Washington City Paper (April 29, 2016)

CITYPAPER Washington

Tease 1 22 unpaid TuTors and d.C.’s reading gap 7

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CHATTER Start Breading the News

In which readers get a bad case of the You Forgot Abouts

Darrow MoNtgoMery

The sTories sandwiched between the front cover and back page of Washington City Paper’s first Sandwich Issue, led by Food Editor Jessica Sidman, provided a veritable smorgasbord of delights: a list of 15 must-try options, a profile of D.C.’s biggest bread nerd (“Code Bread”), a guide to the best deli meats (“A Cut Above”), a behind-the-scenes look at how Taylor Gourmet’s Casey Patten designs the chain’s offerings (“Tinker Taylor Sandwich Guy”), and so much more. “A ‘Sandwich Issue’ might be the only thing I ever wanted out of the City Paper.

Bravo,” tweeted @mpoindc, while @komurphy provided quite an endorsement of the A. Litteri pick: “When my boyfriend (now husband) introduced me to A.Litteri’s I knew that he was the man I was supposed to marry.” Several readers volunteered to fact check the must-try list, including the selfless @TheSamKhater: “Yummmmm I am happy to be a truther and put on 15 to make sure this reporting is accurate.” For others, the issue gave them a new reason to live: @DistrictTable tweeted, “I’ve just made it a personal mission to try each sandwich on this list.”

But the issue also infected some readers with a bad case of the You Forgot Abouts. Bd wrote, “wtf, why isn’t [Woodward Takeout Food] on here,” and Jim Ed commented, “As much as I love Litteris, this list is invalidated by not including the G Man from Mangialardo’s or the Grilled Ruben from Deli City. I expect a full retraction and apology in next week’s issue.” (Nope.) Others complained about the timing of the Sandwich Issue, including reader David in an email: “So whose idea was it to dedicate Passover week to an issue about the greatness of sandwiches and bread?” While the timing of the issue was completely coincidental, it brings me to one of the great things about this issue: It doesn’t go stale. Check out the full package at washingtoncitypaper.com/ —Sarah Anne Hughes go/sandwich2016.

Want to see your name in bold on this page? Send letters, gripes, clarifications, or praise to editor@washingtoncitypaper.com.

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DISTRICTLINE

Tomorrow’s History Today: This was the week that Yvette Alexander and David Garber were fined by watchdog agencies for problems with their campaigns.

Reading Hearts

The Bowser Administration is putting its dollars and its faith into volunteer reading programs. But can they really close the achievement gap?

Billy Cerullo stands at the front of the classroom at Drew Elementary in Ward 7 one chilly morning in January. The fresh-faced 23-year-old wears his work uniform—a blue polo with a red, black, and blue AmeriCorps insignia patch—and writes helpful tips for his team of volunteers-in-training on the blackboard behind him.

Ask open-ended questions. Wait five to seven seconds before helping. If the students give incomplete answers, try saying something like, “Can you tell me more?” Discuss the book before, during, and after reading.

The volunteers settle into pint-sized chairs at big rectangular tables and start their prep work. Most of these adults began their careers—some teaching in public city schools in D.C. and Baltimore—before Cerullo was born. But as long as they show up twice a week for training to become tutors through Reading Partners, an offshoot of the federal volunteer corps program, AmeriCorps, he’s the one in charge.

Reading Partners staffers who specialize in reading education train AmeriCorps members over several weeks; this includes a crash course in literacy best practices and one-on-one tutoring techniques. After that, these members teach groups of unpaid volunteers and lead classrooms as the volunteers work with students. On average, there is one AmeriCorps member for every 38 unpaid volunteers.

Cerullo began his position as site coordinator for Drew’s Reading Partners program last summer with some knowledge of the school; he tutored there a few afternoons a week while he worked at a lobbying firm, his first post-college job. Many of his fellow Reading Partners members also had experience tutoring in D.C. schools prior to becoming AmeriCorps members, and Cerullo says the training allowed him plenty of time

Stephanie Rudig

By Amanda Palleschi

to begin building relationships with Drew’s teachers and families.

Programs like Reading Partners have been criticized for their use of unpaid and quickly trained volunteers. Under this model, students are typically selected for the program by their schools if they test six months to two years below grade level, and meet their tutors twice a week for 45 minutes during their regular language arts class.

But there’s a growing body of research that

says this arrangement can effectively reduce achievement gaps in reading.

Muriel Bowser’s administration thinks so, too: The mayor and D.C. Public Schools announced last year that $20 million in District funds would be dedicated to closing the education achievement gap, specifically by targeting the District’s black and Latino males. The Empowering Males of Color initiative features a controversial plan to build an all-boys college preparatory school in

Ward 7 ; targeted grants to DCPS schools, including $1.7 million in “innovation grants” for non-traditional enrichment and support programs at 16 schools; and 500 new unpaid literacy volunteers. The Bowser administration is turning to Reading Partners and a similar organization, Literacy Labs, to recruit them.

The District has one of the worst achievement gaps by race in the country, and some of the worst reading and math

washingtoncitypaper.com april 29, 2016 7

DISTRICTLINE City Desk

scores overall. Recent tests results of thirdthrough eighth-graders revealed that just 25 percent of all students, in both DCPS and charter schools, are meeting or exceeding grade level expectations in English, results DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson called “sobering.” Nearly 50 percent of the District’s black and Latino boys read below grade level by fourth grade.

D.C. is also home to many literacy nonprofits and young professionals, college students, and retirees eager to volunteer at them. Some, like the hip literary haven 826DC, fill waiting lists with undergrads and government nine-to-fivers eager to spend Saturday mornings reading to elementary students who receive free school lunches and are often years behind in reading skills.

The models and aims of these programs vary as widely as ideas about what works.

But does some Saturday morning “giving back” translate into better test scores and literacy for D.C.’s children? And how can the District measure whether volunteers are actually making a difference? As the Bowser administration targets its attention and its dollars toward one of them, clues to what makes these programs a success—and a failure— can be found in results of the city’s longstanding literacy nonprofits and volunteer models.

Reading Partners began in the San Francisco Bay area in 1999. It pairs volunteers sourced from federal community service programs like AmeriCorps and SeniorCorps with its own curriculum and learning-to-read philosophies. These days, it follows Common Core standards.

DCPS, in its partnership with the federal New Schools Venture Fund, brought the nonprofit here in 2010. The group says it currently serves 850 students in 14 DCPS and four charter elementary schools with 1,000 volunteers. The nonprofit currently has 50 volunteers who signed up through EMOC rather than its typical recruitment pipeline. That number is expected to grow significantly both this semester and in later years through the blessing of the Bowser administration.

Karen Gardner, the executive director of Reading Partners in D.C., says the administration’s decision to make the program part of its EMOC initiative was “a pivotal turning point in our overall relationship with the city and DCPS.” “It gave us clout and a stronger reputation,” she says.

This winter, Bowser and several of her

staffers attended a Reading Partners training session—the group and several Metropolitan Police Department cadets are all tutors in training. Several studies and even a few skeptics suggest that the administration’s faith in the Reading Partners model could prove to be wise.

The program boasts impressive statistics for DCPS students from the 2014-15 school year: 82 percent of students in Reading Partners narrowed the gap between them and peers who read at grade level. And a recent study from the nonpartisan education research firm MDRC found that Reading Partners participants nationwide added one and a half to two months in reading skills each year from second to fifth grade.

The study received attention from education policy wonks like Robert Slavin, who directs the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins. He is among the skeptics of volunteer models in literacy training: “As a means of solving our reading crisis, I don’t think they’re a serious response,” he told the New York Times of programs like Reading Partners.

His research synthesizes several years of studies about the efficacy of such programs, and the results point to a clear pecking order

Paul Penniman, the founder of Resources for Inner City Children, agrees— with some caveats. Like Slavin, Penniman is skeptical that volunteer literacy programs targeted at younger students can produce sustainable results.

Penniman started RICH in the early 2000s, rounding up his network of trained literacy diagnosticians and retired teachers from his prior decades-old for-profit tutoring business. His wealthy former clients— well-heeled parents who hired his tutors to help their kids prepare for the SATs or to pass AP calculus—became RICH’s benefactors.

Like Reading Partners, Penniman’s model works by taking students out of class for oneon-one time in both reading and math. Unlike Reading Partners, Penniman pays his tutors.

“If we want to solve the most intractable aspects of D.C.’s reading crisis, we’ll need to invest in luring our most disconnected older students back to school and providing them with high-quality professional tutoring once they get there,” he wrote in a blog post after Bowser announced EMOC. “An expanded volunteer tutor base won’t solve the problem.”

for one-on-one reading tutoring with elementary students behind in the subject: Certified teachers work better than paraprofessionals who work better than unpaid volunteers.

Still, Slavin says, D.C.’s commitment to the model is impressive; there isn’t much data on cities investing in such programs as a key part of their strategy to both close the education gap and possibly cut costs.

“It could be a terrific thing to do, depending on what the alternatives might have been,” Slavin tells City Paper.

Cerullo and four volunteers at Drew finish their prep and the kids come in. In the back corner of the classroom, Francis Young reads with nine-year-old Malachi Childs.

The fourth-grader breezes through each page of his picture book, about a family of wolves in a snowstorm. Childs has no difficulty reading the words on the page, but Young must slow him down. The beginning readers’ curriculum in Reading Partners is phonetic based, working on sounds the letters make.

The next level targets comprehension—con-

If you’re 826DC, you can offer volunteers a certain cache like donor events attended by James Franco... But you cannot tell a third-grader that her reading buddy won’t leave for graduate school next year.

8 april 29, 2016 washingtoncitypaper.com

cepts like cause and effect.

In the story, the wolf boy has just grabbed his boots to go outside.

“Wait,” Young says. He turns the page back and points to the wolf boy, then turns to Childs. “Is he making an inference?”

Childs shrugs. “Yeah.”

Young learned about Reading Partners through his church on nearby Eastern Avenue in Deanwood. “I love it,” he says. Unlike some of his Reading Partners counterparts, Young never worked as a teacher. The 61-year-old had recently retired from a long career with the National Labor Relations Board and was looking for something to do.

“I think in D.C., they need to have more male role models.”

It’s possible for a volunteer reader to become a role model, but it’s unclear how often that happens. Every education policy wonk, community leader, and nonprofit literacy program leader I spoke with mentioned, unprompted, the same problem: D.C. provides these programs with lots of eager public servants who want to play but fewer who will stick around for more than a season.

“Retention is tough,” Reading Partners’ Gardner says, blaming the oft-cited D.C. stereotype—its residents are just too transient.

Just 35 percent of Reading Partners’ volunteers from the 2014-15 school year are returning this year. Though that number will be boosted by EMOC volunteers, she’s unsure whether those volunteers will help improve the 80-percent retention figure chapters in other cities have.

Any volunteer program will struggle to build-in meaningful accountability, Slavin says. You can check criminal records, take fingerprints, and require a TB test. You can promise all the free coffee and pastries and feel goods of service. If you’re 826DC, you can offer volunteers a certain cache like donor events attended by James Franco and a volunteer room surrounded by signed letters from the president. But you can’t tell a thirdgrader that her reading buddy won’t leave for graduate school next year.

“It’s something we spend a lot of time talking about it,” says 826DC Programs Director Lacey Dunham. “We’ve invested a lot of our resources into providing volunteers the best experience they can have.”

The D.C. chapter of the San Francisco-based, Dave Eggers-founded organization—part literacy nonprofit, part coollit-kids club—retained just a quarter of its 4,431 volunteers from last school year this year. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a wait list: If you’d like to volunteer to read to Harriet

DISTRICTLINE City Desk

Tubman Elementary students on a Saturday morning, you’ll have to wait until next year, although weekday opportunities are regularly available at 51 DCPS schools.

826 surveys parents, DCPS teachers, and students each year for feedback on its programs. Dunham says the results consistently show an increase in “confidence levels” reported by students and “high satisfaction” among teachers they work with. The organization, which has been in D.C. for more than a decade, is more apt to highlight narratives of creative growth than boast statistics of success. During one winter 2016 volunteer information session, Dunham recalled hosting a workshop where children of immigrants put together oral histories of their families—stuff they couldn’t express safely at school.

“It’s the first time some of them get the chance to tell their own stories,” she says.

“The kids think that you are super interesting and cool, so it’s always nice to get that confidence boost,” says Alex Turley, a sophomore at George Washington University. Her undergrad schedule allows her to tutor at 826 four to five times a week. She often works with the same kids, sometimes in small groups, particularly if they’re working on similar projects or skills, she says.

Turley’s level of commitment isn’t the norm at 826DC, but at For Love of Children, consistent volunteer attendance is required. An unpaid volunteer might meet with a student at the Adams Morgan mainstay just once a week, but the person is expected to work one-on-one with the same student for an entire school year. For the last several school years, about 90 percent of volunteers have returned the following year.

FLOC has been around in various iterations since the 1960s, when it housed abused children, and now occupies two cozy floors of an old building next to a 7-Eleven near a busy Columbia Road intersection. The classrooms are painted in bright colors and brim with old furniture and used books. Student artwork and sweet notes from parents adorn the walls.

Appearances aside, FLOC runs a tight ship.

Students and parents must meet with an intake specialist. Students are tested every two to three weeks to measure their progress in FLOC’s curriculum, and they are rarely allowed to work on regular homework. After a student misses a few sessions, a FLOC staffer calls home.

The volunteers in the Neighborhood Tutoring Program—more than 400 this school year—must attend several hours of train-

ing in the FLOC curriculum and some of the politics of K-12 education in D.C. During the 2012-13 school year, 66 percent of its students made a least one year of improvement in reading and math. More than 90 percent of its volunteers came back.

The program also has a college readiness program for high school students and an outdoor education center in West Virginia. But Cody Laminack, FLOC’s Neighborhood Tutoring Program coordinator, regrets that they can’t be everywhere—specifically, in Wards 7 and 8. This year, FLOC added two partner schools east of the Anacostia River, but they’d like to add more. “In that part of the city, more services are needed.”

Over the last decade, 58-year-old Penniman, a soft-spoken former math teacher, has become one of the most ardent education advocates for students in D.C.’s lowincome neighborhoods. In the fall of 2011, RICH expanded from its work exclusively with students at all four District Chavez charter school and began tutoring at Anacostia High School. That same year, Penniman purchased a home there.

He’s lost five RICH students to gun violence and doesn’t feel completely safe walking 100 yards left or right of his house, but Penniman thinks more about the divide between the west and east sides of the District than he does his own personal safety.

He hopes the Bowser administration won’t rule out programs like his, that use paid volunteers and focus on older students in this part of town, when it awards EMOC’s targeted grants.

As the winter deadline to apply for the latest batch of EMOC’s targeted grants approached, Gardner said schools had reached out wanting to add Reading Partners with this money. But the calls she remembers aren’t from principals and administrators.

One day, a parent at a DCPS school that already had a Reading Partners program called her. The parent was unaware of the program and told Gardner she was thinking about taking another job to pay for private tutoring. She didn’t have to, because of Reading Partners, Gardner says.

Penniman, the skeptic, praises Bowser and Henderson for tempering expectations.

“Generally, the message they have is that the system is making progress, but we have a lot of work to do and any program they come up with is not going to be solving a problem overnight,” he says.

“On the other hand, any time you have hundreds more adults coming in to help kids, CP that’s a good thing.”

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UNOBSTRUCTEDVIEW

And Now For Something Completely Different

By Matt Terl

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The Capitals were leading their best-ofseven playoff series three games to two. They had largely outplayed the Flyers in that fifth game, but things didn’t break right or bounce right and they lost anyway.

And everyone in D.C. seemed to know that the series might as well be over.

Not that the Caps—the best team in hockey this regular season—would rebound and knock out the scrappy-but-overmatched Flyers team, but that one way or another, two more losses and another ignominious playoff exit were coming, and doom doom doom doomy doom doom doom.

DOOM. It wasn’t just random fans on Twitter melting down, or crazy-voiced callers on sports talk radio. The giant headline smack in the middle of the Washington Post’s Sports front, spanning a column and a game story, blared “Here they go again.” The column’s subhed talked about “playoff ghosts” while the gamer’s referenced “memories of 2010, ’15.”

Then the Caps came out in Game 6, played a tough game, overcame some questionable calls, maybe got a little bit lucky, and won. Series over, four games to two, and on to Pittsburgh and round 2.

The wheels stayed on. The dumpster remained unlit. The goats remained un-lassoed.

And I found myself thinking that maybe it’s time to think about things a little differently.

It sounds ridiculous, coming from me. I’ve become as much of a doom merchant as anyone else in town, probably worse than most.

There is no silver lining in which I cannot find a dark cloud. Every win is a fluke and every loss a demonstration of the inevitable crush of history.

But I wasn’t always this way. A decade ago, I used to argue in favor of positivity. I made shirts with “Positivity ‘05” written across the front in a freeware version of the Pigskins’ font. The idea at the time was, hey, let’s enjoy the games and assume that things will break right and maybe they will. And they did, briefly, through an improbable playoff run.

At some point, my mindset changed—drastically. It’d be easy to blame years of losing, or my own experience working for the NFL, or the persistently dreary luck of the local fran-

chises, but I don’t think that’s it. I think that I, like so many other local fans, just found it easier to build this downtrodden identity, as if we looked at Boston’s decade-plus of sporting success and decided that it was entirely due to the fanbase’s fixation on their curse.

And it’s ridiculous. Right now, this very week, the best player in hockey is leading the Caps—who, again, were the best team in this year’s regular season—into the second round of the playoffs. The best player in baseball— with a chance to be one of the best players ever in baseball—has the Nationals off to a hot start while making signature plays even on his days off. The football team, fresh off yet another improbable playoff run, just improbably signed an All-Pro at one of their major positions of need and appears to have a competent human being preparing their approach to this week’s NFL Draft.

Sure, you could look at each of these things and find the negative—the Caps might choke again! The Lerners might not be willing to pay Bryce Harper what he deserves to stay here forever! The local NFL squad is just chasing big names like they’ve always done!

But, seriously, what’s the point of that? What do we gain? The easy answer is that anticipating the hurt lessens the impact when it arrives, but it seems pretty clear that that’s not the case.

Even poor Robert Griffin III is an exemplar of this. He was the Rookie of the Year in 2012 and Washington was the most exciting team to watch. Then it all fell apart, and now that he’s signed in Cleveland, local sports websites are posting derisive articles about how bad he looks in their offseason work. It’s nasty, and it’s spiteful, and for some reason it suddenly just seems like much less fun to me than remembering when he seemed great and hoping that he can approach those heights again somewhere else.

It definitely goes against my natural Eeyore mentality, but I’m going to try something different. I’m going to try to focus on the positives, believe the teams will play to their strengths, and just generally not be so damned dreary all the time.

Except about the Wizards. As long as Ernie Grunfeld is running the show there, they’re CP doomed.

Follow Matt Terl on Twitter @matt_terl.

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Gear Prudence: Do drivers treat bicyclists differently depending on whether they’re wearing bike clothes or normal clothes? I didn’t think so, but I’ve recently started riding to work in my work clothes and I feel like I’m being treated much better. Way more patient, way less honking. Or am I totally making this up? —Could Lycra Outfits Thoroughly Hamper Empathy, Safety?

Dear CLOTHES: It’s really hard to generalize about how drivers treat cyclists as this behavior is wildly variable, depending on the individual driver, the individual cyclist, and the context in which they come together. But GP isn’t going to let this stop him from wildly generalizing: Yes, drivers do treat cyclists differently depending on what they’re wearing, and people wearing natural fibres are generally treated with a greater degree of deference and understanding. Let’s look at why, in spite of not much evidence whatsoever, this is supposed to be definitely true.

There are two sides to the theory that underlies this, and both relate to driver perception.

Consider first the person riding in full Lycra kit—the one who conforms to the perception of what a “real cyclist” is. This person, irrespective of actual behavior or ability, looks like she really knows how to ride a bicycle. That the rider is both competent, capable, and fast is supposed merely by her attire. This assumption, to everyone’s detriment, causes drivers to not take as much care, slow down, or worry about giving this rider an appropriate amount of space.

Now consider the bicyclist in standardissue clothes. This isn’t a cyclist per se, but just a regular person who happens to be riding a bike. Therefore, the theory goes, drivers are somehow better able to relate to this “regular” person and react accordingly, giving the person due care and caution and overall treating him much more sympathetically.

Somehow clothes—and clothes alone—create an underlying condition of rapport that leads to a better overall interaction. Is this actually true? Um, maybe. It even has a goofy name—the Mary Poppins Effect—presumably because riding a bike involves Victorian costuming and flying umbrellas.

But even if it’s true, is it actionable? Should you forswear your preferred biking attire for the supposed safety benefits to be gained from looking like a non-bicyclist when bicycling? No way.

You should wear what you want, and if what you want to wear is full cycling kit, then go nuts.

Cyclists needn’t game drivers’ perceptions and sympathies to have a safe cycling experience.

Whether it’s spandex, a suit, or a Chewbacca costume, ride in what makes you comfortable and don’t worry about the illusory benefits of a silly-named maybe-true phenomenon. —GP Gear Prudence is Brian McEntee, who tweets at @sharrowsDC. Got a questions about bicycling? Email gearprudence@washcp.com.

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Buck Angel is a public speaker, a filmmaker, an activist, and a trans man, NOPENIS, who famously and fearlessly bills himself as “the man with a pussy.” I passed your letter on to him because who better to answer a question from a man with a twat than the man with a pussy?

“Anyone who hasn’t had sex in more than a year is going to find it scary to get back out there and start again,” said Buck. “And starting again with a body that you might not be 100 percent comfortable with yet? That’s even scarier. The first thing that NOPENIS needs to hear—and really believe—is that he is lovable.

And he is, even if he doesn’t know it yet.”

The second order of business: You gotta stop beating yourself up over that one-night stand. Take it from Buck, your fellow trans man, and take it from me, your fellow Irish Catholic queer: You didn’t do anything wrong, you didn’t give anything away—hell, you were doing something right.

“Hookups can be important for understanding your body sexually,” said Buck. “So NOPENIS shouldn’t be mad at himself. We learn and grow from our experiences, even if they’re bad ones. And here’s what I learned from my first experiences in the gay men’s world of sex: Hookups are the way it’s done.

I was not prepared for that because I’d had sex only with women before my transition.

That was hard for me, too, at first. But what I learned was that I wasn’t being rejected, even if it was only a one-night thing. I was being accepted in a way I wasn’t used to.”

Finally, NOPENIS, you’ve got to stop seeing your body and your twat as problems.

It’s the only body you’ll ever have, and it’s a body some will find attractive and some won’t.

Some guys will be attracted to your body (and you, ideally) for its differences—not attracted to your body (ditto) despite its differences.

“NOPENIS absolutely shouldn’t count him-

12 april 29, 2016 washingtoncitypaper.com

self out just because he’s trans,” said Buck.

“The world is different now, and many people are attracted to trans men sexually. He just needs to learn to love himself and to have sexual confidence, because people find that attractive. And he should continue to experiment and continue to embrace new experiences!”

For more Buck, go to buckangel.com. And you can—and should—follow Buck on Twit—Dan Savage ter @BuckAngel.

Shakespeare: “Let thee not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.”

Watching these two walk down the aisle will be like watching two drunk drivers speed around a closed racetrack. Maybe they’ll crash, maybe they won’t; maybe they’ll die in a fire, maybe they’ll get out alive. But so long as no one else is gonna get hurt, why risk your own neck trying to pull these fuckers over?

—Dan

I have a friend who is getting married. She’s cheated on every guy she’s been with, including her last three husbands. This will be her fourth marriage. I’m sure she’s fed the new guy a million reasons why her first three marriages didn’t work out.

She’s obviously a sex fiend, but she’s not kinky.

And here’s the punch line: I found her fiancé’s profile on Fetlife, and he has some hardcore fetishes—even by my standards! I’m sure his kinks are going unexplored within their relationship/engagement and that they will go unexplored once they’re married, as my friend has been horrified during discussions of my attendance at BDSM events. I know your rule is generally to “stay the fuck out of it,” but I have a rule that goes like this: “I would like to know that the person I’m dating is a serial cheater who’s probably after me for my money.”

So do I warn the guy? —Fucked Regarding Imperiling Ensuing Nuptials, Dan

My father is a friendly, kind, all-around good guy. We get along well and always have. But I now have to avoid all political discussions with him. He was always a bit socially conservative, but now he gets a lot of batshit crazy and simply dumb ideas from the scourge of our nation today: Fox News. How can we stop the dumbing down of our society by Fox News, Dan? We have to do something about this malady! —Anonymous

Mind your own business, FRIEND, and do so with a clear conscience—because these two sound perfect for each other. He’s on Fetlife looking for someone to diaper him, and she’s probably cheating on him already. If your friend is still a dishonest, lying, heartbreaking cheat—if she’s still making monogamous commitments she cannot keep—why stop her from marrying a man who is already cheating on her or is likely to cheat on her shortly after the wedding? To gently paraphrase William

He’s on Fetlife looking for someone to diaper him, and she’s probably cheating on him already.

“Anonymous is right—Fox News is a malady, one that I’ve often joked is worse than Ebola,” said the documentary filmmaker Jen Senko. “It destroys families and has torn apart the country. That’s pretty powerful.”

Here’s what Senko did about it: She made The Brainwashing of My Dad, a terrific documentary exploring how Fox News and other right-wing media turned her mild-mannered, nonpolitical father into ranting, raving, rightwing fanatic.

“We need to stigmatize ‘Faux News,’” said Senko. “I make it a point when I walk into a restaurant or some other public place and they have on Faux News of politely asking them to turn it off. I write to news outlets when they try to emulate Fox and complain.”

But how do you get your own dad to turn off Fox News?

“Speaking to loved ones is important but it’s difficult,” said Senko. “You have to approach them in a calm way, starting the conversation on neutral ground. Sometimes just getting them out of the house and away from the TV helps. There is a group called Hear Yourself Think (hearyourselfthink.org) that focuses on deprogramming Fox News viewers. You will find plenty of advice there. But if you can sit down with your loved one and tell them you are concerned about their anger and their worry and you feel that Fox News is helping to generate that, it can be a conversation opener. You can also get them to try to watch our movie!”

Go to thebrainwashingofmydad.com and watch the trailer to learn more about Senko’s terrific film. And you can—and you should— follow Senko on Twitter @Jen_Senko. —Dan Send your Savage Love questions to mail@savagelove.net.

THESTRAIGHTDOPE Surely no discussion of dumb politicians can be complete without reference to dearly departed George W., who left behind not just a tanked economy and one or two intractable military misadventures but volumes worth of great lines—you’ll recall “Is our children learning?,” etc. Bush also memorably described looking into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and getting, quite romantically, “a sense of his soul.”

I bring it up because we’d need to give a lot of lawmakers some very thorough eye exams to even begin to answer your question. Are politicians dumb? Who the hell knows? I suspect you’d find that results vary, as with most folks, but that what expresses itself in politicians as apparent dumbness might often reflect a certain kind of savvy. Sure, we had a good laugh when Oklahoma’s Jim Inhofe brought a snowball onto the Senate floor last February as evidence that global warming is a hoax—but keep in mind that Inhofe is well funded by the fossil-fuel industry, and represents a constituency notable for climate-change skepticism.

You think he’s dumb? He’s too busy counting campaign money to care.

It’s important to consider not just politicians’ public statements, which may be pure theater, but the whole “fruit salad of their life,” as Ben Carson recently and so perfectly put it. And there’s another knock on your theory, Knut—Carson seemed like a blathering idiot during the debates, but the guy was a brilliant neurosurgeon by every account. He’s as good a demonstration as you’ll find of the theory of multiple intelligences, originated

by Harvard professor Howard Gardner: Carson would seem to have what Gardner calls visual-spatial and bodily-kinesthetic intelligences by the bushel, but far less of the verbal-linguistic kind. So: • Intelligence is a hazy, multifaceted construct that can be tracked in any number of ways.

• There’s not exactly a surfeit of meaningful data on intelligence as regards politicians as a class.

• Let’s not put too much stock in their public behavior, which can’t be assumed to reflect their actual beliefs.

Of course it’s still tempting to speculate.

One guy who’s succumbed is psychologist Dean Keith Simonton, who in a 2006 study endeavored to estimate IQs for all American presidents, up to and including W. For most presidents Simonton worked from personality assessments by their biographers; he anony-

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mized the data and submitted it to a panel of independent judges, using various analytical tools to validate the results. Now, let’s keep in mind that (a) to the extent IQ scoring is meaningful, it’s mainly as a diagnostic of intellectual or emotional impairment, not a system for ranking healthy people’s intelligence, and (b) the guy is essentially guessing what the presidents’ IQs were anyway.

That said: Simonton found Bush to be “definitely intelligent”—with an estimated IQ around 125, or “in the upper range of college graduates in raw intellect”—but below average relative to other presidents. Compared to all 20th-century presidents (and I’ll note I suggested as much in a 2001 column), “only Harding has a lower score.” The rest were markedly above the national average, which hovers around 100; twenty-eight presidents were given a “genius”-level score, typically defined as anything north of 130.

Scholars have historically assumed a link between political leaders’ education and their effectiveness, but in a paper last year in the Journal of Politics researchers looked at the track records of 20th-century U.S. congresspeople and found that the ones with college degrees didn’t have any more success—in terms of getting bills passed and holding onto their seats—than the ones without. “The idea that education is a marker of leader quality,” the authors concluded, “is far from the empirical regularity it is made out to be.”

You also asked about personality traits.

Here I’ll point you toward a 2012 piece in the Atlantic that described certain people marked by “lack of remorse and empathy, a sense of grandiosity, superficial charm, conning and manipulative behavior, and refusal to take responsibility for one’s actions.” Politicians, right? Well, the author was talking about psychopaths; one neuropsychologist quoted here identifies former British prime minister Tony Blair, for instance, as a perfectly “plausible psychopath.” By this estimation, far from being an impediment to a career in politics, psychopathy could in fact optimize one for it. But then I guess we already knew that.

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AT WHAT

PRICE? Amidst pristine high-rises and condemned buildings are thousands of poorly maintained low-rent units in limbo.

By Allison Kowalski and Quinn Myers | Photographs by Darrow Montgomery There were bedbugs, leaks, and broken appliances. Countless phone calls and court appearances. Still, after dealing with deteriorating housing conditions for years, many D.C. residents in low-rent units have found themselves caught in the gray area of a system that struggles to hold landlords accountable for providing functional, healthy living spaces.

Over the past two months, Washington City Paper has met and interviewed tenants, housing advocates, and landlords across the city, and heard stories about infestations lasting years, frustrations with neighbors and building management as 14 april 29, 2016 washingtoncitypaper.com

development money pours in, and, for some, fears of losing the home they’ve lived in for years.

These issues are tragically common: In a survey of nearly 600 District residents by the DC Consortium of Legal Services Providers, more than 43 percent of respondents said they had problems “keeping up with rent increases and getting their landlords to make repairs.” More than 30 percent of those surveyed said housing was the “most serious problem they had faced in the past two years.”

The official route for tenants to deal with poor living conditions and unre-

sponsive landlords is through the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, whose inspectors conduct housing code inspections when residents report problematic conditions in their rented houses and apartments. When an issue gets reported to DCRA, “certain things are obvious, certain things are almost always not going to be [obvious], and then you have the stuff in between, where, depending on what it looks like, it might need to be treated like an emergency,” says Matt Orlins, a spokesperson for DCRA. “Something like bedbugs,” he says, “could require an emergency inspection,

An extension cord supplies power to the laundry room at 1331-1333 Alabama Ave. SE. washingtoncitypaper.com april 29, 2016 15

but it may depend on the severity of what someone is reporting. If it sounds like something that’s going to be an immediate harm to someone’s health, we’re going to treat it like an emergency.”

Even with repeated visits by DCRA inspectors to units that have faced ongoing problems, it’s often difficult to hold landlords accountable, as they do patch jobs and make temporary fixes to avoid fines and violations.

Anita Ballantyne is a program director at Housing Counseling Services, where she helps individuals navigate the process of improving their building conditions. One way she does this is to start tenants associations to pressure landlords for changes, to varying effect.

A problem with this, Ballantyne says, is that some tenants are hesitant to invite inspectors into their buildings. Having been neglected for so long, tenants fear an inspector will condemn a building, forcing them out of a space whose only comfort is its affordability.

Neglect can also be a tactic landlords use to pressure their tenants into leaving, as developers seek vacant buildings to renovate or demolish.

“Extreme neglect is often coupled with, ‘Oh I’m selling the building anyway or you have to leave,’” Ballantyne says.

Will Merrifield is a staff attorney with the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless who’s worked with tenants at buildings facing that dilemma. “They just let the properties go to hell. This is what they do. This is their business model,” Merrifield says of the buildings’ owners. “For that to be a business model, to exploit and displace people so you can make maximum profit through redevelopment, that’s what’s wrong with this city. That’s a big part of why we have a homelessness problem…

You’re betting on people being displaced who have lived here their whole lives and pay taxes. It’s sick.”

City Paper met and toured four buildings that are facing such situations. Two of these addresses were part of 31 Freedom of Information Act requests City Paper sent to DCRA seeking inspection reports from the last five years. City Paper received 21 of these reports back, all of which detail various rodent and bedbug infestations, water damage, faulty appliances, and poor conditions that tenants are left to live with.

1451 Sheridan St. NW The lock on the front door of 1451 Sheridan St. NW is broken. On a Sunday in midMarch, it takes a group of volunteers from the Latino Economic Development Center to pull it open. They head down to the apartment building’s basement laundry

room, where a tenant meeting is scheduled for that afternoon.

The meeting, organized by LEDC organizer Talia Brock, is meant to serve as a venue for building residents to voice concerns and identify problems they’re having with the conditions of their apartments.

Over the course of an hour, about 15 tenants, mostly Ethiopian immigrants, describe deteriorating appliances and internal plumbing and electrical issues, which they say their landlord has neglected to fix for years.

The building, along with several others

16 april 29, 2016 washingtoncitypaper.com

in the neighborhood, is owned by Saifur Khan, who operates as 16th St. Heights Noah LLC. At the tenant meeting, guided by Brock, residents discuss different ways they could potentially hold the attention of and get much needed results from a landlord they say is unresponsive and often difficult to work with.

Among them is Kassahun Workneh, who has lived in the Above, the exterior building with his of 1405 Somerset; family for the past pictured, Tesfa 16 years. For most Adamssu’s ceiling of that time, he says, there has been a recurring leak in his bedroom and living room that has never been permanently fixed.

“My son is 12 now, he was born in this building. And when my wife was pregnant I started to worry,” Workneh says of the health hazards the leak has created, like mold and fungus. Twelve years later, after a series of temporary fixes by building management, water still comes through parts of the ceiling and walls in his apartment when it rains or snows heavily.

After years of frustrating patch jobs, Workneh says he has stopped contacting Khan about the leak. “Now I stop ask-

ing [Khan] because you know, same story, I don’t want to fool myself when it starts dripping,” he says, shaking his head. He says that he’s been sending photos and videos of the leak to Khan for years, but it hasn’t resulted in any lasting solution.

During a phone call with City Paper in mid-April, Khan repeatedly denied neglecting issues in his properties, saying that “the apartment condition is good” and that he has fixed all of the problems in the buildings he owns in 16th Street Heights. “The city inspector came and they went to my buildings… Whatever violation I get from the city inspector, I done,” he says.

Over the past four years, inspectors from DCRA have inspected individual apartments at 1451 Sheridan 33 times, according to Orlins. At 1405 Somerset Place NW, a nearby building Khan also owns, 30 unit inspections have occurred in the same time period.

Workneh, who recently started working as a cab driver, says he pays $700 a month for a one-bedroom apartment he shares with his wife and son. Moving to a different apartment, he says, just isn’t economically feasible. “The problem is that of course, next day, I can find something expensive, but I cannot afford it,” he says. “So I’m stuck here. We cannot afford it. We pay [and] live with this problem.”

1405 Somerset Place NW A block east of Workneh’s building, at 1405 Somerset Place NW, Tesfa Adamssu hasn’t paid her rent in 10 months. After years of persistent bug and mice infestations in the second floor apartment she shares with her mother, Adamssu stopped paying rent last summer, demanding that her landlord take action that would lead to a permanent fix.

Adamssu’s building is also owned and operated by Khan and 16th St. Heights Noah LLC, and, like 1451 Sheridan, it’s occupied mostly by Ethiopians and a few Hispanic residents. Adamssu immigrated to the United States from Ethiopia in 2002, and works as a nursing assistant at Sibley Memorial Hospital while taking classes part time at University of the District of Columbia and Academy of Hope.

Since moving into her current apartment four years ago, Adamssu says she has been battling waves of infestations without any real solutions from building management.

Mice, roaches, and bedbugs have nestled into the corners of her bedroom and destroyed pieces of furniture, but for the past three years, Adamssu says, getting Khan to deal with the problem has been almost impossible.

“We moved in, and we didn’t know what it was. Then roaches on top of roaches,

mice. We kept on calling [the landlord].

After you call him, it would take him six, seven months to come.” The bedbugs, Adamssu says, forced her and her mother to constantly rearrange their apartment and get rid of infested belongings. “I had to throw my couch [out]. I got rid of three, four mattresses.”

“The bugs,” she adds, have “been hiding in the living room, bedroom, everywhere.”

Similar to Workneh’s leak down the street, Adamssu says that even when management would complete repairs and exterminations, they weren’t extensive enough to solve any problems. “They weren’t going at all,” she says of the bugs after initial attempts to get rid of them. “The extermination they did was not strong enough to kill the bugs. Here, it was so infested and they didn’t care.”

Copies of DCRA inspection documents that Adamssu provided show a history of violations detailing rodents, roaches, and bedbugs in her apartment, and totaling in the several thousands of dollars in potential fines for Khan. “The problem with DCRA,” she says, “is… they giving him time, before one week he will get the job done, which is a lousy job. Then six months, it is the same thing. He’s not maintaining the extermination on time.”

The infestation, and lack of responsibility from management, Adamssu says, has been extremely disruptive to her life and her mother’s. Last year, with help from lawyers and housing advocates, Adamssu took Khan to court, forcing him to combat the conditions of the apartment which, she alleges, he had ignored for so long. The case settlement resulted in a rent abatement for Adamssu, which lasts until June 2016.

By the end of March, because of her case against Khan, Adamssu says most of the problems have been fixed and adequate exterminations have finally occurred. “He change the oven, he change the refrigerator, they change the floor, the kitchen floor,” she says, but only after the court ordered him to do so. A DCRA notice from January 2016 includes two violations against 16th St. Heights Noah LLC for failure to eliminate infestations of rodents, roaches, and bedbugs. Adamssu says that since then, the roaches and mice are gone.

But even with improvements, Adamssu is still grappling with her apartment’s conditions. During an interview in her living room in early April, she repeatedly smacked her hand on the table, killing tiny bugs as they crawled up from the wall and floor.

“He doesn’t care. He never cared,” Adamssu says of her landlord. “It’s a complicated situation.”

76 M St. NW

Barbara Wood has lived at 76 M St. NW for 45 years. When she first moved in, rent was about $100 per month for her two-

“Then they get indignant, and I’m like, ‘You’re not even supposed to be in here,’” Barbara Wood (pictured) says. “Some of these people are crazy people. I can bluff so much, but I can’t show my scaredness.” bedroom apartment. Now, since she benefits from rent control, her rent is about $600 a month.

The apartment building she calls home is in the middle of (but is not part of) the Sursum Corda Cooperative. That resident

association, with developer Winn Development Company Limited Partnership, wants to buy the building so they can tear down the space and include it in the redesign of their community.

Under the Tenant Opportunity to Pur-

chase Act, landlord Peter Odagbodo has to offer to sell the units to the tenants before he offers to sell the building to the developers for the new co-operative community. Odagbodo will make more money if he sells the building empty, and he’s incentivized tenants to leave with a $25,000 payout each, one that won’t sustain them for more than a year or two in a comparable unit in D.C. Odagbodo stands to make $3.8 million from the sale, which means individuals who want to buy their spaces would have to pay about $270,000 each. This is not the first time Odagbodo has sold a decaying building for a profit: In 2003, he sold an apartment complex in Fort Stanton for $3.2 million to a nonprofit that was given millions in federal dollars to deliver affordable housing, the Washington Post reported. The nonprofit, saddled with mort-

washingtoncitypaper.com april 29, 2016 17

become so crowded that she finds herself stepping over individuals openly abusing drugs. During City Paper’s visit, a woman Wood had previously captured on video writhing near the stairs—Wood believes the woman had been using drugs—came in the front door without a key.

“Then they get indignant, and I’m like, ‘You’re not even supposed to be in here,’” Wood says. “Some of these people are crazy people. I can bluff so much, but I can’t show my scaredness.”

A whole in the ceiling of Wood’s unit

Photo courtesy Barbara Wood

Howard Manor

gages it couldn’t pay and buildings that needed extensive repairs, folded. Odagbodo declined to comment for this story.

Even if tenants could afford it, the building has not been kept in a condition that would be worth the price. During a visit in April, Wood showed City Paper photos of holes in her ceiling and people sleeping outside her neighbor’s door. The stench of urine lingered in the stairwell.

Wood has been calling the District since Jan. 8 to clear dozens of empty liquor bottles and piles of trash that have accumulated out front.

“If this was a certain neighborhood, you can’t tell me that stuff would be out there.

It wouldn’t still be there,” Wood says.

At Howard Manor, located at 654 Girard St. NW, residents started to become suspicious in October, when they began receiving flyers for surveys from Zalco Realty, which manages the building on behalf of Howard University.

One resident, who spoke to City Paper on the condition of anonymity, says she was put off by a question on the survey that she felt was trying to pin down which families were still left. Soon after, a notice went out to the remaining families that they would have to vacate their units while the building underwent construction.

The resident had become increasingly paranoid about building operations when her usual service contacts began redirecting her to Zalco offices, who in turn would redirect her to an automated response system.

The building, at one point, had been strictly for employees and students of Howard University, but that rule has since been lifted. The tenant has been in the building for 14 years, where she has witnessed 30 families dwindle down to about 10 in recent months.

“We moved in, and we didn’t know what it was. Then roaches on top of roaches, mice. We kept on calling [the landlord]... it would take him six, seven months to come,” says a 1405 Somerset resident.

For smaller projects, her landlord will come in to do patchwork repairs. He replaced a faucet once, she says, but things like the leak in her bathroom ceiling have stayed untouched for 10 years.

The lock on the front door is easy enough to force in, so Wood frequently has to push past trespassers, who often spit and urinate in the stairwells, to get to her apartment. The hallways sometimes

When her apartment lost power, she says she had a hard time getting someone from the building to fix it. She even offered to pay for a repair out of pocket.

Zalco refused this arrangement, the tenant says, and instead she was moved into a one-bedroom next door.

Zalco did not return requests for comment.

The tenant says she at one point had an opportunity to attend school in New

18 april 29, 2016 washingtoncitypaper.com

York City, but she was hesitant to leave.

She would have needed to find her thenyoung son a decent public school, a process that had been a chore in D.C., and she also knew that the $570 she paid monthly for a two-bedroom apartment in D.C. would not stretch nearly that far in New York.

Plus, she had been there for so long that the other residents felt like her extended family.

“I can’t call Chicago home even though it’s my birthplace, because when I walk in the building here my neighbors will say, ‘Oh you made it home!’” she says. “So you’re genuinely missed.”

In October, the tenants were told in a letter sent by Zalco on behalf of Howard that they have to move out because the building “requires significant work.” Tenants were offered the opportunity to meet with a “relocation counselor.”

The list of damages the landlord has allegedly avoided addressing over the years is lengthy, tenants say: electric and gas that constantly goes out without being fixed, an open-wire electric box in the basement left over from a job half-done, broken appliances, and flooded apartments.

“We haven’t used an oven or broiler in years,” the resident says.

Advocate Ballantyne says she has seen this tactic before. Landlords will avoid making repairs until they can call an inspector in to condemn the building and force its residents out, which they think is a loophole around TOPA. In this case, the landlord also allegedly held off on cashing residents’ checks for six months, finally depositing them all at once. At best, it was a headache for the resident who kept her rent money in a separate account and had to explain the sudden withdrawal to her bank. For other residents, it wreaked havoc on their financial stability, having not expected the large sum to be withdrawn.

It’s also a tactic that can hurt tenants’ chances in court, since a landlord can claim they aren’t technically tenants by refusing their rent.

“I think that’s one of the things they’re trying to do… set up that suddenly, you’re not really tenants,” Ballantyne says. CP

The below five photos, taken

by DCRA and obatined via FOIA, show conditions inside Howard Manor.

such great heights

Outside a complex of buildings owned by Sanford Capital

D.C. has brokered an agreement to make living conditions better for lowincome renters in Congress Heights.

Will it actually work?

By Andrew Giambrone The rats rushed in after dark.

“I’m sitting here watching TV at night, and right under my door, they would come in like a herd of cattle,” Robert Green recalls.

“The exterminator put down some bait, but it seems like it didn’t bother them. I chopped up some of my diabetic heart medicine, next thing they’re straggling across the floor. The neighbors were laughing.”

Green, 67, has lived at 1331 Alabama Ave.

SE since 2010. He pays $194 a month for his one-bedroom unit, including utilities. (Government subsidies cover the rest of his rent, $1,345 a month.) The building, along with three others that surround the Congress Heights Metro station, is owned by Sanford Capital. The Bethesda-based real estate firm plans to redevelop the site into more than 200 apartments, on top of office and retail space.

But in January, the D.C. Attorney General’s office put the brakes on that effort when it sued Sanford and its subsidiaries for allegedly letting

the buildings fall into disrepair through “willful neglect.” Tenants had claimed the company was trying to push them out, in some cases by offering buyouts and in general by creating an uninhabitable environment. Will Merrifield, a nonprofit attorney who represents the more than dozen tenants left in the buildings, describes some of the living conditions that resulted: unsecured doors and windows, broken heating and air conditioning, vermin and trash, dim lighting, and vacant units outsiders used for illicit drug activity and sex.

On a recent day in April, old mattresses and other debris piled in a heap behind 1309 Alabama Ave. SE, where two green dumpsters were not large enough to contain it all.

Boarded-up windows and apertures where A/C units had once been speckled the apartments’ facades. Inside Green’s building, a black feral cat—whose name changes from tenant to tenant—lay curled in the secondfloor hallway: “The best exterminator we

washingtoncitypaper.com april 29, 2016 19

got,” Green says.

When Attorney General Karl Racine announced earlier this month that his office had reached a joint abatement agreement with Sanford, it appeared that things might improve.

Under its terms, the company must conduct regular inspections of vacant units, provide an armed security guard during evenings, perform routine exterminations, and establish both a maintenance hotline and an on-site office through which tenants can communicate with the firm.

Stephen Hessler, the attorney who represented Sanford in the case, fervently rejects characterizations of his client as a “slumlord.” He claims that Sanford has always promised to fix violations, adding that he’s “proud” of the way the case turned out—“a win-win for everybody.”

“We needed to have a consistent inspection protocol and a consistent inspector whose yardstick, like it or not, is the same,” Hessler says. “This ‘catch me if you can’

“You just have to hold your tongue or hold your peace or hold your sanity against a claim of the sword,” says Sanford’s attorney. sort of situation where tenants complain about X or Y condition... if you can’t find it or you can’t get in, you’re going to have a problem.”

“You just have to hold your tongue or hold your peace or hold your sanity against a claim of the s-word,” Hessler continues.

“And just let your actions speak louder than those words.”

For his part, D.C. Superior Court Judge Frederick Weisberg described the abatement plan as “a very intelligent, promising, some-

20 april 29, 2016 washingtoncitypaper.com

what amicable resolution of a very difficult problem” at an April 13 hearing, according to a transcript.“If we could figure out how to bottle this and duplicate it, it would be a path forward to resolving a lot of intractable disputes that wind up in this court.”

The agreement also requires quarterly status reports to D.C. Superior Court while the case remains open. It specifies that Sanford has five business days to correct or challenge “defaults” OAG alleges, and one business day to do so for emergencies like a lack of hot wa-

ter. Basically, Merrifield says, if Sanford fails to comply, it could end up back in front of a judge—with penalties.

“Our goal has always been to seek justice for the tenants, who have been forced to live in deplorable and unacceptable living conditions as a result of willful neglect,” Racine said in a statement. “The abatement plan the Court approved holds the owners of the buildings accountable to maintain living conditions and improve the quality of life for residents.”

Since the lawsuit was filed in January, other tenants have alleged similar violations of D.C.’s housing laws, says a spokesperson for OAG. “Without getting into specifics, suffice it to say that the Office of the Attorney General will look into any situation connected to our statutory jurisdiction where the housing rights of District residents are being violated,” he tells City Paper.

Green was decidedly less sanguine about the future. He ticks off troublesome incidents in his building like entries in a diary: the time he and his grandson encountered a man and a woman having sex in the hallway; the time a white girl who “had to be about 13” was “frothing from the mouth”—apparently from a needle injection—on the stairs; the times he’s returned home to find quarters he uses to do laundry missing, as well as cash he keeps for medical situations, clothes, CDs, and books. Green notes that he’s filed “more than 100” work orders to Sanford over the past five years. “When you go without heat for two months, you call every day,” he says.

“I don’t think they’re going to abide,” Green adds of the agreement. “I think they’re going to find an excuse to get us out of here.”

Green lived in Camden and Atlantic City, and he remembers buildings going up in flames under cover of darkness—allegedly when landlords wanted their tenants out.

“There’s a lot of, lemme pardon the word, a lot of damn crooks,” he says. “You offer them $500, drugs, they’ll go and light this building up… I worry about that.”

According to Merrifield, Sanford must either keep the buildings up to code or sell them.

In the latter scenario, the firm would have to give the renters notices under the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act. Theoretically, a third-party developer could take on the project and produce affordable, dignified housing, he says: a possibility that will look more attractive as D.C. and its partners redevelop the St. Elizabeths campus across the street.

As for Sanford’s compliance, Merrifield strikes a cautionary tone, but says he’s “optimistic” because OAG has shown it’s “very invested” in his clients’ case.

“We’ll absolutely be able to exercise our TOPA rights in an effective way to benefit our tenants,” the attorney says. “What’s unique about this case is that these people are not standing up just for themselves but are standing up for their community…

These tenants are completely dedicated and focused on staying.”

Or as Green puts it: “The only way they’ll bring me out is in a black bag.” CP

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YOUNG & HUNGRY

Pineapple Impress

Chef Aaron Silverman is making his own rules for fine dining at Pineapple and Pearls.

Aaron Silverman’s Pineapple and In the leadup to the opening of Pearls fuses together low-end Pineapple and Pearls, Aaron Silverand high-end concepts. man taught all of his managers how to use Pinterest. And like a bride-to-be, the Rose’s Luxury chef then created nearly 20 inspiration boards for all elements of the decor—even toilet paper holders and trash cans.

“We would get in like 20 different trash cans, and the upstairs [office] would be filled with trash cans, and we’re playing with them and testing them,” he says.

So you can imagine the thought that went into the design of the actual kitchen.

“This is our baby,” Silverman says of the 4,000-pound, custom La Cornue range, which was imported as a single piece from Europe. “It’s still a bunch of old French guys who make it by hand, no machines,” Silverman says. He isn’t aware of any other ovens like this one in D.C., although other fine dining establishments have them.

If it seems like Silverman is pulling out all the stops for the hybrid coffee shop and fine dining destination, consider the expectations. In the two and half years since Rose’s Luxury opened, Bon Appétit named it “Best New Restaurant in America,” and Food & Wine dubbed Silverman among the best new chefs in the country. He’s a finalist for a James Beard Award and was even asked to give a TED Talk about the secret to search other fine dining restaurants around the country, but his success.

Not that any of that seems to be Silverman’s driving force. he didn’t have the time or money to travel beyond a trip to “It’s not meant to be the ‘best’ fine dining restaurant,” he Eleven Madison Park in New York. Ultimately though, that says of Pineapple and Pearls. “It’s just meant to be the most might be a good thing. Pineapple and Pearls is very much Silverman’s own version of fine dining. enjoyable one… Getting certain stars or awards is nice, but if For starters, the restaurant fuses together low-end and it’s not fun, then it will suck.”

Silverman believes Rose’s Luxury was a success in part be- high-end concepts. At 8 a.m., you can get a fried chicken cause it didn’t try to mimic what was popular or trendy. “We sandwich for $9. By 8 p.m., you’ll find a 15-course tasting just did what we thought would work,” he says. Before he menu with drink pairings for $250. In addition to Columbia opened Pineapple and Pearls, Silverman had hoped to re- Room, Pineapple and Pearls is among the first dining estab-

lishments in D.C. to offer pre-paid tickets rather than reservations—more like theater than dinner. And perhaps gutsiest of all, the four-day-a-week restaurant isn’t even open on Saturdays.

Within 60 seconds of arriving at Pineapple and Pearls, you have a welcome cocktail in your hands. From there, you walk past a curtain separating the front coffee counter from a seven-seat bar. Before entering the dining room with an eight-seat chef’s counter, a hostess stops to describe the art on the wall—inspired by weather patterns on the Chesapeake.

You won’t find the same extent of modernist techniques as Minibar, but you will find a similar sort of playfulness from Silverman, head chef Scott Muns, and the rest of the team, who all collaborate on dishes.

A fennel-flavored orb filled with homemade yogurt, fermented fennel, golden raisins, and orange zest is balanced on an absinthe spoon above a cocktail of green apple, fennel, and sunchoke juice with a splash of absinthe in a rose-etched glass.

A spring vegetable egg drop soup is presented tableside, next to a bone marrow egg custard served in eggshells on a silver platter.

Silverman’s trip to Japan last year has also influenced aspects of the menu.

White asparagus “okonomiyaki,” a rolled-up twist on the savory Japanese pancake, is served on plates emblazoned with Sailor Moon characters. Pineapple and Pearls also offers a riff on kakigori, Japanese shaved ice. But instead of the typical crunchy, chewy topping like kids’ cereal and gummy bears, the dessert uses pea shoots, rhubarb gummies, and crunchy lime meringues chilled in liquid nitrogen. Eat it quickly and vapor will come out of your nose.

At the end of the meal, there’s no check. Using a customdesigned online platform, guests pay half when they book a table and the other half on the morning of their reservations.

Darrow Montgomery

By Jessica Sidman

washingtoncitypaper.com april 29, 2016 23

SUMMER HAS NEVER SOUNDED BETTER!

24 april 29, 2016 washingtoncitypaper.com

washingtoncitypaper.com april 29, 2016 25

Street Sense WOLFTRAP.ORG Street StreetSense

SUMMER 2016

StreetSense

DCFEED(cont.)

KRAMERBOOKS

Silverman opted for pre-paid ticketed reservations in large part to avoid the reality check Educating the public and that disrupts the finale of most pricey meals. empowering the homeless “One way or another, you’re paying for it, so why marr the experience at the end with the one newspaper at a time. check?” Silverman says. “When you’re here, you don’t have to worry about anything.”

Silverman admits he was a little worried about the first-glance sticker shock, but he figures the D.C. dining public is savvy enough to understand what they’re getting. Yes, $250 Pick up a copy today from per person is a ton of money, but the price invendors throughout downtown cludes tax, tip, and drink pairings. For comD.C. or visit www.streetsense.org parison, Komi’s tasting menu is $150, but for more information. when you add in the $75 drink pairing, tax, and a 20 percent tip, your total comes to $297 per person. At Minibar, it’s at least $488.

If you sit at the bar, Pineapple and Pearls’ price drops to $150, which includes tax and Mon. 5/2 at 6:30pm tip but not drinks. Guests at the bar can, howUgliness ever, add on a drink pairing or opt for a cockGretchen Henderson CHAMPAGNE tail from barman Jeff Faile. The nontradiA look at the long-standing grasp BRUNCH tional drink menu is simply a small folded that ugliness has on our cultural imagination. card listing the names of five cocktails but no ingredients or prices. (They’re $20 each, tax Tues. 5/3 at 6:30pm and tip included.)

All Tomorrow’s Parties A flower-garnished pina colada made with Rob Spillman tequila, not rum, is presented in icy ribbons A music-filled coming-of-age memoir thanks to a Japanese shaved ice machine. An set against the cultural exploration of even wackier concoction is an oyster tow1980’s Berlin.

Mother’s Day Brunch er where each shell is filled with either green Wed. 5/4 at 6:30pm $36.95 ++ apple-wasabi granita and gin or grilled cuSERGIO Y. Bottomless Mimosas cumber granita and mezcal. Faile also “steam Alexandre Vidal Porto Pick up a copy today juices” oyster shells and makes a granita out & Champagne A startling and inspirational work of fromfrom vendors of the seawater-like liquid to add a touch of transgender fiction by a leading 11amthroughout to 3pm salt to each sip. figure in Brazil's "New Urban" fiction downtown D.C. or visit Large Parties Welcome Friends, family, investors, and industry movement.

Reservations recommended www.streetsense.org for peers get first dibs on half of the bar seatMon. 5/9 at 6:30pm ings each night before they’re released to the more information.

The Singing Bone Live Jazz public. Silverman says other fine dining resBeth Hahn taurants, like Alinea in Chicago, do the same In conversation with Tayla Burney, Producer Featured food items are thing but don’t necessarily promote it. While at The Kojo Nnamdi Show.

Porchetta Romana even Silverman’s own family has to wait in A convicted killer’s imminent parole forces a woman to confront a line at Rose’s Luxury, the chef and his staff Pan Seared Alaskan Salmon nightmarish past. can dole out some insider perks to friends and Chicken & Sweet Potato Waffle family at Pineapple and Pearls.

Wed. 5/11 at 6:30pm Smoky Shrimp & Grits Other aspects of the restaurant also seem The Veins of the Ocean and many more from our to be designed more for staff than the public.

Patricia Engel National Award Winning For example, the fine dining portion of the This is a riveting Pan-American Executive Chef story of fractured lives finding solace restaurant is closed Saturdays through Monand redemption. days. “I get it, people want to go out on Saturday night and have a dinner out—and so Mon. 5/16 at 6:30pm 2033 M Street, NW | does 202 530our 3621 | www.MStreetDC.com staff,” Silverman says. “Our staff The Girl from Home are people too.”

Adam Mitzner Your Neighborhood Destination Restaurant reasonChoice for closing on Saturdays A millionaire goes to deadly Thank You For Making Another Us 2015 Diners Winner is that Silverman wanted to keep the coffee lengths to get what he wants in 2033 M Street, NW | 202 530 3621 | www.MStreetDC.com 2033 M Street, NW | 202.530.3621 this psychological thriller. bar open until 4 p.m., “because it’s a neighYour Neighborhood Destination Restaurant www.MStreetDC.com borhood place.” The coffee bar would need For more information, and to sign up for our Thank You For Making Us 2015 Diners Choice Winner to close at 2 p.m., as it does on weekdays, to newsletter, please visit our website! be ready for dinner service on time. The occasional Saturday will be devoted to private 1517 CONNECTICUT AVE. NW events or hosting guest chefs.

Freely Flowing Champagne Brunch 202.387.1700 // KRAMERS.COM While the dining room is also closed MonSaturdays

UPCOMING EVENTS

Educating the public and empowering the homeless one newspaper at a time.

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“I don’t want to get bored, I don’t want my staff to get bored, and I don’t want the public to get bored,” says Aaron Silverman of Pineapple and Pearls. days, the Pineapple and Pearls team comes in then to brainstorm new dishes and tinker with other aspects of service and design (even down to minutiae like “the spoon for the souffle is too big”).

Mondays are also for staff education, whether it’s wine tastings, coffee classes, or knife sharpening tutorials. The front-ofhouse team has even partaken in a ballet class.

Other fine dining restaurants, like Inn at Little Washington, do the same thing so staff can learn how to navigate the dining room more gracefully.

Employee perks extend to full health benefits, which is somewhat of a rarity in the restaurant world. And recently, Silverman’s restaurants started offering gym memberships to the entire staff as well.

“We invest a ton of money in our staff. We could be a lot more profitable,” Silverman says. But if the place is busy, “we will hit a mark that makes our investors happy.”

To keep both restaurants busy, Silverman isn’t opposed to changing things along the way. In fact, he says, he may change Rose’s Luxury’s entire concept in a year or two.

“Right now, people enjoy it and it’s relevant. We’re making tweaks; we’re not making massive changes. But in a year or two, we totally might,” Silverman says. “I don’t want to get bored, I don’t want my staff to get bored, and I don’t want the public to get bored.”

Similarly, Silverman says Pineapple and Pearls will likely change in its first year.

“When we open the restaurant... it’s not going to be a true reflection of what this restaurant is,” he says. “It’s a living, breathing CP thing—if you treat it like that.”

Eatery tips? Food pursuits? Send suggestions to jsidman@washingtoncitypaper.com.

DCFEED

what we ate last week:

Carrot cavatelli with lobster, morels, and English peas, $20, Ripple. Satisfaction level: 4 out of 5 what we'll eat next week: Kayseri mantisi (ground beef dumplings), $17.25, Ottoman Taverna. Excitement level: 4 out of 5

Grazer

SAUCE-O-METER

LAME SAUCE

How the week’s food happenings measure up

MUMBO SAUCE

brew in town DC Brau and Port City Zehn von Zehn Where in Town: DC Brau, 3178 Bladensburg Road NE

Bistro Français closing next month after four decades in Georgetown.

Price: $13.99 per mixed six-pack

Ramps, ramps everywhere April closures include Crane & Turtle and Sona Creamery.

Vin & Vic’s offers hard-to-find wines at Chicago-style pizza pop-up.

D.C. Eataly may not happen, after all.

Dupont farmers market will begin selling alcohol this weekend.

High Five As it turns five, DC Brau has plenty to celebrate. Since 2011, it has added a “0” to its annual production totals (from 1,600 barrels to more than 16,000) and has gone from local delicacy to nationally revered brand with distribution in seven states. Last week, as a special treat, DC Brau released five anniversary beers created in collaboration with breweries across the country. The lineup includes a hibiscus and rosehip saison with St. Louis’ Perennial Artisan Ales; an India pale lager with tangerine, apricot, and pear with Austin Beerworks; a double IPA with Indianapolis’ Sun King Brewery; an imperial stout with cacao nibs with Tampa’s Cigar City Brewing; and a Munich-style Dunkel with Port City Brewing Company, which opened just two months before DC Brau.

Rappahannock Oyster Company is bringing back the Chesapeake scallop.

Founding Farmers is expanding to King of Prussia, Penn.

Man breaks into Five Guys, makes himself a burger.

The Dish: Thai Pepper Crème Brûlée With Candied Cilantro Where to Get It: Bangkok Joe’s, 3000 K St. NW, (202) 333-4422, bangkokjoesdc.com

Are you gonnA eAt that?

Price: $7 What It Is: To make this crème brûlée, chef and owner Aulie Bunyarataphan tosses in five Thai chilies—which fall roughly between cayenne and habanero peppers in spiciness—per quart of heavy cream. She then adds eggs, vanilla bean, and sugar. The dessert is topped with a sugar crust, fresh berries, and a sprig of candied cilantro, then served with a chocolate-coated spoon on a plate daintily dusted with cocoa powder.

What It Tastes Like: For the first few seconds, it tastes like a really nice crème brûlée— creamy, sweet vanilla goodness. But after a

few bites, the spice starts to hit the back of your mouth. Bunyarataphan says she coats the spoon with thick chocolate so you get a little bit in every bite, helping to cool the spice level. While diners with a decent tolerance for

Fried stuffed boneless chicken wings at Thip Khao

fiery foods will likely wish there were more heat, they can still appreciate the slight, spicy tingle. Those who find pepperoni spicy might find this more adventurous.

The Story: Bunyarataphan debuted this dish long ago at her other restaurant, T.H.A.I. in Shirlington, but shortly thereafter took it off the menu as it was a bit too daring for diners back then. She and her husband, co-owner Mel Oursinsiri, recently decided to transform Mama Rouge back to Bangkok Joe’s and add several new dishes, including the spiced crème brûlée. She says it falls in line with her mission to use more traditional Thai herbs and flavors in her cooking. At the moment, Bunyarataphan says she’s only selling about five to six a day. But with 10 desserts on the menu, there’s a lot of competition for a sweet tooth’s attention. —Rina Rapuano

Perfect 10 Zehn von Zehn, German for “10 by 10,” refers to the District’s original, diamondshaped 10-mile-by-10-mile border, which included part of Alexandria. The eponymous dunkel (or “dark”) lager is a shining example of the style. We should expect no less from the powerhouse duo of DC Brau head brewer Jeff Hancock and Port City brewmaster Jonathan Reeves. Incorporating six different traditional German malts and Hallertau hops, Zehn von Zehn smells and tastes like toasted bread with hints of chocolate, nuts, and toffee. At 5.3 percent alcohol, the beer is medium-bodied and easy to drink.

Sweet malt characteristics are offset by darker roasted malt flavors and the beer’s earthy, dry finish. Sound good? Look for Zehn von Zehn and the other four collaboration beers on draft at the brewery and spots like Pizzeria Paradiso, Boundary Stone, and Meridian Pint, as well as in mixed six-packs with DC Brau’s heralded On The Wings of Armageddon Imperial IPA in stores in and outside D.C. —Tammy Tuck

washingtoncitypaper.com april 29, 2016 27

IS BACK! Tuesday, June 14 5:30 PM-8:00 PM Carnegie Library

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Please drink responsibly.

28 april 29, 2016 washingtoncitypaper.com

CPARTS Green-Age Dream

The Washington Post ends its two-decade long Carter Barron concert series. washingtoncitypaper.com/go/carterbarronconcerts

Broccoli City’s headliners may be Coachella caliber, but the festival won’t abandon its healthy living roots for wide-brimmed hats and Molly.

Handout photo by LaVan Anderson

Broccoli City founders, from left: Brandon McEachern, Darryl Perkins, Jermon Williams, and Marcus Allen

By Julian Kimble Spring’s return also signals the beginning of festival season, a circuit that’s become better defined by the experience than the actual music.

At Coachella, an annual romp in the California desert, for example, the sounds are rivaled by the sights—mainly celebrity appearances and fashion. It’s all about the scene;

the music is merely the soundtrack for the setting.

But since its inception, Broccoli City Festival has used music to lure people toward a greater purpose. It debuted in D.C. in 2013, billed as the District’s landmark Earth Day celebration, and was created by Broccoli City, a grassroots organization focused on increasing awareness about wellness and sustainability in urban communities.

Its organizers identified music as the key to drawing a larg-

er audience for their message, and the inaugural D.C. event brought national acts such as Mississippi rapper Big K.R.I.T. and Michigan singer JMSN to Navy Yard’s Half Street Fairgrounds along with local favorites like DJ and producer Tittsworth and band Black Alley.

The festival has since grown in both size and scope—it relocated to Congress Heights’ Gateway D.C. pavilion in 2014; charismatic Harlem rapper Cam’ron and ethereal siren Erykah Badu have headlined; and the space has been populated by an increasing number of eco-friendly vendors. Jaden and Willow Smith, the progeny of Jada Pinkett-Smith and Will Smith, even appeared last year.

The fourth edition of Broccoli City Festival, scheduled for this Saturday and already sold out, stands to be the biggest to date, primarily on the strength of this year’s lineup. Atlanta’s Future, one of the most popular rappers at the moment, is the main attraction along with singer Jhené Aiko. Joining them on the bill are The Internet, rapper/singer/songwriter extraordinaire Anderson .Paak, singer BJ the Chicago Kid, and producer Sango. Broccoli City Festival’s most impressive lineup yet will be complemented by a wellness center, several food trucks, live-art installations, a pop-up market, and a plethora of resources about how to live a healthier life. But as it becomes more successful, Broccoli City’s organizers are working to ensure that its message isn’t lost amid growing popularity.

Broccoli City’s mission has always extended beyond music. Its origins date back to 2009, when co-founder Brandon McEachern launched an organic T-shirt company under the same name. When McEachern, who resides in Los Angeles, observed the lack of healthy food options in L.A.’s low-income African-American communities, he reached out to friend and fellow Greensboro, N.C. native Marcus Allen. The two decided to build Broccoli City into something more pivotal, but they knew they needed teammates with a shared passion for their initiative. Jermon Williams, senior vice president of communications, and Darryl Perkins, director of programs and community engagement, were the missing links.

“I met Marcus back in the beginning of ’09 through a mutual friend who knew I had an interest in communications and marketing,” says Williams, a native of Upper Marlboro, Md. Williams previously worked for the NFL Players Association, speaking to athletes about unhealthy products and supplements. After starting out as a consultant, he helped Broccoli City organize events in the D.C. area, but an Earth Day affair at the flagship Atlanta store for hatmaker New Era was the moment he realized the movement’s potential.

“That was the first time I saw hip-hop culture mixed with eco-friendly messaging and products,” he says. “After that, I became fully invested in what [Broccoli City] was trying to do, and we grew from there.”

Broccoli City soon began testing the concert waters. “While I was director of programs at the Hip Hop Caucus, I was leading a campaign called Green the Block, and we were coordinating and organizing Earth Day events across the country, and the Broccoli City team was leading the flagship event in L.A.,” says Perkins, who hails from Oakland, Calif.

Broccoli City made its initial foray into live music with washingtoncitypaper.com april 29, 2016 29

CPARTS Continued

a 2010 Earth Day celebration in downtown Los Angeles, The Global Coolin’ Block Party, which was headlined by L.A. rappers Dom Kennedy and Pac Div, as well as a then-little-known rapper named Kendrick Lamar. “We [brought] an Earth Day component and hooked up with some people who had ties to the L.A. hip-hop community,” Williams explains.

The warm response to this combination of live music, live art, and vegan and vegetarian food vendors was evidence that Broccoli City was onto something. But in order to truly emphasize the importance of being healthy and living in a sustainable way, the group felt something more substantial was needed. Arriving at the correct answer took time.

“Fast forward to the first Broccoli City Festival in 2013, and myself, Darryl, Marcus, and Brandon decided, through a phone conversation, to do a festival,” Williams says. “We were [considering] different names, and decided ‘Why not call it Broccoli City Festival?’”

“Broccoli City” is a nickname that McEachern created for his hometown, but D.C. was a strategic choice as the festival’s location. In 2013, McEachern told City Paper that D.C. best aligned with their mission. “We really wanted to begin this festival in a city that is already making great strides in the communities we are trying to impact,” he said. Allen added

that D.C. was selected in part because some of its residents aren’t informed about sustainability.

“There are large areas, specifically in parts of Southeast and Northeast D.C., that still lack local, affordable, and healthy food options or access to them,” he said.

D.C.’s wage gap underlines the divide between rich and poor—high-income whites and low-income minorities—and economic health in certain sections dictates the availability of those healthy alternatives.

Launching a festival is both an onerous task and tremendous risk. The financial, planning, and promotional strains are intimidating, but actually executing the show is the biggest challenge. One error can sink the entire production. The Broccoli City principals brought no event management experience to the table (the first three years were “very raw,” according to Williams), but the reaction to the festival was immediately positive.

2013 saw Big K.R.I.T. flex his dual allure. In 2014, Cam’ron’s cache of hits atoned for his lateness, namely the unmistakeable churn of “Dipset Anthem.” And last year, festival-goers braved the rain and resulting mud to see Badu as “DJ Lo Down Loretta Brown.” Naturally, each headlining act has gotten bigger as Broccoli City Festival itself has (there were two Broccoli City Festivals in 2014; one in D.C. and one in L.A.), and that trend continues with Future at the top of this year’s bill.

Future is a master at creating and controlling moods, but his best recent music reflects a soul lost to vice: 2015’s Dirty Sprite 2 is named after a potentially hazardous blend of codeine, promethazine, and soda. For all of Future’s popularity, there’s a purple elephant in the room: His frequent, unabashed drug talk is incongruous with the festival’s healthy living aim. While the organizers acknowledge the obvious conflict, they insist that it won’t dilute the message.

“We’ve always been willing to meet people where they are,

so Future is a vessel given the fact that he is popular and that he can reach a lot of people,” Williams says.

“Our goal is not to preach to the choir,” McEachern adds.

“The goal is to touch people who are not familiar with these healthy options. Some artists can get us those people.”

But it’s a real possibility that the people who stand to benefit the most from Broccoli City’s doctrine will lose its message in the music.

“That was a big fear going into year two, but what we now understand is that not everyone is going to become a tree-hugger overnight, and some people will never become tree-huggers,” Williams says. “Some people won’t care about clean energy and things of that nature, but they may think twice about throwing a piece of paper on the ground and walking away.

They may hear something that [speaks to them] like, ‘You can save money on your electric bill if you follow these steps.’”

To keep the message at the forefront, Broccoli City organized events leading up to the festival; this includes the Power of One campaign, which rewarded participants in a series of community-building events (preparing meals, raising community gardens, and cleaning up the Anacostia River, to name a few) with tickets to the festival. Perkins says the festival doubles as a celebration of a year’s worth of work, like a 5K run and a fitness event at Anacostia Park.

Ideally, Williams says, they’d like to make Broccoli City Festival free (the cheapest tickets were $59 this year). He adds that Broccoli City wants to involve business communities and governments to take the festival beyond D.C. L.A., Chicago, and Atlanta have been discussed as possible locations, but McEachern has a more ambitious goal. “[We want] to bring Broccoli City festivals to communities all around the world and to keep empowering young people [to realize] that they can be the change that they want to see.”

Music is simply the conduit for that change, not the be-all CP and end-all.

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CPARTS Arts Desk

At the national cannabis Festival, a celebration of pot and Prince. washingtoncitypaper.com/go/cannabisfestrecap

Mercury Advising We did it, D.C. We made it through another winter. Granted, it was a pretty mild one (save for that one crippling blizzard), but it was nonetheless cold, gray, and crappy for what seemed like far too long. As a reward, we get two or three weeks of gorgeous, spring weather followed by three or four months of oppres-

Jazz in the Garden What is it:

The National Gallery of Art’s signature summer series returns for its 16th season in May. Between May 27 and Sept. 2, a variety of jazz artists will perform free concerts every Friday evening in the NGA’s Sculpture Garden.

Heat index: A Metro Car With-

out AC. Jazz in the Garden is one of the few instances where people can purchase beer and wine on the National Mall, which means it can turn into a boozy, crowded shit show. It’s better to cool off at the Capitol Riverfront’s Friday night jazz concert series.

Fort Reno

What is it: For more than 40 years, the concert series at Tenleytown’s Fort Reno park—which features some of the District’s best current punk, rock, and experimental acts—has been a staple of D.C. summers, with many legendary locals, like Fugazi, The Dismemberment Plan, and Q and Not U, gracing its tattered stage.

Heat index: Poolside Chillin’ at

Banneker. If the weather cooperates—and series organizer Amanda MacKaye works things out with the National Park Service, which has very nearly shut down the series two times because of cost disputes—the Fort Reno summer concert series is as about essential as it gets in D.C.

sive heat and humidity. With the heat comes a plethora of signature summer activities that D.C. has to offer: Jazz in the Garden! Street festivals! Fort Reno! But which of these summer series are worth shvitzing in the sun and heat for? Consult our handy guide below.

—Matt Cohen and Caroline Jones

National Symphony Orchestra on the West Lawn of the Capitol What is it:

Every Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day, the National Symphony Orchestra is joined by a variety of B-, C-, and Dlist musicians and actors for a concert celebrating our nation’s history. Gary Sinise narrates depressing stories about veterans and a singer who appeared on a reality show you don’t watch sings an overwrought version of “God Bless the U.S.A.”

Heat index: Being Stuck at Free-

dom Plaza on a July Day. Your tax dollars fund some of the city’s softest grass so the seating situation is definitely comfortable but that still doesn’t warrant a trip through airport-level security in order to see the lead singer of Hootie & the Blowfish deliver a solemn ode to freedom.

Outdoor Movies

What is it: Nothing screams sum-

mer more than watching your favorite movies outside on the big screen. Between Screen on the Green, NoMa Summer Screen, the Capitol Riverfront Outdoor Film Series, Adams Morgan Movie Nights, [BRANDING ALERT] City Paper’s own Summer Cinema Series, and scores of others, there’s a movie screening outside almost every night of the week in the summer in the D.C. area.

Heat index: An Extra Cold Beer

in the Last Shady Spot at a Hip Beer Garden. Break out your lawn chairs and pack a picnic dinner— there’s nothing better than catching a classic flick outside on a perfect summer evening. Just get there early—pretty much everyone else in the city has the same idea.

Street Festivals

What is it: Neighbors, commu-

nity leaders, and local businesses come together to celebrate different parts of the city throughout the summer. More commonly held in neighborhoods that are home to families, activities include live music, fitness activities, and craft activities for fussy children.

Heat index: A Stroll Through Rock Creek Park on a Breezy Day. The streets might be more crowded on the Saturday of a particular street festival, but many of these festivals involve petting zoos and nothing says fun like pigs and mini horses. Also, getting to know your neighbors isn’t a bad thing.

washingtoncitypaper.com april 29, 2016 31

Film

For Better and Worse The illusion of marriage is shattered in two films that portray relationships failed by egos run amok.

Fireworks Wednesday Directed by Asghar Farhadi

Fireworks Wednesday

Papa: Hemingway in Cuba Directed by Bob Yari

By Tricia Olszewski From Asghar Farhadi’s stateside debut, 2011’s A Separation, through his fourth and latest U.S. release, Fireworks Wednesday, one thing is clear: The Iranian writer-director likes characters who like to yell. Particularly married couples, whether the romance is over (The Past, A Separation) or just strained (About Elly). Fireworks Wednesday falls among the latter. Released in Iran a decade ago—since 2013’s The Past, the U.S. has been watching Farhadi’s filmography backward—Fireworks gives a carefree brideto-be a glimpse of what worn-in wedded life can look like. And it ain’t pretty.

Set on the eve of the Persian New Year, the film first introduces us to Roohi (Taraneh Alidoosti, the titular character in About Elly) giddily riding on a motorbike with her fiancé as he takes her to her house cleaning agency. As she waits for a job, Roohi runs into the seamstress of her wedding dress and is able to try on the poufy white gown. She’s radiant and over the moon, so she hardly protests when given an assignment that’s far away.

After having trouble getting past the gate of her employers’ apartment building, Roohi finally meets the domestic upheaval that awaits. Morteza (Hamid Farokhnezhad) is on the phone and already agitated when he lets her in and vaguely waves her toward an area strewn with broken glass to start. When his wife, Mozhde (Hedieh Tehrani), comes home, the tension ratchets, with Morteza halfway out the door claiming he’s been called into work and Mozhde bitterly reminding him that he had promised they’d talk that afternoon while their young son (Matin Heydarnia) is at school. Because there’s a countdown on: The next day the family is leaving for Dubai for the holiday, so the time for a serious sit-down without the kid within shouting distance was now or never.

Mozhde also isn’t happy that Morteza hired outside help when a neighbor was willing to clean. But the obviously stressed woman keeps changing her mind—which leaves Roohi like a dust-busting deer in headlights, unsure of what to say or do. Soon enough,

though, she’s turned into a pawn, carrying out tasks for both Mozhde and Morteza that have nothing to do with housework yet involve plenty of dirty laundry.

Roohi might be uncomfortable simultaneously airing and abetting family secrets, and she may even second-guess her impending nuptials. As Farhadi (along with co-writer Mani Haghighi) does so well, his dialogue hisses with vitriol and his cast delivers it with realistic venom, even the little boy. Alidoosti is an immensely appealing presence regardless of how pressured her character feels; Tehrani as the suspicious wife, however, anchors the film’s anger, her face mostly set to fury but her expressions also flitting between sorrow, doubt, and remorse.

Although Fireworks Wednesday holds its own among Farhadi’s impressive catalog, it’s not his best. The director quotes—or prequotes—a scene from About Elly here in which domestic violence and the typical male/female dynamic of such abuse is at play. (Think “she made me do it.”) Considering that he created this film first, that detail can’t really be held against it. The final scenes, however, meander off with little consequence of the actions that came before them; Farhadi apparently needed a few years to perfect the open endings that his subsequent films offer with panache. We’ve already seen his upward progression in all areas of the art form. But just in case this directing thing doesn’t work out, Farhadi can always pursue a career as a marriage counselor.

The marital strife in Papa: Hemingway in

32 april 29, 2016 washingtoncitypaper.com

Cuba is written and portrayed a little less elegantly. Initially, Ernest and his fourth wife, Mary, appear to be blissfully wed: “We do have a generally good alliance, don’t we?”

Mary remarks in front of a visitor, a young reporter whom Hemingway invited to his Cuban home in the 1950s after the journalist wrote a fan letter. But when parties get the loose juice flowing, so too flow the couple’s resentments, with an occasional “bitch” or “bastard.” These people, however, more often argue in full sentences, even while sloshed.

Cue Mary: “You insult me and my dignity as a human being, goddammit!”

Whoa, Mary, no hitting below the belt!

Papa, directed by experienced producer but green helmer Bob Yari, was penned by Denne Bart Petitclerc, the reporter mentioned above who for some reason is named Ed here. It’s clear early on that journalistic skills don’t necessarily carry over to screenwriting. Ed (Giovanni Ribisi, the only cast member who can hold his head high) goes fishing with Hemingway (Adrian Sparks, often open-shirted and with moobs) the first time they meet. When Ed is hesitant to take control of the speeding boat, Hemingway’s response just rolls off the tongue over the rush of sea: “Now kid, the only value we have as human beings are the risks we’re willing to take.”

In a quiet setting, however, Papa’s repartee can be downright childlike: “Goddamn war,” he says. “I hate it!”

Besides the laughable dialogue, Papa falls short in its storytelling about the two writers, who aren’t quite mentor/mentee but odd

friends. It’s the typewriter days, so you know there are going to be scenes (yes, more than one) of paper being crumpled and thrown into a wastebasket. (Did people actually do this?) Ed leaves behind a seemingly live-in girlfriend (Minka Kelly) every weekend to fly to Cuba; both their apartment and living arrangement are hardly reflective of the ’50s.

And if you’re hoping to get some insight into Hemingway’s day-to-day, look elsewhere: This Ernest pads around his palatial house, goes swimming naked, shows Ed how to fish, drinks too much, and gets suicidally depressed. There’s nothing more revealing here than Sparks’ representative ass—though we do get to see him writing his famous sixword short story, brainstormed in about five seconds while at a bar.

Mary (Joely Richardson) warms to Ed but eventually cools to Ernest, at one point illogically putting great effort into organizing a birthday party for him and then ruining his good time with bitter remarks that seem to come out of nowhere.

A handful of years pass like this, though if you go by Ed’s shirt choices, it appears to be days. Did Ed really neglect his girlfriend for that long? Perhaps if Petitclerc beefed up the kid’s spare, random narration, we’d have a better idea about the development of often sudden-seeming plot points. (The head of the Cuban mafia requests a meeting with Ed? What?) We do find out how the reporter feels when his hero shuns him: “Physical pain is nothing compared to the pain of a lost bond,” he says in voiceover. If you’re wondering, he’s in the pouring rain while thinking this.

Sparks and Richardson alternate between scene-chewery and stiffness, with each, for the most part, more thoroughly embracing these aspects respectively. Granted, it would have been difficult for anyone to deliver Petitclerc’s words naturally, but there had to be a more graceful way of, for example, Hemingway whispering to a sick friend, “I’ve been such a prick.”

The most impressive part of Papa is that it’s the first American movie to be shot in Cuba since 1959. As far as the film itself, however, it might as well have been titled The Old CP Drunk and the Sea. Fireworks Wednesday opens Friday at Landmark E Street Cinema.

Papa: Hemingway in Cuba opens Friday at Landmark Bethesda Row Cinema.

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ONLINE EXCLUSIVE rcn.com/dc-TV *Offer valid only for new residential RCN customers or customers that have not had RCN’s service within the last 60 days. Offer expires 4/30/2016. All sales subject to credit check, applicable surcharges, equipment taxes, franchise fees and government imposed charges and fees. ¹$29.99 package includes Digital TV and 25 Mbps High Speed Internet plus SHOWTIME, THE MOVIE CHANNEL and STARZ. Digital TV refers to Basic Digital TV package only. $29.99 per month offer is a promotional rate effective upon installation for a term of twelve months. Thereafter, price increases to $39.99 months 13-24 and $49.99 months 25-36. Modem, wireless router and standard definition converter box equipment not included; additional fees apply. ² $49.99 package includes Digital TV and 155 Mbps High Speed Internet plus SHOWTIME, THE MOVIE CHANNEL and STARZ. Digital TV refers to Basic Digital TV package only. $49.99 per month offer is a promotional rate effective upon installation for a term of twelve months. Thereafter, price increases to $59.99 months 13-24 and $69.99 months 25-36. Modem, wireless router and high definition converter box equipment not included; additional fees apply. Number of channels may vary based upon package selection. Advertised Internet download speeds are average speeds, but may vary and are not guaranteed. Television package including SHOWTIME, THE MOVIE CHANNEL and STARZ is a promotional offer and is valid for 12 months from installation date; thereafter, price increases to $7.95 in months 13-24; $12.95 in months 25-36, regular rates apply thereafter. Charges may apply for additional services. Other restrictions may apply. Not all services available in all areas. A trademark of Ziff Davis, LLC. Used under license.

Reprinted from pcmag.com with permission. © 2016 Ziff Davis, LLC. All Rights Reserved. STARZ and related marks are trademarks of Starz® Entertainment, LLC. No substitutions. SHOWTIME, THE MOVIE CHANNEL and related marks are trademarks of Showtime Networks Inc., a CBS Company. No substitutions. All names, logos, images and service marks are property of their respective owners. Visit rcn.com for additional terms and conditions. For information about network performance characteristics, please see rcn.com. ©2016 Starpower Communications, LLC. All rights reserved.

Dance at its most glam-o-rock-ous!

Daniel Roberge by Dean Alexander

BOWIE & QUEEN

TUESDAY, MAY 3

8 P.M. • CONCERT HALL

May 4–15 The Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater

TICKETS ON SALE NOW! KENNEDY-CENTER.ORG (202) 467-4600 Tickets also available at the Box Office.

kennedy-center.org | 202.467.4600 washingtonballet.org washingtoncitypaper.com april 29, 2016 33

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Good Grief The Meddler Directed by Lorene Scafaria

PRESENTED BY THE WASHINGTON POST

600 14TH STREET NW

Regina Carter • Maceo Parker • Ben Williams • Kurt Elling • Steve Turre Etienne Charles • Ernest Ranglin • Cymande • Joey DeFrancesco Trio Harold Mabern • Cory Henry & The Funk Apostles • Jimmy Greene Chelsey Green and The Green Project • Yotam Silberstein • Jody Nardone Trio

For tickets visit LIVE.THEHAMILTONDC.COM For artists and complete schedule, visit DCJAZZFEST.ORG PLATINUM SPONSORS

The DC Jazz Festival®, a 501(c)(3) non-profit service organization, is sponsored in part with major grants from the Government of the District of Columbia, Muriel Bowser, Mayor; and, in part, by major grants from the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, The Mayo Charitable Foundation, CrossCurrents Foundation, and with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, an agency supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts; and by the City Fund, administered by The Community Foundation for the National Capital Region. ©2016 DC Jazz Festival. All rights reserved.

34 april 29, 2016 washingtoncitypaper.com

Grief appears in many forms. In the movies, it usually involves long, tense silences around the breakfast table followed by explosions of anger and eventual catharsis. In real life, feelings of loss can express themselves in sneakier ways. The Meddler, by director Lorene Scafaria understands this. It is a bright, bubbly, and complicated tale about a subject Hollywood often sees in the simplest, most reductive terms. It’s also intensely personal, and even if its portrayal of grief doesn’t match up precisely to yours, we should all appreciate the novelty of its approach.

Susan Sarandon, at the top of her game, plays Marnie, a recently widowed Brooklynite who has moved to Los Angeles to insert herself into the life of her unhappy daughter, Laurie (Rose Byrne). Smartly, Scafaria begins the film after this move has already taken place, instead of showing reactions to her husband’s death. This way, we feel the tension of the situation immediately. Marnie shows up unexpectedly in Laurie’s life, not unlike how she shows up in ours. After Laurie blows her off, Marnie takes her meddling elsewhere.

Sarandon is a beam of sunshine in these early scenes, with Marnie suppressing her grief and reveling in her new, liberated existence. She only hints at what the cracks in her bliss represent. Instead, she takes every scrap of attention she gets and uses her only currency—a hefty inheritance—to bribe her way into the lives of total strangers. The smart, young guy (Jerrod Carmichael) who sold her a phone at the Apple store? She convinces him to take night classes and ends up driving him

there three times a week. Laurie’s friend Jillian (SNL’s Cecily Strong) who wants to renew her vows but can’t afford a real ceremony? Marnie offers to pay for the whole thing.

She sees herself as a person who is generous and open to new experiences, but when something more real offers itself—in the form of a hunky, older ex-cop (J.K. Simmons)— Marnie runs for the hills.

You can feel the years of therapy that must have gone into the screenplay. Scafaria is basically Laurie’s age, and remarkably, she has made a film that shows far greater empathy for her difficult, overbearing mother. Even the title is a trick; the meddling mother is a stereotype in films from early Hollywood all the way to My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but here Scafaria examines, subverts, and ultimately deconstructs the cliché. Sarandon is forgivably eccentric in early scenes—showing up everywhere with bagels, oversharing at public events, and displaying an uncommon fascination with serial killers—but, over the course of the film, each quirk is revealed to be a product of her grief, creating a journey for the viewer that shifts and deepens as it goes.

The film is so light and amiable, however, that you might miss the point. Scafaria’s pedestrian visual style can lull the viewer into a sense of complacency. It often makes you feel like you’re sitting at home on your couch on a school night, even if it’s a Saturday night at the cinema. But it’s no matter. The line between television and film is so blurred these days that saying The Meddler is comparable to a top-notch episode of Parenthood is hardly faint praise. Lest it be misconstrued, allow me to clarify: This is a de—Noah Gittell lightful film.

The Meddler opens Friday at Landmark’s E Street Cinema and Bethesda Row.

TheaTerCurtain Calls

COLLEGE PERFORMING ARTS SERIES

In Series’ English retelling of Cosi embraces the opera’s two best qualities: its silliness and accessibility.

Handout photo by Rx Loft Photography

LAST SHOWS OF THE SEASON!

Reach foR the StaRS

and Dorrie can not only sing (and God, can they sing) but they’re also extremely capable actors, crying and going gaga over ridiculous-looking strangers and throwing themselves on various set pieces. Randa Rouweyha as Tina, FonCosi Fan Tutte Goes Hollywood so’s secretary with a screenplay, is completely Adapted libretto by Nick Olcott game provide comic$8relief—for All tickets are:to$10 Regular, Seniors example, Directed by Shirley Serotsky while performingwith an originally Italian piece in $5 Students ID Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart English with a German accent while shooting Music directed by Stanley Thurston Montgomery someCollege sort of gizmo into a man’sSt. foot—while • 51 Mannakee To May 1 at Atlas Performing Arts Center still Rockville, 20850 singing atMD a level that opera fans who know www.MontgomeryCollege.Edu/PAC Cosi forward and backward can applaud.

Office: At this very moment, the Washington BoxThe jokes240-567-5301 in Olcott’s libretto are tame yet National Opera is preparing to open its white winning, and his efforts to poke fun at Cowhale: Wagner’s weighty Ring cycle, replete si’s built-in sexisim are laudable. His text for with fire and big-voiced women and tower- “Donne mie, la fate a tanti”—1790’s “Hotline ing sets. Across town, In Series is preparing Bling”—takes Guglielmo’s lament about how to close its much-smaller English retelling of women, while inherently good, can still do Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte, an angel-food-cake- shitty stuff and turns it on its head: The lights light opera about two men who trick their come up, and Elmo addresses the women in girlfriends into falling in love with incognito the audience with an entreaty dripping in versions of themselves. sarcasm. By the time Pflueger exits the stage In Series’ adaptation, with an English li- to directly harass a woman about, essentially, bretto by UMD’s Nick Olcott, embraces the being a fallible human being, the audience is opera’s two best qualities: its silliness and ac- in full-giggle mode. cessibility. It’s Mozart at his most seductiveIn Series mounts chamber or pocket oply brilliant, with a score full of quick-paced, eras, smaller productions in intimate settings. lush lines that an opera novice can enjoy with- There’s just enough room on the Lang Theout previous study. Its original plot is also atre’s stage for the six performers, a basic set, slap-your-forehead, get-over-yourself-or- and a string quintet led by Stanley Thurston, this-is-gonna-be-painful stupid. which is placed just right of center stage and is Olcott’s cheesetastic telling goes like this: visible throughout. In some ways, the intimaSisters Florrie (Melissa Chavez) and Dorrie cy makes the production’s shortcomings more (Erin Passmore) have moved from Ohio to Hol- forgivable. When something is going very badlywood with their boyfriends, Elmo (Sean Pflu- ly in a full-scale opera, it’s easy for your mind eger) and Randy (Samual Keeler). The gents to wander toward the negative. And even make a bet with a sleazy producer, Donald though there are some shortcomings here— Fonso (Sasha Olinick), who says he can make namely, Pflueger and Olinick’s singing—it’s the women cheat if the men leave town. The hard to turn against this affable cast. boys agree, lie to their girlfriends about a trip If faced with the choice to again watch to New York, then immediately return wearing WNO’s decently sung but otherwise abyssunglasses and mustaches—disguised as ready- mal 2012 production of Cosi—a two-decadeto-breakout movie stars—with the intention of old staging that somehow felt even more datgetting the other’s partner to cheat. ed—or In Series’, I’d choose the latter. With In an opera whose punchline is essentially Cosi, it’s better to laugh with the singers than —Sarah Anne Hughes “ladies are dumb,” it’s a small consolation that cringe for them. the three leading women’s singing and acting abilities far surpass that of their male counter- 1333 H St. NE. $22–$45. (202) 399-7993. parts. Chavez and Passmore as sisters Florrie inseries.org.

TONIGHT!

SPRING DANCE CONCERT

THU, APR 28

TOM PAXTON

FRI, APR 29

THE QUEBE SISTERS

April 29-30, 2016, 8 p.m.

May 1, 2016, 2 p.m.

JULIAN LAGE

Tickets are $10 Regular, $8 Seniors & $5 Students w/ ID

ROBERT E. PARILLA PERFORMING ARTS CENTER

Montgomery College • 51 Mannakee St., Rockville, MD 20850 www.montgomerycollege.edu/pac Box Office: 240-567-5301

THU, MAY 5

1 6 3 5 T R A P R D, V I E N N A , VA 2 2 1 8 2

WASHINGTON CITY PAPER College Perfomring Arts Series SPRING DANCE CONCERT Please run in the April 21st and 28th editions Call Angie Lockhart with any questions.

Angie Lockhart Publicist Robert E. Parilla Performing Arts Center Montgomery College 51 Mannakee Street Rockville, MD 20850 phone 240-567-7538 fax 240-567-7542

washingtoncitypaper.com april 29, 2016 35

I.M.P. PRESENTS Merriweather Post Pavilion • Columbia, MD THIS FRI & SAT!

Tesla • Vince Neil • Kix and more! ............................ APRIL 29 & 30

feat.

Jason Aldean w/ Thomas Rhett • A Thousand Horses • Dee Jay Silver .................. MAY 7

THIS WEEK’S SHOWS ALL GOOD PRESENTS

Elephant Revival w/ Chadwick Stokes ...................................................... Th APR 28 The Residents present Shadowland Early Show! 5:15pm Doors. .............. F 29 U STREET MUSIC HALL PRESENTS

Miami Horror w/ Beacon & Will Eastman

All 1/24 Miami Horror tickets honored. Late Show! 10pm Doors ............................. F 29 Maggie Rose & The Morrison Brothers Band Early Show! 6pm Doors . Sa 30 STEEZ PROMO PRESENTS

Slander w/ Boombox Cartel Late Show! 10pm Doors ....................................... Sa 30 M. Ward w/ NAF .................................................................................................... Su MAY 1 Parachute w/ Jon McLaughlin & My Red + Blue ..................................................... W 4 MAY

The Brian Jonestown Massacre ................................................................Th 5 Super Furry Animals .......................................................................................F 6 Old 97’s & Heartless Bastards w/ BJ Barham (of American Aquarium) ....... M 9 Parquet Courts w/ B Boys Early Show! 6pm Doors ...................................... Th 12 Titus Andronicus w/ La Sera Late Show! 10pm Doors ................................. Th 12 Penguin Prison w/ ASTR & Savior Adore ......................................................... F 13 Mixtape: Alternative Dance Party

with DJs Matt Bailer and Shea Van Horn Late Show! 11pm Doors ........... Sa 14

Yeasayer w/ Young Magic .................................................................................. M 16 Say Anything w/ mewithoutYou • Teen Suicide • Museum Mouth .................. Tu 17 White Ford Bronco ......................................................................................... F 20 JMSN w/ Tiffany Gouché .....................................................................................W 25 Caravan Palace .............................................................................................. Th 26 Hot In Herre: 2000s Dance Party ................................................................. Sa 28 RJD2 ...................................................................................................................Su 29 Christine and the Queens........................................................................... Tu 31 JUNE

Nada Surf w/ Big Thief & Bird Of Youth ..............................................................W 1 Charles Bradley and His Extraordinaires .............................................Th 2

I.M.P. & AEG LIVE PRESENT

Pentatonix w/ Us the Duo & AJ ............................................................................ MAY 12 SWEETLIFE FESTIVAL FEATURING

The 1975 / Halsey / Blondie / Flume / Grimes and more! ................................... MAY 14 Cage The Elephant w/ Portugal. The Man & Broncho .................................. MAY 15

GV/FRANK PROD. PRESENT

Kenny Chesney w/ Old Dominion ....................................................................... MAY 19 CAPITAL JAZZ FEST FEAT

New Edition • En Vogue • Toni Braxton and more! ............................................. JUNE 3-5

Ellie Goulding w/ Matt and Kim ......................................................................... JUNE 13 Tame Impala w/ M83 ................................................................................................. JUNE 16 Chris Stapleton & Jason Isbell w/ Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls . JUNE 18 DC101 KERFUFFLE FEATURING

blink-182 • Silversun Pickups • Cold War Kids and more! .............JUNE 26

ALL GOOD PRESENTS MERRYLAND MUSIC FEST FEATURING

The String Cheese Incident • Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals and more! . JULY 9 & 10

Modest Mouse / Brand New ................................................................................ JULY 12 VANS WARPED TOUR PRESENTED BY JOURNEYS FEATURING

Falling In Reverse • Issues • Four Year Strong and more! .................................... JULY 16

Brandi Carlile & Old Crow Medicine Show w/ Dawes ......................... JULY 23 SUMMER SPIRIT FESTIVAL FEATURING

Jill Scott • Erykah Badu • The Roots and more! ..........................AUGUST 6 & 7

Shinedown w/ Halestorm • Black Stone Cherry • Whiskey Myers ....................AUGUST 10

Train w/ Andy Grammer ...............................................................................................AUGUST 20 Miranda Lambert w/ Kip Moore & Brothers Osborne .....................................AUGUST 25 The Lumineers w/ BØRNS & Rayland Baxter ..................................... SAT SEPTEMBER 10 • For full lineups and more info, visit merriweathermusic.com • 930.com JUST ANNOUNCED!

The Music Center at Strathmore • N. Bethesda, MD

Kraftwerk 3-D Concert..........................................................SAT SEPTEMBER 3 On Sale Friday, April 29 at 10am

U STREET MUSIC HALL PRESENTS

Kaytranada w/ Lou Phelps .................................................................................F 3

Ticketmaster

STORY DISTRICT & CAPITAL PRIDE PRESENT

Out/Spoken: Queer, Questioning, Bold, & Proud

Pimlico Race Course • Baltimore, MD

True stories through an LGBT lens Early Show! 6pm Doors ......................... Sa 4 Who’s Bad: The World’s #1 Michael Jackson Tribute Band

Late Show! 10pm Doors........................................................................................ Sa 4 The Heavy ...........................................................................................................Th 9 Motion City Soundtrack w/ Have Mercy & Let It Happen .............................. F 10 Alice Smith ...................................................................................................... Sa 11 Birdy ...................................................................................................................Su 12 THE WILD HONEY PIE PRESENTS

Matt Corby ....................................................................................................... M 13 ALL GOOD PRESENTS

Atlas Road Crew ........................................................................................... Th 16

MANY MORE SHOWS ON SALE!

9:30 CUPCAKES

930.com

BUDWEISER INFIELDFEST AT THE PREAKNESS FEATURING

The Chainsmokers • Fetty Wap • All Time Low and more! .............................. MAY 21

JUST ANNOUNCED!

1215 U Street NW Washington, D.C.

T he G ipsy K inGs feat. Nicolas Reyes and Tonino Baliardo ...FRI SEPT 9 JENNY LEWIS - Rabbit Fur Coat Anniversary Tour with THE WATSON TWINS .........................................SAT SEPTEMBER 17 On Sale Friday, April 29 at 10am

The best thing you could possibly put in your mouth Cupcakes by BUZZ... your neighborhood bakery in Alexandria, VA. | www.buzzonslaters.com

JUSTICEAID CONCERT BENEFIT FOR THE CFSY AND NJDC

9:30 CLUB PRESENTS AT U STREET MUSIC HALL Father w/ Lord Narf & Lui Diamonds .. Th 28 The Wild Feathers w/ The Shelters & Wanted Man...... Su MAY 1 Fat White Family / Dilly Dally Freddie Gibbs w/ NAPPYNAPPA ...........W 4 w/ Laughing Man ................................. Sa 30 Del the Funky Homosapien ............... Th 5 • Buy advance tickets at the 9:30 Club box office Echostage • Washington, D.C.

Ozomatli plus Big Tony & Trouble Funk .................................................... MAY 15 Sam Beam and Jesca Hoop w/ Marlon Williams .............................................. MAY 21 Plastic Cup Boyz ................................................................................................... MAY 29 The Jayhawks .......................................................................................................JUNE 18 John Carpenter: Live Retrospective Performing themes from his classic films and new compositions ............................. JULY 12 NIGHT ADDED!

FIRST NIGHT SOLD OUT! SECOND

Bryan Ferry w/ LP ................................................................................................. JULY 25 Gad Elmaleh ................................................................................................ SEPTEMBER 1 Loretta Lynn ........................................................................................SAT NOVEMBER 19 • thelincolndc.com • U Street (Green/Yellow) stop across the street!

X Ambassadors w/ Robert DeLong & Sara Hartman ...................................................... MAY 12 Bloc Party w/ The Vaccines & Oscar ..................................................................................... MAY 19 2135 Queens Chapel Rd. NE • Ticketmaster

Tickets for 9:30 Club shows are available through TicketFly.com, by phone at 1-877-4FLY-TIX, and at the 9:30 Club box office.

9:30 CLUB BOX OFFICE HOURS are 12-7PM Weekdays & Until 11PM on show nights. 6-11PM on Sat & 6-10:30PM on Sun on show nights.

9:30 CUPCAKES The best thing you could possibly put in your mouth.

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

36 april 29, 2016 washingtoncitypaper.com

PARKING: THE OFFICIAL 9:30 parking lot entrance is on 9th Street, directly behind the 9:30 club. Buy your advance parking tickets at the same time as your concert tickets!

HAPPY HOUR DRINK PRICES

AFTER THE SHOW AT THE BACK BAR!

930.com

TAKE THE METRO!

PACK A PICNIC!

FIND YOUR SWEET SPOT!

Only 20 minutes from D.C. Park for free or take Metro

Bring your own food and drinks or pick up delicious

Choose covered, in-house seats or general

and the Wolf Trap Express bus right to the entrance.

fare, wine, and local microbrews at Wolf Trap.

admission tickets on the lawn.

INER 60S-INSPIRED D Serving

EVERYTHING from BURGERS to BOOZY SHAKES

HAPPY HOUR:

$2 TUESDAY $3 THURSDAY $4 FRIDAY

CITYLIST Friday Rock Black cat 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. Little War Twins, Alex Vans’ Bad Business, Hello Dharma, Margot MacDonald. 9 p.m. $12–$15. blackcatdc.com.

Dc9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. Bear Mountain, Young Empires. 7 p.m. $12. dcnine.com.

Fillmore Silver Spring 8656 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. (301) 960-9999. Dirty Heads, RDGLDGRN. 8 p.m. $29.50. fillmoresilverspring.com. gypSy Sally’S 3401 K St. NW. (202) 333-7700.

White Ford Bronco. 9 p.m. (Sold out) gypsysallys.com.

BRING YOUR TICKET

the hamilton 600 14th St. NW. (202) 787-1000.

Justin Trawick and The Common Good. 10:30 p.m.

Free. thehamiltondc.com.

Club

TO GET A

FREE SCHAEFERS

SABBATH SUNDAY NIGHTS Punk/Metal/Hardcore Classics

10:30 pm - Close $5 Drafts & Rail Specials

Jammin Java 227 Maple Ave. East, Vienna. (703) 255-1566. Noah Gundersen. 8 p.m. (Sold out) jamminjava.com. merriweather poSt pavilion 10475 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia. (410) 715-5550. M3 Rock Festival with Kix, Vince Neil, Lynch Mob, 86 Bullets. 4 p.m. $35–$60. merriweathermusic.com. rock & roll hotel 1353 H St. NE. (202) 388-7625.

Elliphant, Shaed. 9 p.m. $15. rockandrollhoteldc.com. verizon center 601 F St. NW. (202) 628-3200.

Justin Bieber. 7:30 p.m. $50.50–$126. verizoncenter.com.

Funk & R&B amp By Strathmore 11810 Grand Park Ave., North Bethesda. (301) 581-5100. Secret Society. 8 p.m. $25. ampbystrathmore.com.

U Street mUSic hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 5881889. Yuna, Bosco. 7 p.m. $25. ustreetmusichall. com.

ElEctRonic 9:30 clUB 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Miami Horror, Beacon, Will Eastman. 10 p.m. $20. 930. com.

U Street mUSic hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 5881889. Hudson Mohawke. 10:30 p.m. $17–$25. ustreetmusichall.com.

Jazz

2047 9th Street NW located next door to 9:30 club

SearCh LISTIngS aT waShIngTonCITYpaper.Com

Music

(ALL DRAFTS AND RAIL)

AFTER ANY SHOW AT

Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 Theater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4 Film . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45

Birchmere 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. The Hot Sardines. 7:30 p.m. $29.50. birchmere.com. mr. henry’S 601 Pennsylvania Ave. SE. (202) 5468412. Elijah Balbed. 8 p.m. Free. mrhenrysdc.com.

CITY LIGHTS: FRIDAY

MARACUYEAH 5 YEAR ANNIVERSARY D.C.’s Maracuyeah DJ Collective will celebrate its fifth anniversary the way this team of female music spinners always has—with guest performers and DJs playing tropical dance music that Maracuyeah refers to as “Pan-Latin to the Future.” Maracuyeah—whose name combines the word maracuyá, a Peruvian and Colombian passion fruit, with a Colombian slang expression—will present sets by its own DJ Rat and Carmencha at the celebration, as well as ones from Oakland-based Panamanian rap act Los Rakas, Brooklyn-by-way-of-Panama-and-Puerto Rico DJ Bembona, and Venezuelan electro-pop artist MPeach. Los Rakas, formed in 2006, rap in English and Spanish over tracks influenced by reggaeton, dancehall, hip-hop, and EDM. Exuberantly flowing in a bouncy, sing-song manner, its style works no matter your language proficiency. MPeach’s club music mixes programmed loops and sounds from the Caribbean and the global African diaspora with occasional pop-friendly vocals. Bembona’s mixtapes blend horn-heavy old-school salsa with Latin house and Motown soul. At Judy’s, come as you are: This celebration is billed as a “mixed-community-amor, queer-fly, immigrant-posi, POC-centered genderpolice-free, nena-run, friends-welcome, mucho-respeto space.” Bembona, MPeach, and Los Rakas perform at 10 p.m. at Judy’s Bar —Steve Kiviat and Restaurant, 2212 14th St. NW. $15. maracuyeah.com.

countRy

opERa

BarnS at wolF trap 1635 Trap Road, Vienna.

gw liSner aUDitoriUm 730 21st St. NW. (202)

(703) 255-1900. The Quebe Sisters. 8 p.m. $22–$25.

994-6800. Opera and the French Revolution from

wolftrap.org.

Opera Lafayette. 7 p.m. $20–$110. lisner.gwu.edu.

WoRld

classical

kenneDy center millenniUm Stage 2700 F

liBrary oF congreSS thomaS JeFFerSon

St. NW. (202) 467-4600. The Muffinz. 6 p.m. Free.

BUilDing 10 First St. SE. (202) 707-5000. Del Sol

kennedy-center.org.

String Quartet. 9 p.m. Free. loc.gov.

washingtoncitypaper.com april 29, 2016 37

SUMMER 2016

RAY L aMONTAGNE » THE BAND PERRY LAKE STREET DIVE | THE LONE BELLOW PHILLIP PHILLIPS | MATT NATHANSON GOO GOO DOLLS | COLLECTIVE SOUL SETH MacFARLANE | NSO » AND MANY MORE!

SEE FULL SCHEDULE INSIDE

cabarEt kenneDy cenTeR conceRT hall 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. DECLASSIFIED: Cabaret of Sins featuring Storm Large with the National Symphony Orchestra. 9 p.m. $39. kennedy-center.org.

DJ nights

GOOD TO GO Brunch Sundays from 10am - 3pm

TH APR 28 Dale & The ZDubs w/ Of Good Nature FR APR 29 Moonshine Society w/ Brooke Annibale TU MAY 3 Trivia Tuesday! WE MAY 4 Silver Line Station TH MAY 5 Ghost Of Paul Revere FR MAY 6 Turtle Recall SA MAY 7 The Pocket Band SU MAY 8 Miss Shevaughn & Yuma Ray w/ Lenclair & Galaxy Electric MO MAY 9 Sehkraft Open Mic! (Hosted By Derek Evry) WE MAY 11 Ragtime Annie (Featuring Members Of: Circa Blue / Chris Jones & The Night Drivers) TH MAY 12 The NRI’s w / Underlined Passages SA MAY 14 Emilio Festevez (This show has been postponed, new date announced soon) SU MAY 15 Bach To Rock (B2R) Band Showcase TU MAY 17 Trivia Tuesday WE MAY 18 Sookey Jump

SEHKRAFT BEER RELEASE WEEKEND

black caT backSTage 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. Dark & Stormy with DJ Shea Van Horn.

9:30 p.m. $5. blackcatdc.com.

Vocal geoRge maSon UniveRSiTy cenTeR foR The aRTS 4373 Mason Pond Drive, Fairfax. (888) 9452468. Chorale Broadway Showcase. 8 p.m. $5–$12. cfa.gmu.edu.

TASTY SATURDAYS

TH MAY 19 Giant & Thieves w/ One Step FR MAY 20 Beggar’s Tomb (Tribute To The Grateful Dead) Offer Tasty Samples in our Butcher Shop SA MAY 21 Kidsrock! Brunch & Concert w/ Mr. Knick Knack (Tickets On Website) & Market SA MAY 21 Scott Kurt & Memphis 59 w / Run Come See

925 North Garfield St. | Arlington, VA | 703-841-5889 | sehkraftbrewing.com

Saturday rock

amP by STRaThmoRe 11810 Grand Park Ave., North Bethesda. (301) 581-5100. The Mersey Beatles. 8 p.m. $30. ampbystrathmore.com. biRchmeRe 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. The Waifs with Ruby Boots. 7:30 p.m. $35. birchmere.com.

The hamilTon 600 14th St. NW. (202) 787-1000.

Lloyd Dobler Effect. 10:30 p.m. Free. thehamiltondc. com.

Rock & Roll hoTel 1353 H St. NE. (202) 388-7625.

Fellowcraft, Technicians, Hundredth Nomad. 7:30 p.m. $12. rockandrollhoteldc.com.

U STReeT mUSic hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 5881889. Fat White Family, Dilly Dally, Laughing Man. 7 p.m. $15. ustreetmusichall.com.

ElEctronic 9:30 clUb 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Slander, Boombox Cartel. 10 p.m. $22. 930.com.

U STReeT mUSic hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 5881889. Big Wild, Chet Porter, Lean Quatifah. 10:30 p.m. $10–$12. ustreetmusichall.com.

Jazz DaviS PeRfoRming aRTS cenTeR aT geoRgeTown UniveRSiTy 3700 O St. NW. (202) 687-3838.

Georgetown University Jazzfest. 12 p.m. Free. performingarts.georgetown.edu. geoRge maSon UniveRSiTy cenTeR foR The aRTS 4373 Mason Pond Drive, Fairfax. (888) 945-2468. International Jazz Day Concert. 1 p.m. $5–$12. cfa.gmu.edu.

black caT 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. The Thermals, Summer Cannibals, Amanda X. 9 p.m. $15. blackcatdc.com.

kenneDy cenTeR millenniUm STage 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. Offlines Project featuring Yinon Muallem and Guy Mintus. 6 p.m. Free. kennedy-center.org.

Dc9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. Jared Evan, Bumi Cult,Cawl Stead. 9 p.m. $15. dcnine.com.

mR. henRy’S 601 Pennsylvania Ave. SE. (202) 5468412. Maija Rejman. 8 p.m. Free. mrhenrysdc.com.

fillmoRe SilveR SPRing 8656 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. (301) 960-9999. NOFX, Direct Hit!, Mephiskapheles. 8 p.m. $25. fillmoresilverspring. com. gyPSy Sally’S 3401 K St. NW. (202) 333-7700.

Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams, Erin and the Wildfire. 8 p.m. $22.50–$27.50. gypsysallys.com.

country 9:30 clUb 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Maggie Rose, The Morrison Brothers Band. 6 p.m. $20. 930. com.

CITY LIGHTS: SATURDAY

THE THERMALS

When punkish Portland-based band The Thermals performed at a “sold out” Bernie Sanders rally in its hometown last month, it felt like a fitting launch to the band’s latest rendition of head bobbing, anthemic pop songs, heard this time on 2016’s We Disappear. At the rally, lead singer Hutch Harris tore through an acoustic rendition of the group’s most famous song, “Now We Can See,” as the rest of the band’s members awkwardly swayed and clapped and danced around, cheering for their preferred candidate and maybe, just a little bit, for themselves. By now, The Thermals has been around for a decade and a half, and its fans range from dads reliving The Hold Steady’s glory days to younger indie fans raised on the semi-political, semi-personal howls of Titus Andronicus and Japandroids.

There’s a West Coast fuzz to its records, but it’s ultimately Harris and bassist Kathy Foster’s self-aware, pop-leaning songwriting that casts its newest effort in a firm confidence, proving to critics and fans that the band still deserves to be around, making emotive guitar rock. The Thermals perform with Summer Cannibals and Amanda X at 9 p.m. at the Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW. $15.

(202) 667-4490. blackcatdc.com. —Quinn Myers

38 april 29, 2016 washingtoncitypaper.com

washingtoncitypaper.com april 29, 2016 39

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

1811 14TH ST NW

www.blackcatdc.com @blackcatdc

APRIL / MAY SHOWS THU 28 FRI 29 FRI 29 SAT 30 SAT 30 SUN 1 FRI 6 & SAT 7 FRI 6 SAT 7

HEMLINES

LITTLE WAR TWINS ALEX VANS’ BAD BUSINESS

DARK & STORMY

DANCE / ELECTRO / RETRO

THE THERMALS CMPVTR_CLVB

WILD BELLE DAN SAVAGE’S

HUMP! FILM FESTIVAL STRAIGHT OUTTA BURLESQUE AN ODE TO HIP HOP (21+) THE FUNK PARADE PRESENTS:

HEAVY ROTATION

ALL VINYL DANCE PARTY SUN 8 MON 9 TUE 10 WED 11 THU 12

FRI 13

BOYCOTT CANCER

A BENEFIT FOR JOHN STABB

THE SPOOK SCHOOL

OUGHT // PRIESTS

WILD NOTHING

HOP ALONG SPEEDY ORTIZ THE OBSESSED

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

Tix @ Ticketmaster.com 800-745-3000

Apr 28

NAJEE

THE HOT SARDINES Ruby THE WAIFS Boots ROBBY KRIEGER BAND

29 30 3

(Performing music of The Doors!)

DWEEZIL ZAPPA

5 (Via Zammata Tour) with Reformed Whores 6

JERRY JEFF WALKER Mothers’ Day with

8

MOTHER’S FINEST 9&10 CHRIS ISAAK First Comes The Night Tour IRIS DEMENT & LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III WALTER BEASLEY GARY TAYLOR 14 ® 15 SWEET HONEY IN THE ROCK AUBRIE 18 BRANDY CLARK SELLERS & Luna 19 OTTMAR LIEBERT Negra

11

May 13

In the

20

!

Doors 6pm

HARD WORKING AMERICANS

featuring TODD SNIDER, DAVE SCHOOLS, NEAL CASAL, DUANE TRUCKS, CHAD STAEHLY and JESSE AYCOCK with REED FOEHL

Amy DELBERT McCLINTON Black DIANE SCHUUR 22 MISSY HIGGINS 24

21

An Evening with

25

RICHARD MARX Peter 27 ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO Case FREDDIE JACKSON 28

TUE MAY 17 ROGUE WAVE

FRI MAY 20 ROME FORTUNE THE RANGE

JUSTIN HAYWARD Presents

Stage Door w/Mike Dawes

June 1

PETER WOLF 3&4 ROAMFEST 2016 7pm Solo 9 JOSHUA RADIN Acoustic 10 THE DAN BAND 11 SOUTHSIDE JOHNNY & THE ASBURY JUKES W/Gary Douglas Band presents

TAKE METRO!

WE ARE LOCATED 3 BLOCKS FROM THE U STREET/CARDOZO STATION

TO BUY TICKETS VISIT TICKETFLY.COM

THE MOODY BLUES’

29

& The Midnight Travelers

THE AVETT BROTHERS

with special guest

BRETT DENNEN

May 15, 7:30pm

Tickets On Sale Now through Ticketmaster.com 800-745-3000

40 april 29, 2016 washingtoncitypaper.com

CITY LIGHTS: SUNDAY

NEJLA YASEMIN YATKIN DANCE Berlin-born choreographer Nejla Yasemin Yatkin’s company NY2Dance calls its work “a bridging of cultures from East and West.” To build this bridge, Yatkin draws inspiration from her Turkish heritage and from legendary female dancers-turned-choreographers like Martha Graham. Though she has choreographed numerous group pieces for her company and others (including the Washington and Baltimore ballets), Yatkin takes the floor alone in “What Dreams May Come.”

Like much of her work, this solo piece explores questions of identity. The music comes from Ahmet Adnan Saygun and Kamran Ince, Turkish composers famous for blending Turkish and Western traditions. In the multimedia performance, Yatkin plays with fabric and shadows, and, with help from video artist Enki Andrews, is cloaked in images, both pre-recorded video and real-time projection body mapping designed to respond to her movements. Her visit to D.C. marks the end of “Dancing Around the World,” a yearlong, 20-city tour that took Yatkin and Andrews from Tunis to Antananarivo, from Madagascar to Hyderabad, India. In each city, they collaborated with local dancers on site-specific works, a program focused on creating dance in public spaces that began with Yatkin’s experiments in Dupont Circle almost a decade ago. The performance begins at 7 p.m. at Dance —Emily Walz Place, 3225 8th St. NE. $15–$30. (202) 269-1600. danceplace.com.

classical george MaSon UniverSity center for tHe artS 4373 Mason Pond Drive, Fairfax. (888) 9452468. Fairfax Symphony Orchestra with Awadagin Pratt, piano. 8 p.m. $34–$58. cfa.gmu.edu.

Kennedy center concert Hall 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. National Symphony Orchestra: James Gaffigan, conductor, Storm Large, vocal. 8 p.m. $15–$89. kennedy-center.org.

U Street MUSic Hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 5881889. The Wild Feathers, Shelters, Wanted Man. 7 p.m. $18. ustreetmusichall.com.

ElEctronic Kennedy center MillenniUM Stage 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. Tarana. 6 p.m. Free. kennedy-center.org.

country

liBrary of congreSS tHoMaS JefferSon BUilding 10 First St. SE. (202) 707-5000. Del Sol String Quartet with Frederic Rzewski, piano, Jennifer Koh, violin, Benjamin Hochman, piano. 8 p.m.

Free. loc.gov.

BircHMere 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. Cowboy Junkies. 7:30 p.m. (Sold out) birchmere.com.

MontPelier artS center 9652 Muirkirk Road, Laurel. (301) 377-7800. Fortunata Trio. 1 p.m. Free. arts.pgparks.com.

Folk

MUSic center at StratHMore 5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda. (301) 581-5100. Baltimore Symphony Orchestra: Variations On A Rococo Theme with Andrey Boreyko, conductor; Dariusz Skoraczewski, cello. 8 p.m. $35–$99. strathmore.org.

JaMMin Java 227 Maple Ave. East, Vienna. (703) 255-1566. Joseph, Liza Anne. 7:30 p.m. $14. jamminjava.com.

Vocal

UniverSity of Maryland aUditoriUM at SHady grove BUilding 1 9630 Gudelsky Drive, Rockville. (301) 738-6000. Padmashri Gundecha Brothers. 5 p.m. $25. dhrupad.brownpapertickets.com.

george MaSon UniverSity center for tHe artS 4373 Mason Pond Drive, Fairfax. (888) 9452468. Chorale Broadway Showcase. 8 p.m. $5–$12. cfa.gmu.edu.

Sunday rock

9:30 clUB 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. M. Ward, NAF. 7 p.m. $32.50. 930.com.

BlacK cat 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. Wild Belle, James Supercave. 7:30 p.m. $15. blackcatdc.com. dc9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. Muuy Biien, Shirt/Pants. 9 p.m. $12. dcnine.com.

World

classical MUSic center at StratHMore 5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda. (301) 581-5100. Murray Perahia, piano. 4 p.m. $60–$100. strathmore.org. national gallery of art 4th Street and Constitution Avenue NW. (202) 737-4215. PostClassical Ensemble. 3:30 p.m. Free. nga.gov.

PHilliPS collection 1600 21st St. NW. (202) 3872151. Jennifer Koh, Ursula Oppens, Frederic Rzewski. 4 p.m. (Sold out) phillipscollection.org.

washingtoncitypaper.com april 29, 2016 41

Vocal ClariCe Smith Performing artS Center Stadium Drive and Route 193, College Park. (301) 4052787. UMD Chamber Singers University Chorale. 8 p.m. $10–$25. theclarice.umd.edu.

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Vocal kennedy Center millennium Stage 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. Yale Whiffenpoofs. 6 p.m.

Free. kennedy-center.org.

howard theatre 620 T St. NW. (202) 803-2899.

Harlem Gospel Choir. 1:30 p.m. $20–$40. thehowardtheatre.com.

APRIL

ClariCe Smith Performing artS Center Stadium Drive and Route 193, College Park. (301) 4052787. Honors Chamber Music Recital. 7 p.m. Free. theclarice.umd.edu.

Wednesday

Monday

Rock

Rock

dC9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. SALES. 9 p.m. $12–$14. dcnine.com. roCk & roll hotel 1353 H St. NE. (202) 388-7625.

Local H. 8 p.m. $17–$20. rockandrollhoteldc.com.

Vocal kennedy Center millennium Stage 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. School Without Walls Stage Band and Concert Choir. 6 p.m. Free. kennedycenter.org.

Tuesday

9:30 CluB 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Parachute, Jon McLaughlin, My Red + Blue. 7 p.m. $23. 930. com. dC9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. Bane, Boy Sets Fire. 7 p.m. $20. dcnine.com. Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires, No Ice. 9 p.m. $12. dcnine.com. howard theatre 620 T St. NW. (202) 803-2899.

Filter, Orgy, Vampires Everywhere, Death Valley High. 6:30 p.m. $22.50–$60. thehowardtheatre. com. roCk & roll hotel 1353 H St. NE. (202) 388-7625.

Bane, Boy Sets Fire, Give. 7 p.m. $20. rockandrollhoteldc.com.

Jazz

Rock

BirChmere 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. Robby Krieger Band. 7:30 p.m. $35. birchmere.com.

ClariCe Smith Performing artS Center Stadium Drive and Route 193, College Park. (301) 405-2787. Outdoor Big Band Finale. 5:30 p.m. Free. theclarice.umd.edu.

WoRld

roCk & roll hotel 1353 H St. NE. (202) 388-7625.

Born Ruffians, On an On. 8 p.m. $15. rockandrollhoteldc.com.

roBert e. Parilla Performing artS Center 51 Mannakee St., Rockville. (240) 567-5301. Montgomery College World Ensemble. 7:30 p.m. Free. montgomerycollege.edu/pac.

Hip-Hop

Hip-Hop

warner theatre 513 13th St. NW. (202) 7834000. Bon Qui Qui, Group 1 Crew. 8 p.m. $32. warnertheatredc.com.

u Street muSiC hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 5881889. Freddie Gibbs, Nappynappa. 7 p.m. $20. ustreetmusichall.com.

classical

classical

ChurCh of the ePiPhany 1317 G St. NW. (202) 347-2635. Washington Bach Consort Noontime Cantata Series. 12 p.m. Free. epiphanydc.org.

kennedy Center ConCert hall 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. Christopher Houlihan, organ. 8 p.m. $15. kennedy-center.org.

CITY LIGHTS: MONDAY

BOB BOILEN

When you love something as much as Bob Boilen loves music, you want to know what made your heroes fall in love with it too. The multi-hyphenated NPR Music renegade did just that, thanks in part to his decades-long relationship with underground and mainstream musicians alike. Boilen’s first book, Your Song Changed My Life, brings together legends like Smokey Robinson and comers like James Blake to unpack their most significant music memories. The various accounts throughout the book relate to Boilen’s own nostalgia on listening to a record or experiencing an incredible band for the first time. He makes a point in real life to bring those bands and musicians in front of fans. Boilen created the NPR Tiny Desk concerts, which gave T-Pain the opportunity to gain a new fan demographic and gives aspiring artists like Tiny Desk Contest winner Fantastic Negrito a chance to be seen. Boilen’s energy for the artists he loves is apparent by the number of shows (reportedly in the double digits) he tries to attend each week. Boilen comes to Your Song Changed My Life as a fan bringing the artists he loves to anyone willing to listen or read.

Bob Boilen speaks at 7:30 p.m. at Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, 600 I St. NW. $35–$50.

—Jordan-Marie Smith (202) 408-3100. sixthandi.org.

CITY LIGHTS: TUESDAY

THE BODY OF AN AMERICAN

War, Albert Camus once wrote, “lives inside ourselves.” Sometimes, internal wars stem from experiences in actual wars; sometimes, from a single image. In 1993, Canadian journalist Paul Watson photographed a crowd dragging the desecrated body of Staff Sgt. Bill Cleveland through the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia. The photo had a profound impact; some, including Watson, argue that the picture precipitated President Bill Clinton’s decision to pull out of the Somalian conflict. But for Watson—who believes he heard Cleveland say “If you do this, I will own you forever” just seconds before he snapped the soonto-be infamous frames—the image has become a relentless specter. When Dan O’Brien, a playwright grappling with his own demons, heard Watson speak about the photograph in 2007, he emailed the journalist, and, without fully grasping what drew them to each other, they developed a mutual curiosity. O’Brien’s play, The Body of an American, explores their unexpected friendship. Two actors play O’Brien and Watson—as well as a host of other characters—and the disjointed dialogue and scattered scenes bleed into one another as they circle around these two haunted men. War inhabits them; it dwells within them.

Yet they continue to engage each other and reach for understanding—for some semblance of redemption amid the fragmentation. The play runs April 27 to May 22 at Theater J, —Victoria Gaffney 1529 16th St. NW. $27–$67. (202) 777-3210. theaterj.org.

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Jazz

Kennedy Center MillenniuM StAge 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. University of Maryland School of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies Musical Theater Workshop. 6 p.m. Free. kennedy-center.org.

AMP by StrAthMore 11810 Grand Park Ave., North Bethesda. (301) 581-5100. Billy Hart Quartet.

8 p.m. $35–$45. ampbystrathmore.com.

Thursday roCk

9:30 Club 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. The Brian Jonestown Massacre. 7 p.m. $25. 930.com. birChMere 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. Dweezil Zappa and the Zappa Plays Zappa Band. 7:30 p.m. $35. birchmere.com. dC9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. Matthew Logan Vasquez of Delta Spirit, Dustin Lovelis. 9 p.m. $15. dcnine.com. Matthew Logan Vasquez, Dustin Lovelis. 9 p.m. $15. dcnine.com. fillMore Silver SPring 8656 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. (301) 960-9999. Megadeth, Wilson. 8 p.m. $45. fillmoresilverspring.com. roCK & roll hotel 1353 H St. NE. (202) 388-7625.

Woods, Ultimate Painting, The Sea Life. 8 p.m. $13–$15. rockandrollhoteldc.com.

bArnS At Wolf trAP 1635 Trap Road, Vienna.

(703) 255-1900. Julian Lage. 8 p.m. $22. wolftrap.org. blueS Alley 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Arturo Sandoval. 8 p.m. & 10 p.m. $50–$55. bluesalley.com.

Kennedy Center MillenniuM StAge 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. “Music, Miles, Mari-Liis, and More” with Shuhui (Sophie) Zhoi, Iva Casian Lakos, and Simone Baron. 6 p.m. Free. kennedy-center.org.

World hoWArd theAtre 620 T St. NW. (202) 803-2899.

The Afro-Cuban All Stars. 8 p.m. $37.50–$70. thehowardtheatre.com.

Hip-Hop u Street MuSiC hAll 1115 U St. NW. (202) 5881889. Del the Funky Homosapien, Sean Anonymous.

7 p.m. $20. ustreetmusichall.com.

ClassiCal Kennedy Center ConCert hAll 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. National Symphony Orchestra:

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washingtoncitypaper.com april 29, 2016 43

Andrew Litton, conductor; Vadim Gluzman, violin. 7 p.m. $15–$89. kennedy-center.org.

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THE CRIMESTOPPERS BLUES ROCK ORIGINALS AND COVERS

110 In the Shade A young woman aches for a life outside her small town and when she meets a handsome stranger who promises her opportunity and the ability to ease the region’s drought, her dreams appear within reach in this lively romantic musical by Harvey Schmidt, Tom Jones, and N. Richard Nash. Ford’s Theatre. 511 10th St. NW. To May 14. $28–$69. (202) 347-4833. fords.org. all the Way Explore the power and personality of Lyndon Johnson in this drama from playwright Robert Schenkkan. Featuring appearances by Martin Luther King, J. Edgar Hoover, and other public figures from the era, this play serves as both history lesson and cautionary tale. Arena Stage. 1101 6th St. SW. To May 8. $55–$110. (202) 488-3300. arenastage.org.

Black Pearl SIngS American folk songs and spirituals are put to use in this play set in Depression-era Texas, about two women whose love of music draws them together during difficult times. MetroStage.

1201 N. Royal St., Alexandria. To May 29. $55–$60.

(703) 548-9044. metrostage.org. the Body of an amerIcan A war reporter and a playwright, both haunted by their pasts, form a friendship that takes them around the world in this new play by Dan O’Brien, who based the drama on his own relationship with friend Paul Watson. Theater J. 1529 16th St. NW. To May 29. $27–$67. (202) 777-3210. theaterj.org. chronIcle of a death foretold A young woman returns to her family after her husband discover she is not a virgin, leading her brothers to take revenge in this exciting tale based on the novel

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. GALA Hispanic Theatre.

3333 14th St. NW. To May 8. $20–$42. (202) 2347174. galatheatre.org.

dIal ‘m’ for murder A former tennis star aims to get away with killing his wife in order to cash in on her wealth but he’s quickly investigated by a detective and his wife’s former lover, leading to a wild chase and surprising ending. Jason King Jones directs this play, which inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s film of the same name. Olney Theatre Center.

2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Road, Olney. To May 1. $15–$45. (301) 924-3400. olneytheatre.org. dISgraced Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama considers the consequences of the American dream from the perspective of Amir, a South Asian immigrant who fears that his lavish lifestyle has alienated him from his roots. Arena Stage. 1101 6th St. SW. To May 29. $55–$100. (202) 488-3300. arenastage.org. the electrIc BaBy Rorschach Theater presents Stefanie Zadravec’s spooky thriller about a woman who kills a young man and finds herself haunted by a series of lost souls and spirits that gather around and illuminate a young child. Directed by Randy Baker, this production explores how strange beginnings can lead us on unexpected paths. Atlas Performing Arts Center. 1333 H St. NE. To May 15. $15–$30. (202) 399-7993. atlasarts.org.

Journey to the WeSt Mary Zimmerman’s take on this ancient Chinese legend about a monk on the search for sacred scriptures is both mystical and dreamy, as presented by Constellation Theatre.

Constellation Theatre at Source. 1835 14th St. NW. To May 22. $20–$45. (202) 204-7741. constellationtheatre.org. a leSSon from aloeS Laura Giannarelli directs this acclaimed drama by Athol Fugard about three civil rights activists whose work has driven them apart. The arrival of another friend, a black man who is imprisoned for his work, forces all the characters to confront their failures and the realities of the nation in which they live. Quotidian Theatre Company at The Writer’s Center. 4508 Walsh St., Bethesda. To May 29. $15–$30. (301) 816-1023. quotidiantheatre.org.

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CITY LIGHTS: WEDNESDAY

TRANSMISSION

Sussing out the real story from the dozens of narratives that emerge from any event has become something of a talent for journalists and media consumers. From tweets to blog posts to think pieces, the way people receive the news has rapidly evolved over the past several decades. A new “performance essay” on stage at Atlas Performing Arts Center seeks to explain why skepticism is a natural resource 21st-century residents must have in abundance. Presented by local playwrights collective The Welders and performed by member Gwydion Suilebhan, the piece places audience members in armchairs set up around old radios. The Performer then leads a lesson in 20th century history that blends sound experiments with jazz music and horror stories plucked out of current events. If the premise sounds confusing, don’t worry. Just grab a seat, open your ears, and expect to think twice before sharing that political meme you found so hilarious. The play runs April 28 to May 28 at Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H St. NE. $15–$30. (202) 399—Caroline Jones 7993. atlasarts.org.

Susan Sarandon Rose Byrne

CITY LIGHTS: THURSDAY

–Manohla Dargis, THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Laurel Canyon era of mellow guitar pop faded away in the early ’80s, some time between Warren Zevon’s drug binges and the acrimonious breakup of The Eagles. Intervening decades were filled with scuzzy grunge riffs and manufactured pop from boy bands, but now it’s back thanks to two bands on opposing coasts.

Dawes, based in L.A., deals in sun-kissed pop that warms your spirit one moment and breaks it the next. Woods, a Brooklyn-based ensemble, gets a little more creative, incorporating a singing saw and more prevalent percussion on its latest psychedelic tracks. Even with these musical effects in place, the emotional heft remains at the core of Woods’ music. “You can cover up, you can hide, you feel again/ What passes by won’t stay with them,” vocalist Jeremy Earl sings on “Moving to the Left.” At Rock & Roll Hotel, expect to see the members of Woods use their instruments in unconventional ways while still managing to strum your heartstrings. Woods performs with Ultimate Painting and The Sea Life at 8 p.m. at Rock & Roll Hotel, 1353 H St. —Caroline Jones NE. $13–$15. (202) 388-7625. rockandrollhoteldc.com.

The NeTher Local favorite Ed Gero makes his Woolly Mammoth debut in Jennifer Haley’s fantastical play about what happens when Earth turns into a gray wasteland. A special place where all desires are met serves as a safe space for some individuals but when a detective begins to look into the forces behind this wonderland, the artifice around it crumbles. Woolly Mammoth Theatre. 641 D St. NW. To May 1. $35–$68. (202) 393-3939. woollymammoth.net.

Proof In this Pulitzer Prize-winning play, a young woman who has spent much of her life caring for her unstable father must reckon with his actions after his death. When she encounters her estranged sister and a former student of her father’s, the three of them begin to figure out what’s left behind. 1st Stage. 1524 Spring Hill Road, McLean. To May 1. $15–$30. (703) 854-1856. 1ststagetysons.org. reduced shakesPeare coMPaNy The popular British comedy group, which presents the Bard’s work in silly, abbreviated form, returns to the Folger with its take on “William Shakespeare’s Love Lost First Play.” Folger Elizabethan Theatre. 201 E. Capitol St. SE. To May 8. $35–$75. (202) 544-7077. folger.edu.

The Wizard of oz Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice contribute several new songs to this production of the classic musical about a lion, a scarecrow, a tin man, and a girl who just wants to go home to Kansas. National Theatre. 1321 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. To May 15. $48–$98. (202) 628-6161. nationaltheatre.org.

Film

GreeN rooM A band must take on a gang of vicious skinheads after witnessing a murder in this thriller from writer and director Jeremy Saulnier.

Starring Anton Yelchin and Alia Shawkat. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information) The huNTsMaN: WiNTer’s War Charlize Theron and Emily Blunt star in this prequel to 2012’s Snow White and the Huntsman, which finds sisters Freya and Ravenna competing over the love and protec-

The New York Times

“AN INSISTENTLY WINNING, HOPELESSLY IRRESISTIBLE MOTHER-DAUGHTER DUET.”

WOODS

The MysTery of Love & sex On the eve of their college graduations, two longtime friends debate pursuing a romantic relationship and in the process, learn about themselves, as well as about love and sex, in this warm comedy from author Bathsheba Doran. Signature Theatre. 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. To May 8. $40–$85. (703) 820-9771. sigtheatre.org.

J.K. Simmons

And

tion of an army of huntsman. Directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information) keaNu Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele n star in this manic comedy about friends who aim to rescue a stolen cat by posing as drug dealers.

Directed by Peter Atencio. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information) The MeddLer This independent comedy starn ring Susan Sarandon and Rose Byrne follows an aging widow as she attempts to start a new life with her daughter on the West Coast following the death of her husband. Written and directed by Lorene Scafaria. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information) day A plethora of stars, includn MoTher’s ing Julia Roberts, Jennifer Aniston, and Jason Sudeikis, appear in director Garry Marshall’s latest ensemble comedy centered around a holiday. This time, the characters have to deal with complicated emotions surrounding the women who birthed them. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue

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WASHINGTON CITY PAPER FRI 4/29 2 COL. (4.666) X 2.49 CS ALL.MDL.0429.WCP #1

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gkids presents a riveting steampunk sci-fi adventure from the creators of persepoLis

MIYAZAKI MEETS PIXAR!”

“

THE VERGE

BEAUTIFUL, INVENTIVE AND UNCANNILY SATISFYING!

“

The movie so teems with delightful detail and has such an exuberant sense of play that it feels entirely fresh.”

97%

MARION

information)

COTILLARD

raTcheT & cLaNk A space mechanic and his

n new robot pal fight to save the universe in this

IN

animated caper from directors Kevin Munroe and Jericca Cleland. Featuring the voices of Rosario Dawson, Paul Giamatti, and John Goodman. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information) siNG sTreeT A teenager coming of age in 1980s Dublin forms a band and starts writing songs in order to win the heart of a beautiful model in the a film by

latest film from writer/director John Carney. Starring

CHRISTIAN DESMARES and FRANCK EKINCI

Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Aidan Gillen, and Maria Doyle Kennedy. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information)

Film clips by Caroline Jones.

ENDS THURSDAY,

APRIL 28

TH

LANDMARK THEATRES

BETHESDA ROW

7235 WOODMONT AVE (301) 652-7273 BETHESDA

STARTS FRIDAY,

APRIL 29

TH

LANDMARK THEATRES

WEST END CINEMA

2301 M STREET NW (202) 534-1907 WASHINGTON

washingtoncitypaper.com april 29, 2016 45

Washington City Paper Wednesday, 4/27 1/4Pg(4.66x5.14)

Contents:

Adult..............................................46 Auto/Wheels/Boat .....................47 Buy, Sell, Trade, Marketplace.................................46 Community ..................................46 Employment.................................46 Health/Mind, Body & Spirit ...............................47 Housing/Rentals.........................46 Legals Notices ............................46 Music/Music Row ......................46 Real Estate...................................46 Services........................................46

Diversions

Ink Well Crossword....................47

Adult Services

Legals

Legals

Condos for Rent

Rooms for Rent

Moving & Hauling

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E.L. HAYNES PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL

Mechanics’ Lien: 2010 Honda VIN# 5J6TF2H50AL016880. Sale to be held May 14, 2016 at 10 a.m. on the premises of COLLISION AUTOBODY, 7229 Landover Rd, Hyattsville, MD 20785.

Adams Morgan/Petworth First Month ‘s Rent free. 1BR with den condo, fully renovated, secure building, granite kitchen, new appliances, W/D, DW, CAC. Metro 1 block away, Safway across the st, assigned parking, $1850/mo. NO PETS. 953 Randolph St. NW. Mr Gaffney, 202-829-3925 or 301775-5701.

Capitol Hill Living: Furnished Rooms for short-term and longterm rental for $1,100! Near Metro, major bus lines and Union Station - visit website for details www.TheCurryEstate.com

JUNK BE GONE junk removal and demolision. Fast friendly service.

Realtor discounts, whole home cleanouts, and demos. Call now for your free estimate 202-4929743.

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Legals ATTENTION VETERANS seeking benefi ts; anyone who needs legal help with IRS,adoption,recent arrest.other legal problems.

Contact Attorney Effi e Forde-202-508-1483 for appointment. Offi ce located at Farragut North Metro Station.

Mechanics’ Lien: 2007 Lexus VIN# JTHBC96S575008135.

Sale to be held May 14, 2016 at 11 a.m. on the premises of TAYLORS TOWING, LLC, 9800 Fallard Ct. Lot 40, Upper Marlboro, MD 20772.

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS Landscaping and Snow Removal Services E.L. Haynes Public Charter School (“ELH”) is soliciting proposals from qualifi ed vendors for landscaping and snow removal services. ELH seeks companies with demonstrated ability and experience in creating attractive landscapes and maintaining grounds using industry-accepted guidelines and standards throughout the year. Only proposals for all services included in the scope of work will be considered.

Proposals are due via email to Kristin Yochum no later than 5:00 PM on Friday, May 6, 2016. We will notify the final vendor of selection following the review process. The full RFP with bidding requirements can be obtained by contacting: Kristin Yochum E.L. Haynes Public Charter School Phone: 202.667-4446 ext 3504 Email: kyochum@elhaynes.org Mechanics’ Lien: 2015 Hyundai VIN# KMHDH4AE0FU456752.

Sale to be held May 14, 2016 at 11 a.m. on the premises of TAYLORS TOWING, LLC, 9800 Fallard Ct. Lot 40, Upper Marlboro, MD 20772.

Classified Ads Print & Web Classified Packages may be placed on our Web site, by fax, mail, phone, or in person at our office: 1400 I (EYE) Street NW Suite 900 Washington, D.C. 20005.

Commercial Ads rates start at $20 for up to 6 lines in print and online; additional print lines start at $2.50/line (vary by section).

Your print ad placement will include web placement plus up to 10 photos online.

Premium options available for both print and web may vary.

FREE TRIAL

THE HOTTEST GAY CHATLINE

Print Deadline The deadline for submission and payment of classified ads for print is each Monday, 5 pm.

You may contact the Classifieds Rep by e-mailing classifieds@washingtoncitypaper.com or calling 202-650-6926.

For more information please visit www.washingtoncitypaper.com

46 april 29, 2016 washingtoncitypaper.com

1-202-448-0091 More Local Numbers: 800-777-8000 www.guyspyvoice.com Ahora en Español/18+

Mechanics’ Lien: 2014 Chevy VIN# 1G1PA5SH2E7353312. Sale to be held May 14, 2016 at 10 a.m. on the premises of COLLISION AUTOBODY, 7229 Landover Rd, Hyattsville, MD 20785.

Mechanics’ Lien: 2014 FordVIN# 1FTMF1CM9EKF28376.

Sale to be held May 14, 2016 at 10 a.m. on the premises of COLLISION AUTOBODY, 7229 Landover Rd, Hyattsville, MD 20785.

Office/Commercial For Sale Offices For Rent, DC Petworth & Cheverly, MD (parking in MD) for church services, recording studio /rehearsal space, etc. Wide range of uses. $600-$1600 rent. Call 202-355-2068 or 301-772-3341.

Roommates ALL AREAS: ROOMMATES. COM. Lonely? Bored? Broke?

Find the perfect roommate to compliment your personality and lifestyles at Roommates.com!

Rooms for Rent Fully furnished room for rent in Brentwood, MD. Blocks outside of NE DC, easy access to West Hyattsville metro (green line), bus to Rhode Island metro (red line), and University of Maryland.

Utilities included for $675/month WiFi ready Call Linda 240-893-2929 or email lindajeune10@gmail.com Rooms for rent in Cheverly, Maryland and College Park.

Shared bath. Private entrance.

W/D. $700-$750/mo. including utilities, security deposit required. Two Blocks from Cheverly Metro. 202-355-2068, 301-7723341.

ROOMS FOR RENT 2 blocks from Columbia Heights Metro Station, for international students, men. 14th St NW, $600/ mo. and $680/mo. Contact Ana, 202/306-1639.

Business Opportunities PAID IN ADVANCE! Make $1000 A Week Mailing Brochures From Home! No Experience Required.

Helping home workers since 2001! Genuine Opportunity. Start Immediately! www.TheIncomeHub.com

Miscellaneous Update your skills for a better job! Continuing Education at Community College at UDC has more than a thousand certifi ed online & affordable classes in nearly every fi eld. Education on your own. http://cc.udc.edu/continuing_education

Restaurant/Hospitality/ Hotel

Job Opportunity Location DMV join BizyBee Professional Staffing We have immediate opportunities for the following positions Banquet servers Bartenders Housemen We are located at 9332 Annapolis Road Ste 100A Lanham, Maryland 20706 Call us now 301-459-1233

Financial Services Are you in BIG trouble with the IRS? Stop wage & bank levies, liens & audits, unfiled tax returns, payroll issues, & resolve tax debt FAST. Call 844-753-1317

Antiques & Collectibles Comic Book & Sports Card Show Shoff Promotions. SUNDAY MAY 1 10am-3pm Annandale Virginia Fire House Expo Hall 7128 Columbia Pike 22003 shoffpromotions.com The 6000+ sq ft Hall will be full of dealers selling their collectibles such as: Gold, Silver, Bronze and Modern Age Comic Books, Nonsports Cards , Comic genre Jewelry, Star Trek Collectibles, Pulps & original Art and Hobby Supplies for all your collecting needs PLUS Sports Cards- baseball, football, basketball & hockey - vintage to the present and sports collectibles & some Toys & Vintage Records too.

INFO: shoffpromotions.com or 301-990-4929 * One Dollar ($1) OFF normal $3 Admission with this Notice; 18 & under FREE

Garage/Yard/ Rummage/Estate Sales Flea Market every weekend 10am-4pm. 5615 Landover Rd. Cheverly, MD. 20784. Contact 202-355-2068 or 301-772-3341 for details.

Miscellaneous KILL ROACHES - GUARANTEED! Buy Harris Roach Tablets with Lure. Odorless, Long Lasting. Available: Hardware Stores, The Home Depot, homedepot.com

KILL STINK BUGS! Buy Harris Stink Bug Spray. Odorless, Non-Staining. Effective results begin after spray dries. Available: Hardware Stores, The Home Depot, homedepot.com.

KILL BED BUGS & THEIR EGGS! Buy Harris Bed Bug Killers/KIT Complete Treatment System.

Available: Hardware Stores, The Home Depot, homedepot.com

NAIRDO-WELL

Cars/Trucks/SUVs

Out with the old, In with the new Post your listing with

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40 Javascript alternative 42 Secret Serviceman assigned to Gore?

45 Rhinitis doc 47 Pitching ability 48 Subject of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Booty”?

55 ___ Frome 57 One handing out jobs 58 Decaf container 59 Some smooth calves... and an alternate title to this puzzle 61 Convert to a PDF, say 62 Henry’s sixth wife 63 “Two Laundresses” painter 64 Texan’s neighbor to the north 65 [Gulp!]

66 Movie with a light cycle scene 67 Forest wildcat

Down 1 Kind of salts used in baths 2 French pancake 3 Ogre who controls the warm weather in The Year Without a Santa Claus

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1 Repeat mindlessly 5 Spiegelman masterwork 9 “Let’s boogie” 13 Game food?

14 Conductor Sir Georg 15 ___ Repulsa (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers nemesis) 16 Close up tight 17 Songwriting attribution for Nat “King”?

19 Make a decision 20 Roth’s Van Halen successor 21 Amherst sch.

22 With 27-Across, “those who pay dues can use the outhouses”?

25 One nicknamed Trip, often 26 Class with clay 27 See 22-Across 33 One in Berlin 37 He pours drinks for Barney and Homer 38 Attacked 39 To’s opposite

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4 Olive of comics 5 Some old synthesizers 6 Koran Creator 7 Places where humans evolve?

8 [Can you believe this mistake?]

9 Turn to ashes 10 Muffler company named after a mythical king 11 “Sit on a potato pan, ___” 12 D.C. NLers 14 Flesh wound 18 German river or valley 20 Next in line

FIND YOUR OUTLET. RELAX, UNWIND, REPEAT CLASSIFIEDS HEALTH/MIND, BODY & SPIRIT Moving?

O H A R E

B O R O N

D E F A R I Y E S T C A B L O U A R M S T P H A S

S H I A N G R P E L E A Y E A P C A T W H O

Counseling

Moving?

Pregnant? Thinking of Adoption? Talk with a caring agency specializing in matching Birthmothers with Families Nationwide. Living Expenses Paid. Call 24/7 Abby’s One True Gift Adoptions. 866-413-6293. Void in Illinois/New Mexico/Indiana.

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Licensed Massage & Spas Excellent Massage by fine therapists at Qi Spa in Georgetown.

Ask about our daily specials.

3106 M street, NW, Washington, DC 20007. Walk in or by appointment at 202-333-6345. Everyday 10am-8pm.

Find A Helping Moving? the Find with A Helping Hand Today Out old, In with

MOVING? FIND A HELPING HAND TODAY Out with the old, In with the new Post your listing with Washington City Paper Classifieds

Out with the old, In with the new Post your listing with Washington City Paper Classifieds http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/

LAST WEEK: I’M WITH THE BANNED G U P P Y

Qualifications: Must be a Maryland Resident Have 500.00 down payment No current open auto loan Valid Drivers License Monthly income must gross 1,500.00 2 Recent Paystubs & 1 Recent Bill Required

FIND YOUR OUTLET. RELAX, UNWIND, REPEAT CLASSIFIEDS HEALTH/MIND, BODY & SPIRIT

23 Marceau character 24 Elbows, e.g.

27 Little devil 28 ___ clip (bike part) Karl 240-360-9699 -Glen Burnie, MD 29 Fit to be tied 30 Dancing With CASH FOR CARS: Any Car/ Truck 2000-2015, Running or the Stars dancer Not! Top Dollar For Used/DamChmerkovskiy aged. Free Nationwide Towing! http://www.washingtCall Now: 1-888-420-3808 31 Gerund oncitypaper.com/ conclusion Musicians Wanted http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/ 32 Perfume water 34 “God willing!”

35 Org. with the Shooting Award winning artist, Shiri Greetings, A.L. here 47 Achu’s first solo art exhibition Illustrated year old African American in the USA! 36InPrint:DC is art magazine forming a group for acoustic inspired by Africa, color, guitarists, who have been movement, dance!

36 Very long time dabbling with the instrument Private view 5th & 6th May 41 French port city but would really like to im6pm-8.30pm. prove both their playing and Public Opening 7th-14th May 43 Level things? performing skills. Open to 11am-8pm 44 “Compton” any and all genres of music, At; Gallery A - 2106 R the emphasis is on expanding Street,N.W. Washington DC rapper, briefly our repertoire of songs and Out 20008 with the old, In 46 Island goose being able to perform them with the new Post confi dently in front of oth48 Dancer Twyla True Jesus Church in ers...eventually encouraging your listingD.C.with Washington warmly in49 Shark, e.g. each other to try some open vites you to attend our Evanmics. Also, although the Washington 50 Dora the City gelical Services and Spiritual emphasis is on guitar, other Explorer’s Convocation.

Moving?

Findcousin A acoustic instruments are Paper Classifieds welcome...if you can fi t it in 51 The Phantom’s Helping Hand Today Service Location and Times: a case or a car or a bag etc., http://www.washingtoncityinstrument you can bring it! http://www. paper.com/ 900 Maple Ave East m e e t up.c om / P G - Coun t y52 Come clean, Vienna, VA Acoustic-Friends/ with “up” Fri, 4/22 1:30PM-9PM http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com / Sat, 4/23 9:45AM-9PM 53 Make as a Upcoming Shows long three 4401 Sideburn Road Fairfax, VA 54 Wing of a Sun, 4/24 9:45AM-1:30PM building For additional info, please 55 Take a look at contact us at washingtondc@ 56 Moo yang nam tjc.org or 703.988.1852 www.tjc.us. tok cuisine 60 Bygone insect General killer COOL JAZZ group, THE 61 Fifth note REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS

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http://www.washington9 10 11 12 citypaper.com/

IN-HOUSE Financing!

All Vehicles Are Serviced, Computer-Tested, Reconditioned and Inspected 36 Mo./36,000 Mile Warranty

Events Comic Book & Sports Card Show Shoff Promotions. SUNDAY MAY 1 10am-3pm Annandale Virginia Fire House Expo Hall 7128 Columbia Pike 22003 shoffpromotions.com The 6000+ sq ft Hall will be full of dealers selling their collectibles such as: Gold, Silver, Bronze and Modern Age Comic Books, Nonsports Cards , Comic genre Jewelry, Star Trek Collectibles, Pulps & original Art and Hobby Supplies for all your collecting needs PLUS Sports Cards- baseball, football, basketball & hockey - vintage http://www.washingtoncito the present and sports collectibles & typaper.com/ some Toys & Vintage Records too.

INFO: shoffpromotions.com or 301-990-4929 * One Dollar ($1) OFF normal $3 Admission with this Notice; 18 & under FREE

O P T F S E R A H C A R W O E C L U S O T P E R D E L L O S A S E S T A W S O N O O D Y O L I E N S E T

CHEMISTRY PROJECT is Coming to BLUES ALLEY Monday May 2, 2016; 8:00pm & 10:00pm shows.

TICKETS @ www.bluesalleylive.com/?fuseaction=home. a r tis t&Ve nu e ID = 3 & a r tis tid=14873

Announcements

O P E N S E T

R E Y E A R

N E E L A Y S H E R S

S E M I D R Y P R O G

G A S T R O P U B

I M P E I

G I M M E

O R I O N

N S Y N C

L E E L O Y D E T O X

On behalf of the Community Capital Corporation and Carlos Rosario PCS, is requesting proposals for procurement and installation of a turn-key solution to install Centralized IPTV System that will provide high quality picture and distributed video the Main Campus at 1100 Harvard St NW.as well as a centralized wireless clock system that includes a master clock and secondary digital clock.

The IPTV system must seamlessly integrate with the existing IPTV system at the schools other site (514 V St NE). RFP responses will be received until 5:00 pm Thursday, May 12, 2016. Submit one (1) original copy of your proposal electronically to Gus Viteri at gviteri@carlosrosario.org

Hand Today

the new Post your listing with Washington Out with the old, In withPaper the new City Post your listing Classifieds with Washington

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MOVING?

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http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/

City Paper

Is the Glass half full?

Moving?

Is the Glass Find A half empty?

Helping how about Hand half off!Today

M

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/ Volunteer Services Defend abortion rights. Washington Area Clinic Defense Task Force (WACDTF) needs volunteer clinic escorts Saturday mornings, weekdays. Trainings, other info:202-681-6577, http://www. wacdtf.org, info@wacdtf.org.

Twitter: @wacdtf

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http://www.washingtonClassifieds citypaper.com/ http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/

FIND YOUR OUTLET. RELAX, UNWIND, REPEAT CLASSIFIEDS HEALTH/MIND, BODY & SPIRIT

Comic Book & Sports Card Show Shoff Promotions. SUNDAY MAY 1 10am-3pm Annandale Virginia Fire House Expo Hall 7128 Columbia Pike 22003 shoffpromotions.com The 6000+ sq ft Hall will be full of dealers selling their collectibles such as: Gold, Silver, Bronze and Modern Age Comic Books, Nonsports Cards , Comic genre Jewelry, Star Trek Collectibles, Pulps & original Art and Hobby Supplies for all your collecting needs PLUS Sports Cards- baseball, football, basketball & hockey - vintage to the present and sports collectibles & some Toys & Vintage Records too.

INFO: shoffpromotions.com or 301-990-4929 * One Dollar ($1) OFF normal $3 Admission with this Notice; 18 & under FREE

FIN OU RE UN RE CL HE MI &

Out with the old, In with the new Post your listing with Washington City Paper realdeal.washingtoncitypaper.com Classifieds

MOVING? FIND A HELPING HAND TODAY

http://www.washington-

april 29, 2016 47 Out with thewashingtoncitypaper.com old, In with citypaper.com/ the new Post your listing with Washington City

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