Washington City Paper (April 3, 2020)

CITYPAPER WASHINGTON

NEWS: OLD SITE IRKS NEW UNEMPLOYMENT FILERS 3 SPORTS: EVERYONE WANTS TO RUN NOW 8 ARTS: COMMUNITY FUNDS HELP ARTS GROUPS 14

FREE VOLUME 40, NO. 13 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM APRIL 3–9, 2020

BOILING POINT How will local restaurants make it through a global pandemic? PAGE 10

By Laura Hayes

INSIDE

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COVER STORY: BOILING POINT

10 Restaurant owners reveal what resources they’ll need to survive a global pandemic.

DISTRICT LINE 3 Loose Lips: A delayed makeover of D.C.’s unemployment website impacts tens of thousands of residents.

4 Shelter From the Swarm: People experiencing homelessness need additional help to avoid contracting COVID-19.

SPORTS 8 Pace Yourself: Running, one of the few approved outdoor activities, experiences a boom during the coronavirus pandemic.

ARTS 9 Liz at Large: “Here” 13 Speed Reads: Sarappo on Laura Bogart’s Don’t You Know I Love You 13 Short Subjects: Zilberman on The Other Lamb 14 The Show Must Go On: Without significant government support, community funding sustains artists and arts organizations.

15 Arts Club: Randall and Warren on Maggie Paxson’s The Plateau

CITY LIST 16 City Lights: Buy books, read scripts, and check in on a pair of bald eagles.

DIVERSIONS 18 Savage Love 19 Classifieds 20 Crossword On the cover: Photograph by Darrow Montgomery

DARROW MONTGOMERY 1700 BLOCK OF COLUMBIA ROAD NW, MARCH 26

EDITORIAL

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

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DISTRICTLINE LOOSE LIPS

Workers’ Complication D.C.’s unemployment benefits system needs a long overdue upgrade.

A surge in claims due to COVID-19 makes the delay sting even worse.

When D.C. first announced plans to modernize its antiquated unemployment insurance system, Adrian Fenty was mayor, Barack Obama lived in the White House, and LL was too young to legally drink.

That was in June 2010, and at that time, the D.C. Department of Employment Services (DOES) estimated it would cost about $11 million to upgrade the system, which features components that date to the 1970s. The goal was to upgrade both arms that make up the unemployment insurance system: tax collection and benefits.

“Due to the outdated technology currently in use (Mainframe), implementations of new requirements (laws) are complex, intense, and time consuming to deploy in a consistent timely manner to ensure claimants receive added or new benefits as quickly as possible,” according to the justification spelled out in the Fiscal Year 2011 capital budget plan. “In this environment, the systems are highly fractured silos requiring highly price [sic] contractors to maintain them.”

That language (or something very similar to it) is included in every capital budget plan since 2012, though the estimated cost increased to $46 million in the FY 2020 plan.

A review of budget reports, contracts, and DOES’ responses to oversight questions from the D.C. Council reveals few concrete answers as to what upgrades have been completed and what caused such significant delays. Answers to those two questions are critical as the global COVID-19 pandemic has led nearly 38,000 District residents to apply for unemployment benefits, and complaints about the creaky system abound.

In February 2019, for example, DOES said modernization of the benefits system began in the summer and winter of 2018. The agency aimed to complete some work in July 2019 and the rest in December 2021, its leaders told the Council’s Committee on Labor and Workforce Development, chaired by At-Large Councilmember Elissa Silverman.

During DOES’ budget oversight hearing in April 2019, Director Unique MorrisHughes, who took the reins of the agency in

Darrow Montgomery/File

By Mitch Ryals

2018 and is the department’s third director under the Bowser administration, said so far the agency spent only $7 million of a budgeted $45 million on the unemployment benefits modernization project.

“There’ve been a lot of different iterations on strategy and what direction we were gonna go,” Morris-Hughes told Silverman during the oversight hearing. “And so I think because of all the stops and starts there has not been a significant amount of work that’s been done across the board with modernization efforts.”

Later in the hearing, Silverman zeroed in on a five-year contract with On Point Technologies worth up to $23 million for “IT maintenance and support services” for the unemployment benefits system.

The contract with the Illinois-based tech company, originally signed in 2014, was amended several times, including in 2017, with 10 pages of additional requirements that On Point would deliver free of charge. At the very top of that list was transferring the District’s current system to On Point’s platform, known as OPTimum, which is flexible, configurable, accessible, scalable, maintainable, and cloud-enabled, according to the company’s website.

Morris-Hughes said during the April 2019 budget hearing that “progress with development has slowed down a little bit,” and said she did not expect On Point to finish the work before the end of the fiscal year, then five months away.

On Point’s five-year contract expired in August of 2019, and in November 2019, the District signed a new nine-month contract worth $5 million with the company.

When DOES leaders responded to oversight questions in February 2020, they said the bulk of the upgrades to the unemployment benefits system wouldn’t start until the spring of 2020. The agency expected the work to wrap up by the winter of 2022.

On Point founder Michael Lorsbach tells LL via email that it would be “inappropriate for me to respond to any inquiries about a DC government contract.”

DOES did not respond to LL’s questions by press time.

The labor committee’s FY 2020 budget report, dated May 1, 2019, was not optimistic about the quality of the work.

“Shifting timelines, changing budgets, a lack of a detailed spending plan, contradictory information and little progress to date do little to reassure the committee that the capital project will be completed soon or done well,” the report says.

“It’s still unclear to us what’s been done,” Silverman tells LL this week. “DOES put all kinds of additional work that went beyond the scope of the contract, and that seems to us to be a major modernization provision, and it’s still unclear to us whether that work was done by the contractor, and if it was completed, why the agency hasn’t implemented it.”

Jeremy riley is either going to receive about $375 per week (a significant drop from his typical wage), or he’s going to get nothing.

Riley, who was laid off from his job as a cook at the Mount Pleasant bistro Ellē two weeks ago, says he got an online notification telling him that his claim was received, but the payable amount is $0. He also got a letter in the mail saying he will receive a weekly check.

“I’m not sure if I’m getting paid for the first week because … there’s usually a one-week waiting period, or if I’m even going to get paid at all,” he says. “Calling them is impossible. There’s people who sit on hold for five, six hours.” washingtoncitypaper.com april 3, 2020 3

The roughly 38,000 out-of-work employees who applied for District unemployment benefits since March 13 already outpace the 31,677 new claims filed in all of FY 2017 and the 29,283 new claims in FY 2018. The D.C. Council anticipated the surge and passed emergency legislation earlier this month that waived some of the typical restrictions on unemployment benefits, including the requirement that applicants actively search for work.

As DOES scrambles to update its computer system to reflect the changes, applicants are getting rejection notices when they say they’re not looking for a job. DOES says claims will not be denied or delayed if a person isn’t looking for work, and Mayor Muriel Bowser says applicants should continue to answer honestly.

But some claims processors are giving the exact opposite advice, Riley and other laid off hospitality workers tell LL. A screenshot of an email from the District government to one applicant, who shared it with LL, says “While certifying your weekly claims, please say yes to the question no. 4 (work search).”

“If you say ‘NO,’ to that question,” the email continues, “system will create issue [sic] on your claim and it may delay your benefits further.”

Bowser said during a media briefing on Monday that DOES hopes to update the unemployment benefits computer system to reflect changes in the law within a week. She expects the update will stop automated messages that contradict DOES’ guidance.

In the meantime, D.C. is hosting webinars to help applicants through the process. Riley says he sat through a session earlier this week, and when it came to the searching-for-work question, the instructor was as clear as mud.

“He said ‘I can’t tell you what to put on the form, but if you want it might not hurt to start to become familiar with our system, and put in that you submitted your resume to one or two places,’” Riley says.

DOES hosts four free webinar sessions a day, but they’re currently “sold out” through April 3. To top it off, the application system is optimized for Microsoft’s discontinued browser, Internet Explorer, and doesn’t cooperate with mobile devices. Bowser’s suggestion is to apply from a desktop or laptop computer and to use the out-of-date browser anyway.

For years, Internet Explorer has tormented users and exposed them to security vulnerabilities. Even a Microsoft employee advised against using it as a default on a company blog.

Microsoft finally threw in the towel in 2016 in favor of its new browser, Edge.

These problems could likely have been addressed if D.C.’s unemployment insurance system were updated. In 2019 and 2020 answers to oversight questions from the Committee of Labor and Workforce Development, DOES included a long list of intended improvements, including “increased configurability of the system to reduce updates that require a developer” and “new infrastructure mobility facilitating customers and support resources the ability to work from any device, including mobile phones and tablets.”

Despite the issues, LL remains ever so 4 april 3, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

slightly optimistic. At least the unemployment system hasn’t crashed, as other systems across the nation have. But that’s little comfort for out-of-work hospitality employees, independent contractors, and any other nonessential workers who wait for the kinks to get worked out. Rent came due for many of them on April 1.

Enough about unEmploymEnt benefits. LL’s readers might be wondering about the modernization of the other half of the system—the unemployment taxes.

It’s been a bumpy road. After reissuing a request for proposals in October 2018, the Office of Contracting and Procurement (OCP) gave the $13 million project to the Minnesota-based company Sagitec Solutions, LLC in October 2019. After a local, competing company’s protest of the award was dismissed— a dispute that featured some he-said-she-said accusations of contract steering—it looked as though the modernization would move forward. At least it did until mid-February, when At-Large Councilmember Robert White started asking questions about the way OCP awarded the contract.

OCP awarded Sagitec what’s known as a “letter contract,” which allows the company to begin working on specific portions of the contract right away while negotiations continue.

Sagitec would get paid no more than $1 million, according to the letter contract, because anything over that amount requires Council approval.

If OCP knew the total contract was worth well over $1 million, and would require the Council’s OK, White asked OCP director George Schutter, why award the letter contract? What was the emergency?

Schutter responded by reciting the executive branch’s authority to enter into contracts under $1 million and assuring White that “it’s not uncommon that you would begin work with the letter contract.”

Unsatisfied, White suggested, in what sounded to LL like a thinly veiled threat, that eventually the Council is going to “buck back” against what he said is a clear attempt to force councilmembers into a spot where they must approve a contract or risk losing time and money already spent.

“What you’re asking the city to approve, [and] you may disagree technically, but it is a retroactive contract,” White said.

“I think this contract is gonna cause some serious concern because of the way it proceeded,” he added later. “And the District will, on this contract and/or future contracts, lose money and time because at a certain point, which is probably about now, the Council is gonna say we’re not doin’ this anymore.”

About two weeks later, the District paid Sagitec a total of $912,210 in two payments.

The whole contract still has not been sent to the Council for approval, and the letter contract is not posted to OCP’s online database.

If there’s a lesson here, it’s that LL is clearly in the wrong industry. A lot of money is sloshing around the unemployment IT world, and he is missing out.

CP

CITY DESK

Shelter From the Swarm As the number of COVID-19 diagnoses increase in D.C.’s homeless shelters, advocates demand resources and places where unhoused people can safely isolate.

By Amanda Michelle Gomez Homeless advocates knew positive cases of COVID-19 would begin to reveal themselves in shelters as testing for the disease caused by the novel coronavirus increased. In congregate settings like shelters, where dozens of people can sleep in one room, slowing the spread of the virus has been a challenge.

As of Tuesday, five individuals in the D.C. shelter system have tested positive for COVID-19. These positive cases are spread across three shelters—the Harriet Tubman Women’s Shelter on Massachusetts Avenue SE, Patricia Handy Place for Women on 5th Street NW, and the Community for Creative Non-Violence on 2nd Street NW—Department of Human Services Director Laura Zeilinger tells City Paper. At this point, DHS is not disclosing the number of cases by site out of privacy concerns.

Individuals that were in close contact with infected patients at those locations have moved to a quarantine site where they can self-isolate.

In addition to contact tracing, shelter staff and on-site medical providers performed additional screenings of residents staying at the three shelters out of caution. As of April 1, 49 people had left the shelters and entered self-quarantine with the expectation that they can return to their beds once it’s safe. Per DC Health protocol, individuals who came in contact with infected patients will only be tested for COVID-19 if they display symptoms (cough, fever, or shortness of breath).

Shelters with positive cases notified those staying there and underwent deep cleaning. Every shelter in D.C. is expected to follow these protocols if a positive case turns up.

“We will hold their beds for them so that in the end, they will have a safe place to come back to,” says Zeilinger. “We don’t want to give anybody a reason to feel that they have to make a tradeoff between being able to come back to their space and seeking medical treatment or being able to self-quarantine.”

Homeless shelters across the District are doing the best they can to keep their residents and staff safe during the coronavirus pandemic. Central Union Mission staff, for example, are all required to wear N95 masks and clean every hand surface multiple times per day.

The homeless shelter on Massachusetts Avenue NW near Union Station also suspended a

rule that limits individuals to stays of 15 consecutive days. Under normal circumstances, individuals would have to find alternate accommodations for another 15 days before returning. Even though the emergency shelter is working with the same bed roster, staff members check the body temperature of all overnight guests every day.

The best way to slow the spread of coronavirus is to follow social distancing and hygiene guidelines. But people experiencing homeless don’t have regular access to sinks where they can wash their hands and those staying at homeless shelters can’t always remain six feet from another person. There are simply too many people and not enough space.

“Shelters by nature are communal. They also tend to be dormitory-style bedding facilities and lots of human contact so trying to do six foot distancing in a shelter is difficult or impossible,” says Central Union Mission President and CEO Joe Mettimano. “The only way to do it would be if you significantly decrease the number of people that you are housing and so that’s not an option. D.C. already has a homelessness rate that’s twice the national average.”

Shelters are trying to implement social distancing practices by transitioning away from cafeteria-style food service to grab-and-go and having people sleep head to toe or moving beds further apart. In some shelters, staff cannot create a significant distance between beds because there are 30 sets of bunk beds for 60 individuals in one room. Some Catholic Charities shelters had to move beds into unconventional areas like common rooms to make space. “It doesn’t look necessarily normal right now,” says Amanda Chesney, Catholic Charities’ director of housing and homeless services. “We are trying to be as creative as possible with the situation we have.

This is definitely not a typical operation for anybody in the city, let alone us.”

Everyone working with the homeless population is keenly aware of the logistical challenges of practicing social distancing at shelters, from advocates to health care providers to government officials. If any population needs to be practicing social distancing to reduce opportunities for disease transmission, it’s people experiencing homelessness, who tend to skew older and sicker. If they get infected, some might need to be hospitalized, possi-

Darrow Montgomery/File

Community for Creative Non-Violence on 2nd Street NW bly in intensive care units. Some will likely die.

Homeless advocates have asked the D.C. government to take extra steps to protect individuals experiencing homelessness that are at high risk of severe illness. In a letter sent Friday to DC Health, DHS, and the Office of the City Administrator, several homeless services agencies, including Miriam’s Kitchen, submitted a list of recommendations, including secure locations where high-risk individuals experiencing homelessness can self-isolate. Ideally, they would be offered hotel rooms.

“We believe that preventing them from getting sick is the best way to go because that way that won’t only keep them safe and healthy but will also reduce the pressure and burden put on the health care system,” says Jesse Rabinowitz, an advocacy and campaign manager at Miriam’s Kitchen.

As it so happens, DHS and their partners have been actively thinking about this. On Monday, DHS began moving high-risk individuals experiencing homelessness to vacant hotel rooms for self-quarantine. Locations for any DC Health quarantine sites aren’t being disclosed for privacy reasons. The agency is using criteria “that is consistent with what has been published around age and co-occurring medical condition” to decide who to move, says Zeilinger. As of Tuesday, 51 rooms are being used as isolation sites for those unable to self quarantine in a residential setting. This number is not limited to high-risk individuals.

“We continue to look at all options,” says Zeilinger, “as well as the potential that we may have an increase in demand for shelter and we don’t want to create more density.”

The department is proactively moving peo-

ple in collaboration with Unity Health Care and other homeless services providers. The director of homeless outreach at Unity Health Care, Dr. Catherine Crosland, says her team and shelter staff have been working to identify individuals that should proactively self-quarantine. “Nobody is being forced to do anything against their will,” she notes. Unity Health Care, along with shelter staff, has been selecting individuals over 80 years old and anyone younger with “significant comorbidity.” A study out of Hubei, China, suggests that the fatality rate was significantly higher for individuals over 60 years old, at 9.4 percent. It’s unlikely that D.C. can offer every person experiencing homelessness over the age of 60 the opportunity to proactively self-isolate; that’s more than 1,000 individuals.

The letter homeless advocates sent Friday also asks the D.C. government to create a group quarantine site for those who tested positive or are awaiting results; reduce crowding in existing shelters by developing new ones; set up mobile hand washing stations and portable toilets across the city; and establish universal testing procedures for the homeless population. Already, District leaders created a quarantine location for the populations requested, along with those that have to self-quarantine due to COVID-19 exposure, and erected 17 hand washing stations.

Recent progress has been made on testing. Individuals experiencing homelessness who display symptoms are now a priority testing group, according to DC Health guidance released March 25. The news cheered homeless advocates. Previously, it was hard for patients experiencing homelessness to get tested, as it is for everyone, and presumptive positives were asked to self-quarantine but couldn’t really do so.

Prior to the testing guidance, Unity Health Care was sending patients to the hospitals for testing, where it would sometimes take seven to 10 days to get results back. It wasn’t always clear where individuals could self-quarantine while they waited for results. Now, providers will screen homeless patients for COVID-19, and if patients tick two of the three symptoms, a doctor will call the DC Health hotline to trigger testing. Turnaround time for results should be within 48 hours because swabs are going to the public lab.

“We’re really trying to ... proactively screen the whole population as much as possible,” says Crosland. She hopes that as tests become more widely available, D.C. can move toward universal testing to “shrink” the curve, or prevent the spread altogether. “My hope is that people in congregate settings will be absolutely prioritized for universal testing,” Crosland says.

“The sooner we identify and isolate asymptom-

“This COVID-19 crisis illustrates that everyone’s health and wellbeing are linked and connected and that if D.C. wants to thrive and be healthy, everyone has to have access to the housing and resources they need.”

atic COVID positive individuals, the better our chances of getting a handle on this virus.”

To some homeless advocates, COVID-19 is just exacerbating problems at shelters that predate the pandemic, among them efforts to make facilities more private. Amber Harding, a staff attorney with the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, recalls a 2015 campaign for private bathrooms when it came time to replace the family homeless shelter at DC General.

Only 10 to 20 percent of units in each of the six short-term family housing facilities have a private bathroom. Long-term building plans still don’t resolve this issue. Singles shelters slated for improvement, like 801 East Men’s Shelter, will still be large and congregate.

“All this affirms what people in encampments have been saying for a long time, which is that shelters are dangerous,” says Harding.

“This is very much worse than anything that has happened before but it’s not the only time in congregate shelters we’ve had the fear of or actual contagious disease spread throughout because they are congregate. We’ve had [tuberculosis] outbreaks in the singles shelters before, which generally people don’t have anymore.”

The hope now is that lawmakers learn from this pandemic. “We commend the Bowser administration and the D.C. Council for the urgency with which they’ve addressed COVID-19 and we hope that when this crisis is over, the same urgency, passion and resources will be used to ensure that all of our neighbors have housing they need to thrive,” says Rabinowitz. “This COVID-19 crisis illustrates that everyone’s health and wellbeing are linked and connected and that if D.C. wants to thrive and be healthy, everyone has to have access to the housing and resources they need.”

CP washingtoncitypaper.com april 3, 2020 5

Important Facts About DOVATO

This is only a brief summary of important information about DOVATO and does not replace talking to your healthcare provider about your condition and treatment.

What is the Most Important Information I Should Know about DOVATO? If you have both human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) and hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection, DOVATO can cause serious side effects, including: • Resistant HBV infection. Your healthcare provider will test you for HBV infection before you start treatment with DOVATO. If you have HIV-1 and hepatitis B, the hepatitis B virus can change (mutate) during your treatment with DOVATO and become harder to treat (resistant). It is not known if DOVATO is safe and effective in people who have HIV-1 and HBV infection.

• Worsening of HBV infection. If you have HIV-1 and HBV infection, your HBV may get worse (flare-up) if you stop taking DOVATO. A “flare-up” is when your HBV infection suddenly returns in a worse way than before. Worsening liver disease can be serious and may lead to death. ° Do not run out of DOVATO. Refill your prescription or talk to your healthcare provider before your DOVATO is all gone. ° Do not stop DOVATO without first talking to your healthcare provider. If you stop taking DOVATO, your healthcare provider will need to check your health often and do blood tests regularly for several months to check your liver.

What is DOVATO? DOVATO is a prescription medicine that is used without other antiretroviral medicines to treat HIV-1 infection in adults who have not received antiretroviral medicines in the past, and without known resistance to the medicines dolutegravir or lamivudine. HIV-1 is the virus that causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). It is not known if DOVATO is safe and effective in children.

Who should not take DOVATO? Do Not Take DOVATO if You: • have ever had an allergic reaction to a medicine that contains dolutegravir or lamivudine.

• take dofetilide.

What should I tell my healthcare provider before using DOVATO? Tell your healthcare provider about all of your medical conditions, including if you: • have or have had liver problems, including hepatitis B or C infection.

• have kidney problems.

• are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. One of the medicines in DOVATO (dolutegravir) may harm your unborn baby. ° Your healthcare provider may prescribe a different medicine than DOVATO if you are planning to become pregnant or if pregnancy is confirmed in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. ° If you can become pregnant, your healthcare provider will perform a pregnancy test before you start treatment with DOVATO. ° If you can become pregnant, you should consistently use effective birth control (contraception) during treatment with DOVATO. ° Tell your healthcare provider right away if you are planning to become pregnant, you become pregnant, or think you may be pregnant during treatment with DOVATO.

©2020 ViiV Healthcare or licensor.

DLLADVT190035 January 2020 Produced in USA.

Learn more about Leo and DOVATO at DOVATO.com

6 april 3, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

Tell your healthcare provider about all of your medical conditions, including if you: (cont’d) • are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed if you take DOVATO. ° You should not breastfeed if you have HIV-1 because of the risk of passing HIV-1 to your baby. ° One of the medicines in DOVATO (lamivudine) passes into your breastmilk. ° Talk with your healthcare provider about the best way to feed your baby.

Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements.

Some medicines interact with DOVATO. Keep a list of your medicines and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist when you get a new medicine.

• You can ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist for a list of medicines that interact with DOVATO. • Do not start taking a new medicine without telling your healthcare provider.

Your healthcare provider can tell you if it is safe to take DOVATO with other medicines.

What are Possible Side Effects of DOVATO? DOVATO can cause serious side effects, including: • Those in the “What is the Most Important Information I Should Know about DOVATO?” section.

• Allergic reactions. Call your healthcare provider right away if you develop a rash with DOVATO. Stop taking DOVATO and get medical help right away if you develop a rash with any of the following signs or symptoms: fever; generally ill feeling; tiredness; muscle or joint aches; blisters or sores in mouth; blisters or peeling of the skin; redness or swelling of the eyes; swelling of the mouth, face, lips, or tongue; problems breathing.

• Liver problems. People with a history of hepatitis B or C virus may have an increased risk of developing new or worsening changes in certain liver tests during treatment with DOVATO. Liver problems, including liver failure, have also happened in people without a history of liver disease or other risk factors. Your healthcare provider may do blood tests to check your liver.

Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get any of the following signs or symptoms of liver problems: your skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow (jaundice); dark or “tea-colored” urine; light-colored stools (bowel movements); nausea or vomiting; loss of appetite; and/or pain, aching, or tenderness on the right side of your stomach area.

• Too much lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis). Lactic acidosis is a serious medical emergency that can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get any of the following symptoms that could be signs of lactic acidosis: feel very weak or tired; unusual (not normal) muscle pain; trouble breathing; stomach pain with nausea and vomiting; feel cold, especially in your arms and legs; feel dizzy or lightheaded; and/or a fast or irregular heartbeat.

• Lactic acidosis can also lead to severe liver problems, which can lead to death. Your liver may become large (hepatomegaly) and you may develop fat in your liver (steatosis). Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get any of the signs or symptoms of liver problems which are listed above under “Liver problems.” You may be more likely to get lactic acidosis or severe liver problems if you are female or very overweight (obese).

SO MUCH GOES INTO WHO I AM HIV MEDICINE IS ONE PART OF IT. Reasons to ask your doctor about DOVATO: DOVATO can help you reach and then stay undetectable* with just 2 medicines in 1 pill.

That means fewer medicines† in your body while taking DOVATO

You can take it any time of day with or without food (around the same time each day)—giving you flexibility

DOVATO is a once-a-day complete treatment for adults who are new to HIV-1 medicine.

Results may vary. *Undetectable means reducing the HIV in your blood to very low levels (less than 50 copies per mL). † As compared with 3-drug regimens.

LEO‡ Living with HIV

What are Possible Side Effects of DOVATO (cont’d)?

• Changes in your immune system (Immune Reconstitution Syndrome) can happen when you start taking HIV-1 medicines. Your immune system may get stronger and begin to fight infections that have been hidden in your body for a long time. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you start having new symptoms after you start taking DOVATO. • The most common side effects of DOVATO include: headache; diarrhea; nausea; trouble sleeping; and tiredness.

These are not all the possible side effects of DOVATO. Call your doctor for medical advice about side effects. You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch, or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

Where Can I Find More Information?

• Talk to your healthcare provider or pharmacist.

• Go to DOVATO.com or call 1-877-844-8872, where you can also get FDA-approved labeling.

October 2019 DVT:2PI-2PIL Trademark is owned by or licensed to the ViiV Healthcare group of companies.

Compensated by ViiV Healthcare

‡

Could DOVATO be right for you? Ask your doctor today.

washingtoncitypaper.com april 3, 2020 7

Darrow Montgomery/File

SPORTS

D.C. Lottery’s plan to launch sports betting is indefinitely delayed. washingtoncitypaper.com/sports

RUNNING

Pace Yourself The novel coronavirus pandemic has shut down most of life as we know it.

Local residents are turning to running as an outlet. get home in time to join his wife on a run.

But for the past few weeks, Musser has been borrowing his wife’s old purple-andneon green ASICS Gel-Nimbus 15 shoes before heading out on the roads. Running gives him a reprieve from his work day and a reason to leave their English basement apartment.

“I kind of get anxious or stressed with work, just feeling there’s so much on my plate I need to do. And I can kind of feel like my body is responding to that anxiousness,” Musser says. “At the end of the day, it allows me to burn off that stress or anxiety and so for the rest of the evening, I kind of feel like a little bit more relaxed.”

Thirty five miles away in Olney, Jacqueline Hyman has experienced a similar turnabout. She “really hated” running for most of her life, even during her college and graduate school years at the University of Maryland where she would run on the treadmill or outside with a roommate for exercise.

Now that Hyman, 23, can’t do much else in terms of physical activity, her mindset has changed.

“It’s a treat, whereas running would feel like a chore before,” she says. “It’s a treat because I get to go outside, be physically active, be out in the sun and feel the wind blowing.”

Peter Koll’s life was in a good place.

The restaurant he helped start, St. Anselm in Northeast, had been open for a little more than a year. His schedule had fallen into a comfortable rhythm both at work and at home. He could even find time to exercise.

“Everything just felt like it was clicking the right way,” Koll says.

The timing appeared ideal for a new challenge. Last October, Koll, who’s 33, decided to sign up for his first marathon: the Rock ’n’ Roll Washington D.C. Marathon on March 28, 2020. He trained for months by himself, getting up at 3 or 4 in the morning for long runs that stretched between 16 to 20 miles.

On Sundays, Koll would often go for a run before showing up for a double shift at the restaurant.

But on March 15, two weeks before the race, organizers canceled the marathon.

The novel coronavirus sweeping through the world meant that sporting events, including road races, would come to a halt.

“I had just spent the last 20 weeks or so running for this race,” Koll says. “It was just one more thing. It’s hard to get too upset about it, because so many things are going on right now that are impacting way more than running a race, but you still have that little twang of, this sucks, this was something I was really looking forward to.”

Five days later, Koll lost his job when the restaurant group he works for as a general manager decided to close St. Anselm. Koll gave himself a few days to digest his new reality. But in those moments of uncertainty, one thing felt clear.

On March 28, he would be running a marathon.

Darrow Montgomery

By Kelyn Soong

the mandates arrived one after another.

On Monday, the governors of both Maryland and Virginia issued formal stay-at-home orders to prevent people from gathering and spreading the coronavirus. Shortly after, Mayor Muriel Bowser did the same in D.C., making it illegal for people to leave their residences except for “essential activities” until at least April 24.

8 april 3, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

In Virginia, the order will last until June 10 at the earliest, while Maryland’s order will continue indefinitely.

Fortunately for many people, some outdoor activities are still allowed. And increasingly, local residents have taken to running outside as a way to break up the monotony of their days. It’s one of the few things that have given people some control over their lives during an unpredictable time.

“A running boom is taking off,” writes Talya Minsberg in the New York Times.

Running USA, a not-for-profit organization promoting long distance running in the United States, predicts that this running boom “could be the biggest the world has ever seen.”

In France, a man ran the length of a marathon (26.2 miles) on his 23-foot long balcony in 6 hours and 48 minutes. Another runner in China ran 31 miles around his living room while on lockdown in February. Even Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has touted the benefits of running outdoors during the pandemic, as long as people are following the proper precautions.

“It’s not only safe,” Fauci, a long distance runner, told Yahoo earlier this month. “It’s healthy.”

Ryan Musser, a 33-year-old Hill East resident, doesn’t own a pair of running shoes.

Running isn’t really his thing. Musser typically bikes to work for exercise and doesn’t

few Places exist in the D.C. area that Arlington resident and professional ultra runner Michael Wardian hasn’t run. His prolific career has taken him to nearly every corner of the city. Just two weeks ago, Wardian ran all the D.C. streets named after U.S. states.

But with the running boom, it’s getting tougher for him to find a place to run where he can maintain the six feet of physical distance from other pedestrians that health care experts recommend. Parks and trails have become a popular destination for not just runners, but walkers, cyclists, and families.

“I’ve never seen as many people on the trails that I frequent than I have in the last week and half,” Wardian says. “Even my secret trails, like the Potomac Heritage Trail, it was like rush hour. It was insane.”

The wave of people outside has forced

Erin Kelman

LIZ AT LARGE

Kristen Serafin runners to change their behaviors or alter their usual routes. The National Arboretum, a popular place for visitors to see cherry trees and for runners, is now closed to the public.

In France, exercise is limited to a two kilometer (approximately 1.2 miles) radius from people’s homes.

Some health care professionals have implored runners not to exercise in groups.

Even running with a non-cohabiting partner can be potentially risky.

“I would stick to solo runs,” says Kasia Baca, a local runner and a senior epidemiologist at Health Research and Analysis, LLC in Bethesda. “If you want to put yourself in the safest position, you want to keep social distancing recommendations—that gets a little more difficult if you’re not doing a solo run.”

Baca also recommends running during non-peak hours, like early or late morning, and finding new routes. That may also present challenges, but for some runners, the shift in routine and cancelation of races can be oddly liberating.

Aspen Hill resident Kristen Serafin, 31, doesn’t remember the last time she didn’t have a race around the corner. She had been training for the Boston Marathon, which has been rescheduled from April 20 to Sept. 14.

“I think for me, the rest of this training block is about trying the workouts and not worrying about ramifications of failure,” she says. “When’s the last time when you didn’t hit a workout or didn’t do a long run, that it didn’t matter? That’s so freeing ... The end point is gone now.”

Wardian is using this time to come up with creative ways to get in his miles. The 45-yearold was registered to run in the Catalina Island Marathon on March 14, the Sri Lanka ultra marathon stage race from March 20 to 27, the Cherry Blossom Ten Mile Run in D.C. on April 5, the Boston Marathon on April 20, and the London Marathon on April 26. Boston and London have rescheduled their races for the fall, while the rest have been canceled.

Without the pressure of racing, he wants to run for his friends in other countries that are

on lockdown. On March 26, Wardian, with encouragement from his wife, Jennifer, decided to run a solo marathon on the flat block around his house. It took about 65 laps and 2 hours, 33 minutes, and 31 seconds to finish.

Wardian says that nearly 60 people came out to their front yards to watch him run. And when road races return, Wardian says he has a premonition that a lot of runners will have “breakthrough runs” after the pandemic is over.

“Just because people will be able to refocus and prioritize and when we do get out there, push each other to higher levels,” he says. “At least, that’s what I’m hoping.”

Koll left his condo in Adams Morgan on March 28 at around 5:30 a.m. under a downpour of rain.

He headed toward the C&O Canal, and for the first 10 miles, he didn’t see a single person. He watched the sunrise on the towpath, and only the sounds of birds chirping in the trees broke the meditative silence. “It was very peaceful,” Koll says.

Around mile 22, he hit the wall. His clothes were soaked and his muddy shoes felt like 10-pound weights. Koll didn’t know if he would be able to finish in his predicted time of three and a half hours. He thought about his wife, Gina Holman, and how she might be concerned if he didn’t show up on time.

Koll kept moving.

Just after 9 a.m., he reached the Key Bridge Boathouse in Georgetown. Koll had run 26.2 miles in 3 hours, 36 minutes, and 15 seconds. His wife and parents were there to greet the marathon runner.

“I’m sure I will remember all of it,” Koll says. “I think the feeling of just appreciation for the support of my wife and parents.

When I saw them standing out in the rain waiting for me, that’s definitely a feeling that doesn’t leave you.”

As he walked toward them, Koll’s father tossed him a small plastic bag. Inside was a finisher’s medal from the 2017 Rock ’n’ Roll Washington D.C. Half Marathon. The “1/2” in front of the word “Marathon” was crossed out.

CP

“Here” by Liz Montague Liz Montague is a D.C.-based cartoonist and cat mom. You can find her work in The New Yorker and City Paper. washingtoncitypaper.com april 3, 2020 9

BOILING POINT Not all restaurants will reach the finish line of the COVID-19 crisis.

Five owners talk about what they need to survive and how long they can last.

By Laura Hayes Photographs by Darrow Montgomery

I’ve been dreamIng about the day restaurants can welcome dine-in customers again.

The energy is jubilant. Every restaurant, not just the hotspots that usually draw crowds, has a line out the door at 5 p.m. Regulars are at the front of each line—they can’t wait to tip their friendly bartender, bite into their favorite burger, or give their usual server a hug.

But I’m jolted back to reality when I wake up. Not every restaurant will make it through the COVID-19 global pandemic. In a March 18 Washington Post article, chef and industry thought leader Tom Colicchio predicted 75 percent of U.S. restaurants will not be financially fit enough to reopen when the time comes.

On March 27, Northern Virginia native and celebrity chef David Chang added his thoughts. “My fear is the restaurants that survive are going to be the big chains, and we’re going to eradicate the very eclectic mix that makes America and going out to eat so vibrant and great,” he told the New York Times.

Numbers from the National Restaurant Association look less bleak. On March 25, the trade group estimated that on top of the 3 percent of restaurants that have already closed permanently because of the global pandemic, 11 percent more will shutter for good in the next 30 days. Arlington’s Bracket Room announced its permanent closure on March 24.

Campono, an Italian eatery in the Watergate complex, followed on March 27.

At a March 26 press conference, President Donald Trump offered twisted reassurance

that restaurants will come back in one form or another. “Might be a different restaurant.

But it’s gonna be a great business for a lot of people,” he told his fellow Americans. “We’re making it easy for people. Look, what we’re doing in terms of loans, what we’re doing in terms of salaries, they’ll all come back. It may not be the same restaurant, it may not be the same ownership, but they’ll all be back.”

None of this is good news for the District’s restaurant owners, who already operate on the thinnest of margins. Hospitality establishments don’t have significant cash reserves, especially the small, independent restaurants that make up 96 percent of D.C.’s dining scene.

When a city loses small restaurants and bars, it loses more than food and drink. It loses employers who hire some of the city’s most vulnerable residents, like immigrants and formerly incarcerated people. It loses neighborhood gathering spaces where conversations take place and achievements are celebrated. It loses charitable

10 april 3, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

partners, too. Restaurants regularly host fundraisers and support a wide range of causes, from eliminating hunger to LGBTQ rights.

City Paper asked five restaurant owners how they’re navigating this rapidly evolving crisis, what they need to pull through when opening day finally comes, and what D.C. would lose if they don’t make it. We encouraged them to speak as explicitly as possible. With transparency comes the potential for more support from local and federal governments and greater understanding from the public.

The Good Neighbor—ANXO Cidery & Pintxos Bar 300 Florida Ave. NW ANXO co-owner Rachel Fitz set an ambitious goal for March. She aimed to raise $12,000 for Planned Parenthood through various Women’s History Month fundraisers and events like a cocktail competition, artisan market, and comedy brunch. She knew it was possible, at least until

coronavirus caused operations to cease. In 2019, the Truxton Circle restaurant raised $10,000 for the DC Abortion Fund in one night.

“The restaurant world has so much opportunity to do more than food and beverage,” Fitz says. At their second location in Brightwood Park, ANXO invites kids from The Kennedy, a nearby homeless shelter, over for a monthly paint night. When the young artists complete their work, ANXO gives them the option to hang the paintings on the walls and sell them. 100 percent of the proceeds go back to the shelter. “There’s only so much we can do if we can’t keep our doors open,” she says.

Now it’s ANXO that needs a lift. “We aren’t in a position to reopen and weather this storm without support,” says Sam Fitz, Rachel’s brother and business partner. “We’re making 10 percent of the sales we were doing before we closed.”

ANXO closed on March 15 out of concern for employee safety, one day before Mayor Muriel Bowser limited restaurants’ and bars’ opera-

tions to take-out and delivery. They decided not to sell food for the same reason. “Food preparation involves so many more interactions,” Sam says. “We felt uncomfortable doing food.”

That makes cider ANXO’s only source of revenue right now. They’re permitted to sell and deliver cider and wine as a part of their wine pub permit. In addition to selling cider to Washingtonians, ANXO can direct-ship cider to people in more than 40 states.

“Our sales have grown considerably over the past two weeks,” Sam says, noting they’re still producing and canning, but at a much lesser volume. “Collectively, these initiatives are exciting and show great growth potential, but they don’t cover the overhead of the restaurants or the cidery.”

The Fitzes laid off their staff except for General Manager Jade Aldrighette, who makes deliveries. The owners aren’t paying themselves.

ANXO’s insurance company declined to honor their business interruption policy because global pandemic isn’t covered. Many restaurateurs have encountered this barrier and some are considering filing a class action lawsuit against insurance companies in response. One of the country’s most famous chefs—Thomas Keller of The French Laundry in California and Per Se in New York City, among others—has already done so.

Sam and Rachel Fitz have not secured any rent abatement or forgiveness. While commercial and residential tenants can’t be evicted during the emergency for failing to pay rent under local legislation, Sam says he’s “very, very concerned” about the steps their Truxton Circle landlord will take once she can take steps against them.

“We’re applying to anything and everything that we qualify for,” Sam says. That includes the DC Small Business Recovery Microgrants Program. Grant money can be put toward employee wages and benefits, accounts payable, fixed costs, inventory, rent, and utilities. $25 million will be shared among D.C.’s small businesses, nonprofits, and independent contractors. The Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development said it received 6,000 applications by the April 1 due date. The District will either have to pick winners or hand out grants for as little as $4,166 when they make disbursements later this month.

Sam is also intrigued by the small business loans included in the $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act Congress passed last week. It includes $349 billion for “paycheck protection” loans for businesses with 500 or fewer workers.

Loans aren’t enough, according to most restaurant owners. They need grants, especially because business isn’t likely to spring back to normal as soon as restaurants have the green light to start serving customers again. Washingtonians who were furloughed or laid off won’t have the same amount of disposable income. Others may be afraid to dine out if COVID-19 continues to spread around the world.

The federal loans can be converted into grants should restaurants use the money for payroll. But the amount of forgiveness will be reduced if employers cut down their workforce compared to

prior periods or if they shrink salaries and wages by more than 25 percent from Feb. 15 to June 30.

“We have a lot on the table with our landlord and our vendors,” Sam says. “Bills need to be paid before we can do business again.”

The Meeting Place—IHOP 1523 Alabama Ave. SE Former NFL player Tyoka Jackson took a chance when he opened a sit-down restaurant in Ward 8 12 years ago. At the time, his brother was a police officer in the Metropolitan Police Department’s 7th District, and his father grew up and went to school within walking distance of the site that’s now his son’s IHOP franchise.

It shares a parking lot with the ward’s only full service grocery store.

“We wanted to send the message to the larger D.C. business community that you can do business in Ward 8,” Jackson says. “You can do more than fast food, liquor stores, and convenience stores. We saw a change coming.”

The IHOP had its challenges before the COVID-19 crisis. “It’s hard to be really profitable because of the amount of investment we made,” Jackson explains. “It’s also a grind because of the employment situation. Unemployment in the ward is a little higher. We’re heavily relying on our residents to be able to have the extra income to come in and dine with us.”

Even though IHOP has remained open for take-out and delivery, he describes the current situation as catastrophic. Sales are down 65 percent. “Usually if you’re a restaurant it’s week-by-week or if you’re a really good restaurant it’s month-by-month,” Jackson says.

“Now it’s a day-by-day deal.”

To Jackson, take-out is a weak substitute for the full-service experience. “It’s not just about putting food in your belly,” he says. “When we first opened in Southeast, we had a senior citizen who came up to me with tears in her eyes.

It was the first time she sat down and had a meal served to her in her neighborhood.”

As a business owner, Jackson says part of his job is forecasting. “It would be really optimistic to think we could survive with four more weeks of this,” he says. “I don’t like to predict our own demise, but I’m scared to be doing this beyond one month from now.”

He’s doing what he can to position himself to succeed, including applying for the District’s small business microgrant program. Independent franchises were not initially included in the program, so Jackson turned to local legislators, including Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White, for help. The Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development later amended its policy.

“We have to continuously find ways to financially support small businesses in D.C., because small businesses are the strength of our economy,” White says. “Historically, small businesses hire locally. IHOP, in Ward 8, is owned by D.C. residents and became home to eat, meet, and socialize when we didn’t have any other sit-down restaurants.”

If IHOP doesn’t pull through, Jackson says there will be consequences for his community. “You lose a place that employs upwards of 50 people right here in the ward,” he says. “Our entire management staff are all black females.

You lose the opportunity for black girls to see black women in leadership positions while they’re eating their pancakes.”

The Brand New Bar—Maxwell Park Navy Yard 1346 4th St. SE On March 2, just two weeks before Bowser closed bars and restaurants to on-premise consumption, Brent Kroll welcomed his first customers at Maxwell Park in Navy Yard, a sister business to the laid back Shaw wine bar of the same name.

“I got really choked up talking to staff,” Kroll says. “I had a chat with them about their safety and how I was going to try to do what was right for them and make sure they all had jobs to come back to.”

The Navy Yard location experienced permitting and construction delays, so Kroll stashed would-be staff in Shaw on part-time shifts. When March 2 came around, the Navy Yard location was crammed with people clinking glasses and spending money. “These employees were finally starting to get stable. Then it shut down,” he says. “They just bent over backwards to get the business going.”

A new bar’s finances are particularly vulnerable to setbacks. Investors want to be repaid rapidly. “The gold standard is trying to pay back investors in three years,” Kroll says. “Let’s say you’re accruing debt and not making any money—it’s looking pretty grim. For a place like Navy Yard, where I was easily going to pay back investors in under three years, now I don’t think so.”

On top of that, Kroll just signed up for a variety of services he has to pay monthly even though the bar barely had any time to take in income. He ticks off examples, including his million-dollar insurance policy and the pest control contract that the D.C. Department of Health requires. “If we hadn’t had success in Shaw, Navy Yard wouldn’t make it,” Kroll says.

While Navy Yard’s Maxwell Park has gone dark, Kroll and his business partners, Niki Lang and Daniel Runnerstrom, are selling wine to-go out of the Shaw location. They’re paying themselves what Kroll calls “micro-salaries.” They laid off everyone else. Any tips that come in through wine sales, plus the money raised on the GoFundMe page Lang started, goes directly to staff.

Revenue is severely limited. “If I sell $4,000 in wine to-go, it’s as if I sold $2,000 when I’m open,” Kroll explains. “It’s taken me out of profitably.” Maxwell Park discounts the wine it sells to-go by 30 percent. What would cost someone $100 to drink on one of the bar’s stools costs $70 to sip at home.

After checking his finances, Kroll thinks he can remain closed through August before he’d have to take out an SBA loan or a bank loan to save his businesses. “That’s a better situation than most people, so I feel very fortunate,” he says.

Kroll’s not sitting idle while others suffer.

He’s walking anyone who will listen through what bills they should be fighting during the pandemic. “There are certain vendors who are kind and are waiving payments, even if they’re in legally binding contracts,” he says. “Some are still saying, ‘Pay me now!’ Others are doing deferred payments.”

He’s currently battling credit card companies, asking them to reduce their transaction

washingtoncitypaper.com april 3, 2020 11

fees, which are higher when vendors sign up for no-contact processing—meaning customers don’t have to sign or enter a pin number. On social media he told his fellow bar owners to cancel or adjust their trash and linen contracts.

“Businesses have voices right now,” Kroll says. “We need to speak up. I think diversity from independent owners is what makes D.C. D.C. That would be lost if my business closed.”

The Place Where Everyone’s Welcome— Taqueria del Barrio 821 Upshur St. NW Young families, millennials, and neighbors who have lived off Upshur Street NW for decades fill the tables at Taqueria del Barrio.

Its 22 employees, who were laid off when the restaurant temporarily closed on March 15, contribute to the feeling that everyone is welcome. “Most of my front-of-house staff are LGBTQIA,” says co-owner Anna Bran Leis.

“This is a very safe place. This is where they come to work. It’s another family for them. For some, we are their only family.”

Then there are the drag performers who call Bingo or make brunch more spirited. “They depend on our space as a venue not just for creativity, but to earn a living as well,” Bran Leis says. Local performer Vagenesis has hosted drag brunches, trivia nights, and other special events there for well over a year.

“Together we have turned the restaurant into a safe space for queer people and people of color to gather, work, perform, and have a good time,” Vagenesis says. “We are regularly losing venues like that without the virus. Please don’t let this result in the loss of another. We need to save Taqueria del Barrio for the sake of the community.”

With her restaurant completely closed, Bran Leis spends much of her day wondering how much money she’ll need to make it. She’s trying to clear the same obstacles as ANXO. Her insurance company won’t pay up, arguing that the restaurant hasn’t suffered any physical damage. It’s unlikely that her landlord will let rent payments slide.

“My landlord isn’t a big corporation like EDENS,” Bran Leis says, suggesting big commercial developers might have more wiggle room. “She owns several properties in the city and has mortgages on all of them.” While bigger developers may have more capital, City Paper reported that EDENS, Douglas Development Corp., and JBG SMITH have done little to assist their tenants.

Overall Bran Leis sounds defeated. “People haven’t done enough to think about businesses like ours,” she says. She’s applied for an SBA loan and the city’s microgrant program for small businesses, but wonders when she’ll actually see the money from the latter and how much she’ll actually get. A DMPED representative says grants will max out at $25,000 and will be disbursed in April.

Bran Leis thinks her restaurant can make it as long as the city lifts restrictions by the end of May, but only because she has funds from other ventures. “If it was purely based on the restaurant, we wouldn’t be able to go on,” she says. “It’s because of the other stuff we have going on—DC Empanadas catering is what al-

lows me to float this when it’s not doing great.”

If Taqueria del Barrio doesn’t survive, Bran Leis says Petworth would “go from a vibrant, up-and-coming neighborhood to a bunch of boarded up windows.”

The Stalwart—i Ricchi 1220 19th St. NW I Ricchi has been serving Tuscan food just south of Dupont Circle for 31 years and has outlasted other crises. After 9/11 no one was traveling or dining out. “Our sales were down 70 percent,” its owner, Christianne Ricchi, says. “But we got through it.”

The Great Recession in 2008 hit her restaurant even harder because i Ricchi makes a significant portion of its revenue from private events like board dinners and convention lunches. Those sales opportunities evaporated, but again the restaurant rebounded.

Despite these trials, Ricchi says she still panicked when the threat of COVID-19 locked

12 april 3, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

down D.C. “There’s solace knowing everybody is in the same boat, but on the local and national level, I don’t know how independent restaurants are going to survive this,” she says.

To bring in enough money to keep a few of her most devoted kitchen workers employed and stay connected with the restaurant’s loyal customers, Ricchi launched the i Ricchi Food Club. She designs a four-course Italian menu each week that customers can pay for ahead of time and pick up. Ricchi includes some sentimental extras in the package.

“Together with the food we’re giving out ‘food travel notes,’” she says. “People find comfort through food memories. I also include a candle and an optional bottle of wine you can purchase.” Ideally, customers go home, set the table, read her notes, and take a few minutes to get lost in a close approximation of dining out.

Ricchi hasn’t thought too much about how to pay her next rent bill or how long she can afford

to remain closed. “When you run a restaurant and you’re putting out fires all day long, you have to learn to prioritize,” she says. Last week she was concerned with payroll and paying purveyors.

She sees small restaurants’ importance through an economic lens. “How much do restaurants contribute in sales tax?” she asks rhetorically. “We’re the biggest contributor in the city. That’s black and white.” Hotels, restaurants, and bars provide half of the city’s $1.6 billion in annual sales tax revenue, according to D.C. Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey DeWitt.

“I want to be optimistic,” Ricchi says. “Young people think restaurants always existed in this country or in the world, when actually it’s a relatively new phenomenon. When I was a little girl, going out to a restaurant was a big deal. Today people go out to restaurants three times a day. If people have enjoyed experiences of going out to restaurants in the past, they have to really think about how many, many, many restaurants will close. We might even close. Who knows.” CP

BOOKSSPEED READS HURT PEOPLE Don’t You Know I Love You

By Laura Bogart Dzanc Books, 224 pages

By the Beginning of Don’t You Know I Love You, Angelica Moltisanti has achieved a small amount of freedom, financially and physically, from her abusive father. When a car accident leaves her out of work and unable to afford her new life in D.C., that independence is shattered in an instant. Reluctantly, with a cast on her wrist, she moves back to her parents’ home in suburban Baltimore, to a house and a family that bind her more tightly than the cast does.

That premise gives rise to an admirable first novel, full of fire and electric with emotion, about the realities of domestic abuse. Don’t You Know I Love You includes dramatic scenes of violence, but it’s more interested in the everyday patterns of behavior among survivors, among enablers, and among abusers.

Author Laura Bogart alternates perspectives to show readers the breadth of the toxic dynamic, focusing mostly on 21-year-old Angelica but also dipping into the minds of Marie, her mother, who is constantly trying to smooth rough edges and is desperate to treat her family as normal, and of Jack, her ex-mob father, whose pride and love commingle with anger and violence in a poisonous blend. Bogart’s narrative is clear-eyed about every under-discussed aspect of family abuse, especially the way poverty keeps people trapped in the cycle; Angelica is barely making enough to scrape by in a service job before her hours get cut, and through the book, potential settlement money from the accident is both a beacon of hope and a tool that her father uses to control her, as he stalls and constantly claims he’s trying to negotiate it higher for her own good.

As a result, the beating heart of the novel is its depiction of the inner world of an abuse survivor.

Angelica hates her father; she also loves him in her own way, or at least the idea of who he could be. She finds herself instinctively bending to his will, reacting in the ways she’s learned will keep her safe—flinching when she hears loud noises far from her father’s house, or choosing “dumb instinct over rational fact” the second her par-

ents call. But the book is clear, too, about how those self-preservation instincts fail her outside of her abusive family dynamic. And Bogart isn’t afraid to allow Angelica space in the narrative to be unlikable, petulant, and especially angry.

The same rage her father used on her is present in her interactions with others, including her girlfriend, Janet. The effect of the close-up on her rough edges is that Angelica is fully realized, not just a cipher of a noble survivor. She’s immature as much as she is brave, and angry as much as she is hurt. Likewise, another triumph is the realism of the other characters. Angelica’s parents are not stock villains, but the narration from their perspectives doesn’t, and isn’t meant to, absolve them. Jack is not a man who hates his daughter, yet he still hurts her unforgivably. Marie wants to protect her child but is unable or unwilling to muster the fortitude to leave Jack.

But despite the fact that Bogart grew up in Baltimore and went to graduate school in D.C., the novel’s sense of place can fall flat. For every specificity, like Angelica’s car crash coming down 16th Street NW or a drive up the BaltimoreWashington Parkway, there’s a reference that’s slightly off, like Angelica musing about “the Black Cat Club” or a motel located “just far enough away from anything ever filmed on The Wire” instead of placed in an actual neighborhood. There are some nostalgic quirks: In Angelica’s world, Baltimore City Paper still exists (and has a robust Style section that takes interns).

The prose has some other faults, too—namely that instead of letting action and dialogue convey characters’ emotions, Bogart constantly relies on describing feelings as legible on people’s faces: “her eyes must’ve emanated the heat that flushed her neck and face,” “her face forming a quick rictus of surprise and dismay,” “coltish vulnerability played quickly across her face before she cleared it with a cough.”

Don’t You Know I Love You has a few overlapping love stories—Jack and Marie, Angelica and Janet, even Angelica and the dog she saves, Valentina—but at its heart is the story of a young woman healing and learning to love herself as best she can, and especially learning that anger is not the only source of power and strength.

Bogart’s ambitious debut has some weak spots, but successfully knits itself together, not unlike Angelica’s wrist and heart. —Emma Sarappo

FILMSHORT SUBJECTS

HERD COMMUNITY The Other Lamb

Directed by Małgorzata Szumowska The OTher Lamb, an artsy new thriller from Polish filmmaker Małgorzata Szumowska, depicts the sort of insulated, patriarchal cult community that will be familiar to watchers of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Along with screenwriter C.S. McMullen, Szumowska avoids lurid details in favor of impressionistic, gnawing horror. Her film blends reality and fantasy, and the sparse dialogue leaves the story open to interpretation. By drawing from several styles and influences, the result is more slipshod than devastating.

Based on the costumes, the commune in The Other Lamb might as well exist 200 years in the past. The women and girls wear modest dresses down to their ankles, and the singular man in this cult (Michiel Huisman) wears similarly conservative attire. He has several wives and daughters, all of whom adore him.

His sermonizing does not have substance—it is mostly boilerplate rhetoric about grace and salvation—but the subtext is all about making these women and girls dependent on him.

He is the only one who is allowed to tell stories, for example, and thus all learning flows through him.

Two members of Shepherd’s “flock” stand out above the rest. The first is Selah (Raffey Cassidy), the daughter of one of his first wives. The other is Sarah (Denise Gough), a disgraced wife who lives in quasi-exile and who everyone refers to as a “broken thing.”

Shepherd is drawn to them because they are intensely devout, although intelligent enough to question what is happening around them.

They present more of a challenge than the other women and girls, who are generally demure and frightened. These strange dynamics are put to the test when a police officer tells Shepherd he must move his commune elsewhere.

The subsequent journey is a potent metaphor, as the characters resemble puritan American settlers, and Shepherd’s eventual use of violence creates a gnawing sense of unrest.

The Other Lamb is ostensibly a horror film— some scenes are quite graphic and disturbing—except Szumowska deliberately avoids the usual genre trappings. What interests her are how these women think and feel: There are plenty of daydream sequences, such as when Selah imagines herself as a high school cheerleader. McMullen’s script denies any of these characters a backstory, so their immediate present is the only prism through which we can understand them. At one point, Shepherd describes Selah as his most devoted follower, her thoughtfulness meaning her devotion comes from a deeper place. Yet, this same quality is what causes her to question why she even follows him in the first place.

A hermetically sealed world, coupled with a simple plot, means Szumowska must find thematic depth through her prowess as a filmmaker. The film’s title is not just a metaphor; there are actual lambs throughout The Other Lamb, and their impenetrable stares suggest that these women must also have secret thoughts they dare not share. Szumowska effectively blurs the line between text and subtext until they are one and the same. Canny genre devotees may find themselves restless, or bored.

One repeated image is Shepherd with his fingers in the mouths of these women. It is another metaphor, but The Other Lamb ultimately suggests a simpler reason why he does this— he has a fetish for making women gag. That blunt, withering observation is necessary in a film where all the characters speak with holier than thou rhetoric. It is not enough to recommend the film, unfortunately, and there are moments where The Other Lamb rings as hollow as Shepherd’s lofty platitudes.

—Alan Zilberman The Other Lamb releases Friday to video on demand.

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Courtesy Nemu Takahashi

CPARTS

The Show Must Go On

Courtesy DC Improv

Local arts groups rely on community funding in the absence of government support.

By Jennifer Anne Mitchell One Of the foundations of improv comedy is the concept of “Yes, and.” First, the performers must agree to the situation that has been set up. Then, they must add to it.

DC Improv owner and comedy school principal Allyson Jaffe ties that concept to the coronavirus crisis.

“We’re in the longest improv scene of our lives right now with COVID-19,” she says.

“We just have to basically say this is a situation that’s happening and we have to ‘Yes, and’ it.”

To comply with the D.C. government’s rapidly changing public health regulations over the past few weeks, DC Improv set small goals to get through its last couple shows. The government guidelines “would change an hour later,” she says, and then change another hour later, “and we just kept rolling with it.”

The venue eventually closed on March 16 and laid off its employees so they could apply

for unemployment insurance, then launched a GoFundMe campaign to support former staff members. By March 21, they had surpassed their $10,000 goal. As of March 29, they had raised $32,395 of their new $50,000 goal.

Jaffe hopes the closure is temporary.

“We need comedy. We need to laugh. We need each other to get through all of the hard times,” she says. “It’s cliche, but laughter is the best medicine.”

Learning to perform comedy is a “life skill,” according to Jaffe, which she has seen change students’ lives by helping them overcome personal battles like depression. Some of these previous students are the ones donating to DC Improv’s fundraiser, along with patrons who have been coming to the venue throughout its 27 years of business in the District.

On March 26, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (CAH) held a special two-hour teleconference to discuss the agency’s financial state and possible emergency

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funds for local artists (like the comedians at DC Improv) and small arts nonprofit organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The public was welcome to join the call, and Acting Executive Director of the Commission Heran Sereke–Brhan was upfront with information. In short, their relief plan is on hold.

Leroy Clay, the associate chief financial officer in the Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO), explains that a percentage of sales tax revenue is the primary source of funding for the Commission. Budgets are based on estimates, but restrictions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus have thrown a curveball: Now that only essential businesses are open, and many have significantly decreased operations, those estimates aren’t reliable.

“Generally, we don’t see significant negative adjustments to our estimates unless there’s some sort of rare, significant event impacting revenues,” Clay says. “And, unfortunately, the current pandemic is that significant event.”

A local artist is sending art prints of hugs as care packages to combat the loneliness of staying at home. washingtoncitypaper.com/arts So the discussion of emergency funds for the arts is paused until the OCFO gathers current data and compiles revised revenue estimates, which they expect to finish around April 24.

“To put it in absolute simple terms, there is no checkbook that is linked to an account here at CAH,” Sereke–Brhan notes. “The checks are written by the OCFO, which essentially acts as the treasurer for all District agencies.”

Clay emphasizes that this situation is impacting the D.C. government’s budget across the board, not just CAH. The D.C. government’s general coronavirus website includes a guide to applying for unemployment insurance, noting that—for the first time—self-employed 1099 workers are now eligible for these benefits. This will support creative professionals who fall in this category. CAH says the District’s COVID-19 site will eventually include links to arts-related resources from around the United States.

In addition to sales tax revenue, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities receives an annual grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. This is part of a partnership agreement that requires individuals and nonprofits meet certain eligibility criteria to receive funding, and mandates that CAH only award grants to individuals and nonprofits. So for-profit businesses like DC Improv would not be eligible for these funds, but Jaffe and the performers might be.

“CAH desperately wants to provide asssitance to D.C.’s cultural community during this pandemic,” says the Commission’s chief of external affairs Jeffrey Scott. “We simply don’t know what, if any, funds will be available for any kind of emergency relief.”

In lieu of the local government’s help, grassroots movements like DC Improv’s GoFundMe campaign are what artists and arts organizations are relying on for assistance.

Arena Stage launched a Roaring Back Fund with the goal of raising $1 million to stabilize the organization.

“Theater is one of the areas that is hardest hit,” says Arena’s artistic director Molly Smith in a message announcing the campaign. “All the performing arts are.”

The theater has suspended performances through the rest of its 2019–2020 season and closed its building. These cancelations and their subsequent financial impact led Arena to temporarily furlough the majority of its staff beginning April 13, with fully paid health benefits for those placed on leave. The center’s executive producer Edgar Dobie states in a media advisory announcing these changes that they “look forward to welcoming staff back as soon as we can.”

The day before the furlough was announced, Arena Stage posted footage of its costume shop sewing medical masks for Children’s Nation-

those government meetings “are not broadly advertised.”

So, Washington Project for the Arts and a team of local artists—including Robin Bell, Amy Hughes Braden, Marta Perez-Garcia, and Aaron Maier—held a virtual meeting with CAH on March 19 to assert visual artists’ needs as the government considers a relief package.

But some artists seem to have little hope.

In one survey response to the question of what worries them, an artist said “losing my studio,” which they’ve had for 19 years. “If I can’t pay, what am I supposed to do,” the artist wrote. They also feared being unsupported as a 67-year-old painter.

Nesbett acknowledges the difficulties artists face in the District, where there are limited opportunities for them, a high cost of living, and they are frequently “instrumentalized,” he thinks, for economic gain.

“Clearly artists offer so much more than that,” says Nesbett. “Especially in times of crisis the work that they produce is what we reach for, for meaning.”

He also emphasizes the importance of looking at not just the art but also the artists, people who are capable of being civic leaders and public intellectuals, and who offer hope and inspiration.

Small local arts organization Transformer (which includes a gallery at 1404 P St. NW) is providing a platform to connect the public with artists just for this purpose. Through a project called “Phone Call,” proposed by artist Ginevra Shay, anyone can sign up to get a telephone call from a poet or an artist who will read to listeners or hold conversations with them. The point is “to reconnect people within [the] intimate space of a phone call,” the description notes. As of March 24, more than 50 people had signed up.

They are also harkening back to pre-digital communications by delivering handmade and small-batch printed zines through U.S. Mail.

Transformer’s co-founder, executive and artistic director Victoria Reis, remembers when things like phone calls and receiving zines in the mail were commonplace. “It wasn’t so much social distancing as it was distant socializing,” she says.

Reis notes that artists who participate in Transformer’s programming are paid. They also support artists through their online Flatfile store, which displays artwork (priced at under $500) from local emerging artists, who receive 70 percent of the money from sales.

As for how the community can support artists during this time, Reis encourages people who can give to do so, even if it’s a small amount. “You know $5, $20, it adds up,” she says.

These public fundraisers have big shoes to fill: the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities reports that thus far during the fiscal year 2020, it has awarded nearly $25 million in grants for the arts and humanities, some of which funded projects and development initiatives; $1,556,750 supported 272 individual professionals across eight wards and $13,347,313 went toward the general operating support of 125 nonprofit organizations that serve the District.

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ARTS CLUB

Illustration by Julia Terbrock

al Hospital. The group plans to sew through the end of this workweek with the goal of delivering 1,000 masks; Arena sent 500 on March 30.

Meanwhile, theatreWashington seeks to raise $115,000 through its Taking Care Fund to match $100,000 that the organization itself has pledged to this fund along with $10,000 from the Revada Foundation. All proceeds will go to theater professionals who need support, and theatreWashington defines this group as actors, designers, directors, stage managers, box office staff, choreographers, administrators, and technicians, among others.

Arts Administrators of Color, a D.C.-based, volunteer-run network that has developed a national presence, is also supporting arts administrators along with artists in this time.

“There is a segment of arts administration that I think folks kind of forget about,” says Arts Administrators of Color board chair Joshua Henry Jenkins. “It’s the box office managers, it’s the interns, it’s the folks who are seasonal employees or temporary employees, contract workers. Those kinds of folks who maybe aren’t practicing art but who are also financially impacted.”

To serve the needs of its community, Arts Administrators of Color set up a GoFundMe campaign and reached their initial $5,000 goal on March 22. They increased it to $10,000 to meet increasing demand: More than 400 people have applied to ask for funds.

“We’re deconstructing and reconstructing how we perform, how we rehearse, how we gather, how we present our work,” Jenkins says. “We’re constantly fighting for folks to see the value of the arts in education and all these sort of capacities. And so the arts are used to being resilient.”

Washington Project for the Arts—a nonprofit with just three employees, two full-time and one part-time—is leading advocacy efforts for visual artists in the District. They are continuing their own programming (which includes hiring contractors and artists on a regular basis) and speeding up the process of releasing their Andy Warhol Foundation Wherewithal Grants, which fund “public-facing alternative and experimental visual art projects inside the nation’s Beltway.” The Warhol Foundation funded a $200,000 two-year grant that WPA intends to split into 10 to 15 grants from $2,5000 to $7,500 each, according to their Jan. 29 announcement of the program.

To document what artists in the visual arts community are going through during the COVID-19 pandemic, Washington Project for the Arts is conducting a survey, with answers collected anonymously to protect the sensitive nature of the material. ”Lost income due to a day-job closing will put me behind on studio and apartment rent almost immediately,” one artist says in their response. “My barely sustainable life as an artist will definitely become unsustainable.”

WPA’s director Peter Nesbett explains that artists rely on multiple gigs to stay afloat.

Since they’re not typically in salaried roles, it’s difficult for artists to take time away from their work to sit in government meetings to advocate for themselves. Plus, he mentions,

THE PLATEAU For this week’s edition of City Paper Arts Club, arts editor Kayla Randall and multimedia editor Will Warren read and discussed Maggie Paxson’s The Plateau. It centers on a remote plateau in France where people risked their lives to rescue and shelter hundreds in need, mostly Jewish children during World War II, and Paxson was gracious enough to ask and answer questions about her book. The goal of Arts Club chats is to have free-flowing talks, like a conversation between friends— and we want you to join us. Participate in the conversation using the hashtag #CityPaperArtsClub on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, so we can incorporate your thoughts into the discussion. Next, we’ll be watching the very relevant zombie horror film 28 Days Later.

These arts club chat excerpts have been edited and condensed for clarity. For the full chat, subscribe to Washington City Podcast.

Will Warren: The woman who wrote [The Plateau] is an anthropologist, and it’s her coming to terms with the fact that a lot of anthropology and a lot of social science in general looks at violence, and her trying to understand what peace is and what peace looks like. I found this book very impactful … especially right now. I was really moved by it. It’s a very beautiful, lyrical book.

Kayla Randall: It’s so thoughtful. There are so many passages where you’re just like, “I have to process this; I have to stew on this.” It happens so early on, from page one, I was really invested in this story. And the author, Maggie, her way of telling it was so beautiful. This is like writing lessons, anthropology lessons, sociology lessons. I found the central conceit, the merits of studying peace, really interest-

ing. It’s something that I had never even really considered before reading this book, just how much easier it is for people to understand, talk about, perceive, and count, numerically, violence and conflict—and how difficult it is perceived to be to do the same for peace. That just blew my mind. Obviously, conflict and violence are eye-catching. People are drawn to those things. I think it would be amazing if we were drawn to peace in the same way, or interested in peace in the same way. As Maggie shows with this book, there are incredible stories to be told.

WW: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s something I think about, not just in the context of the pandemic, but I’m thinking about [how] we’ve covered the rising murder rate in D.C. in City Paper, which is something that absolutely should be covered because these are lost lives. But it’s much harder to cover all of the times that someone didn’t murder someone.

It’s easy to talk about the times that someone transmitted a disease to someone; it’s much harder to talk about the fact that you stayed home and all of these potential transmissions didn’t occur. [Peace is] something that is harder to conceive and wrap your mind around in some ways, even though it’s something that I think everyone aspires to and hopes for.

KR: Right. There are some passages that I have marked, and there’s this wonderful, succinct sentence on page four, and it reads: “Peace lacks this analyzable ‘thingness’: It seems like a non-event, a null set.” That is so true. It appears to be the absence of the violence and conflict that we’re all used to, accustomed to, familiar with. I think that’s such an interesting point.

The book is about the past, but it’s also about the present, in her current journey to the plateau. It’s such an interesting hunt [for peace].

It’s such a noble search in that way.

CP

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CITYLIST CITY LIGHTS

CITY LIGHTS

REVISIT THE TALE OF THE FORT RENO ICE-CREAMEATING MOTHERFUCKER

THEN, NOW AND FOREVER

Fort Reno concerts in Northwest D.C. are now rather sedate events where 40-somethingand-up rock fans and their kids come to sit and picnic on the lawn, get ice cream from the Good Humor truck, and see local bands perform. But when D.C. post-punk band Fugazi performed there in August 1993, the crowd was bigger, largely standing, and the age range was mostly teenage to 30s. Fugazi performed at Fort Reno a number of times, but that gig acquired some notoriety thanks in part to the 1999 Fugazi documentary Instrument’s inclusion of the audio portion of an exchange between Fugazi members Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto and two members of the audience. While MacKaye and Picciotto had, in the early ’80s, participated in slamdancing, they were long since tired of seeing bullies turn the friendly bumping in front of a stage into punching and kicking. After two guys began doing so, Mackaye first yelled at them to stop or go to a football field. Picciotto then joined in, but with, uh, humor—“I saw you two guys earlier at the Good Humor truck, and you were eating your ice cream like little boys, and I thought, ‘Those guys aren’t so tough! They’re eating ice cream.’ ...

I saw you eating an ice cream cone, pal ... That’s the shit you can’t hide. You eat ice cream; everybody knows it ... Ice-cream-eating motherfucker, that’s what you are.” About 10 years ago, MacKaye was walking down 18th Street NW in Adams Morgan when a guy recognized him and came up to talk. “I’m the ice-cream-eating motherfucker,” the guy yelled. “That was me!” He admitted he had been caught up in the skinhead scene in the ’90s and was absolutely causing problems at the show, but he had since changed his ways, MacKaye says. Hopefully, Fort Reno shows and lining up for ice cream there will return this summer. You can watch the clip on YouTube, stream Instrument on Amazon Prime, or rent or buy the film on YouTube. Free–$9.99. —Steve Kiviat

CITY LIGHTS

RARE BOOKS AT CAPITOL HILL BOOKS

Maybe tonight, you’re not an underpaid wage-slave, exhausted by a long day of teleworking and burnt out by pandemic-paranoia. Maybe you’re a detective, tracking your target through the back alleys of San Francisco, or a hitman on the streets of Detroit. Thanks to free shipping from Capitol Hill Books, you can escape into noir shadows without leaving the safety of your home. Try Daddy Cool, which is practically a ’70s crime movie (in the vein of Superfly or Shaft) in print, the story of a hitman with domestic troubles. Author Donald Goines started writing crime fiction in prison, after discovering the works of Iceberg Slim. Browse other rare editions of thrillers by Ian Fleming (like a copy of Live and Let Die selling for $150), Raymond Chandler (editions of Farewell, My Lovely and The Long Goodbye are going for $275 each), and Rex Stout (grab a first edition of Death of a Dude for only $35) at their website. Shoot a message to info@ capitolhillbooks-dc.com to learn how to get one of the above books mailed to you, or feel free to request something more contemporary—they’re offering free domestic shipping. Capitol Hill Books is selling general stock through email at info@capitolhillbooks-dc.com and rare books online at capitolhillbooks-dc.com. Prices vary.

—Will Lennon

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In the mid-1960s, the then-teenage Harrison “Skip” Hoaney and his buddies were kicked out of a Northwest birthday party for being too loud.

Standing on a street corner afterward, the group was making their plans for the rest of the evening when Hoaney heard D.C. R&B singer Billy Stewart’s “I Do Love You” blasting from a Thunderbird car at a traffic light. Hoaney began singing along passionately. His friends were suddenly wowed, as they had never heard him sing before, and were unaware of his skill, since Hoaney’s prior vocal experience had just been singing along to the radio. Soon, the soul combo The Casuals were born with the now-renamed Skip Mahoaney (often Mahoney, dropping the A) as lead singer. In 1973, the group’s first single came out, but what should have been an unabashed highlight had its problems. On the 45 release, the label renamed the group Skip Mahoaney & The Casuals and then, in 1974, released their first album without listing the names of the Casuals on the sleeve. Mahoaney’s bandmates weren’t happy and left. Mahoaney, after a second album with new Casuals that had some national success, returned to dayjob work and singing with cover bands. In the ’90s, the original Casuals reunited and later released a best-of album called Then, Now and Forever. Sadly, Skip Mahoaney passed away on March 20 at age 71. But on that collection, you can still hear that voice—a powerful tenor that climbed the scales to a gorgeous falsetto—accompanied by the lush harmonies of The Casuals. A master of melisma, when he sang the word “love,” it lasted multiple syllables. You can stream Then, Now and Forever on Spotify, YouTube Music, and Amazon. Free–$8.99.

—Steve Kiviat

CITY LIGHTS

VIRTUALLY TOUR THE WASHINGTON NATIONAL CATHEDRAL

The Washington National Cathedral’s response to growing coronavirus concerns is a cross between a spiritual tale and a Nicolas Cage movie. Recent headlines proclaiming the church’s donation of masks—yes, they were found in the crypt—to local hospitals are drawing the most attention. Meanwhile, the church is hoping to bring routine and familiarity to these uncertain times via livestreamed church services, including a weekly Holy Eucharist. But the National Cathedral, formally known as the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the City and Diocese of Washington, has a lot more to offer. And that’s not surprising, seeing as the impressive house of worship has been around since the early 20th century. It rallied community morale during World War II through special monthly services. Although such community events are part of the problem now, the National Cathedral is ready once again with curated online offerings. From the comfort of your living room, you can learn about the cathedral’s collection of gargoyles and grotesques (including the difference between the two) and hear more from experts about sculptures of Darth Vader and the other neo-Gothic creatures that adorn the building. Not an architecture buff? You can watch organist George Fergus’s demonstration, complete with an explanation of the unique instrument, or contribute to the National Cathedral’s 500,000 LEGO brick replica project. And finally, you can support photographer Colin Winterbottom and composer Danyal Dhondy by watching a time lapse video of light moving through the cathedral’s stunning stained glass windows. The Washington National Cathedral’s online offerings can be found at cathedral.org/online. Free.

—Sarah Smith

CITY LIGHTS

CITY LIGHTS

COOL FREAKS’ WIKIPEDIA CLUB

THE NATIONAL ARBORETUM’S EAGLE CAM

Ever find yourself down the Wikipedia rabbit hole of oddities and strange occurrences? The nearly 50,000 members of Cool Freaks’ Wikipedia Club have been there, too. In one of the last good things left on Facebook, self-proclaimed “cool freaks” are sharing the quirky Wiki discoveries that left an impression. The group has already caught on to a few Washington idiosyncrasies, like the demon cat haunting federal government buildings or the Anti-Flirt Club’s “war on auto invitation,” powered by women sick of unwanted male advances in 1920s D.C. But they also celebrate small, unexpected tidbits found on the site, such as discovering an article that claims the Association for the Oldest Inhabitants of the District of Columbia is, ironically, also the oldest civic organization in the District. Become a part of the club to share your own freaky Wikipedia discoveries and, if you’re new to the online encyclopedia, there are a few D.C.-centric places you can start. Consider reading (and cleaning up) the articles on the lost neighborhoods of Murder Bay, replaced by Federal Triangle, and Swampoodle, now mostly NoMa, and see where the hyperlinks take you.

Share the story of Lynn Arnold’s 42-day stay on the Big Chair in Anacostia in the summer of 1960. Or pick any anecdote from the controversial history of the McMillan Sand Filtration Site near Howard University to reignite the Save McMillan debate. Plus, it’s a welcome break from pandemic-laden social media feeds and a way to gather a few new tales to tell at the next virtual happy hour. Join Cool Freaks’ Wikipedia Club on Facebook at facebook.com/groups/coolfreakswikipediaclub. Free.

—Katie Malone

Heartbreak. Betrayal. Reconciliation. That was last year’s love story of Liberty and Justice, the hottest bald eagle couple in the District. The duo delighted the dedicated viewers of the “Eagle Cam” above their nest as they took on new suitors, raised baby bald eagles, and came and went from their nest above the Southwest police academy. However, after an intense mating season, the pair has gone missing and their camera is turned off. But for the eagle-eyed viewer, never fear: Mr. President and First Lady, D.C.’s other bald eagle couple, are live streamed daily from their nest in the National Arboretum. While the pair haven’t given us the same drama as their police academy counterparts, anything is possible in this nest. The live stream allows you to watch the eagles hang out on branches, fly in and out of their nest with twigs, and eat. The name of the game in eagle watching is patience, but if you wait long enough, you might get to see some special moments you wouldn’t otherwise witness if you weren’t peeking through a camera mounted high above a bald eagle’s nest. If nothing else, the stream’s sounds of chirping birds, rustling branches and clicking talons is calming. The live stream is available at naeaglecam.org. Free.

—Chelsea Cirruzzo

CITY LIGHTS CITY LIGHTS

EAST CITY BOOKSHOP HOTLINE

There are books about war, and books about love, plenty of books filled with poetry, photos and illustrations, and even a handful of books about pandemics (think Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven or Ling Ma’s Severance). Perhaps you prepared well for social distancing with a carefully curated pile of books on your bedside table. But if you weren’t ready with a doomsday library and now find yourself pacing around your studio apartment, East City Bookshop has an answer. In compliance with government guidelines, you can’t actually browse the community bookstore’s shelves. But you can give book buyer Emilie Sommer a call for personalized book recommendations. Want books that echo the public health crisis caused by COVID-19? Or just general dystopian reads? What about stories that will completely transport you from today’s worries and plop you in fantastical universes? Sommer and ECB have it all. And East City Bookshop’s new hotline is just one of the store’s many responses to make book shopping safe and accessible. After customers place an order (either over the phone or online), ECB offers delivery and discounted shipping. While browsing aisles and picking out books—even judging them by their covers—is a delightful way to pass the time, ECB’s expert hotline is sure to leave you with the perfect solution to quarantine-induced boredom. Text or call the book hotline at (202) 539-2554. You can also purchase books at eastcitybookshop.com. Prices vary.

—Sarah Smith

RIAN JOHNSON’S ONLINE OFFERINGS

Over the past few weeks, streaming services like HBO Now have reported user activity increasing as much as 70 percent as people try to entertain themselves while distancing from others. After a certain point, all those movie marathons might leave you wondering exactly how the sausage gets made. Enter Oscar-nominated film director Rian Johnson, notably born in Silver Spring. Best known for Knives Out, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and Looper, Johnson has posted the shooting drafts of most of his filmography for curious fans to read during this extended time indoors. Johnson also joined British film director Edgar Wright in sharing his quarantine viewing recommendations on film website Letterboxd. After Wright compiled his top 100 comedy films, Johnson curated a “’70s Musical Extravaganza!” list, saying the movie musicals of this era capture the “funky vital wilderness between the fall of the studio system and the ascent of the modern blockbuster.” But if Wright’s comedies and Johnson’s musicals don’t suit your tastes right now, Johnson challenged Russian Doll co-creator and star Natasha Lyonne to make the next watchlist, which she titled “I love dreams, even when they’re nightmares.” So there’s something for everybody! Read Johnson’s shooting drafts at rian-johnson.com/screenplays. The ’70s Musical Extravaganza! list can be found at boxd.it/548dQ. Free.

—Mercedes Hesselroth

washingtoncitypaper.com april 3, 2020 17

SAVAGELOVE My husband and I got married in August of 2019 and we were together for over five years before getting married. I’m very happy and love him with all my heart. I want to have his kids and support his entrepreneurial efforts as he supports mine. We don’t fight, we just have some tiffs here and there.

The kicker is that I have a tough time feeling him during sex and he doesn’t last as long as I would like him to. We’re adventurous enough to try different things, i.e. toys and different positions, but I find myself sexually unfulfilled. He also isn’t very willing/interested in going down on me, in fact he has not once gone down on me. I’m also finding myself attracted to and fantasizing about other men. In addition to being honest with my husband, I don’t know what the solution is. I’m not opposed to opening up a marriage but I worry that I’m just being selfish and that it’s too soon to try or even discuss it at any length. I did bring up a crush I have on a coworker and my husband said, “There’s nothing wrong with having a snack.” What did he mean by that? Do you have any other insights or suggestions on what to do?

—Married Not Dead P.S. I hope you, your family, and your friends are holding up OK during this pandemic. It’s a scary time, so I hope you’re all OK.

me o s d Nee dvice? love a Curious about kinks?

e h t t i s i V er p a P y Cit or more te f ve. i s b e w age Lo Sav washingtoncitypaper.com/ columns

I shared your letter with Tristan Taormino, author of Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships. Through her books, lectures, and podcasts (Sex Out Loud Radio), Taormino has helped countless couples navigate the transition from monogamy to non-monogamy. But before we dive into the specifics of your situation, MND, there’s something Taormino and I want to make clear to all.

“In this time of a global pandemic, thinking and talking about non-monogamy is all you can do right now,” said Taormino. “This goes for everyone: No new sex partners until public health experts say we can go back to standing closer than six feet apart. Even then, we’re going to have to proceed with caution.” Listen up, people: The woman who literally wrote the book on open relationships says open and poly relationships are canceled for the time being.

“Yup, canceled,” said Taormino, “unless every one of your partners lives with you.”

While COVID-19 isn’t classified as a sexually transmitted infection (STI), having sex with someone who has coronavirus would almost certainly result in transmission. And since people who get infected typically don’t show symptoms for up to two weeks, the fact that someone appears to be healthy doesn’t mean they are corona-free. Someone can look and feel great and be both infected and infectious. So for the time being we should only be having sex with a sex partner we live with. If you have more than one sex partner and you’re all staying in the same place, great! Poly isn’t canceled for you and your partners. But we shouldn’t be hooking up with new partners in person or going to see estab-

18 april 3, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

lished partners we don’t live with. That goes double for meeting up with non-cohabitating partners who have other partners and whose other partners have other partners of their own. But the good news is that sext messages and dirty video chats are both allowed and encouraged, kids, so we can get off online with new people as well as established partners who live on the other side of town or the other side of the world. Hell, get the whole polycule together on Zoom—just don’t actually get together (or get under) anyone you don’t live with.

Okay! With that out of the way, MND, we’re going to answer your question. But bear in mind that some of our advice—our advice about opening up your marriage—won’t be fully actionable until after COVID-19 is brought under control.

“I’m glad MND is being honest with her husband about her desires, but let’s take that further with even more specific talk about what’s missing in her sex life,” said Taormino. “In her letter, I heard: pussyeating, intense enough sensation from intercourse, and longer sex sessions. I’ll translate that: She’s missing pleasure, reciprocation, and orgasms for her. She is NOT being selfish for wanting these things. They are pretty fundamental aspects of a sexual relationship, and she needs to address them with her husband first.”

Backing way the hell up: Assuming you knew about my column five years ago, MND, it’s telling you didn’t ask for my advice back when you realized your new boyfriend was never going to eat your pussy. (Spoiler: I would’ve told you to dump him.) Since you chose not to break up with your boyfriend over the lack of cunnilingus back then and you don’t want to divorce your husband over it now, MND, it would seem that going without oral—at least going without at home—is the price of admission you’re willing to pay to be with this guy.

As for your other issues about your sex life with your husband—you don’t “feel him” during penis-in-vagina (PIV) intercourse and it’s over too quickly—the right toys could certainly help.

But if your husband ruled out penetration toys that were bigger than his cock, MND, or if you didn’t order any that were bigger than his cock to avoid hurting his feelings, you’re gonna have to broach the subject of buying some larger toys, MND, ones you can really feel. And since experimenting with new positions didn’t help your husband last longer, you should try alternating between toys and his cock during PIV, which will make both the sex (and the husband) last longer.

“If MND’s husband is really in this relationship, he should be open and willing to give most anything a try,” said Taormino. “MND really needs to see that he’s as interested in her pleasure and satisfaction as he is in his own.

And if there’s something she wants to try or something that really turns her on and gets her off that her husband doesn’t know about, now

is the time to share the juicy details.”

As for opening up the relationship, MND, I wouldn’t advise most people to initiate that convo at this moment because if the conversation goes badly—and they often do at first—that could mean sheltering in place with an angry person. But based on your husband’s reaction when you confessed having a crush on a coworker, MND, I think you could risk discussing opening up while you’re locked down. Your husband didn’t say there was nothing wrong with fantasizing about a snack, MND, he said there’s nothing wrong with having a snack. Make no mistake: That’s not a green light to immediately outsource getting your pussy eaten. But his calm, matterof-fact reaction when you confided in him about your crush is a good sign.

First things first: you need to work with your husband on improving your sex life at home and you should have a convo about that—and a convo about ordering some new sex toys—before you make plans to open up the relationship and start getting your pussy eaten elsewhere.

“Exploring non-monogamy is one way to address sexual incompatibilities and expand our capacity for love and intimacy,” said Taormino. “But the stuff between the two of them needs to get talked about first. Otherwise, you’re glossing over the issues with something new and shiny.”

Follow Tristan Taormino on Twitter @TristanTaormino.

—Dan Savage I’ve been in love with a close friend for years. Social distancing has thrown major life “regrets” into high relief and I would be crushed if something happened to him. We’ve both been distancing for two weeks and neither of us have symptoms. Can I have him come over to hang out? What if we ended up making out or hooking up? He has housemates and I don’t, so he’s around more people than I am, but everyone at his house has been distancing too. I see so many questions about hooking up with randos and that seems like a clear no-no. But what about hooking up with someone you know?

—No Regrets Also a no-no, NR. We’re not supposed to come within six feet of anyone we don’t live with, NR, which means you can’t invite this guy over to play cribbage and/or fuck you senseless. If you wanted to invite this guy over to stay, you could shack up and wait out the lockdown together.

But you can’t invite him over just to play. Instead of inviting him over and hoping for something to happen, NR, you should give this guy a call and tell him how you feel. He might feel the same way and want to be your quarantine buddy. But if he doesn’t feel the same way, at least you’ll know. Rejections we can get over, NR, but regrets are for life.

—DS

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

Newspaper and/or known heirs and heirs Adult Phone Legals periodical: Washwhose whereabouts Entertainment Adult . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ington . . . . . . 42 DC SCHOLARSshall PCS - REQUEST City Paper/ are unknown enKIPP DC PUBLIC FOR PROPOSALS – ModuLivelinks - Chat Lines. Flirt, chat Auto/Wheels/Boat . . . . .Daily . . . . . .Washington 42 Law ter their appearance lar Contractor Services - DC and date! Talk to sexy real singles CHARTER SCHOOLS Public Charter School in yourof area. Call now! in (844)thisScholars proceeding.

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TO a copy of theUNLESS RFP,A PROCEEDINGPersons believed to stjean@kippdc.org.

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by April 24, 2020. of thisnished notice 1 BR/1by BA mail basement ACT. OF COLUMBIA apt, Deanwood, $1200. Sep. enCommercial Painting withintrance, 25 W/W days of its Two Rivers PCS is soliciting carpet, W/D, kitchPROBATE DIVISION proposals to provide project manen, fireplace near Blue Line/X9/ Services. Two Rivers shall so agement services for a smallpublication conV2/V4. Shawnn 240-343-7173.

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by April 24, 2020.

Daily Washington Law 20020, was appointSchool Uniforms Reporter. Name of ed Personal RepresenTwo Rivers PCS is Personal Representatative of the estate soliciting price quotes tive: Adam Powell of Clifford Powell who from custom apparel TRUE TEST copy died on January 28, companies to produce Nicole Stevens Acting 2018, without a Will school uniform tops.

Register of Wills Pub and will serve without To request a copy of Dates: March 19, 26, Court Supervision. All the RFP, email proApril 2. unknown heirs and curement@tworiverheirs whose wherespcs.org. Proposals Request for Proabouts are unknown are due by April 24, posals Student shall enter their ap2020.

Data Management pearance in this proand Student Data ceeding. Objections SUPERIOR COURT Analytics Services to such appointment OF THE DISTRICT LAYC Career Acadshall be filed with the OF COLUMBIA emy Register of Wills, D.C., PROBATE DIVISION LAYC Career Acad515 5th Street, N.W., 2020 ADM 000194 emy is advertising Building A, 3rd Floor, Name of Decedent, the opportunity to Washington, D.C. Lorne Dale Maclver bid on Student Data 20001, on or before aka Dale Maclver.

Management and 9/19/2020. Claims Name and Address Student Data Analytagainst the decedent of Attorney Robin C. ics Services for one shall be presented Alexander, 901 Sixth (1) year starting to the undersigned Street, SW, #602A, July 1st, 2020 with with a copy to the Washington, DC possibility of renewal.

Register of Wills or to 20024. Notice of ApAdditional specificathe Register of Wills pointment, Notice to tions outlined in the with a copy to the Creditors and Notice Request for Proposals undersigned, on or to Unknown Heirs, (RFP) such as; school before 9/19/2020, Robin C. Alexanderl, information, and or be forever barred. whose address is 901 service needs may be Persons believed to Sixth Street, SW, obtained beginning be heirs or legatees #602A, Washingon April 15, 2020 of the decedent who ton, DC 20024, was from Bernadette do not receive a copy appointed Personal Kreh, bernadette@ of this notice by mail Representative of the laycca.org within 25 days of its estate of Lorne Dale Proposals will be publication shall so Maclver aka Dale accepted until May inform the Register Maclver who died on 01st, 2020 at 12 PM. of Wills, including November 25, 2019, All bids not addressname, address and with a Will and will ing all areas as outrelationship. Date serve without Court lined in the RFP will of first publication: Supervision. All unnot be considered.

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By Brendan Emmett Quigley

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