Washington City Paper (March 17, 2022)

CITYPAPER WASHINGTON

NEWS: FORMER GREEN TEAMER BLOWS THE WHISTLE 4 SPORTS: SPIRIT HEAD COACH PUTS PLAYERS FIRST 6 ARTS: YOUR GUIDE TO THE CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL 18

THE DISTRICT'S FREE WEEKLY SINCE 1981 VOLUME 42, NO. 5 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM MARCH 18 - APRIL 7, 2022

The New Fire at Engine

The New Fire at Engine 22 They became firefighters to fight fires. Now they’re senior caregivers. P.6

By Alexandra Moe Photographs by Darrow Montgomery

2 MARCH 18, 2022 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM

TABLE OF CONTENTS COVER STORY 8 The New Fire at Engine 22: Firefighters are responding less frequently to actual fires. Instead, D.C.’s bravest, trained in emergency medical care, are becoming de facto short-term senior caregivers.

NEWS 4 Loose Lips: A former Green Teamer blows the whistle on DSLBD’s shoddy oversight of its Main Street grant funds.

SPORTS 6 High Spirits: In his first full season as the Washington Spirit’s head coach, Kris Ward will use his player-first mantra in search of a second consecutive title.

FOOD 14 Bring It! On: A local bicycle courier operation aims to position itself as an alternative to UberEats and DoorDash.

ARTS 16 Mojo Rising: Capitol Heights MC Odd Mojo will headline an eclectic lineup of rappers, singers, DJs, and musicians at Songbyrd’s One Very Odd Show.

18 Cherry Blossom Fest FAQs: Your guide to navigating peak bloom and its accompanying celebrations 20 Funny Girl: How Emma Eun-joo Choi became NPR’s newest and youngest comedy podcast host 20 Film: Gittell on The Outfit

CITY LIGHTS 21 City Lights: Discover the relationship between coal and ice, see Gilbert O’Sullivan’s first D.C. performance, and take in the American landscape from the hinterlands to Long Island at Photoworks.

DIVERSIONS 13 Crossword 23 Savage Love 23 Classifieds On the cover: Photograph by Darrow Montgomery

Darrow Montgomery | 3400 block of 16th Street NW, March 12 Editorial

Advertising and Operations

Interim Editor CAROLINE JONES Managing Editor MITCH RYALS Arts Editor SARAH MARLOFF Sports Editor KELYN SOONG City Lights Editor ELLA FELDMAN Multimedia Editor WILL WARREN Loose Lips Reporter ALEX KOMA Staff Writer AMBAR CASTILLO Staff Photographer DARROW MONTGOMERY Creative Director NAYION PERKINS Designer KATY BARRETT-ALLEY Audience Growth and Engagement Editor MICHELLE GOLDCHAIN Copy Editor GAIL O’HARA

Director of Sales ALICIA MERRITT Sales Operations Manager HEATHER MCANDREWS Director of Operations JANE MARTINACHE Publisher Emeritus AMY AUSTIN

Leland Investment Corp.

Owner MARK D. EIN Director of Finance RACHEL PROCTOR

LOCAL ADVERTISING: (202) 650-6940 FAX: (202) 650-6970 ADS@WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM FIND A STAFF DIRECTORY WITH CONTACT INFORMATION AT WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM VOL. 42, NO. 5 MARCH 18–APRIL 7, 2022 WASHINGTON CITY PAPER IS PUBLISHED EVERY WEEK AND IS LOCATED AT 734 15TH ST. NW, SUITE 400, WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005. CALENDAR SUBMISSIONS ARE WELCOMED; THEY MUST BE RECEIVED 10 DAYS BEFORE PUBLICATION. U.S. SUBSCRIPTIONS ARE AVAILABLE FOR $250 PER YEAR. ISSUE WILL ARRIVE SEVERAL DAYS AFTER PUBLICATION. BACK ISSUES OF THE PAST FIVE WEEKS ARE AVAILABLE AT THE OFFICE FOR $1 ($5 FOR OLDER ISSUES). BACK ISSUES ARE AVAILABLE BY MAIL FOR $5. MAKE CHECKS PAYABLE TO WASHINGTON CITY PAPER OR CALL FOR MORE OPTIONS. © 2022 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT THE WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE EDITOR.

WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM MARCH 18, 2022 3

Alex Koma

NEWS LOOSE LIPS

Mean Streets The District’s Main Streets program looks riddled with questionable accounting practices, all enabled by inaction from the agency overseeing it.

By Alex Koma @AlexKomaWCP Once a Green Teamer through and through, Jackson Carnes makes for an unlikely whistleblower.

Yet that is exactly the position Carnes finds himself in following his tumultuous three-month tenure running the Upper Georgia Avenue Main Street program. He told the D.C. Council he has extensive evidence of “unethical and potentially fraudulent activity” on the part of the people running the city-funded program, and repeatedly raised the issue with District officials. But all he’s gotten for his trouble is a stiff arm and a pink slip.

Carnes, a former staffer for former Ward 4 Councilmember Brandon Todd and a veteran of Mayor Muriel Bowser’s 2014 campaign, isn’t alone. A series of businesses and nonprofits that work with the city’s Main Street organizations, which are designed to support small companies and invigorate D.C.’s commercial corridors, have grown increasingly concerned about the agency overseeing the program: the Department of Small and Local Business Development.

They believe officials at DSLBD have been playing favorites as they hand out these Main Street grants, passing over some applicants in favor of

the same handful of bidders that are friendly with agency leaders. And when those organizations have been accused of mismanagement, by Carnes and others, the agency has ignored those concerns and continued to hand out grant money, the agency’s critics say.

The Office of the Inspector General launched an investigation into the matter in December, which is still ongoing, and several councilmembers have begun asking probing questions.

DSLBD Executive Director Kristi Whitfield faced some of those queries in a D.C. Council oversight hearing last month, where she insisted the allegations from Carnes and others were without merit. The agency adds in an email to Loose Lips that it is “participating fully” with the OIG’s review.

The whole mess involves complex questions of nonprofit stewardship and grant management, but at bottom, people concerned about DSLBD worry that this dysfunction means small businesses aren’t getting help at a time when they desperately need it.

“It feels like the administration only sees economic development as redevelopment, with big, shiny projects like The Wharf,” says Brianne Dornbush, the head of District Bridges, a nonprofit that has won six Main Street grants.

“There’s a real lack of focus on supports for small businesses and that is really harming our

4 MARCH 18, 2022 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM

economic growth as a city.”

Mysterious Money Moves So how does one of these Main Streets work, exactly? In short, if a community successfully organizes and convinces DSLBD that it needs the program for its local businesses, the agency will round up funding and award a grant for a third party to manage. Each Main Street entity essentially functions as a neighborhood advocacy organization that can connect businesses with city resources, manage local events, or simply run marketing for the corridor.

The Center for Nonprofit Advancement, headed by CEO Glen O’Gilvie, has helmed the Upper Georgia Avenue Main Street (covering the Takoma, Brightwood, and Shepherd Park neighborhoods) since winning the DSLBD grant in 2019. The broader organization provides support services and hires an executive director specifically for the Main Street program. That’s where Carnes comes in. He took over as executive director of the Upper Georgia Avenue Main Street in July 2021 after Todd lost his Council seat.

Right away, Carnes says he began noticing irregularities with how O’Gilvie managed things (all of which he documented and then reported directly to DSLBD, per emails he forwarded to Loose Lips). Often, O’Gilvie would make financial decisions without consulting Carnes or the

Main Street’s volunteer board, moving money around and charging the group’s grant for services it never received. O’Gilvie, who did not respond to requests for comment for this article, subsequently denied all this at the Council hearing.

In one instance, O’Gilvie billed nearly $7,000 that he said paid for technical assistance services for several local businesses. Carnes says he contacted those businesses, and they had no memory of ever receiving those services. Crucially, Carnes found that the money was set to go to MJ Consulting, which has a close relationship with O’Gilvie and CNA. O’Gilvie described the company as the center’s “grant writer,” according to Carnes. MJ Consulting is also listed on CNA’s website as an “industry expert” nonprofits should consider hiring.

O’Gilvie ultimately agreed to remove the charge from the Main Street, though a subsequent DSLBD investigation determined the incident amounted to “serious mismanagement” of funds.

In another episode that troubled Carnes, O’Gilvie placed an order for $11,000 in street pole banners under Carnes’ name, even though Carnes never approved the purchase. Carnes also discovered that CNA funneled donations meant for the Main Street into its own accounts, never to be seen again. He believes this happened with at least two separate donations totaling roughly $300, though there could be more. Carnes provided LL with documents corroborating these claims, all of which he also forwarded to DSLBD. “They completely took advantage of the situation,” Carnes says.

Carnes and the full Main Street board wrote an Oct. 1 letter to O’Gilvie laying out these concerns, saying that “there is mismanagement of [Main Street] funds to the point where it has affected our ability to provide the expected amount of support to [Upper Georgia Avenue] businesses.” The board and Carnes forwarded that letter to DSLBD and began discussing these issues directly with officials there on Oct. 14.

On Oct. 15, O’Gilvie fired Carnes and dissolved the board. The chair of the Main Street’s board, Monica Goletiani, also has not responded to LL’s repeated requests for comment on the whole dispute.

“We all loved Jackson, he was doing a great job,” says Margery Goldberg, who runs the Zenith Gallery in Shepherd Park. “We were all mystified that he was fired, until we found out he was raising these complaints.”

Agency Inaction Carnes believes DSLBD has a clear understanding of these problems, but it won’t act. The agency investigated after repeated messages from Carnes and issued its own Dec. 30 memo on the subject, noting a series of “deficiencies, weaknesses and shortcomings” in the center’s management structure.

But DSLBD stopped short of finding any fraud in these instances. In particular, the agency argued that the center’s decision to mix Main Street funds into its own bank account was not “fraudulent, malfeasant, unethical or even mismanagement,” as they were sufficiently segregated (an assertion Carnes disputes).

Ultimately, DSLBD decided to put the center on a “performance improvement plan” and will give it “reasonable time to correct identified administrative/managerial issues,” the agency writes in an email. That will allow O’Gilvie and the center to continue running the Main Street, managing a roughly $150,000 grant in the process.

NEWS Whitfield said during a Feb. 9 Council oversight hearing that Upper Georgia Avenue Main Street’s board has since been reconstituted and would soon look to add new members to become “more broadly representative of the community” and make improvements, though it’s unclear who sits on the board now.

O’Gilvie also testified that he hired a new interim director for the Upper Georgia Avenue Main Street, but did not identify them. A spokesperson for Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George said the center told her office that Jessica Mailander, formerly a program manager for a different Main Street, has taken over.

O’Gilvie used the hearing to call Carnes a “disgruntled” employee and lament that “politics and emotion have attempted to get in the way of high impact community service.” O’Gilvie doubled down in a budget forum held by Lewis George on Feb. 12, saying that his organization will need to “rebuild community trust tainted by slander,” according to Zoom chat screenshots sent to LL. Carnes finds it “baffling” that DSLBD would accept O’Gilvie’s explanations and continue to let him manage grant funds. And Dornbush expects that if her organization acted like O’Gilvie’s, it would lose its Main Street grants entirely, rather than getting a slap on the wrist.

“If you’re friends with people at the agency, you can get away with things we’d never get away with,” she says.

Playing Favorites?

Dornbush’s group, District Bridges, actually

competed against CNA and the Shepherd Park Citizens Association for the Upper Georgia Avenue grant two years ago. Many business owners believed District Bridges was better qualified than CNA, including members of the citizens association, who testified as much during the Feb. 9 hearing.

Yet Dornbush says she lost out to O’Gilvie because, DSLBD told her, CNA is a more prolific fundraiser. She found that hard to believe, considering CNA has recorded negative net assets on its federal tax forms for the past nine years (District Bridges has done so three times over the same time period).

Instead, Dornbush began to develop the impression that the agency was deliberately snubbing her organization in favor of O’Gilvie’s, simply because officials were friendly with him. In addition to running Main Street programs for years, O’Gilvie has also been featured repeatedly as a speaker on panels convened by the Mayor’s Office on Volunteerism and Partnership.

It didn’t help that Dornbush and her staff spent months raising concerns about DSLBD’s oversight of another Main Street in Woodley Park before the Upper Georgia Avenue competition started.

The nonprofit Friends of Woodley Park used to manage that Main Street grant, but got into hot water after discovering its former executive director had mismanaged close to $100,000 in funding. The group fired him in October 2019 and brought in District Bridges to run a forensic audit and track down any misspent money.

That’s when Dornbush began discovering clear missteps in DSLBD’s practices, including many instances where officials should have easily found financial mismanagement in Woodley Park over a yearlong period of time.

“They should’ve known it was fishy,” Dornbush says.

Losing Woodley Park After District Bridges finished the audit, the organization helped the Friends of Woodley Park reorganize to continue managing the Main Street, and did so without incident through the summer of 2021. By then, DSLBD said it would hold another competition for the Main Street grant, so Friends of Woodley Park proposed a merger with District Bridges to continue managing it.

The proposal attracted support from local businesses (45 signed a letter in support) as well as Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh. Yet, once again, DSLBD rejected District Bridges, this time in favor of the nonprofit Historic Dupont Circle Main Streets. The outcome struck Dornbush as frustrating but predictable, considering that the head of the Dupont group, Bill McLeod, is close friends with several DSLBD officials. McLeod, who denied these allegations in an email, used to work on the Barracks Row Main Street with Christina Amoruso, who coordinates the Main Streets program for DSLBD. “It was utter buffoonery, frankly,” says David DeSantis, a local realtor and the board chair of Friends of Woodley Park. “What egregious thing did we do that caused you to pull a grant

away from the organization that had been working in that community for three years and give it to somebody who had had absolutely no contact with anybody in Woodley Park, whatsoever?”

For his part, McLeod says that “I am an experienced grant writer and Main Street director,” so it’s no shock that he would win such a grant.

During the Council hearing, Whitfield stressed that an independent review panel selected McLeod’s group and said she understands “there is a disappointment whenever there are grant funds that you do not win.”

“District Bridges has $900,000 in grant awards from DSLBD today,” Whitfield said.

“There’s no reason to think that we have an interest in not awarding grant awards to District Bridges.”

Yet Dornbush notes that her organization hasn’t secured any new grants from DSLBD since it began pointing out its failings in Woodley Park. She can’t help but feel targeted by the agency, even though she made those recommendations in good faith to help the city spend its money wisely.

In fact, Dornbush feels so discouraged by DSLBD’s actions that she doesn’t intend to apply for additional Main Street grants any time soon.

She believes her organization has done good work supporting small businesses and keeping them afloat during the demands of COVID, but she would rather turn her attention elsewhere if it’s going to cause such headaches.

“Until there is new leadership at that agency, everything will be the same,” she says.

WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM MARCH 18, 2022 5

SPORTS SOCCER

High Spirits Darrow Montgomery

Kris Ward never expected to be an NWSL head coach, but after leading the Washington Spirit to its first title as an interim coach, the club hired him on a permanent basis.

Kris Ward

By Kelyn Soong @KelynSoong WASHINGTON SPIRIT HEAD coach Kris Ward brings the same mug with him to every match. On one side is a sticker with the word “BELIEVE” in blue letters on a yellow background. On the other side, another sticker reads, “Be curious, not judgmental.”

Both are references to the hit Apple TV series Ted Lasso, about an American college football coach who is hired to manage an English Premier League team. Ward is a fan of the show, and he shares a few things in common with the title character. They’re around the same age, and Ward, 42, is also a first-time professional soccer head coach learning the ropes in a job he didn’t expect to have. Both Lasso and Ward take a playercentric approach to coaching. Spirit players have credited Ward with creating a positive team atmosphere after the club fired former head coach Richie Burke.

“There are certain moments that I relate to for sure,” Ward says of the show.

But the similarities mostly end there.

Unlike Lasso (Jason Sudeikis), Ward has been coaching soccer for more than two decades. The Spirit hired Ward in August of 2020 as a team tactical analysis and player performance development coach—a new position he pitched to the club. And one year later, Ward replaced Burke, who was fired following an independent third-party investigation into allegations from former players of verbal and emotional abuse.

Ward took over on an interim basis, and in his first job as a professional soccer head coach, he led the team to a 9-2-3 record and the Spirit’s first National Women’s Soccer League title. Their two losses were forfeits for violating the league’s COVID-19 protocols. The club named Ward its permanent head coach last December but did not disclose the terms. The Post reports that Ward received a two-year contract with a one-year club option. The jump from an assistant to

6 MARCH 18, 2022 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM

head coach is one riddled with unforeseen challenges and complex dynamics, but those around Ward believe he is ready for the task.

The Spirit opens the new season against Orlando Pride on March 19 for the group stage of the 2022 NWSL Challenge Cup. It will be the first match of Ward’s first full season as one of the 12 head coaches in the NWSL. Ward calls the promotion a “happy accident.”

“It was good [that] it pushed me out of my comfort zone,” he says.

Ward couldn’t bear to sit idly by on the bench with an ankle injury while his teammates at Union University squandered its lead in a regional playoff match.

The Division II team based out of Jackson, Tennessee, was fighting to qualify for a national tournament and went into halftime with a 3-0 lead. But as Ward looked around, he noticed that the opposing team’s coach didn’t appear concerned. Meanwhile, his

coach, Ward recalls, was “just going nuts” in celebration. When the second half started, Union University’s opponents scored twice in 15 minutes.

“I’m looking at our coach, who’s now sitting on the bench with his head in his hands and doesn’t know what to do,” Ward says.

The young college student noticed a mismatch on the field, so he walked down the sideline and told his two teammates to swap positions. Union University won the match, 4-2, and Ward believes his advice helped “stop the bleeding.” On the bus ride back home, Ward realized he wanted to become a soccer coach. Before that, Ward, a history enthusiast, was leaning more toward a job as an archeologist in the model of Indiana Jones.

“It was legitimately like someone turned on the lights in a dark room, and was like, you should think about this,” he says. “It was really an epiphany.”

Ward grew up in Manassas and Centreville, and started coaching high-school and club soccer in the area when he was 19. Ward also eventually coached for the Washington Freedom, the defunct local team that played in the Women’s Professional Soccer league, and D.C. United. He first worked as an assistant coach for the Spirit in 2013, and his most recent head coaching job prior to the Spirit was with the Harvard-Westlake School, an independent college-preparatory high school in the Los Angeles area.

But even with two decades of coaching experience, nothing could quite prepare Ward for a professional head coaching job. His relationship to the players and staff immediately changed due to his responsibilities, and those dynamics can sometimes become “very lonely” because of the new boundaries, he says.

“I’m the one who makes the decisions at the end of the day,” Ward says. “I have to decide whether you’re playing or not, traveling or not traveling. I’ve got to speak to the medical staff, I’ve got to speak to the player, I’ve got to speak to all kinds of people to decide if this is the best situation.”

Ben Olsen, the Spirit’s president and acting general manager, understands Ward’s position better than most. In 2010, Olsen was promoted from assistant to interim head coach of D.C. United after a dreadful start to the season under its previous manager. Olsen accepted the permanent position later that

CAPITOL HILL AUTO SERVICE

SPORTS SOCCER year and served in that role for 11 seasons.

“They’re two completely different jobs, and they come with two completely different responsibilities, two completely different intensities,” Olsen says of the differences between an assistant and a head coach. “You can’t compare it, and you have to get into the role, and within days, you realize how different it is. Because you’re the boss, and you’re making the final decision, and everybody wants a piece of you.”

To help him through the process, Ward turned to the Spirit’s sports psychologist, Amanda Visek, and some of his closest friends, including Dave Tenney, the high performance director for Major League Soccer’s Austin FC, throughout the season.

“I would joke with the players all the time that I was on the phone with the sports psychologist more than they were,” Ward says.

“Because I needed it, too. … We had six-hour calls sometimes.”

Spirit captain Tori Huster and defender Sam Staab both credit Ward for putting

ways, he made my job very easy.”

On a recent Friday afternoon, Ward occasionally rises from his desk to chat with players as they walk by on their way out of the training facility. In front of him, a whiteboard displays staff and players’ votes for an ongoing fashion competition between him and goalkeeper coach Paul Crichton. “Paul is dressing like an English player from the 1990s … I got more casual but still nice looking street wear,” Ward explains. This is the part of the job that he has always enjoyed: building relationships and working with players one-on-one.

“I was perfectly happy being in my cubicle last year before everything happened, just doing a video, and just talking with people, like ‘Here’s your performance from the game.

Here’s how we can make it a little bit better,’” Ward says.

615 INDEPENDENCE AVE SE | WASHINGTON, D.C. 20003 202-543-5155 | CAPITOLHILLAUTOSERVICE.COM

The club has high expectations this season. Reigning NWSL Rookie of the Year Trinity Rodman looks to build on her historic rookie season, and the Spirit also returns U.S. Women’s National Team players Kelley

“It doesn’t hurt to go undefeated and win a championship. So in some ways, he made my job very easy,” says Ben Olsen.

Winter can be brutal on your car.

Get ready for the warm weather with these Spring vehicle maintenance tips.

OIL CHANGE / FLUID CHECK CHECK ALIGNMENT

players in the “drivers’ seat.” The team also improved its on-field tactics under Ward.

One of the first changes Ward made last season was to give players more information on defense. He created guidelines on specific game-time situations, such as how the team should attack opponents and what to look for in transition. “Just a little bit more specifics in that sense, but not so over the top [that] they couldn’t move,” Ward says. “They had to be free within that to explore and create their own things.” The defense craved a structure and development that didn’t exist under Burke. After Ward took over, the defense allowed just three goals in its final eight games.

“Honestly, I think he just kind of let us do us,” Staab says.

Olsen says he interviewed “several” coaching candidates, but Ward stood out because of the way he handled the team last season from an emotional intelligence standpoint and as a tactician on the field.

“It doesn’t hurt to go undefeated and win a championship,” Olsen adds. “So in some

O’Hara, Emily Sonnett, Andi Sullivan, and Ashley Hatch, who won the Golden Boot award last season as the top goal scorer in the league. Aubrey Kingsbury (formerly Bledsoe) was named the 2021 NWSL Goalkeeper of the Year.

“We want to improve off of what we did last year, we want to score more goals, we want to have more shutouts, we want to be more dynamic as a team, and we feel like we have the players to do that,” Ward says. “I think we’re actually stronger this year than we were last year. ... We’re very close to having two starters in every position.”

The team is also expected to hire former NWSL star Angela Salem as an assistant coach. Salem previously played for the Spirit in 2015, and she will join a coaching staff that includes Crichton and assistant coach Lee Nguyen. In several ways, Ward is still the same coach who in 2020 greeted players with a fist bump every morning and then quietly went to work at his desk.

Except now, he’s the one calling all the shots.

CHECK BELTS & HOSES CHECK AIR FILTERS CHECK TIRES BRAKE INSPECTION WINDSHIELD WIPERS Don’t procrastinate getting your vehicle serviced— bring it on by! We want your family to be safe this season.

202-543-5155 | CAPITOLHILLAUTO@GMAIL.COM MONDAY-FRIDAY, 8:00AM - 5:00PM CERTIFIED REPAIR SHOP VOTED A BEST PLACE TO GET YOUR CAR SERVICED: 20 21 2020

20 19

20 17

2016

WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM MARCH 18, 2022 7

The New Fire at Engine 22 Firefighters are trained to douse flames. Today, they’re more often called to assist the ailing and elderly.

By Alexandra Moe Photographs by Darrow Montgomery Mike Murphy and James “Gordo” Gordon

W

hen the green light flashes at Engine Company 22,

on Georgia Avenue NW in Shepherd Park, Captain James Gordon, better known as Gordo, climbs into the black seat of Truck 11, the 40-foot ladder truck. Technician Mike Murphy climbs into the driver’s seat and they head toward the emergency. Murphy competed for the driver position at the station, a role he’s wanted since boyhood, when a rusty abandoned fire truck at Turkey Thicket Park sparked a dream.

Now the front cab of Truck 11 is real, and, like the fire station, a second home, one that Murphy shares with Gordo—a cockpit of mounted laptops, headphones, radio systems, flashlights, and a fire helmet. A heavy black coat, within reach when jumping in the truck, hangs on Gordo’s door.

Driving a 20-ton truck down thin urban avenues requires not just grace and technical skill, but a photographic memory. To earn the job, Murphy, then 28, drove the streets surrounding the station on his days off. He also got out and walked them.

Addresses, alleyways, and “problem spots” that could blow up in flame—old churches, industrial wastelands—burrowed into his memory. Neighborhood familiarization, as this memorization is called, strengthens through nightly flash cards, so that how to get there is ultimately the last thing on a driver’s mind when the green light flashes.

It was surprising, then, two years ago, when Murphy was called to an address he had never heard of before. And to arrive and not see a house at all, let alone a person who had called with an 8 MARCH 18, 2022 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM

emergency.

“Is there a house here?” he asked Gordo, surveying the lot of overgrown trees. “How is someone living here?”

Then, as the pair made their way beneath the overgrowth, a house and an address emerged, and inside, an elderly man who had been “living destitute for years to get this way,” Murphy says.

“The guy was like, ‘I don’t need help.’” But clearly he did, and now that he had summoned the nerve to call 911 and the firefighters had responded, “then it becomes like, now I am going to call every day,” says Murphy.

There is no resignation or annoyance in his voice, but empathy.

Such is the role of firefighters increasingly in U.S. cities like D.C., as home and structural fires diminish, and senior caregiving needs escalate.

In 2017, only 4 percent of calls that firefighters responded to involved actual fires, according to the National Fire Protection Association. The vast majority of calls—80 percent in Washington, D.C. in 2020, for example—are for medical emergencies. Many times, an old person has fallen and can’t get up (a “lift assist,” in firefighter-speak). In 2020, the DC Fire and EMS Department performed nearly 4,000 lift assists, an average of 10 per day. In plain English: Firefighters spend a surprising amount of time picking our parents and grandparents up off the ground.

With the U.S. in the grips of a caregiving crisis, as 10,000 Americans daily turn 65, and aides are not only in short supply but often prohibitively expensive, are firefighters such as Murphy

and Gordo becoming short-term senior caregivers on wheels?

When we think of fires, we often think of men in heavy beige

coats standing before orange plumes swallowing the American West. But starting in the late 1970s, fires in the U.S. began to plummet, thanks to decades of prevention education, improved building regulations (think: sprinklers), and fire-resistant technology. Today, you are infinitely more likely to get hit by a car, felled by a gun, or drown in a pool than become engulfed in flames in your kitchen.

Some bad news, amid the good: When fires do occur, they are much worse, due to today’s building materials—primarily plastic—which serve as fuel. As a result, says Gordo, fires burn hotter and quicker. Fewer fires are breaking out but the ones that do are higher risk and hungrier. (One needs only to look at the tragic, ferocious blazes at Kennedy Street NW in 2019 and G Street SW this year, as examples. Truck 11 was the first ladder truck on the scene at the Kennedy Street blaze.)

The decline of fires coincided with the rise in paramedicine.

The Vietnam War taught us that minutes matter; that a roving medic in a rolling truck can save a life. Many urban fire departments, no longer burdened by the nonstop work of actual fires, began filling the demand for 911 emergency calls in the 1980s by cross-training members as emergency service personnel and paramedics. This resolved two pressure points: municipalities

that wanted to keep their force active and a union that wanted to keep members.

A hit TV show in the 1970s, Emergency!, ushered into U.S. living rooms the idea that paramedics—specifically, a hybrid ambulance-fire service—could soon be caring for you, when disaster strikes. (John Travolta had his first acting credit on the show, as a teenage hiker who falls off a cliff and bloodies his head. A fire truck careens up the canyon to save him.)

Since 1987, all D.C. firefighters have been required to train as EMTs. Twelve percent of uniformed members are trained paramedics, and D.C. Fire and EMS seeks out paramedics heavily in its recruitment. They’re “fast-tracked,” says FEMS public information officer Vito Maggioli, in part because they have more training.

EMTs average around 150 to 200 training hours, whereas paramedics average 1,000 to 2,000 hours or more. Both are equipped for life-threatening emergencies, but paramedics can provide more complex care and make medical decisions, whereas EMTs provide basic patient care and medical transport. All D.C. firefighters are essentially health-care workers, in this sense. And since the calamities an urban firefighter might face range from car accidents to terrorist attacks, fires, heart attacks, kids stuck in trees, toxic chemical spills, lift assists, baby deliveries, and many others qualms, urban departments like D.C. and L.A. are considered “all-hazards” forces, trained for any manner of emergency.

In D.C., since firefighters are trained as EMTs and paramedics and are usually closest to the emergency, they often arrive first after a 911 call is placed. If it’s life-threatening, FEMS aims to have an EMT arrive in four to six minutes. The call taker at the Office of Unified Communications follows a specific protocol, asking a series of questions: Is this a medical emergency, a fire, or a police problem? What is the address? Is the patient awake? Are they breathing? Based on the answers, a code recommends the exact emergency response team to be dispatched, by the severity and geography of the call.

We may still think of firefighters as doing fire-related activities, but the closer definition might be problem-solver, says Gordo.

They’re in the business of solving your problem, and the reason most people call, he says, is that they have a problem and “they just don’t know who else to call.” One firefighter described the role as “general responder,” the “everyman of emergency medical workers.” Many described their work as going into the “unknown,” a murky situation that can be impossible to navigate.

The emergency that many are now navigating is elder care.

Chase Lambert, 35, is a San Francisco Bay Area firefighter and part of the younger generation of firefighters who came to the job as paramedics, after first working in ambulances. He understands the job now involves responding to elderly calls related to respiratory and heart issues, dementia, and diabetes. He

estimates that 40 percent of the calls his department responds to involve elderly residents. He checks their blood pressure, pulse, and uses a cardiac monitor; for diabetics, he checks blood sugar, and, if necessary, administers an IV. If this sounds like the domain of a nurse or health-care clinician, it usually is. He talks with them, since many are lonely. “Sometimes you can tell they want us to hang out. You can tell it’s hard being alone,” he says.

If this sounds like bedside manner, it is that, too.

Susan Braedley, a professor of social work at Canada’s Carleton University who has spent 3,000 hours in fire stations and riding along in firetrucks and wrote her dissertation on firefighters, says firefighters are “being hauled into the care economy.” More than half of the calls she went on involved elderly residents, she says.

Canada’s EMS system resembles the one in the U.S., and shifted to paramedicine soon after the U.S. did, in the 1990s.

The most common call was from someone who had slipped off the toilet and become wedged between the toilet and the bathtub. Some had been there for a day or longer, she says. The firefighters were called by frantic family members who couldn’t reach their loved one, and they performed lift assists. The calls had several things in common: Those in need were elderly, often isolated, often poor, and typically men.

“I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” became a catchphrase in the late 1980s and originates from a commercial for the medical alert company LifeCall, in which an elderly woman on the bathroom floor speaks into a necklace, alerting a dispatcher to her predicament. The line quickly became a punchline, but captured the phenomenon that elderly Americans were facing—they were living longer and living alone. D.C.’s elderly population grew to 80,000 in 2016, a 30 percent increase in just 11 years. Nearly 60 percent of elderly adults in the District live alone, significantly higher than the national average.

The sheer number of elderly people in the United States has skyrocketed to nearly 50 million, a 100 percent increase since 1950. And more than in any other country in the world, older Americans live alone, which poses severe health risks: increased falls, isolation, and chronic conditions worsened by missed doctor’s appointments.

According to a Kaiser Family Foundation brief published in February 2020, nearly a million seniors on Medicaid are on waiting lists for a home health aide. The average cost for a home health aide in D.C. is $64,000 annually. Family members try to fill this gap, but today’s family caregivers, who are predominantly women, are also working: 60 percent have jobs. Medicare covers a home health aide only for acute care, such as recovering from surgery, and usually for only 60 days.

The unknown that firefighters are increasingly entering, the problems they are asked to “solve,” can be a gray area: Who is responsible for the elderly when caregivers are not affordable and not covered by Medicare or Medicaid, and family members are working? Who will pick you up when you fall? Firefighters entered a job intending to douse flames yet learn that one of the most important skills is how to talk to an elderly person alone on a bathroom floor.

One truth about working in a firehouse is that it is part house—food needs to be bought, cooked, eaten; the place needs to be cleaned up; everybody sleeps there—and another is that it is an approximate family. Murphy and Gordo drive Truck 11 to the nearby Safeway to check for sales, steak and shrimp specials, roasts, spaghetti—enough to feed the firehouse three meals a day and extend leftovers to the next shift.

WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM MARCH 18, 2022 9

Murphy and Gordo grew up around D.C—Murphy in Brookland and Gordo in Fort Belvoir—and dreamed of becoming big city firefighters. For Murphy, it was D.C. or nothing; he wanted to give back to the city that raised him. For Gordo, his awe for fire trucks began at 9, after accidentally igniting a lamp at his home and watching the engines arrive. A fire prevention class, taken as punishment, only fanned the flames of this spark. (After working together for five years at Engine 22, Gordo was promoted to battalion chief, Third Battalion, based in Anacostia, in January.)

Working 24-7 is a frequent complaint of American life and employment in a wired age. Murphy and Gordo work a 24-72: a 24-hour shift followed by three days off. A shift, called a “tour,” begins and ends at 7 a.m.

On days off, they fish and talk on the phone about firehouse projects; with all this togetherness, Gordo quips that his wife is slightly jealous of Murphy. But they’ve created a family, Gordo says. “I spent a quarter of my life with these people. If the roof blows off my house tomorrow night, the guys will be there to put a new roof on.”

It also stands in contrast to the solitariness of the elderly residents they visit when they drive Truck 11 to solve problems in the neighborhood. Often the elderly residents are alone, says Gordo.

“That’s why we’re doing it,” he says, adding that most lack aides and regular family visitors. “It seemed like people weren’t being looked after.”

John Donnelly, Chief of the DC FEMS, noted, "They’re not calling us because they have other options. We’re the front line of health care for a lot of people."

The problems for the residents of Shepherd Park range from faulty air-conditioning to carbon monoxide and gas leaks, from food burning on a neighbor’s stove to actual fires. A fire could occur a few times a week, or once a month.

10 MARCH 18, 2022 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM

What happens every day, once a tour, is a lift assist, Murphy says. Shepherd Park is a historically middle-class, predominantly African American neighborhood with a large elderly population.

Many residents have lived here for generations, bought their first house and lived in it for 60 years. With that comes pride. “When we show up, it’s a realization that they no longer control a part of their life,” Murphy says.

They often witness extreme vulnerability—an elderly person alone on a bathroom floor for 12 hours or more. They use the bedside manner that Lambert spoke of, developed from years of helping seniors in decline. “If you walk in, and appear shocked, imagine how you are making that person feel,” says Murphy.

Many residents apologize, feeling as if they’ve failed in some way. To which Murphy says, “It’s OK, I got you, darlin’. We’ll just help you up here.” They haven’t failed. They’ve simply grown old.

“We all have parents or grandparents, right?” adds Gordo. “My attitude is, we’re going to treat them the way we want our parents to be treated.”

So, en route to Safeway, two years ago, they drove Truck 11 to carry a wheelchair-bound woman in her 80s down two sets of stairs, twice a day, three times a week, for a year. She was recovering from surgery, and had no way of getting down her front stairs to the Metro Access van that would transport her to rehab appointments. In the afternoon, they would return to carry her back up the stairs. “We’ve had a few addresses that we’ve run every day, nonstop for years,” Murphy says. This was one.

The woman eventually exchanged phone numbers with the firefighters at Engine 22, so they could plan their day to include this run. “We went through the entire process—how can we make it so we’re not sending a fire truck to this address?” Gordo says.

“Because it’s a big, expensive piece of machinery. It’s not the best option that the city has.”

Some fire departments are experimenting with sending SUVs to medical calls, for just this reason. What if a fire were to break out when the ladder truck was tied up? A truck from the neighboring battalion would have to be sent, and if fires burn hotter and quicker, doesn’t every second count to get there and douse it?

But sometimes they’re the solution, after running it up the chain of city options. As the woman continued to call regularly, Engine 22 referred the case to Street Calls, a division within FEMS that coordinates home-based support and interventions, founded in 2008 to address nonurgent, frequent 911 callers. Solutions come down to the caller’s insurance type, but also what sort of apartment they live in, and whether they are able to move, says FEMS Captain Lakisha Lacey, operations manager for Street Calls. Many real-estate management companies are not obligated to install ramps or make property alterations for renters who are elderly or disabled, she says. “We are the fall back” for elderly who call in need.

“It came down to—we are the default agency for the city sometimes, when there is no other solution. She didn’t qualify to be able to move into another apartment building, or another one in that building, where she would have walk-out access,” Gordo says.

It’s a problem across geographic and economic lines in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia.

“There’s one on every street,” says Aaron Webster, a captain with Bethesda-Chevy Chase Rescue Squad, waving an arm at the surrounding Bethesda neighborhood and referring to a house with an elderly person in it, who regularly calls 911. The elderly alcoholic couple. The hoarder. The man living alone, whose wife died and who, due to pride or income, does not believe he needs a caregiver, or anyone else, for that matter, to help him.

The secret’s out.

Introducing game-changing savings.

Xfinity is changing the Internet and wireless game. We’re talking the fastest in-home WiFi with speeds over a Gig and wireless on the most reliable 5G network with Xfinity Mobile. And NOW, introducing game-changing savings when you get both. Get Gig Internet and Unlimited data with Xfinity Mobile and you could save more than $800 on Internet your first year. Gig-speed Internet and reliable 5G? Now that’s a game-changer.

Join the millions who save by getting Xfinity Internet and Mobile together.* *Savings based on weighted average of optimized pricing for top 3 carriers. Xfinity Internet required. Reduced speeds after 20 GB of usage/line.

1-800-xfinity

xfinity.com

Visit a store today

Offer ends 4/3/22. Restrictions apply. Not available in all areas. New customers only. Limited to Gigabit Internet and one line of Xfinity Mobile Unlimited data. Savings based on combination of promotional discount for Gigabit Internet and Xfinity Mobile Unlimited discount as compared to regular rate for Gigabit Internet. Internet: Gig-speed WiFi requires Gigabit Internet and compatible xFi Gateway. WiFi is shareable across all devices in your home. Actual speeds vary and not guaranteed. Many factors affect speed, including equipment performance, interference, congestion, and speeds of visited websites. WiFi speeds affected by additional factors, including distance from Gateway, home configuration, personal device capabilities, and others. For factors affecting speed visit www.xfinity.com/networkmanagement. All devices must be returned when service ends. Xfinity Mobile: Requires post-pay Xfinity Internet. Line limitations may apply. For Xfinity Mobile Broadband Disclosures visit: www.xfinity. com/mobile/policies/broadband-disclosures. Xfinity Mobile utilizes the network with the most RootMetrics 5G data reliability wins in 2H 2021. Results may vary. Award is not endorsement. Xfinity customers will auto-connect to Xfinity WiFi when available and not use the wireless network. RootMetrics did not test WiFi networks. Call for restrictions and complete details. NPA239608-0001 NED-LGBTQ-BMD-V2

142333_NPA239608-0001 N BMD launch 9.875x11.25 NED-LGBTQ-BMD-V2.indd 1

5:43 PM WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM MARCH2/8/22 18, 2022 11

The young volunteers of the squad gather at dusk with plastic takeout boxes around a picnic table. At 11 p.m., they’ll try to get some sleep in the station bunk room as they wait for night calls.

Mark Andersen, a co-founder of the punk activist organization Positive Force and co-director of We Are Family, a senior outreach organization in D.C. that pairs seniors who live alone with volunteers who visit them, thinks firefighters should not be doing this work. Not because elderly residents are not in real danger—he knows they are. And not because he hasn’t seen firefighters handle with extreme grace and patience many extreme emergencies involving the one thousand low-income seniors he works with monthly. But it shouldn’t come to this, to an emergency, to receive care—there should be home health aides, he says. At the least, there should be “chore aides,” to fetch basic necessities and check on safety.

Andersen is thinking of Ms. Jackson, the 90-year-old woman who said “no, no, no” behind her apartment door for three months, as he pleaded on the other side for entry. She had not been seen at St. Augustine, the historically Black Catholic church on V Street NW, for weeks, had not eaten, and was fearful that whoever was on the other side of the door would send her to a nursing home.

Sister Alma noticed her absence in the pews and attributed it to Ms. Jackson’s blindness and increasing paranoia. She asked Andersen, who is known in the neighborhood as a trusted resource, to check on her. He slowly won her trust from the hallway, until one day, that trust disappeared, and fearing for her safety, he called 911.

A routine developed—Ms. Jackson began falling almost daily, and the firefighters and EMTs were called to lift her. They would

Mark Andersen

12 MARCH 18, 2022 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM

ask to transport her to a hospital, and she refused. Part of it was paranoia, Andersen says, which could have been treated had services reached her earlier.

“Finally, we just accepted that the only way she would get taken to the hospital was when it got so bad that she passed out on the floor and couldn’t refuse to go,” Andersen says. After about a week, Andersen couldn’t reach her, the building management let him in, they found her unconscious, and he called 911.

Six firefighter-EMTs and two civilian EMTs soon joined him on the 10th floor of the brown stucco subsidized senior apartment building, and Ms. Jackson was taken to the hospital.

But he doesn’t see this in the rescue TV show, save-the-day sense.

The firefighters were very patient, very caring, but they shouldn’t have been needed, says Andersen. “There should have been in-home medical support—folks paid to be watching over her,” he says.

His organization is committed to reaching seniors pre-emergency, but it’s a lonely fight. President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better initiative will help by sending more than $1 billion in grants to support direct care workers, including nurse aides and home health aides for seniors. Without regular caregivers, outreach groups such as We Are Family pose a radical idea: Your neighbor is your family.

This is an idea D.C. Fire and EMS Department Chief John Donnelly echoes. “If you have an elderly neighbor, everybody should be looking out for them,” he says. “It takes a community for you to raise a child. It also takes a community for you to age in place.”

Perhaps the word to best describe urban firefighters is “eyewitness.” They are unique, frontline eyes into elderly homes that “police would need a search warrant for,” Michael Dolinger, a D.C.

firefighter, says. They see whose isolation has become perilous, who is just barely getting by.

This reimagining of the firefighter’s role is necessary, says Erik Blutinger, an emergency medicine physician who regularly interacts with firefighters in New York hospitals. “Firefighters are perceived as some of the heroes of our society, and if there was a way [of] harnessing their public image and going on some kind of media campaign illustrating what they are seeing, I think that may educate policy makers on the need for more community help.”

Firefighters, in the public imagination, are brothers bound by the commitment to put their lives on the line for each other, Gordo says. They’re heroes, bounding into the fiery World Trade Center, and working atop “the Pile,” a heap of smoldering steel, for months afterward. Every autumn, they are “smokejumpers,” quelling wildfire infernos burning in the west. And they are also senior caregivers, and will be stretched in this capacity as the elderly population in America grows to 90 million by 2050.

Elder-care experts emphasize the importance of aging in place to preserve dignity and agency. Most seniors want to—and do—live at home as they age. But what it takes is other people, something John Dunne knew, in 1623: No man is an island Entire of itself Every man is a piece of the continent A part of the main.

This is where the elderly residents of not just Shepherd Park, but all of D.C. and much of the nation, are in trouble. For them, Build Back Better, and anything to improve access to home aides, would be a much-needed lift assist.

DIVERSIONS CROSSWORD

Wearing of the Green

By Brendan Emmett Quigley

Across 1. Nervous spasms 5. Vermont jam band 10. Kicker Mia 14. Reply to “Still asleep?”

15. Stress-free course 16. Cyclotron morsel 17. Approximately 19. Chuck of NBC News 20. Rights watchdog, for short 21. Louis, Charles et al.

23. Was a trailblazer 24. S’il vous plaît, across the Rhine 26. Recorded the score 28. “Isn’t that correct,” in snarky memes 30. Opinionated work 31. System.out. println (“Hello world”); e.g.

33. Diamond arbiter 34. Top-rated 35. Indonesian makeup?

37. An old college cry 40. Big O? 42. 1962 Neil Simon musical

45. Sailor Moon and Fullmetal Alchemist genre 48. Went longer than scheduled 49. Relating to smell 53. Pizzeria needs 54. “Open ___ midnight” 55. Criminals often do it 56. Hip appendage?

57. Power System servers 59. Producing a better result 63. Paper towel brand 64. Musical form 65. Modular component 66. Perceive 67. Cavalry mount 68. Yo in Oz Down 1. Commerford of Rage Against the Machine 2. TLA on Reddit forums 3. Medicinal 4. Prism effects 5. Land of the Quechua 6. AI aboard the

United States Spacecraft Discovery One 7. River that flows into the Rhône 8. Online administrator 9. Possesses that je ne sais quoi 10. Bald spot coverage 11. Some South Pacific spots 12. Vintage auto 13. Format for entering some dates 18. ___ acid 22. Stop the flow 24. Alta’s opposite

6 7 8 3 2 5 6 , : $ 6 7 & 5 $

2 1 ( .

$ 1 , 7 $ 6 7 ( % 5 $ * 7 2 2 7 $ 5 1 ( % $ 0 $ 6 7 < 0 7 2 : 2 5 $ 3 6 <

% ( . $ +

, 6 ( (

5 2 3 , ( 6 ( $ 5 3 ( ( ( / 3 $ ' 1 < ( 7 ( 7 7 9 $

25. Computer with a Magic Trackpad 26. Adidas rival 27. Slitherer alongside the Nile 29. Elbow grease 32. London’s West End? 33. Org. for Daniil Medvedev 36. Michael D. Higgins’ republic 37. Clerical title 38. Clerical period 39. Towel embroidery word 40. ___ Khan 41. Tastefulness 43. Low-risk govt. debt instrument 44. ___ Starski (hip-hop pioneer) 45. Crime investigation necessity 46. Crime investigation excuses 47. Rodgers, four times 50. Little fights 51. “Gotta bounce” 52. Threshold 56. Cave : man : : __ : woman 58. Put into words 60. Mardi Gras, e.g.: abbr.

61. “Chandelier” hitmaker 62. Comm. device for the deaf

0 $ 6 7 , 2 7 $ & . ( 5 $ 3 ; $ 0 ( 5 5 & ( 3 2 : 2 ( 0 6 7 ( 3 5 $ . ( 6 ( % $ 7 3 2 1 $ 8 7 5 1 6 $

7 % , / , 6 ,

0 2 ' ( 6 7 2

, 1 $ 6 3 , 1

3 / $ 7 ( $ , / 6 8 0 3 6 2 1 ( 7 5 2 <

/ $ 3 6

( . ( ( 6 6 2

DCHFA, Your Homeownership Resource in the District.

The District of Columbia Housing Finance Agency is your homeownership DCHFA, Yourfrom Homeownership Resource in the resource in the District buying a home to retaining your home; we have a homeownership program to assist you.

DCHFA, Your Your Homeownership Homeownership Resource Resource in inDistri the DCHFA, the DC Open Doors DC Open Doors DC Open Doors is your key to

DC Open Doors DCHFA, DC Your Homeownership Resource in the District. homeownership in the city. This program offers competitive Open Doors

interest rates and lower mortgage insurance costs on first trust mortgages. You are not required to be a first-time homebuyer or a D.C. resident to qualify for DCOD. You must, however, be purchasing a home in the District of Columbia.

DC Open Doors

Home Purchase Assistance Program (HPAP) HPAP provides interest free deferred loans for down payment and closing cost assistance up to $84,000 combined. DCHFA serves as a co-administrator of this DC Department of Housing and Community Development’s (DHCD) first-time home buyer program.

DC4ME DC4ME provides mortgage assistance with optional down payment assistance to D.C. government employees.

DC4ME is offered to current full-time District government employees, including employees of District governmentbased instrumentalities, independent agencies, D.C. Public Charter Schools, and organizations, provided the applicant/ borrower’s employer falls under the oversight of the Council of the District of Columbia.

DC MAP (Mortgage Assistance Program) COVID-19 DC MAP COVID-19 provides financial assistance to those affected by the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Qualified borrowers can receive a loan of up to $5,000 per Visit www.DCHFA.org month to put toward their mortgage for up to six months.

how to apply to any of DCHFA’s homeownership programs.

Visit www.DCHFA.org

Visit www.DCHFA.org for full qualification guidelines and information how to apply to any of DCHFA’s homeownership programs. on howVisit to apply to any of DCHFA’s homeownership programs. www.DCHFA.org

Visit www.DCHFA.org how to apply to any of DCHFA’s homeownership programs.

how to apply toDCany of DCHFA’s homeownership programs.

815 FLORIDA AVENUE, NW, WASHINGTON, 20001 • 202.777.1600 • WWW.DCHFA.ORG DC MAP COVID-19 and financial assistance will be granted on a first come, first served basis until the program allocation has been exhausted. Homeowners seeking assistance through DC MAP COVID-19 should call 202-667-7706 or DCMAP@housingetc.org to begin the process of applying.

WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM MARCH 18, 2022 13

Darrow Montgomery

FOOD YOUNG & HUNGRY

Bring It! On A new bicycle courier service offers an alternative model for dispirited delivery workers and restaurants.

By Michael Loria Contributing writer “People don’t think that you can take 25 pizzas on a bicycle,” says Chris Rabadi. “But a Bring It! courier can.”

Rabadi leads operations for Bring It!, a bicycle courier service for local restaurants and other food and beverage businesses. During work hours, he helps run things from the Bring It! office in Naylor Court, dispatching couriers to their destinations and supporting them as needed, whether with a wheel change or a backup cell phone. The erstwhile bicycle racer handles many of the orders himself on a signature Omnium Cargo bike. Bring It! has wholesale deals with Omnium and a few other bicycle makers to ensure they’re riding the bikes that will get them there the fastest.

The brainchild of Rabadi and his partner, Kimmie Harlow, who owns the company, Bring It! began in 2020 when the pandemic was in full swing and takeout and delivery were the only options diners and restaurant owners had.

For the two of them, both of whom previously worked as food deliverers, it was about creating a company that put delivery workers first; however, a few dozen restaurant owners have also found it to be the solution to their Uber problem.

“We looked into UberEats and some of the other apps and we were really opposed to their pay structure,” says Oliver Cox, a co-owner of Pearl’s Bagels in Mount Vernon Triangle.

There’s still a limit to what people are comfortable spending on a breakfast sandwich, Cox says.

“Once you factor in that Uber is going to take 15 percent of that, it’s almost not worth even being on those sites,” he says. The sourdough bagel shop works exclusively with Bring It! now.

The delivery commission fee for companies like UberEats and Grubhub used to be even higher. Prior to the pandemic, fees typically cost up to 30 percent of every order, taking a sizable bite out of restaurants’ earnings. Given the expanded role that delivery orders suddenly played for District restaurants during the pandemic, the D.C. Council passed a law, tied to the public health emergency, capping delivery fees at 15 percent.

The public health emergency expired this past January. What will happen now remains to be seen, but if D.C. makes those delivery caps permanent, tech platforms such as UberEats and DoorDash won’t go down without a fight. When San Francisco passed such legislation in 2021, DoorDash and Grubhub quickly sued, calling it an “irrational law, driven by naked animosity and ill-conceived economic protectionism.”

For restaurant owners, however, their issues

Chris Rabadi, Kimmie Harlow, and Gunnar Morse

with third-party delivery apps don’t stop at the fees. Bob Daly, the owner of DC Pizza downtown and another Bring It! partner, says thirdparty app workers have shorted customers on their promised number of pies multiple times.

“Things can get wrecked along the way. They drop a $200 order of pizzas and now we’ve got to make them over again,” Daly says. “So many things can go wrong in delivery.”

Complaints like these spurred the team behind Shaw bar Ivy and Coney to create their own delivery platform, DC To-GoGo. Launched in 2020, the platform ultimately didn’t capture enough market share to become sustainable.

Ironically, they lost their edge over the third-party app when D.C. enacted the delivery commission cap legislation.

Where DC To-GoGo offered an alternative to third-party delivery in the name of restaurant workers, Bring It! did so in the name of delivery workers. “We collectively got together to avoid being mistreated,” Rabadi says. “That’s what this whole project is about.”

Delivery workers run a gauntlet to deliver a meal for often very little pay. There’s a new algorithm for every app; people take food they didn’t order; a parking ticket might nix earnings; bathrooms can be scarce; and bad weather can make for a miserable ride for a bike courier.

Third-party app workers suffer particularly bad conditions. D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine sued DoorDash in 2019 for pocketing millions of dollars in workers’ tips and using that to cover labor costs. Georgetown scholar Katie Wells of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor argues that gig delivery workers are set up to fail. While they can dictate their own hours, because they’re classified as independent contractors, they don’t have the same protections in-house employees have, like a guaranteed minimum wage or overtime pay, all while risking their safety in a city where traffic fatalities continue to rise.

Having worked for third-party apps before Bring It!, Rabadi knows what it’s like. “You’re not getting paid very much on DoorDash to begin with,” he says. A large order might fetch a better tip, but otherwise earnings hover around minimum wage. “DoorDash does not take care of their

14 MARCH 18, 2022 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM

couriers at all,” Rabadi says.

For some, the apps alienate them from the work. “Having these huge companies take over the industry is a major disconnect from the courier to their work and being able to get paid fairly,” Rabadi says. It makes a big difference to have an actual human dispatcher looking out for the couriers, he says.

“Math and courier work don’t go hand in hand at all. There’s no way that you can write a math problem that’s going to predict the headwind that a vehicle has to go through to get the job done,” Rabadi says. “There’s a huge amount of trust and attention to detail that comes into courier work.”

Coming up as a courier, Rabadi didn’t have the same flexibility in dictating his schedule that gig workers have. But his efforts on rainy or cold days were recognized by dispatchers who would route him to $600 days when the going was good, a huge windfall by industry standards. “[Courier work] is a lot of time in the saddle dedicating yourself in cold and rainy weather,” he says.

For their workers, Bring It! counters third-party apps by guaranteeing at least minimum wage, though often workers make more. The seven couriers cover less ground, use a dispatcher app made by bike couriers, and have technical support, including backup bicycles. “We focus on making sure our couriers are successful,” Rabadi says.

Bring It! remains small, but the model can be an inspiring alternative to dispirited delivery workers and fed up restaurant owners. A few restaurant owners have even used Bring It!’s couriers to deliver third-party app orders. “People don’t want their couriers to handle it, but we’re very highly trained, well-equipped individuals,” Rabadi says.

For Pearl’s Bagels, Bring It! was a solution after Grubhub added them to their app without consent. They noticed Grubhub workers putting in orders based on outdated menus and put a stop to it after seeing that the deliveries weren’t going smoothly. “Then you have people giving you a one star Yelp review,” Cox says.

The experience made Cox realize that there was a market for delivery, but because Bring It! limits their delivery range to what’s manageable on a bicycle, Pearl can’t reach everyone. For Cox, the trade-off is worth it. “We’re trying to make sure that what we’re putting out is as good as it

can possibly be in our eyes,” he says. “If it goes out of our control, we can look bad and so for us that’s been a more important business decision than the quick, easy way of sort of getting higher volume in sales.”

The two businesses started working together late last year. Cox considered hiring an in-house delivery driver beforehand but decided against it because they weren’t sure how much delivery business there would be. It’s become a small percentage of their business, but they’ve established regulars who order multiple times a week, even if they’ve never come in person.

The relationship between the delivery workers and the restaurant is also different from what third-party app workers can expect. “They’re basically an extension of Pearl,” Cox says. Between rides, couriers might hang out, enjoy a cup of coffee, and talk about where they’re off to next.

Daly doesn’t say Bring It!’s couriers are part of the DC Pizza team, but at least he knows who to call if there’s a problem. Before partnering with Bring It!, they had an in-house delivery worker, but they decided to partner with Bring It! because they couldn’t rely on just one worker to fulfill all their deliveries. “There’s a lot involved with doing your own deliveries and it’s hard to find employees right now,” Daly says.

Working in a still somewhat deserted downtown, Daly says DC Pizza and many of the other downtown restaurants are just holding on. But delivery has helped and it’s become a larger part of their business, growing from about 5 percent before the pandemic to the 15 percent it represents today. “[Delivery] has been a big help,” Daly says. “At this point, any incremental sales are very helpful.”

DC Pizza stipulates Bring It!’s delivery range on its website, but still partner with third-party apps for those outside of it. Customers can still order from third-party apps if they’re within the delivery range, but it’s better for the restaurant if customers order through it directly.

Bring It! handles their biggest orders. “We are focused on the delivery personnel,” Rabadi says.

“When you focus on people or the means of getting a job done and they’re fully equipped, stoked for the job, know they’re getting paid fairly, you can trust those individuals.”

TICKETS ON SALE NOW!

The effervescent, witty, and gorgeous musical comedy

BEN RECTOR

THE JOY OF MUSIC LIVE

JP SAXE

she loves me BOOK BY

JUN 8

BELLE AND SEBASTIAN JAPANESE BREAKFAST EVERY SHADE OF BLUE TOUR

THE HEAD AND THE HEART JADE BIRD

JUN 9

SHERYL CROW JASON ISBELL AND THE 400 UNIT

JUN 16 + 17

JERRY BOCK

VOODOO THREAUXDOWN

LYRICS BY

TROMBONE SHORTY & ORLEANS AVENUE

SHELDON HARNICK

DIRECTED BY

TANK AND THE BANGAS | BIG FREEDIA CYRIL NEVILLE: THE UPTOWN RULER GEORGE PORTER JR. AND DUMPSTAPHUNK THE SOUL REBELS

MATTHEW GARDINER

Now through April 24

OUTSIDE PROBLEMS TOUR

ANDREW BIRD AND IRON & WINE

JUN 18

JUL 28 Photo of Chani Wereley by Christopher Mueller

JUN 15

WAXAHATCHEE

MUSIC BY

JOE MASTEROFF

LOS BITCHOS

4200 Campbell Ave, Arlington VA

YACHT ROCK REVUE

(With Real Ghosts)

$11 washingtoncitypaper.com/ membership

The depth and breadth of ideas that mean conservative are in this new book – mostly as ghosts -- because real conservatism was tortured then murdered...its decayed corpse found November 8, 2016. In an earlier life the author worked among the perpetrators.

Now, he has fled from them, but asks where he and all those like him can go, finding no viable political life elsewhere. Successful in mass media communications – equally on behalf of conservatives and conservationists -- the author promises to possibly intrigue and certainly infuriate every Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, liberal, conservative and independent reader. washingtoncitypaper.com/membership

hingtoncitypaper.com/membership

THE WILD HEARTS TOUR

SHARON VAN ETTEN, ANGEL OLSEN, AND JULIEN BAKER WITH SPECIAL GUEST SPENCER.

JUL 21 FITZ AND THE TANTRUMS ANDY GRAMMER AUG 3

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE™ IN CONCERT NATIONAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

JUL 22 + 23

Available at Politics and Prose Books ON-LINE: politics-prose.com IN-STORE: 5015 Connecticut Avenue

WIZARDING WORLD and all related trademarks, characters, names, and indicia are © & ™ Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Publishing Rights © JKR. (s22)

Give Give the gift of the cal journalism.

Give the gift of gift of local journalism. local news.

GHOST STORY

Presentation licensed by Disney Concerts. All rights reserved.

JUL 10

DISNEY AND PIXAR’S TOY STORY IN CONCERT

NATIONAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

JUL 30

DAVID GRAY

WHITE LADDER: THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR

ELVIS COSTELLO & THE IMPOSTERS

AUG 14

NICK LOWE & LOS STRAITJACKETS

AUG 18

GOO GOO DOLLS BLUE OCTOBER

AUG 17

FANTASIA

AUG 19

…and many more!

THE DECEMBERISTS

ARISE FROM THE BUNKERS TOUR 2022

WITH SPECIAL GUEST BRIGID MAE POWER

AUG 24

WOLFTRAP.ORG

WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM MARCH 18, 2022 15

Photo by Moody Blu

ARTS MUSIC

Mojo Rising Maryland MC Odd Mojo brings her annual showcase to Songbyrd after a COVID-induced hiatus.

By Amari Newman Contributing writer On March 20, Capitol Heights MC Odd Mojo will host her third annual One Very Odd Show at Songbyrd’s new Union Market location. She’s been organizing the yearly showcase since 2018, but had to delay the event for two years due to COVID lockdowns. Over drinks with City Paper, the 27-year-old artist discussed the details for her upcoming show, and how the isolation of the pandemic pushed her to new heights within her artistry.

Odd Mojo, aka Mahogany Pearson, entered the rap game as a teen in 2011. While bingewatching interviews with professional models on YouTube, she came across a Drake instrumental.

“I don’t know what came over me,” she says, “but I just started writing.” She received positive feedback from her friends and family on her Drake remix, and decided to further explore her rapping capabilities.

After graduating high school in 2012, Odd Mojo continued to work on her craft. She wasn’t proclaiming herself a rapper yet, but she spent her free time writing and free-styling at different open-mic events. But it was another side project—photography—that ended up connecting her to Keyari, a member of the impactful DMV rap collective Kool Klux Klan, who asked her to photograph one of his shows in 2014. Mojo continued shooting for Keyari, and eventually told him that she was a rapper too.

Keyari responded by inviting her to a show where she met local rap pioneers Cal Rips and Sir E.U. In addition to growing her musical network, Mojo also witnessed a performance that night by Felixia (aka Sugg Savage) and Sloane Amelia under their Akoko moniker. She notes that seeing the two women perform inspired her to pursue her own music career: “When I saw these women rapping in Maryland, with a crowd, and music out, I was like, ‘I’m about to do this too.’”

Two years later, Mojo released her debut EP, 94, followed by a series of singles leading up to her breakout project Channel Yo Mojo in 2018.

Her sample-heavy production, reminiscent of ’90s boom-bap, accompanied by her relatable lyricism on topics ranging from anxiety and depression to self-love and positive affirmations, quickly cemented Mojo as one of the most exciting upand-coming artists in the District.

But since Channel Yo Mojo’s release, she has significantly slowed down her musical output, only releasing a handful of singles in the past four years. Yet, each of her releases, such as “555,” has received critical acclaim from local magazines and newspapers: In May 2021, the Washington Post called the track one of the “most essential rap and R&B music” projects of the season. Mojo

attributes part of this noticeable drop-off in content to the awful timing of the pandemic. For her, it seemed like the stars had finally aligned at the beginning of 2020. She was gaining traction both locally and online, and had a plethora of shows lined up for the upcoming year. Unfortunately, the pandemic took hold a couple months later— practically halting Mojo’s momentum as all of her shows were simultaneously canceled.

This year’s One Very Odd Show at Songbyrd will take place nearly two years to the day after the D.C. government ordered people to stay home.

The resilient MC has regrouped and returned, headlining an eclectic lineup of rappers, singers, DJs, and musicians.

The Odd Show’s origins stem from Mojo’s struggles to establish a name for herself early in her career. She was often turned away from local promoters and venues, who she says preferred to book their friends, or artists they already had relationships with. Mojo says it’s an ongoing issue that still affects the local music community and can make shows seem exclusionary.

“That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to create One Very Odd Show,” she explains. “I want to put together acts that you don’t normally see. I want you to see different people you don’t expect me to work with, or you haven’t seen me work with yet.”

This show will feature a joint set of Mojo rapping, Sir E.U DJing, and FootsXColes providing live instrumentation. When Mojo held her first Odd Show in 2018, DJ Tomiyeyo mixed her live set while FootsXColes played the drums and pianos. “This year [FootsXColes and I] are working with Sir E.U. I’ve been watching his journey, and really admire how he’s getting into more things with his artistry,” she says.

KyleOnTheMic will host the event, which will also feature sets from local rap collective 20NVR, Brooklyn singer-MC RillyRil, and other special guests. “I’m giving you a new experience,” says Mojo. “I want to give you an odd experience.”

Like the Odd Shows before this, aliens remain an ongoing theme, which Mojo credits to Pearl Rose, a graphic designer who made the flier for the inaugural event. “I just connected with the cover art on the flier, and I was like, ‘alright imma go with this.’” Since making aliens the motif of her first showcase, she’s gravitated even closer to them, incorporating extraterrestrials into her recent promotional videos and photo shoots.

When asked about this consistent branding, Mojo admits she’s working on an album centered around aliens titled Something Odd Is Coming.

“After we had the last Very Odd Show [in December 2019], I started having visions [about aliens], which led to me creating the album,” says Mojo. She was studying screenwriting at the time, and began developing a script around the concept.

16 MARCH 18, 2022 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM

Odd Mojo The COVID lockdowns forced her to stay at home and reflect, not only on her career, which was abruptly halted, but on all the relationships in her life, good and bad. The unending confinement pushed Mojo to find an outlet to express herself, so she decided to fully explore the alien idea. “When I was in my room, isolated, while everything was shut down, this story came about,” she says.

Mojo’s narrative details a solo trip into the woods, where the protagonist intends to reflect on life, but instead is abducted by aliens in the middle of the night. It’s within this solitude, however, that Mojo finds herself. Her album, which she’s currently finishing mixing and hopes to release by summer, functions as the soundtrack to this story.

Despite the alien-centered storyline, the general message of the project revolves around Mojo’s struggles with self-doubt and her tendency to negatively overanalyze herself and those around her. She uses the alien abduction as a way to confront these issues. While “Earth To Mojo” explicitly describes her interactions with aliens, other songs such as “Inception” and “Runnin’” touch on deeper issues, as she reflects on past decisions and addresses her bad habits, such as being overcritical of herself, making false assumptions, and escaping her problems through marijuana and alcohol. Though a few songs, including “555” and “Action,” were recorded before the alien concept was fully developed, all 11 tracks on the album fit within her intricate narrative.

“Something Odd Is Coming has two meanings.

It’s saying something odd—me, Odd Mojo—is

coming,” she says. “I know people say I don’t drop enough music, but I plan on releasing content a lot more consistently after this album.” The second meaning is more spiritual. “I believe a higher power is coming back,” Mojo explains. “It’s gonna be very odd for us because we’ve never seen anything like this. Like, we’re gonna see something in the sky.”

She wants her upcoming album to function as a wake-up call to prepare for a world-changing event. Mojo believes the only way to prepare for this is through finding peace within yourself.

“Y’all have to get closer to yourselves because once you get closer to yourself, you can get closer to God,” she says. “Know that whatever happens, if you have yourself, you won’t feel lost or scared.”

Something Odd Is Coming has a fairly small list of contributors with 7G, Dejuan Cooks, John Tyler, and Owen Gomory handling production on the album. Southeast rapper Ankhlejohn will be featured on the project alongside Odd Show performers RillyRil and 20NVR. Odd Mojo will premiere a couple tracks from the album at the March 20 event. In addition, One Very Odd Show will feature an open-mic rap cypher, and Mojo guarantees some spontaneous go-go music. “[Playing go-go at my shows] is such a freeing and unifying experience. And that’s what I want to do. I want to bring odd artists together and I want to unify us all to create a loving energy.”

One Very Odd Show takes place March 20 at Songbyrd Music House. $12–$15. songbyrddc.com.

Smithsonian

with the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra

ABT Forward March 29 & 30

Don Quixote March 31–April 3

Mind Over Matter Zen in Medieval Japan

On view through July 24, 2022

asia.si.edu/mindovermatter Autumn and Winter Landscape (detail), Sesson Shūkei (ca. 1492–1577), F1966.3

“American ballet at its peak!”

—THE WASHINGTON POST

Mind Over Matter: Zen in Medieval Japan is part of The Arts of Devotion, a five-year initiative at the National Museum of Asian Art dedicated to furthering civic discourse and understanding of religion. This program is made possible by

Visit tkc.co/ballet for casting Calvin Royal III in Don Quixote. Photo by Gene Schiavone.

Kennedy-Center.org (202) 467-4600

Groups call (202) 416-8400

Generous support for this exhibition and the museum’s Japanese art program is provided by

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

Support for American Ballet Theatre at the Kennedy Center is provided by:

WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM MARCH 18, 2022 17

ARTS EVENT

Cherry Blossom Fest FAQs Courtesy of JASWDC

Everything you need to know about the 2022 National Cherry Blossom Festival, from tourist-free sites to transportation, treats, and more.

Sakura Matsuri, part of the National Cherry Blossom Festival, which takes place March 20 to April 17.

By Michelle Goldchain @ goldchainam Springtime is here, and in the District, that brings both cherry blossoms and swarming tourists coming to view the flowers in all their glory. This year, the National Park Service predicts peak bloom—meaning 70 percent of the Yoshino Cherry trees blossoming—will occur from March 22 to 25.

It’s a big year for the blossoms: 2022 marks the 110th anniversar y of Tokyo Mayor Yukio Ozaki gifting 3,000 cherry trees to the District, and it’s also the 95th year of the National Cherry Blossom Festival. And, after a two-year hiatus, the festival will finally return to being fully in-person. (But if you’d rather stay safe by staying home, you can still catch the flowers via the #BloomCam, a 24/7, live, real-time view of the Tidal Basin trees.)

Celebrated across four weeks, the festival brings more than 1.5 million people from all over, making it one of the region’s most popular events. Diana Mayhew, president of the National Cherry Blossom Festival, confirms it isn’t just for tourists. “It’s evolved to celebrate beyond the Tidal Basin, through food and cuisine, entertainment and culture,” she says.

To help festival newbs, or those who haven’t left their homes in two years, City Paper has your need-to-know guide with everything from notable events, transportation, and parade 101.

There’s a parade?

Yes. The annual National Cherry Blossom Festival parade is one of the most popular events in D.C. This year, it will be held on April 9 from 10 a.m. to noon. Expect the route to extend along Constitution Avenue NW, between 7th and 17th streets NW. For the best seats in the house, reserved grandstand seating can be purchased for $30.

If you prefer standing (for free) along the streets, Mayhew recommends posting up between 9th and 17th streets NW for the best views. Can’t make it? ABC7 will broadcast the event on April 17 at 1 p.m. and 8 p.m.

How should I get to the festival—i.e., the Tidal Basin—during these four weeks?

The best advice when it comes to driving in D.C. during the festival is: don’t.

Do not drive to the festival or Tidal Basin.

Unless you’re planning on a pre-sunrise joyride, there’s no reason to drive—and even if you do drive in early, it’ll be difficult to leave with all the expected road closures. Parking will be scant.

Use Metro to get around, but plan ahead.

Leave early in case of delays, and check WMATA alerts online or via Twitter at @Metrorailinfo.

Water taxi is also an option. It offers docking locations at the Wharf’s Transit Pier, 950 Wharf St. SW; Georgetown at 3100 K St. NW; Alexandria City Marina at 0 Cameron St.

18 MARCH 18, 2022 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM

in Alexandria, and National Harbor at 145 National Plaza. Reservations can be made online or in person.

Capital Bikeshare is a great backup plan, especially for the parade. Several stations can be found near the route, including one at 10th Street and Constitution Avenue NW and another at 12th Street and Jefferson Drive SW. Use the website or app for a map of all nearby stations and bike availability.

What events should I be excited about?

Petal Porches brings a pop of color to the region by inspiring residents to decorate their homes through April 17.

The Blossom Kite Festival on March 26 is a long-standing, free tradition in the nation’s capital where people from all across the region can participate by flying kites. On the grounds of the Washington Monument, kids and adults can compete on the designs of their handmade and flown kites. Several other parks host kite programming as well, including Palisades Recreation Field, Takoma Recreation Field, and Marvin Gaye Recreation Center, among others.

On April 3, National Harbor hosts its annual Sakura Sunday Festival, which will run from noon to 6 p.m.

Billed as the largest celebration of Japanese culture in the U.S., Sakura Matsuri on April 9 and 10, is an unmissable event. The Japanese street festival first started in 1960

as a community bazaar by the Japan-America Society of Washington DC. Since then, it has become a premier event, with up to 40,000 people attending in a single day, according to the JASWDC’s Olivia Kent. The event includes activities, a Ginza Marketplace (with Japanese home goods, accessories, and artworks), a culinary arts stage, and Kirin Beer Gardens and Hakutsuru Sake Tasting Pavilion.

Several food vendors will serve traditional Japanese snacks including takoyaki, onigiri, yakisoba, and more. Find it on Pennsylvania Avenue between 3rd and 7th streets NW. $10– $70 depending on the package.

In Alexandria, the Torpedo Factory’s Cherry Blossom Jubilee takes place on April 10 from noon to 3 p.m. with a live performance by taiko drum group Nen Daiko.

Petalpalooza on April 16 is a free daylong event at the Capitol Riverfront with live music, interactive art installations, a beer garden, and family-friendly activities. A 15-minute choreographed fireworks show starts at 8:30 p.m.

For those who want to nosh and tear up the floor, the Pink Tie Dinner Party on April 28 is perfect for bites, a cocktail reception featuring a sushi and sake tasting, and dishes crafted

by TCMA executive chef Houman Gohary.

Dancing and a silent auction resume after dinner. Don’t forget to don your pink attire! $250.

Enjoy the beauty of cherry blossoms through ARTECHOUSE’s immersive art installation, PIXELBLOOM. The main immersion gallery hosts a 22-minute audiovisual installation. This fifth annual spring-inspired exhibition is open to all ages through May 30. (See additional coverage in City Lights, p. 21.)

Art in Bloom, the festival’s communitywide visual arts exhibition, will scatter cherry blossom statues painted by local artists across all eight wards as well as National Harbor and Northern Virginia’s Aurora Highlands and National Landing neighborhoods through May 31.

Where can I see the f lowers but avoid tourists?

If you want to enjoy the cherry blossoms without worrying about crowds, consider the following sites: East Potomac Park, Hains Point, the National Arboretum, the Dumbarton Oaks gardens, Anacostia Park, and Maryland’s Kenwood neighborhood.

If you brave the Tidal Basin, avoid weekend visits.

Carolyn Muraskin, owner of DC Design Tours, also hosts cherry blossom history tours available at the Tidal Basin and in Cleveland Park. Muraskin recommends them for tourists and residents, but the latter option is best for avoiding massive crowds. $20–$35.

ARTS EVENT Will I need a permit to take photos of the cherry blossoms?

Probably not. You can definitely snap a few selfies by the blossoms without one.

The National Park Service requires film and photography permits for shoots that would impact park resources or the visitor experience.

“Low-impact” filming activities—aka “outdoor filming activities in areas open to the public, except areas managed as wilderness, involving five people or less, and equipment that will be carried at all times, except for small tripods used to hold cameras”—don’t require a special use permit, regardless of use.

Professionals planning on a photography shoot need to submit an application in person or via mail. Filming and photography are not permitted within restricted areas: the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial (without copyright approval), Korean War Veteran Memorial, above the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the Stone of Hope section of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, within the outer columns of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, Vietnam Veterans Memorial Apex, within the circle of flags at the Washington Monument, and in front of the gold stars at the World War II Memorial.

If you’re tempted to use a drone, don’t do it.

The Federal Aviation Administration has designated D.C. a no drone zone.

Finally, always remember you can look at the

cherry blossoms, but do not touch them. It’s not only rude to climb, pick, or break the branches of the trees—it’s also illegal.

What cherry blossom–inspired food and cocktails are being offered locally?

E njoy a bu z z y b ever a ge f rom Ca fé Georgetown with their cherry blossom latte.

The light pink drink offers a tart cherry flavor with steamed milk and two shots of espresso, topped with pink flowers. Compass Coffee is also selling a Cherry Blossom Blend with flavors of cherry and vanilla, and their perfectly pink Cherry Blossom Cream Cold Brew—made with homemade cherry blossom syrup, cream, or any milk option, and their house nitro cold brew—is also available.

If you prefer tea, the Willard InterContinental Hotel has Cherry Blossom Afternoon Tea with spring teas, sandwiches, and seasonally inspired pastries in tow.

Likewise, the Mandarin Oriental Hotel offers Sakura Pink Empress Afternoon Tea with a choice of rosé or one of two boozy teas, the Chamomile Teani or the Pink Coconut Chai.

For a sweet treat, consider Ice Cream Jubilee’s seasonal flavor Cherries Jubilee.

The ice cream is layered with black cherries, a splash of brandy, and dark chocolate stracciatella chips.

Alexandria’s the Majestic, Mia’s Italian

From the National Arboretum to Anacostia Park, here are six places to enjoy the blossoms sans tourists.

Kitchen, and Hi-Tide Lounge are all serving a Cherry Blossom Sangria with brut rosé, blanc vermouth, cherry juice, and orange flower water, available for dine-in and takeout.

Lost Boy Cider in Alexandria is also celebrating the spring season with their “March

FEATURING

Camille A. Brown & Dancers Saturday, Apr. 2 at 8 p.m.

Award-winning contemporary dance

Mason Artist-in-Residence

SW!NG OUT

Saturday, Mar. 19 at 8 p.m.

Watch the pros and then swing dance onstage after the show!

Edgar Meyer & the Scottish Ensemble

Explorer Series” Cherry Blossom hard cider.

It’s sugar- and gluten-free, with f lavors of cherry and jasmine.

The National Cherry Blossom Festival takes place from March 20 to April 17. nationalcherryblossomfestival.com.

Virginia Opera:

The Marriage of Figaro

Saturday, Apr. 9 at 8 p.m.

Sunday, Apr. 10 at 2 p.m.

Mozart’s beloved comic opera!

Sunday, Mar. 27 at 4 p.m.

A bass virtuoso performs Bach and more

Your seats are waiting.

TICKETS ON SALE NOW

Tickets for Kristin Chenoweth and more on sale now!

TICKETS | cfa.gmu.edu or 703-993-2787 Located on the Fairfax campus of George Mason University. For information on health and safety protocols, visit cfa.gmu.edu/vaccination.

WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM MARCH 18, 2022 19

ARTS FILM

Funny Girl Emma Eun-joo Choi, a NoVa-bred college junior, is NPR’s newest (and youngest) comedy podcast host.

By Ella Feldman @ellamfeld In January, Queen Elizabeth debuted her own sauce brand, selling ketchup and English brown sauce. In February, a zoo in Stafford, England, hired a Marvin Gaye impersonator to serenade endangered monkeys in hopes that it would encourage them to “get it on.” And last month, Mountain Dew joined the ever growing hard soda game.

These are the sorts of low-stakes, headscratching, and chuckle-inducing news tidbits that provide fodder for Everyone & Their Mom, a new comedy podcast from NPR’s Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, which tackles the things everyone and their mom are—or should be—talking about. (The podcast lives online and in podcast apps; it does not play on the radio.) The host walking listeners through it all is Emma Eun-joo Choi, a 22-year-old from Vienna. She works on the show in between seminars, dining hall meals, and everything else that comes with being a junior in college.

“I got a call like, ‘Hey, do you want to be a host?’ Which was crazy,” Choi tells City Paper.

“Sometimes it feels like it kind of happened at me, because it was super unreal.”

That call didn’t come out of the blue, though.

Choi has been working on her comedy acts since she was a little girl. “I remember when I was 5, I was at a family reunion sitting in a circle with a bunch of my adult relatives. And I was just making them laugh by rubbing chocolate on my face or something. And it was the best feeling. I think my whole life has been chasing that feeling.”

In high school, Choi would visit D.C. often, driven by her burgeoning interest in arts and literature. She and her best friend would visit the Library of Congress and comb through J. D. Salinger manuscripts, or watch National Shakespeare Company shows (“Me and Katie were, like, the only two people under the age of 35 at any given performance”). They passed on their senior homecoming, opting to eat pizza on 14th Street NW and catch a show at the Black Cat instead.

Choi swapped Vienna for Cambridge in 2018, when she started at Harvard University. She’s majoring in English. The pandemic interrupted her sophomore spring, and inspired her to take a year off from school. “Over the pandemic, I really, really missed doing comedy,” Choi says.

“I wanted to find any way that I could keep doing comedy.” Yearning for laughs, she applied for an internship with the team behind Wait Wait…

Don’t Tell Me!, NPR’s flagship weekly comedy show, in which panelists join host Peter Sagal in a news quiz and other games.

She got the job, and subsequently won the team over with weekly PowerPoint presentations. Choi was tasked with creating and giving the team a presentation on Wait Wait’s guests

each week, but began filling her slides with cheeky news and jokes—a starting point for what has since become Everyone & Their Mom. “I just showed up with a PowerPoint on the first day, and everyone liked it so much that each week, it became bigger and bigger and bigger. Until one day I looked up at 45 slides of nonsense.”

Choi was only supposed to intern with the team for spring 2021, but they asked her to stay on through the summer, and then part-time through the fall, when she returned to Harvard for her junior year. That’s when she began working on the then untitled Wait Wait project. Choi was driving home for winter break when she got the call asking whether she would be the project’s host.

She’s the youngest person to ever host an NPR podcast. In the handful of episodes that have been released since launching in late February, she has brought on comedians including Emmy Blotnick and Vinny Thomas, celebrity chef Roy Choi, and her own mother—with whom Choi discussed her grandmother’s failed attempts to make kimchi.

A Korean American herself, Choi says she loves having Korean guests on the show. “I only recently embraced my Korean identity in college,” she says. “And I just love having other visible Korean people in media, because there’s not a lot of us.” That dearth, she says, is particularly evident in the comedy scene at school. “I have developed a real sense of righteous rage over the past two years about the state of comedy today, partially because I go to Harvard, and Harvard is extremely White-male-comedy centric.”

Working on Everyone & Their Mom has been a much-needed reprise from that environment, Choi says. “This podcast really made me realize that making comedy is supposed to be fun, which is really easy to forget when you’re actually making it, because it can be so tough … I just hope if other people see a woman of color, a Korean woman, doing comedy, it’ll help somehow.”

Choi says the 15- to 20-minute podcast episodes she’s currently releasing are just the beginning. She’s got ambitions for longer episodes and higher profile guests (Michelle Zauner, who per for ms as Japanese Breakfast, is her dream guest).

“I’m really excited for Wait Wait to become a space like NPR Music,” she says. “Tiny Desk has become such a cool place for young artists to get their first start in the world—Mitski performed a Tiny Desk when she had just released her first album. And I would love for our show to be a place where young comics, and comics who [may not] necessarily get a voice on NPR otherwise, have a space to reach audiences.”

Listen to Everyone & Their Mom on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. New episodes drop Wednesdays.

20 MARCH 18, 2022 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM

The Outfit: All Looks, No Substance Courtesy of Focus Features

ARTS COMEDY

“We can talk about shocking originality later,” says Leonard (Mark Rylance), the enigmatic tailor at the center of The Outfit. “The point now is skill.” It’s a craftsperson’s ethos that also provides a mantra for the film, a taut crime thriller that eschews visual flourishes and instead delights in the clockwork-like machinations of its twisty script. Written by Johnathan McClain and Graham Moore (who also directed), The Outfit is a nifty exercise in plot that displays a keen understanding of its genre, but what starts out as artistic restraint soon starts to feel like a straitjacket. There’s no need to shock, but a bit of originality never hurt anyone.

Set in a single location, The Outfit could easily have been a play, and if it were, you could imagine the round of applause when Rylance walked on the stage. The Oscar-winning British actor with a gentle charisma plays a familiar character in the crime genre; a man with a violent past now seeking a quiet life. Leonard left London years ago to open a tailor’s shop in Chicago. It’s 1956, and organized crime is rampant, but Leonard cares only about his work and his young receptionist, Mable (Zoey Deutch), who he treats like a daughter. It’s strange that a man aspiring to peace and quiet would allow his shop to be used as a drop-off point for the local crime family led by Roy (Simon Russell Beale), but as fans of the crime genre know: No man can escape his past.

When two gangsters burst into Leonard’s office one evening, one carrying a bullet in his gut, the plot lurches to life. There are uneasy alliances, hidden deceptions, and surprise reveals. It’s not that every twist is foreseeable, but rather it’s so formulaic that the twists barely fulfill your expectations. It leaves the cast to do the heavy lifting, but even there, the manpower is lacking. The classically trained Rylance and Beale bring an invaluable heft to the lightweight story, but the stylistic gulf between their gravitas and the more modern, relaxed attitudes of their scene-mates makes it difficult to fully buy

into this world. Several of the supporting actors struggle with the rhythmic, stylized noir dialogue—that must explain why one interjects a certain obscenity into virtually every line of dialogue—and they seem stiff in their period costumes. Try as they might, some people just don’t look right in a fedora.

The hands-off direction from Moore doesn’t help. The Outfit is set entirely in Leonard’s office, with most taking place in the back room where the tailor does his work. Moore does well to keep his camera in the right places, ensuring the viewer understands the geography of the room and its inhabitants, but his total lack of interest in creating a visual style is glaring.

Crime lends itself to the shadows, but Moore shoots everything under what feels like a sky of bright yellow lights, foregoing opportunities to create texture in a constricted space. It’s a bizarre decision built perhaps on an overconfidence in his actors to tell the complete story, while unwittingly exposing the staginess of the material.

Between its embrace of convention, the talent gap between its actors, and the lack of visual storytelling, The Outfit only has its script to recommend it, and admittedly there’s some pleasure in watching its gears click into place.

But that’s just cleverness; it’s a shallow reward that leaves no room for revelation. Not even the dependable Rylance can find a compelling note. His quiet, steady presence is always welcome, but Leonard’s predictable character arc leaves little room for him to create shading and nuance. There are no shadows in him, either. It’s fun watching him move deliberately through the increasingly bloody chaos, and his bursts of British humor, dry as an English biscuit, bring wit to a world that badly needs it. But it’s not enough. A spare bit of intelligence cannot lift a film whose only reason to exist is to delight in itself.

—Noah Gittell The Outfit opens in theaters on March 18.

CITY LIGHTS Through April 22

Through June 5

PIXELBLOOM Courtesy of ARTECHOUSE

COAL + ICE

Courtesy of the Kennedy Center

What is the relationship between coal and ice? A new exhibition at the Kennedy Center, in collaboration with the Asia Society, aims to answer that question through larger-than-life documentary photo displays. Featuring the work of more than 50 photographers and video artists, COAL + ICE begins by immersing viewers in the landscape of the Himalayan mountains. Photos of snowcovered peaks and glaciers are shown alongside pictures of coal miners. As viewers move further into the 30,000-square-foot space, the relationship in question becomes clearer. The visuals turn to melting glaciers, showing the geography damaged by hurricanes and floods. Coal mining and climate change are studied through their impacts on the landscape, and in the final set of projections, through their impacts on human life. The hanging displays feature imagery of droughts, floods, and wildfires. COAL + ICE first premiered in 2011 in Beijing, produced by the Asia Society and inspired by the connections between coal mines, the Himalayan mountains, and the people of the Tibetan Plateau. Over time, it has traveled around the world and developed a more cohesive narrative around the impact of coal mining. In 2018, the exhibition began to include images of coal mining’s global consequences. Now, as it begins a six-week stay in Washington, viewers will have the opportunity to engage with the exhibition alongside an entire festival. COAL + ICE will feature live music, panel discussions, hands-on art projects, and educational resources. Space in the center of the projections—so that viewers can be fully surrounded by the photos—has been reserved for performances, DJ sets, and “creative conversations.” For thoughtful reflection on the climate crisis and the “resilience of humankind,” be sure to immerse yourself in COAL + ICE during its East Coast debut. COAL + ICE is on display through April 22 at the Kennedy Center, 2700 F St. NW. kennedy-center.org. Free. Proof of vax required.

—Sarah Smith

Photo by Meridith Kohut

PIXELBLOOM takes visitors behind the scenes of the city’s iconic cherry blossom trees and into the metaverse—no virtual reality goggles needed. As D.C. prepares for peak bloom and for the National Cherry Blossom Festival to kick off a sea of pink, art tech venue ARTECHOUSE brings this exclusive-to-D.C. exhibit back for a fifth year. Combining art and technology into an immersive experience, PIXELBLOOM gives viewers a chance to engage with cherry blossoms in a nontraditional way. Throughout ARTECHOUSE’s main immersion gallery, visitors will be surrounded by virtual cherry blossoms, which appear in a 22-minute-long audiovisual installation. Additional gallery rooms feature a three-sided cherry blossom sculpture and an interactive installation of floating cherry trees that may give visitors the impression that they themselves are also floating. A springtime soundscape hums through the galleries, further immersing its audience. You may be wondering, why visit this virtual experience while the real cherry blossoms will soon be blooming at the Tidal Basin? One reason—your eyes can only zoom in so far. The magnitude of PIXELBLOOM allows viewers to explore the colors and textures of blossom petals in greater detail than one is usually able to downtown, surrounded by tourists. One installation scene alone displays 94,000 petals. Once you snap a few pics in front of this year’s blooms IRL, consider heading down to ARTECHOUSE. You may just find that a virtual lens lets you see the cherry blossoms like you never have before. PIXELBLOOM is on display through June 5 at ARTECHOUSE, 1238 Maryland Ave. SW. artechouse.com. $17–$25.

—Sarah Smith

HOME OF THE DMV’S FINEST DANCERS

LUXURY VIP ROOMS • All Major UFC/Boxing Events • #1 Lap Dance Club in the DMV • Discreet VIP Parking

PRIVATE PARTY BOOKINGS AVAILABLE 11313 MARYLAND AVE. BELTSVILLE, MD, 20705 | THEBODYSHOPCLUB.COM | 240.297.9801

Find us on Instagram @thebodyshopclub MON-SAT 8:30PM-2:00AM SUN 8:00PM-1:00AM

SCAN ME FOR

$5 OFF ENTRY WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM MARCH 18, 2022 21

Gilbert O’Sullivan

THE REQUESTS ONLY TOUR

APR 2 | 8 PM APR 3 | 7:30 PM

TOM PAXTON & THE DONJUANS APR 13 | 8 PM

Through April 10

Jennifer Sakai and Philip Taplin

March 27

Austin Weber Courtesy of Big Jack Booking

JOSEPH

You’d think a star like Gilbert O’Sullivan would have played D.C. dozens of times. The force behind some of the biggest hits of the ’70s, he has been writing witty, tender pop songs for four decades. But his 2022 U.S. tour marks the first time the Irish singer-songwriter will visit the District. It’s certainly a show to look forward to. With two Billboard No. 1 hits to his name, O’Sullivan’s lyricism and whip-smart style has proven to be universally appealing. Nina Simone covered his 1972 megahit “Alone Again (Naturally),” which launched him to international stardom. Behind these accolades is endurance and consistency—O’Sullivan has 20 albums under his belt, with work spanning all 40 years of his storied career, from the Nashville-recorded Gilbertville to his excellent 2018 self-titled album, produced by Ethan Johns (who’s worked with everyone from Paul McCartney to Laura Marling). O’Sullivan has always been a pop writer, but how he conveys that in his music is always changing, partially due to his evolving list of collaborators. “By having a different producer, it gives [the music] something a little different, something a little extra,” O’Sullivan tells City Paper. The singer has been able to curate an eclectic repertoire, which comes across on the stage, too. For years, O’Sullivan has captured the attention of crowds with an array of genres (rock, ballad, reggae), but this tour emulates a larger shift—he’s bringing just a piano, guitar, and his voice to City Winery. “It’s very intimate, up close and personal,” he says.

“Bill [Shanley]’s on guitar, I’m on piano, and off we go.” The strippeddown approach emphasizes his lyrics, which tell stories. “It’s all about the songs,” he says. O’Sullivan is excited to spend time in a city he’s always wanted to visit—and D.C. should be just as excited to see him. Gilbert O’Sullivan performs at 7:30 p.m. on March 20 at City Winery, 1350 Okie St. NE. citywinery.com. $30–$45.

—Paul Veracka

that the internet consumed voraciously—the 2018 video has more than 11 thousand views. In the years since, the New York–raised, L.A.-based singer has been proving that a synthy ABBA cover wasn’t the only trick he had up his sleeve. He has three albums to his name—2017’s D-42, 2019’s Love Songs for No One, and 2021’s Late to the Party. Traces of the cover that propelled him into the internet spotlight echo across all three albums. His tracks are witty, with titles like “Using the Internet for French,” and “Like Netflix, But for Having a Good Time,” and they rely heavily on energetic drums and ’80s-esque keys. Weber’s songwriting, though, is more reminiscent of the original band in question. He’s a romantic, with lyrics such as “Not quite brokenhearted, not quite blue/ But it’s a special kind of woe, my melancholy tells me so…” on “I Don’t Want to Miss You (Like I Do).”

If you swapped out the sorrowful piano on “The Winner Takes It All” for an upbeat synth and an 808 drum track, you’d have a dead ringer for a Weber original. See for yourself as he stops in Northeast, with local acts the Crystal Casino Band and the Dune Flowers opening. Austin Weber plays at 8 p.m. on March 27 at Pie Shop, 1339 H St. NE. pieshopdc.com. $15.

Mask and proof of vax required.

—Ella Feldman

Courtesy of Photoworks at Glen Echo Park

March 20

PAUL THORN APR 27

THE QUEBE SISTERS MAY 7

AND MORE!

Photo by Jennifer Sakai

CITYPAPER WASHINGTON

Stay tuned with local news.

Follow City Paper on social media. @washingtoncitypaper @wcp @washingtoncitypaper

“THIS MAN FLEW TO JAPAN TO SING ABBA IN A BIG COLD RIVER.” So goes the all-caps, clickbait-inspired title to the YouTube video for Austin Weber’s cover of ABBA’s iconic “Mamma Mia.” The video begins with grainy, lo-fi footage of a young man wearing clunky headphones and singing into a portable microphone, while standing fully clothed in a shallow river (the video’s description confirms it is Kyoto’s Kamo River, and that vocals were recorded live there). The rest of the video follows the man around the streets of Kyoto, singing into his microphone while onlookers giggle, bewildered. Weber’s rendition of “Mamma Mia” is surprising—a heavy synth vibrates beneath the song, an angelic keyboard fades in and out, and playful drums give the whole track a rhythm that makes it difficult to stand still while listening to it. It’s a tongue-in-cheek cover, one

22 MARCH 18, 2022 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM

I love kitschy Americana as much as the next person, and there’s little to complain about how D.C.-based photographer Philip Taplin has portrayed the greater-than-life-size roadside businesses that operate from buildings shaped like cows, elephants, teapots, and alligator jaws. The gaudy architecture he documents plays off surprisingly well against the unruffled, pastel-hued skies in the background. The problem stems from the unfortunate timing of Taplin’s exhibit at Photoworks—not just that it comes during a deadly serious land war in Europe, but because Taplin’s subjects exist largely in the American hinterlands, which only serves to remind viewers of the unfortunate, yet growing, chasm between rural and urban America. Taplin’s source material will inevitably be viewed through the lens of nostalgia and optimism, yet such sentiment seems tonally off for our current era. The other artist showing at the Photoworks gallery, D.C. photographer Jennifer Sakai, shares an appreciation for the vernacular American landscape, in her case the less showy interiors and landscapes of eastern Long Island. While many of Sakai’s images proceed in a linear fashion from an old family house, the most impressive works are easily her two matrices of small, thematically related images—one featuring upright pieces of wood stuck curiously into pale beach sand, and the other of individual cottages at a seemingly faded motel. Both matrices tap into the same reverence for the yin-yang of similarity and difference mined so successfully in the works of William Christenberry, Bernd and Hilla Becher, and John Divola. The exhibit runs through April 10 at Photoworks at Glen Echo Park, 7300 MacArthur Blvd., Glen Echo. glenechophotoworks.org. Free.

—Louis Jacobson

DIVERSIONS SAVAGE LOVE

CLASSIFIEDS Legal

I’ve been dating the same guy on and off for 20 years. I met him in my 20s and I’m now in my 40s. Even though we’re nothing alike—I’m kinky and adventurous, he’s extremely vanilla—we always come back together. The problem is, any time we have the slightest disagreement, he stops talking to me, usually for weeks, sometimes for months. The last time it happened was when I moved a year ago. He was helping but he snapped at me because he didn’t hear my directions, and I got upset. He didn’t speak to me for 11 months! I reached out to him repeatedly, but he only responded recently. We made plans to meet.

But when I call him to ask when he’s picking me up, he says, “I forgot I had other plans tonight”!

It’s an event I’m not allowed to attend, because “he’ll be working,” but his ex-girlfriend is coming. It’s fine for her to be there, but not me, the person he’s known for 20 years! I got mad, of course, and asked him to call me after the event. And he didn’t. I can’t show any disapproval without him ignoring me indefinitely, and even though it’s always been this way, it still hurts. Months of silence for something that wasn’t even a fullon argument seems extreme, and I have no idea why he does this. I’m just trying to figure him out.

—Infuriatingly Mysterious Silences After Disagreements

trying to find a guy who isn’t an asshole and who shares your kinks. —DS My boyfriend and I have been together for six years.

We have a great relationship, he’s very caring and thoughtful, and we survived the pandemic together, so I think we’re very compatible. I’m in my late 30s now, and I’m starting to realize that time is running out if I ever want a baby. The problem: My boyfriend is 30 years older than me. If he were 45, he would be a great dad, but it doesn’t seem fair to have a child with a man who is almost 70. He doesn’t have children from his previous marriage, so this would be his first. Should I let go of the man I love to see what else is out there and find someone more suited to a future that hopefully includes a child? Or do I take the plunge with my boyfriend and hope for the best?

—Tick Tock Bio Clock Let’s say you dump the old man you love—an old man who could live for another 20 years—to go find a younger man. How long would that take, TTBC? A year? Two? Because it’s not just a guy closer to your own age you need. You have to find a guy you like, a guy who wants children and wants them soon, and then date that guy long enough to fall in love with him. And then you’re going to have to live with that guy long

“The effort you’re putting into making this relationship work would be much better spent trying to find a guy who isn’t an asshole.”

You can’t make a long-term relationship work with someone who responds to routine conflicts—the kinds of conflicts you’ll face almost daily in any relationship lasting longer than a weekend—with months of the silent treatment.

Well, maybe a person can make a relationship with someone like that work; you’ve been making this work for 20 years, IMSAD. My point is, you shouldn’t try to make a relationship like that work. You’re wasting a lot of time and emotional energy trying to figure out a guy who really isn’t that hard to figure out. I mean, the Nancy Drew novelization of this mystery would have just one page, IMSAD, and it would be the title page: The Not At All Mysterious Case of the On-Again, Off-Again Boyfriend Who Is an Asshole and Whose Number You Should Block and Delete.

Stop calling this asshole, stop sitting by the phone waiting for this asshole to call you, stop fucking this asshole when he shows up, stop thinking about fucking this asshole when he’s off sulking and/or fucking someone else. The effort you’re putting into making this relationship work would be much better spent

enough to know you aren’t going to fall out of love with him anytime soon. And if it doesn’t work out—if the first guy you pick isn’t the right guy—you’re going to have to start all over again.

And before you know it, TTBC, you’re 50.

As I see it, TTBC, you have three possible choices/likely outcomes to choose from here: having to get out there and find a new guy who wants a kid, having to date as a widowed single parent if your current boyfriend dies while your child is still young, or having to date as a single parent if the relationship you rushed into with some 30-something dude you barely knew after dumping the 60-something man you loved didn’t work out.

In your shoes, TTBC, I would go with the guy I’ve got—the known quantity—over a stranger I hadn’t met, might never meet, or might come to regret meeting.

—DS P.S. You don’t mention discussing this with your boyfriend. Does he want to have a child?

That seems … germane.

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

TWO RIVERS PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS Behavior Specialist Consultant Two Rivers PCS is seeking a Behavior Specialist Consultant to provide Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) services for individual students and school consultation services. For a copy of the RFP, please email Rossana Mahvi at procurement@tworiverspcs.org.

LEARN D.C. PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS IT MANAGED SERVICES PROVIDER Learn DC PCS solicits proposals for the following services: * IT Managed Services Full RFP available by request. All proposals must be submitted in PDF format and emailed to learn-dc-bids@learncharter.org no later than 5:00 PM on Wednesday, March 30, 2022. No phone calls please.

DC SCHOLARS PCSREQUEST FOR PROPOSALS * Multiple Services and Products DC Scholars Public Charter School solicits proposals for multiple services and products for SY22-23: Integrated Payroll Software and HR Information System (HRIS) - Staff Laptops - Executive Leader Development & Coaching Services (Schoolwide) - Special Education Technical Assistance and Special Education Leader Coaching The Request for Proposals (RFP) specifications for each of these RFPs can be obtained on and after Friday, March 18, 2022 from Emily Stone via estone@dcscholars.org.

Bids must be received by Friday, April 8, 2022 at 5:00 PM. All questions should be in writing by e-mail. No phone calls regarding these RFPs will be accepted.

PERRY STREET PREP PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS Chromebooks Issued: March 9, 2020 Perry Street Prep PCS, a tax-exempt DC Public Charter School operating in Washington, DC serving students in grades PK – 8 th grade.

Perry Street Prep PCS is soliciting proposals from qualified vendors to provide 250 Dell 3100 Chromebooks with corresponding 3 Year accidental damage warranty.

Questions and proposals may be e-mailed directly to Perry Street Prep PCS (ksmith@pspdc.org) with the subject line: Chromebook RFP. Deadline for submission is 12 noon on April 1, 2022.

E-mail is the preferred method for responding.

All materials for proposals must be in our office by the above deadline.

Perry Street Prep PCS Attn: Director of Operations 1800 Perry Street NE Washington, DC 20018 INTENTION TO GAIN “TITLE OF ABANDONMENT” for a 1989 Bayliner Trophy cuddy cabin 23 ft boat.

Blue and white, no motors.

Found abandoned and ravaged. Located at 5045 Meade St. N.E. Washington, D.C. 20019. Donte Felder (202)-294-5643

Employment EHLS - DEVELOP YOUR ENGLISH SKILLS FOR A CAREER IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT Native speakers of critical languages are in high demand in the US government. EHLS trains advanced English speakers to be effective communicators and strong candidates for federal jobs. Full scholarships for US citizens who are native speakers of Amharic, Arabic, Azerbaijani, Balochi, Bambara, Dari, Hausa, Hindi, Kazakh, Korean, Kurdish, Kyrgyz, Mandarin, Pashto, Farsi, Punjabi, Russian, Somali, Tajik, Tamashek, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, or Vietnamese. English for Heritage Language Speakers at Georgetown University SCS ehlsprogram.org 202-6874455 HISTORIC/HERITAGE CORE DRILLER - SKILLED LABORER We Offer Project Based work with health insurance available to eligible employees after a 3 month probationary period Applicant must have longbore core drilling experience in existing historic/ heritage cementitious construction, wet and dry.

Applicant must understand mounting core drill rigs, laying out core locations, setting angles and other common long-bore core drilling practices MUST BE A WASHINGTON, DC RESIDENT** Applicant must be able to get to the work site by 7:00 am Applicant must be able to safely lift and move up to 80lbs OSHA 30 Certification is 100% REQUIRED** DC Flagger Certification is ideal but not a must Applicant must be willing to submit to a drug screening Applicant must be willing to submit to a full background check $29.94 per hour is the starting pay Please contact Nick Sykes with Masonry Solutions International at nsykes@masonrysolutions.com or call him at 410-771-1922 EQUITY RESEARCH ANALYST SOUGHT BY HOPKINS HOLDING LLC (SILVER SPRING, MD) to provide insight & analysis for equity projects, conduct research & make fin'l projections.

Req. Bachelor's in Finance, Acctg, Real Estate & 6 mths exp. Send resume Attn: HR, 1010 Wayne Ave, Ste. 1010, Silver Spring, MD 20910.

SUBCONTRACTING OPPORTUNITY FOR CERTIFIED DBES, MBES, & WBES WITH FORT MYER CONSTRUCTION for DC Water Bid, No. DCW-SOL-22-10162: Water Main Infra. Repair & Replacement Contract.

This an emergency service IDIQ contract that includes furnishing & installment of water main & lines, excava-

tion, meter installation, frames cover, fire hydrant removal, replacement, adjustment & some pavement work, etc. Subcontracting Quotes requested by: 03/30/22. For more info, contact Manuel Fernandes at Bids@fortmyer. com or call 202.636.9535.

HOME & OFFICE CLEANERS WANTED $630/ Weekly Cleaning Position: Available Working Days: Mon-Fri Time Schedule: 11 AM - 2 PM Minimum Requirement Email: candice75312@gmail.com

Services TRAIN ONLINE TO DO MEDICAL BILLING! Become a Medical Office Professional online at CTI! Get Trained, Certified & ready to work in months! Call 866-243-5931. (M-F 8am6pm ET) DO YOU OWE OVER $10,000 to the IRS or State in back taxes? Our firm works to reduce the tax bill or zero it out completely FAST. Let us help! Call 877-414-2089.

COMPUTER & IT TRAINING PROGRAM! Train ONLINE to get the skills to become a Computer & Help Desk Professional now! Grants and Scholarships available for certain programs for qualified applicants.

Call CTI for details! 1-855554-4616 The Mission, Program Information and Tuition is located at CareerTechnical.edu/ consumer-information.

BATH & SHOWER UPDATES in as little as ONE DAY! Affordable prices - No payments for 18 months!

Lifetime warranty & professional installs. Senior & Military Discounts available. Call: 1-877-649-5043 WATER DAMAGE TO YOUR HOME? Call for a quote for professional cleanup & maintain the value of your home! Set an appt today!

Call 833-664-1530 4G LTE HOME INTERNET Now Available! Get GotW3 with lightning fast speeds plus take your service with you when you travel! As low as $109.99/mo! 1-888519-0171 HUGHESNET SATELLITE INTERNET – Finally, no hard data limits! Call Today for speeds up to 25mbps as low as $59.99/mo! $75 gift card, terms apply. 1-844416-7147 BECOME A PUBLISHED AUTHOR! We edit, print and distribute your work internationally. We do the work… You reap the Rewards! Call for a FREE Author’s Submission Kit: 844-511-1836.

DIRECTV SATELLITE TV Service Starting at $59.99/ month! Free Installation!

160+ channels available.

Call Now to Get the Most Sports & Entertainment on TV! 877-310-2472

Buy Sell Trade TOP CA$H PAID FOR OLD GUITARS! 1920-1980

Gibson, Martin, Fender, Gretsch, Epiphone, Guild, Mosrite, Rickenbacker, Prairie State, D'Angelico, Stromberg. And Gibson Mandolins / Banjos. 877589-0747 HUGE CHURCH RUMMAGE SALE Saturday, April 9 from 8am - 1pm at St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church in the Gymnasium at 4701 Whitehaven Parkway NW Washington DC 20007.

Clothing for all ages and sizes, jewelry, housewares, books, toys, games, and sports equipment. New this year, we accept credit cards. Check stpatrickschurchdc.org for last minute details.

DONATE YOUR CAR TO KIDS. Your donation helps fund the search for missing children. Accepting Trucks, Motorcycles & RV’s , too!

Fast Free Pickup – Running or Not - 24 Hour Response - Maximum Tax Donation – Call 877-266-0681 CASH FOR CARS! We buy all cars! Junk, high-end, totaled – it doesn’t matter! Get free towing and same day cash! NEWER MODELS too! Call 866535-9689

Community DAVID BOWIE Lifelong fan of David Bowie seeks friendship with other David Bowie fans. Contact Steven at Stevenstvn9@ aol.com.

WE INVITE ALL WHO LOVE TRADITIONAL JAZZ April 3, 2022 event 2:00-5:00pm Where: the Knights of Columbus Hall 9707 Rosensteel Ave, Silver Spring MD ** Same place we just held our very successful Mardi Gras Concert ** (From the Capital Beltway: North on Georgia Ave., Left (West) on Forest Glen Rd. (192), Right on Rosensteel Ave. Just 4 blocks from the Forest Glen Metro Station) Non-members: $25 at the door or Advanced tickets available at a discount $22.50 at: www.eventbrite. com/e/289048881987 or www.paypal/me/PotomacRiverJazzClub **We follow all state Covid restrictions** Starvation Army Jazz Band was founded in 1989 as an offshoot of the Columbia Concert Band specializing in traditional jazz. Since then, the band has broadened it's repertoire to also include Klezmer and Swing.

The band has performed at numerous venues and special events in the greater Washington/Baltimore area, including the PRJC in recent years before the pandemic. Come enjoy dancing like "Nobody is Watching" on the huge dance floor!!

Limited selection of food available, liquid refreshment, but with unlimited jazz!!

Health & Wellness VIAGRA AND CIALIS USERS! 50 Pills SPECIAL $99.00 FREE Shipping! 100% guaranteed. CALL NOW! 888-531-1192

WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM MARCH 18, 2022 23

Introducing Astound Broadband Powered by RCN FREE Month & Install

SPECIAL BONUS

300 Mbps

$100 VISA Gift Card

24

$

99 /mo/1 year plus equip.

on select offers††

$100

Downloads up to 300 Mbps Uploads up to 20 Mbps

We’ve been a part of your community for years—with award-winning Internet service and 24/7 local customer support. We put our customers first in everything we do. Our goal is to astound you every day… that’s why RCN is now Astound Broadband powered by RCN.

Switch today.

1.800.4.ASTOUND | astound.com No Contracts | No Early Termination Fees | Next Day Installation *Internet download speeds may vary and are not guaranteed. Observed speeds may vary based on device connection & other factors outside of Astound Broadband’s control. Gig Internet offers speeds up to 940 Mbps and certain equipment may be required. All advertised speeds are up to the stated speeds and are not guaranteed; speed may vary due to conditions outside of network control, including customer location, sites accessed, number of devices connected, customer usage, customer equipment and computer configuration, the level of overall traffic, and customer compliance with Astound Broadband’s usage policies set forth in the acceptable usage policy. See https://astound.com/learn/internet/optimize-wifi-speed for why speeds may vary. Astound Broadband’s FCC Network Management Disclosure makes available information regarding our network management practices and the performance and commercial terms of our Internet access services to enable you to make informed choices regarding the purchase and use of our services, in accordance with Part 8 of the Rules of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Modem required for internet service. Advertised promotional prices are valid for 12 months from installation date. 300 Mbps Internet offer of $24.99 includes up to 300 Mbps Internet service at $24.99 per month for 12 months from installation date. Regular rates apply after promotional period ends. Monthly modem rental fee and/or wireless gateway may be additional. Unless otherwise specified, promotional offer extends defined, set pricing for the period of 12 months after installation; distinct pricing exists for months 1-12. Free month(s) applies to base Internet service and equipment only and will be applied as credit to first or second month of Astound Broadband services. ††Prepaid VISA® gift card available on 300 Mbps Internet speeds and above and is subject to terms and conditions outlined by VISA. A customer must be in good standing for 90 days before the VISA gift card is issued. After 90 days, customers will receive an email with instructions on how to redeem the gift card online. After following the instructions, the gift card will arrive in 4-6 weeks. Offer expires March 31, 2022. Offer valid only for new residential Astound Broadband customers or previous customers with account in good standing who have not had RCN or Astound Broadband service within the last 60 days. Non-standard installation may require additional outlet and special wiring fees. Any additional services, such as equipment, premium channels and other tiers of service are subject to an additional charge and regular increases. Price does not include Network Access and Maintenance Fee/Internet Infrastructure Fee of $6.97/month, which is subject to change. Network Access and Maintenance Fee/Internet Infrastructure Fee helps defray costs associated with building and maintaining our fiber rich broadband network, as well as the costs of expanding network capacity to support the continued increase in customers’ average broadband consumption. This fee is neither government-mandated nor a tax, fee or surcharge imposed by the government; it is a fee that Astound Broadband assesses and retains. Additional fees apply for taxes, surcharges, equipment, activation and installation that are not included as part of the package and are subject to change. No contract is required to take advantage of the promotional pricing and savings. No early termination fees apply in the event service is terminated in advance of the promotional end date. Customer is responsible for any accrued service charges in the event service is canceled. Subject to credit check. Any additional services, such as equipment, add-on channels and other tiers of service are subject to an additional charge and regular increases. Other restrictions may apply. A One-Time Activation fee of $9.99 in addition to your installation charges will be applied. The activation fee offsets a portion of our cost of setting up your account, allocating and restocking equipment to our inventory, activating your devices (boxes/modems) on the network, and connecting your home to Astound Broadband services. Not all services and speeds are available in all areas. Next day installation is not guaranteed. Availability varies by market and is limited to availability of appointments during normal business hours Monday-Saturday. Other restrictions may apply. . All names, logos, images and service marks are property of their respective owners. Visit https://astound.com/policies-disclaimers/ for additional terms and conditions. ©2022 Starpower Communications, LLC. All rights reserved.

MARPA0222