigade and made it so successful that it, too, spawned a touring company, which shows up at Sixth & I Historic Synagogue on Sunday. In the decades since Fey and Poehler traveled across Illinois selling jokes, road food has certainly improved, as have the performers’ crash pads. But what remains the same is the comedy: full of irreverent bits from a half-dozen young jokesters that land a little differently each night. The Upright Citizens Brigade performs at 7 p.m. at Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, 600 I St. NW. $20–$25. (202) 408-3100. —Caroline Jones sixthandi.org.

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CITY LIGHTS: MONDAY

“HAND OF FREEDOM: THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF THE PLUMMER FAMILY”

If you really want to learn about someone’s most intimate experiences, a diary is a great place to start. But instead of mining Prince George’s County resident Adam Francis Plummer’s diary for personal details, curators at the Anacostia Community Museum used it to learn what life was like on a Maryland slave plantation in the years before the Civil War. (Plummer worked on George Calvert’s Riversdale plantation from the age of 10 until Maryland ended slavery in 1864.) After Plummer died in 1905, his daughter Nellie continued to update his diary with family happenings, including her brother Henry’s founding of the Bladensburg Burial Society, an organization that provided financial and social support for members following the death of a loved one. The museum uses the diary’s most compelling stories as the basis for its newest exhibition, which tells of the family’s past, as well as the story of Prince George’s County in the late 19th and early 20th centuries through words and photos. The suburbs that now feel so close appear completely foreign. The exhibition is on view daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., to Dec. 27, at the Anacostia Community Museum, 1901 Fort Place SE. Free. (202) 633-4820. anacostia.si.edu. —Caroline Jones

48 february 20, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

CITY LIGHTS: TUESDAY

CHITA RIVERA

Ask musical-theater fans about Chita Rivera and they’ll give an objective response: She’s a stage legend. In addition to winning two Tony Awards, a Kennedy Center Honor, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, she originated the role of Velma Kelly in Chicago and, at 82, she’s still not done: Rivera will return to Broadway later this year in The Visit, the final musical created by Chicago composers John Kander and Fred Ebb. To get back into performance mode, Rivera will bring her cabaret act back to the area where her career began. A District native, she studied ballet at Petworth’s Jones Haywood Dance School as an adolescent before heading to New York to further pursue her studies and rack up a mantle full of accolades. At McLean’s Alden Theatre, she’ll share songs and stories with awestruck audience members and prove that octogenarians can remain lean and limber if they just keep moving. Chita Rivera performs at 7:30 p.m. at the Alden Theatre, 1234 Ingleside Ave., McLean. —Caroline Jones $45–$75. (703) 790-0123. mcleancenter.org.

Jazz

BoHeMian caverns 2001 11th St. NW. (202) 2990800. Mad Curious - Lenny Robinson. 7:30 p.m. & 9 p.m. $10–$15. bohemiancaverns.com.

Twins Jazz 1344 U St. NW. (202) 234-0072. Nathan Hook. 8 p.m. & 10 p.m. $10. twinsjazz.com.

Go-Go BlUes alley 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Be’la Dona. 8 p.m. & 10 p.m. $20. bluesalley.com.

caBaRet alDen THeaTre 1234 Ingleside Ave., McLean. (703) 790-0123. Chita Rivera: A Legendary Celebration. 7:30 p.m. $45–$75. mcleancenter.org/alden/default.asp.

Wednesday Rock

S H AW - H O WA R D METRO ACCESS O F F GREEN LINE

620 T ST. NW WASHINGTON DC, 2001 202.803.2899 THEHOWARDTHEATRE.COM

VALET PARKING + SELF PARKING ON INTERSECTION OF 7TH & T ST FULL DINNER MENU EVERY SHOW NIGHT

JUST ANNOUNCED

2/27-LIL DURK

3/3-CURREN$Y

5/3-ERICA CAMPBELL

5/19-TECH N9NE

3/6-RAHSAAN PATTERSON

3/19-BLITZ THE AMBASSADOR

Folk Gypsy sally’s 3401 K St. NW. (202) 333-7700. Sean Watkins, Jill Andrews. 8:30 p.m. $15–$18. gypsysallys.com.

3/28-KENNY LATTIMORE

Hip-Hop FRIDAY FEBRUARY 20TH

U sTreeT MUsic Hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 5881880. OCD: Moosh & Twist, Ground Up. 7 p.m. $15. ustreetmusichall.com.

Thursday Rock Black caT BacksTaGe 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. Turtle Recall, Bencoolen, Black Checker. 8 p.m. $10. blackcatdc.com.

Black caT 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. Helmet. 8 p.m. $16. blackcatdc.com.

Dc9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. July Talk. 9 p.m. $10. dcnine.com.

Dc9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. Paper Route, Spirit Animal. 8:30 p.m. $10–$12. dcnine.com.

rock & roll HoTel 1353 H St. NE. (202) 388-ROCK. The Twilight Sad. 8 p.m. $14. rockandrollhoteldc.com.

electRonic

Funk & R&B

U sTreeT MUsic Hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 5881880. MK, Beckwith, DJ Nav. 10 p.m. $15. ustreetmusichall.com.

Gypsy sally’s 3401 K St. NW. (202) 333-7700. Cory Henry and the Funk Apostles. 8 p.m. $15–$25. gypsysallys.com.

UPCOMING SHOWS WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 25TH

PRODUCED BY JILL NEWMAN PRODUCTIONS & BLISSLIFE PRESENTED BY MAJIC 102.3

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 22ND MAJIC 102.3 PRESENTS

LUKE JAMES & BJ THE CHICAGO KID GEORGE TANDY JR. / RO JAMES

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 26TH

SATURDAY FEBRUARY 28TH

ERIC KRASNO, LEE FIELDS, IRMA THOMAS, ALECIA CHAKOUR & THE DYNAMITES: BLUES AT THE CROSSROADS

THE PRINCE & MICHAEL JACKSON EXPERIENCE

THE LUTHER VANDROSS RE-LIVES TOUR FEAT.WILLIAM “SMOOTH” WARDLAW

RED BARAAT’S FESTIVAL OF COLORS RAHSAAN PATERSON 76 DEGREES WEST BAND

LATE SHOW

SUNDAY MARCH 1ST

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 27TH

LES NUBIANS

HIP HOP LIVS & 93.9 WKYS PRESENT

BRAND NUBIAN & KOOL G RAP

2/24 PARKS & REC FINALE PARTY SOLD OUT 3/7

2/28 THE PRINCE & MICHAEL JACKSON EXPERIENCE 3/3 CURREN$Y 3/4 RAW DC PRESENTS: GRANDEUR

MAJIC 102.3 PRESENTS

FEAT. DJ FLAVA (FROM WKYS 93.9) PLUS PERFORMANCES BY NIQUE, R&B STAR ANDERSON MALCOLM & BLACK PASSION

SATURDAY FEBRUARY 21ST

AMEL LARRIEUX

SATURDAY FEBRUARY 28TH

MISFITZ BAND

MARTHA REEVES & THE VANDELLAS

3/5 3/6 3/7

4/19- MICHELLE BLACKWELL

3/11 3/13 3/14 3/20

THE CORNEL WEST / THEORY

MAYSA LATE SHOW EXQUISITE GHANA LATE FAMILIAR FACES INDEPENDENCE BALL TITLE FIGHT & LA DISPUTE LUCIANO KID CREOLE & THE COCONUTS POINT BREAK LIVE KEITH SWEAT: BALTSOUNDMANAGEMENT PRESENTS ALBUM RELEASE SHOW PEARIS J W/ JUS PAUL, J BEALE, (BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND!) TP & RAW ELEMENT RAUL ROMERO DE LOS NOSEQUIEN 4/11 MIXTAPE Y LOS NOSECUANTOS 4/30 SHEILA E. 3/21 3/21 3/25 3/26 4/25

THE WORLD FAMOUS HARLEM GOSPEL CHOIR

EVERY SUNDAY !

$45 GETS YOU ALL YOU CAN EAT SOUTHERN STYLE BUFFET AND ENTRY TO THE SHOW

washingtoncitypaper.com february 20, 2015 49

THE BAD PLUS

www.bethesdabluesjazz.com

E B R U A R Y SOUND CONNECTION FEATURING MARQUISE & DJ NOEL SA 21 JOE CLAIR COMEDY NIGHT (SHOWS AT 7P & 10P) SU 22 DENDE & BAND PLUS ALMA TROPICALIA F 20

WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 25

FEB 20 & 21

SPECIAL FILM SCREENING OF

HAPA

“TOUCH THE WALL” TH 26

FEB 24

BETTYE LAVETTE

“High Priestess of R&B” (The Huffington Post)

CATHY PONTON KING BAND FEAT. CURTIS POPE F 27 THE FABULOUS HUBCAPS SA 28 TOM PRINCIPATO BAND M A R C H SUNDAY MARCH 1

THE BRANFORD MARSALIS QUARTET (SHOWS AT 3P & 7:30P)

W4 TH 5

RARE EARTH SOULCIAL HOUR BAND SUNDAY MARCH 8

MIDGE URE

FEB 25

(SOLO ACOUSTIC) PLUS

KAT EDMONSON LAURA ELLIS BENANTI ROBERT

MARGOT MACDONALD

Timeless vintage pop from jazzy singer/songwriter

SU 15

NEW RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE FRIDAY MARCH 20 & SATURDAY MARCH 21

MAGGIE ROSE

FEB 27

JOHN EATON

TOMMY CECIL, BASS

Piano Solos and Jazz Duets

SUNDAY MARCH 22

“WHIPLASH” NOMINATED FOR 5 OSCARS: BEST PICTURE, BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR, WRITING, FILM EDITING & SOUND MIXING

7P - “WHIPLASH”

FILM SHORT VIEWING (20 MINUTES)

730P - HANK LEVY LEGACY BAND PERFORMANCE FEB 28

F 27

BIG SAM’S FUNKY NATION GENERAL ADMISSION

TH 2 W8

FRANK SOLIVAN & DIRTY KITCHEN PLUS BUMPER JACKSONS A P R I L CHUCK REDD THE CHRIS GRASSO TRIO W/ SHARON CLARK THURSDAY APRIL 9

THE FABULOUS THUNDERBIRDS

MAR 5

AUSTIN LOUNGE LIZARDS Clever satire-laden Americana

FEAT. KIM WILSON

7719 Wisconsin Ave., Bethesda, MD (240) 330-4500

SEE FULL SCHEDULE AT

WOLFTRAP.ORG

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

50 february 20, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

CITY LIGHTS: WEDNESDAY

FRANKENSTEIN There are two major misconceptions plaguing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The first is that the monster’s name is Frankenstein. The second is that Frankenstein can’t be funny—even Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein had to retell the story with a new cast of characters. But Faction of Fools, the District’s resident commedia dell’arte ensemble, finds plenty of humor in the original work, which is why the group has adapted the classic tale of horror into a stage play that incorporates physical comedy, acrobatics, and original music. Though this week’s performances are only a preview of the production—the full version will premiere in October as part of the Women’s Voices Theatre Festival—you’ll be able to see how five actors in grotesque masks transform into Victorian poets, sailors, and angry, torch-wielding mobs. After the workshop, the company will unmask and turn back into regular folks to take questions about the artistic process and explain their adaptation. The workshop runs Feb. 25 to March 1 at the Eastman Studio Theatre at Gallaudet University, 800 Florida Ave. —Tim Regan NE. $5 suggested donation. factionoffools.org.

ElEctronic

country

Flash 645 Florida Ave. NW. (202) 827-8791. Chris Liebing. 8 p.m. $5–$20. flashdc.com.

FillMore silver spring 8656 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. (301) 960-9999. Joe Nichols, Sam Grow, Scott Kurt & Memphis 59. 8 p.m. $26.50. fillmoresilverspring.com.

Jazz Music center at strathMore 5301 Tuckerman Lane, Bethesda. (301) 581-5100. Diana Krall. 8 p.m. $93.50–$143.50. strathmore.org.

TheaTer

BluEs

Back to Methuselah George Bernard experiments with science fiction in this satirical romp that journies from the Garden of Eden to far into the future. Washington Stage Guild at Undercroft Theatre. 900 Massachusetts Ave. NW. To March 15. $20-$50. (240) 582-0050. stageguild.org.

howard theatre 620 T St. NW. (202) 803-2899. Eric Krasno, Lee Fields, Irma Thomas, Alicia Chakour & The Dynamites. 8 p.m. $35–$70. thehowardtheatre.com.

Baskerville Tony-winning playwright Ken Ludwig takes advantage of the Sherlock Holmes craze and presents this comedic new take on The Hound of the Baskervilles, with five actors playing more than

twins Jazz 1344 U St. NW. (202) 234-0072. Dave Kline. 8 p.m. & 10 p.m. $10. twinsjazz.com.

Bohemian Caverns Tuesdays Artist in Residency Roy Haynes Tribute B FE

DC’s Legendary Jazz Club

Established in 1926 2001 11th ST NW - (202)299-0800

Valentine’s DayWeekend

Aaron “Ab” Abernathy w/ Nat Turner Fri Feb 13th

Loide

Howard “Kingfish” R Franklin MA

Tim Green th

Fri & Sat Feb 27 & 28

Jamie Broumas Thur Mar 5th

Akua Allrich Fri & Sat Mar 6 & 7 th

Eric Deutsch

Sat Feb 14th

Aruan Ortiz

Lenny Robinson

Sun Mar 8th

Kenny Wesley Sun 3/22 Fri & Sat Feb 20 & 21 Sun 3/29 Ethnic Heritage Ensemble Joel Harrison th

Sun Feb 22nd

Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra Mondays @ 8pm

"This group is something special." ~ Mike West (CityPaper)

Jeremy Pelt Fri & Sat

Apr 3rd & 4th

www.BohemianCaverns.com

Feﬆival

DC BLUEGRASS

Jerry Douglas

Fri/Sat & The Earls of Leisester (S) February The Seldom Scene (F) 27 & 28 Tim O’Brien (S) Blue Highway (S) Sierra Hull (S) The Bankesters (F/S) The Grass Cats (F/S)

Bluestone (F) Gold Heart (S)

Sheraton Tysons Hotel at Tysons Corner, VA

Hotel Reservations 888-627-8230

Take the Metro Silver Line to Spring Hill

Visit www.dcbluegrassfest.org for ticketing information!

Wednesday, March 18 at 6:00 PM Eastern Market North Hall 225 7th Street Southeast $45 Prices will increase Washingtoncitypaper.com/events

nOt FOr BaBIes 21+

washingtoncitypaper.com february 20, 2015 51

40 roles. Arena Stage. 1101 6th St. SW. To Feb. 22. $55-$110. (202) 488-3300. arenastage.org.

Fri & Sat, February 20 & 21 at Midnight!

UPTOWN BLUES

Buy Advance Tickets Online

tickets.landmarktheatres.com

Open Mic Blues JaM Big Boy LittLe every Thursday

Fri. Feb. 20 Moonshine society Sat. Feb. 21 stacy Brooks BLues Band

D.C.’s awesomest events calendar.

Fri. Feb. 27 swaMp keepers Band Sat. Feb. 28 BiLL ewan the red harMonica king Fri. Mar. 6 over the LiMit Sat. Mar. 7 Big Boy LittLe Band Sundays Mike FLaherty’s

washingtoncitypaper.com

washingtoncitypaper.com/ calendar

dixieLand direct Jazz Band

3000 Connecticut Avenue, NW (across from the National Zoo)

202-232-4225 zoobardc.com

Cherokee One white and one black couple seek rejuvenation in nature and head to a campsite in Cherokee, North Carolina. But when a group member disappears and a strange local makes the remaining members consider living off the grid forever, their plans and lives quickly change. John Vreeke directs Lisa D’Amour’s companion to Detroit, which played at Woolly last season. Woolly Mammoth Theatre. 641 D St. NW. To March 8. $40-$68. (202) 393-3939. woollymammoth.net. Choir Boy When a prestigious boarding school for young African-American men falls on hard financial times, its acclaimed gospel choir feels the pressure. The young man chosen to lead the group must decide whether that responsibility is worth ignoring his sexual orientation in this new musical story by playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney. Studio Theatre. 1501 14th St. NW. To Feb. 22. $20-$78. (202) 332-3300. studiotheatre.org.

UPCOMING PERFORMANCES

Dunsinane The Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre of Scotland present a limited engagement of David Greig’s dramatic sequel to Macbeth, in which one man attempts to restore peace to a ravaged nation. Sidney Harman Hall. 610 F St. NW. To Feb. 21. $20-$110. (202) 547-1122. shakespearetheatre.org.

McPHERSON

Frankenstein Faction of Fools puts its signature Commedia take on Mary Shelley’s gothic novel about a mad inventor and the monster he brings to life. Gilbert C. Eastman Studio Theatre. 800 Florida Ave. NE. To March 1. $5-$30. (202) 737-7230. capitalfringe.org.

LIVE

W/ DYLAN PRATT

FRIDAY

FEB 27

BIG SOMETHING W/ NAPPY RIDDEM

SATURDAY

FEB 28

SUN, MAR 1

“SPIRIT OF SATCH” DR. JOHN INTERPRETS LOUIS ARMSTRONG THUR, MAR 5

JIMMIE VAUGHAN W/ JONNY GRAVE FRI, MAR 6

HOWIE DAY SAT, MAR 7

DRKWAV FEAT JOHN MEDESKI, SKERIK AND ADAM DEITCH WED, MAR 11

JASON BOLAND & THE STRAGGLERS / CODY CANADA AND THE DEPARTED

THEHAMILTONDC.COM 52 february 20, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

Bessie’s Blues MetroStage revives this musical look at the 20th century, which won six Helen Hayes Awards when it debuted at Studio Theatre 20 years ago. Playwright Thomas W. Jones II directs and choreographs the production that tells the story of the blues from the perspective of singer Bessie Smith. MetroStage. 1201 N. Royal St., Alexandria. To March 15. $55-$60. (703) 548-9044. metrostage.org.

Frozen 10-year-old Rhona disappears and the actions of her mother and killer are followed over the next several years by psychiatrists. Delia Taylor directs this production of Bryony Lavery’s script. Anacostia Playhouse. 2020 Shannon Place SE. To March 1. $25-$35. (202) 544-0703. anacostiaplayhouse.com. halF-liFe In this zombie-inspired work of physical theater, a car accident survivor wanders through life resembling an undead person and must handle the perceptions of others while she recovers. Flashpoint Mead Theatre Lab. 916 G St. NW. To Feb. 22. $10-$20. (202) 315-1306. culturaldc.org. house oF Desires In this play written in the 17th century by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, four characters squabble over mistaken identities and failed romances. Director Hugo Medrano sets his version in 1940s Mexico and incorporates mariachi music into this farce that considers the will of women during a period when they were subjected to a strict moral code. GALA Hispanic Theatre. 3333 14th St. NW. To March 1. $20-$50. (202) 234-7174. galatheatre.org. kiD ViCtory Legendary composer John Kander collaborates with playwright Greg Pierce on this world premiere musical about a young boy who returns home a year after disappearing and his struggle to reenter society. Signature Theatre. 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. To March 22. $29-$94. (703) 8209771. signature-theatre.org. king heDley ii In the ninth play from August Wilson’s “Pittsburgh Cycle,” King Hedley returns from prison determined to open a business. But when a scheming conman threatens to reveal long held family secrets, King’s plans are threatened. Timothy DOuglas directs this look at the daily struggles of a community in the 1980s. Arena Stage. 1101 6th St. SW. To March 8. $40-$90. (202) 488-3300. arenastage.org. last oF the Whyos A gang leader in 1880s New York travels 100 years into the future to confront his future self in this mysterious and cinematic play. Rebecca Holderness returns to Spooky Action to direct this play by Barbara Wiechmann. Spooky Action Theater. 1810 16th St. NW. To March 1. $10-$35. (301) 9201414. spookyaction.org.

The LieuTenanT of inishmore When the black cat of a mad Irish liberation fighter is killed, his neighbors try to replace it without his knowledge. But when they wind up with an orange cat instead, the thoughtful couple has to contend with a world of machine guns and terrorism. Constellation Theatre at Source. 1835 14th St. NW. To March 8. $20-$45. (202) 204-7741. constellationtheatre.org. mary sTuarT Holly Twyford and Kate Eastwood Norris star in this new production of Frederick Schiller’s play that chronicles the final days and death of Mary, Queen of Scots. Folger Elizabethan Theatre. 201 E. Capitol St. SE. To March 8. $40-$75. (202) 544-7077. folger.edu. The meTromaniacs Alexis Piron’s classic farce involves poets, pseudonyms, disguises, and many intertwining relationships. Shakespeare Theatre Company presents the play as part of its ReDiscovery Series. Lansburgh Theatre. 450 7th St. NW. To March 8. $20-$100. (202) 547-1122. shakespearetheatre.org. much ado abouT noThing This latest wordless production from Synetic Theater sets the story of confirmed bachelor Benedick and his equally stubborn and single counterpart Beatrice in 1950s Las Vegas. Synetic Theater at Crystal City. 1800 South Bell St., Arlington. To March 22. $15-$95. (800) 494-8497. synetictheater.org. oTheLLo WSC Avant Bard presents a new production of Shakespeare’s tale of love, hate, and jealousy, the only major tragedy by the Bard that the troupe hasn’t performed. Theatre on the Run. 3700 S. Four Mile Run Drive, Arlington. To March 1. $30-$35. (703) 2281850. arlingtonarts.org. rapTure, bLisTer, burn After meeting in graduate school, Catherine and Gwen pursued opposite life paths, with Catherine becoming an academic and Gwen becoming a wife and mother. Gina Gianfriddo’s comedy explores what happens decades later, when they start to covet each other’s lives. Round House Theatre Bethesda. 4545 East-West Highway, Bethesda. To Feb. 22. $10-$50. (240) 644-1100. roundhousetheatre.org. The TempesT Taffety Punk presents another allfemale Shakespeare production as part of its Riot Grrrls series. Company member Lise Bruneau tells the story of an overthrown duke and a mysterious monster in

this new version of Shakespeare’s magical company. Taffety Punk at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop. 545 7th St. SE. To Feb. 28. $15. (202) 261-6612. taffetypunk.com. The WidoW LincoLn James Still’s world premiere play chronicles Mary Lincoln’s life in the weeks following her husband’s assassination. Ford’s Theatre. 511 10th St. NW. To Feb. 22. $35-$62. (202) 347-4833. fordstheatre.org.

FROM THE CREATOR OF ‘FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS’ “ ONE OF THE FLAT-OUT FUNNIEST FILMS IN AGES! ”

HILARIOUS! LARIOUS!” “ HILARIOUS! LARIOU ” “ ” HILARIOUS! LA “ HILARIOUS! LARIOUS!” “

Film duff Mae Whitman stars in this teen comn The edy about a girl who changes her appearance after learning she’s considered the ugly one among her friends, only to discover that her transformation leaves her feeling worse than before. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information) Tub Time machine 2 The gang from the n hoT 2010 comedy return for this sequel that requires the characters to enter the time machine once again in order to save a friend from an assassin. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information) The LasT 5 years Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan star in this adaptation of the Jason Robert Brown musical about a couple who come together and drift apart over the course of half a decade. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information)

PRESENTS

usa Kevin Costner stars as a high n mcfarLand, school track coach who inspires his predominantly Mexican-American athletes in this movie based on the true story of Jim White, the most successful cross-country coach in California history. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information)

“

THE BEST COMEDY OF THE YEAR!”

WWW.WHATWEDOINTHESHADOWS.COM

#DELICIOUSNECKS

EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT STARTS FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20TH

We do in The shadoWs Flight of the n WhaT Conchords creator Jemaine Clement co-stars and co-directs this comedy about four vampires struggling to survive as roommates and defend the humans they come across and start to feel fondly for. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information)

Film clips are written by Caroline Jones.

CITY LIGHTS: THURSDAY

“CREATING THE VISUAL WORLD OF GAME OF THRONES”

George R.R. Martin takes it easy. Four years after the most recent book in Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series came out, his publisher says the notoriously slow-paced author will have no new book in 2015, an unsurprising announcement when you consider that it’s taken him 19 years to publish five volumes. At least the HBO portion of Martin’s sword-and-zombies empire—between the TV show, books, board games, and home decor products, it’s one worth fighting five kings over—keeps busy. Before a reception featuring Game of Thrones-themed beers from New York’s Brewery Ommegang, series production designer Deborah Riley will discuss how she creates the television show’s Middle Ages mash-up look with University of Virginia English professor Lisa Woolfork, who recently taught a class based on the books. Riley manages Thrones sets in multiple countries without losing her mind. Maybe Martin should come by and get some tips. The program begins at 6:45 p.m. at the Baird Auditorium, 10th Street and Constitution Avenue NW. $25–$30. (202) 633-3030. smithsonianassociates.org. —Will Sommer

washingtoncitypaper.com february 20, 2015 53