Washington City Paper (February 21, 2020)

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HOW IT ALL WENT DOWN Turning abandoned streetcar tunnels into a functional art space isn’t easy. Just ask the leaders of Dupont Underground and D.C. government officials. PAGE 8 By Emma Sarappo

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COVER STORY: HOW IT ALL WENT DOWN

8

The fight to preserve subterranean art space Dupont Underground pits arts leaders against government planners.

DISTRICT LINE 4 Loose Lips: Attorney General Karl Racine is making major endorsements of his former staffers in the Democratic primary.

SPORTS 6 Smash Hit: At local Super Smash Bros. tournaments, the competition is fierce, but the scent isn’t.

FOOD 14 Street and Greet: An exuberant group of black restaurateurs are setting up shop on H Street NE.

ARTS 16 The Joy of Painting: Two painters bring their views of the region to a D.C. gallery.

18 Attorney at Love: Local lawyer Andie J. Christopher moonlights as a new kind of romance novelist.

20 Curtain Calls: Paarlberg on GALA Hispanic Theatre’s Exquisite Agony, Warren on Arena Stage’s Mother Road, and Rudig on Constellation Theatre’s The 39 Steps 22 Speed Reads: Ottenberg on R. Eric Thomas’ Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America 23 Liz at Large: “Growing” 24 Short Subjects: Zilberman on Beanpole

CITY LIST 27 Music 30 Theater 31 Film

DIVERSIONS 33 Savage Love 34 Classifieds 35 Crossword On the cover: Photograph by Emma Sarappo

DARROW MONTGOMERY 1500 BLOCK OF 19TH STREET NW, FEB. 17

EDITORIAL

INTERIM EDITOR: CAROLINE JONES ARTS EDITOR: KAYLA RANDALL FOOD EDITOR: LAURA HAYES SPORTS EDITOR: KELYN SOONG LOOSE LIPS REPORTER: MITCH RYALS CITY DESK REPORTER: AMANDA MICHELLE GOMEZ CITY LIGHTS EDITOR: EMMA SARAPPO STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER: DARROW MONTGOMERY MULTIMEDIA AND COPY EDITOR: WILL WARREN CREATIVE DIRECTOR: JULIA TERBROCK ONLINE ENGAGEMENT MANAGER: ELIZABETH TUTEN DESIGN ASSISTANT: MADDIE GOLDSTEIN EDITORIAL INTERN: KENNEDY WHITBY CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: MORGAN BASKIN, MICHON BOSTON, KRISTON CAPPS, CHAD CLARK, MATT COHEN, RACHEL M. COHEN, RILEY CROGHAN, JEFFRY CUDLIN, EDDIE DEAN, CUNEYT DIL, TIM EBNER, CASEY EMBERT, JONATHAN L. FISCHER, NOAH GITTELL, SRIRAM GOPAL, HAMIL R. HARRIS, LOUIS JACOBSON, JOSHUA KAPLAN, CHRIS KELLY, AMAN KIDWAI, STEVE KIVIAT, CHRIS KLIMEK, PRIYA KONINGS, NEVIN MARTELL, KEITH MATHIAS, BRIAN MCENTEE, CANDACE Y.A. MONTAGUE, BRIAN MURPHY, BILL MYERS, NENET, TRICIA OLSZEWSKI, EVE OTTENBERG, MIKE PAARLBERG, PAT PADUA, JUSTIN PETERS, REBECCA J. RITZEL, ABID SHAH, TOM SHERWOOD, CHRISTINA STURDIVANT SANI, MATT TERL, IAN THAL, SIDNEY THOMAS, HAYWOOD TURNIPSEED JR., JOE WARMINSKY, ALONA WARTOFSKY, JUSTIN WEBER, MICHAEL J. WEST, DIANA MICHELE YAP, ALAN ZILBERMAN

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DISTRICTLINE LOOSE LIPS

General Elections

Darrow Montgomery/File

Attorney General Karl Racine could have quite a few allies on the D.C. Council after 2020.

By Mitch Ryals Not quite a year ago, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine was all in on Kamala Harris. His national profile on the rise, boosted by his office’s lawsuits against President Donald Trump and his work as the co-chair of the Democratic Attorneys General Association (DAGA), and Racine was an obvious contender for the Department of Justice’s top post in a Harris administration. A 2019 Politico profile called him “perhaps the single most important player in restoring Democratic clout in America’s legal system.”

But a lot has changed since then. Harris’ campaign officially collapsed late last year, and Racine has yet to make another endorsement (Mayor Muriel Bowser, mean-

while, has loaned her support to billionaire Mike Bloomberg).

While Racine mulls over his role in the national landscape, he’s started shifting his attention to local races ahead of D.C.’s June Democratic primary. A quick scan of the candidates in each of the local primary races reveals a common thread: Racine.

Janeese Lewis George worked for the Office of the Attorney General as a prosecutor in juvenile court and is challenging the incumbent, longtime Bowser ally Brandon Todd, in Ward 4.

At-Large Councilmember Robert White worked on Racine’s transition team and was hired as OAG’s director of community outreach after losing the non-majority at-large race in 2014. He was elected to the Council

4 february 21, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

as a Democrat in 2016 and is running for reelection this year.

Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White joined Racine’s staff as a community development specialist after he lost the 2015 special election to LaRuby May by about 100 votes. Trayon White came back and defeated May, another Bowser-backed candidate, in the 2016 Democratic primary. One of his challengers this year is May’s former Council staffer Mike Austin.

The newest entry into the crowded Ward 2 field, Brooke Pinto, announced her candidacy less than a month before the deadline to turn in petitions to qualify for the ballot.

She worked under Racine’s direct supervision in his policy office.

“And Veda Rasheed in Ward 7,” says

Racine, reminding LL of yet another former staffer looking for a spot on the Council.

Rasheed is the only former staffer and current office seeker Racine is not officially supporting, citing his existing relationship with Ward 7 Councilmember Vince Gray. But, he says, he is willing to help the other four candidates however he can, be it with endorsements, fundraising, or door knocking.

What does that mean in a town where political coattails haven’t counted for much recently?

“He’s building a political machine,” says Chuck Thies, a political consultant and ardent Bowser critic. “And if that wasn’t obvious after Trayon and Robert, it’s now indisputable. You don’t endorse four candidates, all of whom are former employees, and don’t have that be part of a political machine.”

(Thies is the treasurer of Gray’s reelection campaign and speaks in his individual capacity.)

The impact of Racine’s endorsements could have implications beyond his own political benefit. His chosen candidates, with the possible exception of Pinto, whose campaign is still young, are ideologically to the left of Bowser and her Green Team, who are generally more business- and developer-friendly.

Racine pushes back against the idea that he is actively recruiting OAG employees for Council campaigns.

“The bigger point is this: I think the Office of the Attorney General … attracts people to the office that are extremely public interest-focused and want to make a contribution to the District of Columbia,” he says. “And we’ve got good people who care about individuals and their interests and give them challenging assignments so that they can grow.”

At the suggestion that four or five potential allies on the Council could boost a future run for Bowser’s job (Racine was a speculative candidate in 2017), the AG sticks with the same answer he’s given in the past.

“I think that’s a question that people always ask, but that question does suggest intention,” he says. “I don’t have an intention, number one, to recruit folks to have them run for the city council, nor have I expressed

an intention to run for mayor in the future.

“I’m focused on the attorney general job, and at an appropriate time, which certainly isn’t 2020, I’ll consider whether I return to the private world or try to keep my job here, or seek another job,” he continues.

Racine has more than enough time to think it over (his current term ends in 2023), and Bowser isn’t even halfway through her second term. She has a 67 percent approval rating, according to a recent Washington Post poll.

But don’t sleep on Racine’s popularity. In addition to his lawsuits against Trump, he gets plenty of positive local ink for his office’s pursuit of cases that deal with perhaps the most pressing issue in the District: affordable housing.

Recently, local news outlets reported on Racine’s efforts to force slumlords to repair neglected properties, on the $1 million settlement he secured against a notorious landlord Sanford Capital LLC, the “largest-ever recovery of rent from a District landlord,” according to his office, and on his exposure of rental companies who discriminate against people using housing vouchers and leaving homeless shelters.

He has cleaned up at the ballot box as well.

In 2014, Racine became D.C.’s first elected attorney general, winning in all eight wards (with his highest vote total coming in Bowser’s home, Ward 4) and earning nearly twice as many total votes as the next candidate.

While celebrating his uncontested primary election victory in 2018, Racine revelled in the fact that he topped Bowser’s vote total by 9,700 votes.

In the general election that same year, he earned nearly 36,000 more votes than Bowser did.

Both Racine and Bowser also weighed in on that year’s non-majority at-large race. Bowser endorsed Dionne Reeder, who lost to Racine’s pick, incumbent Elissa Silverman.

And he would know. The AG took in roughly $690,000 in contributions in 2014, not including a $451,000 loan from himself, and about $482,000 for his 2018 campaign. Access to Racine’s donor network in the legal community could prove useful for Pinto, who so far is the only Ward 2 candidate not participating in D.C.’s new public financing system.

“Fair Elections was not intended to be a program for every candidate,” Pinto says. “I am cautiously hopeful and optimistic that I can raise money through traditional means.

And my view was if I can do that, then why spend taxpayer dollars?”

In an interview last week, Racine described Pinto’s short, two-year stint in his office. She started in early 2018 as a Charles F.C. Ruff Fellow working on commercial tax litigation. After about eight months, Racine was so impressed with her work that he plucked her from the commercial division and moved her to the front office to work directly for him on policy and legislation, where she would get exactly the kind of experience a Council candidate might want.

“I think you’ve got somebody who is mature beyond her years in a wide open race that’s a sprint, and she has a chance to catch fire,” Racine says. “Is it hard?

Damn right it’s hard.

The AG race five years ago was a sprint. Nobody knew my name at all. But I got a little momentum and got lucky. I think she can create momentum for herself.”

Pinto bills herself as a candidate who has experience crafting local legislation and will focus on regulation of small businesses competing for government contracts through the city’s Certified Business Enterprise program, an issue she worked on at the AG’s office. The program is designed to give preference to small, local companies but, Pinto says, many business owners have complained that out-of-town companies exploit the program by setting up sham headquarters in D.C. Pinto, a Connecticut native, says she’s lived in D.C. for the past six years. During a phone interview last Friday, she said she was fairly certain that she’s voted in D.C. at least once, but after double-checking, found that she had not. DC Board of Elections records show she registered to vote in D.C. in March 2019.

Thies, for one, believes her campaign could change the entire race.

“It’s a major accomplishment to get in the race late, and pull off a victory,” he says. “If a well funded, qualified woman gets in this race of frat boys, she’s going to change the dynamic of that race overnight, and now that candidate has the endorsement of a very well liked, prestigious elected official.”

CP

“I’m focused on the attorney general job, and at an appropriate time, which certainly isn’t 2020, I’ll consider whether I return to the private world or try to keep my job here, or seek another job.”

As for Pinto, Racine’s latest endorsee, the 27-year-old Georgetown Law graduate is hoping her former boss’ support will help make up for her late entry into a primary race with seven other Democrats.

“Karl has been an incredible mentor to me,” Pinto says. “I approached him that I was interested in doing it, and he, as he supports all the lawyers in the agency, was very supportive of my desire to go pursue this.”

Some cash from his donor network wouldn’t hurt either. Although Pinto says she hasn’t specifically asked Racine for help bringing in contributions, Racine says he’s given her advice on how to build an effective fundraising apparatus.

HAVE

410-761-0118

Chesapeake Research Group, LLC “Health on the Horizon”

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Kelyn Soong

SPORTS ESPORTS

Smash Hit

The D.C. area is an epicenter for passionate and devoted esports players competing in Super Smash Bros. tournaments.

It’s almost 7:30 p.m. on Valentine’s Day, and more than 100 video game enthusiasts are piling up inside Xanadu Games, an esports competition venue tucked in the corner of Laurel Park’s grandstand. Surveying the room, Dalton Hanlon decides it’s time for some crowd control.

“Please do not use this machine up front for anything besides reporting scores,” he shouts into a megaphone as people hover around the front desk, their restless commotion becoming more palpable. “Do not use it to look at your brackets. Do not use it to look at the stream queue. Do not use it to randomly Google something.”

Most of the patrons—young and male, but racially diverse—have already plopped down in front of a TV, reclined in a gaming chair, and connected their Nintendo GameCube or Switch controller. Others are waiting to sign up last-minute for the impending event. Separate TV pods give the gamers ample playing space, and Hanlon, the tournament organizer who goes by the gamer tag “Vanilla,” guides any newcomers to the right place. A large flatscreen TV hanging above the gamers proclaims: “OPEN EVERY SINGLE DAY.” They’re all here for the same reason: to play Super Smash Bros.

Since 2012, VGBootCamp (short for “Video Game Boot Camp”) has been hosting weekly Smash Bros. tournaments here at Xanadu, which moved to its current space in March of 2018 from a small business complex in Baltimore County. Hanlon, who started the tournament series Just Tryna Smash in 2015, hosts The Grind series every Friday night.

Esports, broadly defined as multiplayer video games played competitively, have entered the mainstream, with estimates that the market surpassed $1 billion in revenue last year, and Super Smash Bros. has become one of the field’s most popular fighting games since being released in 1999. Few places can claim that more than D.C. In addition to events at Xanadu, the Dulles Expo Center in Chantilly will host Super Smash Con, considered the largest Smash Bros. tournament in the world, this August. North-

Kelyn Soong

By Kelyn Soong

Martin “Dandelion” Kalawski and Davon “Dexter” Poindexter ern Virginia native Justin Wykowski founded the annual event in 2015.

But unlike many other popular esports games with a professional league and the backing of major funders, Smash Bros. occupies a unique space in the esports ecosystem due to its grassroots, largely fan-driven competitive scene. Most Smash Bros. tournaments are not sanctioned by Nintendo, which hasn’t emphasized competitive play when it comes to its marketing for the game. Only recently has the Japanese company introduced official tournaments.

The community’s passion is part of the game’s appeal, according to Josh Hafkin, the founder of Rockville’s esports training center The Game Gym. “We host different tournaments, but Smash is our most consistent,” he says. “It’s the one that we can get most people to come out to.”

That doesn’t surprise Hanlon. By the time his tournament begins, 103 gamers have registered—a solid but unremarkable number. A few top local players are missing, he notes. It’s Valentine’s Day, after all. thIs scene repeats itself every week— often more than once—in several locations

6 february 21, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

across the D.C. area.

Xanadu, for example, hosts tournaments on Tuesdays and Fridays for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the latest iteration of the fighting game developed by Nintendo that features many of the company’s famous and beloved characters like Mario, Donkey Kong, Bowser, and Link.

To win the game, players attempt to knock their opponents off the stage until one player runs out of lives.

Gamers can also compete in Super Smash Bros. Melee, the second version of the series released in 2001, on Wednesdays and Fridays.

The Game Gym organizes its own biweekly Smash Bros. tournament series on Fridays.

Much of the credit for the local rise of weekly tournaments goes to the VGBootCamp founders, Calvin and Matthew Lofton, says Hafkin. The brothers from Beltsville founded VGBootCamp in 2009 as a way to grow the Smash Bros. scene that they felt had been lacking. They saw a vacuum in live streaming for Smash Bros. content, and so they started their own Twitch and YouTube channels, using other fighting game communities as a model.

In 2013, outside factors caused the game’s profile to elevate considerably. At that year’s

Rui Hachimura has no trouble developing a national brand with the Wizards. washingtoncitypaper.com/sports Evolution Championship Series, an annual fighting games event in Las Vegas commonly known as Evo, players voted to make Super Smash Bros. the eighth and final competitive game at the tournament. Also that year, a U.S. production company, East Point Pictures, released a popular nine-part documentary series, The Smash Brothers, that examined the competitive history of the Smash Bros. community.

“A lot of people started getting interested in Smash, and it made me want to grind harder,” says Calvin Lofton, better known as “GimR,” his gamer tag. “Viewership started to rise. Within an eight-month period in 2013, we went from 5,000 concurrent live stream viewers at its peak to 20,000 to 30,000 viewers for big tournaments.”

Calvin, 30, was able to quit his day job as an audio mixer and dove into VGBootCamp full-time. The company’s live streams and YouTube videos, which have reached over 270 million total views, are often a first point of entry for local players looking for tournaments to compete in. They have inspired others, like The Cave Gaming Center in Fairfax, to host tournaments.

Calvin partly attributes the game’s popularity to its simplicity.

“Smash is a fighting game, it’s pretty simple,” he says. “You throw someone off the stage. Anyone can watch that and can figure it out. And Smash has every [Nintendo] character—it’s the biggest crossover in history. The sky’s the limit at this point.”

IngrId “d3lIsh” castIllo, one of the competitors at Xanadu on Friday, wants people to know that it doesn’t smell at Smash Bros. tournaments. At least, not the ones at Xanadu’s new venue.

It’s a stigma that has followed the Smash Bros. community around for years: As the rumor goes, they stink. One Kotaku article from 2018 is headlined, “Smash Players Plead With Each Other to Please, For the Love of God, Stop Smelling So Bad.” It can be an unfortunate side effect of sitting in a room for upward of six hours with dozens of other people.

“It’s not very stinky,” Castillo, a 23-year-old from Rockville, insists. “A lot of people like trashing the Smash community for being stinky, but like, if it’s air conditioned, things are okay.”

Bigger problems plague the scene. Like with other esports, stories of toxic players and bullying exist in the community. Some people have accused Smash Bros. players of being hostile to beginners.

Castillo hasn’t experienced that either. As one of the few girls in the space, she says she’s been pleasantly surprised by how easy it has been to talk to people and make friends in the community since she started competing seriously in 2018.

“I mean, you’ll get occasionally, like crabby people who … aren’t really responsive,” she explains. “But you’re gonna find that everywhere.

And it’s not the only toxic community out there.

I think of the places I’ve drifted around because I play Siege and I’ve played [first-person shooters].

That’s way more toxic than Smash.”

Calvin Lofton calls Smash Bros. fans a “really passionate online community,” and believes that any toxicity comes from “the vocal minority.”

“For the most part, they’re not actively involved in the community,” he says. “If you go to a Smash tournament, it’s one of the most welcoming communities in the world.”

Some in the esports industry even consider Smash as being a positive force for being a more affordable game. Players who want to get involved won’t need high-end consoles or computers that cost thousands of dollars.

The Nintendo Switch runs at $300, and gamers can show up to tournaments with just their controller.

The family friendly characters and graphics also lend to its mass appeal.

“Mario, Donkey Kong, parents are down with this game,” says Hafkin, The Game Gym founder. “It’s a very entryway to the competitive gaming scene.”

More than five hours have elapsed since the start of the Valentine’s Day tournament at Xanadu, and Hanlon can finally relax. The crowd has dwindled to just a couple dozen who have stuck around to watch the final match of the evening: an intense bout between 24-year-old Baltimore resident Davon “Dexter” Poindexter, ranked third in MD/VA for Smash Bros. Ultimate, and Jason “Wal00gi” Lilly, a 15-year-old from Pasadena, Maryland.

Hanlon uses the down time by getting in some games himself.

“The thing I love about Smash in particular is there’s something about that cartoonish charm,” he says. “It’s all ages friendly, it really brings in every corner of the audience you can think of: people as old as 30, as young as 12. It can be something as casual as you want ... like a side hobby to trying to make something big out of it.”

Because the tournaments aren’t sponsored

by Nintendo, the prize money for these tournaments is low compared to other high-profile esports. The entry fee to Hanlon’s tournament is $15.

But that doesn’t mean players can’t make money. Lilly’s father, John, realized his son had a talent for esports when he performed well at the 2018 Super Smash Con. Last year, Lilly earned money by placing top-eight in a tournament for the first time. Poindexter made over $10,000 in 2019 off his winnings from tournaments at Xanadu alone.

It’s a little before 1 a.m. when Hanlon hands out his final prize money envelopes.

In the end, Poindexter walks away from the evening $265 richer and with another tournament title to his name. Lilly, the runner-up, takes home about $100.

Hanlon doesn’t pack up to leave. He starts another game. For fun.

CP

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Darrow Montgomery

HOW IT ALL WENT DOWN The leaders of subterranean art space Dupont Underground have fought for more than a decade to activate tunnels below Dupont Circle.

Can it survive financial woes and government foot-dragging? By Emma Sarappo Nov. 8, 2019 wasn’t an especially cold night in Dupont Circle, but everyone inside the unheated Dupont Underground tunnel kept their hats and coats on. The opening of the 2019 World Press Photo Exhibition had brought hundreds of people deep below D.C. to celebrate journalism, art, and Dupont Underground itself. Attendees milled around, viewing photographic prints and projections. By the time Dupont Underground’s CEO Robert Meins got up to the stage at the tunnel’s end to speak, it was so crowded and noisy with the echoes of footsteps and conversations that it was at first hard for him to be heard. Meins, who had only been on the job since March, thanked the DC Com-

mission on the Arts and Humanities, the Rotary Club, and Dupont Underground’s volunteers. “As I will get into later this evening, there are some difficulties around the space,” he said.

The crowd murmured as he moved on to introducing the night’s speakers.

Later, Meins took to the stage again. “It was a group of D.C. residents who decided that this space could be used for an event like the one we’re having tonight,” he explained. For years, Dupont Underground had done so, hosting exhibitions, live theater, a fashion show, and other programming. Now, they wanted to turn the still-abandoned west platform, the mirror image of the tunnel people were gathered in that

8 february 21, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

night, into a permanent gallery for photojournalism. World Press Photo had expressed major interest in partnering. DU was ready to move ahead. “Then we got in touch with the city—or we started to try and get in touch with the city,” Meins explained. “And a week went by. And another week went by. And a third week went by ... Eight months, it took, and the intervention of someone who means a great deal to us, to be able to actually have a telephone call with the people at the city who are responsible for the space.” It didn’t go well, and he was worried: “That conversation lasted about 20 minutes … At the end of that call, it was quite clear that the city was looking for alternative uses for the

space. When I say alternative uses for the space, I mean they would like to hand it over to a developer,” he said. The crowd booed.

The major issue facing the group, Meins explained, was that their lease was expiring, and for an arts organization that books programming six months in advance, the spring 2020 expiration date was effectively kneecapping them. “We are a small community organization and we have a small voice. Many of you have a much larger voice,” he said. “Help us amplify our goal to keep Dupont Underground the underground heart of Dupont Circle.” The crowd clapped wildly.

Meins walked off, and the reception continued.

That November opening led to a small flurry of media coverage on the uncertain future of the space. But though months have passed, Dupont Underground has yet to extend its initial five-and-a-half year lease with the city, and it expires in May. The hectic tone of the last few months isn’t uncommon for the group. In the last five years, DU has struggled to realize their vision for the notoriously hard to activate space, and their accomplishments have been accompanied by stumbles. Now, despite ongoing negotiations and renewed optimism from the team, nothing’s guaranteed for Dupont Underground’s future.

Six yearS before that night, the old trolley tunnels underneath Dupont Circle sat untouched. Originally built in 1949 for D.C.’s

Darrow Montgomery/File

streetcar system, the tunnels went out of use after the system was shut down in 1962. They were briefly used as a fallout shelter, then abandoned for decades until the disastrous Dupont Down Under project, which attempted to bring a food court into the tunnels, opened in 1995; it lasted less than a year. By all accounts, it’s thanks to the efforts of one man, architect Julian Hunt, that the space is in use today.

After living and working in Barcelona for a decade, Hunt returned to D.C. in the late 1990s and founded his architecture practice, Hunt Laudi Studio, in 2001. Around that time, he started to notice abandoned stairways around Dupont Circle, he says. After asking around, he realized they led to the former streetcar station.

Hunt was fascinated by Spain’s transformation of public spaces during the nation’s transition to democracy in the late 1970s, and he wanted art and public space to do the same kind of transformational work in D.C. He contacted the city about potentially using the tunnels. Then the uphill battle began.

Getting a lease took nearly 10 years: Hunt and Lucrecia Laudi, his wife and partner in Hunt Laudi, founded the 501(c)(3) Arts Coalition for the Dupont Underground, the organization that runs the space today, in 2005. In 2010, after years of pushing the city to recognize the space, to resolve outstanding litigation from Dupont Down Under, and to get an agency to take responsibility for it, the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (DMPED) issued a request for proposals, which the Arts Coalition won. They still didn’t sign a lease for the space until 2014.

And that lease—the one that expires this spring—had plenty of problems. Chief among them was that the lease was only for a period of five years and six months, which, as Meins explains, is a problem for an artistic organization.

The typical horizon for an arts grant is five to 10 years, he says. No funders will offer a grant to an organization with just a few years left on its lease, as there’s no guaranteed return on investment. It took a year and a half for Dupont Underground to even begin offering programs because of how much work the tunnels needed. By the time the organization had proven its concept enough for grantmakers to be interested, there was so little time left on the lease that no one would hand over the money.

When signing, the Dupont Underground team “agreed to something that was indeed punitive,” Meins says. “And it contained a poison pill at the end, either because one, the city was looking at this as a real estate deal with a commercial entity, because that’s what DMPED does, or two, they didn’t quite understand that this was an arts organization. But either way, this was never a realistic contract to have signed then and expect to be able to execute, I think,” he explains.

That “poison pill” was a nearly $150,000 payment due to the city on the five-year anniversary of the lease’s signing in November 2019.

Part of DU’s worry at the World Press Photo Exhibition opening came from the fact that they did not have that much money to hand over. It also seemed that, five years later, the balloon payment didn’t make much sense. Dupont Un-

Julian Hunt derground had invested major time and money—clearing debris from the east platform and electrifying the space—for the last five years, and paying that much back rent when the future was uncertain was a big ask.

D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson and then Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans agreed in a letter of support they sent Interim Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development John Falcicchio on Nov. 14, writing “We request that DMPED review the existing balloon lease payment to determine whether it would be best to allow the organization instead to contribute that payment to significant capital improvements it has committed to make to the tunnels for code compliance.”

In a two-page overview of Dupont Underground’s situation at the end of 2019, the group wrote “The current focus is on a single $150k balloon payment, but we believe investments of +/$150k will need to be made each year for the next five years to bring the space up to code and commercial viability as an arts space.” Funding has always been a struggle for Dupont Underground.

It began 2019 with a balance of about $5,000 and between $10,000 and $15,000 in arrears, which have since been paid or settled, the group wrote in the overview. Money has been tight because its revenues come from programming and community support. At the end of 2019, the twopager claimed that 80 percent of DU’s revenues came from programming—ticket sales, space rentals, bar sales, etc. In 2017, according to its IRS Form 990, the most recent available, Dupont Underground raised nearly all of its revenue that year—a little over $300,000—from fundraisers. It spent the money mostly on program service expenses, and things like advertising, in-

surance, Square transaction fees, and business registration (none of the board members drew a salary), and ended 2017 with $262 in net assets. This situation is abnormal for arts organizations, which often run largely on grant money. By late 2019, DU had raised about $70,000, but it hoped to spend it on needed upgrades, not the balloon payment.

Some of the most pressing upgrades the space needs are fire safety improvements. Initially, the team wanted to install a dry pipe—“basically a pipe that goes from outside into the space that the fire department can pump water into if there’s a fire,” Meins explains—which would have cost about $60,000. More recently, a firm offered to install a full sprinkler system for about $40,000, which Meins hopes will happen by the end of the month. That installation must occur before the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) will grant a permanent Certificate of Occupancy. The still-temporary certificate expires April 13. Without the sprinkler, DCRA will only issue certificates on an event-byevent basis. But DU and the city are caught in a standoff. “Without knowing whether or not the negotiation would work, it makes no sense to invest ... when it would be shut down the next day,” Meins said in January. But without the sprinkler and DCRA’s sign-off, the space can’t continue to operate. And the balloon payment is still up for negotiation: The DU team met with DMPED in November and discussed using the rent payment for capital improvements, but renewal was still far off.

The lease offered the tunnels on an “as-is” basis and made no guarantees that the space would be suitable for its intended use. The space had to be electrified and had no easily accessible water

or sewer connections—as of today, the space still has no heat or running water. Both the east and west platforms were full of debris and damage from neglect and years left unsecured. Despite these issues, the lease contained a prescriptive schedule of development milestones. By June of 2015, the group was to obtain a building permit for building out one side of the platform, as well as launch a fundraising campaign; construction was to start no later than November of 2015 and be completed in June of 2016. A final certificate of occupancy was slated for September of 2016 and the first public event on the premises was scheduled for no later than Halloween of 2016. DMPED says that it’s standard for the office to lease property as-is, including long-vacant spaces, and that when a tenant executes a lease, they commit to take responsibility for its needs.

Dupont Underground’s first exhibition, Raise/ Raze, which re-purposed hundreds of thousands of plastic balls from The Beach, an exhibition at the National Building Museum, opened on April 30, 2016, beating the final milestone by more than half a year. Tickets to Raise/Raze sold out almost immediately, and it received warm reviews, including from City Paper critic Kriston Capps. But DU still has yet to obtain the final Certificate of Occupancy it was supposed to have gotten nearly three-and-a-half years ago.

DMPED acknowledges that Dupont Underground did launch its fundraising campaign and held its first public event by their deadlines, but according to a spokesperson, “it’s the District’s position that the remainder of the milestone, obligations, and responsibilities to which they committed to in the lease have not been met.” The space looks much the same as it did when it first invited the public inside.

Other terms of the lease have also been violated over the last years, notably in the summer of 2017. In a June 23, 2017 email City Paper obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, former Dupont Underground managing director David Ross alerted DMPED’s director of real estate, Sarosh Olpadwala, to a host of issues a month after he left the organization.

“I only gradually came to realize that the founder and/or board would approve/sanction events without regard to code compliance or the terms of the lease,” Ross wrote. “As you will see below, where violations did come to my attention, I took immediate steps to rectify the situation and bring DU into compliance. Those steps were often thwarted by the DU founder and at times, members of the board.” Ross goes on to mention a host of Fire and EMS Department requirements that had not been fulfilled, including events held without the requisite fire watch, a lack of insurance on file with the city, being behind on the lease milestone requirements, and DU’s failure to pay the Commission on Fashion Arts and Events the 40 percent profit share they owed after hosting a fashion show in the space on April 15, 2017.

“After my exit from DU, the organization told CFAE that they were unaware of my contract with Fashion Commission [sic]. Several members of the staff and Julian Hunt were fully aware of the financial arrangement for the event, which was a profit sharing agreement.” Hunt told City Paper that “[Ross] did

washingtoncitypaper.com february 21, 2020 9

not inform us of any contract agreements; there were no written agreements anywhere we saw … that type of contract should have gone through the board.” Ross also asserted in the email that many members of the board in 2017 hadn’t closely read the lease and were unaware of its stipulations. (“I would say that’s not true,” Hunt said.)

Ross met with Olpadwala after sending his email, and other emails from 2017 and 2018 show DMPED following up with Dupont Underground about having insurance coverage on file, CFAE following up with Dupont Underground about a payment plan, and Susan Corrigan, Dupont Underground’s former CEO, reaching out for insight into the fire watch process. DMPED says the agency worked in good faith with Dupont Underground to correct these issues. “On matters that affected life safety issues, such as Dupont Underground’s resistance to using a Fire Watch Officer, DMPED compelled them to make the changes to ensure the safety of the space per Fire Code,” a department spokesperson says. David Ross also returned to volunteer with Dupont Underground after his departure in May 2017; in January of this year, he helped organize an underground art market in the space.

The whiteness of Dupont Underground’s leadership is a stumbling block for the organization in a historically black city. Ross, who is black, says “If Dupont Underground wants to stay in D.C., they need to learn how to exist in D.C.— recognize the past, think towards the future, and be culturally sensitive, the way we’re forced to be with them.” Jared Bileski, who worked with Ross to design and execute projection mapping in DU’s 2017 exhibition Make it Work and volunteered in the space in that year, also said the organization was very homogeneous. “I’m white, so I don’t know if I noticed things as anybody of color would, but definitely at a hierarchical level, it was very white at the top. Everybody of color was sort of down on the ladder,” he said. That’s still true of the board, which is entirely white after the late 2018 departure of Antwaun Griffin.

In the group’s day-to-day operations, Ken Brown, the front office manager, is black, and the group’s current jazz ambassador, D.C. singer Changamiré, who is also black, is joining soon as DU’s engagement manager, Meins says. “In terms of our programming, it is highly diverse. [Last year] we had everything from an interpretation of women’s issues through cello events to go-go to LGBT issues in a drag-showgone-wrong-slash-dance-performance,” he says. As for Ross’ comments, Meins says “he’s absolutely right, and it’s something that we’ve discussed with the board.” Once the organization’s future is clear, he says, the board hopes to address diversity in leadership head-on.

Another obstacle has been the high level of turnover both at Dupont Underground and at DMPED. Meins and Laura London, the chair of Dupont Underground’s board, both only began their roles in the early spring of 2019.

Hunt is also less involved in the day-to-day running of the organization than he was at its beginning. At DMPED, the project has had at least three points of contact in the last five years, and its current manager took over the project as recently as May 2019.

That manager, Patrick Pendleton Smith, is a curious choice. Smith was Dupont Underground’s director of real estate from February of 2014 to June of 2016, according to his LinkedIn profile. During that time, he oversaw the organization’s contact with DMPED and pushed for further development—including a potential hotel in the space, which is mentioned often in early press coverage. In fact, much of the early writing about Dupont Underground’s opening mentions Smith or draws on interviews with him. Smith applied for an open job with DMPED in April of 2016, according to emails acquired by City Paper, and began working there that summer.

In an email to the Board of Ethics and Government Accountability on Jan. 4, 2017, five

Esther Ezra, DMPED’s associate director for real estate, told Laura London in an email “FYI, the project has been re-assigned to another project manager on my team, Patrick Pendleton Smith. I will coordinate with him to find a time to meet.” Later down the email chain, London replied “Patrick is very familiar with the Underground so I’m looking forward to speaking with him when he returns!”

Hunt declined to comment on the circumstances of Smith’s departure from Dupont Underground, citing the nondisclosure agreement. “Regardless, it’s an appearance of conflict of interest, just on the face of it,” he says. “I find it very odd that they would put someone on the portfolio who was previously involved with this,” Meins says.

“If Dupont Underground wants to stay in D.C., they need to learn how to exist in D.C.—recognize the past, think towards the future, and be culturally sensitive, the way we’re forced to be with them.” months after he started at DMPED, Smith wrote that he “terminated [his] relationship with [Dupont Underground] as of June 7th, 2016.” He also asked for guidance from BEGA regarding his role: “What am information [sic] may I provide, as I am the current DMPED ‘Expert’ on the site itself regarding zoning, construction issues, community issues, etc.,” he wrote. “What are the potential ethics issues?” Brian K. Flowers, BEGA’s then general counsel, replied that another BEGA attorney would contact him to follow up.

But on Oct. 29, 2018, Hunt wrote an email to then DMPED chief of staff Andrew Trueblood, frustrated with the agency’s lack of movement on renewing the lease. “Countless individuals have dedicated long hours to reviving what was a dead space (not even a cold, dark space, but one without even the minimal utility connections) into one of the most innovative cultural venues in the city. Yet, we have had to work under impossible terms, a short-lease, bureaucratic inertia (try getting a building permit under these circumstances), and even, dare I say, a certain inert hostility and incomprehension at DMPED,” he wrote.

“I want you to understand that before Susan Corrigan became our Director, Patrick Smith (now a Project Manager at DMPED) occupied that post and was fired under a Non-Disclosure Agreement.”

Trueblood replied to Hunt, writing “I will engage the team, but also want to state unequivocally that District law and policy have required Patrick Smith to recuse himself from this project. So I can assure you that his time with the organization and any circumstances related to his employment and end of employment will have no bearing on DMPED’s course forward.”

About seven months later, on May 29, 2019,

10 february 21, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

The District Personnel Manual states that newly hired employees must disclose their previous employment relationships and that employees are restricted from participating in the D.C. government’s decisions regarding renewal or awards of contracts or consultancies with the previous employer for one calendar year. The head of an employee’s agency may separately allow them to serve as a liaison between the District and the former employer or participate in the oversight of a former employer’s performance.

In a statement, a DMPED representative said “The DMPED employee’s involvement in this project is in compliance with the District Personnel Manual (1805.4 and 1805.5). The DMPED employee’s supervisor authorized the employee to communicate with Dupont Underground for an information request on July 5, 2017. Therefore, it was not a conflict of interest as per BEGA, the District’s authority on such matters.”

DMPED did not make Smith available for comment.

Dupont unDergrounD’s leaDers say the group’s greatest obstacle has been the city’s perceived lack of interest in working with them, despite interest and support from grantmakers and other arts organizations. Meins characterizes Dupont Underground’s relationship with the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities as extremely positive. DU also had a working relationship with the Alliance for New Music-Theatre, which served as its company-in-residence, installed a stage and lighting in the space, and hosted a run of The Havel Project in late 2019. The space has hosted exhibitions by a bevy of contemporary artists and collaborated with successful arts organizations like Solas Nua, Washington Performing Arts, and The Choral Arts Society of

Washington. And in the fall of 2019, when the group was trying hard to push the city for lease renewal, officials from organizations like the Phillips Collection, the Austrian, Czech, German, and Indonesian embassies, the National Building Museum, Historic Dupont Circle Main Streets, and CulturalDC wrote letters of support.

As Meins told the crowd at the 2019 World Press Photo opening, after World Press Photo expressed interest in turning the still-defunct west platform into a year-round, permanent gallery space, the group attempted to contact DMPED for the first necessary step WPP needed to commit to the project: lease renewal.

“It’s been on our mind since the beginning—I think almost since the beginning of the time when this lease was signed, and I wasn’t around for that, but a five and a half year lease is crazy to begin with,” says London, the board chair. “It’s kind of never stopped, although, of course, it amplified a lot over the last year. But I know even my predecessor and people who have been involved for years have been trying to have productive conversations with the city about how to make this a sustainable future.”

DU kept following up on their requests to meet with the team at DMPED throughout 2019.

London emailed asking for a meeting with Sarosh Olpadwala for the first time on March 6, 2019. She continued to follow up with the office in the succeeding months, providing information on Dupont Underground’s status and asking to meet about the project. “As things stand, our lease ends in April 2020. Is not only unlikely, it is by any measure impossible, for us to get significant funding when we risk losing the space in a year. Mind you, this is not unique to us—any organization, public or private, would have considerable difficulty get [sic] sizable funding with only one year left on its lease,” she wrote to Esther Ezra, associate director of real estate, in April. “It would be immensely helpful if DMPED would provide us with clarity. It doesn’t make makes sense [sic] for us to continue spending our time and effort if we continue to be ignorant about a future that is not under our control.” London says she showed up at DMPED’s office at the Wilson Building multiple times to ask for a meeting, to no avail. “DMPED was in touch with Dupont Underground throughout 2019, by email, phone and, as warranted, in person meetings,” a spokesperson says.

Finally, in October, the group got their desired meeting scheduled—not in person, as they’d hoped, but as a phone call, scheduled in advance for 1:30 p.m. on Oct. 4, 2019. At 12:59 p.m. on the 4th, Olpadwala emailed the group, saying “Hi, can we do this call at 1:10 p.m.? I had a meeting added at 1:30 p.m.” The Dupont Underground team was able to accomodate the request but the 20-minute call was tense, according to multiple sources, and largely unhelpful. “To have someone in charge of the space who isn’t a partner and isn’t an ally is really challenging,” London says.

While the city government has yet to guarantee DU’s lease will be renewed, it’s aware of the deadline and has been looking to the future. On Nov. 6, 2019, Patrick Smith emailed a draft request for proposals for the Dupont Underground space to colleagues, asking for feedback. By Nov. 18, DMPED’s communications director told the

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Vendors and shoppers at the Below Zero art market Washington Post that there were no plans for DMPED to issue an RFP at that time. “DMPED develops and maintains draft RFPs for properties in its portfolio, whether they are slated for disposition at the time or not,” a representative for the department says. “However, DMPED had no plans to issue an RFP while Dupont Underground had an active lease for the space.” On Nov. 22, 2019, Mayor Muriel Bowser submitted a resolution to the Council that would change the West Dupont Circle zoning to allow the space to acquire a nightclub license.

When news first broke that Dupont Underground might close, Falchicchio told reporters that officials “remain committed to keeping this unique space as an asset of the creative economy” and reaffirmed that at the end of the month. This week, Falchicchio gave City Paper a statement reiterating that point. “It is important that this unique space is activated as part of DC’s creative economy,” it reads. “We remain in active negotiations with the operators of the Dupont Underground as they attempt to overcome their previous challenges, to become financially viable and to fulfill the commitments of their existing agreement and potential lease extension.”

“You know, there’s a saying: ‘Where you

sit determines where you stand.’ I think that’s what it is,” Meins explains. “They have a certain interest, and that is in commercial real estate. And we have certain interests, and that’s in the arts, and those are just two different fields.

I think a lot of the communication issues sort of stemmed from that. I mean, that’s a natural thing. But I mean, from my perspective, this space was abandoned by the city entirely before D.C. residents came in and activated it.”

Although Dupont Underground very much wants to remain in the space, Hunt said in January that if the city offered them the same short-term lease, they wouldn’t take it. “If we did not receive the basic, viable terms and make partnership possible with philanthropic organizations? No, we’re not going to continue,” he said, even though if they vacate the space, per the lease, all the physical improvements they made to the long-abandoned tunnels revert to the city. Still, more recently, Meins says he’s feeling good about negotiations. “I’m very optimistic about the fact that we’ll come to an agreement. It’s not a guarantee,” he says.

In a November 2018 email, Olpadwala told Smith “I have always been extremely clear

12 february 21, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

when speaking with [Hunt’s] organization that DMPED seeks only to ensure that any leaseholder is long-term viable and financially selfsufficient. It is the same test we applied to the Franklin School and that we continue to apply to all of our dispositions.” (The Franklin School is home to the upcoming Planet Word museum, which is opening in May after a delay due to the removal of legally protected historic interiors during its renovation.)

When read that statement, Hunt reframed the issue. “We had to work under impossible terms— a five year lease. When we got that first five year lease, we felt like it was a trap, that it was simply impossible for us to procure philanthropic money or any kind of loan from the bank. And so internally, we decided we could just do whatever we could to make it work. Now, what we did was probably the only operation that has actually worked in the Underground,” he said. “With no water, no electrical service, and a lease that was impossible to work with—to then say ‘Oh, you can’t make it work, my fiduciary duty requires me to basically not take you seriously’ … I can’t say we were ‘financially viable.’ But we haven’t stopped operations, and operations have been increasing. In terms of dumb financial formulas

that can’t reflect realities outside of commercial development, no, we couldn’t do it. We instead did what we could, and in fact with growing success.”

On Jan. 25, the tunnel was chilly again, but the sheer number of people in the space helped make it comfortable. The Below Zero art market was bustling—over the course of the day, it had 4,000 attendees, Meins says. The popup market, organized by David Ross, included around 50 vendors selling a colorful variety of art, crafts, clothing, and snacks. People posed for photographs with the colorful murals on the tunnel walls. In places, it was so packed that it was hard to move through the crowd.

Despite usually closing from December to March, since the space is not heated, Dupont Underground will continue hosting weekly markets, including future ones organized by Art Rave, to increase community engagement and to prove the high level of interest in the space.

Still, time is of the essence: The lease expires in May, and the sprinkler installation is still required for occupancy beyond April. Meins is hopeful, but until the ink is dry, the space’s future is up in the air.

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Street and Greet

Black restaurateurs on H Street NE are bringing the neighborhood everything from ramen and barbecue to Jamaican and soul food.

By Laura Hayes Visit H street NE today and you can get Swiss raclette, Burmese pepper water, vegan fine dining from Philadelphia, Ethiopian kitfo, po boys, half smokes, Trinidadian doubles, Taiwanese noodles, natural wine, cocktails, and canned beer. But relentless headlines about trendy restaurant openings come with asterisks of alarming closures. Notably, Horace and Dickies, a neighborhood mainstay for 30 years, will serve its last fish sandwich on March 1.

“The neighborhood, it’s changed,” says Simone Shannon, the daughter of Richard “Dickie” Shannon. “Everybody sees that. A lot of those neighbors, they don’t really want Horace and Dickies there anymore.”

The H Street NE commercial corridor, built in 1849, was one of the most dynamic neighborhoods in the District in the first half of the 20th century. The uprising following the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. left some H Street NE businesses smoldering and led to divestment. An increased interest in central city living over the past two decades has transformed the neighborhood once again.

The near-constant change is a manifestation of a development-friendly D.C. that benefits some and punishes others. More than 20,000 black residents were displaced from low-income neighborhoods from 2000 to 2013, according to a 2019 study that named the District the most intensely gentrifying city in the nation.

There’s money to be made on H Street NE in this latest phase of redevelopment, and fortunately, some of the restaurant operators cashing in on current and future economic opportunities are people of color.

“We need a strong mix of not only blackowned businesses, but people of color need to step up and open things that have good food,” says Anwar Saleem, the executive director of H Street Main Street. “We try to attract them to come to H Street because it’s stronger when there’s a strong cultural mix.”

These five black-owned businesses have either opened since the start of the year or should launch in the next few months.

Sudon Williams and Chef JR Robinson KitchenCray 1301 H St. NE Status: Opening in May Chef JR Robinson treats his 209,000 Instagram followers to a steady stream of photos of gut-busting dishes like a towering stack of crab tots, Philly cheesesteak omelettes, and seafood mac and cheese. “People eat with their eyes so as soon as you see something you might like you’re going to tag your friends, come try it, and word of mouth will do the rest,” he says.

His social media prowess packs the dining room of the first KitchenCray in Lanham. The self-proclaimed “king of food porn” plans to introduce augmented reality technology, which enables customers to scan a menu item and watch a 3D image of the dish pop up on their phones.

Robinson recommends trying the crab cake, fried red snapper, and oxtails when KitchenCray opens down the block from Atlas Performing Arts Center. The expansive restaurant has two levels, a patio, and a bar serving cocktails from consulting mixologist Josue Gonzalez.

Born in Harlem, Robinson began cooking at an early age. His adolescence included stays in foster care and years when he describes “sleeping outside, sleeping on floors, and eating whatever we could eat.” He moved to the D.C. area in 2011 and worked at Blue Duck Tavern, In-

14 february 21, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

dulj, and high-end hotels before opening his own venture with Sudon Williams.

“I’m older than him, so he’s like my little brother,” says Williams, who worked as a corrections officer for 22 years. “People around him weren’t getting things done. I saw how hard he was working and how serious he was taking it so I said, ‘I’ll be there to match your intensity.’”

Robinson says one of his biggest accomplishments is landing a restaurant in a historic D.C. neighborhood. “We’re just trying to be somewhere major and bring that Chocolate City feel back to the D.C. area,” he says. “I feel like we’re going to bring the new chef culture to H Street.”

When Robinson first moved here he says he didn’t see many black chefs and he hopes to be a role model for others who don’t think they fit the typical chef mold. “We made it cool to wear Nike boots,” he says. “I don’t have to have a big white hat. Even if you see me walking down the street or in the restaurant, people wouldn’t think I was a chef because a chef has a certain look. We’re going to change the game.”

Kitsuen 1362 H St. NE Status: Open Wayne Johnson and Tony Perry have been throwing parties since they were in their

early 20s. They met through mutual friends and later opened two nightclubs off Dupont Circle— Saint Yves and Abigail. For their third venture, the business partners didn’t want to cannibalize their own club crowds and made a foray into the restaurant business instead.

“The people we came into nightlife with are in a different place in their life,” Johnson says. While the ages of the customers standing in line to enter his clubs stay stagnant, the 32-year-old and his circle want a night out that ends earlier and “isn’t as expensive, rowdy, or packed.” When patrons turn 27 or 28, they start asking if a venue serves food, he says. “No one younger ever asks.”

Johnson and Perry’s restaurant and hookah bar serves five styles of ramen including soybased shoyu, creamy tonkotsu, and spicy miso ramen. Fried Japanese pub grub like chicken karaage rounds out the menu. Kitsuen’s cocktails use Japanese ingredients like yuzu juice, plum wine, and sake.

Kitsuen got slammed when it opened. Johnson attributes the buzz to hip-hop artist Pusha T, an investor in the project. Johnson says the rapper, who has a home in Bethesda, does more than lend his name. “Push is instrumental,” he says. “I talk to him as much as I talk to Tony.”

Johnson lives on H Street NE. “CorePower Yoga, Orangetheory, [solidcore]—when you start seeing those brands pop up—it’s an indicator that a neighborhood is next up,” he says.

“It was a good thing to get involved early and be a fixture before the huge boom on rent.”

He was also attracted to the neighborhood because it represents a cross-section of the city. “You’re getting a mixture of races and people from different places,” Johnson says.

“Everyone gets along, hangs out. You don’t see that in a lot of other neighborhoods in D.C.” Jerk At Nite 1100 H St. NE Status: Opening in late spring When Denville Myrie enrolled at Howard University on a basketball scholarship, he couldn’t have predicted that by his senior year he’d have a side hustle selling Jamaican food out of his home. Friends would deliver meals to students who had grown tired of status quo pizza and Chinese. Born in New York to Jamaican parents who work in health care, Myrie had an early fascination with nutrition.

While interning at the D.C. Department of Health as a junior food truck inspector he says he observed that there weren’t enough trucks offering healthy options made from fresh, local ingredients. After testing the Jerk At Nite concept on his classmates, Myrie raised enough money to launch his first food truck in 2015. Farley Craig Capital—a D.C.-based pri-

vate venture capital firm headed by Howard alumni—issued Myrie several loans.

Now Jerk at Nite consists of two food trucks, a robust catering and events business, and the forthcoming H Street NE restaurant. The “Jerk Box N Mac” is the biggest seller. It comes with jerk chicken, “JaMacNCheese,” and rasta bread. Myrie, who spent some of his childhood in Jamaica, says he had to tame the heat in his jerk seasoning for the masses. Customers also crave the jerk nachos and jerk tacos.

At the restaurant, Myrie plans to launch a vegan and organic menu and will center the drinks around fresh fruit juices and smoothies, in addition to Red Stripe beer and fermented sorrel. “When making food, the most important thing is the ingredients that you’re using,” he says, touting small local farms. “The best food comes from the simplest people.”

Jerk At Nite will lean on its food truck origins to get people in and out fast. “It’s going to be more like an &pizza meets Jamaica meets the Chipotle model with soul flare,” Myrie explains. Diners will be able to place orders from a walk-up window, order delivery, or opt to sit down for a meal inside or on a patio.

Smokin’ Pig 1208 H St. NE Status: Opening in early March You can find Smokin’ Pig either by following the smell of smoky brisket or looking for the restaurant’s mascot guarding the door.

The tiered statue features three animals central to barbecue. Owner Bernard Gibson named them Maggy Moo, Piggy Smalls, and the Cocksmith.

Shawn McWhirter, formerly of Hill Country Barbecue Market and DCity Smokehouse, is the pitmaster. He’ll borrow traditions from three key barbecue regions and use a gas smoker with a firebox for wood. Look forward to Texas-style brisket, Kansas City-inspired smoked chicken wings, and Carolina-style pork complimented by sides like chili mac, loaded baked potatoes, and “pigtail” fries.

Gibson and McWhirter are crossing their fingers that smoked turkey legs—the cartoonishly large ones frequently devoured at renaissance fairs and amusement parks—will emerge as the signature dish. There will also be vegetarian options. The drinks from beverage director Lance Smith will focus on whiskey.

Though there are two floors and a patio, seating is limited. Gibson hopes to serve more customers through take-out and delivery. “You’re going to see a lot of city workers in their trucks licking their fingers,” McWhirter says. “I’m out here trying to reach the working man and working woman.”

Gibson and McWhirter grew up just off H Street NE and have watched many businesses turn over. “Certain places shouldn’t have left,” McWhirter says. “The Children’s Museum shouldn’t have left. I used to love that spot when I was a kid. There are historical spots around here that you don’t want to see go.”

“I also think change is good,” Gibson says.

“The city is building up. The street is building up. It’s the circle of life.” He owned a chicken

franchise on H Street NE in 2007. “Back then I was paying $13 per square foot. Now landlords are asking for $50 or $55 per square foot, some as high as $60.”

McWhirter expects to encounter neighbors who watched him grow up. “A lot of older people are going to [come] see what you accomplished,” he says. “They’re going to wanna support, they wanna come see, they wanna critique. So you gotta make sure you’re up to par on everything.”

The closest barbecue restaurant to Smokin’ Pig is Kenny’s BBQ Smokehouse on Maryland Avenue NE. “We want to set the bar on H Street. I want tradition to last like that old man around the corner,” McWhirter says, referring to Dickie Shannon of Horace and Dickie’s.

The Bar @ Milk & Honey 1245 H St. NE Status: Open The Bar @ Milk & Honey represents the next chapter of the Milk & Honey brand known for decadent brunch dishes. The new restaurant offers a full bar and an all-day menu from Chef Sammy Davis with savory dishes ranging from mussels in saffron broth and jerk lamb lollipops to a deep-fried lobster tail nestled atop a cornbread waffle drizzled with truffle honey butter.

Davis started cooking as a homeless teen.

Early in his career he worked at high-volume chains like LongHorn Steakhouse before getting a big break at Roy’s. At the Atlanta outpost of the Hawaiian restaurant, Davis advanced from dishwasher to executive sous chef. At future jobs he gravitated toward cooking brunch and eventually developed a business plan for a restaurant that serves the meal daily.

His first Milk & Honey Cafe in Atlanta failed. Davis tried again in Beltsville and found success after taking over the former Swahili Village Bar and Restaurant. A four-hour wait to dine wasn’t uncommon. Davis’ business and romantic partner Monique Rose had to set “house rules” and loosely enforce them. “No reservations unless you’re Barack Obama!” “No table hibernation—others gotta eat too!”

Rose and Davis grew into a bigger space in College Park and currently operate five Milk & Honey locations. Rose focuses on the dining room and cocktails. “We put all of our time, our money, our energy into our dishes and drinks,” she says. “There’s not a lot of money spent on flatware. Stuff like that doesn’t matter at the end of the day. We want you to feel like you went over to your friend’s house.”

Rose likes her address on H Street NE in the former Smith Commons space because it’s on a strip of black-owned businesses. “You can have a bite and go to the next one,” she says. “I thought the feel of it was so cool. People had some dope concepts.”

“It’s a truly great mix of people you can satisfy if you can reach them through food,” Davis adds. “There’s Union Station down the street and then Whole Foods. Further down it gets more urban, then it gets cleaned up, then urban again.”

CP

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Charles Yook

CPARTS

Go see artist Song Byeok’s bombastic paintings at Lost Origins Gallery. washingtoncitypaper.com/arts

The Joy of Painting

Local artists capture nostalgic moments in the D.C. area amid the region’s rapid development.

By Jennifer Anne Mitchell Painting in Place of a Place, an on view exhibition at Shaw’s artist-run Foundry Gallery, features two newcomers to the space, Courtney Applequist and Sheila Blake. Both called D.C. home before moving just outside of the District to Montgomery County. Their combined body of work includes paintings of the District from the 1980s to present day that document how the city has changed.

The installation is a collection of paintings that depict everyday images and scenes with oil on linen and canvas, from a swimming pool to houses to a local dance school.

Many of them are large works, with some of the biggest measuring 48 inches by 60 inches and 54 inches by 40 inches. Blake’s paintings are grounded and realistic, while Applequist’s are more layered and somewhat abstract. The two styles complement one another, and since both frequently feature the Washington area, their work almost serves as a photo album of the region. Both artists say they are deeply connected to and influenced by their communities.

At the exhibition’s opening reception in early February, Applequist, Blake, and their colleagues spoke of how they find inspiration, especially during a time that is increasingly challenging for artists.

“It’s really hard to make fine art that’s not propaganda, and that’s not what I’m trying to do,” Applequist says of addressing societal issues. “I’m not trying to make posters. I want to make beautiful paintings but if they can lend themselves to a bigger conversation that helps someone who is struggling against these big systems that I think have really not served us at all, I’ve got a lot of thoughts and feelings about [that].”

In addition to the paintings featured in Painting in place of a place, Applequist is working on a series of paintings about local farming, in keeping with her passion for supporting small local businesses.

Some of her paintings are set in D.C., at a Metro station or a construction site. The locations of others are purposely left ambiguous, she says, “leaving a little bit for any of you to interject your story into it.” This sentiment matches Applequist’s painting style, which is

“Purple House on Carroll” by Sheila Blake, 2020 full of slightly obscured objects.

“I wouldn’t have associated her images with Washington because they’re more universal,” notes Kate Samworth, an artist and illustrator based in Takoma Park who was at the opening reception.

In her discussion at the gallery, Applequist shared how her art making is a process of layering paintings to capture moments.

“It seems like any of these paintings don’t actually get good until there are about four paintings underneath them,” Applequist says. “There’s a lot of struggle and scraping and adding.” That, she says, is where she finds authenticity.

16 february 21, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

Applequist, 43, has formal interior design training, and started out in the District working in that field before transitioning to fine art.

She lived in Petworth from 2003 to 2015, then moved just outside of the city to Montgomery County to raise her kids.

Yet D.C. and its constant evolution continue to inspire her artwork. “There’s tension in change,” Applequist explains. “Even when it’s a daylily growing up through the sidewalk— there is struggle to live.” She sees the struggles and the living in everyone walking down the sidewalk, and how that common ground unites diverse groups.

Applequist says that while collaborat-

ing with Blake, who is 80 years old, the pair learned to understand each other through art and become peers. “The art has gotten rid of ” separation based on age, she says.

Blake is aware that she comes from a different time. Instead of being influenced by how many likes her artwork gets on Instagram, Blake says she works on her paintings without wondering if they’ll be popular, or even sell.

Along with painting, Blake co-hosts a biweekly radio show on a low-power radio station in Takoma Park called Art as Experience, which provides information about the art world to get its listeners interested in participating.

In contrast to Applequist’s artwork, Blake’s paintings are more straightforward in both their execution and sense of place. Pieces that cite Takoma Park street names, like “Purple House on Carroll” and “Pink House on Lincoln,” make it clear that her paintings are set in the greater Washington area.

“I recognize Sheila’s work because I live in the same neighborhood,” Samworth says.

“And so it’s fun to see all these houses I’ve walked by a million times and see the changes in the neighborhood and see the paintings reflecting some of those changes.”

Blake moved to D.C. from North Carolina, where she was teaching at Duke University, because her husband got a job at NASA. They arrived here in the 1980s and lived near Howard University. Blake remembers the duality she experienced living there.

In her artwork, she depicts picturesque alleys and showcases backyard gardens maintained by people who had lived in the area for years. “But it was exactly at the time that the crack epidemic hit,” she recalls. “I also saw the whole deal, all the drug trade and everything.”

Her husband supported her while she focused on art. Many of Blake’s earlier paintings capture Howard University and its surrounding neighborhood. She has since moved to Takoma Park, which she says reminds her of her childhood.

“Since I came to Takoma Park all my paintings are paintings of here, of the houses, the yards, the weeds, the trees because they have such an evocative feeling,” Blake says. “And I feel that in Washington, too. Because even though there’s a lot of the new stuff there is

CPARTS

“Morning Light” by Courtney Applequist, 2020

also a lot of the old Washington and I love to see that.”

The title of Applequist and Blake’s show Painting in place of a place is inspired by the Wallace Stevens poem “The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain.”

Blake’s husband came up with the exhibition’s title, she says, while noting that in her paintings “a lot of it is invented, but the feeling of the place is there.”

“You can walk around in that world,” Blake says. “You can visit in it and really just take it in and feel that feeling of being there. You can walk on the porch and peer in the window.”

Blake’s nostalgic artwork is not immune to current issues like Takoma Park real estate, even if it’s not intentionally speaking to them.

“Somebody saw this painting and they said, ‘Oh, where is that house?’” Blake says. “I said ‘Well, it’s on Carroll and Flower,’ and they go, ‘Well, I wonder how much they want for it.’”

She laughs. “It’s a painting!”

The District’s rental market was different when Foundry member artist Joyce Wellman moved here from her hometown of New York City in 1981. “When I came here rent was $235 and I paid $250 for the whole year to work at WD Printmaking Workshop with Percy Martin,” she says.

The city’s rapid development and increasing rent forced Wellman out of her artist’s studio and into her basement, which she fashioned into a workplace that she calls “the studio down under.”

Another Foundry member, artist Matthew Malone, credits some of his success to his time in the Brookland Artspace Lofts, a complex of affordable housing units for artists. “I was living there for 10 years,” he says. “What that allowed me to do was make work that I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to do. It allowed me this—my practice growing—which is a struggle here in D.C. for a lot of people.”

Since most artists don’t experience wild success throughout their entire careers, Wellman notes the importance of having a place like Foundry Gallery where what she calls “everyday artists” can sustainably work and exhibit, and everyday people can purchase art.

Along with struggle, there is hope for artists: At the exhibition’s opening reception, a red dot was placed on the label of one of Applequist’s paintings, indicating that it had sold. The artist says the painting cost $5,500.

CP Painting in place of a place is on view to March 1 at Foundry Gallery, 2118 8th St. NW. (202) 2320203. foundrygallery.org.

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CPARTS

Attorney at Love A D.C. federal attorney turned romance author is changing the future of romance novels.

HannaH Mayfield and andie J. CHristopHer have a couple things in common: Neither are a fan of dating apps, but they do like French bulldogs.

Except Hannah is fictional and Christopher, who created Hannah, is very much real.

On a January mid-morning coffee run at the LINE DC Hotel, Christopher has brought her new puppy, a French bulldog named Archie who excitedly crawls around her lap, to talk about her latest romance novel Not the Girl You Marry, released in November.

It follows Hannah Mayfield, a successful but tough event planner in Chicago determined to plan weddings, the hottest happenings at her company. However, her boss thinks she lacks the experience in romance to do so, and challenges her to find a date to their upcoming Halloween party. Enter Jack Nolan, a journalist at a men’s magazine determined to break into political journalism—but not without first proving to his editor he can take on a tough assignment: how to lose a girl. You can guess what happens next.

It’s hard not to see Christopher in Hannah.

If Archie the French bulldog isn’t a dead giveaway for Hannah’s own dog, Gus, Hannah’s discussion about her identify certainly is.

In the novel, Hannah, who is half black and half white, frequently mulls over the conflicts with her identity she faces. In one scene, she tells a former flame, a black man, that she feels as though he dumped her because she wasn’t black enough for him.

“I spent my whole life trying to be as white as possible—so I could be like the rest of my family,” Hannah says.

Christopher discusses this dilemma in an author’s note at the front of the book. Is Christopher black enough? Does saying she’s biracial mean she’s not proud of being black? For Christopher, these questions came to a head when a 6-year-old student she was mentoring while in college at the University of Notre Dame asked her, “You’re not white, but you’re not black. What are you?”

Christopher’s answer was the same as Hannah’s in the book: “mixed.”

Her willingness to insert her own questions about her identity, as well as her own feelings and fears about the dating world, into her romance novels has garnered her the admiration of her fellow romance authors at a time when

Andie J. Christopher

By Chelsea Cirruzzo

“I want to explore what it is about real intimacy that feeds us and how to find that in a world that doesn’t foster real connection.” the genre grapples with what—and who—the future of romance novels looks like.

Not the Girl You Marry isn’t Christopher’s first published book; she has three others selfpublished on Amazon, as well as six at Lyrical Press, an imprint of Kensington Publishing. However, it is her first at Berkley Random House, giving her an entire marketing team and a contract for more books, including one, Not That Kind of Guy, about a high-powered state attorney looking for a date to her brother’s upcoming wedding, coming out this April.

All of her published books have been romance novels.

By day, Christopher is an attorney for a federal agency who lives near Adams Morgan, but

18 february 21, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

by night, she’s a successful romance novelist.

Or rather, by morning.

“When I write in the morning, I’ll get up at 5 a.m.,” she says. “The one thing about being a lawyer is you have to type a lot of words really fast. So when I’m drafting, I can get 1,000 words in the morning and then I feel like I’ve accomplished something for the day and then go to work.”

Her infatuation with love stories began at age 12, when she started reading her grandmother’s romance novels.

“I tried to write a romance novel on my first Mac computer,” she says, laughing. “I got through the meet-cute and then kind of lost interest.” She’d later go on to graduate from the

University of Notre Dame and Stanford Law School. But when she moved to D.C. in September 2010, she got the boost to start writing from a therapist who told her to find a creative outlet.

In 2014, Christopher took her first writing class at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda. There, she wrote her first romance novel called Stroke of Midnight—pun intended. It was also there that she found a group of women who would meet every Friday to discuss and critique their writing. Later, she joined the Romance Writers of America and eventually met her future agent Courtney Miller-Callihan at one of the group’s conferences.

Miller-Callihan was instantly drawn to Christopher. “She is an absolute powerhouse,” she says. “That is just a constant delight for me. I can see very clearly how she has had such a successful life in two different careers.”

But, in early January, as Christopher patted Archie in her lap and talked up her romance novel, a huge part of the romance writing world was exploding.

The Romance Writers of America had punished a writer for speaking up about racial stereotypes used by another romance novelist.

The fallout led to the cancellation of the Romance Writers’ annual awards and the resignation of several board members earlier this year, according to CNN. Nisha Sharma, another romance novelist and lawyer based in New Jersey who met and befriended Christopher via Twitter, says romance novelists are leaving RWA and pushing to see more inclusive novels in the romance space.

And for the most part, Sharma says, much of the community has responded positively to the challenge. “How can we fix this? Let’s work together,” she says. “That really speaks to romance authors and the community today.”

Sharma and other novelists are turning to Christopher to pave the way.

Arlington’s One More Page Books hosted Christopher in November for the launch of Not the Girl You Marry and is no stranger to the romance world as a bookstore with a robust romance section and a staff who reads it.

“Despite being one of the most profitable genres in the industry, there is an ongoing stigma against romance, even among booksellers,” says One More Page Books events coordinator Amber Taylor.

Miller-Callihan concurs. “For the most part,

Photo by Gerard Gaskin

romance is a very female-oriented genre,” she says. “I think misogyny in our culture leads us to dismiss things that appeal more to women than to men.”

One of the challenges romance novelists face is getting people to take them seriously and to see the themes, beyond sex, present in their novels.

But Taylor says when Christopher came to the store to talk about her book, a dedicated crowd came excited to see her.

“As a woman of color, Andie is writing about her own experiences, contributing to the further diversification of voices in the genre,” Taylor says.

Christopher’s first series of books takes place in Miami, where she has spent a lot of time, and features Latinx protagonists, much like her father, who was Afro-Latino.

Her willingness to be vulnerable and personal in her writing is something Miller-Callihan admires.

“She has an authenticity in her work that isn’t present in all romance,” she says. “There is something very real and very fresh. She puts a lot of herself in her writing.”

Sharma says Christopher is adept at creating complex, savvy characters. Christopher is open about her desire to explore new areas of romance, from fear of commitment to sexy priests (yes, they exist outside of Fleabag and certainly will in Christopher’s upcoming novels, she says) to including awkward, relatable moments.

Christopher’s publicist, Jessica Brock, calls her characters witty, “but at the same time her characters would totally say ‘Thanks, you too’ to a waiter who just told them to enjoy their meal.”

One area Christopher wants to explore in her next novel, Not That Kind of Guy, is ambivalence toward marriage and long-term relationships, something she herself has battled.

She’s even quit dating apps.

“I felt like these guys were demanding my attention and demanding sort of like emotional labor from me,” she says. Now, she’s asking how self-sufficient, professional women are doing with long-term relationships in their lives. “I want to explore what it is about real intimacy that feeds us and how to find that in a world that doesn’t foster real connection,” she says.

When asked about the future of romance novels, Christopher is humble, pointing to other romance novelists, particularly writers of color, who paved the way for her: Kennedy Ryan, Adriana Herrera, LaQuette, and Farrah Rochon, to name a few.

But she also has her own vision for the future.

“I think the future of romance is black and brown,” she says. “It’s sex-positive and bodypositive. It’s going to explore concepts of gender and power.”

And, of course, it will involve a happily-ever-after.

“Romance novels are the only kind of books that have the aim of making the reader happy,” she says. “I think the future of the romance novel is giving that book joy to everyone.” CP

Jason Moran and The Bandwagon + Cassandra Wilson & Marvin Sewell Friday, February 28 at 8 p.m.

Eisenhower Theater Join Jason Moran and his bandmates, bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits, as they celebrate the 20th anniversary of their superlative, chance-taking trio, The Bandwagon. They’ll reflect on their musical journey with a special concert experience featuring some of their most creative friends: singer/ songwriter Cassandra Wilson and blues/jazz guitarist Marvin Sewell.

Kennedy-Center.org (202) 467-4600

This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts

Groups call (202) 416-8400 For all other ticket-related customer service inquiries, call the Advance Sales Box Office at (202) 416-8540 Major support for Jazz programming at the Kennedy Center is made possible by The Buffy and William Cafritz Family Foundation.

washingtoncitypaper.com february 21, 2020 19

THEATERCURTAIN CALLS

WHAT BECOMES OF THE BROKEN HEARTED? Exquisita Agonía (Exquisite Agony)

Written and directed by Nilo Cruz At GALA Hispanic Theatre to March 1 GrievinG can be like dating, in that both processes consist of different stages. There is the initial shock, the rush of emotions from infatuation or loss. There is the deepening obsession, the singular focus on one person crowding out all other thoughts. There is the idealization, placing the loved one on a pedestal. Then there is the reflection, the realization that the person is, or was, a human being, as complex and flawed as all of us. And ultimately, it is hoped, there is a return to equilibrium that points us to a clearer path forward.

This process can be complicated by the fact that, in grief, the object of affection is not around to respond. It allows memories to shift dramatically along with emotions. The HBO series Six Feet Under illustrated this with the periodic appearance of the ghost of Nathaniel Fisher, who dies in the first episode, to his widowed wife and children. Depending on who he was talking to and when, he could be loving, hectoring, sage, or a homicidal gun-toting maniac.

Exquisite Agony, a play by Pulitzer-winning playwright Nilo Cruz now on stage at GALA Hispanic Theatre, takes a more static approach, in which another patriarch, Lorenzo, looms over the entire play as a larger-thanlife portrait looking down at his surviving family on stage. At times it can seem comforting, at other times menacing. Lorenzo’s portrait is sometimes obscured by sliding doors his wife occasionally closes on him, but they always reopen. This leaves his memory to be debated and acted out by those he left behind.

This burden is taken on almost entirely by his widow, Millie (Luz Nicolás), a retired Spanish opera singer in Florida, who overcompensates for the apparent indifference of her son and daughter. As the portrait reminds us, she can’t let go, and this motivates her unhealthy pursuit of another living reminder of her late husband. Lorenzo, it turns out, was an organ donor, and his heart went to a Cuban immigrant, Amér (Joel Hernández Lara), whom she tracks down, against the advice of the surgeon who did the transplant, Dr. Castillo (Ariel Texidó). An extended courtship commences, with Millie pursuing Amér aggressively: first by mail and eventually in person. Amér

has misgivings, which we learn are very well founded, as his willingness to meet lands him and his protective brother in the middle of a tumultuous family drama into which they’ve been forcibly conscripted.

Like the grieving process, Cruz’s play morphs and moves in unexpected ways. It’s a melodrama, but one that portrays the stages of grief as not just a process but as an adventure. At times it is deeply sad and reflective, at others exhilarating, and in the second act, it becomes another play entirely. Cruz’s dialogue is lush and poetic—everyone, even the doctor, speaks in metaphors and goes on long philosophical soliloquies about things like cellular memory that would sound clunky in less capable hands. But the production is grounded by the excellent Nicolás, a GALA company regular who often takes on the most emotionally wrought roles and projects them through her whole body. Her Millie is an unstoppable force who masks her conflicted memories of her husband with explosive declarations of devotion and pain, twisting her very body into a pretzel.

The acting is solid all around, with Lara and Texidó, two Cuban actors new to GALA, giving life to the shy and sympathetic Amér and the chatty, love drunk (or simply drunk) Doctor Castillo. Another company regular, Andrés Talero, gives a standout performance as Millie’s son Tommy, whose sarcastic attitude comes off as self-centered and petty in the first act, then upends the story entirely in the second.

Exquisite Agony is a breathtaking ride, and GALA’s production is a rare chance to see a work directed by one of the best in the business. Cruz may be a showy wordsmith, and the dialogue can be baroque at times. But above all, he knows how to construct a story,

20 february 21, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

and can lead an audience around by its nose wherever he wants to take it. It can feel perilous at times, like you are being set up for heartbreak, or worse, cliché. But as with grief, sometimes it’s best to simply accept it and go along with it, not knowing where you will end up.

—Mike Paarlberg 3333 14th St. NW. $30–$48. (202) 234-7174. galatheatre.org.

JOAD RULES Mother Road

By Octavio Solis Directed by Bill Rauch At Arena Stage to March 8 You can look at a road trip from two perspectives: It’s either a journey toward a destination, or a journey away from an origin point. In Mother Road, a theatrical follow-up to John Steinbeck’s classic migration story The Grapes of Wrath, a band of Americans in search of a shared destination examine their own origin points.

Playwright Octavio Solis starts his story when William Joad (Mark Murphey) meets up with the last living descendent of Tom Joad in California. William plans to give this Joad the deed to his Oklahoma farm, for reasons not yet clear, but is surprised and initially dismayed to find that his would-be successor is Mexican American. (Throughout the play, the elder Joad earns the dubious distinction of being slightly less racist than other characters our voyagers encounter along their journey.) Still,

he wants to verify their shared lineage and make sure that Martín Jodes (Tony Sancho) is up to the task of taking over his beloved farm.

Because Martín Jodes, who harbors his own secrets, refuses to fly, the two have to drive back to Oklahoma together. Mother Road quickly falls into the rhythm of a road trip story, with the two men arguing over what music to listen to, and the long, lonely miles prompting them to open up and reveal intimate truths.

The play is at its best when it examines these truths. Sancho highlights Martín’s righteous and Sisyphean bravery as he struggles against systemic racism and violence. Murphey captures William’s deep, internalized hurt. As they travel, the pair picks up more travelers, including Martín’s cousin Mo (a hilarious and winning Amy Lizardo). She, like William, Martín, and their fellow travelers, dreams of freedom, prosperity, and belonging—your typical American Dream stuff.

Mother Road is, at its core, optimistic. It believes that people, despite their differences, can travel through life together. It’s a beautiful sentiment, with powerful staging. The characters travel around in a beat up truck, and the intimacy of the in-the-round staging pulls the audience into the play’s more actionpacked scenes.

This isn’t to say the play always works.

While Mo injects welcome comedy and energy into the long journey, the show’s humor sometimes cuts and deflates dramatic and serious moments. Similarly, the play’s greek chorus, which intensifies the show with poetic chanting, at times interrupts otherwise strong scenes. Mother Road also takes on a lot, which means that not every compelling character and story gets as much time as you might hope.

The genuine mutual affection, or at least understanding, William and Martín seem to develop doesn’t quite feel earned.

Still, Mother Road is a reminder that while we’re all in this together, we’re all going through different things. If we afforded each other the thoughtfulness this play gives its characters we’d all be better off. Mother Road is a road trip. It’s long and winding, but worthwhile in the end.

—Will Warren 1101 6th St. SW. $41–$105. (202) 554-9066. arenastage.org.

THRILL PILL The 39 Steps

Adapted by Patrick Barlow Directed by Nick Olcott At Source Theatre to March 15 Film director alFred HitcHcock supposedly first named the concept of a MacGuffin, which he described as "the thing that the spies are after but the audience don't care.”

Spoiler alert: The title of the play The 39 Steps refers to a spy cabal intent on evil-doing and perpetuating a “master race.” But all that

How do you protect a child born into danger?

Blue the dialogue moving at a speedy clip, and also provide plenty of memorable scenes, kooky caricatures, and delightful sight gags. The humor can at times veer into extreme dad joke territory, but the lines are delivered with such self-aware earnestness that they earn genuine laughs. Gwen Grastorf and Christopher Walker, who as the Cast of Dozens play all the other characters besides Richard and his femmes fatales, are a riot as they buzz around the stage juggling props, costumes, and accent changes.

Constellation’s scenic design demonstrates a knack for working within the constraints of a small space, and the low-key, stripped back aspects of the production keep the feel intimate.

A.J. Guban’s set is embellished with nested archways and nooks and allows for endless scene shuffling. Sabrina Mandell’s costuming is era-appropriate but vibrant and evocative. Several shadow puppet sequences are particularly effective, both as a way to cleverly convey the long distances that Richard traverses, as well as some memorably laugh-outloud imagery.

Silver screen aficionados will recognize the strains of scores from other Hitchcock films and other nods to the master’s work, and even those who’ve never seen a noir film will still get a laugh out of cheeky callouts, like one character imploring another to exit through “the rear window.” The fondness for the era of film noir and Hitchcock is apparent throughout, and the familiar rhythms of those films are lovingly sent up, without devolving into satire or heavy-handed moralizing about the geopolitical machinations mentioned in the plot. By the end, the dashing hero has gotten (one of ) the girl(s), the mystery is solved, and many laughs have been had—and all that conspiracy business is mere MacGuffin after all.

—Stephanie Rudig 1835 14th St. NW. $25–$45. (202) 204-7741. constellationtheater.org.

Kenneth Kellogg and Aaron Crouch, photo by Karli Cadel

global conspiracy stuff is barely glanced at, and it ultimately doesn’t matter much, when it comes to following or enjoying the play. With more than enough real-world conspiracies to dwell on, it’s a fun reprieve that The 39 Steps, based on the Hitchcock thriller of the same name, treats its shadowy organization as the ultimate MacGuffin, and its spy stuff as a mere backdrop for a spirited farce.

The hook may be the upending of classic film noir, but the play hinges on a gimmick wherein three of the four actors play multiple characters, often within a single scene, assuming new personas with onstage jacket switching and mustache fastening. This lends the show the fizzy energy of an improv show or something thrown together by neighborhood kids, but with the polish and tight choreography of a cast that knows how to sell a joke, and a restrained production that allows them to shine.

Though the nail-biting suspense is replaced with spot-on comedic timing, the plot follows the 1935 movie fairly faithfully. Richard Hannay (Drew Kopas)’s evening at the theater is cut short when the mysterious Annabella Schmidt (Patricia Hurley, who’ll be back to play two other lovely lasses) fires a gun as a diversion. She sneaks home with him, telling him she’s a spy who is in grave danger since she’s uncovered a ploy by the 39 Steps to steal military secrets. The next morning, Annabella is fatally stabbed with a knife in her back, forcing Hannay to go on the run to avoid being framed for her murder, and to get to the bottom of this dastardly conspiracy.

Without spoiling the twists and turns of the plot too much, the rest of Hannay’s journey entails an impromptu political rally, stops at several quaint countryside locales, a criminal mastermind missing part of his pinky, a sheeprelated traffic jam, an odd couple handcuffed together, and a man with nearly superhuman powers of memory. These absurd misadventures and roving settings keep the action and

March 15–28 | Eisenhower Theater Music by Jeanine Tesori / Libretto by Tazewell Thompson In English with Projected English Titles

Groups call (202) 416-8400

Kennedy-Center.org (202) 467-4600

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

Major support for WNO and Blue is provided by Jacqueline Badger Mars.

WNO’s Presenting Sponsor

David M. Rubenstein is the Presenting Underwriter of WNO. WNO acknowledges the longstanding generosity of Life Chairman Mrs. Eugene B. Casey.

Additional support for Blue is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

washingtoncitypaper.com february 21, 2020 21

BOOKSSPEED READS

A JOY TO WATCH.

“

”

–The Times

TICKETS START AT $35

Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America

TIMON

By R. Eric Thomas Ballantine Books, 264 pages

of ATHENS

BY

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AND THOMAS MIDDLETON EDITED BY EMILY BURNS AND SIMON GODWIN DIRECTED BY

SIMON GODWIN Underwritten by the

NOW PLAYING

Beech Street Foundation

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Production support by Share Fund

ShakespeareTheatre.org | 202.547.1122

Restaurant Partner:

Photo of Kathryn Hunter by Simon Annand © RSC.

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HERE COMES THE FUN Most success stories recount a lucky break. R. Eric Thomas’ came some years back, when he was living in Philadelphia, posting funny remarks on Face book. An editor from Elle.com read his comments and hired him to write a daily humor column. Now he has published an amusing memoir-in-essays, Here for It, about growing up in Baltimore, being African American and gay, and floundering around in his 20s and some of his 30s not knowing what to do with his life. Or his hair.

At one point he gets it straightened, but this doesn’t quite work out: “And the story here is two black dudes, one with a sort of Bride o f Frankenstein thing going on with his hair, leaning into each other as they laughed.”

Thomas’ parents worked hard to send him to a fancy private school in Baltimore, where most other students came from affluent Jewish suburbs. “Much of the first couple of years I spent at Park were composed of learning by doing, learning by reading and learning by asking things like ‘What is Rosh Hashanah and why is no one in school today and does this mean we can watch a movie?’”

When applying and visiting colleges, Thomas had some surprising experiences.

“At Cornell, my host—a student named Fredo—made me sleep under his bed and told me there was a race war on campus, so I shouldn’t talk to any white people.” Thomas enrolled at Columbia, but got all bollixed up about his gay identity and didn’t finish. “Put that on my tombstone: Here lies R. Eric: he didn’t know exactly what he was doing.”

After this academic debacle, he lived in his parents’ basement in Baltimore, attending

the University of Maryland and working.

Later, he moved to Philadelphia and became surer of his gay identity. “Physical activity has never been my bag… you can imagine my horror when I became an adult, came out of the closet and found out that one of the central tenets of homosexuality is that all gays have gym memberships.”

Another theme of Here for It is church.

Religion meant much to Thomas growing up, and his husband is a Presbyterian minister. Their Christian backgrounds diverge: “We never had Easter egg hunts in church growing up. We were Baptists and that bunny didn’t die on the cross, did it? No, it did not!”

Thomas also loves pop culture, mainly music and film, and specifically anything featuring Whitney Houston.

But he also likes Mis ter Rogers’ Ne ig h b orh o o d, and even devotes a chapter to it , “There’s Never Any Trouble Here in Bubbleland.” This absence of trouble derived partly from Thomas’ nononsense mother, who had a special outfit for “funerals and meetings in which she had to set someone straight.

She called it her death suit, because if she was wearing it, ‘either someone is already dead or someone is going to die.’ We didn’t have money in Bubbleland, but we were rich in bon mots.”

Here for It is an entertaining memoir, and even has some laugh out loud moments. But throughout, it is clear that Thomas is more than a comic. He takes some things very seriously—politics, the struggles of the gay and African American communities and their intersections, and the realities of class. He just approaches them with a light touch, which makes his views all the more persuasive.

Toward the book’s end, Thomas describes a 2016 election night party he threw, one ruined by Trump’s win and its dire prospects for gay people. This is one of the few times this book mentions Trump, which is remarkable—the past three years have been all Trump all the time. This avoidance is all the more amazing considering how plugged in Thomas is to the internet. Indeed at the book’s end, he writes, “Hi, I’m R. Eric Thomas; I’m from the internet.”

—Eve Ottenberg

LIZ AT LARGE

Patti Smith, Jesse Paris Smith, and Rebecca Foon March 21

Camila Meza and the Nectar Orchestra March 14

jaimie branch’s Fly or Die March 11

March 8–21, 2020

A two-week celebration of contemporary culture featuring women creators in honor of the 100th year of suffrage Featuring Patti Smith, Ava DuVernay, jaimie branch, Camila Meza and the Nectar Orchestra, and more!

“Growing” by Liz Montague Liz Montague is a D.C.-based cartoonist and cat mom. You can find her work in The New Yorker and City Paper.

For a full listing of events, plug in at direct-current.org DIRECT CURRENT is presented as part of The Irene Pollin Audience Development and Community Engagement Initiatives.

washingtoncitypaper.com february 21, 2020 23

FILMSHORT SUBJECTS MATTHEW WHITAKER

with special guests WPA Children of the Gospel Choir Michele Fowlin, artistic director

SAT, FEB 29, 8pm SIXTH & I A piano and Hammond B-3 organ wunderkind, 18-year-old Matthew Whitaker has been hailed as “the next Ray Charles” (CBS Sunday Morning).

Special thanks: Lydia Micheaux Marshall; Galena-Yorktown Foundation; Jacqueline Badger Mars and Mars, Incorporated

CHERISH THE LADIES FEB 25 + 26

BRENTANO STRING QUARTET CHAMBER MUSIC AT THE BARNS

FEB 28

KIRAN AHLUWALIA FEB 29

LIV WARFIELD

Terry Riley’s Sun Rings

JOHN LLOYD YOUNG’S BROADWAY!

Choral Arts Chamber Singers

MAR 5

MUSIC DIRECTION BY TOMMY FARAGHER MAR 14

KRONOS QUARTET

Beanpole

FRI, MAR 13, 8pm LISNER AUDITORIUM

Beanpole, a Russian drama from directorwriter Kantemir Balagov, is about two young women who struggle to start life anew after staring down annihilation during World War II. Sympathy for these women runs deep— they don’t have the resources to fully integrate into normal society—and yet Balagov does not shy away from how their inexperience leads to disturbing conclusions.

“Beanpole” is a term of endearment for Iya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko), a desperately shy woman who stands at least a head above everyone around her. The war has been over for a few months, and after serving on the frontlines, Iya now works at a Leningrad hospital where her patients are all convalescing soldiers. For Iya and her patients, one source of joy is the young boy Pashka (Timofey Glazkov). Everyone assumes Pashka is Iya’s child, but his mother is Iya’s friend Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina), and Iya does not correct their mistake. Masha returns to Leningrad shortly after Pashka dies under tragic circumstances. Rather than grieve the child’s death, Masha and Iya go through the long, painful process of making a new family.

No one in Beanpole is quite sure how to live again. Some characters have chores and responsibilities, so their days are not empty, but they can hardly fathom what a future looks like. Many of the characters have PTSD, and there is no attempt to diagnose their condition, let alone understand it. Balagov heightens this isolation through uncomfortable closeups, long scenes of awkward dialogue, and little background music. Wan pools of yellow light offer little sense of comfort, and some sequences unfold in disorienting darkness.

What makes this film watchable and com-

Kronos Quartet performs its 2020 Grammy-winning Sun Rings, Terry Riley’s multimedia masterwork, cocommissioned by NASA and featuring live performance by quartet and chorus, augmented by awe-inspiring sounds and imagery from the NASA archives.

Special thanks: Pamela Sutherland

LADYSMITH BLACK MAMBAZO MAR 16 + 17

THE SECOND CITY

LAUGHING FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS MAR 25–28

AND MANY MORE!

TICKETS: WashingtonPerformingArts.org (202) 785-9727

Do you drink alcohol?

Research volunteers needed.

The National Institutes of Health is seeking volunteers for a study to learn more about how past experiences with alcohol can influence current drinking and cravings.

You may be eligible to participate if you are 21 to 65 years old and drink alcohol weekly.

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ResearchStudies.DrugAbuse.gov 24 february 21, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

Directed by Kantemir Balagov

pelling is how the characters stumble toward a sense of basic dignity. This is clear in a scene where Masha goes with her boyfriend Sasha (Igor Shirokov) to meet his well-to-do parents living in a large house with abundant food.

Masha defiantly explains her complicated wartime past even after Sasha’s mother suggests she is a whore. Perelygina’s performance is matter-of-fact, not defiant, as we learn the true cost of survival on the front. Another key character is Iya’s boss Nikolay (Andrey Bykov), who works as a surgeon. He longs for simpler days where he can treat routine ailments, and since he is a little bit older than everyone else, he understands Masha and Iya need more than bandages or prosthetics.

It is remarkable that director Bagalov is under 30 years old. Beanpole is a mature film, one with a firm understanding of history and human behavior, so it’s easy to assume the director is a master filmmaker in the mold of Tarkovsky or even Zvyagintsev. Instead, Bagalov is wise beyond his years with an unhurried style that never slacks, and a keen sense of history. If Beanpole has a direct influence, it is Ingmar Bergman’s Persona. Both films are about two women with indescribable needs and their imperfect attempts to state those needs to one another. Masha and Iya are both broken people, and their tragedy is that they cannot form a whole together, no matter how much they might want to.

In the final scenes, ones that are carefully observed and tenderly acted, characters make desperate promises to each other in a crowded one-room apartment. Bagalov achieves a unique tone: He lets the audience know these promises are empty, but gives the characters just enough hope and delusion to believe them.

Few dramas, let alone one from a filmmaker this young, are this specific or accomplished.

After confronting death for years, these characters have more than earned that luxury, though they may not realize it is fleeting.

—Alan Zilberman Beanpole opens Friday at Landmark E Street Cinema.

FREE CONCERT!

MAR. 5 AT 7:30 P.M.

PETER BERNSTEIN

Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center

jazz guitarist

For FREE tickets, please visit:

usafband.eventbrite.com

FAMILY SERIES

GREAT PERFORMANCES AT MASON 2019–2020 SEASON GET TICKETS 703-993-2787 or CFA.GMU.EDU Half price tickets available for youth through grade 12!

NATIONAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA OF UKRAINE Volodymyr Sirenko, conductor Natalia Khoma, cello

Saturday, Feb. 22 at 8 p.m.

A live recording of the popular NPR show!

A global music celebration!

NPR’S FROM THE TOP

Hosted by Anderson and Roe Saturday, Feb. 29 at 8 p.m.

HOT PEAS ‘N BUTTER Sunday, Mar. 1 at 1 p.m. & 4 p.m.

Russian National Ballet

ROMEO AND JULIET/ CARMEN Saturday, Mar. 7 at 8 p.m.

Featuring Tchaikovsky, Brahms and more

SUPPORT OUR JOURNALISM. BECOME A MEMBER.

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

Two of the world’s greatest ballets

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washingtoncitypaper.com february 21, 2020 25

26 february 21, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

CITYLIST

The Club at Studio K

Music 27 Theater 30 Film 31

SPOTLIGHT ON IMPROV COMEDY

Music FRIDAY

CITY LIGHTS: FRIDAY

Baby Wants Candy: Historical Hip Hop Edition

THIS IS WHERE/I BEGIN...

F E B . 2 0 | 7 : 3 0 & 9 : 3 0 P. M .

BLUES

A fully improvised, epic hip hop musical based on a historical figure of your choosing!

WARNER THEATRE 513 13th St. NW. (202) 783-4000.

Tedeschi Trucks Band. 8 p.m. $69.50–$277. warnertheatredc.com.

CLASSICAL

The Black Version

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS COOLIDGE AUDITORIUM First Street and Independence Avenue SE. (202) 7075507. Miranda Cuckson & Friends. 8 p.m. Free. loc.gov.

F E B . 2 1 | 7 : 3 0 & 9 : 3 0 P. M .

ELECTRONIC

Wild Horses

SOUNDCHECK 1420 K St. NW. (202) 789-5429. Ben Böhmer. 10 p.m. $15. soundcheckdc.com.

F E B . 2 2 | 7 : 3 0 & 9 : 3 0 P. M

U STREET MUSIC HALL 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889.

Kaivon. 11 p.m. $10–$18. ustreetmusichall.com.

M A S O N B AT E S ’ S KC J U K E B OX

U STREET MUSIC HALL 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889.

BAYNK. 7 p.m. $13–$21. ustreetmusichall.com.

Ekhodom and Mason Bates F E B R U A R Y 2 7 | 7 : 3 0 P. M .

UNION STAGE 740 Water St. SW. (877) 987-6487. Tender. 7 p.m. unionstage.com.

FUNK & R&B

L

AVA IMITE Story District’s ILAB D ILIT Y Funnier Than Fiction

CITY WINERY 1350 Okie St. NE. (202) 250-2531. Glenn Jones. 8 p.m. $35–$45. citywinery.com.

F E B R U A R Y 2 8 | 7 : 3 0 & 9 : 3 0 P. M .

HIP-HOP HOWARD THEATRE 620 T St. NW. (202) 803-2899.

Kool Moe Dee with The Treacherous 3 and Spoony Gee. 9 p.m. $25–$30. thehowardtheatre.com.

SONGBYRD MUSIC HOUSE AND RECORD CAFE 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. City Morgue. 8 p.m. $20– $25. songbyrddc.com.

JAZZ BLACK CAT 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. Anthony Pirog & Friends. 8 p.m. Free. blackcatdc.com.

BLUES ALLEY 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Roy Ayers. 8 p.m.; 10 p.m. $50–$55. bluesalley.com.

POP SONGBYRD MUSIC HOUSE AND RECORD CAFE 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. Annie Hart. 8:30 p.m. $12. songbyrddc.com.

UNION STAGE 740 Water St. SW. (877) 987-6487. Tender. 7 p.m. $17–$35. unionstage.com.

ROCK 9:30 CLUB 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Refused and Youth Code. 7 p.m. $32. 930.com.

BARNS AT WOLF TRAP 1635 Trap Road, Vienna.

(703) 255-1900. 1964: The Tribute. 8 p.m. $40–$44. wolftrap.org.

HILL COUNTRY BARBECUE 410 7th St. NW. (202) 556-2050. Angela Perley. 9 p.m. Free. hillcountry.com.

JAMMIN JAVA 227 Maple Ave. East, Vienna. (703) 2551566. Sarah Borges and the Broken Singles. 8 p.m. $15–$20. jamminjava.com.

UNION STAGE 740 Water St. SW. (877) 987-6487.

Scary Pockets. 10 p.m. $20–$40. unionstage.com.

VELVET LOUNGE 915 U St. NW. (202) 462-3213. Max Fillion. 8 p.m. $10. velvetloungedc.com.

Jason Palmer, “Upward” F E B R U A R Y 2 9 | 7 : 3 0 P. M .

The longer he is denied citizenship in the United States, the more material Gabriel Mata has for his dances. At Atlas Performing Arts Center’s 11th annual Intersections Festival, the choreographer debuts his third solo show exploring his status as an undocumented immigrant. He’s a talented contemporary dancer, busy earning an MFA at the University of Maryland, performing with other local companies, and developing his own dances. Mata came to California from Mexico as a young child, and arrived in D.C. two years ago to be with his partner. In This is where/I Begin… Mata muses on the concepts of “home” and “citizenship,” asking how a body can feel at home in a country that doesn’t recognize it. To help hone an abstract notion, Mata employed a dramaturg for the first time. He also chose an hour-long, extant piece of music by contemporary composer Michael Wall, knowing his movement and ideas would all need to fit within a framework. “There’s not one way to experience or express this,” Mata says of his immigration status. He’s right. But while there may be 700,000 DREAMers in America, there’s only one in D.C. making such affecting dances about citizenship limbo. The performance begins at 8 p.m. at Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H St. NE. $25. (202) 399-7993. atlasarts.org.

—Rebecca J. Ritzel

SATURDAY BLUES WARNER THEATRE 513 13th St. NW. (202) 783-4000.

Tedeschi Trucks Band. 8 p.m. $69.50–$277. warnertheatredc.com.

CLASSICAL MUSIC CENTER AT STRATHMORE 5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda. (301) 581-5100. National Philharmonic: Black Classical Music Pioneers. 8 p.m.

Free–$79. strathmore.org.

COUNTRY HILL COUNTRY BARBECUE 410 7th St. NW. (202) 556-2050. Randy Thompson Band. 9:30 p.m. Free. hillcountry.com.

ELECTRONIC

SOL

BGR!Fest Secret Shows

DO

UT

M A R C H 5 – 7 | 9 : 3 0 P. M .

D I R ECT C U R R E N T

jaimie branch’s Fly or Die M A R C H 1 1 | 7 : 3 0 P. M .

Kennedy-Center.org (202) 467-4600

Groups call (202) 416-8400 For all other ticket-related customer service inquiries, call the Advance Sales Box Office at (202) 416-8540

Major Support for Comedy:

ECHOSTAGE 2135 Queens Chapel Road NE. (202) 503-2330. Oliver Heldens. 9 p.m. $25–$30. echostage.com.

U STREET MUSIC HALL 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889.

Rev909. 10 p.m. $10–$12. ustreetmusichall.com.

FUNK & R&B U STREET MUSIC HALL 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889.

Moon Hooch. 6:30 p.m. $20. ustreetmusichall.com.

Major Support for Jazz: The Buffy and William Cafritz Family Foundation Major support for Hip Hop, KC Jukebox, and DIRECT CURRENT: The Irene Pollin Audience Development and Community Engagement Initiatives Additional Design Support: Vicente Wolf of Vicente Wolf Associates and Margaret Russell David M. Rubenstein Cornerstone of the REACH

washingtoncitypaper.com february 21, 2020 27

!

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

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

Tix @ Ticketmaster.com

Feb 21

THE KENTUCKY HEADHUNTERS

HARMONY SWEEPSTAKES A CAPELLA FESTIVAL 24 DIGABLE PLANETS

22

25 Peter

Asher & Jeremy Clyde

PETER & JEREMY (of Peter & Gordon/Chad & Jeremy)

26

SARAH HARMER

28

ARLO GUTHRIE

CHRIS PUREKA

20/20 Tour featuring 'Alice's Restaurant' with Folk Uke

Mar 1

HAYES CARLL (Solo)

with ALLISON

5

MOORER

SQUIRREL NUT ZIPPERS

The Inevitable 25th Anniversary Tour Performing the entire debut album in concert, along with other hep musical stylings!

6

THE OAK RIDGE BOYS

7

On A Winter's night With

Christine LAVin, JOhn gOrKA, CherYL WheeLer, PAttY LArKin, & CLiFF eBerhArDt Plus Sp. 8 TODD SNIDER guest!

12 THE HOT SARDINES 13&14 THE HIGH KINGS 17

THE DIRTY KNOBS

20

10,000 MANIACS

21

with MIKE

CAMPBELL

An Evening with

TOM RUSH

with Matt Nakea 'First Annual Farewell Tour!'

24

Sage HOWARD JONES Rachael Acoustic Trio Tour

RAUL MALO 26 HOLLY NEAR & CRYS MATTHEWS 25

27

THE MANHATTANS featuring GERALD

ALSTON

Bonnie JAMES McMURTRY Whitmore 29 THE SECRET SISTERS Apr 2 THE MUSICAL BOX 'A Genesis Extravanza Vol. 2'

28

3

An Evening with

KELLER WILLIAMS 4 THE FOUR BITCHIN' BABES 5 KATHY MATTEA

GO-GO

CITY WINERY 1350 Okie St. NE. (202) 250-2531.

WHAT? Band. 11 p.m. $20–$25. citywinery.com.

HIP-HOP

SONGBYRD MUSIC HOUSE AND RECORD CAFE 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. Little Stranger. 8 p.m. $12–$15. songbyrddc.com.

SONGBYRD MUSIC HOUSE AND RECORD CAFE 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. Little Stranger. 8 p.m. $12–$15. songbyrddc.com.

CITY LIGHTS: SATURDAY

HOOK

JAZZ

BLUES ALLEY 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Roy Ayers. 8 p.m.; 10 p.m. $50–$55. bluesalley.com.

ROCK

9:30 CLUB 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Wolf Parade. 6 p.m. $30. 930.com.

DC9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. The Family Crest. 7:30 p.m. $15. dc9.club.

PIE SHOP DC 1339 H St. NE. (202) 398-7437. Broke Royals. 8 p.m. $10–$12. pieshopdc.com.

UNION STAGE 740 Water St. SW. (877) 987-6487.

Sloan. 8 p.m. $20–$40. unionstage.com.

VOCAL

MIRACLE THEATRE 535 8th St. SE. (202) 400-3210.

Frozen Live in Concert. 10 a.m. $14–$59. themiracletheatre.com.

WORLD

CAPITAL ONE ARENA 601 F St. NW. (202) 628-3200.

Marc Anthony. 8 p.m. $59–$499. capitalonearena.viewlift.com.

SUNDAY ELECTRONIC

RHIZOME DC 6950 Maple St. NW. Sonoscopia, TL0741, and NarkotroniK. 8 p.m. $10. rhizomedc.org.

U STREET MUSIC HALL 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889.

Brame & Hamo. 10 p.m. Free–$10. ustreetmusichall.com.

FOLK

CITY WINERY 1350 Okie St. NE. (202) 250-2531.

Barnes, Gordy, and Walsh Trio. 7:30 p.m. $22. citywinery.com.

JAMMIN JAVA 227 Maple Ave. East, Vienna. (703) 2551566. Gretchen Peters. 7 p.m. $15–$22. jamminjava.com.

FUNK & R&B

BIRCHMERE 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. Jeffrey Osborne. 7:30 p.m. $85. birchmere.com.

CITY WINERY 1350 Okie St. NE. (202) 250-2531. Mike Phillips. 7:30 p.m. $20–$28. citywinery.com.

GO-GO

ECHOSTAGE 2135 Queens Chapel Road NE. (202) 503-2330. TCB. 10 p.m. $20–$30. echostage.com.

JAZZ

BLUES ALLEY 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Roy Ayers. 8 p.m.; 10 p.m. $50–$55. bluesalley.com.

EAGLEBANK ARENA 4500 Patriot Circle, Fairfax.

(703) 993-3000. Raul Midon and Lionel Louke. 8 p.m. $28–$48. eaglebankarena.com.

ROCK

DC9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. Downhaul.

7:30 p.m. $12. dc9.club.

UNION STAGE 740 Water St. SW. (877) 987-6487.

Black Lips. 7:30 p.m. $20–$40. unionstage.com.

MONDAY HIP-HOP

BIRCHMERE 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. Digable Planets. 7:30 p.m. $55. birchmere.com.

JAZZ

BLUES ALLEY 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Peabody Jazz Faculty Ensemble. 8 p.m.; 10 p.m. $22. bluesalley.com.

POP

SONGBYRD MUSIC HOUSE AND RECORD CAFE 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. Baby Rose. 8 p.m. $18. songbyrddc.com.

28 february 21, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

Rather than hip-hop hotbeds like L.A. or the Bay Area, rapper Hook is from Riverside, out in California’s Inland Empire. And while she proudly claims it, the IE is more a place to be from than to be in. “It’s nothing, there’s nothing there, you feel me?” she told The Fader last year. “There’s not much to do. Everybody leaves to go out and do shit.” For the 21-year-old upstart, music has been her way out of Riverside for a minute; she grew up performing in girl groups before deciding to be a rapper full time. And while she’s only been releasing music as Hook for less than a year, she’s already making a name for herself with tracks that range from finger-snapping posthyphy jams to hazy SoundCloud rap headbangers. But what really sets Hook apart is a staccato, whispery flow that gives character to even the most back-to-basics lyrics. “Bitch, I’m a girl, but I still am the man,” she boasts on the title track of her latest album, “Crashed My Car.” “You can try to win, but bitch, you can’t.” Hook performs at 8 p.m. at Pen Arts Gallery, 1701 N St. NW. $15. femmecase.eventbrite.com.

—Chris Kelly

ROCK

JAZZ

WARNER THEATRE 513 13th St. NW. (202) 783-4000.

Million Dollar Quartet. 8 p.m. $47.50–$110. warnertheatredc.com.

BLUES ALLEY 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. KW Big Band. 8 p.m.; 10 p.m. $22. bluesalley.com.

TUESDAY JAZZ

BLUES ALLEY 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Baby Blue Sound Collective. 7 p.m.; 10 p.m. $22– $120. bluesalley.com.

ROCK BIRCHMERE 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. Peter Asher & Jeremy Clyde. 7:30 p.m. $35. birchmere.com.

WORLD BARNS AT WOLF TRAP 1635 Trap Road, Vienna.

(703) 255-1900. Cherish The Ladies. 8 p.m. $27–$32. wolftrap.org.

BOSSA BISTRO 2463 18th St. NW. (202) 667-0088.

Cheick Hamala’s Griot Street. 9:30 p.m. Free. bossadc.com.

WEDNESDAY ELECTRONIC

SOUNDCHECK 1420 K St. NW. (202) 789-5429. GRAVEDGR. 10 p.m. $10. soundcheckdc.com.

U STREET MUSIC HALL 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889.

Sango. 7 p.m. $25. ustreetmusichall.com.

FOLK

ROCK JAMMIN JAVA 227 Maple Ave. East, Vienna. (703) 2551566. Jonathan Mudd. 7:30 p.m. $15–$22. jamminjava.com.

PIE SHOP DC 1339 H St. NE. (202) 398-7437. Gutter Demons. 8 p.m. $10–$12. pieshopdc.com.

WORLD AMP BY STRATHMORE 11810 Grand Park Ave., North Bethesda. (301) 581-5100. Bokanté. 8 p.m. $39–$59. ampbystrathmore.com.

BARNS AT WOLF TRAP 1635 Trap Road, Vienna.

(703) 255-1900. Cherish The Ladies. 8 p.m. $27–$32. wolftrap.org.

HOWARD THEATRE 620 T St. NW. (202) 803-2899.

Tarrus Riley. 8 p.m. $32.50–$40. thehowardtheatre.com.

THURSDAY CABARET

U STREET MUSIC HALL 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889.

Georgetown Cabaret 44. 8 p.m. $14. ustreetmusichall.com.

COUNTRY 9:30 CLUB 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Josh Abbott Band, Randy Rogers Band & Pat Green. 7 p.m. $40.

930.com.

BIRCHMERE 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. Sarah Harmer. 7:30 p.m. $29.50. birchmere.com.

BIRCHMERE 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives. 7:30 p.m. $59.50. birchmere.com.

MANSION AT STRATHMORE 10701 Rockville Pike, North Bethesda. (301) 581-5100. Niccolo Seligmann.

7:30 p.m. $19. strathmore.org.

SOUNDCHECK 1420 K St. NW. (202) 789-5429. Meduza. 10 p.m. $20–$25. soundcheckdc.com.

ELECTRONIC

Merriweather Post Pavilion • Columbia, MD JUST ANNOUNCED!

DAVE MATTHEWS BAND * AJR WITH QUINN XCII *

.............................. SAT JULY 18

FEBRUARY

MARCH (cont.)

w/ Hobo Johnson & The Lovemakers and Ashe ...............................................SAT AUGUST 1

On Sale Friday, February 21 at 10am

L’Impératrice

THIS WEEK’S SHOWS

Early Show! 6pm Doors .....................F 27

AN EVENING WITH

M3 ROCK FESTIVAL FEATURING

STEEZ PROMO PRESENTS BASS NATION FEAT.

Super Diamond -

The Neil Diamond Tribute ....Th 20

Refused w/ Youth Code & Racetraitor ........F 21

Wolf Parade w/ Jo Passed

Early Show! 6pm Doors ..................Sa 22

White Ford Bronco:

Kix • Tesla • RATT • Night Ranger and more! ..................MAY 1-3

Blunts & Blondes

w/ SubDocta & Bawldy Late Show! 10pm Doors ...................F 27

For more info and a full lineup, visit m3rockfest.com

Luke Bryan w/ Morgan Wallen & Caylee Hammack................. JUNE 20 Halsey * w/ blackbear & PVRIS ................................................................. JULY 19 Sam Hunt w/ Kip Moore • Travis Denning •

Soccer Mommy w/ Tomberlin

Early Show! 6pm Doors ...................Sa 28

Bruno Major w/ Adam Melchor

Late Show! 10pm Doors ...................Sa 28

DC’s All-‘90s Band

Late Show! 10pm Doors ..................Sa 22

Ernest • Brandi Cyrus (DJ Set) ................................................................................. JULY 25

Rod Stewart * w/ Cheap Trick ................................................. AUGUST 15 Daryl Hall & John Oates * w/ Squeeze & KT Tunstall .. AUGUST 22

Poliça w/ Wilsen .......................Su 29 APRIL

Josh Abbott Band • Randy Rogers Band • Pat Green ..Th 27 Drive-By Truckers w/ Buffalo Nichols............F 28 & Sa 29

Leslie Odom Jr.........................W 1 Manic Focus + Mersiv w/ Russ Liquid.............................Th 2 STEEZ PROMO PRESENTS

MARCH

Minnesota

of Montreal w/ Lily’s Band ........M 2 Koe Wetzel w/ Read Southall ...Th 5 No Scrubs: ‘90s Dance Party with DJs Will Eastman & Ozker, Visuals by Kylos ..........................F 6 ALL GOOD PRESENTS

The Lil Smokies & Joe Pug

Early Show! 6pm Doors ....................Sa 7

STEEZ PROMO PRESENTS

PEEKABOO

w/ MoodyGood • ZEKE BEATS • ISOxo Late Show! 10pm Doors ..................Sa 7

The Districts w/ And The Kids .Tu 10 Dead Kennedys w/ D.O.A. ......W 11 Radical Face w/ Axel Flóvent ..Th 12 ALL GOOD PRESENTS

The Motet & TAUK ................F 13 ZZ Ward w/ Patrick Droney.......W 18 Best Coast w/ Mannequin Pussy ..................Th 19

ALL GOOD PRESENTS

Railroad Earth w/ Kyle Tuttle Band 2-Night Passes available! ....F 20 & Sa 21

Caribou w/ Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith ............Th 26

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

BYT’S FUTURE IS FESTIVAL PRESENTS

w/ Of the Trees • Eastghost • Thelem • Abelation ........................F 3

Who? Weekly Live

Pussy Riot w/ Deli Girls ............Sa 4 The Glitch Mob

Jonathan Richman & Welcome to Night Vale Bonnie “Prince” Billy ........ MAR 7 w/ Dessa .............................................APR 2 Walk Off The Earth Brian Fallon & w/ Gabriela Bee ..................................APR 5 The Howling Weather w/ Justin Townes Earle & Worriers .MAR 13 Jens Lekman w/ Eddy Kwon Whindersson Nunes .......... MAR 16 and DC Youth Orchestra Program......APR 22 Kurt Vile with BYT’S FUTURE IS FESTIVAL PRESENTS Cate Le Bon .............................APR 24

w/ Ivy Lab ....................................Su 5

Deafheaven

w/ Inter Arma & Greet Death ........M 6

Aterciopelados & Los Amigos Invisibles ..........W 8 Delta Rae w/ Frances Cone &

Carrie Welling ..............................Th 9

The Lone Bellow

w/ Early James...........................Sa 11

Little Dragon ...........................W 15 Margaret Glaspy w/ Kate Davis Early Show! 6pm Doors ......................F 17

POLITICS AND PROSE PRESENTS

NPR’s Ask Me Another

Watch What Crappens........ MAY 2

feat. Ophira Eisenberg, Jonathan Coulton & More TBA

Dabin

thelincolndc.com • impconcerts.com •

DiscoBENT ..............................Sa 18 Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real ...........Su 19 Hot Country Knights

Madeleine Albright-

Hell and Other Destinations ...APR 27

AEG PRESENTS

Evening Show! 7pm Doors .............MAR 28

w/ Trivecta • Nurko • Last Heroes Late Show! 10pm Doors ...................F 17

Russell Brand: Recovery Live

16+ to enter. ....................................MAY 28

U Street (Green/Yellow) stop across the street!

9:30 CLUB PRESENTS AT U STREET MUSIC HALL

w/ Rachel Wammack ...................M 20

Cupcakes by BUZZ... your neighborhood bakery in Alexandria, VA. | www.buzzonslaters.com

The Lily’s Nora Knows What To Say feat. Nora McInerny

Matinee Show! 2pm Doors .............MAR 28

AEG AND U STREET MUSIC HALL PRESENT

The best thing you could possibly put in your mouth

....................................................... FRI MARCH 27

On Sale Friday, February 21 at 10am

Drink the Sea- 10th Anniv. Tour

MANY MORE SHOWS ON SALE! 930.com impconcerts.com

9:30 CUPCAKES

merriweathermusic.com • impconcerts.com • Ticketmaster.com * Presented by Live Nation

STEEZ PROMO PRESENTS

9:30 CLUB & ALL GOOD PRESENT Moon Hooch w/ Paris Monster.. Sa FEB 22

Audrey Mika w/ Souly Had ..... W MAR 4 9:30 CLUB & ALL GOOD PRESENT

VÉRITÉ w/ Arthur Moon ..................F 28 The Soul Rebels .........................F 6 GARZA (Rob Garza of Thievery Corporation) .Sa 29 Tall Heights w/ Victoria Canal .......Tu 10 • 930.com/u-hall • impconcerts.com • Buy advance tickets at the 9:30 Club box office. •

TICKETS for all shows are available at IMPconcerts.com, and at the 9:30 Club, Lincoln Theatre, The Anthem, and Merriweather Post Pavilion box offices. Check venue websites for box office hours.

HAPPY HOUR DRINK PRICES impconcerts.com AFTER THE SHOW AT THE BACK BAR!

PARKING: The 9:30 Club parking lot is now located at 2222 8th St NW, just

past the Atlantic Plumbing building, about a 3 minute walk from the Club.

Buy your advance parking tickets at the same time as your concert tickets!

930.com washingtoncitypaper.com february 21, 2020 29

CITY LIGHTS: SUNDAY

FOLK RHIZOME DC 6950 Maple St. NW. Ledah Finck, Niccolo Seligmann, and Bahloul & Friends. 7:30 p.m. $15. rhizomedc.org.

HIP-HOP CAPITAL ONE ARENA 601 F St. NW. (202) 628-3200.

Post Malone. 8 p.m. $129.50–$599. capitalonearena.viewlift.com.

JAZZ BLUES ALLEY 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Kim Waters. 8 p.m.; 10 p.m. $40–$45. bluesalley.com.

POP SONGBYRD MUSIC HOUSE AND RECORD CAFE 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. Holychild. 8 p.m. $15–$18.

TCB

D.C. bounce beat go-go pioneers TCB are celebrating two events at Echostage—the band’s 20th anniversary and vocalist Black Bo’s birthday. The self-proclaimed BouncebeatKingz will be joined by many of the act’s original members to commemorate the group’s origin, and by vocalists from other go-go bands to honor Bo. In 2000, TCB, then led by vocalist Reggie “Polo” Burwell, had a hard, raw go-go sound. Then, in 2003, they debuted the galloping timbales and rototoms rhythm known as bounce beat at a now-legendary show at a Riverdale firehouse. That beat, enhanced with keyboard samples and rapped vocals, gave a younger DMV generation a staccato sound of its own without the funk-and-salsa-rooted congas and horns of old-school go-go. Sadly, Burwell had a brain aneurysm in 2010 that put him in a coma until his death in 2013. TCB’s bounce beat is now being utilized by scores of other groups, despite being derided by some as too atonal. Bounce beat circa 2020 is, however, a tad different. TCB now transforms rap and R&B hits by sometimes shifting from that now classic rawness into more tuneful portions, featuring more melodious sung vocals. The evening looks to be a history lesson that you can beat your feet or sing along to. TCB performs at 10 p.m. at Echostage, 2135 Queens Chapel Road NE. $20–$30. (202) 503-2330. echostage.com.

—Steve Kiviat

songbyrddc.com.

ROCK DC9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. Time Is Fire. 8 p.m. $10–$12. dc9.club.

UNION STAGE 740 Water St. SW. (877) 987-6487. Wish You Were Here. 8 p.m. $13–$16. unionstage.com.

VELVET LOUNGE 915 U St. NW. (202) 462-3213. Afton.

8:30 p.m. $15. velvetloungedc.com.

Theater

THE 39 STEPS Four actors embody over 150 characters in this remix of the Alfred Hitchcock film of the

30 february 21, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

same name, including Richard Hannay, who starts a night at a London theater and ends it accused of murder. Constellation Theatre at Source. 1835 14th St. NW. To March 8. $19–$45. (202) 204-7741. constellationtheatre.org.

ADA AND THE ENGINE Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, loves mathematics—and the “father of the computer,” Charles Babbage. But Babbage’s

fatherhood couldn’t have been pulled off without Ada, who was essentially its mother. WSC Avant Bard at Gunston Arts Center Theater Two. 2700 South Lang Street, Arlington. To April 5. $40. (703) 4184808. wscavantbard.org.

ALIX IN WONDERLAND This original musical brings the titular Alix down Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland, but none of them are quite as Alix—or anyone—remembers them. Part of Keegan’s Boiler Room Series, the show tackles on social norms, self-perception, and growing up. Keegan Theatre. 1742 Church St. NW. To Feb. 24. Free. (202) 265-3767. keegantheatre.com.

THE AMEN CORNER James Baldwin’s play The Amen Corner examines the role of the church in black communities as a 1950s Harlem pastor must confront a figure from her troubled past. Sidney Harman Hall.

610 F St. NW. To March 15. $35–$120. (202) 547-1122. shakespearetheatre.org.

BOY Based on a true story, Boy depicts a misguided doctor who convinces new parents to raise their infant son as a girl after a botched circumcision, and the consequences that ripple through their lives.

Keegan Theatre. 1742 Church St. NW. To March 7. $41– $51. (202) 265-3767. keegantheatre.com.

EASY WOMEN SMOKING LOOSE CIGARETTES Marian and Richard are happily settling into their new retirement and their empty nest—until a pregnant niece, the boy next door, and a daughter with a secret show up on their doorstep. Signature Theatre. 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. To March 29. $40–$90.

(703) 820-9771. sigtheatre.org.

CITY LIGHTS: MONDAY

LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE

From Abbas Kiarostami, the director of The Wind Will Carry Us, comes Like Someone in Love. Kiarostami stayed in his native Iran for decades after the 1979 revolution, leaving only twice to make movies outside of it—including Like Someone in Love, set in Japan. Like his Iranian movies, it’s composed mostly of minimalist, locked-down shots, often presented in repetition.

It luxuriates in gaps and pauses; one of the most wrenching sequences in Like Someone in Love consists of the protagonist, a Tokyo call girl named Akiko, sitting in the back of a cab, listening to voicemails, the lights of a slick, clean, lonely city reflected against the windows. Akiko has been sent out to see a client she doesn’t like. After she spends the the night at his apartment, he drives her to her university, where they encounter Akiko’s abusive boyfriend (who remains blissfully ignorant about Akiko’s nighttime activities.) That’s pretty much it. It’s a movie that offers little in terms of explicit stimulation, yet it soaks up all the viewer’s focus and attention and leaves them hungrily awaiting the next line and shot. This state of prolonged anticipation is the key ingredient in the film’s bitter punchline. The film screens at 7:15 p.m. at AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center, 8633 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. $8–$13. (301) 495-6700. afi.com/silver.

—Will Lennon

CITY LIGHTS: TUESDAY

EXQUISITA AGONÍA (EXQUISITE AGONY) A middleaged woman tries to find love with the young man who got her dead husband’s transplanted heart in this witty and poignant play. In Spanish with English supertitles. GALA Hispanic Theatre. 3333 14th St. NW. To March 1. $40–$48. (202) 234-7174. galatheatre.org.

FRIENDLIER FABLES & THOUGHTFUL TALES Learn about respect and friendship through an engaging all-ages show made of kids’ stories told with a sweeter twist. Atlas Performing Arts Center. 1333 H St. NE. To Feb. 22. $15. (202) 399-7993. atlasarts.org.

INTO THE GREAT UNKNOWN This play highlights the heroism of adventurers like Guion Bluford, the first black astronaut, and Sophia Danenburg, the first African American to climb Mt. Everest. Publick Playhouse. 5445 Landover Road, Cheverly. To Feb. 27. $6–$8. (301) 277-1710. arts.pgparks.com.

KILL MOVE PARADISE Kill Move Paradise flips the mythology of the Greek Elysium on its head. We meet the newly deceased characters in a waiting room as they try to come to grips with their deaths— and as the show tries to come to grips with the killings of unarmed black people. Rep Stage at Howard Community College. 10901 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia. To March 8. $5–$25. (443) 518-1500. repstage.org.

A LESBIAN BELLE TELLS... In this one-woman show, a lesbian belle from Mississippi talks coming out, growing up, and moving to D.C. Atlas Performing Arts Center. 1333 H St. NE. To Feb. 21. $35. (202) 399-7993. atlasarts.org.

LET IT SHINE: THE AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT (1955-1968) This production introduces viewers to the notable names, songs, and moments in the Civil Rights Movement, including the Montgomery bus boycott, the March on Washington, and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Publick Playhouse. 5445 Landover Road, Cheverly. To Feb. 25. $6–$8. (301) 277-1710. arts.pgparks.com.

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CLIMATE CHANGE One young woman tries to balance modern dating with her everpresent climate pessimism as she meets a climate refugee, dates a climate denier, and falls in love with an activist. Atlas Performing Arts Center. 1333 H St. NE. To Feb. 22. $20. (202) 399-7993. atlasarts.org.

THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR Falstaff has a plan to woo Windsor’s wealthy housewives, but they team up to teach him a lesson, and his comedic comeuppance is well-deserved. Folger Elizabethan Theatre.

201 E. Capitol St. SE. To March 1. $27–$85. (202) 5447077. folger.edu.

MISS YOU LIKE HELL This new musical tracks the love between an estranged mother and daughter who take a weird and wild road trip from Philadelphia to California. Olney Theatre Center. 2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Road, Olney. To March 1. $37–$79. (301) 9243400. olneytheatre.org.

U.S. BOTANIC GARDEN AT 200: DEEPLY ROOTED, BRANCHING OUTWARD

In 1820, after several years of nudging from assorted local aesthetes, do-gooders, and gentleman horticulturalists, the U.S. Congress established a botanic garden right in the heart of the nation’s capital. Control of the garden was given to a private organization called the Columbian Institute, which promptly ran into financial troubles and ceased to exist. The garden remained a swampy, abandoned eyesore until Congress took control of the project at mid-century, formally dubbing it the U.S. Botanic Garden and authorizing the construction of greenhouses, because you really can’t have a botanic garden without greenhouses. Ever since then, the Garden has been a verdant oasis in the heart of the city: a place where visitors can learn about, appreciate, and get yelled at for plucking leaves off of plants of all sorts. This year marks the bicentennial of D.C.’s botanical dream, and, in celebration, the Garden is launching a commemorative exhibition that will examine its past, present, and future. The sparse information available on the Garden’s website promises, among other things, “plant science interactives, three-dimensional sights, [and] infamous smells,” which sounds like a Jeopardy! category gone horribly wrong. The Garden remains great, even if some of its plants are smelly. The exhibition runs to Oct. 15 at the U.S. Botanic Garden, 100 Maryland Ave. SW. Free. (202) 225-8333. usbg.gov.

—Justin Peters

MOTHER ROAD William Joad is ill, and he wants to pass his plot of Oklahoma farming land down to a descendant who moved West. When he learns his only living descendants are Mexican American, the bits of the family must confront racism and who they really are. Arena Stage. 1101 6th St. SW. To March 8. $51–$95. (202) 488-3300. arenastage.org.

MOUSE ON THE MOVE In this show for young audiences, two adventurous mice head out of their mouse-hole to explore the big world outside and seek to hang out on the Moon, since it’s cat-free and made of cheese. Atlas Performing Arts Center. 1333 H St. NE. To March 1. $15. (202) 399-7993. atlasarts.org.

NEVER THOUGHT I WAS BLACK TILL I CAME TO AMERICA This immigrant story is told through comedy, music, poetry, and prose, dwelling on African heritage and contemporary African and African American life in the U.S. Atlas Performing Arts Center. 1333 H St. NE. To Feb. 23. $25. (202) 399-7993. atlasarts.org.

PHANTOM OF THE OPERA Deep underneath the Paris Opera House, a deformed and bitter musician develops an obsession with a new singer named Christine. Known only as the Phantom, he terrorizes the opera house and manipulates Christine, tutoring her and demanding she be cast in more prominent roles. Synetic Theater at Crystal City. 1800 South Bell St. , Arlington. To March 1. (866) 811-4111. synetictheater.org.

THE ROYALE Jay “The Sport” Jackson wants to be the heavyweight champion of the boxing world, but 1905 boxing is racially segregated, and the odds are against him. 1st Stage. 1524 Spring Hill Road, McLean.

To Feb. 23. $15–$42. (703) 854-1856.

1ststagetysons.org.

SCULPTING CLAY OR HOW I BECAME MOTHER OF UNICORNS One woman attempts to navigate the journey of her dreams teaching students but runs up again and again against secondary trauma in educators from the dark issues her students face. Atlas Performing Arts Center. 1333 H St. NE. To Feb. 22. $25.

(202) 399-7993. atlasarts.org.

SHIPWRECK: A HISTORY PLAY ABOUT 2017 In this radical play, the wounds of the 2016 election are ripped open after the 45th president sends a consequential dinner invitation. Woolly Mammoth Theatre.

641 D St. NW. To March 8. $15–$64. (202) 393-3939. woollymammoth.net.

SILENT SKY A decade before women gained the right to vote, Henrietta Leavitt and her fellow women “computers” transformed the science of astronomy.

In the Harvard Observatory, Leavitt found 2,400 new variable stars and made important discoveries about their fluctuating brightness, enabling fellow scientists to map the Milky Way and beyond. This inspiring drama explores the determination, passion and sacrifice of the women who redefined our understanding of the cosmos. Ford’s Theatre. 511 10th St. NW. To Feb. 23. $22–$72. (202) 347-4833. fords.org.

SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER This Tennessee Williams play takes place in New Orleans’ Garden District as an elderly socialite mourns her dead son, who died mysteriously. WSC Avant Bard at Gunston Arts Center Theater Two. 2700 South Lang Street, Arlington. To April 5. $40. (703) 418-4808. wscavantbard.org.

THIS BITTER EARTH Black playwright Jesse finds himself at a crossroads with his white boyfriend, Neil, who can’t understand why Jesse won’t join in on Neil’s Black Lives Matter activism. Anacostia Playhouse.

2020 Shannon Place SE. To March 22. $20–$40. (202) 290-2328. anacostiaplayhouse.com.

A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS This adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s novel focuses on two Afghan women in Kabul who become unlikely allies in the face of brutality and must make a dramatic decision.

Arena Stage. 1101 6th St. SW. To March 1. $56–$105.

(202) 488-3300. arenastage.org.

TIMON OF ATHENS Timon lives in an opulent, uppercrust Athens world, but when she loses her money, status, and friends, she takes to the forest to plan her revenge against the society that ousted her. Michael R. Klein Theatre. 450 7th St. NW. To March 22. $35– $120. (202) 547-1122. shakespearetheatre.org.

THE TOXIC AVENGER Melvin Ferd the Third falls into a vat of radioactive waste and emerges as a sevenfoot-tall freak called The Toxic Avenger, who’s ready to clean America up. Rorschach Theatre at the Silver Spring Black Box. 8641 Colesville Road, Silver Spring.

To March 1. $10–$65. (202) 399-7993. rorschachtheatre.com.

THE WANDERERS From the award-winning writer of Photograph 51 and Actually comes this funny, insightful, and moving new play. Esther and Schmuli are Satmar Hasidic Jews embarking on an arranged marriage, despite barely knowing each other. Abe and Julia are high-profile celebrities embarking on a dangerously flirtatious correspondence, despite being married to other people. On the surface, the lives of these two pairs couldn’t be more different; but the hidden connections between them draw the audience into an intriguing puzzle and a deeply sympathetic look at modern love. Theater J. 1529 16th St. NW. To March 15. $34–$64. (202) 777-3210. theaterj.org.

WHITE-ISH In White-ish, black girl Dotty goes on a journey about identity and acceptance while meeting a motley crew of people along her way. Atlas Performing Arts Center. 1333 H St. NE. To Feb. 23. $25.

(202) 399-7993. atlasarts.org.

Film

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG A small town police officer must help a super fast blue alien hedgehog defeat an evil genius. Starring Jim Carrey, James Marsden, and Neal McDonough. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information) THE TRAITOR This Italian film follows the real story of Tommaso Buscetta, the first mafia informant in 1980s Sicily. Starring Pierfrancesco Favino, Luigi Lo Cascio, and Fausto Russo Alesi. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information) EMMA In this adaptation of the Jane Austen novel, Emma Woodhouse can’t stop herself from meddling in others’ love lives. Starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Josh

washingtoncitypaper.com february 21, 2020 31

Thank you to everyone who came out to celebrate the Best of D.C. voting launch!

CITYPAPER WASHINGTON

Let’s keep the party going and encourage others to vote for their favorites by March 1 at washingtoncitypaper.com/bestofdc2020.

CITY LIGHTS: WEDNESDAY

BEETHOVEN’S LEONORE

Beethoven isn’t known for opera. He only wrote one, Fidelio, and it doesn’t get performed nearly as much as it should. It has all the tropes familiar for Beethoven fans: noble heroes, wicked tyrants, anti-authoritarian politics, thinly veiled stand-ins for Napoleon. However it’s named for a character that does not exist, the male alter ego of a woman, Leonore, who disguises herself as a prison guard to free her wrongfully imprisoned husband. D.C. last saw this opera in 2012, in a concert version by the National Symphony Orchestra. So it’s surprising that a staged version is coming from Opera Lafayette, a niche chamber opera company which specializes in French Baroque era, not German Romanticism, and normally does not do fully staged productions. Going even further out on a limb, theirs will not be Fidelio per se but a more obscure, earlier version, called Leonore. It’s Opera Lafayette’s most ambitious project yet, but given their reputation for historical detail, likely fastidiously prepared. The show begins at 7 p.m. at the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater, 2700 F St. NW. $25–$135. (202) 4674600. kennedy-center.org.

—Mike Paarlberg

Photos by Clarissa Villondo

CITY LIGHTS: THURSDAY

PRESENT TENSE: DC PUNK AND DIY, RIGHT NOW

The hardcore photo essay is an enduring tradition. Cynthia Connolly first published her pivotal book on the city’s punk scene in 1988; Banned in DC is now in its seventh printing. Lucian Perkins only ever shot a handful of shows, but his pictures of Bad Brains, Teen Idles, and other punk bands endure in a recent publication, Hard Art, DC 1979. So with her new photo collection, City Paper contributor Farrah Skeiky is first and foremost paying homage to the past.

Present Tense: DC Punk and DIY, Right Now captures the throbbing energy of the city’s punk and hardcore scenes in high-contrast black-and-white photos, much like the punk documentarians who came before her. Skeiky’s show and photo book include shots of Iron Cages, Guilt Parade, Homosuperior (in which she now plays guitar), and other acts making it across different scenes today. A picture of Priests playing a 2018 benefit for Mount Pleasant’s Best World Supermarket is a reminder that the core punk concerns of compassion, localism, and accessibility haven’t failed the city in an era of rapid displacement. The photo is more than a document of the moment, though: Skeiky’s work is part of a larger ecosystem that is vital, vulnerable, and still very much carrying on. Tradition is not a knock. The exhibition runs to Feb. 29 at Transformer, 1404 P St. NW. Free. (202) 483-1102. transformerdc.org.

—Kriston Capps O’Connor, and Bill Nighy. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information) BIRDS OF PREY The Joker’s sidekick Harley Quinn leaves him behind and teams up with superheroes Black Canary, Huntress, and Renee Montoya. Starring Margot Robbie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Ewan McGregor. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information) BRAHMS: THE BOY II A family moves into an old mansion and their son makes friends with a lifelike doll called Brahms—but the new friend may be more sinister than he appears. Starring Katie Holmes,

32 february 21, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

Owain Yeoman, and Ralph Ineson. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information) THE PHOTOGRAPH A woman finds her mother’s old belongings and viewers see a series of intertwining love stories from the past and present. Starring Issa Rae, LaKeith Stanfield, and Chelsea Peretti. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information) THE CALL OF THE WILD A sled dog must survive adventures in the Alaskan wild. Starring Harrison Ford, Karen Gillan, and Dan Stevens. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information)

SAVAGELOVE I’m 20, straight, male, fit, and active. I masturbated prone—flat on my stomach—for years. I’ve now changed to a more traditional position (on my back or sitting upright), and I’m using my hand rather than grinding against a mattress. I can easily orgasm when I masturbate. I’ve had sex four times in my life, and I’m worried because I wasn’t able to orgasm by someone else’s hand, through oral, or during penetration. I felt more sensation with oral or by hand than I did during intercourse, but I wasn’t able to get off. This is extremely worrying, and I am increasingly depressed. Am I broken? Is my sex life ruined?

—Boy Reeling Over Kaput Equipment You’re not broken, BROKE, and your partnered sex life, which has barely begun, isn’t ruined. Even if you’re never able to come by someone else’s hand, mouth, twat, or ass— and that’s the worst-case scenario here— you can still have a rewarding and pleasurable sex life.

In the short run, BROKE, you need to be honest with your sex partners about the way your cock currently works. Let them know you’re going to be mixing some manual selfstimulation in with the vaginal/oral/anal penetration. In other words, at some point you’re going to pull out of whatever you’re in, you’re going to jerk it until you reach the point of “orgasmic inevitability” (OI), aka that split second between the start of orgasmic contractions and the good stuff spurting out, and then you’re going to put it back in.

Since most women need to mix direct clitoral stimulation with penetration (or in place of it) in order to get off—before, during, after, or instead of intercourse—your honesty about what you actually need to get off will signal to your female partners that they can be honest with you about what they actually need to get off.

Backing way the hell up: The way you used to masturbate—prone—is likely the reason you’re having difficulty climaxing now. But lots of men who masturbated in more “traditional positions—e.g., on their backs, sitting up, standing up, etc.—have trouble transitioning to partnered sex from solo sex. The inside of a mouth, vagina, or butt doesn’t feel like your own hand (or a long-suffering mattress, in your case), and even someone else’s hand doesn’t feel the same as your own. While the excitement of partnered sex helps most guys get over the hump—for many men, it takes time and a little experimentation for their cocks to adapt. But men who engaged in “atypical masturbatory behaviors” as boys— and prone masturbation/humping a mattress counts—frequently have a harder transition to partnered sex.

There’s a name for what you’re experienc-

ing: delayed ejaculation. And while delayed ejaculation can be frustrating, the opposite problem—premature ejaculation—is more frustrating and harder to work around. (I get a lot more letters from guys in despair because they come too quickly and too easily than I do from guys like you, BROKE, who take too long.) And, really, when you look at it from a different angle, your problem—being able to last forever—is really kind of a superpower.

Because let’s say you fuck some lucky woman for ages, and she gets off again and again because someone—you, her, a third—is stimulating her clit at the same time. Once she’s satisfied (or shortly before she’s satisfied), BROKE, you can pull out, jack yourself to OI, then put your cock back inside her and blow that load or take the condom off and blow your load—with her consent, of course—all over her ass or tits or stomach or Toyota Corolla or whatever.

But for your partner to feel like this is your superpower and she totally lucked out when she met you, BROKE, you can’t leave her in the dark about the way your dick works. If you don’t let your partner know you need to stroke yourself a little right before you come, she’s likely to interpret your staying power (your superpower) as a sign you aren’t attracted to her.

Now here’s how you might be able to fix this in the long run, BROKE: When you’re masturbating, you should … well, you should do what you’re doing. Masturbate while sitting up or lying on your back, use your hand and a little lube, but do it with a much lighter touch/grip and maybe invest in a quality (read: silicone) masturbation sleeve. Don’t use the death grip—don’t squeeze the life out of your dick—as that will make things worse. And while cutting back on porn and using your imagination instead is fine, the real goal is to retrain your cock to respond to subtler sensations. Which brings us to the hardest part: If you can’t come after masturbating for 10, 20, or 30 minutes—using that light touch/grip, a little lube, and maybe that sleeve—you don’t get to come. No flipping over and humping the mattress after half an hour, and no using a firmer grip. You put your dick away and go to bed or work or school.

Because this is about focusing on pleasurable sensations, not blowing your load, and you want to let the pressure build in your balls between sessions.

Stick to these rules when you’re on your own for at least six months. If your dick is able to adapt, it will, and then you can take your more sensitive dick into partnered sex with more confidence. But if after six months you’re still not able to come using a lighter touch or a masturbation sleeve, you

CITYPAPER WASHINGTON

may have to accept that this—your need to get yourself to the point of OI during partnered sex—is the way your dick works. Just as some women need to use a vibrator in order to come, and that doesn’t mean they’re broken, some men—after giving and receiving a lot of pleasurable fucking—need to pull out, jack to the point of OI, and then plunge back in for the last few victory pumps. It doesn’t mean they’re broken, it doesn’t mean their dicks are broken, and it certainly doesn’t mean their sex lives are over. As sexual superpowers go, BROKE, it’s a pretty decent one to have.

Finally: I just reread a paper on traumatic masturbatory syndrome (TMS) that was published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy back in 1998—which I think was before you were born (math is hard)—and it identified prone masturbation as the primary cause of delayed ejaculation. To prevent TMS, delayed ejaculation, and other forms of erectile dysfunction that prone masturbation can lead to, the authors recommended “masturbatory instruction in the home, classroom, or pediatric clinical setting.” If their advice had been taken—if boys were advised, as one aspect of a comprehensive sex-education program, to avoid humping mattresses or placing their penises between mattresses and box springs—far fewer young men would have the problem you’re having now.

—Dan Savage I’ve been seeing a guy for two years. It was a FWB situation from the start, because he already had a girlfriend. I adore him, we quickly broke the rules (L-word spoken on both sides), but the B part has dwindled to nothing. We haven’t had PIV sex since September, and he just added a second FWB to the mix. He swears he’s attracted to me and says we aren’t having sex, with the exception of me blowing him from time to time, because he’s older. But I know for a fact the other two women are getting some.

He says he’s attracted to me, so why doesn’t he want sex? How do I make him see how much I need him without issuing ultimatums?

—Scared But Horny Your FWB might come through with a little PIV if you issued that ultimatum, SBH, but it sure doesn’t sound like he’s going to fuck you short of one. You might be able to get this guy to quite literally throw you a bone, but I think your time would be better spent finding a new FWB. —DS

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

for ‘Best Art Collective’ and 200+ other categories!

by March 1st at washington citypaper.com/ bestofdc2020

washingtoncitypaper.com february 21, 2020 33

515 5th Street, N.W., Building A, 3rd Floor, Washington, D.C. Adult . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 SUPERIOR COURT 20001, on or before OF THE DISTRICT OF August Auto/Wheels/Boat . . . 20, . . .2020. . . . . Claims . 42 COLUMBIA against the decedent Buy, Sell, Trade . . shall . . . .be . .presented . . . . . . .to . . .

PROBATE DIVISION 2020 ADM 000031 a Marketplace . . . . the . . .undersigned . . . . . . . . with . . 42 Name of Decedent, copy to the Register of Jacquelyne L. Herndon.

Community . . . . . Wills . . . .or . .to . the . . .Register . . . 42 Name and Address of of Wills with a copy to Employment . . .undersigned, . . . . . . . . .on . 42 Attorney, Reed Spell- . . . . the or man, 6404 Ivy Lane, before August 20, 2020, Health/Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Suite 400, Greenbelt, or be forever barred.

Maryland 20770.

Notice . . . Persons Body & Spirit . . . . . . .believed . . . . . .to . be 42 of Appointment, Notice heirs or legatees of the Housing/Rentals . . . . . . .who . . .do . .not . 42 to Creditors and Notice decedent to Unknown Heirs, Regireceive a copy of this Legal Notices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 nald B. Herndon, whose notice by mail within 25 address is 5 McDonald Row . days Music/Music . . .of . its . . publication . . . . . . 42 Pl, NE, Washington, DC shall so inform the RegPets . . . . . . . . . . ister . . . .of . Wills, . . . . including . . . . 42 20011, was .appointed Personal Representaname, address and reReal Estate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 tive of the estate of lationship. Date of first Jacquelyne L. Herndon Shared Housing . publication: . . . . . . . . 2/20/2020 . . . . . 42 who died on October Name of Newspaper Services . . . . . . . and/or . . . . . periodical: . . . . . . . . 42 9, 2018, without a .Will and will serve without Washington City Paper/ Court Supervision. All Daily Washington Law unknown heirs and heirs Reporter. Name of Perwhose whereabouts are sonal Representative: unknown shall enter Reginald B. Herndon their appearance in this TRUE TEST copy Nicole proceeding. Objections Stevens Acting Register to such appointment of Wills Pub Dates: shall be filed with the February 20, 27, March Register of Wills, D.C., 5

Contents:

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Classified Ads Print & Web Classified Packages may be placed on our Web site, by fax, mail, phone, or in person at our office: 734 15th Street, NW Suite 400 Washington, D.C. 20005 Commercial Ads rates start at $20 for up to 6 lines in print and online; additional print lines start at $2.50/ line (vary by section). Your print ad placement plus up to 10 photos online. Premium options available for both print and web may vary.

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KIPP DC PUBLIC Adult Phone CHARTER SCHOOLS REQUEST Entertainment FOR PROPOSALS Livelinks - Chat Lines. Flirt, chat AV Hardware/Software and date! Talk to sexy real singles Installation in your area. Call now! (844) 359-5773 KIPP DC is soliciting proposals from qualified Legals vendors for the Acquisition andISInstallation of NOTICE HEREBY GIVEN Audio/Video Hardware THAT: and Software.

The RFP TRAVISA OUTSOURCING, INC. (DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA can be found on KIPP DEPARTMENT OF CONSUMER DC’s website at www.

AND REGULATORY AFFAIRS kippdc.org/procurement.

FILE NUMBER 271941) Proposals should be HAS DISSOLVED EFFECTIVE NOVEMuploaded to the website BER 27, 2017 AND HAS FILED no later OF than 5:00 PM OF ARTICLES DISSOLUTION ET on March 6, 2020.CORDOMESTIC FOR-PROFIT Questions should be adPORATION WITH THE DISTRICT dressed to keon.toyer@ OF COLUMBIA CORPORATIONS DIVISION kipdc.org.

ASUPERIOR CLAIM AGAINST TRAVISA COURT OUTSOURCING, INC. MUST OF THE DISTRICT OF INCLUDE THE NAME OF THE COLUMBIA DISSOLVED CORPORATION, Landlord and Tenant INCLUDE THE NAME OF THE Branch CLAIMANT, INCLUDE A SUMMA2019 LTBFACTS 027674 RY OF THE SUPPORTING DC Housing THE CLAIM, ANDAuthority BE MAILED TO 1600 INTERNATIONAL DRIVE, Plaintiff, SUITE 600, MCLEAN, VA 22102 v.

Ruth Cummings ALL CLAIMS WILL BE BARRED Defendant.

UNLESS ATOPROCEEDING NOTICE HEIRS OF TO ENFORCE THE CLAIM IS COMRUTH MENCEDCUMMINGS WITH IN 3 YEARS OF Ruth Cummings, PUBLICATION OF THISwho NOTICE lived at 1845 WITH Harvard IN ACCORDANCE SECTION Street, 623, Wash-OF 29-312.07NW, OF THE DISTRICT ington, at COLUMBIADC 20009, ORGANIZATIONS ACT. the time of his reported death, is the subject of Two Rivers PCS is soliciting an action for a Comproposals to provide project manplaint Possession agementfor services for a small conby Plaintiff DC struction project.

ForHousing a copy of the RFP, please email procurement@ Authority in the Landtworiverspcs.org. lord and TenantDeadline Branchfor submissions is December 6, 2017. of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, Case No. 2019 LTB 027674 . A judgment for possession may lead to eviction and the loss of personal property in the residence.

Any interested person, including but not limited to creditors, heirs, and legatees of the decedent, shall appear on March 19, 2020 at 9:00 am in Courtroom B109, in the Landlord and Tenant Court, located at 510 4th Street NW, Washington, DC, to show cause if there be any reason why the complaint for possession should not be granted and the plaintiff take possession, dispose of, or take any other action as ordered by this Court of any personal property contained in the unit. Inquiries may be directed to: Jillian K. Lewis, Esq. Musolino & Dessel PLLC 1615 L Street, NW Suite 440 Washington, DC 20036 (202) 466-3883 SUPERIOR COURT OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PROBATE DIVISION

34 february 21, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

2019 ADM 001396 Name of Decedent,Legals Thelma Fagin Hyman.

DC SCHOLARS PCS - REQUEST Notice of Appointment, FOR PROPOSALS – ModuNotice to Creditors and lar Contractor Services - DC Notice Unknown Scholars to Public Charter School Heirs, Darryl H. solicits proposals forFagin, a modular whose 4506 contractoraddress to provide is professional Avonsale Apt, management Street, and construction services to construct a modular Bethesda, Maryland building to house four classrooms 20814, was appointed and one faculty offi ce suite. The Personal Representative Request for Proposals (RFP) of the estate of Thelma specifi cations can be obtained on Fagin Hyman who died and after Monday, November 27, on November 24, 2019, 2017 from Emily Stone via comwith a Will and will serve munityschools@dcscholars.org. without Court SuperviAll questions should be sent in sion. unknown heirs writing All by e-mail.

No phone calls regarding thiswhose RFP will be acand heirs wherecepted. Bids be received by abouts aremust unknown 5:00 PM on Thursday, December shall enter their appear14, 2017 DC proceedScholars Public ance in at this Charter School, ATTN: ing. Objections to Sharonda such Mann, 5601 E. Capitol St. SE, appointment shall Any be bids Washington, DC 20019. filed with theallRegister not addressing areas as outof Wills, D.C., 515 5th will lined in the RFP specifi cations Street, N.W., Building not be considered.

A, 3rd Floor, Washington, D.C. 20001, for on Rent or Apartments before 8/6/2020. Claims against the decedent shall be presented to the undersigned with a copy to the Register of Wills or to the Register of Wills with a copy to the undersigned, on or before 8/6/2020, or be forever barred. Persons believed to be heirs or Must see! of Spacious semi-furlegatees the decedent nisheddo1 not BR/1receive BA basement who a apt, Deanwood, $1200. Sep. copy of this notice by entrance, W/W carpet, W/D, kitchmail within 25 days of en, fireplace near Blue Line/X9/ its publication shall so V2/V4. Shawnn 240-343-7173. inform the Register of Wills, including name, Rooms for Rent address and relationship.

Date of firstTwo furHoliday Specialpublication: 2/6/2020 nished rooms for short or long Name of Newspaper term rental ($900 and $800 per and/or periodical: month) with access to W/D, WiFi, Kitchen, City and Den. UtiliWashington Paper/ ties included.

Best N.E.Law location Daily Washington along H St. Corridor.

Call Eddie Reporter. Name of Per202-744-9811 for info. or visit sonal Representative: www.TheCurryEstate.com Darryl H. Fagin TRUE TEST copy Nicole Stevens Acting Register of Wills Pub Dates: February 6, 13, 20.

SUPERIOR COURT OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Landlord and Tenant Branch 2019 LTB 027671 DC Housing Authority Plaintiff, v.

Dianne Painter Defendant.

NOTICE TO HEIRS OF DIANNE PAINTER Dianne Painter, who lived at 1845 Harvard Street, NW, 425, Washington, DC 20009, at the time of his reported death, is the subject of an action for a Complaint for Possession

by Plaintiff DC Housing Authority in the Landlord and Tenant Branch of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, Case No. 2019 LTB 027671. A judgment for possession may lead to

eviction and the loss of Construction/Labor personal property in the residence.

Any interested person, including but not limited to creditors, heirs, and legatees of the decedent, shall appear POWER DESIGN NOWon HIRMarch 19, 2020 APPRENat 9:00 ING ELECTRICAL TICES OF ALL SKILLB109, LEVam in Courtroom inELS! the Landlord and Tenant Court, located position… atabout 510the 4th Street NW, Do you love working Washington, DC, to with your hands? Are you intershow if there be ested cause in construction and any reason why the in becoming an electrician? complaint for possession Then the electrical apprentice should bebegranted positionnot could perfect for and plaintiff take you!the Electrical apprentices are able to earn a paycheck possession, dispose of, and full benefi ts while learnor take any other acing as the ordered trade through firsttion by this hand experience.

Court of any personal

property contained in what we’re looking for… the unit. Inquiries may Motivated D.C. residents who bewant directed to learnto: the electrical trade and have a high school Jillian K. orLewis, diploma GED asEsq. well as reliable transportation.

Musolino & Dessel PLLC 1615 L Street, NW Suite a little bit about us…

440 Power Design is of the Washington, DCone 20036 top electrical contractors in (202) 466-3883 the U.S., committed to our values, to training and to givNOTICE ing back toOF thePUBLIC communities SALE OF in which wePERSONAL live and work.

PROPERTY: Public more details… auction of items presVisit owned powerdesigninc.us/ ently

by Angelika careers email careers@ Beverly, or Darneisha powerdesigninc.us!

Hammond, Carl Brown, Synethia Broadnax, and Janae Henry to compensate for storage Services charges Financial thereon. Items were Denied Credit??

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The auction will open for bids on March 7, 2020

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at 10:00am at [StoragAuctions etreasures.com](http:// storagetreasures.com/), and will close as a final sale on March 17, 2020 at 1:00pm. Purchases must be made with credit card and paid at the time of sale.

Buyers will coordinate with MakeSpace to pick up purchases from our facility “3370 V St. Whole at Foods Commissary Auction NE, Washington, DC DC Metro Area 20018” within 3 days 5 at 10:30AM ofDec. winning the lot. All 1000sare S/Ssold Tables, goods as isCarts and & Trays, 2016 Kettles up must be removed by the to 200 Gallons, Urschel end of the Cutters & scheduled Shredders inpick up appointment. cluding 2016 Diversacut Buyers must6 pay an 2110 Dicer, Chill/Freeze additional $10Rack for Ovens each Cabs, Double & Ranges, Braising green plastic(12) storage Tables, 2016 (3+) Stephan bin or moving blanket VCMs, 30+to keep.

Scales, they choose Hobart 80 qt Mixers, MakeSpace reserves the Complete Machine Shop, right to refuse any bid. and much more! View the catalog at Order of Publicationor www.mdavisgroup.com Commonwealth of 412-521-5751 Virginia Charlottesville Juvenile andGarage/Yard/ Domestic Rummage/Estate Relations District Sales Court Flea Market every Fri-Sat The object5615 of this suit Rd. 10am-4pm.

Landover is to: Terminate Cheverly, MD. 20784.the Can buy parental rights202-355-2068 of the in bulk. Contact Unknown Father of a or if or 301-772-3341 for details intrested inchild beingborn a vendor. female to Joy Brown on December, 06, 2018.

It is ordered the the defendant Thomas Moneke, appear at the above-named Court and protect his interests on or before 3-11-20 @ 2:30pm.

Amy C Shifflette Deputy Clerk SUPERIOR COURT OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

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Please contact Rural Dog Rescue www.ruraldogrescue.com to complete an application or visit us at the adoption event this Saturday from 12-2 at Howl To The Chief 733 8th Street SE, DC.

PROBATE DIVISION 2020 ADM Miscellaneous 000074 Name of Decedent, NEW COOPERATIVE Charles C. PointsSHOP! A/K/A Charles Carrington FROM EGPYT THINGS Points. Name and AdAND BEYOND dress of Attorney, Reed 240-725-6025 Spellman, 6404 Ivy www.thingsfromegypt.com Lane, Suite 400, Greenthingsfromegypt@yahoo.com belt, Maryland 20770.

Notice of Appointment, SOUTH AFRICAN BAZAAR Craft Cooperative Notice to Creditors and 202-341-0209 Notice to Unknown www.southafricanbazaarcraftcoo Heirs, Charlese Points perative.com Jennings, whose address southafricanba z a ar @hotmail. is 756 Barnes Street com NE, Washington, DC 20019, was appointed WEST FARM WOODWORKS Personal Representative Custom Creative Furniture of the estate of Charles 202-316-3372 info@westfarmwoodworks.com C. Points A/K/A Charles www.westfarmwoodworks.com Carrington Points who died on February 2, 7002 Carroll Avenue 2018, with a Will and Takoma Park, MD 20912 will serve without Mon-Sat 11am-7pm, Court Supervision. All Sun 10am-6pm unknown heirs and heirs whose whereabouts are Motorcycles/Scooters unknown shall enter their appearance 2016 Suzuki TU250Xinforthis sale.

1200 miles. CLEAN. Just serproceeding.

Objections viced.

Comes with bike cover to such appointment and Askingthe $3000 shallsaddlebags. be filed with Cash only. of Wills, D.C., Register Call 202-417-1870 M-F between 515 5th Street, N.W., 6-9PM, or weekends.

Building A, 3rd Floor, Washington, D.C. Bands/DJs for Hire 20001, on or before 8/13/2020. Claims against the decedent shall be presented to the undersigned with a copy to the Register of Wills or to the Register of Wills with a copy to the undersigned, on or before 8/13/2020, or be Get Wit Itbarred.

Productions: Profesforever Persons sional soundtoand availbelieved be lighting heirs or able for club, corporate, private, legatees of the decedent wedding receptions, holiday who do not receive a events and much more. Insured, copy of this by531competitive rates.notice Call (866) mail within 25message days offor a 6612 Ext 1, leave its publication shall so onten-minute call back, or book inform the Register of line at: agetwititproductions.com

Wills, including name, Events address and relationship. Date of first Christmas in Silver Spring publication: 2/13/2020 Saturday,of December 2, 2017 Name Newspaper Veteran’s Plaza and/or periodical: 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Washington Paper/ in Come celebrateCity Christmas Daily Washington Law the heart of Silver Spring at our Reporter.

Name of PerVendor Village on Veteran’s Plasonal Representative: za. There will be shopping, arts Charlese Jennings and crafts forPoints kids, pictures with Santa, music entertainment TRUE TESTand copy Nicole to spread holiday cheer and more.

Stevens Acting Register Proceeds from Dates: the market will of Wills Pub provide a “wish” children February 13, toy 20,for27. in need. Join us at your one stop shop for everything Christmas.

Order Publication For moreofinformation, contact Commonwealth of Futsum, Virginia info@leadersinstitutemd.org or Charlottesville call 301-655-9679 Juvenile and Domestic General Relations District Court Looking to Rent yard space for The object of this suit is hunting dogs. Alexandria/Arlingto: Terminate the parenton, VA area only. Medium sized tal rights of the Mother, dogs will be well-maintained in Joy Michelle Brown, a temperature controled dog of housfemale born to Joy es. I havechild advanced animal care Brown December, experienceonand dogs will be06, rid 2018.

It isflies, ordered the free of feces, urine and oder.

Dogs defendant will be in a ventilated kennel the Joy Miso they will not be exposed to winchelle Brown, appear at ter and harsh weather etc.

Space the above-named Court will be needed as soon as possiand protect her interests ble. or Yardbefore for dogs3-11-20 must be Metro on @ accessible. Serious callers only, 2:30pm. call anytime Kevin, 415- 846Amy C Shifflette 5268. Price Neg. Deputy Clerk

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