Washington City Paper (May 15, 2020)

POLITICS PREDICTING A WARD 2 WINNER 4 FOOD VIRGINIA PREPARES TO REOPEN RESTAURANTS 10 ARTS LUCKY LOCAL MUSEUMS GET PPP LOANS 12 THE DISTRICT'S FREE WEEKLY SINCE 1981 VOLUME 40, NO. 19 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM MAY 15 –21, 2020

Better Together Through limited equity co-ops, residents of modest means can own property and prevent displacement. PAGE 6

By Amanda Michelle Gomez

TABLE OF CONTENTS COVER STORY

6 Better Together: Renters of modest means become property owners through limited equity co-ops.

SPORTS

3 See You Later: D.C.’s professional rugby team prepares to return after the pandemic.

NEWS

4 Loose Lips: The winner of the Ward 2 primary is anyone’s guess.

FOOD

10 Virginia Is for Grubbers: Restaurants in the commonwealth grapple with reopening as D.C. watches.

ARTS

12 Who’s Down With PPP?: A few local museums get a federal funding boost.

13 Arts Club: Randall and Warren on Warrior 13 Theater: D’Angelo on Globe Online’s The Trojan Women 14 Film: Zilberman on Blood and Money and Sarappo on Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klimt

CITY LIGHTS

20 City Lights: Liberate your body with a local burlesque performer and learn about beat ya feet dancing from a PBS series.

DIVERSIONS

17 Crossword 18 Savage Love 19 Classifieds

Cover Photo: Darrow Montgomery; Teresa Edmondson outside 1477 Newton Street NW

Darrow Montgomery | 3100 Block of Mount Pleasant Street NW, May 11 Editorial

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2 may 15, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

SPORTS RUGBY

See You Later

PARIS MALONE/OLD GLORY DC

D.C.’s newest professional sports team believes it will survive the pandemic.

Danny Tusitala, left, and Will Vakalahi

By Marisa Ingemi Contributing Writer Two years ago, an ownership group of sports executives set out to bring professional rugby to D.C., and in 2019, Old Glory DC became the local Major League Rugby franchise. This year, the team started 4-1 and sold out its four home games — two in the preseason and two during the regular season — at Cardinal Stadium, a 3,500 capacity multipurpose

stadium at the Catholic University of America, building momentum for the fledgling franchise playing in its first non-exhibition matches.

Then the coronavirus pandemic happened.

Old Glory suspended the season before canceling it outright. Professional sports leagues across the country have struggled in the wake of the virus. The reboot of the XFL came to an abrupt end in April. The NBA and NHL are debating what to do with the rest of their seasons, and the MLB has yet to begin its 2020 season.

But Old Glory DC intends to survive.

“We’re disappointed in the way it turned out,” says Old Glory head coach Andrew Douglas. “But you consider what’s happening around the world, we want to be safe. Players who live outside of the D.C. area and have family, we want to make sure they’re taken care of and deal with logistical issues like housing for players.”

Old Glory played five regular season matches and two in the preseason before the sports world came crashing down. Losing the opportunity to play an inaugural season is frustrating, especially with the uncertainty of next year.

“The word heartbreaking is not inappropriate,” says team chairman and part-owner Chris Dunlavey, who previously played for the Washington Irish Rugby Football Club.

“Things were going so well. We were enjoying the payoff of our hard work so much, it was heartbreaking having it taken away, but that was tempered by it being the right thing to do ... We are so committed to coming back strong next year, it lightens the load.”

A stoppage raises concerns for future gate revenue for every league, but Old Glory has taken that into account, along with the rest of the startup league, and maintains it has a solid financial status.

MLR was founded in 2018 and has quickly risen to 12 teams, which went down to 11 in early May when the Colorado Raptors withdrew from the league.

Despite that, Old Glory DC executives are confident about its future.

“Unlike some other sports like the XFL which just packed it in, shortening the season actually ended up leaving the league in pretty good shape financially,” Dunlavey says. “We’re planning on returning in 2021 when public health conditions improve, and we’re planning already.”

Dunlavey argues that the league, and especially a first-year team, was going to operate at a loss early on anyway, so investing money into game-day operations would have cost the league and team more.

It’s not a blessing in disguise, but it’s not going to kill the league, either.

“Shortening it actually saved money,” he says. “It left the league itself in a better financial position than it would have been if we played out the full season.”

Players and staff are taking that promise to heart and operating as if they’ll be in the picture for years to come.

“The league’s in a pretty good space,” Douglas says. “The league’s in a good spot and that’s because things were done early financially. We’re just excited for the competition to start up.”

Money saved or not, spending years to develop a professional team as part of a young league and losing that first season will be a setback in building a fanbase and team identity.

The single-entity league boosted its expansion fee to $4 million this season (from $500,000 a year ago), and teams operate with a salary cap of $450,000.

The New York club operated at a reported $1.4 million loss a season ago, while the league lost a reported $62 million combined, and no games this season means less money lost.

Rugby is an international sport, and with borders closed around the globe, that remains the biggest obstacle for pro rugby in the U.S. to begin again. Douglas and a few players are living in D.C., but many have returned to their homes in Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, Fiji, and South Africa.

If sports are permitted to return but there are travel restrictions, the makeup of the league could change.

“Things were going so well. We were enjoying the payoff of our hard work so much, it was heartbreaking having it taken away, but that was tempered by it being the right thing to do … We are so committed to coming back strong next year.”

Dunlavey says Old Glory might have an advantage in that scenario, but it’s still a concern.

“An important component of our player base is the international player,” he says. “We’ve already been struggling with immigration challenges to get players into the country on visas for a variety of reasons. I think there’s a possibility there will be an impact of travel restrictions, but that drives us in the direction of developing domestic players. Most clubs will follow this model. We built a professional team that oversees domestic players, but we’re connected to a whole development pathway with clubs and teams in the area that act as our reserve pool.”

With the uncertainty of the pandemic, repercussions from the sports shutdown into the summer months are still being determined.

There’s no prediction of what lies ahead, but Major League Rugby and Old Glory DC believe they’ll continue being a part of the D.C. pro sports landscape.

“We were building something we thought was going well,” Douglas says. “It was taken away for a freak thing that occurred. None of us have seen something like this before, so we move on to next season.”

washingtoncitypaper.com may 15, 2020 3

NEWS LOOSE LIPS

Two’s Company Who the hell is going to win in Ward 2?

Good news, Ward 2 Democrats! After nearly 30 years of waking up to a councilmember who divided his attention between elected office and private consulting, now you have options.

The bad news: You might have too many options. In addition to Jack Evans, the former Ward 2 councilmember who resigned amid ethics violations and dumps his trash illegally, there’s Evans’ 2016 campaign chair, Patrick Kennedy, Brooke Pinto, a 27-year-old who’s never voted in the District, Jordan Grossman, a progressive running in what is perhaps the District’s least progressive ward, John Fanning, a longtime ANC commissioner who lost to Evans once before, and Kishan Putta, a Republican-turnedindependent-turned-Democrat.

Less than two weeks before early voting begins for the Democratic primary, none of the top six candidates are pulling ahead as clear frontrunners. LL respects the dedication of Yilin Zhang and Daniel Hernandez, who are also on the ballot and continue to show up to candidate forums, but he will eat his shoe if either of them win.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the DC Board of Elections’ pivot to encourage residents to vote by mail through a somewhat confusing, multi-step application process, make it hard to predict who is likely to vote, and that makes political prognosticating next to impossible. A BOE spokesperson tells LL about 47,000 people have requested ballots citywide, and more than 5,000 have requested them for the Ward 2 special election, the winner of which will fill the seat until early 2021.

“You cannot talk about an election without knowing [who a likely voter is],” says political strategist Chuck Thies. “The Ward 2 election is extraordinarily unpredictable. No one can poll it [effectively] and no one can know the outcome.”

(Thies is running Ward 7 Councilmember Vince Gray’s re-election campaign, but speaks here on his own behalf.)

The two publicly released Ward 2 polls do agree on three details: more than 40 percent of the residents polled don’t know who they’re voting for, those polled prefer Kennedy over the other candidates, and Evans’ approval rating can better be described with a poop emoji than a percentage.

The first poll, funded by Kennedy’s campaign and conducted in mid-March, shows that 44 percent, or 132 out of 300 Democrats, were unsure who they would vote for.

Evans’ favorability rating is at 10 percent (the lowest of five of the top six candidates), and his unfavorability rating sits at a seemingly insurmountable 58 percent, according to Kennedy’s

Darrow Montgomery

By Mitch Ryals @MitchRyals

A Wilson Building staffer removes Jack Evans’ name plate after he resigned from the Council. poll. Still, 9 percent of those polled said they’d vote for Evans, putting him in second place to Kennedy’s 18 percent.

A second poll, taken in mid-April and released by the Baltimore-DC Metro Building Trades Council (which recently endorsed Kennedy), shows that 46 percent, or 161 out of 352 people, are undecided. Kennedy again got 18 percent of the vote, followed by Evans with 9 percent. Both of those numbers dropped after the pollster read information about each candidate. Ultimately, Kennedy kept his lead with 15 percent, followed

by Grossman with 12 percent, Fanning with 11 percent, Evans and Putta with 8 percent each, Pinto with 6 percent, and 37 percent still undecided.

“If a neighbor asked me from across the fence, I’d say, ‘Well, look at the three people who’ve held elected office in the city, not counting Jack, who have a record of doing things in the community,” says Monica Roache, an at-large committeewoman on the DC Democratic State Committee, who has endorsed Kennedy. “And start with that.”

Fanning is a longtime Logan Circle advisory neighborhood commissioner and self-proclaimed “MOCR for life,” referring to his role as a mayoral liaison under every D.C. mayor since Marion Barry’s second tenure in the executive’s office.

Fanning previously ran for the Ward 2 seat in 2000, and some of his notable current endorsements come from the DC Latino Caucus, Teamsters Local 639, Busboys and Poets founder Andy Shallal, and former At-Large Councilmember Carol Schwartz.

“He organizes, he gets things done, and he’s not glib even though he’s very conversant on all these

4 may 15, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

issues,” Schwartz says, acknowledging that she hasn’t spoken to the other candidates. “I’ve had it with glib, I’ve had it with polished. His experience is relative, and he is substantive.”

Fanning, the only openly gay candidate in the race, is ranked second to Grossman by the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance. GLAA awarded Grossman a perfect 10, while Fanning believes he lost a point for his stance on decriminalizing sex work. (GLAA refused to rate Evans due to his ethics violations. The organization has given him high marks in the past.)

Fanning supports full legalization of sex work, but ultimately, he would prefer to create other employment opportunities for people in that line of work.

“We’re all humans, so we know people are going to have sex,” he says. “It’s how do you go about doing that, and people operating in the street at all hours of the morning are jeopardizing their safety, in my view. So if they’re working at massage parlors, or like in Las Vegas, there’s a hooker hotel, where it’s centralized. Otherwise we’re going to continue to see them be victims of violence.”

Fanning is counting on votes from his neighbors in Logan Circle, seniors, the LGBTQ community, African Americans, and Latinx voters.

Putta’s experience as an advisory neighborhood commissioner stretches back to 2012, when he represented Single Member District 2B04 in Dupont Circle. Since 2018, he’s represented Single Member District 2E01, which includes parts of the Georgetown and Burleith neighborhoods.

In his time as an ANC, Putta has advocated for bus lanes, bike lanes, and more investments in computers for students. Recently,

he’s latched onto the coronavirus as a major talking point. A recent television campaign advertisement touts his work on community outreach and enrollment with DC Health Link, the District’s healthcare exchange, as relevant experience in the fight against COVID-19.

His campaign assembled a coronavirus advisory team that includes President Barack Obama’s Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, but Putta’s middling finishes in the polls have political observers looking past him.

Kennedy, 28, is a neighborhood commissioner in Foggy Bottom, and has chaired ANC 2A for the past five years. Detractors call him “Jack 2.0” for his ties to the business community and support from lobbyists David Julyan and David Catania, the former at-large councilmember who hosted a fundraiser for Kennedy at his office.

Kennedy shrugs off the label as an unfounded smear. He embraces his big tent of support, and brands himself a “bridge builder,” preferring consensus over hardline ideology.

“I have people supporting me from my left and from the moderates and centrists,” he says. “And that’s Ward 2. It’s a ward of diverse sensitivity, and it’s a ward that has a business presence. I don’t think having a constructive relationship with the business community is a bad thing.”

His answers during candidate forums show his thorough understanding of the inner workings of D.C. government agencies and commissions, but sometimes to the extent that LL’s eyes glaze over.

Kennedy has a small army of neighborhood commissioners supporting him, as well as the endorsement of Greater Greater Washington, the nonprofit organization that advocates around

NEWS transportation, housing, and land use issues, Ruby Corado, founder of Casa Ruby and prominent LGBTQ advocate, and Council Chairman Phil Mendelson.

Evans resigned in the wake of multiple ethics investigations into his conflicts of interest and use of his public office for private gain. The D.C. Council was one vote away from expelling Evans had he not stepped down. Federal agents raided his Georgetown house last summer, but he has not been charged with a crime. Evans has insisted that the feds would have charged him by now, but LL wonders if this campaign will only poke the bear.

With no notable endorsements, Evans pitches himself as an ethics reformer and a financial guru who has the budgetary experience necessary to guide a government facing a $1.5 billion shortfall over the next two years. To his credit, Evans’ answers during candidate forums and interviews reflect his three decades’ experience, even when he claims to have “created more jobs than anyone in this city through my economic development policies.”

Evans has also been spotted climbing ladders to hang his red campaign signs throughout the ward—further evidence that he doesn’t have the level of public support he once had. He seems to be banking on his name recognition and a crowded field of opponents to split the anti-Jack vote.

“He’s somewhat of an incumbent, and some people don’t care [about the ethics violations],” Sean Metcalf, a local campaign staffer and

former Evans spokesperson, told LL in an interview in March. “They know the value Jack brings to the city. He’s going to miss some votes, but at the end of the day, in Ward 2, you might only need 3,000 votes. And Jack can get 3,000 votes without a problem.”

Even if Evans is elected, LL has to wonder how effective he’ll be. Every D.C. councilmember signed a letter condemning Evans’ campaign as a “willful and arrogant disregard for ethics,” and at least four councilmembers want to continue where they left off with Evans’ expulsion. It’s also difficult to fathom what committee assignments, if any, Mendelson would give to a man who, in the chairman’s words, “lost not only the trust of his colleagues, but the trust of the public.”

For those who don’t care about an extensive record of elected government service or prefer a pair of fresh eyes, allow LL to introduce you to Grossman and Pinto.

Pinto’s late entrance into the race has befuddled political analysts and opponents, but it didn’t stop the Washington Post editorial board from endorsing her. That endorsement might as well be cursed: In 2018, the board’s preferred challengers included DJ Petar Dimtchev over well-respected incumbent Mary Cheh in Ward 3 and a Bowserbacked small business owner, Dionne Reeder, for Elissa Silverman’s at-large seat. Both lost.

The board acknowledged Fanning and Kennedy’s “solid records and agendas,” didn’t

mention Putta, and took a passive aggressive swipe at Grossman for “promising the sky under the banner of progressive justice,” without naming him.

Fanning predicts the endorsement will draw votes from Kennedy and Evans, especially among Georgetown voters, but won’t give Pinto enough of a boost to win.

Still, that Pinto can list the board’s support alongside that of her former boss, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine, is a great advantage in a race with so many undecided voters. During her two years as an assistant attorney general, Pinto says she litigated tax disputes and wrote legislation on hate crimes, marijuana, and tenants’ rights.

But Pinto’s dark horse candidacy comes with a huge asterisk. She grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, moved to D.C. six years ago to attend Georgetown University Law Center, and has never voted in D.C. She registered to vote in the District in March 2019, but listed a Connecticut address on her donations to John Delaney’s presidential campaign and Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy’s Senate campaign as recently as November 2019.

Pinto is the only Ward 2 candidate not participating in the District’s public campaign financing program, which restricts contributions from corporations and political action committees.

She says she supports the program, but entered the race too late to qualify. She also has the highest percentage of donations coming from out of state; more than 27 percent of her contributions

come from donors in New York, according to local activist Keith Ivey’s analysis of her campaign finance records.

Grossman fits squarely in the cast of progressive candidates jostling for Council seats this cycle.

He’s secured endorsements from labor unions, many local lefty groups, and Silverman, arguably the Council’s most progressive member. Former California Rep. Henry Waxman also recently lent his support. The former congressman lives in Ward 2, but only registered to vote in D.C. in 2019, Grossman’s campaign confirms.

Grossman, who touts himself as a fifth generation D.C. resident and grew up in Potomac, dishes out progressive platitudes in one breath and slams Evans over ethics violations in the next. According to his campaign slogan, “he’s for you, not for sale.”

Grossman’s perfect score from the GLAA could help in a ward with a politically active LGBTQ community, though LL wonders whether his progressive platform will win Ward 2 voters.

“Some of us are holding onto our ballots to see who ends up in the lead,” says Richard Rosendall, GLAA vice president and political commentator for the Washington Blade. “There’s a bunch of good people, and I’m waiting to see if one of them seems to be doing better in the next few weeks, and if there’s a group who is willing to coalesce around a person as a way of preventing Jack from winning a plurality.”

Tom Sherwood contributed reporting.

#VoteSafeDC in the Tuesday, June 2, 2020 Primary Election: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the DC Board of Elections is committed to providing a safe environment where every vote is counted. All voters are strongly encouraged to request a mail-in ballot instead of voting in person, unless absolutely necessary. Voting by mail is safe, secure and simple. Ballot request forms are available now at www.dcboe.org. If you must vote in person, 20 Vote Centers will be open throughout the District. Social distancing measures will be enforced, and voters will be required to wear face coverings inside the Vote Centers. Curbside voting will be available.

Only voters affiliated with one of the major parties (Democratic, Republican, DC Statehood Green or Libertarian) will be issued a ballot. Same-day registration will be available at all Vote Centers.

Need to Vote in Person?

If you must vote in person, Vote Centers will open from May 22 through June 1, 2020, from 8:30 am to 7:00 pm. All sites will be closed on Memorial Day, May 25, 2020. Vote Centers will open from 7:00 am to 8:00 pm on June 2, 2020, Primary Election Day. Voters can cast their ballot at any Vote Center regardless of where they live in the District.

You may visit us online at www.dcboe.org or call us at (202) 741-5283 for more information.

washingtoncitypaper.com may 15, 2020 5

The four-story, mid-rise residential property at 1477 Newton Street NW is something of an anomaly in D.C., where the housing market can feel inaccessible and many residents struggle to have an ownership stake. The property is collectively owned by its residents, who were previously renting units in the building, some for more than 15 years. Homeownership in this area seemed like a long shot, given that these residents each earn a modest amount in their teaching, nonprofit, or government jobs, if they are working. But together, they were able to purchase the 24-unit apartment building in one of D.C.’s most gentrified neighborhoods, where the median household income is $97,700.

“This is the newest history on the block in Columbia Heights,” Teresa Edmondson says.

Edmondson owns a share in the entire property because she is a member of The Cooperative At 1477. The cooperative, an association of residents who organized so they could own and operate the apartment building, acquired the building from the landlord in February. Unlike condo owners who own their unit, co-op members own a share in the building and lease their unit via contract.

Better Together In one of D.C.’s fastest gentrifying neighborhoods, a community of renters have become part of the city’s long and rich history of turning black and brown tenants into collective owners.

By Amanda Michelle Gomez Photographs by Darrow Montgomery The residents bought the building at a price that is substantially below what it is actually worth. According to one appraisal, the building has a value of $5.5 million. Yet, tenants acquired it for $2.3 million. Edmondson, the president of the co-op’s board, revels just thinking about the co-op’s victory of collective ownership. It took more than three years, along with a dedicated team of tenants and housing experts.

Built in the early 20th century, the white

6 may 15, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

concrete building accented with a dull magenta trim sits at the center of the block. At one end is a fire station and at the other is St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church, a place of worship known to host progressive activism and community events. Residents walk in and out of the building’s bright red door as they go to work or run errands. One early afternoon, an older resident of the building greets individuals that walk by as she smokes a cigarette. Inside,

1477 Newton Street NW the building represents a cross section of D.C., salaried and hourly employees living alongside elderly individuals who receive Supplemental Security Income. The youngest resident is 4 years old; the eldest is in their 70s.

“You see the American dream in action in your building,” says Lynette Daniels, who’s lived at 1477 Newton Street NW with her son since April 2004. Over the years, she watched residents of the building go from “little people” to high school graduates.

For The Cooperative At 1477, ownership not only means community, but power. They are no longer renters answering to a landlord, and wealthy newcomers can’t price them out. The tenants understand they are putting down roots in a neighborhood that was once home to the city's first black bookstore and a wealth of pupuserias.

All but one of the residents are black or Latinx.

In exchange for ownership, they agree to keep the building affordable for years to come by restricting the resale price of membership shares. Unlike traditional co-ops, where a member can sell their share at whatever price the market can stand, members of limited equity co-ops sell at the price they originally paid, plus

a modest rate limited to inflation. Ownership, in this sense, is not about building wealth, but maintaining affordable housing. The residents of 1477 Newton Street NW are now part of a long and rich history of D.C.’s limited equity housing co-ops that dates back to the beginning of the Home Rule era, and made possible by organizers with institutional knowledge of how to create and maintain them so residents won’t be displaced.

The Cooperative At 1477’s process of purchasing a building of this value was unorthodox from the start. Most limited equity coops in D.C. were created under the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act of 1980, a local law that gives tenants the option to buy the building themselves or transfer the purchase rights to another buyer. The clock starts when tenants receive a notice from their landlord that the building is being sold and they have the right to purchase it. Tenants often form a co-op for no other reason than to exercise their TOPA rights.

A few limited equity co-ops in D.C. are intentional community co-ops, where residents decide to live together to practice a shared lifestyle, like the Ella Jo Baker Intentional Community Cooperative in Columbia Heights.

Most limited equity co-ops are “forged in crisis,” University of the District of Columbia associate professor Amanda Huron argues in her book, Carving Out the Commons. She writes that limited equity co-ops rapidly started forming when D.C. was a majority-black city that began to govern itself and passed tenant protections for its low-income residents, who were threatened with displacement from an influx of whites. By 1981, about 50 buildings, with roughly 6,000 units total, had converted into limited equity co-ops.

“It’s not like they are choosing between market rate homeownership and limited equity co-op homeownership. They are choosing between continuing to rent or limited equity co-op homeownership,” Huron says. She also lives in a limited equity co-op in D.C. Unlike the dozens of existing limited equity co-ops in the city, the residents of 1477 Newton Street NW received no notice of sale—the formation of their co-op was proactive rather than reactive. The process to convert the rental property into a co-op began because the building was behaving like one and a resident, Edmondson, took notice. When she moved into the building seven years ago, Edmondson was interviewed by a board. The residents had even independently established bylaws for residents living in the apartment to follow.

“But I don’t have a share of occupancy. I don’t own anything,” Edmondson says. “I was paying rent, so I didn’t understand.”

She did some sleuthing, and found out the building was purchased more than 20 years ago with the intent that tenants could one day own the building. In 1997, Safe Haven Outreach Ministry and Community of Hope purchased the property at 1477 Newton Street NW for individuals struggling with substance misuse. The groups hoped the tenants would own the property in recovery, as a way of teaching self-sufficiency, so the building was deeded to a co-op of their own creation, called the Haven House. Five of the original tenants still live in the building today.

To finance the property, the Haven House partnered with National Equity Fund, a nonprofit that specializes in federal-state tax credits. Due to affordability provisions in the

Low-Income Housing Tax Credits loan, along with requirements in loans through the DC Housing Finance Agency and D.C. Department of Housing and Community Development, the building could only ever be occupied by tenants of modest means. Per the LIHTC requirement for the building, all units are restricted to households at or below 60 percent of the area median income, or $50,950 for a household of one in 2019. The developer and its investor entered into an agreement with the federal and local governments that regulated rents and assured affordability for the next 30 years. Even as its original tenants moved out and the neighborhood got more expensive over the next two decades, the

gathered and Meima helped put together financing plans for both acquisition of the building and immediate repairs. In hindsight, Rome says he never worked on a project quite like it, but it was far from the first limited equity co-op his law firm has worked on.

“The big difference, frankly, [is] it's easier to make the numbers work just because the purchase price is so relatively low,” Rome says. “It’s not easy, but it’s easier to make the numbers work without requiring new kinds of deep subsidies from D.C. Most limited equity cooperatives that are being formed these days are competing with other developers.”

“We often negotiate these options at the end of

Lynette Daniels and Teresa Edmondson building remained affordable. Today, a one-bedroom unit at 1477 Newton Street NW is capped at $1,417. Monthly charges vary by income bracket, and owners do not always charge the maximum rent. At the end of 2019, one-bedroom rents averaged just more than $1,100. For comparison, the fair market rent for a one-bedroom unit in D.C. is $1,500.

For years, the building was acting like a limited equity co-op, but Edmondson was the first tenant to realize they had a right to the building after complying with the LIHTC loan for 15 years, according to a contractual agreement she found. More importantly, they had the right to enlist help.

“Teresa, being an astute person, realized they had an option to purchase, so she in turn sought counsel,” says Eric Rome, the tenants’ lawyer.

“She came to my firm.”

This was in 2016. There was no looming deadline or lurking landlord, as there usually is when a limited equity co-op is formed under TOPA, but the process still required plenty of patience. In interviews, Edmondson still jumbles up exactly how she did it. To understand affordable housing finance, you almost have to be a real estate developer, and Edmondson is not—she’s a case manager at Pathways to Housing and an ANC commissioner. She was determined to see the process through because, as she puts it, “I’m from New Jersey and I come from a background of money.”

The team helping Edmondson included Rome and Judy Meima of Mi Casa, a nonprofit that provides development consultant services to renters and co-ops members. Rome made legal sense of the documents Edmondson

the LIHTC compliance period, but they are not viable, financially. This is the first one that's actually come to fruition that I know about,” he says.

The co-op purchased the building for $2.3 million because the investor and majority owner of the tax credits on the property, National Equity Fund, wasn’t looking to get equity out of it when it exited. No gap financing was needed— a remarkable feat given the location and the current year. The co-op secured a loan from the National Housing Trust to make the purchase, and assumed two DHCD loans from the original purchase. The NHT loan mirrors the affordability restrictions in the LIHTC loan, and these restrictions will be written in the co-op’s bylaws to ensure continuity. Members did not collectively or individually make a down payment on the mortgage. (The mortgage underwriting for limited equity co-ops is based on the potential income of monthly carrying charges, also called co-op fees, that cover a member’s share of operating and maintaining the co-op, from mortgage payments to property management fees to insurance premiums.) But members will have to pay an additional fee once all the paperwork associated with the conversion is finished; Meima says to think of this like a security deposit for a rental apartment.

“Most tax credit deals these days are motivated, frankly, by tax credit investors or capitalists trying to stick their money somewhere,” Rome says. “I don't know of any other deals where the tax credits are owned by somebody like NEF, whose continued goal is affordable housing, not profit acts or tax breaks.”

“NEF focuses on equitable exits, even if it’s 15-plus years down the road,” says Ramon

Jacobson, the executive director of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, a lender organization affiliated with NEF. “NEF stuck with the project through some turbulence, and worked hard to structure an exit that delivered on that long-ago envisioned result: a permanent stake in Columbia Heights.”

The seed of the idea was planted when Columbia Heights “had acres of vacant lots and piles of dirt where the Metro would be,” Jacobson says. Safe Haven Outreach Ministry and the Community of Hope saw the potential of the neighborhood before the market did, and invested the money and time. Many are grateful they did. In 2012, the Fordham Institute named Columbia Heights one of the fastest gentrifying neighborhoods in the nation. Because the building remains affordable, some longtime residents of 1477 Newton Street NW, like Retna Pullings, were able to stay and witness its transformation.

Eighteen years ago, Pullings moved into a two-bedroom apartment with her daughter.

Back then, she paid just $600. Her daughter has since moved out and lives with her own family in Maryland, but Pullings stayed and has seen everything around her change. She describes seeing the area transform from a mostly black neighborhood where people sat on their front porches, chatting with one another, to something she doesn't recognize anymore.

“I don’t know the people like I used,” says Pullings, who is now vice president of The Cooperative At 1477. “It becomes strange when you don’t know the people who live in your neighborhood. You don’t have a relationship.”

She does have a relationship with the people in her co-op, as well as her nearby church. There are others who, like her, have refused to leave, and continue to live in the building and on the block. Community support is critical in uncertain times like these. Members of Pullings’ and Edmondson’s families each have the other’s contact information, in case something happens. Both women live alone and watch out for one another.

“The older you get, you got to have some roots,” says Pullings, when asked to describe why ownership is important to her. “You have to stake out what’s going to be yours—that’s what I decided to do. This is where I’m going to live.”

Holding on this long has been rewarding because she now gets to own a piece of her building. The building’s planned renovations excite her—she hopes to get a washer and dryer in her unit and upgraded kitchen cabinets, countertops, and appliances. For Pullings, ownership is about creating home. Planting flowers out front lets everyone know this isn’t simply a roof over her head.

“I don’t really know all the aspects of what a cooperative is, but let’s give it a try. I want to know what I can do to make it work,” she says.

A common critique of limited equity co-ops is that its owners cannot accumulate wealth.

“From an equity perspective, it's a glorified rental situation,” says Rome. “You earn more interest on your security deposit than you would otherwise, or on your membership fee, but you don’t have the equity that you would in a true ownership situation.”

In her book, UDC’s Huron says one black co-op expert thought limited equity co-ops “sounded like something a bunch of white people thought up to keep black people poor” when he first learned of them. He changed his tune as he learned more

washingtoncitypaper.com may 15, 2020 7

about them, and is now in favor of the ownership structure. Edmondson, who is black, is also the first to acknowledge that this arrangement prevents her from accumulating wealth.

“The only thing we are going to own is debt.

We can’t leverage this and buy another building,” Edmondson says. But while she isn’t able to enrich herself in the capitalist sense, she is able to enrich herself in another way. “I believe that everything happens for a reason and that the creator put me in that building so that I will do something that would benefit the community, my community, people of color, black people in the neighborhood.”

Supporters of limited equity co-ops see them as key to addressing the housing crisis. Between 2000 and 2013, D.C. had the highest percentage of gentrifying neighborhoods in the nation.

Limited equity co-ops can prevent further displacement by keeping housing affordable over time. “Because many of these buildings have at least one subsidy ... they remain affordable to residents earning no more than 80 percent of Area Median Income,” a February report from the Coalition for Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development and Virginia Commonwealth University says. The report also says that a limited equity co-op’s carrying charges can be cheaper than rent. In 2004, the median monthly cost of 30 limited equity co-ops was almost half the cost of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development fair market rent in 2003. Huron had similar findings for her book, published in 2018.

Currently, this tenure type makes up just a tiny percent of the District’s total housing stock.

There are 99 limited equity co-ops, or 4,400 units, in D.C., and most buildings are concentrated in Ward 1, according to a task force created

by At-Large Councilmember Anita Bonds. The creation of new co-ops has slowed during the last 10 years. In an October 2019 report, task force members asked that limited equity co-ops be considered in Mayor Muriel Bowser’s proposal to create 36,000 housing units, 12,000 of them affordable, by 2025. Task force members want to see this type of co-op increase by 45 percent.

“Co-ops are a really viable way of preserving affordable housing and preserving low-income communities and communities of color in the District,” says Elin Zurbrigg, the deputy director of Mi Casa and a task force member. “We think that they should be given due attention and, to some extent, priority in funding decisions.”

The task force continues to believe that 2,000 of the 12,000 new affordable units should be limited equity co-ops, says its chairperson Paul Hazen. It’s unclear how the coronavirus pandemic will impact the executive’s housing goals, but some can see the pandemic lowering housing prices and making the acquisition price more financeable for tenants interested in limited equity co-ops. In crisis comes opportunity.

Bonds, who believes D.C. should be creating more limited equity co-ops, says the pandemic complicates the task force’s budget request of at least $25 million dollars for expansion. “I think it would be doubtful that we can have that kind of resource, but we haven’t given up,” Bonds tells City Paper. Money continues to be a problem for this housing type, from acquisition to pre-development to critical repairs to renovation, as well as for the technical support that helps co-ops own and maintain their buildings.

“The startup money—the seed money—is incredibly hard to come by, and low-income tenants do not have a couple thousand dollars just sitting around to put toward things like hiring an attorney and completing an environmental study or a building evaluation,” Zurbrigg says.

There is both private financing and public funding available for limited equity co-ops.

Historically, Zurbrigg says, the main source of permanent acquisition funding has been the First Right Purchase Program, which offers low-interest loans to tenant associations so they can actually exercise their TOPA rights.

Loan resources also include D.C.’s Housing Preservation Fund and Housing Production Trust Fund, sources of money available to support all types of affordable housing in a time of growing housing costs.

The task force found that limited equity coops are scoring less favorably when applying

for public dollars because they are competing against large affordable housing projects, not just other co-ops. Virginia Commonwealth University’s Kathryn Howell found the same outcome in her own February report. Howell says both the number of developers and projects have surpassed HPTF and HPF funding, forcing competition that generally favors experienced, high-volume developers.

“The question is not ‘do we just fund all the co-ops?’ You still want the best projects to be funded because they are public dollars,” says Howell. But similar types of projects should compete against each other, she recommends.

“If you want to know what the District is prioritizing, you go to the Notice of Funding Availability. Whether that is D.C. or the federal government—funding and the way we fund, and how we fund, and what we fund, is policy and priorities,” she adds.

While working at the Latino Economic Development Center the last three years, Citlalli Velasquez has worked with two limited equity coops whose renovation applications for Notice of Funding Availability dollars were rejected twice.

“It is really disheartening for them to look around their neighborhoods and see buildings flipping and changing rapidly and looking really nice, and their realities or their expectations of their housing have not changed drastically,” Velasquez says.

“It doesn't feel super empowering for them.”

And while this type of housing is the manifestation of her ideals, Velasquez regularly reminds tenants she’s counseling that limited equity co-ops don’t work without an ecosystem of support. She’s never worked on a building that she’s helped convert into a limited equity co-op. Groups like hers say most TOPA-eligible buildings either aren’t interested or can’t get the capital needed to purchase the building. These groups get involved at the start of the TOPA process, when tenants have a set number of days to form a tenant association and decide how they want to exercise their rights.

“Most buildings that I've come across are not interested in forming a limited equity co-op, and I don't think it's because people are not interested

1424 Chapin Street NW 8 may 15, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

in being owners of their apartments,” Velasquez says. “Usually these apartments are rent-controlled apartments that were in dilapidated conditions because of neglect by the landlords, so tenants would basically be buying an apartment building that is falling apart. There are concerns of buying something that is potentially a liability for people and not really having a lot of capital to quickly turn the building around.”

“In the last five years, the biggest barrier would be affordability,” says Marian Siegel, the executive director of Housing Counseling Services, a housing group similar to LEDC. “When you have a building that consists of a significant number of low-income tenants and the price of the property is based on future expectations of development and the gentrification pressures of the pricing … then feasibility is just not there.”

In a large number of TOPA properties that Housing Counseling Services has worked with, they decided to keep them rental. This was her nonprofit’s experience even in the 1980s and 1990s, when property prices were lower and financing the deals wasn’t as big a challenge as it has become in recent years.

“I think it’s because, for so many people, the thought of ownership has always meant that white picket fence around a single family house. And to transition people's heads around the fact that this dilapidated place that they've lived in, not out of love but out of necessity, could become something valuable and good for them,” Siegel says, “that takes time to transition people’s thoughts around.

A lot of times tenants say 'I want to get the hell out of this building. I don't want to own this building' and so we do talk a lot about what the difference in ownership opportunity means.”

Siegel and her team spend a lot of time explaining the pros and cons of limited equity coops to tenants when they first meet with them to go over options after they receive a notice of sale.

Limited equity co-ops are only right for individuals who want to run a multi-family residential building and make decisions with their neighbors. The hard work doesn’t end at financing. For example, co-op members also need to create a new relationship with their property manager, who has long thought of them as renters.

It remains complicated for residents to be owners of multimillion-dollar properties.

Renters generally become co-op members so they have control over their property. But owning isn’t easy, especially when it has to be done democratically. Co-op members sometimes have to agree to decisions that go against their own self-interest for the good of the group. This is why housing groups continue to offer their assistance for years after closing.

Housing Counseling Services is still working with limited equity co-ops that Siegel helped start in 1987, like Capital Manor in Columbia Heights. There is ongoing technical support so co-ops know, for example, to evaluate carrying charge levels and increase fees to maintain a balanced budget. Support can also look like conflict mediation or leadership training. What can happen in any democracy can happen on a co-op board: a member gets crazed with power, or apathetic co-op members lose their voice when the board gets tired of trying to engage them.

“I always see it as like a microcosm of the world, how dictatorships take over,” says Siegel.

Sandra Ceron will soon own a share in her 3 4-u nit apar tment bu ilding at

Credit: Douglas Reyes-Ceron

1424 Chapin Street NW. Like the property at 1477 Newton Street NW, Ceron’s was set up to become a limited equity co-op.

In 1993, tenants of the building successfully sued their landlord and the court awarded the title to the residents. These tenants formed the Archbishop Rivera y Damas Cooperative so they’d own the property, collectively. (Many of the tenants were from El Salvador, hence the name.) But all but one of the tenants vacated because they didn’t have the money to rehabilitate their dilapidated building. The one resident who stayed, Leroy Washington, found his way to Mi Casa and National Housing Trust, which provided technical and financial assistance. The name given to the partnership between the co-op and NHT, Meridian Manor, is still engraved in an old-style serif font at the entrance of the building to this day. The inscription has been there since the original construction of the building in the 1930s.

Sometime between 1996 and 1997, Ceron got a call from the executive director of Mi Casa, Fernando Lemos, asking if she wanted to move into 1424 Chapin Street NW. The building was just a block away from where she was already living, in another co-op that was converting into condos. She agreed to move to live in a larger unit for her and her two boys. In April

2003, after building renovations were complete, Ceron moved in.

In the beginning, two-thirds of Meridian Manor tenants were single mothers. Ceron remembers counting more than 50 children running around in the building. They had a computer lab for the kids set up at one point in the building, thanks to a grant set up by NHT. “We call it a big family,” Ceron says. “Because that's the feeling.”

She feels lucky to have stayed in the building all this time. Even though her neighborhood has become wildly expensive, her monthly rent is fixed at 30 percent of her income. It’s also Project Based Section 8 Housing. (It’s not impossible for a co-op to have Section 8 status, because the program subsidizes members’ carrying charges and doesn’t interfere with the ownership structure.) She’ll soon own a share in her building in the neighborhood of her choice. The process to acquire the building from the investor who helped tenants secure the building at the turn of the century has already started.

Like 1477 Newton Street NW, 1424 Chapin Street NW was acquired and preserved through a LIHTC loan. As part of the agreement, the investor can leave after complying with the loan for 15 years and residents have the first right of refusal at the end of the compliance period.

The investor exited in 2019. NHT is now helping Sandra and her co-op secure financing to undertake the property and complete a $2 million dollar renovation. NHT, which has an ownership interest, spoke with four banks before it secured bank loans for recapitalization and renovation. Everything should be completed by the summer. NHT will continue to be involved in the property for the ease of the residents and banks, but the co-op members will be responsible for owning and operating the building.

“As we move into a new phase and no longer have an ownership interest, we will work more closely with Sandra and the co-op board. We plan to meet quarterly with the board to talk about general conditions and operations at the property,” says Kevin White, NHT’s director of real estate development. “As a result of these meetings, the co-op board will be exposed to the intricacies of multi-family ownership and understand the importance of preventative maintenance, financial reviews and planning strategies, and the importance of meeting lender and regulatory requirements.”

Ceron is looking forward to this new opportunity. She never considered homeownership in this way. Like Edmondson’s building, Ceron’s was already behaving like a co-op, and she has been on the board the entire time she’s

Photo of the board at the Archbishop Rivera y Damas Cooperative. From left to right: (top row) Sandra Ceron, Secretary and Co-Treasurer; Maxima Checca, President; Deysi Chicas, Vice President; (bottom row) Imelda Frías, Member; Juan Valdez, Member; Hilbert Turner, Co-Treasurer lived there. She does it because it challenges her mentally. She says it balances her day job as a housekeeper, which is more taxing physically.

Plus, she likes numbers and gets to be treasurer.

She’s excited for what this opportunity means for her kids, and to teach them the ways of cooperative living. Living at the property has already enabled her to save for her kids’ college tuitions; they are nearly done paying off student loans.

“I keep telling them this is going to be their building,” Ceron says.

Zurbrigg suspects there might be more limited equity co-ops that form the way Ceron or Edmondson’s did. Others believe there are so many creative ways to proactively form limited equity co-ops.

“In 2009-10, when there was not much available acquisition funding, a number of buildings decided to utilize tax credits as their only option to purchase (rather than forming an LEC),” she says. “That means that we will likely see many of these coming up for potential conversion to co-op around 2025.”

washingtoncitypaper.com may 15, 2020 9

FOOD YOUNG & HUNGRY

Virginia Is for Grubbers

Crispy spring rolls at Nam-Viet in Clarendon

By Laura Hayes @LauraHayesDC “It’s like opening a peeing section in a pool,” says Ian Boden, the owner of The Shack—a small destination restaurant in Staunton, Virginia. “The truth is, well-to-do people in D.C. are going to come to Virginia as soon as it opens. With all of our guests coming from D.C., it unnecessarily exposes my staff.”

The District and most northern Virginia zip codes have a higher rate of COVID-19 infection than most parts of the commonwealth, but that didn’t stop Governor Ralph Northam from initially declaring on May 4 that restaurants could reopen for dine-in service as early as May 15. The move was the first in a series of evolving directives that changed multiple times over the course of two weeks.

Northam walked back his timeline in a May 8 press conference, when he revealed official details about phase one of Virginia’s reopening plan. Restaurants with outdoor areas can seat customers outside at 50 percent capacity starting May 15. Phase one could last as little as two weeks, according to Northam, who said phase two would allow restaurants to seat customers in dining rooms in limited numbers.

“I know some communities may choose to go more slowly, particularly northern Virginia,” Northam hedged. “Phase one is a floor, not a ceiling. Local governments can consult with our administration about stricter regulations.”

Elected officials of the five largest localities in northern Virginia—including Arlington County, Fairfax County, and the City of Alexandria—penned a letter to Northam over the weekend, explaining that local health officials do not believe the threshold metrics are near where they need to be to enter phase one. Enough testing or contact tracing hasn’t occurred, and hospitalization rates haven’t decreased.

Darrow Montgomery/File

The commonwealth will likely be the first jurisdiction in the region to reopen restaurants. D.C. can learn from the fears of owners and workers across the river.

In response, Northam pushed back the launch of phase one for the northern Virginia region until May 28. His executive order published Tuesdays says restaurants are to remain closed to dine-in guests until then.

Even with the two-week delay, it’s likely restaurants across the Potomac will be permitted to open their dining rooms before the District, with Maryland close behind. Mayor Muriel Bowser said at her May 8 press conference that “it makes no sense to open restaurants when people are still dying.”

The D.C. hospitality industry is watching closely as restaurant owners and employees in Virginia consider the high-stakes situation and weigh how they’ll respond to the challenges of reopening. When the time comes, the District will have to decide whether to emulate or avoid the strategies of nearby jurisdictions, including those in the commonwealth.

“It’s hard to separate everything out emotionally,” Boden says. His 26-seat restaurant received a three-star review in the Washington Post weeks before D.C., Maryland, and Virginia closed dining rooms in the wake of the COVID19 pandemic. He’s anxious to get back to work, but he also agonizes over the public health ramifications of operating during an active pandemic.

“There’s a lot that goes into it. It’s hard to maneuver through,” he says. Boden’s convinced it’s not worth taking the risk yet. “The dining public isn’t ready to be in dining rooms. That’s been made clear to me by guests and friends.”

An informal poll conducted on May 5 in the well populated “Northern Virginia Foodies”

10 may 15, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

Facebook group found that 74 percent of 506 respondents weren’t ready to dine out. The same percentage was reflected in a national Washington Post-University of Maryland poll conducted from April 28 to May 3.

Reduced seating capacities might work for sprawling suburban chains, but not The Shack.

“We’re 450 square feet,” Boden explains. “We have 26 seats in the dining room. I might be able to function if we’re required to cut back by 50 percent. But 25 percent—what the fuck do I do with six seats?” There’s no one-size-fits-all solution and any limit on capacity, while necessary, strangles revenue.

Sloppy Mama’s BBQ owner Joe Neuman also isn’t in a rush to open his dining room, though he is launching takeout at his Arlington restaurant on Friday. He received a Paycheck Protection Program loan, which has terms that reward businesses that rehire staff.

Neuman closed Sloppy Mama’s on March 16, just as barbecue season beckoned. Still, the decision was easy. A family member felt sick and couldn’t get tested. “I kept coming back to the goal of safety, not selling more barbecue,” he says. “If you care about safety, the thing to do is to close.”

But Neuman thought the pandemic would run its course in eight weeks, instead of stretching into the summer. “We can’t wait a year,” he says. “If we could be closed and our staff not be screwed, we probably would. But there’s a lot of people who fall outside of safety nets. We can’t leave them hanging.”

Neuman projects that he won’t open his dining room until he sees a steady decline in new

cases for six to eight weeks. He’s also monitoring how reopening goes for other restaurants. Restaurant owners are locked in a game of chicken in which they hope others take the lead and launch first. “Part of the problem is there’s been a lack of leadership everywhere,” Neuman says. “This should be a galvanizing event and it’s not. It’s causing division.”

A critical component of leadership is instituting and enforcing protocols. Restaurateur Jamie Leeds isn’t willing to reopen the dining room at Hank’s Oyster Bar in Alexandria until safety measures are clearly defined.

“Even though our livelihood is at stake, we have to put people’s lives first,” she says.

Leeds sat in on a call with the ReOpen DC committee on restaurants and food. She advocated for specific guidelines, and says she’d even welcome a COVID-19 certification of some kind, similar to the ServSafe program for food handlers. “If you set standards and requirements, you know they’re being met,” she says.

Will enough supplies be available for restaurants to keep up with those safety protocols? Nam-Viet operations director Richard Nguyen worries about acquiring everything he needs to keep the staff and customers at his family-run Arlington restaurant safe. Masks, gloves, and hand sanitizer will be in even higher demand once restaurants reemerge.

“Anytime I could find sanitizer throughout this I was hoarding it for the restaurant,” Nguyen admits. “But these 12 bottles are only going to be there for so long.” While he understands why wholesalers like Restaurant Depot

FOOD opened to the public during the pandemic to stoke new revenue streams, he worries that the pivot will make it harder to find protective equipment.

Nguyen wants to get reopening right. “The last thing you want to hear is that the restaurant is only making a few hundred dollars and you hear about one of your employees getting sick,” Nguyen says. “Our reputation is our integrity.

We’ve been in Arlington since 1986.”

Restaurant employees have different considerations, which Northam acknowledged.

“Many workers at these businesses are eager to get back to work, but I also understand there are workers who are afraid to go back right now,” he said at the May 8 press conference.

Andrew Shapiro lives in D.C., but bartends at Taqueria Picoso in Alexandria.

He was shocked when he first heard Virginia restaurants could possibly reopen on May 15.

“That was one of my lowest moments,” he says. “A vocal minority of younger people are ready for places to reopen, but elsewhere the general public is still very nervous.”

Even though the timeline for reopening d i n i ng ro oms was pushed back, Shapiro still has many worr ies , ch ief a mon g them how he’ll get to work. He’s in the process of acquiring a car, but ty pically relies on public transportation. “Metro has reduced hours and trains don’t run late,” he says. Regular service may not return u nt i l Spr i ng 202 1, according to WMATA General Manager Paul Wiedefeld. “An Uber ride costs me $40,” Shapiro says. Neither solution limits his exposure to other people or the potential of virus transmission.

Taqueria Picoso only opened in January, and Shapiro questions if there was enough time to build a base of regular customers who will be clamoring to come back. “What’s a Friday or Saturday night going to be like?” he wonders. “I don’t want to stand behind a bar that isn’t busy. That’s one thing on a Monday or Tuesday. It’s another all week long.”

Most bars and restaurants laid off staff.

“Those who’ve been able to get unemployment want to build up some savings,” Shapiro says.

“I’m terrified to give up that money because it’s guaranteed. What happens if I go back and two weeks later we’re not busy and you lose what you saved over the last six weeks?”

Financial security is also front of mind for Diana Fortiz, a general manager at an Arlington restaurant that temporarily closed in mid-March. Her employer is considering introducing curbside takeout, which she says some kitchen staff are pushing for since they didn’t qualify for unemployment benefits and want to work.

“We’re bored and it’s affecting our mental health,” Fortiz says. “But at the same time,

things are not going great. You see all these people not following the right guidelines— like what the governor is saying about wearing masks. We know things might get worse if we reopen.”

Jon Schott’s mental health is also fraying.

He’s the beverage director at The People’s Drug in Alexandria. “There’s been some days where I’ve come home and broken down completely,” he says. “These restaurants mean so much to me and the people we’ve met and served over the years. You fight for the things you love.”

Restaurants have been under constant pressure for months to retool their operations and reevaluate their safety measures. “What better inspiration than if you don’t do it right, you’ll lose your businesses,” Schott says. The People’s Drug found a way to offer most of its menu to-go, plus an array of cocktails, with only a couple of people working. “The stakes are so high for every little thing you do each day,” he says. “That’s super exhausting.”

Schott was prepared to consider reopening strategies once the original stay-at-home o r de r l i f t e d J u n e 10. That executive order has since been amended to include the implementation of phase one. “It feels like [the government is] giving in to people at home who are complaining,” he says.

H e ’s a l s o w o r ried rehiring will be tricky. One employee moved to a not her city because it’s too expensive to live in the D.C. area without dependable income. Other workers might have children to care for, or could be in close contact with people who are vulnerable to contracting COVID-19. “I wouldn’t make anybody come back,” Schott says.

June 10 also seems like an appropriate date to reevaluate the situation, according to Meghan Morgan. She bartends and serves as the vice president of sales at Falls Church Distillers, which has a full bar and restaurant.

Morgan has found some satisfaction in developing ways to reach customers during the crisis. She’s selling plenty of to-go cocktails and she held a Zoom cocktail party for an apartment complex on Cinco de Mayo. “It was kind of cool to cheers with 40 people you’ve never met,” she says.

The distillery was already considering putting in patio seating before the governor announced that phase one would focus on restaurants with outdoor seating. They’ll forge ahead on patio plans, but Morgan says her employer will take reopening slowly.

“There’s no need to rush back into things,” she says. “Our area is an educated area.

People know the risks.” That said, Morgan assesses the crisis succinctly: “As a bar or restaurant, we need people to come through the door.”

“What better inspiration than if you don’t do it right, you’ll lose your businesses? The stakes are so high for every little thing you do each day. That’s super exhausting.”

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Darrow Montgomery

ARTS

Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens

Who’s Down With PPP? How D.C. museums fared in the Paycheck Protection Program lottery

By Kriston Capps Contributing Writer At Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens, the property and former home of heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, March is Orchid Month, the highest of holidays. Normally, the museum can count on thousands of flower flâneurs to idle through the museum’s vast orchid library, which boasts some 2,000 specimens. But this year, Orchid Month was canceled. Since March 15, the orchids and Hillwood’s many other treasures—the Beauvais tapestries, the Sèvres porcelain, the Fabergé imperial Easter eggs—have been sealed from view.

For the past eight weeks, visitors have been barred from entering Post’s former manse in D.C.’s Forest Hills neighborhood. And as with other museums, Hillwood Estate was forced to furlough many of its staffers as a result.

“Hillwood welcomes our largest number

of visitors in the spring, when thousands of people enjoy the beauty of our f lower and azalea gardens,” says Kate Markert, executive director for Hillwood Estate. “Sadly, this year, we had to be closed, resulting in the loss of our highest revenue-generating months of the year.”

Hillwood has been more fortunate than most, though: The museum successfully applied for and received a loan through the federal Paycheck Protection Program, the backstop initiative stood up by the U.S. Small Business Administration. With a $1.068 million loan in hand, Hillwood Estate was able to bring back all 18 staffers the museum had furloughed—some full time, most part time— onto their payroll as of May 4.

Other museums in the area are still waiting to see whether they will come out ahead in the PPP lottery. Loans through the program have slowed to a trickle as the SBA tries to avoid the mistakes of its widely criticized first round of funding, in which several publicly traded companies such as Shake Shack and Ruth’s Chris Steak House received grants. The trickle of loans means that many museums in D.C. are waiting to see if they’ll receive any federal support during the lockdown.

The National Building Museum, for example, has received approval through its bank for a loan through the Paycheck Protection Program. But as of this writing, the museum has yet to receive confirmation of funding from the SBA. At the end of April, the Building Museum announced that it was canceling its Summer Block Party, the institution’s most popular program of the year. This year’s spectacle—a partnership with the Folger

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Shakespeare Library—would have seen the museum staging A Midsummer Night’s Dream all summer long.

The Phillips Collection is in a similar boat: The museum’s application has been accepted, but the loan has not yet materialized. Another private modern art collection, the Kreeger Museum, is still awaiting approval for a loan.

Federal museums were not eligible to participate in the program, so neither the National Gallery of Art nor any Smithsonian Institution museum applied.

By City Paper’s count, the only other D.C. museum to get a PPP loan as of press time is the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

The downtown museum snagged a loan from the initial $349 billion round of funding, which was exhausted over just 13 days in April. The museum’s slice, about $500,000, will enable it to meet payroll for salaried workers and support some 21 part-time workers. Museum director Susan Fisher Sterling describes PPP as “of critical importance to the National Museum of Women in the Arts’ ability to pay our full-time staff salaries and bring our part-time staff members back as quickly as possible.”

The International Spy Museum, which debuted its new $162 million museum building in L’Enfant Plaza one year ago, declined to answer a question about its participation in the program. The Museum of the Bible, which opened its $500 million building four blocks away in 2017, also declined to answer a question about PPP. Like other companies and nonprofits, museums that receive a loan via PPP may have that loan forgiven if they spend the bulk of it on payroll. Glenstone, the contemporary art collection in Potomac, Maryland,

has not laid off any staff as a result of the pandemic. Neither Glenstone nor Dumbarton Oaks, a Georgetown museum and research library linked to Harvard University, applied for a loan.

By some accounts, the local art world’s experience with the program lines up with broader complaints about SBA’s PPP execution. According to a museum spokesperson, Hillwood applied for its loan through Eagle Bank, which is headquartered in Bethesda and serves the DMV region; the Building Museum, whose loan is still pending, applied with Capital One. Nationally, smaller and regional lenders have processed the overwhelming majority of PPP loans, according to the Federal Reserve. The result: Loan dollars are steered away from the coasts and toward less populous states in the Midwest, and small banks dole out more PPP. Museums in the area that have canceled programs and postponed exhibitions are looking for ways to bring back staff while putting more of their work online. More drastic solutions, such as selling artworks, are off the table for now. All of the museums mentioned previously in this story confirmed: Nobody is looking to sell any Impressionist landscapes, Dead Sea Scroll fragments, or Fabergé eggs at this time.

With weeks or even months of lockdown still on the horizon for the District, museums are writing off this spring season as lost. Few appear to have found any federal support to weather a long summer.

“We are very grateful to have received the PPP grant, which allowed us to bring back the staff we had furloughed to offset some of the income losses,” Markert says.

ARTS THEATER REVIEW

ARTS ARTS CLUB

Warrior For this week’s edition of City Paper Arts Club, arts editor Kayla Randall and multimedia editor Will Warren watched Warrior, a 2011 movie about fighting—in every way imaginable—that captured our hearts. The film, directed by Gavin O’Connor and starring Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton, and Nick Nolte, centers on the estranged Conlon family: father Paddy (Nolte) and brothers Tommy (Hardy) and Brendan (Edgerton). It’s an emotional tale that dives deep into a family torn apart and broken, but ultimately brought together by a mixed martial arts tournament—it broke us a little, too. But, like good art always does, it broke us in all the best ways.

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

Will Warren: This is a story about two brothers who are estranged from one another and from their father, who are extremely gifted MMA fighters, but for various reasons that come to light throughout the movie, are out of the game. They get back in the cage for this grand tournament. In some ways, it’s a sports movie, and it’s their journey to compete for this prize, but it’s also about their relationship with one another and their relationship with their father and their relationship with violence and fighting. I really liked this movie, I thought it was really good.

It’s a really tragic movie, I think—even though I guess it ends in this positive way. It leaves you with a sense that the family might be coming back together, but it’s really tragic that things got to this point.

Kayla Randall: I think Brendan and Tommy’s relationship was really severed by their dad’s alcoholism and abuse. Brendan has some genuine affection for Tommy, where Tommy is really resentful of Brendan. By all accounts [their dad] was a terrible person when Tommy and Brendan were young.

This relationship is so fractured, and it’s so

broken. The fact that they come together in the climax through violence is really interesting, because they’ve had a life full of it beforehand.

I think the way violence is used in the movie is really fascinating in that respect.

WW: The thing that strikes me is that they both turn to violence because they think they don’t have any other choice. Brendan turns to violence because his house is being foreclosed on, he isn’t making enough money as a teacher, and he has this one other prodigious talent—so put that to use and make money. With Tommy, it’s a little more tricky. It seems like he doesn’t know any other choice because his dad trained him from a young age to be a fighter. He went straight from that to the Marines [and] back to this. It’s like this cycle of violence that he’s lived his entire life. This movie is a great depiction of masculinity; these guys are the most extreme version of what society wants men to be. A lot of the things that we think about masculinity are sort of just trickling down from this. Basically, Brendan is beating other people up with his fists for his family, and that’s what the platonic ideal of a man is as far as our society is concerned.

KR: A lot of this movie makes me misty-eyed.

WW: Me too, I got verklempt multiple times.

KR: Another thing about this movie that I really appreciated was its depiction of anger.

These are very angry men. And a lot of them have the right to be angry. Brendan and Tommy have every right to be angry—but putting that animosity toward each other and toward fighting is really all that they know how to do.

WW: And you know what’s interesting is that it’s hurtful and, at the very least, not ideal that these men have to both express themselves through violence and also make a livelihood through it. They are at risk of dying. And yet the violence is kind of seductive. The movie does a really good job of depicting [that], on the one hand, these are not people who are emotionally healthy and this is not good, but also, they’re heroes and you root for them and want them to succeed at what they’re doing.

A screenshot of the cast

The Women Tell All The Trojan Women

By Euripedes Directed by Arielle Seidman-Joria Presented by Globe Online The theater invites audiences to explore that which makes us most human.

Originally produced in 415 B.C., Euripides’ The Trojan Women paints a world of pain and heartache, where the women of Troy must face the terrors of a lost war. It is thanks to director and founder of the newly established Globe Online, Arielle Seidman-Joria, that the company’s inaugural Zoom production is a high quality and heartfelt evening with moments of excellence.

The director, now functioning as the stage manager as well, first illustrates a war-torn city and a bedraggled group—the defeated Trojan women, destined for enslavement.

The ancients come to life on the stage, or in this case, the screen, as we are transported back to the Trojan War. Immediately, a regal presence fills the screen, her grief palpable.

As Hecuba, Queen of Troy, Elizabeth Weiss provides an unmatched depth of character.

Her performance mimics a layered painting, leaving one immersed in sorrow, yet prideful.

“Weep for me, crown of misery,” she cries to the heavens, and the image of her bathed in spotlight on a barren stage arises.

Weiss continuously builds from one scene to the next. One such moment is found with Sarah Pfanz as Cassandra, who strikes a brilliant contrast to her mother’s woe. The raging daughter proclaims death to the Greeks, and Pfanz’s manic and energetic performance should strike fear into the hearts of men everywhere. Later, the Queen ferociously defends the truth of the woman who lay waste to her city, Helen. Kripa Patwardhan, playing

Helen, and Weiss volley back and forth like Serena and Venus Williams as tension, angst, and discord build. They erupt in a fervor that reminds us of William Congreve’s oftrepeated line: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Small elements of costuming and makeup, like a shawl, vest, or painted eyes, add a dimension of live theater. The bathing of Poseidon in sunlight and the hanging of a window curtain further convinces viewers that they could be sitting in front of the actors. The production would have benefited from additional pieces of set, costumes, and makeup, of course, but also if consistency of visuals existed between the actors. Much of the cast performs the ancient text like poetry, embracing an archaic speech pattern and rhyme scheme. While a great strength, the overall mastery made errors even more glaring, with some lines seeming to be delivered to friends at the mall, as opposed to combatants at war.

These small notes fail to detract from the high level of professionalism the cast presents to their virtual viewers, as the ensemble remains engaged in the saddest of woes and weeps alongside the Trojan Queen, following her to the bitter end. One ensemble member, Francesca Cesaro, captured my full attention each time she spoke, demonstrating superior command of her lines, their delivery, and a clear devotion to Troy and its queen. Cesaro emboldens the audience to dive deeper, to let go of expectations and distraction, and instead to focus on the actors who strive diligently to bring the burning world of Troy to viewers.

Now, more than ever, we need distractions, and one form is local theater performed via Zoom. Globe Online embraces an online platform to share the stories of our civilization. As we mourn lost plans, lost jobs, and lost loved ones, inviting the production of The Trojan Women to explore grief and sorrow in the comfort of your home might be exactly what you need.

—John D’Angelo IV To watch the play, visit facebook.com/goglobeonline.

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ARTS FILM REVIEW

Abstract Repressionism Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint Directed by Halina Dyrschka

Cold-Blooded Blood and Money Directed by John Barr It could always get worse. That’s the central message of Blood and Money, a new film that mixes crime thrills with a tale of survival in Maine’s harsh wilderness. Our hero Jim Reed, played by Tom Berenger, is not resourceful or a brilliant tactician. He is stoic and grumpy, lumbering through the plot as if the criminals who threaten his life simply inconvenience him. By the time writer-director John Barr moves his film toward an inevitable conclusion, a halfhearted shrug is all he can inspire.

Jim is a veteran who spends his winters hunting in Maine’s nearly impenetrable forests.

Berenger is best known for films like Platoon and Major League, and, now that he is a bit older, his gruff acting style is more wooden.

Barr responds by shooting in long takes, giving his actors plenty of time to dodder through the frame.

He stumbles into the plot by accident: He thinks he has shot a deer, except he has shot a random woman instead. He does not know where she came from, and his confusion is mostly tied to his usual solitude. Unsure what to do next, he discovers that she was a thief who stole more than $1 million from a casino, and her accomplices are still at large. He returns to the scene of the crime, takes the money, and finds himself pursued by angry, violent men who are desperate in the bitter cold.

The most obvious comparison for Blood and Money is A Simple Plan, an underrated Sam Raimi thriller in which a group of men also

stumble upon a bag of money in the wilderness.

Raimi’s thriller is psychological, with the hapless criminals making one bad decision after another, with disastrous moral consequences.

There is no such curiosity here: Jim is one dimensional and taciturn, while his pursuers are one dimensional and cruel.

At just under 90 minutes, and despite very little dialogue, Barr’s feature-length debut has an impressive number of f-bombs. They mostly come from Berenger, who is understandably unhappy when his car is torched and when he falls into an icy river. Berenger has been playing tough guys for decades, but his limited vocabulary and range diminish the authenticity.

To his credit, Barr films the action with efficient clarity. It is always clear where Jim fits in relation to the thieves, and there is a bleakness in what little they say to each other. The script is economical, and sometimes ruthless. It features a clumsy scene where Jim provokes the criminals, and the blunt language is a major part of why his provocation is so effective.

There are subplots that are introduced and then go nowhere, and Jim’s backstory is a mess of “tough guy” tropes.

There is little escapism in Blood and Money, or sense of catharsis. Jim is not especially likable, and if Berenger aspired to be an antihero, it does not show. Instead, this film is a reminder of why Berenger never quite achieved leading man status. He is effective in smaller roles, like the aforementioned Platoon or even Inception, but his deadpan style lacks the charisma and grace that you find in a more conventional star. Jim punches, shoots, and curses his way through the wilderness, and his feelings on the entire ordeal remain maddeningly obtuse.

—Alan Zilberman

Blood and Money is available beginning May 15 on VOD platforms.

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At the end of 2018, the Solomon R .

Guggenheim Museum devoted its austere spiral gallery to an artist almost entirely unknown in the United States. Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future, the first American survey exhibition of the 20th century Swedish artist, was a hit, attracting more than 600,000 visitors— the most in the museum’s history. This was partly because the exhibition upended common understandings of how artistic abstraction developed, but, judging by the reviews, it was mostly due to the strength and power of her massive, abstract paintings. We know from her copious notes that the act of creating them was a spiritual endeavor. Staring at the works— especially the group titled “The Ten Largest”— and following their undulations, curves, color gradations, and hard forms is spiritual as well.

Af Klint is a singularly intriguing figure.

Born in Sweden in 1862, she studied as a young woman at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, where she produced art firmly anchored in observations of the material world. By the turn of the 20th century, she was enmeshed in spiritualism and Theosophy.

She joined a group of four other women artists, called The Five, and used mystical practices to communicate with entities they called the Great Masters. By 1906, she was making huge, abstract works channeling those spiritual messages. She decisively abandoned figurative painting at a time when her male peers across the continent were only beginning to flirt with unrecognizable forms and compositions. She continued interpreting and visualizing her grand message in shockingly original, stirring paintings until her death in 1944. Then she was lost, the story goes. She left her paintings to her nephew Erik with strict instructions that they not be shown to the public until 20 years after her death, feeling strongly that her work wouldn’t be received as it should in her time. (She was right: Even after the paintings were rediscovered, her work wasn’t shown until 1986 and didn’t gain wide reception until 2013.)

But her oeuvre still has yet to be placed into the canon of art history.

Into the breach comes the persuasive, polemic documentary Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint, directed by Halina Dyrschka.

Beyond the Visible breathlessly campaigns for her recognition as a visionary. Af Klint, it points out, had adopted abstraction to communicate her ambitious, mystical messages well before Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian.

Explosively, the documentary suggests that Kandinsky may have seen her work while developing his own, and that she should perhaps be cited as an influence.

Beyond the Visible makes the case for the

artist seem open and shut. Interviews with art critics and historians highlight the ingenious nature of her painting. Armed with moral righteousness, simple filmmaking techniques punch above their weight. There’s a shocking sequence where af Klint’s work and extremely similar pieces by the male masters are displayed side-by-side, with dates appended. Af Klint’s work is always first. The sparse use of reenactments, which focus on the physicality of her painting, are grounding. The film interrogates her symbolic language’s prescience—it echoes the discoveries of the previously invisible makeup of the material world, like the structure of the atom, the visible light spectrum, and DNA. Thanks to Dyrschka’s intensive research, the film dismantles the narrative that she never showed her abstract works during her life, pointing to an overlooked 1928 exhibition of spiritual art in London. Af Klint, it argues, is being intentionally forgotten, because the story of abstraction is a heavily male one. Properly acknowledging her would require rewriting art history.

Yet af Klint herself is a ghost in Beyond the Visible, one the film can only communicate with through signs and symbols. Several publications have claimed she may have been queer (and many of the signs of queer life are there: She never married; she lived in a commune with four other women; her paintings interrogated the symbolic duality of human sex), but neither the documentary nor any of the mainstream exhibitions of her work address this theory. We hear from her nephew’s widow, Ulla af Klint, deceased by the time her interview makes it into the film, and her living descendants pass on some family stories handed to them. Attempts to really know Hilma are stymied by time and a lack of documentation; viewers see her stern face in a handful of photographs. We can assume she was brilliant, determined, and extremely dedicated to her projects. To learn more, all we can do is sit before her paintings—in person or in the lingering shots of the film—and attempt to connect with her in another world. —Emma Sarappo Beyond the Visible is available now to stream at Kino Marquee.

CITY LIGHTS

The section that (temporarily) shows you how to enjoy staying home.

City Lights

The Infiltrators Landing yourself in an immigrant detention center on purpose takes genuine courage. The documentary The Infiltrators shows how, in 2012, two activists, Marco Saavedra and Viridiana Martinez, did just that, and managed to record much of their Kafkaesque experience. Saavedra and Martinez were both undocumented, so when they got themselves detained by the U.S. Border Patrol and thrown into the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, Florida, they faced real danger. But they had a mission: Help get the detainees already inside the facility released. As Saavedra and Martinez connected the undocumented people inside with their organization, the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, NIYA acted as a sort of mission control on the outside and a film crew rolled their cameras. It took two directors with two very different styles (one known for cyberpunk action, the other for documentaries) to stitch the resulting footage into a cohesive film. Thanks to its distinctive blend of styles, a mix of raw documentary footage and dramatic recreations, The Infiltrators is a unique and fascinating piece of media for those concerned with the immigration crisis in America. For a limited time, you can see it in AFI Silver’s Virtual Screening Room. The Infiltrators is available to rent at theinfiltrators.vhx.tv. $10.

—Will Lennon

City Lights

Color My Washington D.C. For many of us, “home” is currently a dank nest of dirty clothes and rationed Clorox wipes. It’s depressing! So escape to the wider world with Color My Washington D.C., a gorgeous hardcover coloring book by Elina Diaz. It’s easy for those of us living in the District to take for granted that we (used to) walk past some of the world’s most famous structures every day. Color My Washington D.C. gives you a chance to spend a relaxing afternoon appreciating the city’s gorgeous landmarks and monuments and to really contemplate the capital’s splendor. Plus, you’ll learn historical facts as you go, courtesy of Diaz. And you get bonus points for spotting the hidden Illuminati and Freemason imagery in the architectural geometry! (Just kidding. Or are we? We are.) You may wonder: What am I supposed to do about the landmarks that are white? Great news! You can do whatever your heart desires. Camouflage our museums to hide our national treasures! Make a tie-dye White House while you listen to Pink Floyd! Unfurl a rainbow down the National Mall to celebrate pride! Or just color every page black from corner to corner to create a mirror of your haunted soul! All it takes is a pack of crayons and a little imagination. Color My Washington D.C. is available from independent bookstores through bookshop.org. $15.59.

—Will Lennon

City Lights

The Tyranny of Distance Certain albums are capable of crystallizing the moments when we first heard them, then triggering a heady rush of nostalgia on subsequent listens. The soaring riff that opens D.C.-formed Ted Leo and the Pharmacists’ The Tyranny of Distance is enough to catapult me back to the summer when I was 18, driving down Route 7 with the windows open and the volume cranked up. But revisiting the album now, “Parallel or Together” is the track that really stands out. I’ve always loved its nervous, shuffling percussion and intricate wordplay, but the lyrics (which dwell on a dissolving relationship) are also strangely perfect for our prolonged state of quarantine. “We’re caught in a landslide, the minutes come tumbling down,” Leo sings, managing to capture the way time becomes elastic during moments that reshape our assumptions about the world. And later, “We’re really not together at all, but parallel” could just as easily describe the way Zoom calls and FaceTime don’t manage to deliver the same satisfaction as sitting in the same room with someone. In the face of so much uncertainty and pain, it’s a relief to find a song that attempts to make sense of feelings of displacement, loneliness, and betrayal—especially one that also offers Leo’s specific, gentle curiosity. The Tyranny of Distance is available to stream on Spotify, YouTube Music, and Apple Music. Free.

—Michelle Delgado washingtoncitypaper.com may 15, 2020 15

City Lights

The Big Leap Wheels, wires, and auto parts aren’t typically associated with artistic genius. But for her exhibit The Big Leap, artist Jean Jinho Kim transformed seemingly mundane objects into colorful, architectural designs that are as puzzling as they are nostalgic. The exhibit appeared in January in VisArts’ public 355 Pod Space. In her artist’s talk, Kim describes the process of repurposing utilitarian objects into 14 sculptures whose dimensionality can be seen in the accompanying video. For example, “The March” features downspouts out of context: released of their function, contorted, and painted fluorescent green. You might not immediately know it from the tangle of neon pipes, but Kim actually drew inspiration from the #MeToo movement. The parade of pink rain boots supporting the vibrant structure stand at the ready and in solidarity with each other—a slightly louder reference to the movement.

The familiar objects evoke a sense of comfort, but their unlikely presentation challenges the viewer to consider the shapes anew. If you’re currently staying indoors, Kim’s sculptures might inspire you to view that leaky faucet or chipped teacup with a little more compassion.

Following Kim’s lead, scavenge the house for old gadgets, pipes, and trinkets. Affix them together to create an entirely unique work of art that is simultaneously playful and deconstructive—or, at the very least, something new to look at. The images, video, and artist’s talk are available online at visartscenter.org. Free.

—Emma Francois

City Lights

Browse the D.C. Art Bank Since 1986, the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities has been stocking the D.C. Art Bank with artworks, ranging from paintings, sculptures, and textile works to glass art, photography, and video, to be displayed in public buildings and other spaces in the city. The collection now includes more than 3,000 artworks, and can be viewed at the Commission’s online museum. The art bank includes work by native D.C. artists whose careers have focused on the region, as well as international artists who spent time in D.C. Among them are household names such as Sam Gilliam, Gene Davis, Jacob Kainen, William Christenberry, and Alma Thomas, along with local art figures including John Gossage, Lou Stovall, Joey Mánlapaz, Colin Winterbottom, Chan Chao, Joe Cameron, and Muriel Hasbun. Emerging artists such as Caitlin Teal Price, Adam Davies, Ebtisam Abdulaziz, and Naoko Wowsugi are also represented. Of special note are the artworks that depict D.C. itself; these depictions range from Ben’s Chili Bowl and Georgetown street life to Malcolm X Park and downtown. “These are the pictures of and about our city, and as such are both an important archive and a viewing pleasure,” says the collection’s curator, Sarah Gordon.

Gordon will also give an online lecture about the art bank on May 13, sponsored by Photoworks in Glen Echo. The D.C. Art Bank is available to view at dcarts.emuseum.com. Free. —Louis Jacobson

City Lights

Peruse vintage postcards that capture D.C.’s past Last week, CityLab published an extraordinary piece, “How to Discover the History of Your Neighborhood, Without Leaving Home,” that documents writer and illustrator Ariel AbergRiger’s research-based journey into her neighborhood’s past. Among Aberg-Riger’s many clever research tricks, one is particularly ingenious: Browsing vintage postcards to learn more about how a city once advertised itself to the world. A quick search on eBay turns up hundreds of snapshots of 16 may 15, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

D.C.’s past. Even if you’re not in the market to buy, it’s fun to see what you can find, especially with a little digging. During my own brief scroll, I encountered a 1955 image of the National Gallery of Art featuring trees that seem comparatively miniscule, a 1905 postcard of the Smithsonian Castle, where the District’s first children’s museum had opened a few years earlier, and one displaying the “new” Union Station, complete with vintage cars, parasols, and voluminous skirts.

Try plugging in different search terms, such as specific years or locations, and you might just be surprised by what turns up. Postcards are available to view and purchase on sites like eBay. —Michelle Delgado Prices vary.

City Lights

Explore the history of Wardman homes There’s no better time than the present to learn about D.C. architecture. That way, when the city’s stay-at-home order lifts, you can play tour guide to friends and family. For beginners, Harry Wardman’s buildings are a great place to start. The developer’s portfolio is truly prolific: He’s responsible for signature row houses in Bloomingdale, 16th Street Heights, Petworth, Brightwood, Woodley Park, and Fort Stevens Ridge. If you’re interested in learning more, Sally Berk, a former DC Preservation League president and devoted Wardman researcher, runs a website where you can learn about Wardman’s life, browse a database of his developments, explore an exhibit about Wardman-heavy neighborhoods (co-curated by Caroline Mesrobian Hickman), and gaze at photo galleries of his work. However, your lesson shouldn’t stop there. While his homes influenced the signature look of residential Northwest D.C. over the last century, they’re also associated with long-lasting housing inequality in the city. As told by Mapping Segregation DC, during the peak of construction associated with Wardman’s row houses, racist housing covenants stopped many people, like black and Jewish residents, from buying the homes; Wardman himself put racist covenants on his own properties. After working your way through Berk’s website, Mapping Segregation in D.C.’s Story Map is the perfect resource to learn about these deed covenants, the demographic changes after they were slowly repealed, and their ramifications for current homeownership. Remember, the best tour guides tell a city’s whole story. Explore Wardman homes at wardmanswashington.com and the Mapping Segregation in DC Story Map at —Sarah Smith mappingsegregationdc.org. Free.

DIVERSIONS CROSSWORD

Unit Test

By Brendan Emmett Quigley

Across 1. Bits of bullshit 5. Letter-shaped construction beam 9. Bearded animals that lions prey on 13. Color of the sea 14. Join together as one

19. Entertains with force?

22. Fancy case 23. Klutzy sorts 25. Energetic rap act?

30. Parceled (out) 33. Way to go crazy 34. Shuttlecock’s path 35. Grp. concerned with fall protection 36. Ride hard 38. In that matter 39. Colored line in the Uber app: Abbr.

40. Its motto is “Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain.�

41. Take it from the top?

18. Bar sold in pairs

—Steve Kiviat

17. Overused

KQED, a San Francisco-based PBS television station and NPR radio station, has created a series of online videos called If Cities Could Dance, and season three starts with Washington, D.C. The episode covers exhilarating local beat ya feet dancing, which was inspired by D.C. go-go. This 7-minute effort was dynamically shot by director/producer Charlotte Khadra and cinematographer Devin Johnson, with assistance from local producer Randy Gill of GW Entertainment, who helped choose the locations. While designed as a basic history lesson on DC’s funky homegrown music and its leg-wiggling, foot-stomping dance, the video’s vivid footwork in front of both cultural and tourist landmarks should entertain those familiar with the sonics and movements. The video includes enthralling footage of dancer and dance teacher John ‘Crazy Legz’ Pearson and others moving their knees left and right and slapping their sneakers down in front of iconic locations including the Lincoln Memorial, the Metro PCS store of Don’t Mute D.C. fame, and Barry Farm’s basketball court. While this episode doesn’t get into the dance history minutia of beat ya feet’s late ‘90s origins, it does include clips of the godfather of go-go, Chuck Brown, and the legendary Howard Theatre, and it gestures at the history of majority black Washington with pre-1968 black and white photos by Robert H. McNeill. While Crazy Legz is the lead, the video also includes scenes with Kevin ‘Noodlez’ Davis doing the dance’s fast left-foot-overright-foot stepping and sliding moves in front of the Anacostia “Many Voices, Many Beats, One City� go-go mural designed by Cory Stowers. Women, including Tierra Parham and Gabrielle Kornegay, also strut at multiple locations. When you hear that bounce beat go-go adaptation of the Jackson 5, you might even want to get up and try it yourself. The video is available on YouTube. Free.

16. Steak, when served with lobster

If Cities Could Dance’s beat ya feet episode

15. Blow-up bed brand

City Lights

Happy Hour Body Liberation Party

Having a live audience watch your webcam dancing may seem like a work-from-home nightmare.

Alternatively, learning to embrace your body as it is in front of strangers may be just what you need while stuck at home. That’s why Diva Darling, in partnership with Joe’s Movement Emporium, is hosting another installment of her Body Liberation Dance Party. You don’t need a studio or any dance experience, and the D.C.-based burlesque dancer is quick to guarantee the event is open to people of all genders, body types, and ages. All you need is a way to join the virtual dance party over Zoom. Diva Darling describes herself as a “velvet-voiced vamp with dangerous curves who’s hell on heels.� On May 15, the vamp will be focusing on body positivity and helping participants feel the music. For anyone still on the fence, know that Diva Darling knows her stuff. She’s been teaching introductory burlesque and striptease classes in the area for years, and she’s performed at the Dominion Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Capital Fringe, Capital Pride, and Woodhull’s Sexual Freedom Summit. You’re guaranteed to walk away from the event rejuvenated and feeling more confident, and maybe even a little less self-conscious about videoconferencing mishaps. The Body Liberation Dance Party begins at 4 p.m. on May 15. Registration is available at eventbrite.com. $5–$15. —Sarah Smith

City Lights

42. Powerful in any event?

46. It might be put to one’s face in embarrassment 47. “That’s why!�

51. “Facts are facts,� frequently?

55. Indian wrap 57. Maker of Tamiflu and Valium 58. Tuber used for poi 59. Make a movement 60. Behind 100 percent 61. Shortly, quaintly 62. “thank u, ___�

(Ariana Grande) 63. AutoCAD creation

9. French cake 10. Broadcast interruption 11. Sch. just outside of Providence 12. Guaranteed Rate Field team, for short 14. Berlin’s subway system 20. Gulf War missile 21. Tablet that comes with GlowLight 24. Big name in mattresses 26. Van ___ (sobriquet for a hard rock band when Sammy was their lead singer) 27. Style similar to goth

28. The Mandalorian creator Favreau 29. Edinburgh citizen 30. Poetic time before lunch 31. Bar in court 32. 1999 sci-fi movie that used wire fu 36. Turn bad 37. Amazement 38. Bloodiest battle in the Civil War 40. “This is exactly how I feel,� in some social media shares 41. State with the lowest income inequality 43. “Java� trumpeter 44. At the middle 45. Pale with fear 48. Product that unclogs 49. Razor sharpener 50. Gas that provides cover 52. Evil puzzle maker’s ploy 53. Stay on a hot streak 54. Sch. whose student-athletes have won the most Olympic medals 55. ID that can never begin 666 56. Swallowed

LAST WEEK: THE SUPREMES

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washingtoncitypaper.com may 15, 2020 17

DIVERSIONS SAVAGE LOVE

GO SOLAR. MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

It’s taken a lot to do this but here goes. I am a 38-year-old gay male. I have been dating this guy for one year and ten months. It’s been a lot of work. He cheated on me numerous times. He lives with me and doesn’t work, and I’ve been taking care of him for seven months now. He always accuses me of cheating or finds something to blame me for. What I am angry about now is how, for the past four months, he has been accusing me of playing games by conspiring with people to make him hear voices. If I look up at the ceiling or look around he says I am communicating with “them.” I keep telling him I do not hear or see anything but he insists that I am lying. He also says I put a curse on him. One day I got up and he packed his bags and said he had enough and walked out. He said I was not being loyal.

This is a man who has been doing coke since the age of 14 and he is now 43 years old. He does meth and whatever else. He says until I come clean about hearing the voices too and admit I cast some sort a spell on him he won’t talk to me or see me. Mental illness runs in his family and one sibling already committed suicide. He doesn’t want professional help because, he says, “I am too smart for that.” I’m hurt and angry and want some advice. ANY ADVICE. Please.

—Desperate For Answers

15

I don’t see the problem.

A delusional and potentially dangerous drug addict with mental health issues who refuses to get help packed his bags and walked out of your life. Yahtzee, DFA, you win. It was his presence in your life (and your apartment) that was the problem and your boyfriend—your ex-boyfriend—just solved it for you. Block his number, change your locks, and pray he forgets your address.

You might want to seek some professional help yourself. You need to get to the bottom of why you wasted nearly two years on this asshole. Being alone can’t be worse than being with someone who cheats on you and then accuses you of cheating, to say nothing of someone who abuses drugs, hears voices, and makes other irrational/delusional accusations. He wasn’t just a danger to himself, DFA, he was a danger to you. He’s out of your apartment. Now you need to get him out of your head.

—Dan Savage

YEARS 2004-2019

Proudly serving the Washington, D.C. area for 15 years!

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About a month ago I broke up with my boyfriend after I found out he was cheating on me. Long before we broke up, I freaked out about a rash and looking back, I think it was probably herpes all along. I found out for sure three days ago and I’m honestly thinking about not telling him.

He doesn’t show any symptoms and he’s the type of guy who will call me a slut if I tell him. He’ll blame me for his wrongdoing and just keep going and going. I honestly don’t know if I should tell him, since he’s asymptomatic. This is going to cause a huge problem between us. He has a lot of anger issues and he could use this as blackmail.

I’m legitimately scared.

—Her Ex Reacts Personally

Letting a former sex partner know you may have exposed them to an STI—or that they may have exposed you to an STI—is the decent, responsible, courteous, and kind thing to do. Not just for

18 may 15, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

their health and safety, HERP, but for the health and safety of their future sex partners. But people who are unkind, scary, and violent have no one but themselves to blame when a former sex partner/girlfriend/boyfriend/enbyfriend is too afraid for their own safety to make that disclosure. Provided your fears are legitimate, HERP, and you’re not inflating them to avoid an awkward or unpleasant conversation, you don’t owe your ex a call.

—DS I’m a bi guy, living alone. At the start of the year, this new guy moved into the house where I live—we share communal areas but have private rooms—and he’s a bit of a slacker but holy shit, is he hot. I’ve had regular fantasies about him.

And now with the quarantine, those fantasies have increased along with the number of times I see him in a day. I’ve been feeling the urge to ask

“Health authorities have advised us to shit where we eat for the time being.

The New York City Health Department recommends masturbation, HELP, because you are, and always have been, your safest sex partner.” him if he’s interested in anything but my friends have advised me to “not shit where I eat.” Due to the quarantine, the only other option I have is masturbating and that’s not doing the trick.

Should I take the plunge and ask him?

—Household Entirely Lacks Pleasure

Health authorities have advised us to shit where we eat for the time being. The New York City Health Department recommends masturbation, HELP, because you are, and always have been, your safest sex partner.

But your next safest partner during this pandemic is someone with whom you live. NYC Health has advised us all to “avoid close contact—including sex—with anyone outside your household.” That doesn’t mean everyone inside your household is fair game, of course; some people are quarantining with their parents. But if there was ever a time when you could approach a non-related adult with whom you live to see if they might wanna fuck around, now’s the time. Apologize to the hot slacker in advance for potentially making

things awkward and invite him to say no. (“If you’re not interested, please say no and I promise not to bring it up again.”) But if the answer is yes, HELP, send video.

—DS I’m a gay bondage bottom. My boyfriend of four years is 100 percent vanilla and we solved the “problem” of my need to get tied up—and it’s a real need—by outsourcing it. (Can you tell we’re longtime readers and listeners?) I was seeing two regular FWBs/bondage buddies, but that’s obviously on hold right now. (I’ve reached out to both my FWBs to let them both know I’m thinking about them and that I care about them, Dan, like you’ve been urging people to do on your show.) The issue is I still really need to get tied up and my boyfriend is willing but he’s so bad at it that I don’t want to bother. He knows how much I need it and he’s hurt that I’d rather go without than let him put me in bondage that isn’t really bondage because I can easily get out. We used to fight because I wanted him to tie me up and he didn’t want to do it and now we’re fighting because he wants to tie me up and I won’t let him do it. Any advice for a fan?

—This Isn’t Exactly Desirable

If people can teach yoga, give concerts, and conduct first dates via online streaming services, then one of your bondage buddies can— if they’re into the idea—give your boyfriend a few bondage tutorials online. I’m glad to hear you already reached out to your bondage buddies, TIED, since now you’ll be asking them to do you and your boyfriend a favor. But I imagine it’s a favor they’ll enjoy doing.

—DS I’m a teenage girl with a female friend who keeps joking about having sex with me. We’re both into girls and sex, but while I find her really hot, she probably doesn’t feel the same about me. How can I tell if she’s joking about it because she finds the idea ridiculous or if she’s joking about it because she actually wants to? Once everything goes back to normal COVID-wise, what should I do?

—Getting Into Real Life The ability to ask someone a direct question—particularly someone you’re interested in romantically and/or sexually—is an important skill, GIRL, and getting some practice now, when stakes are relatively low, will benefit you all your life. So get your friend on the phone and ask her this: “Are you serious about wanting to have sex with me? It’s fine if you don’t want to, but I’m actually attracted to you.

Please say no if the answer’s no.” If the answer is yes, you can make a date to get together once circumstances/pandemics allow. But if the answer is no, GIRL, then you can get some practice making declarative statements: “I don’t want you to make those jokes anymore.

They’re hurtful to me.” And if she continues to make jokes about having sex with you after you’ve made it clear she’s hurting your feelings, then she’s just being cruel and doesn’t deserve your time, attention, or friendship.

—DS

Email your Savage Love questions to mail@savagelove.net

CLASSIFIEDS Legal NOTICE OF PROTEST; PROTESTED/CHARGES Thurston County Records, State of Washington, No. 3843008 on 6/26/06 AD finds Barrators/trespassers on Jeffrey McMeel’s, peaceful, non combatant status in re: TRADING WITH THE ENEMY ACT of 1917-40 Stat. 411.

McMeel is not a private/ public enemy of governments. Barratry/contempt of court charged on: Thurston county court No. 13DV-0310,10-M00941, UHS15-167, 7Z1085643, 17-2-06110-34, 17-203433-34, 13-2-30176-5, 17-4-00091-34. Pierce county court 9Z625080A. W. WA District court 3:12-cv-06067, 2:16-po00278-MAT, 2:20-cv00079MJP. W. WA Bankruptcy court 16-11767-CMA. US court of Appeals, 9th Circuit 16-1145, 201003, 14-35813.

NOTICE OF INTENT TO ENTER A SOLE SOURCE CONTRACT Breakthrough Montessori Public Charter School intends to enter into a Sole Source contract with Heutink International for the purchase of Montessori classroom materials and with Community Playthings for the purchase of classroom furniture. To view the complete Notices of Intent, please contact emily.hedin@breakthroughmontessori.org.

STATESMEN COLLEGE PREPARATORY ACADEMY FOR BOYS PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL NOTICE OF INTENT TO ENTER SOLE-SOURCE CONTRACT Statesmen College Preparatory Academy for Boys Public Charter School (“Statemen”) intends to enter into a sole source contract for Medstar Georgetown University Hospital (“Wise”) for the 20202021 school year with the option to extend in up to three (3) option years post this school year. The decision to conduct a sole source agreement is due to the partnership that we already have with Wise.

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DREAM PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL Request For Proposal: Furniture and fixtures (inquiry by 5/22); Before and after care (inquiry by 5/29); Specials contract teachers (PE, music, art, yoga, language) (inquiry by 5/29);Special Education Coordinator (inquiry by 5/22).

I Dream Public Charter School issued a Notice of Intent to enter a Sole Source Contract with Urban Teachers to provide assistant teachers for the 2020-2021 school year (inquiry by 5/22). All interest inquiries should be emailed no later than 5:00 PM on date listed by each function. Contact mwhitnall@idreampcs.org.

STATESMEN COLLEGE PREPARATORY ACADEMY FOR BOYS PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL NOTICE OF INTENT TO ENTER SOLE-SOURCE CONTRACT Statesmen College Preparatory Academy for Boys Public Charter School (“Statemen”) intends to enter into a sole source contract for Ed-Ops for the 2020-2021 school year with the option to extend in up to three (3) option years post this school year.

The decision to conduct a sole source agreement is due to the partnership that we already have with Ed-Ops. Statesmen has used this vendor since 2017 (2 years prior to opening its doors to students) and plans to continue using these services during the 20202021 school year. Specifically, Ed-Ops provides the following unique, important and relevant services to our school: Budgeting, accounting, financial analysis, auditing and payroll, accounts payable and federal grants support The cost of this contract is $60,900.00. The sole source contract will be awarded on Monday, June 1, 2020 by 5:00pm.

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