Washington City Paper (September 25, 2020)

NEWS CAN AN EX-GROSSO STAFFER WIN HIS SEAT? 4 EDUCATION THE BENEFITS OF OUTDOOR LEARNING 6 SPORTS ROLLER SKATING’S PAST AND FUTURE IN D.C. 8 THE DISTRICT'S FREE WEEKLY SINCE 1981 VOLUME 40, NO. 37 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM SEPT. 25–OCT. 1, 2020

Six months into the pandemic, restaurants are discovering which pivots can best position them to make it through the winter. PAGE 10

By Laura Hayes Photos by Darrow Montgomery

Dear City Paper readers, In April, we stated our intention to keep printing weekly editions of Washington City Paper despite plummeting ad sales and lost event revenue in the face of the pandemic.

Consolidating circulation provided a little relief, but five months later, it’s no longer enough. And so, in an effort to protect staff and salaries as best we can, we will be temporarily reducing our print publication schedule to once per month.

DURING COVID-19, YOU’VE BEEN CARING FOR YOUR HOUSEHOLD IN MANY DIFFERENT WAYS.

NOW, IT’S TIME TO BE

HURRICANE

READY!

A monthly schedule will still allow us to reach Washingtonians in print — those who lack access to broadband internet or a computer, those who just like to pick up a physical copy on the street, and those who love our crossword puzzles. Readers can expect continued and regular publishing on our new website, washingtoncitypaper.com, which will allow us to tell stories in new, engaging, and more interactive ways.

City Paper started as a bi-weekly paper in 1981.

If becoming a monthly for a little while will keep us around for the next four decades, that’s a sacrifice we’re compelled to make.

Thank you to the 1,100 members who have stepped up to support our work over the past year, as well as to our advertisers that have stood with us in print and digital form and will continue to do so. As we transform into a more member-supported newspaper, sustainability is our chief priority. We’re committed to making decisions that will protect the future of your legacy alt-weekly.

We will continue to update our print circulation routes online. Please reach out to circulation@washingtoncitypaper.com to request a new dropoff spot. Expect to see the next print editions of Washington City Paper on October 15, November 12, and December 10.

BE HURRICANE READY! READY.DC.GOV

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Thank you for your support, Caroline Jones, Interim Editor Duc Luu, Publisher and Chief Revenue Officer

TABLE OF CONTENTS COVER STORY 10 Test Kitchens: After six months of reinvention, some restaurants have found strategies to sustain themselves through winter.

NEWS 4 Loose Lips: Former David Grosso staffer Christina Henderson makes a play for her former boss’ at-large D.C. Council seat.

6 The Outsiders: While private and charter schools convene classes outdoors, DC Public Schools hesitate to embrace open-air learning.

SPORTS 8 On the Roll Again: As roller skating enjoys a renaissance on the internet, seasoned skaters consider its past and future in D.C.

ARTS 14 Poetic Justice: Kim Roberts reflects on her new anthology of work from more than 100 local poets of the past.

16 Keep On Keeping On: A conversation with local singersongwriter Art Auré 18 Film: Gittell on Misbehaviour 19 Books: Ottenberg on Jennifer Howard’s Clutter: An Untidy History

CITY LIGHTS 21 City Lights: Discuss a new children’s book with ballerina Misty Copeland and learn to DJ or mend your clothes.

DIVERSIONS 18 Crossword 22 Savage Love 23 Classifieds

Darrow Montgomery | 1600 Block of Newton Street NW, Sept. 10 Editorial

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washingtoncitypaper.com september 25, 2020 3

NEWS LOOSE LIPS

Playing the Dozens

Darrow Montgomery

Does former D.C. Council staffer Christina Henderson have chance to win an at-large seat over more than 20 challengers?

Christina Henderson

By Mitch Ryals @MitchRyals Christina Henderson is wa l k i ng through the quiet streets of Brookland, where she knows some people and where she’s hoping to get to know more. She passes houses displaying campaign signs for Ed Lazere and At-Large Councilmember Robert White— two of her challengers for the two at-large seats on the D.C. Council up for grabs this November—as she continues the monthslong slog of contactless canvassing, a more boring version of door knocking.

Henderson, a former Council and current Capitol Hill staffer, is running as an independent against 22 other candidates in the general election. (Little-known candidate Rick Murphree dropped out last weekend and endorsed Henderson. His name will still appear on the ballot.)

Some lawns are decked with the first-time candidate’s own purple signs. Others have signs for Joe Biden. And as she turns the corner onto 18th Street NE, she happens upon a lawn with three plain white signs indicating support for Marya Pickering, the only Republican

running in the crowded race.

As the signs come into focus, so too does their owner, Peter Semler, who just so happens to be returning home with an acquaintance, Nestride Yumga, and a box of doughnuts from Dunkin’. His shirt is tucked into his underpants.

Yumga recently drew public attention when she, along with Semler and a representative for Breitbart News, delivered lunch to the Metropolitan Police Department’s Second District Station. During the visit, Yumga falsely claimed that Black people are “the most violent race in America.”

Henderson knows it’s useless to drop her literature on these folks, but she gives them a chipper “Hi, how are you?”

“Good. Why don’t you support Marya Pickering?” asks Semler. “She’s the only one who’s gonna provide jobs and won’t sell us down the road to all the Northern Virginia White developers.”

“Oh, OK, well, I’m Christina Henderson. I’m also running for the Council,” she responds.

Semler again encourages her to drop out and support her Republican opponent, who he calls the “new Carol Schwartz.” He tells

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Henderson that Vincent Orange, another of her opponents, has her beat in campaign contributions (not true) and name recognition (likely true). He calls At-Large Councilmember David Grosso, Henderson’s former boss, the “most corrupt, dirty, unethical person we have.” He claims that Pickering is “more Democrat than any of the guys running,” and he says the city’s leaders think of residents in Northeast D.C. as “jungle bunnies.”

(Pickering was one of a handful of people who attended the puny rally to push for reopening the local economy in May.) At one point, Semler briefly turns his back to Henderson and LL, and when he turns back around he’s wearing glasses with a camera attached. He yammers on about Yumga’s run for Advisory Neighborhood Commission in Ward 5, talks about “access to capital,” and name-drops City Paper owner Mark Ein before Henderson bids them adieu.

“This is all your fault,” she tells LL jokingly. “You wanted to talk to the people with the Marya Pickering signs in the yard.”

Henderson recognizes Yumga from the mini scandal with MPD earlier this year, but has never met Semler.

“You have Marya signs? Three of them jokers? You have a Trump sign in your yard?”

Henderson says. “I don’t need to talk to you.”

And so the walk continues.

Henderson hangs campaign literature on front doors where her internal campaign data says likely voters live. She resists the urge to knock or ring doorbells, but she chats with the people she bumps into outside their homes.

She’s running for a “more equitable D.C.,” she tells them. Most people smile and nod and go about their day.

Henderson, 33, was born in Brooklyn, New York, and moved to D.C. after earning an undergraduate degree from Furman University in South Carolina. She worked as a legislative staffer for Sen. Kay Hagan, earned a master’s degree in public affairs from Princeton University, and began working for Grosso in 2013. She served as his deputy chief of staff and later as committee director when he became chair of the education committee in 2015.

Henderson left the Council in 2017 for her current job as a legislative assistant for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. She’ll take a leave of absence to focus on her Council campaign in the coming weeks.

On this bright and sunny Saturday in Ward 5, Henderson is targeting older residents, who she believes will play a crucial role in the at-large race.

“They’re like, ‘I want my same services that I already have. I don’t want my property taxes to go up. I like change, but not too much change,’” she says, in what sounds to LL like a reference to Lazere, a budget wonk who has locked up much of the support of the local progressive community, including that of his former employee, At-Large Councilmember Elissa Silverman. In March, Lazere stepped down from his post as executive director of the left-leaning think tank DC Fiscal Policy Institute to run for the at-large seat. Silverman worked for Lazere as a staffer before she was elected. Lazere challenged Council Chairman Phil Mendelson in 2018 and lost by nearly 27 points.

Henderson has support from Grosso, who opted not to run for a third term, but she’s failed to get the stamp of approval from any other groups. A Washington Post article about the top at-large candidates quoted Grosso expressing his disappointment that liberal groups too quickly dismissed Henderson in favor of Lazere.

Grosso, who is also canvassing for Henderson on this Saturday morning, adds that Lazere’s decadeslong history of testifying before the Council put him into a box.

“We know where he stands, and you’re either gonna vote with him or not, but the fact of the matter is, he’s not going to easily change his mind,” Grosso says. “And I think with a politician, you want them to be able to look at both sides and say, ‘I was wrong in the beginning, and now I’ll do this.’ I think that’s what you get with Christina, and I don’t think you’ll get that with Ed at all.”

“I just gotta get Christina up there so she can hold them all in line,” Grosso quips. “Especially that Mendelson dude.”

NEWS Henderson overhears Grosso’s jab at the Council chairman, as he’s wont to do. “David,” she admonishes. Henderson says she’s up for the task, though her approach is less combative.

“Mendelson can be outmaneuvered, but nobody ever does the work to actually beat him on stuff,” she says. “Because he is certainly doing the work on his side.”

As an example, she points to Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen’s failed budget amendment to raise income taxes on residents making more than $250,000, which she says she supports. Mendelson opposed the measure, and it lost on a 5-8 vote. “That should have been a winnable amendment,” she says.

Henderson thinks of herself as a “pragmatic progressive,” which are the same terms Mendelson has used to describe himself, though she says her approach on the Council would more closely align with Allen.

“We can make progress, and we can do things, but, like, we’re also not gonna bankrupt the city at the same time,” she says. “Actually, that’s an unfair characterization. I don’t feel like all progressives will bankrupt the city. I shouldn’t have said that. But I do think that Charles can appreciate balancing situations.”

On her comparison to Lazere, Henderson says there are some areas where they align and others where they don’t. The differences, she says, stem from her experience working inside the government as opposed to Lazere’s

perspective as an outsider.

“I’m not of the belief that spending more money is always the answer to everything,” she says. “And I do feel like we have limits in terms of what we can do to raise revenue.”

While Lazere is generally in favor of raising property taxes on high-value homes, Henderson resists that notion, but says she “would be interested to see an analysis from the [Chief Financial Officer] and [the Office of Tax and Revenue].”

Lazere says he doesn’t want to throw money at problems to the exclusion of agency oversight, but he does believe the District government needs to spend more money to address systemic issues in housing and education, for example. He clarifies that he supports raising taxes on high-value homes only for those whose income could support it. “I don’t want to raise property taxes on somebody who lives in a home who happened to get swept up by gentrification,” he says.

And what of two of her other opponents, Orange and Marcus Goodwin, who each have some degree of name recognition?

“Marcus and I have lots of similarities, but our understanding of policy is different,” she says. “Vote for Marcus if you want a slogan. Vote for me if you’re looking for nuance in policy.”

Henderson acknowledges that Orange’s previous terms on the Council weigh in his favor on a 24-person ballot. “But I also feel like there are

a lot of people who remember what it was like when VO was serving,” she says.

Orange was the first elected official sanctioned by the Board of Ethics and Government Accountability, his campaign was at one time the target of an FBI investigation, and he ultimately lost his seat to White in 2016. Orange resigned under pressure from his colleagues before his lame-duck term was up because he took a job as the D.C. Chamber of Commerce’s president and CEO, a glaring conflict of interest.

“The voters said, ‘Nah, we want to do something different,’” she says of Orange.

As Grosso’s legislative staffer and committee director, Henderson has written dozens of pieces of legislation, one of which is illustrative of her approach to governing.

In 2015, Henderson began laying the groundwork for what would become D.C.’s school modernization system. Under the old system, Henderson says, modernizations were driven by politics, not data. Schools located west of Rock Creek Park were generally prioritized over those east of the Anacostia River, she says.

“It required getting 13 councilmembers to give up power. It required the mayor’s office giving up power,” she says. “They had always been able to use modernizations to handle community issues.”

The bill, which she wrote, passed unanimously.

It also required Henderson to get buy-in from the

Department of General Services, the agency that manages D.C. government buildings, and DC Public Schools.

Kaya Henderson, the DCPS chancellor at the time the bill passed, remembers Henderson for her neutralizing impact on oversight hearings. The former chancellor first met Henderson (no relation) in 2012 when she worked in DCPS’ Office of Human Capital before she took a job in Grosso’s office.

“It was like a gladiator ring,” Kaya Henderson says of DCPS oversight hearings. “And what changed tremendously, in part because of Grosso’s leadership, but also because of Christina’s facilitation, was that we actually worked together to show the community what was going on in D.C. public schools.”

Henderson says the school modernization bill is one she’s most proud of during her time in D.C. government “because people thought we were crazy to do it. There was no way to please everybody.”

LL could say the same of her campaign.

Although she entered the race early, a 24-person ballot that also features an entrant named Kathy Henderson could confuse voters.

She’s facing some well known opponents with more money and more support. The question, then, is whether she can excite voters with her preference for pragmatism and consensus over strict ideology.

washingtoncitypaper.com september 25, 2020 5

NEWS CITY DESK

The Outsiders

Miranda Chadwick

As some of D.C.’s private and charter schools implement outdoor learning plans, DC Public Schools considers the feasibility of doing the same across a diverse school district.

Students of Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School of the Nation’s Capital enjoying outdoor education

By Amanda Michelle Gomez @AmanduhGomez At a private school on 16th Street NW, students are learning outside. A second grader calls out in Hebrew, “The king says that everyone should touch the color red.” His classmates scan the playground, their classroom for the morning, in search of anything red. A student spots the color on his classmate’s shirt. Instead of running over and touching him, the second graders point and clap in his direction.

As the world continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic, students are taught to be even more conscious of keeping their germs to themselves. And at Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School of the Nation’s Capital, Hebrew, along with the rest of the curriculum, is taught outside.

“We are repurposing all of our space and all of our people to make this work,” says Dr. Deborah Skolnick-Einhorn, the head of school.

The ga-ga pit, a pit in the shape of a hexagon where a gentler version of dodgeball is played, is

now a classroom where groups of no more than eleven students learn, as is the playground and roof of the school building. The art teacher is now teaching general studies to younger elementary students. The bus driver is disinfecting doorknobs and other high-touch surfaces.

And the librarian is the COVID-19 screener, taking the temperature of anyone who tries to get through the school gate.

In D.C., outdoor learning comes at a price.

Annual tuition at Milton is $28,400 for pre-K through fifth grade and $31,200 for sixth through eighth grade. It’s a school for families of privilege. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner send their children there, according to the New York Times, although the school will not confirm the enrollment of specific students for privacy reasons. Outdoor learning, like learning pods and tutors, is yet another way inequities in education could widen during the pandemic, given how pricey and complicated it is to execute.

As public schools moved ahead with remote learning, Milton opted for what SkolnickEinhorn calls “virtual plus.” This means

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students learn in-person one to two days per week, while the rest of the school week is virtual. With the exception of pre-K and kindergarten, learning occurs outside. Students go inside the school facility only to use the bathroom. The private school was unsatisfied with the three models that school districts across the country were using to respond to the coronavirus—full in-person learning, full remote learning, or a hybrid of the two—and so made the decision over the summer to incorporate outdoor learning. The school invested in outdoor hand washing stations and tents, along with voice amplifiers for teachers and yoga mats for students to enhance the experience.

“We believe that they need to be outside, happy, and joyful,” Skolnick-Einhorn says of students. “That was always our orientation.

It’s just so much harder to execute.”

“The default is the kids are just sitting at home in front of their computer all day. We just weren’t satisfied with that as the default,” she continues.

More than three weeks into the academic year, there have been no COVID-19 scares.

The private school’s screening process, which includes a mobile application, and communication with families via internal newsletters and Zoom calls about the communal responsibility to keep one another safe by practicing social distancing on and off campus appear to be working so far.

“Teachers feel more themselves and more at ease because they are outside,” says Skolnick-Einhorn.

A teacher named Rebecca even called the class she instructed outside during torrential rain “amazing.” A few teachers opted to teach only remotely for medical reasons, and the school provided accommodations. There were no layoffs, but the school did hire an additional nurse.

A small but loud group of educators is trying to get DC Public Schools to invest in outdoor education for the benefit of students, irrespective of the pandemic. Research suggests outdoor learning can improve academic performance and engages students with the community. The pandemic only underscores the case for outdoor learning. A study of 110 cases of the virus in Japan found that the likelihood of catching the coronavirus is nearly 20 times higher indoors than outdoors. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, also says schooling should take place outdoors as much as possible.

“If we’re able to have restaurants right now under tents or block off streets in order to have people socially distance outside, then why not do it for a school?” says Collin Radix-Carter, a pre-K teacher at a Ward 3 public school who is a part of the teacher advocacy group EmpowerEd. “There is precedent for this,” he says.

To respond to a tuberculosis outbreak in Rhode Island at the start of the 20th century, two doctors proposed open-air schools to mitigate transmission. It worked. The open-air school movement spread across the U.S., and by 1918, 130 cities operated some kind of outdoor learning.

“The District also needs to be in a position right now where it needs to reinvent itself for the sake of our children, because the reality is virtual learning, while it might be the safest option, it may not necessarily be the best option for all students,” Radix-Carter says.

“And I think especially for early childhood students who need that socialization as part of their development teaching. Virtually, it’s not the same.”

Outdoor education appears to be a strong option if families and teachers want to return to in-person learning, but only if it can be done safely. DCPS is unable to offer outdoor learning right now, as a few local private and charter schools have, for a host of reasons. For starters, DCPS is responsible for more than 100 schools and 48,000 students. Milton, for comparison, has two campuses and roughly 475 students. Another challenge is that not every public school has an appropriate space for outdoor learning. For some schools, it is an issue of not having enough physical space.

NEWS For others, it’s about not having enough spaces where educators and families feel comfortable having students.

“I’m always leary about exclusion,” says Washington Teachers’ Union President Elizabeth Davis. “Sometimes it’s not because we intend to. It’s because we simply don’t have a level playing field when it comes to parents and students with the same resources. So consequently, some kids are going to be left out.”

When asked about outdoor learning, Davis immediately recalled a shooting outside a Ward 8 school in May 2019. According to media reports at the time, a man was fatally shot around 12:50 p.m. on a street that lines Savoy Elementary School’s playground. The school was briefly placed on lockdown.

WTU has asked members about outdoor learning, both before and during the pandemic. In April 2017, when Davis asked teachers if they wanted to participate in National Outdoor Classroom Day, only teachers working in schools that could accommodate such learning and who were supported by parents replied.

In recent weeks, teachers only responded to survey questions about outdoor learning by asking more questions: How would it work in the winter months and could it be done equitably?

Davis says no one responded to the question of whether they would feel more safe teaching outside than inside the school, although about 100 teachers said they want to return to in-person learning if DCPS answers their questions.

“I like the idea,” says Davis. “This is something we need to explore further before we move forward with it.”

“Principals think, by and large, that it’s a great idea,” says Richard Jackson, the president of the Council of School Officers, which represents principals and administrators, of outdoor learning. “That conversation is a collaborative conversation and not an individual conversation. It’s a conversation around, ‘What does your outdoor look like? How are we going to handle inclement weather? What resources can come from the central office around facilities and equipment?’”

Jackson says that so far there has been no collaboration between the principals’ unions and DCPS. He learned that the mayor wanted small groups to return to in-person learning this semester from a Washington Post article.

Principals are now responsible for submitting proposals to DCPS explaining what this would look like at their individual schools if they want to return to in-person learning before Nov. 6, Jackson says. “I think they are being somewhat coerced to say yes. And our concern is that if and when something goes wrong … there’ll be a convenient scapegoat for the system.”

A lack of honest communication and collaboration between school unions and officials has hampered creative solutions to reopening schools, according to the presidents of both the teachers’ and principals’ union.

In a statement to City Paper, DCPS Chancellor Dr. Lewis Ferebee says, “DC Public Schools is committed to a safe and successful return to in-person learning for our students and staff. With safety and equitable

access top of mind, we are actively considering options that would allow for students, especially those furthest from opportunity, to return in-person to receive the high-quality instruction and critical supports that prepare them for lifelong success.”

The spokesperson for the chancellor adds that some principals and educators already expressed interest in returning to small group in-person learning before Nov. 6 after DCPS requested proposals, and DCPS is working with the Department of General Services to ensure that the schools’ heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems are suitable for the return.

During a July 30 press conference, Ferebee said DCPS considered outdoor education, but realized it could not provide “the same experience across the District.” Nor does DCPS think a full school day can take place outdoors, Ferebee said. Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn added that the Office of the State Superintendent of Education says schools should strongly consider holding classes outside if they can make it work.

In a statement to City Paper last week, Kihn remained vague about future plans. “Through a lens of equity and access, we are evaluating the feasibility of every possible option, including the logistics associated with the strategic use of outdoor space and other non-classroom spaces in our school buildings,” he says. “We anticipate being able to provide an update to District families soon.”

EmpowerEd hopes DCPS takes advantage of property under the control of the Department of Parks and Recreation to address schools’ unequal access to outdoor spaces. Schools near Oxon Run Park in Ward 8, for example, should be able to take advantage of the green space, the group insists.

“The same thing you do inside, I would put it right outside and make it beautiful and make it interesting,” says Dr. Erika Blackburn, a pre-K teacher at a Ward 2 school who is a part of EmpowerEd. “Use natural materials.”

Blackburn gets excited describing the possibility of having her classroom outdoors, thinking of an easel stand where her students would make words out of magnetic letters or a mud kitchen for them to conjure culinary creations.

She’s already driven around her school’s neighborhood to look for green spaces. If Blackburn could have it her way, schools would transition from distance learning to full in-person learning, with education taking place outside as much as possible and HVAC systems getting updated to facilitate indoor instruction.

“It just seems to me that a hybrid situation could actually be even more dangerous because we’re putting kids into more and more cohorts,” Blackburn says. “They’re going to end up being potentially at day care for two or three days.”

Some epidemiologists share her concerns.

A hybrid plan introduces additional contacts besides the ones that happen in schools and homes if families need child care during remote learning. Students will inevitably be exposed to more people—say, day care staff and other children—and then return to their schools for inperson learning.

Preschool students between the ages of 2 and 4 returned to in-person learning five days a week at Lowell School, a private pre-K through eighth grade school in Ward 4. The plan is to have preschool students outdoors as much as possible. Briya Public Charter School, which has campuses in Northwest and Northeast D.C., also welcomed its parents and pre-K students back for outdoor learning two days a week.

“We have always used the outdoors as a classroom,” says Iris Vargas, the interim assistant director of the pre-primary program at Lowell. “But this year, we are being a little more purposeful.”

“Knowing all the guidelines we were going to follow and that the school was putting in place, I felt comfortable [returning],” says Nuria Rodriguez, a pre-primary teacher at Lowell.

“Nature-based learning and outdoor learning has always been important to us, and we’ve always done it to the [fullest] extent possible and we really believe in it,” says Lisa Luceno, the senior director of early childhood strategy at Briya. “It has so many benefits for young children.”

The ethos of these schools meant they were better positioned to make the transition— they already had some of the equipment they needed to move classes outdoors or their curriculum could be more easily tailored. Lowell, for example, is the kind of school where teachers and assistant teachers view the outdoors as being the third teacher. If a hawk flies by and distracts students from the lesson plan, so be it. They might even incorporate the hawk into the lesson.

“Oftentimes, we think about those memories outdoors, where we went somewhere and saw something. The beach. The sky. The woods,” says Vargas. “I am very excited about this new opportunity. It forces us to think about outdoor learning.”

Lowell is also right down the street from Rock Creek Park, which educators took advantage of during its summer camp by sending students there to do yoga. Not everyone has access to such green space.

According to an analysis from the Center for American Progress, low-income residents in D.C. are more likely to live in an area that is deprived of nature. The families of Lowell School students pay a large sum for education.

Tuition for Lowell ranges between $19,830 for the younger students and $41,330 for the older ones.

Briya Public Charter School is an adult education school that also offers a pre-K program, so parents and their kids can learn together.

They serve a number of immigrant families, some who live in crowded apartment complexes. Being back at school allows families to enjoy green spaces that many have sought out during the pandemic.

“Not all the children have their own yard or garden,” says Luceno. “We need to facilitate that, because we know that the benefits are numerous.”

“I think we’re not taking fresh air for granted anymore,” she adds.

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washingtoncitypaper.com september 25, 2020 7

SPORTS ROLLER SKATING

On the Roll Again

Darrow Montgomery

Roller skating has been ingrained in Black communities for decades. Local skaters want to use the current spike in interest to bring an indoor facility to D.C.

Saletta Coleman

By Kelyn Soong @KelynSoong When Saletta Coleman puts on her roller skates, she’s transported to another reality. No matter the setting, moving around to the rhythm of music with eight wheels underneath her feet is all Coleman needs to feel what she calls “a wonderful high.”

In a time when people need an escape from the harrowing reality caused by a global pandemic, roller skating has provided an outlet. National publications, from the New York Times to Vogue, documented the surge in roller skating participation this summer and the worldwide shortage of roller skates due to the increased demand.

Skaters have become TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube stars, and subsequently inspired others to pick up the activity. Skate shop owners have been fielding orders from beginners looking to buy their own skates, and it can take weeks, if not months, before skaters get their hands on the right pair.

Coleman, 41, lives near Alexandria and is heartened by the spike in the interest in roller skating, but wants people to know one important thing: Roller skating has always been popular in the Black community. And even before the pandemic shut down businesses and large group gatherings, she noticed that the activity, which she dubs the “official sport of quarantine,” had been making a comeback of sorts.

“Pre-pandemic, there was already some buzz about skating, and social media has done some of that, TikTok has done some of that,”

says Coleman, a Howard University graduate.

“But roller skating has existed on the internet for years. For years. There’s been video content of roller skating on the internet, but it was Black people, it was urban. It wasn’t seen as a fashionable thing to do until we got into the Instagram and TikTok periods. Whenever TikTok exploded, that was one of the first things to get cute on the internet.”

In 2018, HBO released the documentary United Skates, which explores the importance of roller skating rinks for African American communities. They served as a launching pad for hip-hop artists and DJs and have provided a safe social space that’s often overlooked by the mainstream. But over the years, rinks nationwide have been shuttered because of rising rent costs and a lack of public investment, including in D.C. No indoor roller skating rink currently exists in the city. Local skaters have to travel to surrounding suburbs like Lanham and Temple Hills in Maryland or Manassas in Virginia to skate. Coleman, an associate producer for United Skates, and other skaters in the D.C. area hope the momentum from the interest in roller skating during the pandemic can change that.

“I’m optimistic about the future,” she says, “because what was underground is now being acknowledged.”

Loud music blares from the speakers and the bass pulsates the walls as Gerald Chase walks into the Temple Hills Skate Palace on a recent Sunday night. It’s 8:40 p.m., and a line of a dozen or so skaters are still waiting to get in. The

8 september 25, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

rink is hosting one of its “Adult Skate” nights for skaters 18 years and older, and the flyer for the rink’s fall schedule advertises the weekly Sunday evening session as “Old School Music like 102.3.”

Chase, 69, and his wife Mary, 75, are celebrities here. The couple met in 1984, when they both skated at the Alexandria Roller Rink, which closed in 1986. Gerald is considered by many, including Coleman, to be an amateur historian and archivist of roller skating in the D.C. area.

On this chilly September evening, barely a few minutes go by before another skater in the lobby greets the two. Mary is responsible for the decorations on the walls, and Chase handles maintenance work for the facility.

“A lot of people here I’ve known since elementary school,” Chase shouts above the music.

“Some weren’t even born yet.”

The dozens of mask-clad skaters take their time mingling with each other and putting on their skates, and the rink remains empty when Chase pulls out a thick binder he carries around whenever he wants to educate someone—reporters, kids, anyone who shows interest—about roller skating. Inside are photos of his old roller skating club, magazine and newspaper clippings of roller skating articles, tributes to late skaters like D.C. legend Howard “Honey Boy” Williams, and lists of facts he’s printed out.

“He has too much information,” Mary says with a laugh.

Chase was born off Benning Road in Northeast D.C. and graduated from Anacostia High School. He started skating at age 9, after he watched some neighbors skating down the sidewalk in old steel skates. One of their siblings had an extra pair of skates, which they let Chase borrow, and he joined them, forming a line and holding onto each other as they rolled down the sidewalk.

“Like a caterpillar,” Chase explains.

He’s been skating ever since. At that time, D.C. had several skating rinks, including the National Roller Skating Rink off Kalorama Road NW in Adams Morgan, which closed in 1992 and is now a Harris Teeter grocery store. Instead of DJs, the rinks used organists.

And as documented in United Skates, many skating rinks across the country were segregated.

“Back in the ’50s, the area skating rinks were predominantly White, and the Blacks could only skate on Saturday,” Chase says. “And you could not wear jeans or tennis shoes … You had to go to these skate rinks like you were going into school or to church. No jeans or tennis shoes were allowed. If you came to the door with it, they wouldn’t let you in. And the Blacks were allowed to skate on Saturdays only. And the White people came on from Sunday to Friday. And then later on in the ’60s, around ’62 or ’63, it started to integrate a little bit.”

Currently, the only large roller skating rink in D.C. is at the Anacostia Park Skating Pavilion, an outdoor venue. Chase recalls that there used to be five indoor roller skating rinks in D.C. alone. They have all since closed or been converted into something else. In addition to the one off Kalorama Road NW, there was the Uline Arena (later renamed the Washington Coliseum) and Riverside Stadium at what is now

the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Chase adds that the Booker-T Theatre on Georgia Avenue and the basement of the Lincoln Theatre on U Street NW also allowed roller skating.

When those rinks disappeared, generations of area residents felt a void.

“It’s the kids that lose out on things, like when recreation centers close, the kids lose out on it,” Chase says. “They lose out on having fun ... If you close down the skating rinks, the recreation centers, the bowling alleys, and movie theaters ... If you close down things of interest to the children, there’s nothing to do. It’s a thing of being bored, then you got the hanging out in the streets. That’s what you don’t want to have.”

Jayla Briscoe grew up skating in Charles County, Maryland. In elementary school and middle school, she’d skate every other weekend or at least once a month with friends. When she got to high school, the activity didn’t seem as cool, so she stopped.

It wasn’t until this past April that the 25-yearold started again.

“I was just kind of tired of sitting in the house doing the same thing like everyone else,” says Briscoe, who lives in Silver Spring. “I was on Instagram, YouTube, and even TikTok, I noticed a lot more Black women skaters were skating, and I got really inspired by that. And I was just like, wow, this would be really cool if I could pick up my skates.”

First, though, Briscoe had to find skates. That proved to be harder than she had anticipated. She messaged roller skating Instagram accounts for any leads, and was told the Derby Star Pro Shop in Frederick, Maryland, might have some. Within a week, Briscoe went to pick up her new skates— the first pair she’s owned—but the wheels that came with her skates were sold out. She ended up ordering temporary outdoor wheels from Adrienne Schreiber, the owner and operator of the Department of Skate online skate shop.

Now Briscoe skates every week, often multiple times. She goes to local parks and tennis courts, and typically skates by herself.

“It’s almost like meditating while you’re just rolling on wheels,” Briscoe says. “It’s so peaceful to me.”

Coleman senses a hunger for roller skating like she hasn’t seen before, from returners like Briscoe and newcomers alike. Last November, Coleman helped organize the Capital Skate Fest at the D.C. Armory. The event came about after Angie Gates, the director of D.C.’s Office of Cable Television, Film, Music and Entertainment saw a screening of United Skates.

Gates questioned why D.C. wasn’t featured, Coleman recalls.

Her response? Because there hasn’t been a skating rink in D.C. in over 20 years.

Coleman says that 5,000 people from all over the East Coast attended the event. Her dream going forward is to have a public-private partnership to create a roller skating rink in D.C. The demand, she believes, is clearly there.

“We have an opportunity now,” Coleman says, “to create a whole new generation of roller skating in the city.”

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washingtoncitypaper.com september 25, 2020 9

Facing precipitous drops in revenue, local restaurant owners rely on inventive ideas and new distribution models to stay in operation during the pandemic.

By Laura Hayes Photos by Darrow Montgomery

Pizza ready and waiting at 2Amys

The COVID-19 pandemic has been an exercise in throwing ideas against the walls of empty dining rooms and seeing what sticks.

Restaurant owners morphed into makeshift grocers when supermarket shelves were sparsely stocked, figured out how to deliver margaritas by the quart, and cheekily seated stuffed animals at tables left vacant to comply with capacity limits on indoor dining. To borrow a phrase from Billy Beane in Moneyball, these businesses must “adapt or die.”

Nearly one in six U.S. restaurants have closed permanently or indefinitely six months into a public health crisis people initially hoped would only last weeks. That’s approximately 100,000 closures, according to the National Restaurant Association. The trade group’s survey-based report, released in mid-September, also found 40 percent of restaurant owners don’t think they’ll be in business in another six months without additional relief from the federal government.

Restaurant owners and workers say their anxiety is at its highest level since March. Fall’s first cold snap hearkens the coming of winter and its challenges. There could be a second spike in cases that throws D.C.’s phased reopening process into reverse. Outdoor spaces, which have emerged as the safest and most desirable places to sit, are expensive to winterize, even with a new

$4 million grant program from the city. Demand for heaters is already wiping out the supply.

Some local operators are capitulating, including Ian and Eric Hilton. On Halloween, they will close seven of their bars and restaurants for the foreseeable future. “With colder weather a few weeks away and no prospects for relief in sight, we think it makes sense to ramp things down and give potentially displaced members of the team time to look at other employment opportunities,” Ian told City Paper on Sept. 15. Those employees won’t find jobs at Capitol Lounge, Rebellion, BBQ Bus Smokehouse, Poca Madre, Taco Bamba on I Street NW, or Matchbox on 14th Street NW, which all closed in September.

While any attempt to innovate amid uncertainty is worthwhile, the time to distinguish between half-baked pivots and fully executed pirouettes is now. Several strategies restaurants and bars have utilized have proven to be more successful than others, especially if success is measured in new and different ways.

That could mean finding a way to sustain operations long enough to see the other side of the pandemic, bringing in enough money to employ as many people as possible, or finding ways to keep staff and customers healthy. The following approaches, which focus on takeout and delivery instead of dine-in business, aim to

10 september 25, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

achieve one or more of these goals. The restaurants that test them provide diners with plenty of fun, unexpected, and interactive meals.

GHOST STORIES

A Shaw Mexican restaurant known for its mezcal cocktails and mole negro tried its hand at hawking burgers and cheesesteaks to bolster sales and couldn’t believe the immediate and sustained results. “We thought we were going to do maybe $5,000 in Ghostburger sales per week,” says Espita managing partner Josh Phillips. “The first week we did $25,000.”

Ghostburger is the name of Espita’s “virtual” or “ghost” restaurant that debuted in August. These kinds of enterprises operate out of and alongside existing licensed eateries and use the same labor and equipment. The offerings are available for takeout or delivery. Some operators use these restaurants to try out new cuisines, while others repackage their current menu under new names.

An increasing number of establishments are experimenting with virtual restaurants because a fresh brand has the potential to attract new customers and drive revenue without significant overhead costs. Launching one requires testing recipes, sourcing new ingredients,

training staff, and marketing a nascent brand.

The elbow grease has paid off for Espita, which only needed two weeks to birth Ghostburger.

Espita had been averaging $40,000 in weekly sales in Phase Two of D.C.’s reopening. Once Ghostburger was part of the equation, that figure climbed to $62,000. In strong months, when there’s not a global pandemic, Espita typically pulls in $61,000 in sales; slower summer months land closer to $48,000. The addition of the ghost restaurant helped Espita exceed its pre-pandemic average weekly sales and allowed the restaurant to hire back five employees.

Ghostburger is also Espita’s cold weather insurance policy. “What happens if we’re just left with takeaway when cases spike in the winter?” Phillips asks. He recalls the tough months early in the pandemic when restaurants were limited to takeout and delivery, and Espita was only bringing in $8,000 per week. “That’s about 12 percent of what we normally do,” he says. “If we go to a takeaway-only scenario in the winter, how are we going to live on that?”

Building a following for Ghostburger before winter was crucial. Its launch coincided with the return of Espita’s star chef Robert Aikens, who had been cooking in New York City at Verōnika and Pastis. Earlier in his career, he set out to

Nantucket Clam Shack’s last day is Sept. 27, but I’m Eddie Cano has already teed up its next virtual restaurant—Jimmy’s Philly Steaks. (Gee hails from Philadelphia.) “It’s another aspect of his culinary repertoire that we know he can deliver on,” Carolyn Papetti says.

CLOSE TO HOME

Ghostburger’s Philly cheesesteak have the best cheeseburger in Philadelphia at The Dandelion and developed a relationship with meat master Pat LaFrieda, experiences he’s utilizing with Ghostburger.

Chef de cuisine Ben Tenner also cooked in Philadelphia, where he estimates he cranked out 20,000 cheesesteaks. Together, Tenner and Aikens are making cheffy casual food. As Ghostburger’s popularity has grown, they’ve been able to source higher quality ingredients.

Soon, they’ll have rolls from Sarcone’s Bakery in South Philadelphia.

Phillips says restaurants should play to their strengths when creating a new virtual brand.

He encourages others to tap their chefs and cooks for ideas. “Everybody cooks what they cook for a living,” he says. “Then they cook what they love on their own. People on your

2Amys

team might have a passion for something they can do very well. Explore that.”

That’s what I’m Eddie Cano in Forest Hills aimed to do with its virtual restaurant, which specializes in two styles of lobster rolls and clam chowder. Owners Carolyn Papetti, Massimo Papetti, and James Gee launched Nantucket Clam Shack in July after seeing their sales drop 60 percent from the previous year. When restaurants were limited to takeout and delivery in the first three months of the pandemic, the Italian restaurant was only down 40 percent.

Gee, the chef, lived on Nantucket, off the coast of Massachusetts, for five seasons, and Carolyn Papetti is from East Hampton, New York. Northeastern seafood is what they know and love, and what some Washingtonians missed out on when they canceled their

vacations because of COVID-19.

“If we didn’t do something, we were going to have to lay off more staff, not to mention deal with possibly closing our restaurant for good,” Carolyn Papetti says. The virtual restaurant boosted the team’s confidence and promised temporary work.

But it wasn’t profitable. I’m Eddie Cano handicapped its earning potential by selecting a ghost concept with pricey ingredients like lobster.

Virtual restaurants often skew more casual than their host restaurants to ease execution, lower food costs, and reach stressed-out diners craving comfort food. The Oval Room, for example, introduced a virtual sandwich shop dubbed On a Roll this month. The fine dining restaurant near the White House typically serves fancier items like bouillabaisse-poached bay scallops.

The rhythm of the downtown lunch rush stopped when law firms, government agencies, hotels, museums, and newsrooms cleared out after the District issued a stay-at-home on March 30. According to a DowntownDC report, 95 percent of office workers had been working remotely for more than four months as of July.

Restaurants like Shouk, which has locations in NoMa and Mount Vernon Triangle, sought out alternative ways to get food back in the bellies of Washingtonians who used to commute downtown and eat out during the day. Utilizing large, third-party delivery apps like DoorDash has drawbacks like a limited delivery radius, commission fees, and a lack of quality control. But in March, Shouk founder Ran Nussbacher came up with a new delivery system that would allow the restaurant to reach new customers without the steep commission fees that delivery services charge.

Nussbacher, who lives in Bethesda, says his neighbors asked if he would consider doing a group delivery of the Israeli fast-casual cuisine they missed, and he obliged. “People were sheltering at home, the shock was big, no one could go out,” he says. “Having access to good food from downtown, delivered to the neighborhood, was a welcome distraction.”

The next day, Shouk posted about “neighborhood drops” on social media to gauge if other parts of the region would be interested in partaking. “Be the person your neighbors think you are,” Nussbacher nudged. “Be the neighborhood hero!” He messaged listservs and Facebook groups, and after a week of grassroots advertising, Shouk formalized the program.

Nearly 20 neighborhoods now rotate on a schedule displayed on the “Hood Drops” tab on Shouk’s website. The restaurant typically completes two or three drops per night, which can include as many as 80 orders. They utilize their own drivers and vehicles and pull up in places

2Amys

washingtoncitypaper.com september 25, 2020 11

like public library parking lots. Customers line up in their cars, and Shouk employees place meals securely in the trunk.

The legwork required to make neighborhood drops work has helped Shouk recover.

Nussbacher says sales have returned to 90 to 100 percent of what they were before the pandemic. “It’s allowed us to go back to our normal levels, which is huge in these times.” The drops account for 35 percent of Shouk’s sales and positioned Nussbacher to bring back staff.

Nussbacher targeted neighborhoods where people might seek out Shouk’s plant-based and certified Kosher menu. “It’s not just about getting great food from downtown, it’s about not having that where they live,” he says. “Think about what you do that’s unique and where people are yearning for that, and go meet that need.”

Lebanese Taverna has the capability to reach farther-flung locations because of resources like the refrigerated trucks they typically use for the catering arm of their 41-year-old family business. Five full-service Lebanese Tavernas, six LebTav fast-casual restaurants, a cafe, and a retail shop are spread across the D.C. region.

Grace Abi-Najm Shea, Lebanese Taverna Group’s senior vice president, reports that sales are currently down 40 to 50 percent companywide. Shea’s comfortable with that percentage for now. Catering, however, took the biggest hit when Washingtonians canceled weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, and other large gatherings due to COVID-19.

The restaurant group’s response was to convert its catering kitchen in Fairfax into a popup LebTav, which allowed them to reach a new audience. Encouraged, they explored neighborhood drops, starting in Ashburn, Virginia. Like Shouk, Lebanese Taverna relied on word-ofmouth to get the program off the ground. “The good thing about being around so long and growing up here is we have a lot of long-term customers everywhere,” Shea says.

Soon, Lebanese Taverna was boxing up meals and bringing them as far as the Delaware beaches, Richmond and Williamsburg in Virginia, and Maryland’s Deep Creek Lake. The drops are posted on the neighborhood deliveries tab on the company’s website. Shea and her relatives do a majority of the drops themselves.

They consider 20 orders for closer locations and 40 orders for farther destinations worthwhile, and zero in on areas that lack Middle Eastern food options. There’s a $50 minimum per order and a $5 delivery fee.

“Without this, catering would not be open,” Shea says. “We’re still only at 10 percent of our full catering business, but 50 percent of that 10 percent is coming from neighborhood deliveries.” The company is seeing tangential benefits too. “There’s just so much satisfaction in doing this. People get a taste of their past or of home or something different,” Shea says. “Talk about an ego boost at a time when you are really worried.

If you’re in the food business, you’re in it because you love it, and you’ll always find a way.”

CHEF FOR A DAY

Some restaurants have helped District residents find the sweet spot between cooking dinner and ordering takeout by selling meal kits that require about 10 minutes of reheating and finishing once they’re picked up or delivered.

Establishing such a service requires careful

Feast box from Nina May

Feast dinner components

planning and new kinds of customer service skills, but the payoff is an interactive experience that may have home cooks feeling like sous chefs at their favorite eateries.

Logan Circle farm-to-table newcomer Nina May was just hitting its stride when the pandemic hit. Sales spiraled down to 10 to 20 percent of what they were previously averaging. Co-owners Colin McClimans and Danilo Simic rallied to start a meal kit service, Feast, on April 1.

The venture lifted sales by 25 to 30 percent and allowed Nina May to rehire 50 percent of its employees. “We wanted to be a neighborhood restaurant. Now is the time to prove that,” McClimans says. He didn’t want to “take the easy way out” and close. Simic says they’re back to 80 percent of pre-pandemic sales, which they believe can sustain the restaurant through winter.

Each meal kit includes a three-course dinner for two, chosen from four specialized menus that change monthly: meat, fish, gluten free, and vegetarian. Breakfast and lunch boxes are also available. McClimans, who is Nina May’s executive chef, includes reheating instructions, plating suggestions, and notes about ingredient sourcing and inspiration. The goal is to provide hospitality outside the four walls of a restaurant.

12 september 25, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

September’s meat menu for two costs $50 and features grilled Maryland peach and arugula salad; Old Bay-spiced beer can chicken with mac and cheese and squash caponata; and chocolate whoopie pies. Customers are expected to toss the salad, reheat the chicken in the oven after brushing it with barbecue sauce, warm the sides, and pipe raspberry pastry cream between the cookies to make sweet sandwiches. All equipment and heating containers are provided. “Ideally, there should be no more than 10 minutes of prep time for any menu, not including cook time,” McClimans says.

While Feast is modeled after companies like Blue Apron, it’s far less labor intensive.

McClimans doesn’t want to expose people to the time suck of chopping ingredients. Nailing the messaging so that diners’ expectations are met is tricky, as is building a new website. Then there’s the matter of boxing up the meals, carefully labeling containers, and getting them out to customers.

Nina May tapped a bartender and salad cook to deliver Feast meals within 25 miles of the restaurant four days a week. There’s a $10 delivery fee and a $60 minimum per order. Tacking on Simic’s bottled cocktails can close the gap.

Republic Cantina had more experience with in-house delivery, positioning the Truxton

Circle Tex-Mex restaurant to quickly roll out Cantina Family Feasts in April. Owner Chris Svetlik co-founded Republic Kolache, and through that “cycled through all the ways you can get products out to customers absent of a brick-and-mortar,” he says. Most applicably, Svetlik’s team delivered kolaches throughout the District on Fridays. Republic Cantina also uses its own drivers and Republic Kolache vans to bring fajita kits for two, priced from $32 to $35, to Washingtonians’ doorsteps.

Home cooks have to heat up a mixture of onions, peppers, and their protein of choice.

Then comes the fun part. Republic Cantina sends par-cooked f lour tortillas that need to be finished off in a skillet before serving.

Customers get a kick out of watching them puff up. “It pulls back the curtain a little bit,” Svetlik says, noting his restaurant doesn’t have an open kitchen. The kit comes with rice, beans, and a set of condiments.

“One thing we got acquainted with through feedback from customers was a broad range of cooking aptitudes that exist,” Svetlik says. At first, they assumed anyone capable of reheating leftovers would get the gist of what the kits require. “The calls we’d get from folks were polite, but they wanted to make sure they were doing it right,” Svetlik says. “It was both endearing and underlined the value that restaurants play for some folks who aren’t home chefs.”

The Cantina Family Feasts, which can be ordered through Tock, were most in demand during the first weeks of the pandemic and accounted for 40 to 60 percent of Republic Cantina’s revenue Thursdays through Saturdays. Orders died down once patios reopened, but Svetlik is banking on another peak in the winter.

Both Nina May and Republic Cantina discovered that themed kits for holidays are the most lucrative. Republic Cantina filled $16,000 worth of meal kit orders for Cinco de Mayo, besting the restaurant’s previous single-day sales record by $6,000. Nina May swam in orders on Mother’s Day. “To find this alternate tactic that was providing, most days, half of our sales was mechanically helpful in that we could pay staff and bills, but it helped psychologically, too,” Svetlik says.

“It illuminated that there’s a way through this, if we think creatively.”

THE TAKE

D.C. restaurants got the green light from the city to welcome back customers when the District entered Phase One of reopening on May 29. Outdoor dining was permitted first, followed by indoor dining at 50 percent capacity when Phase Two began on June 22. But not everyone was ready to flip the switch. Some cited staff and employee safety. Others, particularly those that did not receive a Paycheck Protection Program loan, weren’t in a position to rehire employees.

Sushi Taro, Cane, The Red Hen, 2Amys Neapolitan Pizzeria, Ellē, Frankly...Pizza!, Thompson Italian, Little Serow, Habesha, Fancy Radish, and Federalist Pig are among those who have limited their operations to takeout and, in some cases, delivery.

Establishments that built loyal customer bases before the pandemic are poised to

Shouk’s veggie burger succeed at takeout. Customers are familiar with the menu and might crave their favorite dishes. They’re also emotionally invested in seeing their beloved haunts survive, and may be more forgiving when the to-go experience doesn’t live up to the magic of a night out.

The owners of 2Amys, which has enjoyed a near-religious following since debuting in 2001 near the National Cathedral, are so committed to being a takeout restaurant through 2020 that they used a forklift and pallet jack to place a pizza oven in the dining room. The move entailed installing a flue and erecting a support wall in the basement to prevent the oven from falling through the floor.

The installation of the oven resolved chef and owner Peter Pastan’s chief concern. “There’s no social distancing in kitchens,” he says. “Boxing in seven people standing next to each other in a small space all day long trying to cook? Clearly that’s a bad idea.” Three cooks can work in the prep kitchen downstairs while five can crank

away at orders upstairs in the satellite kitchen.

“It just seemed like the only sensible solution for me to alleviate that stress,” Pastan says.

2Amys is pulling in 60 percent of its average pre-pandemic sales with takeout. They do not offer delivery because of the commission fees third-party delivery apps charge. “We’re not profitable, but we don’t lose a ton of money, which is sustainable for a while,” he says.

“Hopefully the numbers will stay fairly solid.

If I sink $100,000 into the business, it’s not a big deal if we still have a restaurant at the end.

It’s cheaper than opening a new one.”

Pastan acknowledges that 2Amys serves America’s original takeout food. Pizza is an easier sell than a boxed-up tasting menu from a fine dining restaurant. He counsels other restaurants to rethink what they serve. “If you have a kitchen and a staff, you can do whatever you want to do,” he says.

Komi, which typically serves a Greek tasting menu in Dupont Circle, switched to a more

casual, takeout-only concept—Happy Gyro—at the start of the pandemic. Beuchert’s Saloon on Capitol Hill reopened as Fight Club in August with a menu of sandwiches and half smokestuffed hushpuppies.

Like 2Amys, Thompson Italian in Falls Church and Ellē in Mount Pleasant aren’t planning to let diners inside anytime soon. “Our main concern is the safety of our staff and guests,” says Ellē executive chef and partner Brad Deboy. His restaurant is long and narrow, making social distancing nearly impossible.

“We have nothing against others, but our setup is too tight at this point.”

Clearing out the dining room and turning it into a takeout and delivery staging area was a tougher decision for Gabe and Katherine Thompson of Thompson Italian. “We’ve been wringing our hands about it since day one,” Katherine says. “Every day, I wonder if we made a mistake by not trying to open outside and possibly indoors.”

But a long staff meeting in July uncovered that most of the team wasn’t comfortable waiting on customers. “There was a pit in our stomach,” Katherine says. “The last thing we want is for someone who works for us to catch this virus.”

The Italian restaurant presented specialty to-go options including supper trays that feed up to six people, cook-at-home pastas, and holiday menus. Gabe is from Texas and has had some luck swapping in a Tex-Mex menu to provide regulars with variety. Being in a residential neighborhood instead of an abandoned downtown office hub has its perks, according to Katherine.

She also acknowledges that limiting interactions with patrons to takeout and delivery handoffs has another benefit. “We didn’t want to take on being the mask police,” Katherine says. When customers and restaurants clash over COVID-19 guidelines, it can debilitate employees’ mental health. “To show up to find rules and regulations seems antithetical to hospitality.”

washingtoncitypaper.com september 25, 2020 13

ARTS

Poetic Justice A new poetry collection highlights the work of writers — both famous and forgotten — published between 1800 and 1930 in the District.

I’ve included were not well-known writers. But they were people who took their writing seriously. There’s a strange way that who gets to be famous works, and many of the poets whose work we consider important now were not wellknown in their own time.

WCP: What does the process of putting this book together look like? Where do you start? What do you read?

KR: When I moved to D.C. 30-odd years ago, I immediately wanted to know who were the poets who were an important part of the literary community here. I have been compiling poets for a very long time. I didn’t know I was writing a book; I was just doing it for myself.

When I started looking at this as a book, there were quite a lot of poets who I knew right away, even if they were not well-known, that I wanted to include them. I supplemented by doing a lot of research in archives, and that was helped tremendously by how many newspapers are now digitized, so I could search for particular names if I knew them, I could look through the archives of local newspapers that I knew published poetry. One great source for me was abolitionist newspapers. It’s been sort of digging for buried treasure. Often when I started looking at the work of one poet, I could look for the other writers that were part of their community, and that would lead me on to discovering others.

By Emma Sarappo @EmmaSarappo

was this project different? Why focus on this time period?

Kim Roberts wants to talk back to the canon. That’s the point of putting together an anthology of historical poems, she says.

As a local literary historian and a poet herself, she’s been thinking about the city’s literary culture since she first moved here three decades ago. Roberts has already put together one volume of recent poetry about D.C., 2010’s Full Moon on K Street, but a different sort of project awaited her in her newest book. In By Broad Potomac’s Shore: Great Poems from the Early Days of Our Nation’s Capital, which comes out Oct. 6 from the University of Virginia Press, Roberts collects poems from more than a hundred writers published between 1800 and 1930, from the city’s most famous names to its most obscure. As she writes in the preface, “Taken together, the poems create a map of a particularly American landscape, and the capital city reveals something representative, something symbolic, about the identity of the country as a whole.” Roberts spoke with City Paper about the book, D.C. poetry, and the city’s history.

Kim Roberts: It’s very different. I have been really interested in researching the early years of D.C. because I think those stories are less well-known. The anthology is sort of a companion to my guidebook called A Literary Guide to Washington, D.C., and that also stopped around the same period. I stop around 1930 because literature changes completely around that time with the beginnings of modernism. There was less of a division between who read poetry in those earlier years. It wasn’t seen as something only educated people read. Poetry was considered [to be] for everyone, and it was much more a part of people’s daily lives. It was reprinted in newspapers and recited at public events; children would memorize poems in school. Poetry was sort of everywhere. And after modernism, it started becoming less accessible and perceived as something that was for the elite. So there’s something very appealing to me about that earlier period.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Washington City Paper: You’ve already edited one volume of poetry about D.C., but those were contemporary poems. How

WCP: How diverse were most people’s reading—or listening, as it was often recited—habits? Were the poets you’ve included well-known in their own times?

KR: Not necessarily. I wouldn’t know of them at all if they hadn’t [been] published in at least some newspapers and things that have been preserved, but certainly some of the poets who

14 september 25, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

WCP: You mention putting in a lot of work to include poets who aren’t often anthologized—poets of color, working-class poets, women. Was the process of finding those poets different? Are there any that you especially loved?

KR: For me, the whole reason to put together an anthology is to argue with what has already been determined to be canonical. I’m thrilled to include Walt Whitman, I adore Walt Whitman, but everyone knows Walt Whitman.

What I really wanted to do was to highlight poets whose names have been completely forgotten but whose work is, in my opinion, just as good, if not better, than some of the poets who everybody knows. For women poets, workingclass poets, and poets of color, oftentimes their work was either not published well in the first place or got lost in the ensuing years because of political reasons. The real joy in editing this book was to put the better-known poets in conversation with the lesser-known poets.

In the first section of the book that covers the period prior to the Civil War in D.C., it is all White men and Emma Willard. And Emma Willard is a tremendous figure, an early feminist, someone who really advocated for women’s education. I think she’s pretty amazing. In the Civil War section, one of the great surprises is an author named Arthur Bowen. If you know about the racial history of D.C., you know that the very first race riot in D.C. was called the Snow Storm, happened in the 1830s, and it was precipitated by a young enslaved man, Arthur Bowen ... Multiple businesses and homes and schools owned by African Americans were

destroyed. Everything we know about Arthur Bowen is through the records of White people—it’s his mistress’ correspondence, it’s court records … And we know nothing about the rest of his life. But I was able to find a poem written in his own hand, which was amazing to me. It was published in a newspaper at the time, and it is the only thing that we know about him from him. I’m not arguing that it’s great literature; it’s not. But it is a wonderful indication of the power of poetry. He could have written a letter to the editor, but he chose to write a poem, because he felt that that would be the most direct way to engage people’s sympathy, and to show that he was an educated, cultured man. I think T. Thomas Fortune, also African American, he’s known as a newspaper editor, not as a poet, and his poetry is terrific. Anne Lynch Botta, she’s just totally been forgotten and she’s an early woman poet who I think the feminists need to embrace. The same, I think, with Charlotte Forten Grimké. This anthology allowed me to argue their case.

WCP: How do you decide which poems from each writer to include?

KR: If the poets had poems that were specifically set in D.C., then that really drew my interest, because I wanted the book to reflect what is unique about this city. But beyond that, a lot of it is subjective. It’s “What did I fall in love with?”

I was leaning on my many years of experience as an editor of literary journals and as a teacher to look through as much of their work as I could find and to pick what I really think was the best.

WCP: The book is a very broad survey of what was being published and what was being read—you’ve got presidents and first ladies next to these writers whose names are now obscured. But with Albert Pike, you wrote he was very popular at the time; he was also said to be a KKK member, and he was the only Confederate to have an outdoor sculpture in D.C. before it was pulled down in June by protesters. In his poems you’ve included, he’s rejoicing in this false, romanticized Old South vision.

Why was it important to include that?

KR: While as an editor, you want to include mostly poets you love, what I was trying to do was give a sense of historical sweep. He deserved to be included because he was important in his time period, he was popular, he was well-read. In his case, I selected some poems that really give the reader an immediate sense of a political viewpoint. And you’re absolutely right, it is a romanticized, pro-South, Lost Cause literature. Part of the reason why I wanted to include him, and I included more than one poem of his, is the shock value, I guess.

It’s important to remember that that was the political air everyone was breathing at that time period, and that D.C. was a very pro-Southern city. For an anthology like this, it was important to me not just to make certain poems more widely available, but also to start a certain conversation about what the role of poetry was in

ARTS that time period for getting across political messages and messages about American identity.

WCP: Your introduction is a very wideranging look at the early history of D.C. How much context do you think the average reader needs to either enjoy or understand these poems?

KR: I would hope that the poems would stand alone, but I have always believed that knowing something about a poet and the context in which they lived and created their work helps us to read more deeply. Does everyone need to know that history to get something out of the poems? No. But I think the history really does

help. We are all products of our time period and of our context, and I was trying to make certain arguments for how these poets reflect the history of D.C., and in turn how D.C. reflects the history of the country as a whole.

WCP: What is studying and collecting this poetry like as a poet yourself?

KR: It can’t help but change the way I think and I write, that’s for sure. I feel really fortunate. I feel like living with this older material has really enriched the background that I can draw from for my own writing. Because the historic sweep of poetry acts sequentially—we end up standing on the shoulders of our poetic forebears—it’s

incumbent upon writers, if they’re serious about their writing, to be reading the forebears.

this research gives me—the layers of history in the city.

WCP: What makes you want to keep focusing your efforts on the history and literature of D.C.?

WCP: How does it feel to be at the culmination of a project you’ve been working on for three decades?

KR: I have these twin passions of loving literature but also loving urban history, and specifically this urban environment. I’ve lived in D.C. longer than I’ve lived anywhere else in my life.

It’s a fascinating, weird city. It’s equal parts infuriating and awe-inspiring. Doing literary history has allowed me to combine two passions that otherwise might not come together.

I just love the deep sense of place that doing

KR: Oh, my God, yeah. It is amazing, isn’t it? I hope that I’m going to continue to do this work and continue to discover new poets, but it does feel like this is sort of, as you put it, culmination. I’m very excited about this book. I’m very pleased with how it came together. There was a lot of judicious culling that had to happen, but it feels like it’s got a nice heft and shapeliness to it now, in this version. I’m very proud.

IDENTIFY: Maren Hassinger with Charlotte Ickes Wednesday, October 7 | 5:30 p.m. | Via Zoom

Let’s Meet Up...Online!

Explore the Portrait Gallery’s digital programs from podcasts and online exhibitions to story time sessions for kids and art-making workshops for all ages. Check out the “Visit at Home” page at npg.si.edu or follow along @smithsoniannpg on social media.

Join artist Maren Hassinger and Portrait Gallery Curator of Time-Based Media Art Charlotte Ickes for an online screening of Hassinger’s video Birthright, sponsored by the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative. The video unfolds around a central encounter between the artist and her uncle, whom she meets for the first time. Hassinger will teach attendees how to twist newspaper, a meditative ritual she performs throughout the course of the video. This artist discussion anticipates Hassinger’s related performance in May 2021, commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery’s IDENTIFY series dedicated to performance art. *Attendees are encouraged to bring their own newspaper to the screening and conversation.

Free—Registration required through npg.si.edu/events 8th and G St. NW • npg.si.edu • #myNPG Credit: Dranwn to Figures (detail) by Tony Powell, 2019

Credit: Birthright (still) by Maren Hassinger, 2005. Video (color, sound), 12:12 min. Edition of 3 plus 2 artist’s proofs (MH0021.) Courtesy of Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC

washingtoncitypaper.com september 25, 2020 15

ARTS

Local singer-songwriter Art Auré speaks about her uplifting music and its influences.

By Kayla Boone Contributing Writer Soulful rising star and D.C. native Art Auré has a voice and energy that are u nmatched. A si nger-song w r iter who attended the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, she recently released her motivational single “Keep On.” She spoke with City Paper about the message behind the song, and provided a glimpse into her musical influences.

Washington City Paper: Where did your stage name come from?

Art Auré: My stage name is something we took our time with. Art is an acronym for always remain true, and Auré is like an array of light energy [and] we just put it together.

My music is true, genuine, it comes from a good place, and it’s real. My manager David came up with Art and my brother came up with Auré and we just put them together.

WCP: When was the moment that you knew music was your calling?

AA: I knew music was my calling around the age of 6 or 7 years old. My parents are originally from Gary, Indiana, so Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5 have been in our household, playing in the stereos and car and everything. I saw The Jacksons: An American Dream. Once I saw Jason Weaver and all of the other amazing actors, I was like, I have to do that. I started writing songs actually when I was 6, and when I discovered that I can sing, I just kept doing it. That was the thing that made me happy, and when something makes you happy, it’s like, you gotta roll with it.

WCP: What role has D.C.’s musical culture played for you as an artist?

AA: As we know, D.C.’s musical culture is different from anywhere else. You can’t mention D.C. without mentioning go-go music and of course mumbo sauce. Chuck Brown is that name that you hear when you think about D.C. When you think of D.C., it’s not just one thing. As an artist, I felt like I could be myself. I don’t have to just do one type of music because D.C. is so diverse, even with the people. There’s so many different types of people from all over the world that come here. So I feel like that lives inside of me.

I am D.C.

WCP: Who are your biggest musical influences?

AA: Of course anybody from Gary, Indiana.

I was like 8 years old and I had my Walkman on and there was this song by Janet Jackson called “Escapade,” and I literally thought that I was Janet Jackson. We lived on a military base and it was very conservative, but you know, I didn’t care. I was jumping around. I was dancing in the streets, that was my thing, so I’ve always looked up to her. Earth, Wind & Fire, a lot of my music is inspired by them because of all the live instrumentation. All my music is live on my upcoming album.

Sade, Prince. I love Lucky Daye’s music. I love Anderson .Paak. There’s a lot of dope artists. Kendrick Lamar. Those are definitely artists that influence my music. Stevie Wonder, too.

WCP: How did “Keep On” come to be?

AA: Well, “Keep On,” we wrote in October.

It’s really crazy because I have endometriosis and I wrote that with Ronnie Collins right after my surgery. Endometriosis is something that I’ve lived with my entire life and the biggest thing is it causes pain. Sometimes I was just in so much pain I would just want to give up. I came in the studio and he was already playing the guitar riff that you hear in the beginning. And then I heard something inspirational. A lot of people feel like they’re in that place where they want to give up, but you just gotta keep going. I’m getting text messages all the time where people are saying, “This song has changed my life. Thank you for writing it.”

WC P : Your song was chosen as a theme for Black Women for Biden leading up to the election. How do you feel about his choice of running mate Sen. Kamala Harris?

AA: I love it! I love the fact that Joe Biden chose a woman of color to be his running mate. For one, history is being made. You don’t see that. We’ve never seen that in our country, at least. That means that change is coming and we have to keep on. I really feel like people are going to use their common sense and change is inevitable, especially now. How do you not choose somebody that’s for the people?

WCP: Do you have a savior song—a song that you listen to when you’re going through tough times?

16 september 25, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

WCP: What is your creative process like?

AA: It’s always different. Sometimes we start with the lyrics. Sometimes we start with music. It all depends.

WCP: You’ve been a show opener. How do you mentally prepare for a performance knowing that you are setting the tone for the rest of the show?

record label called It’s Art Entertainment, and underneath that I want to have a lot of positive and empowering things. I want to be known and respected within the industry and a successful business woman and artist.

WCP: What advice would you give to someone who is trying to pursue music?

AA: It takes a lot of hard work. You have to believe in yourself and be confident with who you are as an artist. Don’t try to be like anybody else. People don’t want to see the next Michael Jackson or the next Beyoncé, they want to see the next you. That’s what makes you unique. Also, keep positive people around

Art Auré

A A: It comes w it h yea rs of doing it .

You’re always going to have nerves. It’s just like practice, the more you do it, your muscle memory becomes more prevalent in your body and starts to form its tone and shape when you do it for so long.

The nerves are never going to go away. I’m sure you heard people say if you don’t have nerves, it’s not a good thing.

WCP: What is the best advice you’ve been given musically or personally?

AA: There’s an artist by the name of Eric Roberson. I went to one of his shows maybe 10 years ago, and afterward, he took the time out to speak to everybody, and I asked him, “What advice do you have for someone like me trying to get my career started?” He said, “You just gotta do your own thing. Live in your own lane. Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t do it.”

Domo Jenkins

Keep On Keeping On

AA: Absolutely, I’m all about positive music.

One of my favorite songs is a song by Donny Hathaway called “Someday We’ll All Be Free.” It’s talking to the Black community and saying, even though we’re going through this, you gotta keep going. Just the chord progressions and the way he’s singing it resonates.

Earth, Wind & Fire, “Keep Your Head to the Sky,” that’s one of my favorite songs as well.

All positive music, that’s what’s in my head.

WCP: Where do you see your music career going in the next five years?

AA: I see my music helping so many people. I want to start a couple of foundations for endometriosis. I want to open up my own schools.

A school of the arts and for underserved communities as well. I want to help those people out. My manager and I also just started a

you. Keep people around you that want to see you thrive. Keep people around that are honest with you, that will tell you when you mess up and you’re not on your best.

WCP: What can we expect from you next?

AA: I have my new single “Good Times.” It’s up-tempo, so the complete opposite of “Keep On.” Also, we don’t know if we’re going to do an album or a couple of EPs, because there’s just so much music that we’ve been working on over the past couple of years. We are taking our time and making sure that the quality is the best that it can be. But look out for that.

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Become a member. washingtoncitypaper.com september 25, 2020 17

ARTS FILM REVIEW

DIVERSIONS CROSSWORD

Symbolizing

By Brendan Emmett Quigley

Across 1. Groups not social distancing 5. Main ingredient in fougasse 10. Warm up 14. ___ polling 15. HBO show about women skateboarders 16. Indian export 17. *Ted talks, say 20. [God! This is so bor-ING!] 21. Run 22. Get some air 24. Took charge 25. *Buck inventor 32. Key typed with the left pinky 33. Dakota or Lakota, e.g.

34. Work tray label where the first word feels more appropriate 35. IVF supply 37. Polite rejection 39. Long, longing look 40. Some fantasy sports leagues 42. Country whose national language is Swahili 44. It came with the IMB PCjr

ANSWER: SYMBOLIZING

45. *Key song 48. Bread to soak up aloo gobi 49. Towel Day and Pi Day celebrant, likely 50. Working actor’s ID 54. Family vehicle 57. *Let 60. Villain who says “Put money in thy purse�

61. One working on intros 62. Gangsta rapper nĂŠ Tracy Marrow 63. No-win situation 64. Shook, as a defender 65. More limited Down 1. Room in the back 2. Hard workers on a farm 3. 1989 LL Cool J single 4. One prepping for the second wave of the pandemic, e.g.

5. J. Edgar Hoover Building org.

6. Herd immunity spot?

7. “Sailor and Girl� painter Dix 8. Sch. whose football mascot is Paydirt Pete

9. Grease setting 10. ___ water (trying to stay afloat) 11. “Java� horn blower 12. Top 13. Actor Bentley 18. League members 19. Fountain with a papal coat of arms 23. Analgesic’s target 25. Mayhem 26. Bookworm’s spots 27. Sources of inspiration 28. Lining out?

29. Irregular bones 30. Manila’s island

31. Hot stretches in Haiti 32. Ryobi rival 36. Night light 38. QB Fitzpatrick 41. With one’s head in the clouds 43. Snotty playground comeback 46. Totally stoic 47. Supervillain with the sidekicks Fat Bastard and Frau Farbissina 50. Take to the skies 51. Shit in the tank 52. 19-Down’s home 53. Listening station, e.g.

55. King beaters 56. Fishing gear 57. Screened 58. Don’t start?

59. Earth to ___ (Disney+ talk show)

LAST WEEK: TEA PARTY

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18 september 25, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

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It starts out with a pair of London activists on divergent paths. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Sally Alexander (Keira Knightley), a single mother trying to balance her child-raising with her studies. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hoping to work within academia to bring about change for women. On the other side is Jo Robinson (Jessie Buckley), who is more radical, abundant with passion but lacking discipline. Sally writes papers. Jo vandalizes sexist advertisements.

Sally has straight hair and wears glasses. Jessie has wild red curls. Their initial friction, based on this thin characterization, quickly gives way to a partnership as they work together to plan a secret mission: to disrupt the 1970 Miss World pageant and stage a feminist â&#x20AC;&#x153;happeningâ&#x20AC;? on live television.

With nimble direction by Philippa Lowthorpe, there are hints of a heist movie that could have been, sort of an Oceanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 8 with political stakes, but the filmmakers donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t go there. Instead of exploring the dynamic tension between our mismatched heroes, the film jumps around, first going backstage to share the experience of two contestants of color, Jennifer (Gugu

parallel plots converge, of course, when the protest happens and a surprise winner is crowned, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s never clear how weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re supposed to feel about the storylines. A better film could use this ambiguity to its benefit, highlighting the emotional casualties that often come with political victories. But Misbehaviour pitches itself, through its brisk pacing, plucky musical score, and underdeveloped characters, as a feel-good polemic, and it lacks the tools to make anything out of its complexities. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a closed system, within which layered thoughts have no place.

Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not to say itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s completely without virtue. In this time of deepening despair, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pleasant to watch activists achieve a victory of any kind, even as the film stretches to frame its story as some kind of origin story of second-wave feminism in its final moments. The truth of how change occurs is, of course, far more complicated, but the makers of Misbehaviour are more invested in creating a film youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll like than one that reflects reality. As such, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a difficult movie to hate, but a hard one to love. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Noah Gittell Misbehaviour is available Friday on VOD.

ARTS BOOK REVIEW

Coming Clean Clutter: An Untidy History

By Jennifer Howard Belt Publishing, 176 pages How and why stuff accumulates is the subject of Jennifer Howard’s new book Clutter: An Untidy History. It begins with her cleaning out her mother’s home—an experience many people of a certain age are familiar with. The book then tackles hoarding disorder, the Victorian roots of consumerism, the history of mail-order catalogues leading to today’s Amazon Prime, how controlling clutter has historically been “women’s work,” and the problem of waste and how it damages the environment. Clutter thoroughly unpacks the topic.

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful,” wrote English novelist and socialist William Morris. Howard quotes him in the context of facing her mother’s house full of mess, writing: “This culture creates a craving for things we don’t really need, often to distract ourselves from what’s really missing—love, connection, meaningful work, a sense of something beyond self, a care for the natural world that goes beyond exploiting it to make more stuff to buy and sell.”

Then she sums up consumer capitalism: Our possessions define us; the purpose of life is to accumulate, and those who don’t or can’t are failures.

Howard outlines the implications of wild, runaway consumerism for the environment.

When we’re done with our purchases, she observes, all this stuff has to go somewhere, so a globe packed with trash has become a very real possibility. She mentions the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—the floating continent of plastic waste in the Pacific Ocean—and how China has closed its doors to further recycling the staggering tonnage of U.S. plastic waste. The book makes it hard to avoid concluding that this problem urgently demands government action.

Plundering the world’s resources, destroying ecosystems, and causing climate change to produce superfluous junk that then winds up fouling the environment as trash: That’s

our nightmare system. While Howard argues for individuals curbing consumption and thus reducing their carbon footprint, she indicates systemic solutions are needed.

Clutter recounts the infamous hoarder story of Homer and Langley Collyer, two brothers in Manhattan, whose early 20th-century home literally became a deathtrap. The book also informs us of the reality TV show Hoarders and of various cities’ hoarding task forces, which often work with local fire departments to identify “heavy contents,” meaning blocked exits and impassable rooms. “From a first responder’s point of view, the time to help someone get heavy contents under control is before an emergency strikes,” Howard writes.

Most of us, however, do not suffer from fullblown hoarding syndrome. We just have lots of stuff. “To declutter does not always mean to discard; it can be a way to reclaim an object’s original purpose,” Howard observes. She quotes all the relevant adages: Live simply, that others may simply live; waste not, want not; a place for everything and everything in its place.

“Yesterday’s thriftiness has become today’s sustainability,” Howard argues.

This became much clearer with the COVID19 lockdown. People stopped shopping, driving, and flying—indeed, global carbon emissions dropped. Emissions must fall every year, if we want to avoid catastrophic climate change. But there are far fewer statistics on how people not shopping affected the production of consumer goods. It likely declined, with consequent environmental benefits.

The problem is that capitalism is predicated on endless growth, which, as author and environmentalist Edward Abbey said, is also the philosophy of the cancer cell. Buying lots of needless stuff speeds up the cancer. When billions of people do it, the cancer metastasizes.

Clutter is a call to rein it all in. It successfully personifies the argument. In one instance, the book quotes cartoonist Roz Chast, cleaning out the parental abode: “I was sick of the ransacking, the picking over and deciding, the dust and the not particularly interesting trips down memory lane.” Buy less, buy only what’s useful, and, Howard urges, spare your offspring the chore of cleaning up after you. —Eve Ottenberg

DOEE.DC.GOV/TRASHFREEDC

washingtoncitypaper.com september 25, 2020 19

DURING COVID-19, YOU’VE BEEN CARING FOR YOUR HOUSEHOLD IN MANY DIFFERENT WAYS.

NOW, IT’S TIME TO BE

HURRICANE

Her Story: A Century of Women Writers

READY!

On view through Jan. 18, 2021

Discover some of the most acclaimed women writers featured in the Portrait Gallery’s collection.

This exhibition is presented as part of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative, Because of Her Story.

The museum is now open Wed.–Sun., 11:30 a.m.–7:00 p.m. Please visit npg.si.edu for visitor guidelines.

Credit: Lorraine Hansberry (detail) by David Attie, gelatin silver print, 1959. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. © David Attie

20 september 25, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

BE HURRICANE READY! READY.DC.GOV

CITY LIGHTS City Lights

Women, Race, Representation The Phillips Collection is hosting an online panel on women, race, and representation to commemorate 100 years since the adoption of the 19th Amendment won White women the right to vote. The conversation, titled “Artists of Conscience,” will celebrate women who both fight for social justice issues and recognize the intersections of race and gender in the ongoing struggle for equality and representation in the arts, education, and philanthropy. The panelists include University of Maryland scholar Sharon Fries-Britt and artists Jae Ko, Jeanne Silverthorne, Renée Stout, and Jennifer Wen Ma. The museum is also unveiling a digital exhibition to mark the historic milestone, which will feature the artists’ works. But that’s not the only thing these women have in common—they have all earned the “Anonymous Was a Woman Award,” a grant established in 1996 to confront sexism in the arts. It wasn’t until 2018, 22 years later, when the anonymous donor was revealed to be Susan Unterberg, a fellow artist and the evening’s final panelist. The women all work in vastly different mediums, but their ability to create “Escape Plans” from collages or “Dandelion Clocks” out of silicone rubber prove that there are infinite canvases for dedicated, creative women. The panel will be held online at 5:30 p.m. on Sept. 24. Registration is available at phillipscollection.org. Free.

—Emma Francois

City Lights

Misty Copeland discusses Bunheads

Most know Misty Copeland as the first Black ballerina to be promoted to principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre in its 75-year history. But she’s also an accomplished author who’s published a memoir and now two children’s books. In 2014, she published her children’s literature debut, Firebird, about a young girl struggling to embody the titular character of Stravinsky’s eponymous ballet. This year, she’s following it up with Bunheads, a picture book based on Copeland’s own experiences discovering the art form at age 13. In the book, a young Misty discovers dance through Arthur Saint-Léon and Léo Delibes’ Coppélia and vies for the part of Swanilda, the ballet’s heroine. On Sept. 29, she’ll discuss the book at a MahoganyBooks virtual talk with its co-owner and co-founder Ramunda Young. The talk begins at 7 p.m. on Sept.

29. Registration is available at crowdcast.io. Free.

—Kaila Philo

basics of DJing actually can be taught. This introductory virtual class will cover the core techniques, principles, and setups to guide your exploration of the vast world behind the decks. The class is hosted by Rhizome DC, the nonprofit community arts space in Takoma, and will be led by Natalia Maurer from Haus of Jung. As a self-taught DJ, Maurer is familiar with the obstacles many beginners face, which include establishing budgets, seamlessly transitioning between songs, and finding a place within the male-dominated industry. In addition to debunking common myths, Maurer (who is also an artist and leatherworker) will devote time to helping attendees develop their own personal styles. So if you’ve been keeping your perfect DJ name hidden in your back pocket “just in case,” now is the time to bring it out and start the party. The lesson will begin at 6 p.m. on Sept. 27.

Registration is available at rhizomedc.org. $25. —Emma Francois

City Lights

Overture: 200222020

City Lights

Mending Club

School is back in session and the stage is alive once more—at least virtually. But for the newest cohort of actors and actresses at American University, this semblance of normalcy comes at a time of ultimate chaos. These incoming theater students are not only adjusting to college life amid a pandemic, but are also learning to navigate the world as adults. What better way to process and reflect than through performance? Enter Overture: 200222020. This ensemble-driven show from American University seeks to do just that. As the academic year—and their college journeys—kicked off, a group of “diverse” and “dynamic” incoming students wrote Overture: 200222020 to share what it is like to come of age in 2020. They have prepared songs, poems, monologues, and movement pieces about their own experiences.

Aaron Posner, an associate performing arts professor at AU and the former artistic director at the Arden Theatre and Two River Theatre, says the show is truly a mosaic. Some students will share their own stories; others will share stories from new friends. The end result will weave together coming-of-age narratives perfect for the digital world. Whether you are struggling to understand Generation Z or you simply want to enjoy an evening of performance, Overture: 200222020 promises a blend of entertainment and exploration. The show begins at 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 25.

Registration is available on Facebook. $5.

—Sarah Smith

City Lights

Intro to DJing There’s an art to DJing. It requires much more knowledge, skill, tech, and subtlety than the average high school sweetheart’s mixtape or fraternity’s party playlist. DJs read rooms, create vibes, and control moods. But with great power comes great responsibility: There are choices to be made. DJs must set beats to determine how fast people dance, when they go low, and when they raise their arms up high. And like so many other arts, the

Are the sweatpants you’ve had on since March wearing thin?

With COVID-19 restrictions making it hard to get to your favorite clothing store for a replacement, it may be worth learning a new skill: mending. The DC Public Library has a virtual mending club for both experienced menders and beginners, perfect for when you need a quick stitch and there for you when you want to connect with fellow sewing fans. The plus of joining this intimate group is you get the insight of two expert menders and feedback from the entire collective. Participants are invited to bring their questions on how to fix common issues via sewing and to show off their sewing projects. You may get some good ideas on how to keep yourself occupied as we brave the next several months of fall and winter quarantine. The class begins at 5 p.m. on Sept. 30.

Registration is available at dclibrary.org. Free. —Chelsea Cirruzzo

washingtoncitypaper.com september 25, 2020 21

DIVERSIONS SAVAGE LOVE Married guy here. I’m 33, the wife is 31. Our fifth anniversary is next month but we’ve been together for almost eight years. We’ve recently both come out to each other as bi. She tried to tell me a long time ago whereas I came to the realization only recently. We’re both interested in new sexual encounters and this weekend we met up with a male escort. It was my first sexual experience with a man and the first sexual encounter between my wife and another man in eight years … and we found it lacking. It was too short and too impersonal. Is this how it usually goes with escorts? Should we have been more upfront with our interests ahead of time? We don’t want to keep spending the money if we’re not getting the experience we want. We need to stay fairly discreet for most of these encounters due to our careers. Appreciate any input.

P.S.A shoutout to my amazing wife for going from learning I’m bi to fucking another dude with me three months later!

—Basking In Confusion Over Underwhelming, Pitifully Lackluster Experience

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

e Visit thper City Paor more te f ve. i s b e w age Lo Sav washingtoncitypaper.com/ columns

Some sex workers love their jobs, some don’t.

Some sex workers are good at their jobs, some aren’t. Sometimes a sex worker doesn’t click with a particular client for some ephemeral, hard-todefine reason. Sometimes a client gives off a bad vibe—or a bad odor—and the sex worker bails or hurries things along not because they’re a shitty sex worker, BICOUPLE, but because their client is shitty or smells shitty.

But here’s the thing, BICOUPLE: No sex worker can read minds. You tell me you’re wondering if you should’ve been “more upfront with [your] interests ahead of time.” If you left something important out when you made the booking, well, that could’ve been the problem. No sex worker likes having things sprung on them.

A sex worker who doesn’t do kink is going to feel very uncomfortable if there’s a bunch of bondage gear laid out when they arrive; even a sex worker who does kink is going to feel uncomfortable if kink wasn’t discussed in advance.

Similarly, BICOUPLE, if you didn’t explain to your sex worker that there were two of you, your sex worker might’ve felt uncomfortable when they arrived.

If you weren’t clear about your wants and your sex worker didn’t ask or you couldn’t articulate them after he asked, you put your sex worker in the position of having to guess. And your sex worker may have guessed wrong—some clients prefer sex that’s athletic, impersonal, or aggressive. And if your sex worker had a bad experience with a husband who got upset when his wife seemed a little too into him, he may have erred on the side of maintaining some emotional distance, even as you got physically close.

If what you wanted—if what you were most interested in—was a more intimate and connected experience, then you weren’t just expecting sexual labor from the sex worker you hired, BICOUPLE, but his emotional labor too.

While affection and intimacy can certainly be faked, we don’t typically expect a strong emotional connection when we’re hooking up with a stranger. Being sexually intimate can build that connection, BICOUPLE, but it can take time and a few meetings to get there. To avoid winding up in bed with another sex worker you

22 september 25, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

don’t click with, I would advise you to take the time—and spend the money—to make a real connection. By which I mean: Go on a date.

Find a sex worker you’re interested in and make a date—for dinner. Pay them for their time, pay for their meal, and if you click, BICOUPLE, if you feel like you could connect, book them for a sex date.

—Dan Savage Straight male here, divorced four years ago, just entering my 50s. I recently expanded my dating app parameters to see everyone in my area. I wanted to check out the competition and possibly give myself a little ego boost. I have a gay male friend who is in his 40s. Mr. 40s has a boyfriend of two years who is in his 20s. They are great together—they vacation together, they quarantined together, Mr. 20s and Mr. 40s worked on redecorating a home together, etc.

The problem is I spotted Mr. 40s on several dating

“If what you wanted—if what you were most interested in—was a more intimate and connected experience, then you weren’t just expecting sexual labor from the sex worker you hired... but his emotional labor too. ” apps. It would have been perfectly acceptable for him to say, “none of your business,” when I asked him why. Instead he told me they were old profiles, implying they pre-dated Mr. 20s. He lists pets on his profiles that he adopted a few months ago. I have a sore spot about this behavior because my ex-wife started “auditioning” my replacement before we filed divorce papers. I really don’t like being lied to. What do I do? Confront Mr. 40s? Mind my own business and hope Mr. 40s doesn’t crush Mr. 20s by cheating? Help! —Fumbled Into Fraught Terrain Involving Expanded Search Maybe Mr. 40s and Mr. 20s have an open relationship. Maybe they have a closed relationship, but both regard flirting on dating apps as harmless. Maybe Mr. 40s was charged with finding a very special guest star for a threesome.

Or maybe Mr. 40s has profiles on dating apps for the exact same reason you expanded the parameters on your profiles, FIFTIES: for the ego boost.

If it was any of the above—if there was an innocent explanation—why did Mr. 40s go with, “Those were old profiles,” instead of, “We sometimes have threesomes?” Well, in my experience, FIFTIES, some straight people have a hard time wrapping their heads around the kind of non-monogamy practiced by most gay male couples. Hell, some closed-minded gay people have a hard time with it. I can imagine a scenario where Mr. 40s was honest with people in the past and got a bad reaction and consequently no longer feels safe—much less obligated—to share the details of his sex life with straight or gay friends.

So he gave you the answer a lot of straight people and some gay people prefer to hear when they ask pointed questions of partnered friends they assume to be monogamous: “Of course I’m not sleeping around! Those were old profiles! My monogamous boyfriend would never want me to shove my monogamous dick down his throat while some other dude non-monogamously rearranges his guts! Heavens! We’re far too busy redecorating our lovely home to arrange threesomes! Which we’re totally not interested in having!”

Look, FIFTIES, you put a question to Mr. 40s that he wasn’t obligated to answer at all, much less answer truthfully. So what do you do now? What you should’ve done when you first stumbled over Mr. 40s’ dating profiles: You do nothing. You drop it. The issue you shouldn’t have brought up in the first place? You don’t bring it up again. Even if Mr. 40s is auditioning replacements for Mr. 20s—even if he lied to you for a selfish, self-serving reason—it’s still none of your business.

—DS My boyfriend and I first heard the terms “sexual monogamy” and “social monogamy” on your podcast. They describe us: not sexually monogamous, but we present that way socially and most people in our lives assume we are. Including my mother. We’re both from very Republican families that struggled to accept us. My attitude is that if my brothers don’t have to tell our parents about their kinks, I don’t have to tell them about my threesomes. (Both of my older brothers have confided in me about their kinks, which I wish they hadn’t.) But it got back to me via my sister that my Trump-worshipping, Obamadespising mother only accepts me and my boyfriend because we are “good” gays. Good because we’re monogamous, like good straight people, and not promiscuous, like bad gay people. Now I feel like I should say something. But what?

—They Really Underestimate My Proclivities “Good people can be ‘promiscuous,’ Mom, and awful people can be monogamous. Take Donald Trump. That asshole has been married three times and cheated on every one of his wives.

Barack Obama, whom you despise, has been married once and never been caught cheating.

Which means either Obama doesn’t cheat or, like everything else he’s ever done, from being someone’s husband to being our president, he’s better at it than Donald Trump.”

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

CLASSIFIEDS Legal SUPERIOR COURT OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PROBATE DIVISION 2020 ADM 000191 Name of Decedent, Sandylee Maccoby aka Sandy .

Name and Address of Attorney Abigail Scott, Esq Regan Associates, Chtd, 1003 K Street, NW, Third Floor, Washington, DC 20001. Notice of Appointment, Notice to Creditors and Notice to Unknown Heirs, Mervat Mahgoub, whose address is 1906 Jackson Street, NE, Washington, DC 20018, was appointed Personal Representative of the estate of Alaaeldin Abdelmegid Saleh who died on December 28, 2019, without a Will and will serve without Court Supervision. All unknown heirs and heirs whose whereabouts are unknown shall enter their appearance in this proceeding. Objections to such appointment shall be filed with the Register of Wills, D.C., 515 5th Street, N.W., Building A, 3rd Floor, Washington, D.C. 20001, on or before 10/9/2020. Claims against the decedent shall be presented to the undersigned with a copy to the Register of Wills or to the Register of Wills with a copy to the undersigned, on or before 10/9/2020, or be forever barred. Persons believed to be heirs or legatees of the decedent who do not receive a copy of this notice by mail within 25 days of its publication shall so inform the Register of Wills, including name, address and relationship.

Date of first publication: 4/9/2020 Name of Newspaper and/or periodical: Washington City Paper/ Daily Washington Law Reporter. Name of Personal Representative: Mervat Mahgoub TRUE TEST copy Nicole Stevens Acting Register of Wills Pub Dates: April 9, 16, 23.

THE DC SCHOLARS PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL BOARD OF TRUSTEES’ next meeting will be on 09/23/2020 from 5:00 – 6:30 pm via Conference Call. To participate, call (301) 7158592, 2447541912#, 140710#. This meeting is open to the public.

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FRIENDS, MILITARY PERSONNEL, VETERANS, AND BOY/GIRL SCOUTS: It's now fall in the D. C. Metropolitan area. If enough readers of the City Paper vote democratic in this year's election we will somehow be able to get over the last four year's administration and we can look forward to a radically improving socio/economic recovery.

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For information call Kelly, (703) 751-3786 HELLO EVERYONE: PLEASE JOIN US. OUR COMMUNITY GROUP SW STRONG! is virtually hosting “Weather the Storm: the SW DC Disaster Preparedness & Resiliency Building Festival” to highlight Emergency Preparedness and Community Resilience on September 24th 12- 4pm and 25TH, 9-12 pm Before the Covid-19 pandemic changed all of our lives, we planned to hold

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