Washington City Paper (October 23, 2015)

CITYPAPER Washington

poliTics: ThE End oF bowsEr’s honEymoon 7

Food: GET rid oF TippinG? 23

1099 Percent Free Volume 35, no. 43 WashingtonCityPaPer.Com oCtober 23–29, 2015

The

Stories of D.C.’s independent contractors14

2 OCTOBER 23, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

INSIDE

AMERICAN FINE

14 the 1099 percent Uber drivers, construction workers, and exotic dancers—who’s really an independent contractor? photographs by darrow montgomery

4 chatter District Line

7 9

10 11 12 13 21

Loose Lips: The mayor’s honeymoon is over District Line: D.C. tries to lowball a whistleblower City Desk: How angry to get over recent GOP comments about D.C. Gear Prudence Unobstructed View Savage Love Buy D.C.

D.c. FeeD

23 Young & Hungry: A brewpub experiments with abolishing tips 25 Grazer: Coming soon: Lots of diners 25 Underserved: Buffalo & Bergen’s Boozy Ice Cream Sodas

arts

27 The Sundance Kid: How the Middleburg Film Festival is trying to be the Sundance of D.C. 29 Arts Desk: The cassette revival is alive and well among local labels 30 Theater: Klimek on The Magic Tree and Lovecraft: Nightmare Suite 31 Curtain Calls: Ritzel on Salomé

CRAFT SHOW WASHINGTON DC ARMORy

NATIONAL MUSEU M of WOMEN in the ARTS

OCT. 23 • 24 • 25

This Weekend Don’t Miss It!

32 Short Subjects: Gittell on Truth and Olszewski on Tab Hunter Confidential 34 Sketches: Goukassian on “CO-EXIST”

195 Jury Selected Artists & Designers

city List

37 City Lights: Ian Svenonius will read from his latest essay collection on Tuesday 37 Music 42 Theater 44 Film

Ceramics Decorative Fiber Wearable Fiber Painting Sculpture Mixed Media Glass Furniture Jewelry Leather Metal Wood

46 cLassiFieDs Diversions

47 Crossword

on the cover

Design by Jandos Rothstein

“

TO B E N E F I T THE

First Look Friday 23: 2-8pm | $22 sat & sun Hours Saturday 24th: 10am-6pm Sunday 25th: 10am-5pm admission Saturday & Sunday: • adult $14 • Senior $13 • Student $8 • Weekend Pass $16 • Children under 12 Free OFF • Cash at the CouPon door only on our

$2

wEbsitE

dC armory 2001 E Capitol Street SE Washington, DC • Parking at sitE • own mEtro station

We’re not going to pluck anybody from the palm doing $500 tables. —page23

”

Preview Show Info

AmericanFineCraftShowDC.com washingtoncitypaper.com OCTOBER 23, 2015 3

CHATTER Mall: Rats!

In which readers stake out some turf

DaRRow MontgoMeRy

ReadeRs Responded with mixed mes-

sages to last week’s close look at the Landmark Festival’s financial contribution to the Trust for the National Mall (“National Maul,” Oct. 16). RMahoney waded in to defend the fest and stand firmly on the side of green, green lawns: “First off, this festival was not even held on the new turf areas of the mall,where the other damaging festivals were previously held. Also, In addition to the large amount of funds raised for the upkeep of the mall, this was a great event that a ton of people attended and made the city a more attractive place to live. People love outdoor festivals and this definitely added to the diversity and quality of events in DC. ... The protection of the mall as an asset that is not too be destroyed through a tragedy of the commons type scenario is of high importance. The nations capital jewel should not be a hardened dirt patch that is beyond being able to be maintained.”

OK, you lost us at “diversity,” but wait! Matt Jones was skeptical: “$570,000 may sound like a lot, but how much of that will actually make it to park repairs rather than paying for the Trust’s Reagan building offices. (The mall’s headquarters are in trailers that constantly flood) And who is paying for the restoration of the concert venue now that it’s over. The problem here is like every other problem in this town -- one set of rules for some, another set for the privileged few. Saying no to them comes at a price.” Thanks a lot, now we’re all vaguely afraid of the toughs at the Trust.

A Roof of One’s Own. Reader TheDistrict weighed in in favor of dignified housing for D.C.’s homeless and formerly homeless populations, which Amanda Kolson Hurley covered in her inaugural Concrete Details column (“A Very, Very, Very Fine House,” Oct. 16): “Condos for the homeless sure beats tax breaks for billionaires. Surely beats the trillions we dump into defense. Surely beats the fraud of taxes that people with money commit every day.

I pay more taxes as a percentage than people making 5x as much as me. Let the wealthy pay for stadiums to benefit the wealthy and take my tax dollars to help the homeless.”

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

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4 OCTOBER 23, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

after-hours sneak peek

October 23 from 5:30–8:30 pm

Sōtatsu

making waves

Once-in-a-lifetime display of Japanese masterpieces Sōtatsu: Making Waves is co-organized by the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Japan Foundation. The exhibition is supported by All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd. Special thanks to Tokyo University of the Arts. Additional generous support is provided by the Anne van Biema Endowment Fund.

Through January 31, 2016 asia.si.edu/sotatsu #sotatsu

washingtoncitypaper.com OCTOBER 23, 2015 5

The Pepco Holdings-Exelon Merger: Now, It Works for Everyone.

Dear Pepco customers, After working to learn what is important to the District, we’re pleased to report that we’ve reached a settlement with the District government and others on our merger. We listened to District leaders, residents and the community to find a path forward that is more focused on the District’s priorities.

The settlement has more than 120 commitments that help ensure the merger benefits everyone in the District.

The commitments include more than doubling customer benefits to over $72 million, which is expected to be used for: $25.6 million to offset distribution rate increases for residential customers through March 2019. $14 million in direct bill credits for residential customers. $16.15 million for low-income energy assistance. $3.5 million for renewable energy and $3.5 million for energy efficiency programs. $10.05 million to support the District’s Green Building Fund.

The settlement also includes: New commitments for fewer and shorter outages and significant financial penalties if Pepco fails to meet them.

Up to 10 megawatts of new solar generation and making it easier and faster for customers to install solar panels.

More jobs located in the District as a result of the merger and $5.2 million for workforce development. $19 million in guaranteed charitable contributions over 10 years to nonprofits that serve District residents.

The Pepco Holdings-Exelon merger will bring significant benefits to the District, and we hope you will agree that the merger now works for everyone.

Donna Cooper

Region President, Pepco

Melissa Sherrod

Vice President of Corporate Affairs, Exelon

Bringing significant benefits to the District.

For more information or to voice your support visit PHITomorrow.com

Paid for by Exelon Corporation.

6 OCTOBER 23, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

DISTRICTLINE

$60 million for the Advisory Board? washingtoncitypaper.com/go/advisory

Loose Lips

Swallow the Leader

The honeymoon may be over as opposition to Bowser and her agenda grows.

Kenyan McDuffie opposes parts of Bowser’s crime bill.

This toddler had some tough opinions on Muriel Bowser. Standing outside the Congress Heights Metro station, the baby carried a sign saying “#IDFWU, Muriel Bowser.” For the hashtagilliterate, that’s “I don’t ___ with you,” with the “F” being a word LL hopes a baby doesn’t know.

That child—or at least the sign-making parent— represents a problem for the mayor, and they marched with roughly a hundred other problems for Bowser’s young administration Tuesday night in Congress Heights to oppose Bowser’s new crime bill.

Unlike previous Black Lives Matter-centered marches in the District, Bowser and her crime bill— with its warrantless search provisions—were at the center of this protest. As the march headed towards the 7th District police headquarters on Alabama Avenue SE, protesters carried signs that declared Bowser “know[s] better” and, cribbing a line from Nicki Minaj’s feud with Miley Cyrus, asked “Muriel Bowser, what’s good?”

After months of glowing national TV interviews, stadium announcements, and electoral wins, Bowser is hitting a rough patch. And she isn’t just getting heat from the streets. Instead, Tuesday night’s protest comes as part of a wave of opposition to Bowser from both outside the Wilson Building and inside it.

Ward 7 resident and protester Travis Ballie tells LL he started out as a fan of Bowser’s

to Council seats in special elections earlier this year, is having so much trouble pushing through her public safety bill after a summer of homicides. But McDuffie and the protesters aren’t the only ones giving the mayor a hard time lately.

Instead, much of the flak the mayor has taken lately is a result of FreshPAC, the political action committee associated with her “Green Team” coterie of political operatives and well-heeled donors.

The PAC has managed to raise more than $300,000 in six months. Led by Bowser associates like treasurer Ben Soto, lawyer Thorn Pozen, and Chico Horton, a pal of former Mayor Adrian Fenty, it’s meant to support Bowser’s agenda, which will likely translate next year into backing Council candidates who will go along with the mayor.

FreshPAC has an advantage that regular candidate committees don’t. As long as it doesn’t support candidates this year (and there aren’t any to support until next year’s primary), the PAC can take unlimited contributions from individuals and corporations.

In a ward race, the maximum contribution to a candidate is $500. One FreshPAC donor, on the other hand, gave $20,000 in a single contribution. FreshPAC offers Bowser the opportunity to put compliant councilmembers on the dais and threaten incumbents, bolstered by even more than the usual fundraising advantages that come with being mayor.

That doesn’t sit well with the kind of counDarrow Montgomery

By Will Sommer

administration. On Tuesday night, though, he carried a sign declaring Bowser’s bill—referring to it by its official number in the D.C. Council’s legislative system—was “that -ish I don’t like.”

Another sign listed Bowser’s big campaign donors, like developers Blue Skye Construction and Chris Donatelli. “How can Bowser fight for the people,” the sign asked, “if she is paid by big business?”

In other words: This is getting personal.

Ballie and his fellow protesters have an unlikely ally on the D.C. Council dais. Ward 5 Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie— who has managed to be one of the Council’s

least predictable members when it comes to Bowser’s agenda—opposes parts of Bowser’s bill. The most controversial part of the legislation would let police conduct warrantless searches of violent offenders on probation or parole.

That makes McDuffie the surprising ideological ally of Eugene Puryear, the socialist and former at-large candidate who crashed Bowser’s announcement of the crime plan in August. Thanks to McDuffie’s opposition, the warrantless searches will likely die in the Council.

It’s a little stunning to LL that Bowser, who helped elect two of her closest associates

washingtoncitypaper.com OCTOBER 23, 2015 7

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cilmembers that Bowser could choose to target when they’re up for re-election, like D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson. AtLarge Councilmember David Grosso, whose upcoming 2016 campaign offers an intriguing target for a Green Team takeover, co-introduced a bill Tuesday that would stop FreshPAC from taking unlimited contributions in non-election years.

Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh, who along with Grosso has become one of Bowser’s most persistent Council opponents, co-introduced the bill. From the dais, Cheh framed FreshPAC as only the latest in a series of alleged Bowser misdeeds, from land deals advantageous to developers to the administration’s settlement over the Pepco and Exelon utilities merger. An exercised Cheh, who previously compared the Pepco deal to trading Manhattan for beads, asked whether the District was becoming Tammany Hall.

“I think it’s about time now that we should be asking, ‘What’s going on in the District of Columbia?’” Cheh said.

Bowser spokesman Michael Czin says he isn’t concerned about the mayor’s recent problems.

“It’s safe to say that folks have a thick skin, and we remain focused,” Czin says.

Indeed, Grosso and Cheh have good reason to oppose more money flowing to Bowser-backed candidates. What’s most surprising for LL, though, is how the Washington Post editorial board—normally the Green Team’s most loyal scribes—has turned on the mayor over FreshPAC. In theory, the Post’s opinion set should be thrilled that Bowser will have more money to install her school reform-minded candidates.

They’ve been on board with the Green Team since Fenty, and they backed her picks in the special elections. But on Sunday, the Post urged Bowser to disband FreshPAC. The PAC, the Post moaned, “undermines” Bowser’s promise to give the city a “fresh start” after the federal investigation into Vince Gray.

The Post’s anguish reminds LL of put-upon medieval peasants assuring themselves that their beloved king can’t be behind their woes.

No, the thinking goes, it has to be his treacherous advisors.

Making that comparison a little on the nose, Post columnist Colby King wailed this week that Bowser needs “a true friend” to save her from the inequities of her cronies in FreshPAC. Good luck. After the recent wave of opposition, LL thinks Bowser has a few fewer friends CP to choose from.

Got a tip for LL? Send suggestions to lips@washingtoncitypaper.com. Or call (202) 650-6925.

8 OCTOBER 23, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

By Jeffrey Anderson Five years after being hired to reform the D.C. Public Schools food services program, former director-turned-whistleblower Jeffrey Mills is trying to recover what he claims is his lawful share of a multimillion dollar settlement resulting from his 2013 qui tam lawsuit against megavendor Chartwells-Compass Group LLC. Mills brought evidence of vendor fraud to the attention of DCPS officials from 2010 through 2012; Chancellor Kaya Henderson fired him in 2013. He then filed a sealed complaint against Chartwells in D.C. Superior Court under the D.C. False Claims Act, and he provided a copy to the D.C. Office of the Attorney General. In April, the office joined Mills as an intervenor in his complaint, after working with him for two years to build the case, according to a court motion by Mills. The case settled in June for $19.5 million and prompted a D.C. Council committee to call for new competitive bids for DCPS food services for 2016-17. D.C. Inspector General Daniel Lucas and D.C. Auditor Kathy Patterson are reviewing the contract and the decision to outsource food services.

Attorney General Karl Racine’s office has offered Mills nine percent of the total settlement, court documents say, but Mills cites a 2013 amendment to the False Claims Act that calls for a 15- to 25-percent whistleblower share. Racine’s office declined to comment. In court filings, the office claims that the amendment does not apply to the case and that a portion of the settlement goes to charities before Mills’ share can be computed. The OAG also argues that Mills’ contributions were “minimal” and “not meaningful.”

Collette Matzzie, of Phillips & Cohen, filed a motion on July 31 requesting a 24-percent share of the total settlement for Mills. The OAG adopted almost all of Mills’ allegations, the motion states, including that Chartwells fraudulently induced a 2008 school food contract, violated “best price” provisions, and failed to remit rebates specified in a 2012 contract. Matzzie further argues that the OAG’s proposal frustrates the statute’s objective to guarantee recoveries for whistleblowers who take risks to recover public funds. Mills has yet to find full-time employment since being fired from DCPS. He settled a wrongful termination lawsuit with the District in 2014 for $450,000.

“None of this makes any sense,” says Sadie Barr, a nutrition researcher and food services consultant. “Without Mills there would

be no lawsuit against Chartwells and no money recovered for the District. It is surprising that the OAG’s office is claiming ignorance to that. What is the purpose of the law if the city will not honor it?”

Patrick Burns, co-executive director of the whistleblower advocacy group Taxpayers Against Fraud, accused Racine’s office of “nickel-and-diming” Mills. “What kind of message does his office intend to send to D.C. taxpayers and voters?” Burns asks. “Do city school children not deserve better food? Do city taxpayers not deserve more integrity?”

Former DCPS employees have attested to problems Mills called to DCPS’s attention, problems that led to annual losses of up to $10 million per year. In a sworn declaration, Joel Metlen, former business operations manager for the Office of Food and Nutrition Services, wrote, “The funds that Chartwells agreed to pay DCPS were a direct result of Mr. Mills’ whistleblower lawsuit.

The lawsuit was just a small part of [his] overall efforts to hold Chartwells accountable, which DCPS should have done itself. He was the driving force behind the effort.”

Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh, a leading advocate for healthier school lunches, declined to delve into specifics, but says Mills clearly was responsible for bringing to light evidence of fraud in the school lunch program, and that the District should project appreciation and generosity where such efforts are concerned.

“To winnow down a whistleblower’s share suggests to me that we are not being straightforward or fair to those who have recovered funds on behalf of the District,” Cheh says. “We should be rewarding whistleblowers who come forward with evidence of fraud, not cheating them out of their just deserts.”

Cheh and several members of the Committee on Education opposed renewal of Chartwells’ contract for the current school year, but settled for a pledge by DCPS to seek new vendor proposals for 2016-17. DCPS is currently visiting each ward to gather public input as it prepares a new Request for Proposal.

Henderson has resisted pressure to bring food services in-house, as most major cities have done. Food service is not a “core competency” of DCPS, she insists. And while Chartwells has received withering criticism for its food services, DCPS officials who have overseen the vendor have avoided any consequences related to those services, which the District has subsidized since 2008. (The U.S. Department of Agriculture reimburses schools under the free lunch program, and most districts either break even or turn a profit from school meals.)

Council Chairman Phil Mendelson says Mills’ case is more of a legal question than a Council one at this point. “This is an issue for the courts to decide, and we’re going to let the judiCP cial process play out in this case.”

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DISTRICTLINE City Desk

Tomorrow’s history today: This was the week that Washington Post Managing Editor Kevin Merida announced he was leaving the paper for ESPN.

ElEphants in thE Room At least four Republican presidential candidates seem to be going out of their way to bash the District, despite its residents’ paltry representation in Congress. What’s all the kicking and screaming about?

Last week, low-in-the-polls Jeb[!] Bush suggested at an event in New Hampshire with Fox News’ Sean Hannity that Americans might “create a little bit of a recession in Washington, D.C., so that we can have economic prosperity outside of Washington.” For some context: Bush was answering an inquiry on how he would convince voters to reject Dems’ plans for an expanded social-safety net. “I think the better message is, let’s disrupt Washington,” he said.

While it’s true that the District weathered the economic recession

Jeb Bush

Mike Huckabee

“And I think we need to restore hope by shifting power away from Washington and disrupting the order there. If we do that, I think we could grow at a far faster rate.

We’d see people getting the kind of pay raises that they haven’t gotten in a long while.”

“John [Fredericks, talk show host], you’re close to the Beltway. I don’t have to tell you it’s the only economy in America that never has a recession. Six out of the 10 richest counties in the United States surround Washington, D.C.”

Righteous Anger Level: 5/5

Righteous Anger Level: 4/5

Comparable D.C. Frustration: A 45-minute wait for a Red Line train

Comparable D.C. Frustration: When someone says they live in D.C. but they mean McLean

better than other jurisdictions (thanks in part to the federal government), the myth that D.C. is recession-proof has been long since debunked.

Almost eight percent of the city’s residents are unemployed; the rate is almost twice that among African-American residents.

But facts be damned. Bush spokesperson Tim Miller doubled down on the candidate’s comments to the Daily Beast: “We should shrink D.C. so we can grow the economy of the rest of the country.”

District residents were rightfully angry about Bush’s comments, but what’s the appropriate level of righteous anger? Here’s our handy guide to how pissed off you should be about each of the candidates’ comments.

—Andrew Giambrone

Chris Christie

“I don’t think adding another person to Congress [by giving D.C. statehood] is going to help. I understand the philosophical argument you are making and I am not completely rejecting, but I have to be honest with you, I haven’t given it enough thought to give you a really thoughtful answer about it.”

Righteous Anger Level: 4/5

Donald Trump

“I have a conflict of interest [on the statehood question] because I’m building the greatest, you know, I’m building at the Old Post Office, I think, what will be maybe one of the great hotels of the world.”

Righteous Anger Level: 3/5 Comparable D.C. Frustration: A $1 million home in Brookland

Comparable D.C. Frustration: Escalefting Cherry Blossom tourists

From left, photos courtesy: Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons; U.S. government; Luigi Novi, Wikimedia Commons; Michael Vadon, Wikimedia Commons

10 OCTOBER 23, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

Adopt a friend today!

Gear Prudence: I’d like to get more out of my bike, but I’m out of shape. I don’t see the path between racing in spandex and what I’m doing now, which is, well, commuting to work some days. I’m intimidated by my friends who race but ride more than friends who don’t ride at all.

What are some starting steps to getting faster and fitter and maybe one day—not quite now but maybe by spring—upgrading my bike and investing in a lifestyle? —Friends Are Strong, Terrifying Entry Rider Dear FASTER: GP supposes that you could recognize that improved speed and fitness is a longterm project, adopt incremental changes, put yourself on regular regimen of workouts (both on the bike and off), assess your diet and nutrition, set goals, be disciplined, and hold yourself accountable, but this sounds very hard and time consuming. What if instead you just make slower friends? D.C. Public Schools is now teaching all second graders how to ride bikes, so find a gaggle, challenge them to a race, crush those wobbly noobs, and feel better about your comparative cycling aptitude. That’s vastly more expedient.

Fitness goals, and the means to achieve them, are highly individualistic. Different bodies are going to respond in different ways to various forms of training, so it’s important to craft a personalized plan that works for you and the time you have to commit to it. The key will be to accumulate more miles on the bike and find the time in your schedule to do it. Weekend group rides— of which there is no paucity in and around D.C.—are a great way to start to make the transition from sometimes bike commuter to More Serious Cyclist (whatever that means to you). The spectrum of rides catering to differing levels of speed and endurance will allow you to steadily progress as your fitness improves. Don’t overdo it and don’t get discouraged if you find yourself falling off the back of the pack a mere few minutes after the start. Invariably you will chance upon a ride that surpasses your abilities, and it’s OK to admit that rather than scrap the whole enterprise.

If groups aren’t your thing, solo jaunts can certainly help build speed and stamina. Keep your expectations realistic, diligently track your progress (there are apps), and figure out what will sufficiently motivate you to keep at it (for GP, it’s exploration and tacos). Be sure to mix up your route. Repetition can be stultifying. But consistency and hard work are key. It’s not like you can just take some drugs —GP and magically get faster at cycling.

Gear Prudence is Brian McEntee, who tweets @sharrowsDC. Got a question about bicycling?

Email gearprudence@washcp.com.

FACTS ABOUT CONNOR Size: Small 25 lbs (11 kg) or less, 17 lbs Sex: Male

Breed: Yorkie, Yorkshire Terrier/Poodle (Miniature) Mix Color: Black Age: Adult, about 8 years

Connor’s Story...

MEET CONNOR! Please contact Rural Dog Rescue www.ruraldogrescue.com to complete an application or visit Connor at the adoption event this Saturday from 12 - 3 at Howl To The Chief 733 8th Street SE DC.

Connor is a very sweet companion dog who will cuddle up right beside you! He is housetrained and non-destructive. Connor is also an athletic dog who loves to play. He should not be adopted by a home with small children, and that is the unfortunate reason that he needs a new home. He is most comfortable being the only animal in the house but has successfully lived with two cats and has gotten comfortable with another dog on visits to a family member’s house.

I am already neutered, house-trained, up to date with shots, not good with kids, and not good with dogs.

Needs a Home With Another Dog?: No, Needs a Fenced Back Yard?: No, Special Needs Notes: None

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washingtoncitypaper.com OCTOBER 23, 2015 11

UNOBSTRUCTEDVIEW Great News: Kirk Cousins is Awful!

By Matt Terl The best news for the Washington football team is that Kirk Cousins is terrible at football.

He played a Kirk Cousins-esque game on Sunday: flashes of genuine adequacy mixed with bafflingly inaccurate throws and multiple, spirit-crushing (and gamekilling) interceptions.

This is what Cousins does. It’s what he’s done ever since he got into the NFL and it appears to be what he’s going to continue doing, regardless of what former Washington head coach Mike Shanahan—who has developed a habit of randomly wandering onto radio shows to praise Cousins—would like to claim.

But his terrible performance is actually a good thing. It’s what the team needed to find out this season: what Cousins— given the time, attention, practice reps, and general coddling accorded to starting NFL QBs—could do.

Welp. They sure did find out. What he can do is be a much handsomer version of Rex Grossman, a brighter-eyed and bushier-tailed iteration of Jay Cutler. (It may be worth noting that Shanahan seeded his own departure from Denver by overestimating Jay Cutler in his rookie season and naming him starter on a team that had a 7–4 record.

They lost three of their last five.)

Now that they know, the problem comes from how the coaching staff reacts to it.

What they’ve done so far is make excuses for Cousins, put a brave face on his errors, and stick by him as he’s lost game after game. It’s been a pretty embarrassing spectacle for head coach Jay Gruden, all told.

But Gruden’s a guy who’s stuck with Cousins through no fault of his own, so it doesn’t seem like his motivations in defending the QB are overtly sinister. The next quarterback on the depth chart is Colt McCoy, who is largely interchangeable with Cousins, even though they’re exact opposites. (One is a strong-armed gunslinger who makes bad decisions and hasn’t shown himself able to win consistently in the NFL; the other is a cautious player without much arm strength who also hasn’t shown himself able to win consistently in the NFL.) And then there’s Robert Griffin III. His salary for next season is guaranteed if he’s injured; that means that playing him puts 12 OCTOBER 23, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

the team at risk for a $16-million cap hit if he goes down, and, given Griffin’s history, it’s not unreasonable to view his injury risk as “astronomically high” as soon as he walks onto a football field. If you see Griffin play again while any of the other QBs are healthy, you’ll know that the team is done with Gruden.

Given that these are Gruden’s choices, there is a very good reason that he’s standing by Cousins: He understands the futility of making a switch. Which, despite the scandalized “He lied to us!” response from sportswriters every time a coach reverses course on something he said in a presser, is a perfectly understandable approach.

(Taking the podium to say “He’s awful and we’re doomed,” while probably accurate, isn’t exactly “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose” from an inspiration standpoint.)

But ESPN’s Bomani Jones went on the record last week with a firm belief that there’s a racial component that underlies the differences in how Cousins’ interceptions are treated from how Griffin’s mistakes were treated.

“If you see Griffin play again... you’ll know that the team is done with Gruden.”

“You’d either have to be dumb or in denial to ignore the possibility race is a part of things,” Jones told the Washington Post, “and I’d argue only someone with an agenda would pretend the white guy, in this case, isn’t treated in a much nicer way when than the black one was at times when both were mediocre.”

It’s impossible to say that Jones is wrong.

And Gruden’s clumsy, obvious defenses of Cousins only make it worse. But racial overtones aside, Gruden’s doing the only sensible thing.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but Cousins being awful is much better than if he were just mediocre, especially since it’s the quickest way to the end of this tedious fourCP year QB soap opera.

Follow Matt Terl on Twitter @Matt_Terl.

SAVAGELOVE I’m a straight guy, married for 16 years, kids in school. My wife cannot find a way to be intimate with me. We’ve had therapy individually and together. I nearly divorced her, but we decided to stay together—we do love each other, and the economics and child-rearing favor it. After I asked for a divorce, she fucked the shit out of me for the first time in 10 years.

That was the last time she fucked me. She’s “broken”—her word, not mine, and her final answer. When the subject of affairs came up in the past, she said, “I wouldn’t blame you.”

I could jack off only so many times before I cracked. I went online and met a very sexual woman with a strictly NSA thing for married men, and we fucked. I plan on doing it again. I know this could go all kinds of bad ways, but divorce just isn’t realistic. We had that one conversation, but we do not have an explicit understanding. I don’t want to head into my 50s with 10-plus years of celibacy behind me and decades of celibacy ahead of me.

But I want to keep my marriage. Which kind —Help Understanding of idiot am I? Boundary-Breaking Yearnings If I were required to answer particular types of questions based on the percentage of the mail they constitute, I would answer two questions like yours every week, HUBBY. The majority of the mail I receive is from unhappy people in sexless marriages they either don’t want to end (they have kids, they do love each other, everything besides the sex is working) or can’t afford to end (they don’t have enough money for lawyers or two households, one depends on the other for income/health insurance/caregiving).

So which kind of idiot are you? The most common kind, I’m afraid.

I’m going to take a break from questions like these—from questions like yours, HUBBY—because I’m sick of the subject and my regular readers must be, too. But for you, HUBBY, and one last time, here’s my advice for people in your situation: Do

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what you gotta do to stay married and stay sane. Have a convo with the wife about the accommodation you require—permission to get it elsewhere—to stay in the marriage. Reassure her that you’re prepared to spend the rest of your life with her while emphasizing that you refuse to be celibate for the rest of your life. So every now and then, for your own sanity, and for the greater good, you’re going to have sex with other women. You’ll do it discreetly, rarely, and NSA-ly, but you’re gonna do it. If this isn’t something your wife can accept, HUBBY, then your only other option is divorce.

—Dan Savage These are things I (28, gay, male, single) did last night, and they show how fucked up I am.

(1) I hooked up with a guy off Craigslist. It was lame, he wasn’t cute, I was bored. (2) I came home and went on Tinder (which says I’m looking for an LTR, despite that hookup).

I saw a guy from the gym—but he didn’t swipe right, and I was devastated. (3) I went online and sold a pair of my used undies. I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. I could use some advice. I’m sure what you say won’t be nearly as bad as what the voice inside my head —What Is My Life? is yelling at me.

1. I hooked up with this dude once, and it happened so fast—and it was so sleazy— that I had to fish his driver’s license out of his wallet when he was in the shower because I couldn’t remember his name. And that sleazy hookup led to a relationship so good that I wound up marrying sleazy hookup dude. Twice. So in my experience, WIML, and the experiences of millions of other people in LTRs with people they fucked the first time they met, hooking up isn’t proof that someone isn’t looking for an LTR. So that underwhelming hookup doesn’t make you a hypocrite, okay?

2. Gym dude isn’t into you—just like you weren’t into the dude you hooked up with

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It was lame, he wasn’t cute, I was bored. last night. Are you into every dude you see at your gym? No. Do you swipe right on every dude you see on Tinder? No. So last night you got rejected quickly and impersonally—Tinder-style—but you’ve dished out that kind of rejection too. Don’t be a hypocritical baby about it, okay?

3. You made an underpants perv very happy, WIML, and you made yourself a little money. Nobody was lied to or misled, no one got hurt, and the total amount of joy in the world ticked up slightly. You have nothing to be ashamed of, okay?

One eventful night does not an out-ofcontrol sleazebag make. But if you feel out of control, WIML, take things slower. Resolve to be a bit choosier about who you hook up with, remind yourself to be grown-up about rejection when it comes your way, and refrain from kink-shaming yourself the next time you make an under—Dan pants perv’s day.

I’ve come into professional contact with a respected and successful artist. She is a woman in her 60s; I am a man in my 40s. I’m real-

ly attracted to women who are strong, talented, and smart. She’s all that, and funny. I’ve never been attracted to someone that much older than myself. Nobody bats an eye when a guy gets with a woman who is 20 years younger, but how do I pursue her without her thinking I have some creepy fetish? Am I a creep? I don’t think so. I’m pretty average, I have an unusual but boring job developing woodworking tools, and I don’t have any kinks or fetishes to speak of. I’ve gone out of my way to make her feel special on several occasions, but it has only caused her to remark on my great customer service—and not in a flirty way. How can I let her know that I want to move into something else besides a professional relationship without creeping her out?

—She Makes A Real Turn-on Set aside the age difference, and how you met, and those sexist and dehumanizing double standards. (An older man with a younger woman is an attractive guy with game, an older woman with a younger man is a fetish object with no self-respect.) Set all that aside, SMART, and what do we have left? Person A is attracted to Person B; Person A doesn’t know how Person B feels, so Person A has to hit on Person B. Even if Person A does their best to mitigate the risks of creeping out Person B—Person A is polite, respectful, and does their hitting on by “asking out” not by “lunging at”—the risk cannot be entirely eliminated.

Your best bet, SMART, is to be unambiguously direct with her (“I think you’re great, and I’d love to take you out on a date”) and to invite her to be unambiguously direct with you (“If you’re not interested, just say no—I’m a grown-up and I can handle rejection”). And if she’s squicked out by the age difference or wonders if you’re a fetishist, urge her to google —Dan the term “sapiosexual.”

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

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washingtoncitypaper.com OCTOBER 23, 2015 13

1099 Percent The

Supply and Demands As D.C.’s sharing economy grows, are the workers supporting it getting the short end of the stick?

By Andrew Giambrone Chito Peppler knows D.C.’s restaurant scene better than your average resident. In 2012, having lived in the District for a decade, he created a search engine called RUNIN Out to promote dishes from eateries in the metro area. Since 2012, Peppler has added more than 5,000 restaurants and stores to RUNIN Out. The index gave Peppler a growing familiarity with menus and venues, and at the recommendation of a friend, he put this knowledge to use working as a courier for Postmates, an “on-demand” delivery app, from April to June of this year.

In 24 states plus the District of Columbia, Postmates operates a network of couriers from its headquarters in San Francisco. It promises to have food, toiletries, clothes, and other products “delivered in under one hour.” (One of its co-founders has described the company as “anti-Amazon.”) Dynamically priced delivery fees start at $5 and increase with distance; a nine-percent service fee also applies.

Like many other freelance laborers do, Peppler saw Postmates as an opportunity to bring in a little extra cash. Tech writers as well as the app’s users have compared the service to Uber, which does not consider its drivers “employees” but “partners” who

work as independent contractors.

Another similarity Postmates and Uber share: Both allow customers to rate their operators on a five-point scale, as a measure of performance. When Peppler’s rating dropped to 4.6, a lawsuit he filed in late August states, Postmates effectively fired him. Their purported explanation? “The rating is the rating.”

“Without workers like Mr. Peppler, there is no Postmates. There is no business,” says attorney Jason Rathod, who is representing Peppler in a class action claim. “They are fully economically integrated into the system. That’s a key fact of the employee-versus-independent-contractor [distinction].”

Whether Postmates, Uber, Instacart, or other on-demand app companies can legally classify their workers as independent contractors is at the heart of lawsuits springing up across the country, from Massachusetts to California. Pro-labor groups argue that these workers are being mislabeled as independent contractors by start-up firms trying to avoid paying full salaries, giving benefits, and complying with federal laws. In other words: It’s a form of wage theft.

The companies contend that contractors are largely free to determine their own schedules, work for multiple companies, and choose clients. 1099-ers—so dubbed for the type of IRS form they receive from clients—

14 OCTOBER 23, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

are their own bosses. If service providers don’t like the terms of the partnership, they can go elsewhere.

As a class action, Peppler’s suit incorporates all people who have worked for the company as couriers in the District. Rathod says he’s not sure what the scope of that group is, but guesses it could be around 300 people. (Postmates did not respond to repeated requests for comment.) The lawsuit alleges that Postmates does not pay its couriers minimum wage as required by D.C. statutes, nor does it reimburse them for expenses that are essential to their employment, like gas and phone data. The plaintiffs seek compensation for back wages and overtime, which could amount to more than $3 million.

“Labels don’t really matter; it’s the economic realities,” Rathod’s co-counsel, Nicholas Migliaccio says. “Giving workers labels to deny them protections is an injustice worth fighting against.”

If the courts rule in the class’ favor, Postmates would have to treat its couriers as employees and pay them accordingly, or change its business model. But a victory for the plaintiffs could also set a precedent for similarly situated contractors, be they Uber and Lyft drivers, Homejoy cleaners, or GrubHub food carriers. The result of Peppler’s case will have implications beyond the District.

According to the lawsuit, Peppler, who declined to sit for an interview but provided background information about himself through Rathod, once had to deliver to a client food from made-to-order Italian restaurant Vapiano. Peppler’s lawyers say his compensation was less than $10.50 an hour, D.C.’s current minimum wage (scheduled to rise to $11.50 next year). “He had to travel to the location, wait in line for 30 minutes, order, pay, pick up the food, and then travel to the customer,” their claim alleges. “The one job took an hour and [Peppler’s] fee plus tip amounted to less than the minimum wage. When expenses, such as travel costs, are factored in, the hourly wage was even less.”

The entrepreneur finds himself in a legal gray zone that has expanded concurrently with the so-called sharing economy.

On the one hand, many 1099 workers enjoy the flexibility that being a contractor allows.

On the other, an increasing number of such workers realize that the jobs aren’t as openended as they anticipated.

“More often than not it’s a situation where a person is starting [a job] and wants to see where it goes,” Tonya Love, an attorney for the Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO, says of the two or three 1099 clients seeking unemployment she sees each year. “Then they’re [at work] every day, the hours are designated by the employers, the workers are supervised—factors that start to pull them into employee status.”

District law outlines several criteria that determine whether an employer has “misclassified” a worker, regardless of whether that worker signed an agreement designating them a contractor (think: realities not labels). Those include whether the employ-

Lauren Heneghan

er can hire and fire the laborer; whether the employer controls work schedules and conditions (supervision); and whether the person does tasks that are vital to the business in question. Also on the checklist: whether the employer sets a rate and method of payment; whether the employer maintains employment records; and whether the employer owns equipment necessary for the job. Generally, the more skilled a worker is, the more likely they’ll be hired as an independent contractor. The sharing economy is

challenging that rule of thumb.

Sheena Wadhawan, advocacy director at the D.C. Employment Justice Center, explains that new business models propagated by companies like Uber are leading to an uptick in misclassification claims. Still, she notes, mislabeling occurs across industries, at firms small, large, and everything in between; it’s not a new problem, nor limited to mobile apps.

“It’s important for folks to remember that if you misclassify someone, there’s a

loss all around,” Wadhawan says. “There’s a loss of tax revenue for the jurisdiction.

Also, the worker doesn’t get benefits like unemployment insurance, [certain tax] deductions, or [compensation for] overtime.

People should know that if they’re being misclassified, there’s something they can do about it.”

The lost tax revenue isn’t mere chump change. In 2010, then-U.S. Department of Labor Deputy Secretary Seth Harris testified to Congress that misclassification could

decrease employers’ labor costs by 20 to 40 percent. (Businesses don’t have to pay Social Security and unemployment insurance taxes on contractors.) A 2013 report from the U.S. Treasury Department found that an employer can save roughly $3,710 every year per employee (paid an average annual income of $43,007) by misclassifying workers as 1099-ers. According to Jobs with Justice, a national nonprofit, the federal government loses a minimum of $3 to 4 billion a year to misclassification. The total number of misclassified employees is unknown, but it’s likely in the millions.

In D.C., workers who believe they’ve been misclassified can liaise with attorneys to file lawsuits, or register complaints with the District’s Department of Employment Services. Investigators for the agency conduct fact-finding missions, as a result of which employers may be required to pay back wages or appear at hearings if they dispute certain claims.

When an employer found to have misclassified a worker fails to respond to claims or to forfeit damages, DOES may refer the case to the Office of the Attorney General. OAG, in turn, may choose to prosecute the employer.

But few cases get that far, in part due to workers’ fear of retaliation by employers or of hardships finding a job once they’ve blown the whistle.

“Many workers are really living handto-mouth, so they’re afraid of losing their income even as retaliation is technically illegal,” Wadhawan says. “What do you do?… Lawsuits take one to three years to get through the court system. Is that an effective route? ‘I’ve got to pay my rent!’”

Among other limitations, independent contractors can’t form unions under the National Labor Relations Act, making it exceedingly difficult for them to find strength in numbers. The Internet has somewhat alleviated such barriers through online forums where 1099-ers can trade notes. Uber drivers, for instance, recently used social media to promote a “nationwide strike” (although beyond raising awareness, the strike’s economic impact was unclear). “Hey Travis,” a flier addressing Uber’s CEO, Travis Kalanick, reads. “Your UberX drivers are fed up!

Uber is a great idea, but the rates aren’t cutting it playboy. Stop treating your drivers like shit!”

One ex-Uber driver from Orange County, Calif., who requested anonymity citing future job concerns, says he started to feel like an employee of the company when his driver account was deactivated for a day in September. The driver, whom we’ll call Tom, claims Uber shut down his account after he had registered what he thinks may

washingtoncitypaper.com OCTOBER 23, 2015 15

Mis-Independent

Independent contractor misclassification happens in seemingly every industry, from construction to exotic dancing.

Stadium Club has been sued over alleged misclassification.

Darrow Montgomery/File

have been “too many cancellations”: Riders would hail him through the app, but if they had poor ratings (a red flag for possible disrespectful and drunk clients) or wanted to take a trip that ultimately wouldn’t benefit him (say, if the client needed him to pick them up outside of a surge area he’d been waiting in, or he was already past their exit on the freeway), Tom would cancel the rides within 15 seconds of accepting them. The company, he speculates, eventually caught on to what he and other drivers were doing to exercise more control over their trips: Uber sent him several messages warning him that his account had been flagged for “having significantly more cancellations” than others. On Oct. 9, a few weeks after Uber closed Tom’s account temporarily, the company had it permanently deactivated.

“They sent me a message that said, ‘We believe Uber might not be the right leadgeneration tool for you,’ and they decided to ‘discontinue our partnership,’” says Tom, who now drives for Lyft. “Did I want to be an ‘employee?’ No, because I get to set my hours… [But] when you tell me when I can cancel or accept rides, and then I get deactivated for things I feel aren’t in my best interest, that’s when I feel like I was an employee. We’re supposed to be ‘independent contractors,’ but there’s rules.”

Uber acknowledges that if a driver’s cancellation and acceptance rates are persistently high and low, respectively, it can deactivate his or her account; the same goes for a driver who consistently receives low ratings.

There’s no precise threshold for when Uber pulls the trigger, though, and median ratings vary by city. Drivers can appeal their ratings and rates at Uber’s partner-support centers, or by email or phone.

As for drivers’ status as independent contractors, a study Uber published in January found that 73 percent of drivers surveyed said they preferred “a job where you choose your own schedule and are your own boss [to] a steady 9-to-5 job with some benefits and a set salary,” while 63 percent of them indicated that they use Uber “to have more flexibility so they can balance work and family.”

Rathod says many Postmates couriers stand to “critically benefit” from Peppler’s suit. (The District’s Wage Theft Prevention Amendment Act, which went into effect earlier this year, permits employees to opt-out of class actions instead of requiring them to opt-in.) While he declined to speculate on how the company’s legal team would address the claim, he did say that they could file for a motion to dismiss, or push back against its class action nature.

“Wage theft happens across industries, to people from all walks of life,” Rathod says. “It’s a problem where employers in almost every field have tried to cheat the system. We just think communities should feel passionately that people should get a fair CP day’s wage for a fair day’s work.”

By Sarah Anne Hughes If a company hires a person to stand near a construction site and direct traffic, is the worker in business for himself ? If a company can fire a consultant without warning, is the worker really an independent contractor? Is a strip club still a strip club without exotic dancers? D.C.-area workers are asking these questions—and many more— as they allege the companies they consider their employers have misclassified them as independent contractors.

When people are classified as employees, they receive an IRS W-2 form from their employers. Line one shows the employee’s wages, line two the federal income tax that’s been withheld, line four the Social Security tax, line six the Medicare tax, and so on. The 1099-MISC form that an independent contractor receives, however, usually only has one dollar amount, in box seven: nonemployee compensation.

While an employee may get a tax refund,

16 OCTOBER 23, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

1099 Percent The

independent contractors almost always owe: The self-employment tax alone is 15.3 percent on the first $118,500 of income. Because of this classification, independent contractors aren’t protected by D.C.’s unemployment insurance, anti-discrimination, or paid sick leave laws. Likewise, they aren’t able to collect workers’ compensation; should D.C. pass a bill granting both public and private employees 16 weeks of paid family leave, it wouldn’t apply to independent contractors.

“It’s a dollars-and-cents issue,” says Gregg Greenberg, a Silver Spring-based employment attorney. In the exotic dancing industry, for example, dancers are sometimes charged a

performance fee and not paid wages, instead collecting tips from customers and pooling the money. If an employer can turn his largest overhead—payroll—into a revenue source, “how do you turn away from that business model?” Greenberg says.

Greenberg’s firm is currently representing Talayna Clements, who settled with D.C.’s Stadium Club in April 2014 for $40,000; Clements previously alleged she was misclassified, not paid wages, and “unwillingly had sex with [an employee] for fear of losing her job and her livelihood.” In December 2014, she filed suit again, saying none of the scheduled monthly payments had been made. That case is still pending.

Miya Eley, another exotic dancer, filed a collective action suit against Stadium Club in September 2014 alleging independent contractor misclassification. According to the suit, the club had the “ability to discipline [dancers], fine them, fire them, and adjust each of their schedules.” The dancers, the suit alleges, were not paid the federal or D.C. mini-

mum wage. That case is also pending.

Greenberg’s firm also brought suit against the owners of two Maryland clubs for misclassification and won more than $265,000 for six dancers earlier this year.

“I think that it’s worked in the past, and they try to make it work again,” says Greenberg. “You’re going to keep on doing that until you get sued enough until you’re doing it right.”

Workers, on the other hand, often don’t know they’re being misclassified or don’t see the incentive for stepping forward. As the Washington Post reported in August, a fulltime independent contractor with the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities says she was fired after she sought paid maternity leave (as D.C. government employees are guaranteed) and lodged a complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor over alleged misclassification.

“In this job market, it’s tough, so people just take what they can get,” says D.C. employment lawyer Alan Lescht. “It’s a very big issue, because there’s a lot of contractors in the area.”

In fiscal year 2016, the D.C. Office of the Inspector General will conduct an audit on the award and administration of temporary service contracts. “The objectives of this engagement are to determine whether existing policies and procedures for the use and administration of temporary services contracts identify and make available best practices for use by agencies; and are in compliance with labor laws, mitigate liability risks, and assure cost-effective outcomes,” an audit plan states. In fiscal year 2016 alone, OIG states, D.C. has appropriated $500 million in local funds for “contractual services and temporary employees.”

Teresa Hinze of Community Tax Aid, a nonprofit that provides free tax assistance to low-income residents of the region, says she sees some clients who know they are being paid as independent contractors, mostly graduate students working as freelance writers or web designers. “They knew they were hired to do a project,” she says. But she also sees what she calls the “unintentionally” or “accidentally” self-employed. “They really didn’t know that this was happening,” she says.

In July of this year, the Department of Labor released an interpretation of the “economic realities” test in the Fair Labor Standards Act, the basis for determining if a worker is an employee or independent contractor. “Applying the economic realities test in view of the expansive definition of ‘employ’ under the Act, most workers are employees under the FLSA,” DOL wrote, adding that “each factor should be considered in light of the ultimate determination of whether the worker is really in business for him or herself (and thus is an independent contractor) or is economically dependent on the employer (and thus is its employee).”

The interpretation was the latest warning shot in DOL’s crackdown on misclassification, which intensified a few years ago when the department entered into informationsharing agreements with several states, in-

cluding Maryland. In September, DOL issued $10 million in grants “to increase the ability of state unemployment insurance tax programs to identify instances where employers improperly classify employees as independent contractors or fail to report the wages paid to workers at all.” D.C. received $276,310.

Legislatively, D.C. has some of the most progressive wage theft and workers’ rights laws in the country. But the issue of misclassification has only been specifically addressed once, through the Workplace Fraud Amendment Act now-Council Chairman Phil Mendelson and then-Councilmember Michael Brown introduced in 2012. The law, which went into effect in 2013 and only applies to the construction industry, upped the penalties for misclassifying employees and allowed workers “to seek up to treble damages for lost wages and benefits.”

But according to a spokesperson for the Department of Employment Services—whose Office of Wage-Hour receives and investigates complaints—no complaints were filed in fiscal year 2014 under the stipulations provided in the law. One complaint was received in fiscal year 2015, which concluded at the end of September.

“I am very concerned about independent contractor misclassification and wage theft.

And I continue to be concerned that enforcement is not what it should be, not even close,” Mendelson said in a statement. “I will be working with the oversight chairman to see what we can do to improve enforcement.”

Steve Cordi, deputy chief financial officer for the Office of Tax and Revenue, says it’s impossible to spot misclassification just from looking at a person’s tax returns. (In D.C., a worker’s status doesn’t change the amount of income tax she owes.) An audit may help OTR learn about misclassification, but finding these cases through random audits is rare. Instead, most come through whistleblowers.

With the differences in federal and local law, the misclassification gray area is vast and the scope of the problem is unclear. Because “misclassification is not in and of itself a violation of the statutes that DOL enforces, there is no data on the number of enforcement cases in which we’ve found misclassification,” a DOL spokesperson says by email. Many lawsuits are settled out of court, keeping the outcome from the public, but the suits that do make it through the court process offer an insight into how judges are interpreting the FLSA. Take a flaggers’ suit against Alexandriabased electrical utility construction company PowerComm for alleged misclassification. In certifying the flaggers’ collective action status earlier this year, a judge for the U.S. District Court for Maryland laid out, in his opinion, why the flaggers are not independent contractors: They were hired, fired, and trained

by PowerComm. They filled out time sheets.

They didn’t choose where and when to work.

They couldn’t make business decisions that would increase their profits. They were supplied with materials, like trucks, cones, and walkie-talkies. They weren’t free to find other work.

CP In short, they were employees.

Walk and Roll As D.C. gets more expensive, can independent dog-walking musicians make it work?

By Ron Knox Laurie Spector typically wakes around 9 a.m. By 10, she’s out of her parents’ house in Bethesda and off to meet her clients. There’s Charlie and Sophie, Bella and Gabby—a collection of diminutive friends who rarely need to venture beyond their respective fences. There’s a rowdy group who gets so excited to see her, one of them pees on the floor every time she arrives. They burst with energy, this bunch: Maddie and Cisco, Carmella and Csilla. In their inexplicable excitement, they often pull her down the street.

They have loved her from the very beginning. She finds such unearned attention— love for a stranger—baffling.

A month or so ago, Spector hadn’t yet met these new friends—toy poodles and springer spaniels and vizslas and, in one case, a jack-a-bee. Back then, Spector was struggling with the tedium of a desk job at a nonprofit in Foggy Bottom.

She has a college degree, and the officeworker path felt predetermined, she says.

Spector would burn her eight hours and then go home, drink a beer, watch a movie, and fall asleep.

“I need to live on money, so I started working there,” Spector says. “After a while, I was completely miserable.”

Passionless evenings drained Spector, a musician who has spent years playing in bands Foul Swoops, Dudes, and, most recently, Gauche. She requires time and energy to make music. The desk job sapped both from her life.

So last month, Spector quit and took a job with Dogcentric, one of dozens of pet care companies in the D.C. region that are a draw for those hoping to focus on whatever creative thing they’re passionate about. Spector’s one of a number of D.C.-based artists and musicians who have swapped desk jobs, or the other standard paycheck sources for working artists (serving food and bartending), for walking the city’s canine contingent while their humans are at work or out of town. As independent contractors, they’re free to set their schedules as they like, play late-night gigs without sweating the next day’s alarm clock, or spend days or weeks inside the rank confines of a tour van.

1099 Percent The

D.C. has the lowest rate of pet ownership in the country by a wide margin, according to a 2012 survey by the American Veterinary Medical Association. Yet the city has seen a proliferation of pet care professionals. Federal data shows the D.C. region has the fourth-largest number of animal care workers of any metro area in the country. More than 3,600 people in D.C. care for animals as their primary profession—a group that includes dog walkers, cat sitters, and those who care for animals in kennels and zoos.

The pet care professionals City Paper spoke with report a growing need for pet care in the city. Anecdotally, they chalk it up to demographics. Between 2012, when AVMA released its most recent study, and now, the demographics of the city have continued to change along a consistent trajectory—the District’s population has grown by nearly ten percent since 2010, according to Census Bureau estimates. As young workers move to D.C., they require care for their pets during the long working hours many D.C. jobs demand. And that presents the perfect opportunity for the District’s creative class.

“Dog walking is a great job if you’re a touring musician,” says Chris Moore, the owner of Peticular Charm Pet Care and the drummer for a number of local punk and hardcore bands, including Sick Fix, the Rememberables, and Coke Bust.

Moore traded working an office gig in a dismal basement for pet care more than seven years ago, and he hasn’t looked back.

He can play shows and tour, of course, but he also finds catharsis in his new career: It’s just him, the outdoors, and the dogs.

“I think it’s attractive to someone with a wandering mind,” he says.

Meg Levine started her pet care company, Just Walk, in 2011, after she moved to D.C. from New Orleans. She sees the District as a vibrant city for pet ownership. It

washingtoncitypaper.com OCTOBER 23, 2015 17

Darrow Montgomery

has been as long as she’s been here, as millennials continue to Chris Moore owns move to the District and bring Peticular Charm Pet their dogs with them.

Care and plays drums She knows the havoc gentrifiin local bands. cation can wreak on poorer residents in rapidly changing tracts of D.C. But these forces are also helping to provide clientele— her dog-walking route includes the rapidly changing length of H Street NE and its environs. “[Gentrification is] directly benefiting me,” Levine says.

“I recognize that I am creating a boutique service that people who can afford it are able to use, or people who are willing to sacrifice that amount of money out of their budget are willing to use.”

As Moore points out, people often spend outside of their budgets on pet care because, much like health care, they simply must.

“Most people who hire dog walkers are making more than your average Joe, but that’s not saying much in a city that’s so expensive to live in,” Moore says.

“Those people are also working so much that they need some help taking care of their dogs.”

But can one really eke out a living walking dogs in one of the most expensive cities in the country? The answer depends on how one wants to live. Jordan Oeste co-owns the cooperatively run Brighter Days Collective, a ten-person pet care operation that pools its revenue and offers workers 30 days of paid time off each year. Long enough, Oeste says, for any of the co-owners to pursue other ventures. “Six weeks of vacation is great if you’re going on tour,” she says.

There’s also a health care plan to buy into—a nice perk for a selfemployed worker.

Those communal perks come with what Oeste describes as a typical annual salary for one of the coof the financial spectrum in a changing D.C. owners: $35,000 before taxes. (Dog-walk“At what point will it tip the scales in D.C., ing wages in D.C. vary depending on the where I’ll be kicked out and I’ll have to move company a person works for, with hourly to Maryland or wherever?” wages ranging from around $13 to $18 beAnd if the question becomes “Can one fore taxes.) While nowhere near poverty walk dogs while focusing on their music or level, it’s well below the District’s median art in D.C.?” the answer is murkier. income. And the same tide of gentrificaLevine says yes, people can, and do, baltion that brought those affluent clients to ance pet care with outside artistic interD.C. threatens to wash the service indusests. Her company aims to provide ample try workers who cater to them out of the time off, as well as pay its employees a livcity altogether. ing wage, along with providing health care “I don’t know what the answer is, sadly,” and mobile phone reimbursements.

Levine says. She says she tries to meet all Spector sees a different reality, at least of the neighbors along her route and foster among the dog-walking artists she knows. a sense of community as best she can. But Is it possible to make dog walking work as a she recognizes that she’s on the losing end way to achieve a kind of work/art balance?

18 OCTOBER 23, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

Maybe, she says.

The musicians Spector knows typically make it work by pairing dog walking with another gig or two—serving or bartending, usually. She moved back home after giving up her nonprofit job specifically so she could focus on her music and not work full-time. “I’m not your best example of how someone could live in D.C. off of dog walking,” she says.

But pet care provides artists other benefits—ones that are perhaps even more important than relieving the time and energy constraints nine-to-five jobs can create. Walking dogs, to her, is a therapeutic job. Stress burns away in the outdoors and wilts under the joy of the dogs when

they see her. It can unlock her creativity in ways a desk job never could. She’s cautious not to make generalizations, but a lot of artists struggle with life in a buttonedup world—for one reason or another—and turn to art as a way to shape the reality in which they live.

“A lot of artists struggle with and have no course of treatment for mental illnesses or trauma, and dog walking is probably really attractive for people like that,” she says. There’s the fresh air, the time to think, and the solitary space that can be so difficult to find in the city.

And then there are the dogs—these yappy, joyous friends, some so happy they pee CP to say hello.

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Benefits of the Doubt Has DC Health Link unleashed an entrepreneurial spirit in District residents?

After seven years at the same job, Alka Pateriya had begun to think about striking out on her own as an independent consultant. But it wasn’t until late 2013—by which point she’d been working at the research company Westat for nearly nine years—that she began making moves.

Up until that point, Pateriya suffered from “job lock.” The term refers to people who find themselves stuck in their jobs because they can’t give up benefits like health insurance. Pateriya had pondered the freelance life as early as 2011, but when she shopped around for health insurance plans comparable to what Westat provided, she couldn’t afford the $800 to $900 per month that insurers would charge her.

That changed for her in late 2013, when DC Health Link, the health insurance exchange the District created under the Affordable Care Act, began enrolling District residents in health insurance plans.

“That was when I started getting serious,” Pateriya says, calling access to affordable health insurance the “driving decision” in her career change.

She put out feelers with clients she had worked with before, to see whether she’d be able to making a living as a freelancer. In March of 2014, she quit her job and began consulting on her own. The health insurance she received through Westat expired at the end of March, and the plan she found on DC Health Link, which cost her $440 per month, kicked in the next day.

For wonks who like the Affordable Care Act, Pateriya’s story is a feel-good tale that lets them present the polarizing law as something more than another costly entitlement.

If the law can chip away at job lock, maybe it can have some appeal for free-market types as a way to unleash entrepreneurism and reduce friction in the labor market.

Detractors don’t want Obamacare infringing on their freedom, but the law gave Pateriya hers.

“You just have the freedom on both ends to test out, ‘Is it a good fit for me? Is it a good fit for [the company]?’ without jumping into another long commitment,” Pateriya says.

Six months into working for herself, she was hired full-time by one of her freelance clients, an education startup based in Massachusetts. Neither the tiny company nor Pateriya, who lives in Glover Park and works remotely, would’ve been will-

Darrow Montgomery

By Zach Rausnitz

Victoria Lai left a government job to open an ice cream shop.

1099 Percent The

ing to commit to a permanent, salaried position before they each had the chance to try working together.

But skeptics wonder how common stories like this are.

Katie Vlietstra, vice president of the National Association for the Self-Employed, doubts that a vast number of people “were unhappy with their typical corporate nineto-five jobs and felt, with the exchange, that they could jump into self-employment. Because I think the path to self-employment

20 OCTOBER 23, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

professors authored a paper estimating that 3,000 people in D.C. would become self-employed in 2014 as a result of the Affordable Care Act’s reforms. The estimates relied on benchmarks from previous studies that examined job lock, including one that found a bump in self-employment among people who become eligible for Medicare.

But according to Linda Blumberg, the coauthor from the Urban Institute, there are no empirical estimates yet of how the Affordable Care Act in particular has affected job lock, in D.C. or nationwide. DC Health Link does not collect job information on individual-market customers.

Victoria Lai seems to be someone who found liberation from job lock through DC Health Link.

In 2010, Lai joined the Department of Homeland Security as an attorney working on immigration policy. In January 2014, she resigned to devote herself full-time to making ice cream. That’s the same month that coverage began for the first DC Health Link plans. Within a few weeks of leaving her stable job, Lai was enrolled in health insurance that she obtained through D.C.’s exchange.

But ask her about the timing, and Lai will tell you not to connect the dots.

“If it weren’t easy for me to find health insurance, I probably would have left my federal government job and all my benefits anyway,” she says.

Lai had been making ice cream as a hobby for years, eventually becoming a member of Union Kitchen, which provided her with production space. In 2013, she started to sell half-pints to a few retail stores in the District, under the label Ice Cream Jubilee.

But she still had her day job as a lawyer for the federal government, and she wasn’t desperate to break out. Lai says she enjoyed government service and the role she was able to play in policymaking.

“It all happened pretty suddenly,” in August 2013, she says. “I was asked to take a look at the Capitol Riverfront neighborhood, where I eventually opened up the store.” Lease negotiations grew serious later that year.

Lai, who describes herself as “a healthy 30-something,” says health insurance wasn’t on her mind as she weighed whether to leave her job. When she resigned from the her job in January 2014—six months before Ice Cream Jubilee opened its storefront at 301 Water St. SE—she signed up for DC Health Link over the phone.

Last month, Lai hurt her ankle and visited an orthopedic surgeon. Her co-pay for the consultation was $30. Access to health insurance didn’t turn Lai into an entrepreneur.

Still, she says, “I’m glad I’m insured.” CP

is very different.”

Giving up a reliable paycheck to work for oneself requires a risk-taking personality and a willingness (and ability) to tolerate the lean years. “It’s also incredibly cumbersome to start a business,” Vlietstra notes, throwing a jab at D.C.’s much-derided Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs.

NASE isn’t an unbiased observer. Vlietstra’s organization offers many perks to its paid members, including access to group health insurance plans. DC Health Link is NASE’s competition. (A spokesman for NASE says the average cost of health insurance premiums obtained through NASE is “hard to estimate because it depends on a range of variables.”) But Vlietstra is right: The extent to which the Affordable Care Act has eased job lock is unknown.

In 2013, a senior fellow from the Urban Institute and two Georgetown University

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YOUNG & HUNGRY

The Tipping Point

D.C. restaurateurs take a closer look at eliminating gratuities.

By Jessica Sidman The Public Option isn’t your average brewpub. Its owner, Bill Perry, was previously a photo librarian for National Geographic.

The production is itty-bitty: Perry, a longtime homebrewer, only brews one barrel at a time. He jokes that the brewpub will never even be a pico-brewery.

But what makes the Public Option, located at 1601 Rhode Island Ave. NE, really different from other brewpubs—and nearly every bar and restaurant in the city, for that matter—is what happens when you get your check. You’ll be charged $7 for a Belgian-style ale or coffee porter with no line for a tip. Perry won’t accept them.

“We’re interested in looking at and challenging business models,” Perry explains. He says throughout the latter half of the 20th century, businesses have shed what were traditional responsibilities— from funding pensions to providing health care. And he feels many businesses are shirking the responsibility of paying a living wage.

“Famously, some of the largest retailers in the country pay so poorly that their staff has to rely on public assistance to get by. They’re basically pushing off the responsibility to keep their workers alive onto the rest of us.” So instead of leaving it to the public to pay his employees via tips, Perry wants to pay them at least $15 an hour. He also likes the idea that it makes wages more predictable and eliminates some of age, gender, and racial biases that sometimes manifest through tipping.

At this stage in its weeks-long existence, however, the Public Option’s only employees are Perry and his wife, Cathy Huben.

The Public Option is among a very small but growing number of restaurants nationwide experimentally doing away with tipping. Last week came the big news that renowned New York restaurateur Danny Meyer would eliminate tipping at 13 of his Union Square Hospitality Group restaurants by the end of 2016 and raise prices instead.

His 1,800-employee restaurant group is the largest—and most prominent—to make this move in the U.S. to date. Some D.C. restaurateurs are now watching closely to see if this is a model worth adopting themselves.

“It’s got everybody talking about it,” says restaurateur Jeff Black, who owns Pearl Dive Oyster Palace, Republic, and BlackSalt, among others. “You didn’t pay much attention when other people were doing it. But when Danny Meyer does it, yeah, you pay attention to it.”

Black says he’s considered a no tipping business model in the past—“you have to always be open minded in the restaurant business.” And with a well-respected restaurateur like Meyer doing it, he anticipates the trend will grow. Still, he doesn’t want to be the guinea pig in D.C. “To me, it seems kind of reckless…

I would really like to see this thing shake itself out a little bit more,” he says.

Farmers Restaurant Group principal Dan Simons is likewise following the topic closely. He says his group, which operates Founding Farmers and Farmers Fishers Bakers, has been evaluating and researching the idea of eliminating tips for the past three years. “A lot of us in the industry who are really motivated by company culture Darrow Montgomery

Bill Perry’s new brewpub doesn’t accept tips.

But the brewpub aims to hire its first employees by December. For now, the place is only open Fridays through Sundays, and the food menu won’t arrive until November. But what the menu does have is a paragraph describing the no tipping policy.

It concludes: “Will it work? One way to see, right?”

washingtoncitypaper.com OCTOBER 23, 2015 23

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and taking care of our people are really studying it,” he says. But he’s still in a wait-and-see mode. “This is a topic with lawyers and accountants and it’s a cultural topic in-house…

You have to do a lot of work to be ready for this,” he says.

For now, the only other D.C. restaurant besides the Public Option to forgo tipping is Sally’s Middle Name. The H Street NE smallplates restaurant opened in June with a flat 18-percent service charge, which they’re now calling a “fee” because the money is actually split evenly between front- and back-of-house employees. (Meyer, meanwhile, will raise prices rather than charging such a fee.) No one on staff at Sally’s makes less than $10.50 an hour, in addition to their share of the fee.

In D.C., tipped wages can be as little as $2.77 an hour, but must add up to minimum wage of $10.50 with tips. That will rise to $11.50 next July. However, many servers, especially those in upscale restaurants, make far more than the minimum wage.

“Everyone who works for us has been

ers. Meanwhile, Meyer told Eater that he’s looking into some sort of revenue share program for servers.

Sally’s Middle Name has had typical restaurant turnover among the front-of-house staff, but the kitchen staff is the same as it was on day one. Adkins claims the restaurant’s system has also eliminated resentment between the front and back of the house—she believes workers have each others’ backs more.

Adkins says another one of the perks is more consistency for employees. For example, August is typically a slower season for many restaurants. “We didn’t have to worry as much about ‘Are our people able to sustain themselves through this job?’” Adkins says.

This isn’t a convincing argument for everyone: “It’s reliable money, but it’s less. I couldn’t pay my waiters what they make,” says Black. He says some of his servers make $85,000 a year with tips; some make “radically” more. “I don’t know how you run a restaurant and pay that kind of money. The reality is people in Washington, D.C. are very generous

“If you’re OK with a $9 vodka on the rocks, are you going to be OK with a $12 vodka on the rocks?”

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happy with it,” says Sally’s Middle Name co-owner Aphra Adkins, who runs the restaurant with her husband and chef Sam Adkins. So too, she says, are diners: “We’ve even had a few people come in specifically because of that.”

Sally’s Middle Name states but doesn’t explain the policy on its menu. That’s intentional. If people have questions, Adkins wants them to engage in a conversation with their server. “It puts a more human face to it,” she says.

So far, no one has insisted on leaving a tip.

Every once in awhile, someone will leave their change if they pay in cash, and that (extremely small) amount is shared among staff. If people actually left a significant amount of money, the restaurant would donate it to charity.

Justifying his decision, Meyer cited his desire to bridge the pay gap between servers and other staff like cooks and dishwashers, who are legally restricted from sharing in tips and tend to make significantly less. By paying back-ofhouse staff more, his restaurants will (in theory) be able to attract and retain more talent, which is particularly important given the nationwide shortage of skilled restaurant work-

24 OCTOBER 23, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

with their tipping. It’s one of the most generous tipping markets I’ve ever seen,” Black says. He’s certain he would lose staff if he got rid of tipping.

“Everybody wants to be equitable and fair with their staff, but my staff does very well,” Black says. “My employees are well compensated, and I look after them like a shepherd.”

Perry hopes the Public Option will be able to compete with similar businesses on pay.

His daughter, who was a server for a number of places on H Street NE, tracked her income over the course of a month and found that she made $15 to $20 an hour on average with tips. “We’re not going to pluck anybody from the Palm doing $500 tables,” Perry admits. “We think we’re going to be similar to what somebody would make tip-wise to some of the places on H Street.”

Of course, in order to pay servers what they would otherwise make in tips while also raising wages for everyone else, restaurants would have to raise prices significantly. Meyer told Eater his menu prices could go up as much as 30 to 35 percent—for example, a $30 entree would become a $40 entree.

A lot of D.C. restaurateurs say they aren’t

sure people are willing to pay those higher prices, especially in a city where prices are already high and competition is fierce. Just a glance at a more costly menu could scare people away altogether.

“It’s a risky proposal,” says Chef Geoff’s owner Geoff Tracy. “Do you raise every price 30 percent across the board? How much can you really charge for a cup of coffee?... What happens to wine pricing? If you’re OK with a $9 vodka on the rocks, are you going to be OK with a $12 vodka on the rocks?”

Simons also wonders if diners might trade down and order a rotisserie chicken over a higher-priced fish dish as a result. He points out that higher prices would mean higher sales tax for diners. “When your tax is much higher, you notice,” he says. “So the tax line, even if you don’t notice the percentage, it’s really relevant to the customer.”

And while total sales revenue may go up as a result (assuming the restaurants continue to do the same amount of volume), so will taxes and credit card fees.

There’s also plenty of contention over how eliminating tipping would impact the quality of service. Black believes servers wouldn’t have an incentive to go to a table, sell another drink, and generally make sure the guest is happy without tipping. “Waiters don’t work for me. They don’t work for the managers. They don’t work for the house.

They work for the guest,” he says. “That’s actually a positive thing. They’re the advocates for the guest… I’m a big, big believer in incentivizing.”

Adkins points out there aren’t many other industries where customers assume people aren’t going to do a good job because they’re not tipped. She argues people in the restaurant industry do a good job because they care about their work, not because they want to just get as much money as possible out of people.

And the absence of tips doesn’t necessarily mean there would be no financial incentive for staff. Simons says he’s interested in the idea that an employer would have more flexibility about how people are paid. Rather than the public deciding what employees make via their tip, a restaurateur could make his or her own judgements based on the their skills, seniority, and output.

Even though Sally’s Middle Name has eliminated tips, Adkins believes they model isn’t necessarily “better” than the traditional way.

It’s just different. “A lot of people make their living that way and it’s awesome,” she says.

“No city is the same, no restaurant is the same.

So there’s really no one right way. Just to have more models, more options, that’s always betCP ter in any industry.”

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

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Nothing’s Finer

Underserved The best cocktail you’re not ordering

While the D.C. area does have a few diners here and there, Washingtonians still love to bemoan the dying breed, especially after the closure of Capital City Diner in 2012. The good news is that the diner appears to be making a comeback. Here are four very different types of diners that are on their way. —Jessica Sidman

Where: Buffalo & Bergen in Union Market, 1309 5th St. NE

Slim’s Diner 4201 Georgia Ave. NW. Opening: November/December 2015 Crane & Turtle and Petworth Citizen owner Paul Ruppert is expanding his footprint in Petworth with this traditional diner featuring allday breakfast. Slim’s gets its name from a carpenter who for years has worked on Ruppert’s restaurants. As Ruppert told Petworth News, “He has never met a stranger. We admire his friendly attitude and hard work ethic and believe that his name captures the friendly, accessible vibe that we want to offer at the new diner.” The business has also been trying to get the community involved by soliciting their input on important topics such as hash browns versus home fries.

Blue Diner 1248-1250 H St. NE. Opening: Spring 2016 Father and son owners Larry and Justin Harbin aim to create a “modernized version of a traditional diner” with influences from around the world. (The menu is still a work in progress, but Justin says to expect some California Baja flare.) The 160-seat restaurant will have booths and counter seating, but the look will be a bit brighter and more modern than the ’50s-era diner. Blue Diner will include blue in its color scheme and feature live blues performances on certain nights. Depending on demand, the owners would like to keep the place open 24 hours.

Community 7770 Norfolk Ave., Bethesda Opening: Spring 2016

Fare Well

406 H St. NE. Opening: Fall 2015

Bacon and sausage may be traditional diner staples, but you won’t find either at Doron Petersan’s vegan diner, bar, and bakery. The owner of Sticky Fingers will offer plenty of baked goods, a graband-go lunch counter, and American comfort food staples with “classic diner-style service and seating.” Expect house-baked breads like focaccia and challah as well as sticky buns, cupcakes, and pies. At a pop-up last month, Fare Well also previewed dishes like walnut lentil seitan loaf and roasted pepper and tofu frittata strata. The bar will feature beer and wine on tap, and W Hotel bartender Joe Ambrose will create cocktails.

What: Boozy Ice Cream Sodas with Trickling Springs Creamery vanilla ice cream, housemade flavored syrups, and two ounces of your spirit of choice

Medium Rare owner Mark Bucher aims to bring back the diners he grew up with by serving American comfort food and breakfast all day. Chef Todd Harrington, the former executive chef of Central in Las Vegas, will serve straight-forward omelets, pancakes, waffles, and egg sandwiches for breakfast. Burgers, matzo ball soup, and open-faced turkey and roast beef sandwiches will be available for lunch. “Old school complete dinners” will include soup or salad with an entree like roast chicken or New York strip steak.

The 100-seat restaurant with 90-seat patio—less than a block from Tastee Diner— won’t be open 24 hours a day, but it will have a full bar.

Price: $13

Photo by Laura Hayes

DCFEED

what we ate last week:

What You Should Be Drinking What if you could experience the retro charm of an old-school soda fountain and get your fix of naughty too? That’s what “mixtress” Gina Chersevani is encouraging Buffalo & Bergen patrons to do by way of adding alcohol to her ice cream sodas. The “make it boozy” option at the Union Market mainstay lets customers choose from house-made syrups that get swirled with Trickling Springs Creamery vanilla ice cream, soda, bitters, and two ounces of whichever spirit has their number.

If decision making is a customer’s kryptonite, however, allow Chersevani or one of her team members to make a suggestion like a blackberry Manhattan ice cream soda with Maker’s Mark Bourbon, Angostura bitters, orange bitters, and a brandied cherry on top.

“You can really go anywhere,” Chersevani says. “Say you love Scotch. Let’s put it with pear, sage, bitters, and vermouth for fall.”

Why You Should be Drinking It Despite being both playful and decadent, Chersevani is finding some resistance when it comes to ordering her boozy ice cream sodas.

“There’s some kind of stigma against it, but there shouldn’t be,” she says. “I can’t understand why ice cream and alcohol makes people scared—look at drinks like the Brandy Alexander.” That classic cocktail is just a scoop of ice cream over brandy with some nutmeg. “Your grandmother loved it, [and] your grandmother’s grandmother probably did, too.”

No matter how you doctor up your ice cream soda, the resulting concoction will not only be something you suck dry because of its flavor and texture, but it will feel like a throwback to childhood with a grown-up spin—like that time in college when you watched The Wizard of Oz while Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the —Laura Hayes Moon played.

washingtoncitypaper.com OCTOBER 23, 2015 25

Accordion Virtuosi of Russia Sun, Nov 8, 7pm The Lincoln Theatre An awe-inspiring experience: Dozens of master accordionists and beloved works spanning the “Sabre Dance,� West Side Story, Carmen, and more.

Co-presented with Lincoln Theatre.

Anonymous4 Molsky,, fiddle Bruce Molsky 1865

Sun, Nov 22, 7pm Historic Sixth & I His oric Synagogue Just weeks bef before retiring, etiring, Anonymous 4 and Bruce Molsky bring tto life the stories ories from the North War and South at the end of the Civil W ar through songs instrumental tunes from and instrument om the hills and back roads of America.

Americ Made possible by the Abramson Family Foundation and BB&T Wealth.

TICKETS:

WashingtonPerformingArts.org (202) 785-9727

cake off

Who will be left standing when the timer dings?

A hilarious new musical

Now through November 22 | #SigCakeOff

signature 26 OCTOBER 23, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

703 820 9771 | SigTheatre.org

CPARTS

Nearly a year after Ari Roth’s firing, Theater J hires Adam Immerwahr as its new artistic director. washingtoncitypaper.com/go/adamimmerwahr

The Sundance Kid The Middleburg Film Festival wants to be the D.C. area’s best.

It started with an offhand remark

by Robert Redford. It was sometime in 2005 that the legendary actor and director came to the sleepy, small town of Middleburg, Va., to visit his friend Sheila Johnson. Johnson—the co-founder of Black Entertainment Television and president and managing partner of the Washington Mystics—was gearing up to break ground on her new luxury resort and had invited Redford out to scope the land and swap stories about business and entrepreneurship.

“I took him up on the property and he stood there and said, ‘This would be a good place for a film festival,’” Johnson recalls.

That was ten years ago. Today, the Middleburg Film Festival is kicking off its third year, giving Redford’s own festival—the prestigious Sundance Film Festival—a run for its money.

Since launching in 2012, the Middleburg Film Festival has quickly become one of the D.C. area’s premier film festivals—no small feat considering the plethora of them, from AFI Docs to Filmfest DC to the dozens of specialized and genre festivals that take place throughout the year.

But Middleburg is different. From its very first year, it’s managed to book a diverse selection of extremely buzzy awards-season favorites—with their filmmakers and actors in attendance—that typically only screen at top-tier festivals like New York Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, and Telluride Film Festival.

This year is no different: Among the 26 films playing over four days are Best Picture favorites like Sarah Gavron’s feminist period piece Suffragette; Todd Haynes’ intimate lesbian drama Carol; and Tom McCarthy’s highly acclaimed drama about the Boston Globe’s investigative journalism team, Spotlight, which recently opened the inaugural Investigative Film Festival in D.C. Assembling this caliber of films isn’t easy, but when you’re

out the year. Her daughter, Paige Johnson, is a champion show jumper, which is what attracted her to live in the area.

Though she frequents D.C.—she has ownership stake in not only the Mystics but the Capitals and the Wizards—and Arlington (her husband is an Arlington County Circuit Court chief judge), she resides full-time in the Middleburg area.

She knew that if she was going to start a film festival here, it would have to be big enough that people would make the trek to attend.

“I wanted to bring something to the little town of Middleburg that’s going to bring more people in,” she says.

“Something that’s going to boost the economy, but something that was kind of sexy and exciting.”

It’s no secret that Johnson is well connected in the film industry. In addition to serving on the Sundance Institute’s Board of Trustees for seven years, she’s executive produced hit documentaries, as well as Lee Daniels’ 2013 biopic The Butler. So when her 340-acre luxury resort, the Salamander Resort and Spa, opened in 2013, she already knew her next big project was to start a film festival, and she knew the perfect person to help her build it.

Johnson first worked with filmmaker Susan Koch on her 2008 documentary Kicking It, and their relationship continued with The Other City (the 2010 film about D.C.’s AIDS crisis). She knew that if she was going to pull off a successful film festival, Koch would be the woman to help make it happen. “She really knows the landscape and the film industry,” Johnson says.

Though they talked about the prospect of starting a film festival off and on over the years, it wasn’t until after attending Sundance in 2013 that they actually started planning it.

“We got back from Sundance and [Sheila] says, ‘I think we should do it this year,” Koch says. “And [Susan’s] like, ‘Are you out of your mind?’” adds Johnson. “I said, ‘Let’s just go for it.’”

They had their first planning meeting in February, and in just eight months, the first annual Middleburg Film Festival opened

Yes they Cannes!

Johnson and Koch bring Hollywood to Middleburg

Darrow Montgomery

By Matt Cohen

Sheila Johnson, the country’s first black female billionaire, finding a way to make it happen isn’t the hard part—it’s ensuring that people will actually show up.

Situated just over 45 miles west of D.C., Middleburg is perhaps the least likely town to host a ritzy, international film festival. Its population of just 700 people and lack of movie theater—something one would think is essential for a film festival—notwithstanding, Middleburg is primarily known as an equestrian town.

“We’re sort of the Kentucky of Virginia,” Johnson says of Middleburg, which hosts a variety of equestrian events through-

washingtoncitypaper.com OCTOBER 23, 2015 27

CPARTS Continued

with Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, which would later garner six Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture.

The inaugural festival was a success in their eyes. They sold about 2,500 tickets that first year, and the festival cost about $500,000 to put on—Johnson’s investment, which was partially offset by corporate sponsors and partnerships, according to the Washington Post, which labeled it an “an itty bitty Cannes.”

The following year, Middleburg upped its game, opening with the Anna Kendrick-led musical drama The Last Five Years and programming another slew of Oscar-bait films, including future Best Picture nominee The Imitation Game. It again attracted somewhere in the ballpark of 2,000-plus attendees.

With its third year looking to be its biggest yet—Koch says they’ve already doubled their ticket sales from last year—both Johnson and Koch feel that the Middleburg Film Festival has finally carved out its niche.

The festival’s programming philosophy, Koch says, includes adding “some big Oscar buzz films, some foreign films, and then some gems that you might not otherwise get a chance to see.” Unlike other big festivals, Middleburg doesn’t try to cram more than 100 films into ten-plus days of programming. Instead, there are 24 films screened generously over four days.

In fact, Johnson and Koch’s overall guiding philosophy

for Middleburg has been to figure out what things other big festival’s aren’t doing.

“We’re the only film festival in the country that honors film composers,” Koch says. This year, they’re honoring Carter Burwell, who’s scored dozens of films since the the mid-’80s, including several by the Coen brothers. Additionally, the festival will also honor cinematographer Dante Spinotti, who’s shot such visually lush films as L.A. Confidential, Heat, and The Last of the Mohicans.

And then there’s the issue of diversity in Hollywood, which both Johnson and Koch say is a driving force in their programming. Men directed 93 percent of the 250 top-grossing domestic films in 2014, according to a report by San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film.

This year’s festival aims to put the spotlight back on women directors, with the world premiere of actor Meg Ryan’s directorial debut, Ithaca, and an intimate “Fine Wine and Conversation” with Twilight director Catherine Hardwick, whose new film, Miss You Already, will play at the festival.

“I think that’s just a question that everyone in Hollywood is grappling with, the fact that there needs to be a greater representation,” Koch says. “Only four percent of the films directed by women make it to the big screen. For us to have over 25 percent is a huge, huge thing.”

But with an impressive and diverse lineup of programming, the one aspect of other big film festivals that Johnson and Koch don’t want Middleburg to have is the exclusivity.

Although advance ticket packages range from $100 to $2,500, tickets for individual films are just $15, and each film is shown at least twice during the festival to try to ensure that everyone who wants to see it will have a chance. (Middleburg has a number of corporate sponsors that finance the festival, including the Washington Post and Coca-Cola, which is this year’s presenting sponsor.)

The biggest challenge, Koch says, isn’t scoring high-profile films (both Johnson and Koch say most of the big films playing this year’s fest approached them), but rather “having a film festival in a town with no movie theaters.” Instead, screenings will take place at various other venues, including Johnson’s own Salamander resort, a school, a museum, a library, and a historic hall often used to host weddings.

Mostly, they’re just trying to figure out a formula that works for them: creating a mid-to-top tier film festival in the D.C. area that can be both accessible and prestigious, glamorous and inclusive, busy but not overwhelming in programming.

“I think we’re young and we’re off to a good start,” Koch says. “Telluride didn’t get The King’s Speech in their third year, CP so who knows?”

MAYOR MURIEL BOWSER Presents The most prestigious honors conferred by the city on artists, teachers, nonprofit organizations and patrons of the arts.

With appearances by Lamman Rucker, DC Youth Slam Team, Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, Capital City Symphony, and more!

Historic Lincoln Theatre 1215 U Street, NW Washington, DC 20009 Thursday, October 29, 2015 Ceremony 7:00 - 9:00 PM Free Admission

www.dcarts.dc.gov 202.724.5613

28 OCTOBER 23, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

CPARTS Arts Desk

At long lAst: lovitt Records is reissuing the final Frodus album, And We Washed our Weapons in the sea. washingtoncitypaper.com/go/frodus

Tape Heads

Because the cultural fascination with outdated media only continues to grow, Cassette Store Day—remarkably—celebrated its third year last week. That’s right: In 2015, cassette tapes are making so much of a comeback that there’s now an annual celebration of those little plastic rectangles that regularly got tangled in your car stereo circa 1985 to 1995. And D.C. is not immune to the cassette revival. Though no D.C.-area artists had any official Cassette Store Day releases, there’s nevertheless a proliferation of local labels who’ve joined the cassette revival.

Below, a quick survey of the latest cassette releases from D.C.-area labels.

—Matt Cohen Check out a playlist of D.C.’s best recently released tapes at washingtoncitypaper.com/go/tapeheads

Babe City Records Babe City is quickly becoming the poster child for D.C.’s underground music scene: Between its DIY venue, label, and concert booking at Adams Morgan’s Songbyrd Music House and Record Café, Babe is everywhere. But it’s not too busy to devote time to putting out tapes of bands like BRNDA, the Sea Life, Go Cozy, and NYC’s Bueno.

Bad Friend Records According to its own mythology, Bad Friend Records started “after years and years of hearing (and making) lots of music that didn’t fit on other labels.” That’s pretty accurate considering the label’s two cassette releases by experimental anarcho-noise band Drunken Sufis, which are nothing short of mesmerizing aural assaults.

Latest release: Witch Coast, Burnt Out By 3 p.m.

Odessa Madre Tapes Odessa Madre is the tape-only label started

by Baby Bry Bry & The Apologist’s Bryan Gerhart, named after “The Queen of the Washington Underworld” in the 1940s. But unlike its infamous namesake, Odessa Madre Tapes isn’t controlling any brothels in the District, just putting out tapes by the UVF Rays, BRNDA, and Gerhart’s own Apologists.

Latest release: Drunken Sufis, Cotton Candy Cluster Bombs

Blight Records Started in earnest in 2012 by Br’er and Pree’s Ben Schurr, Blight Records has since become one of the more prolific tape labels in D.C. In 2015 alone, Blight has put out tapes by Stronger Sex, Br’er, Pree, Hollow Boys, and Hallowed Bells.

Latest Release: The UVF Rays, Universal Friend Rays

Latest Release: Stronger Sex, Stronger Sex (Deluxe Edition)

DZ Tapes Founded in 2011 by Brett Isaacoff, originally to release a tape of music by Russian protopop-punk band Wavepool Abortion, the cassette-and-digital-only DZ Tapes now focuses on local bands, with releases by D.C.’s Big Hush and Baltimore’s Romantic States.

Sister Polygon Formed by the members of art-punk quartet Priests, Sister Polygon has become synonymous with some of the most forward-thinking, captivating music—in D.C. and elsewhere. Indeed, Sister Polygon was an early champion of bands like Pinkwash and Downtown Boys, who’ve since captured the attention of punks across the country.

Latest release: Hemlines, All Your Homes EP

Latest release: Gauche, Get Away With Gauche! washingtoncitypaper.com OCTOBER 23, 2015 29

TheaTer

Arboreal Talk A confused Irish psychodrama and a six-pack of Lovecraftian chillers The Magic Tree

By Ursula Rani Sarma Directed by Matthew J. Keenan and Colin Smith At Keegan Theatre to Nov. 13

The Magic Tree

Handout photo by C. Stanley Photography

Lovecraft: Nightmare Suite

By Daniel Spurgeon, adapted from the writings of H.P. Lovecraft Directed by Jay D. Brock At DC Arts Center to Nov. 8

By Chris Klimek

Lovecraft: Nightmare Suite

Handout photo byTony Hitchcock Photography

The prolific Indian-Irish writer Ursula Rani Sarma’s opaque and unpleasant The Magic Tree, first staged in 2008 and only now receiving its U.S. premiere at the Keegan Theatre, feels in its tense first half like a shaky stab at emulating the work of Martin McDonagh. Although less than a decade Sarma’s senior, McDonagh casts an outsized shadow: He broke out young, then found success in movies; he remains the most famous and celebrated of the not-yet-dead Irish playwrights. His stories are frequently populated by sociopaths whose colorful turns of phrase make us laugh, and whose recognizably prosaic foibles make their violent misdeeds all the more chilling.

The Magic Tree starts off like one of McDonagh’s black comedies. A young woman traveling alone (Keegan regular Brianna Letourneau) breaks into an unoccupied house seeking shelter from a thunderstorm. (G. Ryan Smith’s strobelights provide lighting at dramatic intervals.) She peels off her wet clothes.

Her name is Lamb, presumably to deepen our sense of her as a victim-in-waiting after a man hiding his face beneath a hoodie follows her inside. In the role of Gordy, Lamb’s surprisingly chatty stalker, Chris Stinson’s compact frame, baby face, and fragile demeanor all work in his favor as he tries to persuade his more-fazedthan-frightened prey not to regard him as a threat. But it’s clear before long that despite his protestations, he is one, the advance man for a trio of would-be rapists. After this early reveal, he persuades his droogs—ringleader Doc (Scott Ward Abernethy, believably contemptible), and Ryan Tumulty, playing a slow-witted animal lover named Lenny, perhaps in a nod to Of Mice and Men—to go back out into the storm and wait while he plies her with wine. When she screams, that’ll be the

read the preceding three paragraphs.

Lamb and Gordy find themselves together in Southeast Asia, far away from the cruel, wet Ireland of act one.

(The Irish setting isn’t important to the story, really, though the cast clearly relishes the opportunity to practice their accents.)

Lamb seems like a wholly different person from her prior iteration, who shrunk from the vulgar gerund “fucking” and asked Gordy not to impugn her special-needs sibling. Now, she’s an emotionally numb masochist who bribes a guard so that she and Gordy will be allowed to camp out on an excavated mass grave. You know, like people do. They’re surrounded by destitute and near-naked local children— conjured up via designer Patrick Lord’s ghostly projections—who demand money, or to have their photos taken. Gordy is understandably unnerved, yet he refuses to leave Lamb behind, repeatedly comparing himself to a loyal dog. Lamb, meanwhile, insists that she feels nothing at all and wants for him to go.

This is why you have so much trouble persuading your theater-agnostic friends to give it a try.

Sound Designer Tony Angelini’s recorded voices of the children make them sound like demons: GivememoneyorIbringmyfatherhehasgun. Taken with the imposing sight of the massive, angular tree set designer Robbie Hayes has built for the second act only, it accrues into a dour flood of sensation. But it isn’t even readily discernible who is doing what to whom in The Magic Tree’s concluding moments, much less what Sarma wants us to harvest from it. The ambiguity seems wholly unintended, and The Magic Forest remains maddeningly out of view.

signal for them to barge in.

Once we know we’re watching a slow-motion prelude to a gang rape, nothing that happens seems very funny. In getting to know Lamb a little, Gordy quickly loses his stomach for ravishment. Now he must find a way to spring Lamb from the trap he himself set.

Are you buying any of this? Does this sound in any way like a reasonable facsimile of human behavior on the part of anyone involved?

It’s not a pleasurable exercise, exactly, waiting around to see if or how Lamb avoids getting violated (and Doc beats her up pretty good).

But you can at least understand what’s happening in this segment, and Letourneau and Stinson are both excellent.

Enumerating the second act’s shortcomings is tricky without denuding the first act of whatever suspense is left in it now that you’ve

30 OCTOBER 23, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

Lovecraft: Nightmare Suite is an uneven but enjoyable anthology adapted from a half-dozen H.P. Lovecraft short stories published between 1917 and 1926. The product of D.C.’s Grand Guignol-inspired Molotov Theatre company, the show continues the troupe’s recent arc away from the over-thetop gore of its earliest productions, investing more in mood and humor to get its kicks.

Although characteristically compact at about 75 minutes, Lovecraft is the company’s most technically ambitious show to date, relying heavily on set designer Rachel Marie Wallace’s projections to supply the gothic environs that the D.C. Arts Center’s constricted black-box theater can’t accommodate. Wallace mostly abstains from using three-dimensional scenery, with the exception of a series of curtains that actor Jennifer Restak ties to anchor points around the stage during “The Outsider,” a clever way of suggesting the labyrinthian castle in which that story’s narrator is trapped.

Restak is even better in “Cool Air,” in which her unnamed character receives emergency medical attention from her neighbor in a boarding house, the mysterious Dr. Munoz (Elliott Kashner).

“The Picture in the House,” first published in 1921, has a setup remarkably similar to the opening of The Magic Tree. In this one, Brian McDermott is the solitary traveler waiting out the rain in a strange house, and Molotov Theatre co-founder Alex Zavistovich is its owner, who seems a little too welcoming of the youngish guy who let himself in and began leafing through his library of creepy books. This telling ends on a more forceful note than its prose inspiration, but then it’s an adaptation, not a transliteration. Anyway, too few theater companies are willing to send a severed head flying across a small room for our amusement.

Rounding out the show are “The Statement of Randolph Carter,” “The Cats of Ulthar,” and “Nyarlathotep.” While these adaptations aren’t as much fun as the others, they’re at least intriguing enough to send you back to the original tales. To be fair, it would be difficult to improve upon this: And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods— the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep.

CP Lovecraft gonna Lovecraft.

1742 Church St. NW. $25–$36.

(202) 265-3767. keegantheatre.com.

2438 18th St NW. $20–$25. molotovtheatre.org.

TheaTerCurtain Calls

Salomé Directed and adapted by Yaël Farber At Shakespeare Theatre to Nov. 8 If the Women’s Voices Theater Festival has demonstrated anything thus far, at least judging by the offerings at D.C.’s largest theaters, it’s that hiring a lady playwright does not guarantee staging a compelling, femalecentric story.

For Woolly Mammoth, Sheila Callaghan contributed a sophomoric farce about an entitled trust fund millennial and three fuckedup women in his life (Women Laughing Alone

Immersive staging and a compelling story rewrite ancient history in surprising new ways. with Salad). At Signature, lyricist Julia Jordan teamed with composer Adam Gwon to turn an extant play into a musical about a guy trying to win a baking contest (Cake Off). And at Arena Stage, local playwright Karen Zacarías is sending up the puffy-gowned, goopy-mascara world of telenova mistresses in her new comedy, Destiny of Desire.

There’s nothing wrong with all this entertaining fare, but it seems much more in the spirit of this festival for theaters to stage plays that have something to say about the female experience. Be grateful then, that the Shakespeare Theatre, a venue devoted to the maledominated cannon, is premiering playwright and director Yaël Farber’s Salomé as adapted from the scriptures, historical sources, and Oscar Wilde’s play.

Farber, a South African director whose father is of Lithuanian-Jewish descent, has built an international career around recontextualizing the classics. Her work was last seen here two years ago when Shakespeare hosted her touring production of August Strindberg’s Mies Julie, set in post-Apartheid South Africa. For Salomé, Farber assembled an international cast, including many actors of Middle Eastern descent.

In the New Testament gospels, the story about the girl who dances before Herod—and

so pleases the ruler of Judea that he offers Salomé anything she wishes—gets just 15 verses. She’s named not in the scriptures but by the historian Josephus; the seven veils were Wilde’s idea, and made infamous in Richard Strauss’ opera.

Neither ancient source provides a reason for her request (the head of John the Baptist on a platter), but according to scriptures, the idea came from Salomé’s mother. Contemporary readers looking at these texts—which we must remember have been patched together and translated by 20 centuries’ worth of men—are left to assume Salomé was a slut and her mother, Herod’s wife, was a vindictive bitch. That’s not the case in Farber’s play, which positions the story in a broader historical context. The resulting hypnotic 90-minute theater piece should now appeal to anyone with an interest in early Christianity and Hebrew history, and all who love seeing a fascinating story unfold onstage in unexpected ways.

The set at the Lansburgh Theatre is deceptively bare.

The back of the theater is painted black, with exposed pipework and masonry. When the cast processes in, it’s with great solemnity. Movement and music are crucial to the show’s ethos; two singers vocalize nearly the entire time, chanting over an effective drone. Salomé herself is depicted by two actors: Nadine Malouf as Herod’s gamine stepdaughter and Olwen Fouéré as a reflective older woman, who delivers much of the narration.

As the cast reenacts scenes from scripture, sand pours from the ceiling, veils fall from the catwalks, and trap doors open to reveal the River Jordan. (Tony winner Donald Holder did the stunning lighting; Susan Hilferty is credited with the scenic and costume design.)

By show’s end, audiences are entirely sucked in, as if huddling beneath a tent to escape a desert sandstorm.

The world of first-century Hebrews is, evidently, a perilous one. Their inhospitable holy land is occupied by tax-and-starve Romans, and for women, the situation is far worse. So what if Salomé—Salomé the seductress—may have been dancing for much more than a Nazarite head? In Farber’s retelling, her striptease starts a revolution, one that required discarding oppressors and finding salvation. So convincing is the theatermaking in Salomé, you may leave converting into thinking that while well behaved women rarely make history, it takes a revisionist woman playwright and director to —Rebecca Ritzel set history straight.

COMPETITION ROOMS

CORPORATE TEAM BUILDING

DuPont Circle

Teams of 2 up to 35

with one goal - getting out!

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A playful drinking game slowly reveals itself as a dangerous unpacking of privilege, status symbols, and class divisions.

Handout photo by Scott Suchman

Revisionist HeRstoRy

BY MARCUS YOUSSEF AND JAMES LONG DIR. BY CHRIS ABRAHAM

OCT 27—NOV 22 WOOLLYMAMMOTH.NET // #WOOLLYWNL

450 7th St. NW. $20–$108. (202) 547-1122. shakespearetheatre.org washingtoncitypaper.com OCTOBER 23, 2015 31

FilmShort SubjectS Tab Hunter Confidential

Truth

You Can’t Handle tHe trutH Truth Directed by James Vanderbilt Here’s a fun game: Ask a liberal and a conservative about the time trusted news anchor Dan Rather had to retire following a story he ran on the president’s military service. You’ll likely get two very different answers.

The liberal will spin a conspiracy theory about a television network that colluded with a corrupt presidential administration, while the conservative will tell you about a liberal news icon who finally got what he deserved. It seems like our divisive political situation cannot handle a single reality—there must be two.

This is both the subject and the downfall of James Vanderbilt’s Truth. Although the film seeks to reclaim Rather from disgrace and rewrite history for the liberals, it leaves far too many holes in its argument to ever actually persuade. Still, when it treats its characters like people, not political symbols, it’s a startlingly effective character drama buoyed by a powerful performance by Cate Blanchett, once again proving she’s one of our era’s greatest actors.

The legendary newsman is only a supporting player in his own story; instead, his long-time producer Mary Mapes (Blanchett) is the protagonist. Following an awardwinning story on Abu Ghraib, Mapes entices her bosses with an old story she never ran on President George W. Bush’s dubious service in the National Guard.

She and her team of reporters (Dennis Quaid, Elisabeth Moss, and Topher Grace are under-written and mostly in-

terchangeable here) rush the story to air, and, as quickly as it airs, it starts to unravel. Witnesses change their story; experts recant their testimony. Other news agencies accuse both Rather and Mapes of leading with their political biases, and soon both their careers are in jeopardy.

To his credit, Vanderbilt doesn’t shy away from showing Mapes’ and her team’s mistakes, but he gives too much consideration to the unprovable idea that she and Rather were innocent pawns in a larger political battle. It’s not that he’s necessarily wrong— contrary to the promise implicit in the film’s title, we never find out what motivates their enemies—but the truth is likely somewhere in the middle. Vanderbilt is too reverent of his subjects—particularly Rather—to scrutinize them too closely.

Still, Truth succeeds on the back of another show-stopping performance by Blanchett. Playing the vulnerable producer, she never loses sight of her character’s compelling inner struggle.

Mapes’ father abused her as a child, and as the forces conspire around her in the wake of the controversial story, her buried trauma threatens to come to the surface.

Her father makes a painful appearance at one point, but it’s a different patriarchal system that provides the real threat: In a late scene, she fights for her professional life in front of an appointed panel of aggressive male lawyers (led by the excellent Dermot Mulroney). Her ability to save her job, we are told, relies on her quieting her internal instinct to fight every slur and push back against every aggression.

It’s a rare film that climaxes in a show of emotional restraint. Had the filmmakers applied that sensibility to their politics, Truth could have really been worth telling.

—Noah Gittell Truth opens Friday at E Street Cinema.

32 OCTOBER 23, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

aCt of tHe Matter Tab Hunter Confidential Directed by Jeffrey Schwarz Tab Hunter Confidential is a biopic that feels less like a hagiography and more like your grandpa telling stories about the good ol’ days. Tab Hunter, the genial former matinee idol who’s still handsome at 84, helps narrate his own story in Jeffrey Schwarz’s (I Am Divine) documentary, along with directors, co-stars, critics, and fans—even Clint Eastwood, who appears near the end to make a quip about Hunter’s horsemanship.

The film’s title is a wink at Confidential magazine, which was essentially the 1950s’ National Enquirer. And the nugget of interest in Hunter’s career—the gossip that landed him in Confidential—is that Hollywood’s golden-haired boy next door may have been primed to make all the gals swoon, but in fact was gay and deeply closeted. (One of Confidential’s headlines on Hunter: “Caught at a limp-wristed pajama party.”) Coincidentally, he and Rock Hudson shared an agent who worked to keep both men out of the rag.

Hunter, as an unseen ’50s television announcer describes, was “six feet of rugged manhood that could stir the heart of every woman.” Star Trek’s George Takei, who’d also kept his sexuality a secret for most of his life, indirectly likens him to Matthew McConaughey: “In every picture, he managed to take his shirt off.”

Indeed, although Hunter—born Arthur Kelm—was a movie buff as a kid, it was his looks that got him recruited into acting by an industry insider. He was widely mocked in his first film, Island of Desire, and says he worked on “Grade Z movies” after that. But Hunter put some effort into his craft and

soon won a bit of critical respect as well as tons of fan admiration.

To protect his career, Hunter platonically stepped out with his leading ladies, including Natalie Wood and Debbie Reynolds. And when he became involved with men (including Anthony Perkins), they’d “double date” to both enjoy each other’s company while keeping up the ruse. Hunter now understatedly says, “I didn’t feel good about myself.”

Equally serious for him was his Catholic faith; after once confessing to a less-than-Christlike priest, Hunter said he made him feel “like I was the worst person that ever lived.”

Tab Hunter Confidential checks off all the boxes that make a typical documentary: Footage of Hunter’s films; stills of him both professional and candid; commentary by industry people, from Rex Reed to John Waters to actor-turned-nun Mother Dolores Hart.

Hunter himself explains much of his career development—and downfall—with good-natured self-deprecation. (Of his 1966 project with Soupy Sales, Birds Do It, he sarcastically says, “That’s a winner.”) He’s blunt about eventually embracing camp and mocking his image in Waters’ films: “That’s called ‘paying the bills.’”

Hunter’s not the only appealing part of the film; throwback jargon such as “eligible bachelor” and black-and-white tape of game shows that gave out cartons of cigarettes make for amusing relics. And though he mentions throughout the doc the pain of having had to pretend to be something he wasn’t, it seems that no scars linger: Hunter has had a partner for 30-plus years and here acts game to answer personal questions for the first time publicly, likely no longer caring about keeping secrets at this point in his life. As he tells the director, “I am happy to be forgotten.”

—Tricia Olszewski Tab Hunter Confidential opens Friday at the Angelika Pop-Up.

Bohemian Caverns Tuesdays Artist in Residency

KENNEDY CENTER

Federico Peña T OC

Jason Moran, Artistic Director for Jazz

2015–2016 Season

@LivNightclub

DC’s Legendary Jazz Club

Established in 1926 2001 11th ST NW - (202)299-0800

Fri Oct 30 Sun Ra Big Chief of Congo Square Arkestra Marshall Allen th

Donald Harrison Fri & Sat

rd

&

under direction of

DJ Underdog

Revive Music

Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown Reimagined

Under the musical direction of The Roots’s pianist Ray Angry, the classic Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown LP recording is reimagined in a contemporary setting.

Saturday, October 24

The Crossroads Club • Performances at 8 & 10 p.m. in the Atrium.

The Crossroads Club features expansive standing room (only) a dance floor, and high-top tables, with drinks available for purchase.

th

Oct 23 & 24

Butler, Bernstein & the Hot 9

With a large dose of Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller, the allstar band Hot 9 performs selections from their 2014 recording Viper’s Drag (Impulse!).

Saturday, November 7 at 7 & 9 p.m. | Terrace Theater

Mark Meadows Fri & Sat

Ray Angry

Oct 30th & 31st

Chad Carter

A Family Affair

Elhae Vibes

Sun Nov 1st

Matvei Sigalov Thur Nov 5

th

presented by WERC

Oct 29th

Suricato Thur Nov 19 The Funky Bohemian Caverns Knuckles No1v Jazz Orchestra & Higher Hands 1 th

th

Mondays @ 8pm

"This group is something special." ~ Mike West (CityPaper)

www.BohemianCaverns.com

The Hello?! Tour &

Key!

Special Guests

Dorado Schmitt and the Django Festival All-Stars

Showcasing the rhythmic, virtuosic intricacies of the Django Reinhardt guitar style of “hot jazz,” the Django Festival All-Stars return to the Kennedy Center by popular demand, featuring superstar Dorado Schmitt on lead guitar and violin.

Friday, November 13 at 7 & 9 p.m. | Terrace Theater

KENNEDY-CENTER.ORG (202) 467-4600 Tickets also available at the Box Office. Groups call (202) 416-8400.

WPFW 89.3 FM is a media partner of Kennedy Center Jazz.

Nov 12th

www.LivDC.com

washingtoncitypaper.com OCTOBER 23, 2015 33

AWESOME

WE ALSO REPAIR

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HiFi SPEAKERS, AMPS, LPS, TURNTABLES, ETC. AMPS-RECEIVERS TUNERS: Naim/Technics/Onkyo/Pioneer/Sansui/Sony/Kenwood/Harman Kardon etc. TUNERS: Luxman/Marantz/Sherwood/Audio Lab CD PLAYERS & CHANGERS: Sony/ Scott/Marrantz TURNTABLES: Dual/Pioneer/Technics/Realistic SPEAKERS: Advent/JBL/ Pioneer/B&W/Bose/Kenwood/E.J. Korvette/ProAC/Polk/Klipsch/Akai/Sansul/OHM etc.

PLUS OTHER RELATED ITEMS THAT WON’T FIT THIS AD., PLEASE CALL FOR MODELS AND PRICES!

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G & G PAWNBROKERS INC. | 1325 UNIVERSITY BLVD. E. TAKOMA PARK, MD 20912

301.439.4116 • Call for inventory

Celebrate With Us!

The Most Happy FellA

By Frank Loesser

OCT. 23 AND 24 • 7:30 P.M. OCT. 25 • 2 P.M. HARTKE THEATRE For more information and to purchase tickets, visit music.cua.edu.

Please call 202-319-5414 or email cua-music@cua.edu to request disability accommodations.

OCTOBER 30 – NOVEMBER 1, 2015

WASHINGTON MARRIOTT WARDMAN PARK THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA Washington, D.C. 34 OCTOBER 23, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

www.animeusa.org

GalleriesSketcheS UnnatUral Selection “CO-EXIST” At Otis Street Arts Project to Nov. 21 Since it opened in May, the Otis Street Arts Project has primarily been used as a studio space for artists. But every now and then, it’ll open up its doors to host regular artist talks, critiques, figure drawing sessions, and parties—all in the spirit of creative community collaboration. Through November, the space is hosting its first guest-curated exhibition of works created by artists not working at the studio. The unifying theme is a brazen use of materials to produce almost other-worldly pieces of art.

Molly Ruppert curated “CO-EXIST,” which features the works of local artists Eric Celarier, Glenn Richardson, and Albert Schweitzer. Celarier creates winged creatures out of detritus, Richardson carves fallen trees with a chainsaw, and Schweitzer’s childlike paintings feature brightly colored character portraits on canvas.

Celarier’s flying objects—by far the standout works of the show—hang from the ceiling and cling to walls like birds or giant insects. Each is made from dozens of discarded items. Every time you look closely at one of the pieces, you see a few new objects you hadn’t noticed before. Broken iPods, hoses, oxygen tanks, car bumpers, remote controls, hand vacs, windshield wipers, and Listerine bottles fit nicely into each other to create garbage beasts so imaginative, they’re almost believable. And yet Celarier never attempts to hide his humble materials.

“Crafting creatures from refuse,” he writes in his artist statement, “I lend form to the idea that all future flora and fauna can be seen as byproducts of our existence.” The materials are as integral to the meaning of the works as water is to all living things.

Part of Celarier’s “Alternative Evolution” series, these mythical creatures often have wings suggestive of Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machines, but many also contain circuit boards. They’re sci-fi hybrids of the past and present (with a stern warning about the possible future). Fitting into the artist’s evolutionary narrative, the titles are Latin names, reminiscent of binomial nomenclature—Ipsum hyacinto (blue button), Vidua dux (window guide), Kaput rubrun (red head).

Scattered throughout the exhibition space, Glenn Richardson’s tree carvings include a dragon bench and a few dinosaur-like skeletons. (A pterodactyl/flying fish fittingly hangs from the ceiling near Celarier’s birds.) Carved out of a single tree, most of the skeletons tower over you, with long necks, bird feet, and giant hands or feet where their heads should be.

The combination of charred wood and

“Goodberry” by Albert Schweitzer, 2015. skeletal subject matter is more strikingly morbid than Celarier’s winged garbage creatures, but the sentiment behind them is quite similar: Richardson laments the loss of trees as humans continue to expand cities and colonize the natural world.

Schweitzer’s paintings, on the other hand, deal more with human emotion than the relationships between people and nature. I’m still not entirely convinced that the works fit into the show’s theme of using materials differently, but in Schweitzer’s case, the interpretation of “materials” may simply be less literal.

Schweitzer says he likes the circus and Mardi Gras, and the characters he paints are obviously influenced by that kind of aesthetic.

Vibrantly colored, they represent “the various states of the human condition”; they look like paintings you might find at Baltimore’s Visionary Art Museum.

In fact, all three artists take aesthetic cues from outsider and folk art, often with a nod to Native American traditions. Many of Richardson’s chainsaw carvings resemble totem poles, while Celarier’s sculptures call to mind the work of Brian Jungen—a contemporary First Nations artist from British Columbia, whose creatures made out of plastic chairs and suitcases were featured at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian five years ago.

Through a humility of materials and a reach into humankind’s relationships with itself and its surroundings, each artists’ work elicits a sense of wonder—no matter how conventional or unconventional their process may be.

—Elena Goukassian 3706 Otis St., Mount Rainier. Free. (202) 550-4634. E-mail otisstreetartsproject@gmail. com to schedule a visit.

washingtoncitypaper.com OCTOBER 23, 2015 35

I.M.P. PRESENTS Verizon Center • Washington D.C.

JUST ANNOUNCED!

MUSE

w/ X Ambassadors................................................................FEBRUARY 1 On Sale Friday, October 23 at 10am

THIS WEEK’S SHOWS

Ticketmaster

ALL GOOD PRESENTS

Lotus w/ Pan Astral ..................................................................................... F 23 & Sa 24 Peaches w/ Deap Vally ............................................................................................... M 26 UB40 feat. Ali Campbell, Astro and Mickey Virtue w/ Radio Riddler ................Tu 27

Echostage • Washington, D.C.

JUST ANNOUNCED!

Umphrey’s mcGee

w/ Tauk .......................FRI FEBRUARY 12 On Sale Friday, October 23 at 10am

OCTOBER ALL GOOD PRESENTS

Pigeons Playing Ping Pong w/ Psycho Killers & Litz ........................................ F 30

ALL GOOD PRESENTS

The Revivalists w/ Gedeon Luke and The People ............................................... Sa 31

NOVEMBER Youth Lagoon w/ Moon King ....................................................................................... Su 1 The Districts w/ Lady Lamb & Sun Club ..................................................................... M 2 U STREET MUSIC HALL PRESENTS Lido w/ Tunji Ige ............................................................................................................ Tu 3 Parov Stelar .................................................................................................................... W 4 U STREET MUSIC HALL PRESENTS Gorgon City w/ Kidnap Kid & Waze and Odyssey ................................................... Th 5 Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. w/ Brothertiger Early Show! 6pm Doors ..........................F 6 U STREET MUSIC HALL PRESENTS Bakermat w/ Eau Claire Late Show! 10pm Doors .....................................................F 6 GWAR w/ Born of Osiris & Battlecross ......................................................................... M 9 RAC w/ Big Data • Filous • Pink Feathers ................................................................ Tu 10

EL VY (feat. Matt Berninger of The National and

James Bay w/ Frances ..................................................................................NOVEMBER 14 ROCKSTAR ENERGY DRINK PRESENTS

All Time Low & Sleeping With Sirens w/ Neck Deep ... NOVEMBER 16

JOURNEYS PRESENTS

Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness & New Politics

w/ The Griswolds & Lolo........................................................................................ NOVEMBER 17

City and Colour w/ Bahamas ..................................................................... DECEMBER 11 2135 Queens Chapel Rd. NE • Ticketmaster

DAR Constitution Hall • Washington D.C.

Glen Hansard w/ Richard Thompson .............................. NOVEMBER 28 WILCO w/ Steve Gunn.....................................................................................FEBRUARY 7

Brent Knopf of Ramona Falls & Menomena) w/ Flock of Dimes........................... W 11

Ticketmaster

Rachael Yamagata w/ My Name is You .................................................................. Tu 10 Wild Child w/ Royal Canoe ........................................................................................... F 13 ALL GOOD PRESENTS

Yonder Mountain String Band

w/ Henhouse Prowlers Early Show! 5pm Doors ...................................................... Sa 14

Mixtape: Alternative Dance Party Late Show! 11pm Doors .............................. Sa 14 NOV 15 SOLD OUT! SECOND NIGHT

ADDED!

Shakey Graves w/ Those Darlins ...............................................................................M 16 Chris Robinson Brotherhood ................................................................................ Tu 17

1215 U Street NW

Washington, D.C.

Richard Cheese & Lounge Against the Machine ...................OCTOBER 30 AEG LIVE PRESENTS

ALL GOOD PRESENTS

Jim Jefferies Late Show! 10pm Doors .....................................................NOVEMBER 7 Accordion Virtuosi of Russia ............................................................NOVEMBER 8

U STREET MUSIC HALL PRESENTS

JUST JOKES USA PRESENTS HOODLARIOUS STARRING

The Wood Brothers .................................................................................................. W 18 Azealia Banks ................................................................................................................ F 20 Slow Magic & Giraffage w/ Daktyl ....................................................................... Sa 21 Lights & The Mowgli’s ............................................................................................. Su 22 Ryn Weaver w/ ASTR & HOYCHILD ............................................................................M 23 The English Beat ......................................................................................................... W 25 STEEZ PROMO PRESENTS

Brillz w/ Party Favor • Ghastly • Willy Joy .............................................................. F 27

ALL GOOD PRESENTS

Keller Williams’ Thanksforgrassgiving featuring Larry Keel, Jason Carter, Cody Kilby, Travis Book & Chris Pandolfi, with Cabinet ... Sa 28

DEC 18 SOLD OUT!

SURPRISE! AT THE CLUB!

December 17

ST. PAUL AND THE BROKEN BONES w/ Seratones ...............................................................................................DECEMBER 30 with special guests Trouble Funk .................................................... NEW YEAR’S EVE!

9:30 CUPCAKES

Including The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Cinema Show and more! ...........NOVEMBER 13

DL Hughley, Tony Roberts, Timmy Hall, and Hope Flood ..NOVEMBER 15

Dave Rawlings Machine .................................................................... NOVEMBER 19 LIZT ALFONSO DANCE CUBA PRESENTS

Cuba Vibra! ................................................................................................DECEMBER 1 Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings .....................................................DECEMBER 8 Joanna Newsom w/ Alela Diane & Ryan Francesconi ........................... DECEMBER 10 FOALS w/ Circa Waves................................................................................. DECEMBER 16 A JOHNNYSWIM Christmas ............................................................ DECEMBER 17 STORY DISTRICT PRESENTS

Thievery Corporation

MANY MORE SHOWS ON SALE!

Steve Hackett From ACOLYTE to WOLFLIGHT plus Genesis Classics (1970-1977)

930.com

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

Top Shelf ........................................................................................................JANUARY 9

AEG PRESENTS

R5 ...................................................................................................................FEBRUARY 23 Natalia Lafourcade All 10/22 tickets will be honored. .............................. MARCH 24 • thelincolndc.com •

U Street (Green/Yellow) stop across the street!

9:30 CLUB PRESENTS AT U STREET MUSIC HALL Autre Ne Veut w/ GEMS & MAZED.F OCT 23 IAMX .................................................... Th 29 Mikky Ekko w/ Transviolet ................. Sa 24 Raury ..................................................... F 30 Green River Ordinance Chad Valley & Keep Shelly in Athens w/ The Last Bison & Sean McConnell... Su 25

w/ Stranger Cat & Different Sleep ....... Sa 31

Strange Talk w/ Intergalactix ............. W 28 TOPS w/ Puro Instinct..................... M NOV 2 • Buy advance tickets at the 9:30 Club box office

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

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

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

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

36 OCTOBER 23, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

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

HAPPY HOUR DRINK PRICES

AFTER THE SHOW AT THE BACK BAR!

930.com

INER

60S-INSPIRED D Serving

EVERYTHING from BURGERS to BOOZY SHAKES

HAPPY HOUR:

$2 Tuesday $3 Thursday $4 Friday (ALL DRAFTS AND RAIL)

BRING YOUR TICKET AFTER ANY SHOW AT

CITYLIST Music

Friday Rock

Gypsy sally’s 3401 K St. NW. (202) 333-7700.

Tumbleweed Wanderers. 8:30 p.m. $14–$16. gypsysallys.com. lincoln TheaTre 1215 U St. NW. (202) 328-6000.

Joe Jackson. 6:30 p.m. $55–$75. thelincolndc.com. sonGbyrd Music house and record cafe 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. Witch Coast, Bless, Joy Buttons. 7 p.m. $10. songbyrddc.com.

Villain & sainT 7141 Wisconsin Avenue, Bethesda. (240) 800-4700. Lisa Doll and the Rock ‘n’ Roll Romance. 9 p.m. $10–$12. villainandsaint.com.

Funk & R&B bossa bisTro 2463 18th St NW. 202-667-0088.

The Caribbean, Mariage Blanc, Mattress Financial.

10 p.m. $5. bossproject.com.

Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 Theater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2 Film . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43

SearCh LISTIngS aT waShIngTonCITYpaper.Com

CITY LIGHTS: FRIDAY

HAGOROMO Retiring from the New York City Ballet symbolically marks the end of a dancer’s career, and while most performers probably relish resting their joints and keeping their feet planted on the ground, many former NYCB performers remain professionally linked to the dance world. Wendy Whelan and Jock Soto, performing this weekend at American Dance Institute, are two such artists. Whelan retired in October 2014 after a 30-year career with the company but continues to debut new works around the world. Soto left the company in 2005, after 24 years, and teaches full time at the School of American Ballet.

At ADT, the former partners collaborate once again, this time on choreographer David Neumann’s Hagoromo, a work-in-progress adapted from a Japanese Noh drama about a poor fisherman and a fallen angel who connect on a stormy night. Described as a “movement-theater artist,” Neumann creates more experimental works than the classical ballets Whelan and Soto performed in New York, but Hagoromo will still showcase their immense skills in an environment blessedly more intimate than Lincoln Center. The performance begins at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at American Dance Institute, 1570 East Jefferson St., —Caroline Jones Rockville, Md. $20–$30. (855) 263-2623. americandance.org.

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

Bell Biv DeVoe. 7:30 p.m. $42.50. thehowardtheatre.com. u sTreeT Music hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 5881880. Autre Ne Veut. 7 p.m. $15. ustreetmusichall.com.

ElEctRonic 9:30 club 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Lotus, Pan Astral. 8 p.m. $25. 930.com.

Jazz

Club

aTlas perforMinG arTs cenTer 1333 H St. NE. (202) 399-7993. Ran Blake. 8 p.m. $20–$28. atlasarts.org.

FREE SHOT!

Mr. henry’s 601 Pennsylvania Ave. SE. (202) 5468412. Aaron L. Myers II. 8 p.m. Free. mrhenrysdc.com.

TO GET A

$15 for unlimited pumpkin pie, kolache, empanadas, and more.

Costume Contest with $500 first prize!

(Tickets: satellitepumpkinfest.eventbrite.com)

classical barns aT wolf Trap 1645 Trap Road, Vienna.

(703) 255-1900. Jonathan Biss. 7:30 p.m. $40. wolftrap.org.

Kennedy cenTer concerT hall 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. NSO Pops: Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers. 8 p.m. $45–$109. kennedy-center.org.

Kennedy cenTer MillenniuM sTaGe 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. IssaSonus Ensemble. 6 p.m.

Free. kennedy-center.org.

saturday Rock

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

blacK caT 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490.

Babes In Toyland. 9 p.m. $25. blackcatdc.com. fillMore silVer sprinG 8656 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. (301) 960-9999. Iration, The Green, The Movement, Hours Eastly. 7 p.m. $22.50. fillmoresilverspring.com.

rocK & roll hoTel 1353 H St. NE. (202) 388ROCK. Kylesa, Inter Arma, Indian Handcrafts, Irata. 7 p.m. $15–$18. rockandrollhoteldc.com. u sTreeT Music hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 5881880. Mikky Ekko. 7 p.m. $15. ustreetmusichall.com.

Funk & R&B howard TheaTre 620 T St. NW. (202) 803-2899.

Musiq Soulchild. 7:30 p.m. $37.50. thehowardtheatre.com.

Jazz blues alley 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Rudresh Mahanthappa. 8 p.m. & 10 p.m. $35. bluesalley.com.

Kennedy cenTer aTriuM 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. The Crossroads Club: Revive Music: Sarah Vaughan With Clifford Brown Reimagined. 8 p.m. & 10 p.m. $30. kennedy-center.org.

Folk

warner TheaTre 513 13th St. NW. (202) 7834000. Raheem DeVaughn, Leela James. 8 p.m. $43–$67.50. warnertheatre.com.

dc9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. Little May. 9 p.m. $12. dcnine.com.

ElEctRonic

WoRld

9:30 club 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Lotus, Pan Astral. 8 p.m. $25. 930.com.

Gw lisner audiToriuM 730 21st St. NW. (202) 994-6800. Mariza. 8 p.m. $45–$65. lisner.org.

washingtoncitypaper.com OCTOBER 23, 2015 37

sunday

Jazz

9:30 club 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Cold War Kids featuring Dearland Horns, Maudlin Strangers, Kinsey. 7 p.m. $30. 930.com.

WoRld

Rock

blacK caT 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. The Mezingers, mewithoutyou. 7:30 p.m. $20. blackcatdc.com. fillMore silVer sprinG 8656 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. (301) 960-9999. The Darkness. 8 p.m. $28.50. fillmoresilverspring.com.

blues alley 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Rudresh Mahanthappa. 8 p.m. & 10 p.m. $25. bluesalley.com.

bossa bisTro 2463 18th St NW. 202-667-0088.

Tosin and the Afro-Groove Revival. 9 p.m. $10. bossproject.com.

Hip-Hop The haMilTon 600 14th St. NW. (202) 787-1000.

Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth. 7:30 p.m. $20–$25. thehamiltondc.com.

rocK & roll hoTel 1353 H St. NE. (202) 388ROCK. Southern Culture on the Skids. 8 p.m. $15. rockandrollhoteldc.com.

Monday

u sTreeT Music hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 5881880. Green River Ordinance, The Last Bison, Sean McConnell. 7 p.m. $16. ustreetmusichall.com.

9:30 club 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Peaches. 7 p.m. $25. 930.com.

Funk & R&B

Folk

birchMere 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. Commodores. 7:30 p.m. $89.50. birchmere.com. howard TheaTre 620 T St. NW. (202) 803-2899.

Musiq Soulchild. 7:30 p.m. $37.50. thehowardtheatre.com.

ElEctRonic

lincoln TheaTre 1215 U St. NW. (202) 328-6000.

Josh Ritter and the Royal City Band. 6:30 p.m. $45. thelincolndc.com.

classical Kennedy cenTer Terrace TheaTer 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. David Aaron Carpenter,

CITY LIGHTS: SATURDAY

MIKKY EKKO There’s more to singer-songwriter Mikky Ekko than his breakout hit, “Stay,” a moody 2013 duet with Rihanna that immediately brought the vocalist born John Stephen Sudduth to the attention of casual music listeners. Not that the track is anything to dismiss: The song topped charts around the world and won the duo a Grammy soon after. But since then, Ekko has refined his brand of radio-ready pop, releasing his debut album, Time, in January with an array of fresh material from the bubbly “Smile” to the breathy, stark piano ballad “Mourning Doves.”

Collaborations with artists as diverse as David Guetta, Lil Wayne, Sam Smith, and Gwen Stefani further Ekko’s genre-blending style: He easily transitions from belting chintzy choral ballads in the vein of Ed Sheeran to experimenting with electro-pop and R&B elements. The Nashville-based artist offers a track for everyone, making his music a crowd-pleaser that can summon dance moves from concert-goers of all tastes. Mikky Ekko performs with Transviolet at 7 p.m. at U Street Music Hall, 1115 U St. NW. $15. (202) 588-1889. ustreetmusichall.com.

—Tatiana Cirisano

38 OCTOBER 23, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

washingtoncitypaper.com OCTOBER 23, 2015 39

CITY LIGHTS: SUNDAY

RESTORATIONS 1811 14TH ST NW

www.blackcatdc.com @blackcatdc OCTOBER SHOWS

FRI 23

FRI 23

JERMAINE FOWLER DARK & STORMY

DANCE / ELECTRO / RETRO DANCE PARTY W/ SHEA VAN HORN

SAT 24

SAT 24

BABES IN TOYLAND GAY//BASH!!

HALLOWEEN SHITSHOW DANCE PARTY / DRAG NIGHT

SUN 25

TUE 27

THE MENZINGERS MEWITHOUTYOU PIANOS BECOME THE TEETH RESTORATIONS

THE EX &

KEN VANDERMARK

WED 28 EVERYTHING

IS TERRIBLE!

FRI 30

EIGHTIES MAYHEM

SAT 31

THE 2015

HALLOWEEN DANCE PARTY COSTUMES ENCOURAGED

HALLOWEEN CIRCUS

MUSIC / BURLESQUE / VARIETY

EVERY WEEKEND AT 7PM

FRIDAY

TEN FORWARD

SATURDAY

Dr. Who A HAPPY HOUR HAPPY HOUR

1 STAR TREK:TNG EP. PER WEEK

ROMULAN ALE SPECIALS

1 EPISODE pER WEEK plus drink specials

NOW OPEN at 5pm M-F!

THU, OCT 22

OLD DOMINION

TWO SHOWS! 7 + 9:30 PM

JONATHAN BISS, PIANO

CHAMBER MUSIC AT THE BARNS

FRI, OCT 23

WILLIE NILE

JEFFERSON GRIZZARD

THU, OCT 29

CATHERINE RUSSELL FRI, OCT 30

SISTER SPARROW & THE DIRTY BIRDS WILD ADRIATIC

THU, NOV 5

MOUNTAIN HEART SUN, NOV 8

CALIFORNIA GUITAR TRIO WED, NOV 11

DEBBY BOONE THU, NOV 12

RED ROOM & LUCKY CAT PINBALL

Restorations is at its best when it’s nerding out. On last year’s excellent LP3, the band embraced its nerdy musical obsessions—anthemic punk, mid-’90s emo, shoegazey electronics, and too many guitar solos—resulting in nine gut-punching sing-alongs that wear their influences proudly on their sleeves. But underneath Restorations’ layers of musicianship and noise, frontman Jon Loudoun is something of a spiritual troubadour, singing about anxiety, hardships of life, and an insatiable wanderlust as one grows older. Those sentiments are perhaps best expressed on the album’s lead single, “Separate Songs”: “Imagine that focus in real life / Imagine going outside / Imagine not waiting for something to come along,” Loudoun raspily screams on the song’s explosive bridge. Since LP3 was released last year, the band pretty much been on the road non-stop—a true testament to the song’s message of “not waiting for something to come along.” Restorations is a band that practices what it preaches, and its transformative live shows might just inspire you to do the same. Restorations perform with the Menzingers, Mewithoutyou, and Pianos Become the Teeth at 7:30 p.m. at the Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW. $20. (202) 667-4490. blackcatdc.com. —Matt Cohen

AND MANY MORE!

Salome Chamber Orchestra, Ila Paliwal. 7 p.m. $45. kennedy-center.org.

tuesday Rock

9:30 club 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. UB40, Radio Riddler. 7 p.m. $40. 930.com. dc9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. David Ryan Harris, Melissa Polinar. 9 p.m. $12–$15. dcnine.com. rocK & roll hoTel 1353 H St. NE. (202) 388ROCK. The Bright Light Social Hour, SWIMM. 8 p.m. $15. rockandrollhoteldc.com.

Funk & R&B u sTreeT Music hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 5881880. AlunaGeorge, Fakear. 7 p.m. $22. ustreetmusichall.com.

TAKE METRO!

Wednesday

TO BUY TICKETS VISIT TICKETFLY.COM

9:30 club 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Garbage.

7 p.m. $40. 930.com.

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

40 OCTOBER 23, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

Rock

Gypsy sally’s 3401 K St. NW. (202) 333-7700.

McLovins, the Southern Belles. 9 p.m. $10–$12. gypsysallys.com. u sTreeT Music hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1880. Strange Talk, Intergalactix. 7 p.m. $16. ustreetmusichall.com.

WoRld bossa bisTro 2463 18th St NW. 202-667-0088.

La Internacional Sonora Balkanera. 10 p.m. $10. bossproject.com.

classical Kennedy cenTer concerT hall 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. Evgeny Kissin. 8 p.m. $45–$135. kennedy-center.org.

thursday Rock

9:30 club 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Garbage.

7 p.m. $40. 930.com. sonGbyrd Music house and record cafe 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. Teen Mom, BRNDA. 7 p.m. $10. songbyrddc.com.

UPTOWN BLUES

HAPPY HOUR M-F • 4-8 1/2 Priced APPetizers Fri. Oct. 23 Swamp KeeperS Band Sat. Oct. 24 Bruce ewan Fri. Oct. 30 T.B.a.

Bg & Sat. Oct. 31 Halloween parTy w/ THe moJo HandS

STill STanding Sat. Nov. 7 Big Boy liTTle Band Fri. Nov. 6

Sundays miKe FlaHerTy’S

dixieland direcT Jazz Band

CITY LIGHTS: MONDAY

DAVID GREENE

Before Amtrak started a writers-in-residence program, NPR’s David Greene took a journey on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. From the seat of a train, and from small villages, Greene’s latest book, Midnight in Siberia, found life. As he traveled from town to town and talked with everyone from babushkas to carpet-dealers to inn keepers, Greene collected the voices living in the isolated landscape. In those voices, you can hear frustration with bureaucracy, inequality, and military life. Criticisms of Putin’s Russia don’t come from posh Moscow cafés but the streets hundreds of miles away. Greene’s day job as one of the hosts of “Morning Edition” means he brings listeners closer to voices like these on a daily basis. But in Midnight in Serbia, stories aren’t limited to a threeminute audio segment. Greene’s conversations speak for themselves and now, you’ll have a chance to hear them too. David Greene reads at 6:30 p.m. at Kramerbooks, 1517 Connecticut Ave. NW. Free. (202) 387-3825. kramers.com.

—Jordan-Marie Smith u sTreeT Music hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 5881880. IAMX. 7 p.m. $25. ustreetmusichall.com.

ElEctRonic Gypsy sally’s 3401 K St. NW. (202) 333-7700.

ELM, Tweed, Eminence Ensemble. 8 p.m. $12. gypsysallys.com.

Jazz blues alley 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. John Pizzarelli. 8 p.m. & 10 p.m. $40-$45. bluesalley.com.

3000 Connecticut Avenue, NW (across from the National Zoo)

202-232-4225 zoobardc.com

Thursday, October 22

HALL WILLIAMS BAND Friday, October 23

LISA DOLL & THE ROCK N ROLL ROMANCE Saturday, October 24 - 40 THIEVES Wednesday, October 28

OPEN MIC NIGHT hosted by Brian Weber Thursday, October 29

COLONEL JOSH AND THE HONKEY TONK HEROES, CHUTE AND MARZY MADDOX Friday, October 30 - BROADSOUND Saturday, October 31

THE DEAD WILL RISE AGAIN Rex Foundation event & costume contest: ON THE BUS, BEGGARS TOMB, COMIC BOOK COLORS & BLACK MUDDY RIVER BAND Monday, November 2

WAKE THE SUN

WoRld birchMere 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. Natalie MacMaster, Donnell Leahy.

7:30 p.m. $39.50. birchmere.com.

W W W. V I L L A I N A N D SA I N T. C O M washingtoncitypaper.com OCTOBER 23, 2015 41

TH 22 ART SHERROD JR

FRIDAY OCTOBER 23

TITO PUENTE JR & HIS ORCHESTRA S 25

MARIA MULDAUR “WAY PAST MIDNIGHT”

M 26 DARYL DAVIS PRESENTS ROBBIN KAPSALIS

TUESDAY OCTOBER 27

THE JAM

GARY GRAINGER & FRIENDS W 28 MARCH FOURTH! MARCHING BAND

THRILLER THURSDAY OCTOBER 29 MICHAEL LIVE PROJECT PRESENTS A MICHAEL JACKSON TRIBUTE

CITY LIGHTS: TUESDAY

IAN SVENONIUS Censor it all. Film, TV, music, politics, books, news, art—censor all of it. That’s the guiding principle of local radical punk Ian Svenonius’ latest essay collection, Censorship Now!! Wait a minute, has Spiv—the radical frontman of establishment-burning bands like Nation of Ulysses and Chain & The Gang—gone right-wing on us? Hardly. As he argues, there is no “underground” anymore. Corporations and big businesses have not only accepted boundary-pushing art but commodified and branded it so much that nothing can really be seen as controversial anymore. Thus, if you start censoring art again, it puts the sociopolitical power back in the hands of those underground artists. Spiv could really be onto something here, or he could just be talking out of his ass. Only one way to find out: Go see him talk about his new book at Busboys & Poets and decide for yourself.

Ian Svenonius reads at 6:30 p.m. at Busboys and Poets 14th & V, 2021 14th St. NW. Free.

—Matt Cohen (202) 387-7638. busboysandpoets.com.

bossa bisTro 2463 18th St NW. 202-667-0088.

Cissa Paz and Friends, the Brazilian Wax Job, Neville C. 10 p.m. $5. bossproject.com.

with a new translation by acclaimed poet Anne Carson. Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater. 2700 F St. NW. To Oct. 25. $79–$185. (202) 467-4600. kennedy-center.org.

classical

aVenue Q Constellation’s actors break out their puppetry skills in this lively musical about a young college graduate and the eccentric monsters, humans, and friends he makes in his new neighborhood. Allison Arkell Stockman directs this production written by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx. Constellation Theatre at Source. 1835 14th St. NW. To Nov. 22. $20–$45. (202) 204-7741. constellationtheatre.org.

Kennedy cenTer concerT hall 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. National Symphony Orchestra, Lang Lang. 7 p.m. $25–$99. kennedy-center.org.

theater

‘capers Anu Yadav stars in this one-woman show inspired by stories she heard from residents of D.C.’s Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg public housing projects as they protested the demolition of their neighborhood. Yadav and director Patrick Crowley first presented the play in 2004; now, 10 years later, they look back at how the city has changed in the past decade. Forum Theatre at Silver Spring Black Box Theatre. 8641 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. To Oct. 23. $30–$35. (240) 644-1390. forum-theatre.org.

7719 Wisconsin Ave., Bethesda, MD (240) 330-4500

alice in wonderland Follow Alice down the rabbit hole and experience this darker take on Lewis Carroll’s loopy tale featuring the Queen of Hearts, the Mad Hatter, and the Cheshire Cat. The production, presented as part of the Women’s Voices Theater Festival, is directed by Paata Tsikurishvili and choreographed by Irina Tsikurishvili. Synetic Theater at Crystal City. 1800 South Bell St., Arlington. To Nov. 8. $15–$70. (800) 494-8497. synetictheater.org.

Two Blocks from Bethesda Metro/Red Line Free Parking on Weekends

anTiGone Award-winning actress Juliette Binoche stars in this ancient drama about a strong woman who is willing to do anything to give her brother a proper burial. This contemporary production comes

F 30

HALLOWEEN HOWL COSTUME CONTEST

SA 31 THE VI-KINGS COSTUME CONTEST

42 OCTOBER 23, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

caKe off Sherri L. Edelen stars in this new play about a bake off with a one million dollar prize and the tough competitors aiming to take home the dough. Expect a production full of flour, sugar, and bitter batter battles. Signature Theatre. 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. To Nov. 22. $40–$96. (703) 8209771. signature-theatre.org. erMa boMbecK: aT wiT’s end Dramatists Allison and Margaret Engel return to Arena Stage after presenting Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins in 2012 with this look at mid-20th century humorist, newspaper columnist, and feminist. David Esbjornson directs this one-woman show starring Barbara Chisholm. Arena Stage. 1101 6th St. SW. To Nov. 8. $55–$90. (202) 488-3300. arenastage.org.

GirlsTar Part reality competition, part fairy tale, this musical focuses on the lengths people will go to for fame. When a popular record producer transforms her long lost niece into an international pop star through some unconventional means, they’re forced to consider the limits of success and how far they’re both willing to go. Signature Theatre. 4200

CITY LIGHTS: WEDNESDAY

$10 BURGER & BEER MON-FRI 4 P M -7 P M

JAY FARRAR Starting in 1998, Wilco and Billy Bragg created a picture of the American West by setting the forgotten lyrics of Woody Guthrie to music on the Mermaid Avenue albums. Two decades later, Jay Farrar, Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy’s former bandmate in Uncle Tupelo, crafted a different image of California when recording the soundtrack for the Jack Kerouac documentary One Fast Move or I’m Gone. While Tweedy has gone on to experiment with a variety of rock traditions, Farrar remains rooted in the alt-country world, both as a solo artist and with his group Son Volt. Sad and sweet, his songs tell of aimless nights on the road and pause to consider what might have been. When he takes the stage at the Birchmere, Farrar performs the lushly instrumented tracks from Son Volt’s first album, Trace: Among them “Out of the Picture,” a delicate tale of loss, and the slightly grungier “Drown.” Jay Farrar performs with Holy Suns at 7:30 p.m. at the Birchmere, 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria. $29.50. (703) 549-7500. thebirchmere.com. —Caroline Jones

$3 PBR & NATTY BOH ALL DAY EVERY DAY

JUST ANNOUNCED! R ED SKINS AWAY GAME WAT CH PA RTY EVERY SUNDAY AWAY GAME

600 beers from around the world

Downstairs: good food, great beer: $3 PBR & Natty Boh’s all day every day

WITH THE FIRST LADIES OF FOOTBALL

FREE TO ENTER! DRINK + FOOD SPECIALS +

*all shows 21+

H O M E G A M E T I C K E T G I V E AW AY S !

FRI OCTOBER 23RD

THURS, OCTOBER 22ND

WHUR 96.3 FM PRESENTS:

SAT OCT 24TH & SUN OCT 25TH

DOORS AT 630PM SHOW AT 7PM

MUSIQ SOULCHILD MON OCTOBER 26TH

AWKWARD SEX IN THE CITY

UNDERGROUND COMEDY

BELL BIV DEVOE 2 NIGHTS OF

FRI, OCTOBER 23RD

AN EVENING WITH DAVID DUCHOVNY

DOORS AT 6PM SHOW AT 8PM S AT, O C T O B E R 2 4 T H

TUE OCTOBER 27TH

CORI DIALS PRESENTS

BIG K.R.I.T.

FRI OCTOBER 30TH

GIN BLOSSOMS

DOORS AT 8PM SHOW AT 10PM

TUE NOVEMBER 3RD

HOPE OPERA PRESENTS A NEW HOPE

SUN, OCTOBER 25TH

JILL NEWMAN PRODUCTIONS & PM7 ENTERTAINMENT PRESENTS

PAUL MOONEY & DICK GREGORY Campbell Ave., Arlington. To Nov. 15. $40–$96.

(703) 820-9771. signature-theatre.org.

ater. 2700 F St. NW. To Oct. 24. $49. (202) 467-4600. kennedy-center.org.

The MaGic Tree A lonely man and an equally lonely woman meet on a stormy night in an abandoned home and immediately form a connection.

But as soon as things take a turn for the romantic, other factors come in to drive them apart. Matthew J. Keenan and Colin Smith direct Ursula Rani Sharma’s play as part of the Women’s Voices Theater Festival. Keegan Theatre at Church Street Theater.

1742 Church St. NW. To Nov. 13. $25–$36. (703) 892-0202. keegantheatre.com.

sMarTphones Two couples addicted to revealing their every thought on social media begin to lose their cool while trapped on the estate of an eccentric friend in this absurdist play by Emilio Williams.

Flashpoint Mead Theatre Lab. 916 G St. NW. To Nov. 15. $20–$40. (202) 315-1306. culturaldc.org.

The niGhT aliVe A man living in Dublin is content living a lonely life but finds hope when he is able to help a woman who’s been beaten recover in his tiny room. Katie deBuys and Edward Gero star in this new play by Irish author Conor McPherson. Round House Theatre Bethesda. 4545 East-West Highway, Bethesda. To Nov. 13. $36–$61. (240) 644-1100. roundhousetheatre.org. saloMé Adaptor and director Yaël Farber presents this new production chronicling the story of the princess who begged for the head of John the Baptist on a platter and takes back ownership of her body. Presented as part of the Women’s Voices Theater Festival. Lansburgh Theatre. 450 7th St. NW. To Nov. 8. $20–$108. (202) 547-1122. shakespearetheatre.org. sancho: an acT of reMeMbrance Presented as part of the Kennedy Center’s World Stages initiative, this play explores the life of Charles Ignatius Sancho, the first black man to vote in Great Britain who also worked as an actor and musician at the height of the British slave trade. Kennedy Center Terrace The-

winners and losers Two friends engage in lively debates about whether certain cultural icons (Kanye, the Berlin Wall, goat cheese) are winners or losers, a casual game that turns serious as their discussion topics begin to touch on privilege and class issues. Canadian performers James Long & Marcus Youssef star in this production they also created.

Woolly Mammoth Theatre. 641 D St. NW. To Nov. 22. $35–$68. (202) 393-3939. woollymammoth.net. world builders Two schizophrenia patients interact while participating in a clinical trial and fall in love while they fight to hold on to the fantasy worlds they’ve come to know in Johnna Adams’ play about unconventional romance and the lengths we’ll go to for love. Forum Theatre at Silver Spring Black Box Theatre. 8641 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. To Nov. 21. $30–$35. (240) 644-1390. forum-theatre.org.

FilM

beasTs of no naTion Idris Elba stars in this haunting film about a child soldier growing up among West African rebels. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information) The Milgram obedience expern experiMenTer iment gets the big screen treatment in this

TRIVIA EVERY M O N D AY & W E D N E S D AY

DOORS AT 7PM SHOW AT 8PM

ONE NIGHT ONLY!

PRODUCED BY JILL NEWMAN PRODUCTIONS

MON, OCTOBER 26TH

THU NOVEMBER 5TH

DISTRICT TRIVIA

TERRI LYNE CARRINGTON'S MOSAIC PROJECT

STARTS AT 730PM

FT. VALERIE SIMPSON & JAGUAR WRIGHT

TUES, OCTOBER 27TH

FRI NOVEMBER 6TH

LAST RESORT COMEDY

DEAFHEAVEN TRIBULATION | ENVY

DOORS AT 8PM SHOW AT 830PM

SAT NOVEMBER 7TH STEPHANIE MILLS

WED, OCTOBER 28TH

DISTRICT TRIVIA

SUN NOVEMBER 8TH SEVYN STREETER MON NOVEMBER 9TH MINUS THE BEAR

STARTS AT 730PM

THURS, OCTOBER 29TH

UNDERGROUND

COMEDY

O'BROTHER | AERO FLYNN

DOORS AT 630PM SHOW AT 7PM

TUE NOVEMBER 10TH AN EVENING WITH

FRI, OCTOBER 30TH

ANDERSONPONTY BAND

BLANCHE BOUDOIR

PRESENTS

W/ JON ANDERSON & JEAN LUC PONTY

BUY TICKETS AT THE BOX OFFICE OR ONLINE AT THEHOWARDTHEATRE.COM 202-803-2899

DOORS AT 8PM SHOW AT 10PM 1523 22nd St NW – Washington, DC 20037 (202) 293-1887 - www.bierbarondc.com @bierbarondc.com for news and events

washingtoncitypaper.com OCTOBER 23, 2015 43

UNCANNILY BEAUTIFUL.

“

LIVE

THRILLINGLY REFLECTIVE.”

UPCOMING PERFORMANCES

GIANT PANDA GUERILLA DUB SQUAD

– DAVID EDELSTEIN, NEW YORK MAGAZINE

Adventurous in form and thought, not just in subject.”

“

W/ THE SIMPKIN PROJECT

AND FEELFREE

THURSDAY OCT

22

– MANOHLA DARGIS, THE NEW YORK TIMES

THE HAMILTON LIVE &

Official selection

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL

ALL GOOD PRESENT:

An Evening With

LEFTOVER AMERICAN AQUARIUM W/ CHRISTIAN LOPEZ BAND WED, OCT 28

AN EVENING WITH

PORTLAND CELLO PROJECT FRI, OCT 30

TIM O’BRIEN W/ OLD MAN LUEDECKE NEWMYER FLYER PRESENTS:

FREE IN THE LOFT

THE MINI HALLOWEEN HOWL

A MICHAEL ALMEREYDA FILM PETER SARSGA ARD

W INONA RY DE R

EXPERIMENTER

SUN, NOV 1

AN EVENING WITH BRASS-A-HOLICS

THE STANLEY MILGR AM STORY

STARTS FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23 THEHAMILTONDC.COM

magpictures.com/experimenter

HHHH ( H I G H E S T R AT I N G )

“ONE OF THE FINEST FILMS ABOUT JOURNALISM SINCE ‘ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN.’” -Rex Reed, NEW YORK OBSERVER

Cate Blanchett

Robert Redford

Topher Grace

Elisabeth Moss

Truth

And

Dennis Quaid

“A POTENT CINEMATIC PROVOCATION.” -Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE screenplay by

paper.com for venue information) Taxi Jafar Panahi wrote, directed, and stars in this film about a Tehran taxi driver and the customers

franchise, a family is traumatized when their new home appears to be possessed by supernatural entities. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information)

who confide in him. Meant to look like a documen-

rooM Brie Larson stars as Joy Newsome, an abused woman trapped by a mad man in a garden shed in this dark drama adapted from the acclaimed novel by Emma Donoghue. As she comes to terms with her need to escape, Joy must make a decision that benefits both her and her son. Directed

by Lenny Abrahamson. (See washingtoncitypaper. com for venue information)

ingtoncitypaper.com for venue information)

n

sTeVe Jobs Michael Fassbender stars as the enigmatic founder of Apple in this biopic that co-stars

tary, Panahi filmed on the Iranian streets, openly defying his 20-year ban on filmmaking. (See wash-

TruTh The controversy about George W. n Bush’s National Guard experience and Dan Rather’s reporting on it gets dramatized in this new film directed by James Vanderbilt. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information)

Film clips are written by Caroline Jones.

ASHLEY MONROE

25

FRI, OCT 23

SAT, OCT 31

paranorMal acTiViTy: The GhosT diMenn sion In the fifth installment of this horror

Kate Winslet and Seth Rogen. (See washingtoncity-

CITY LIGHTS: THURSDAY

SALMON

SUNDAY OCT

drama starring Peter Sarsgaard as the famed social psychologist and Winona Ryder as his wife. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information)

JAMESVANDERBILT basedthe bookon “TRUTHANDDUTY:THEPRESS,THEPRESIDENT,ANDTHEPRIVILEGEOFPOWER” by MARYMAPES directed

by JAMESVANDERBILT

WWW.SONYCLASSICS.COM

DC BETHESDA FAIRFAX FAIRFAX STARTS FRIDAY WASHINGTON, Landmark’s ArcLight Angelika Cinema Arts E Street Cinema Bethesda at Mosaic OCTOBER 23 (202) 783-9494 (301) 365-0213 (571) 512-3301 Theatre (703) 978-6991

VIEW THE TRAILER AT WWW.TRUTH-FILM.COM

44 OCTOBER 23, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

Tennessee-born country singer Ashley Monroe frequently lends her sweet drawl to slow-tempoed, almost folky songs about women on the edge dealing with burdensome emotional issues. On her latest album, The Blade, she looks at both the hope and desolation found in relationships. While she promises to lift a loved one up on “Weight of the Load,” she also chronicles the decision to end a romance on “Bombshell” and questions her own place in the world on the waltz-tempoed “If the Devil Don’t Want Me” with the stinging follow-up line “where the hell do I go.” Monroe isn’t all minor-key catharsis over pedal steel guitar though. All three of her albums feature a few poppier tracks, and Monroe also rocks out, honky-tonk style, as a member of the Pistol Annies, a girl group featuring Angaleena Presley and Miranda Lambert. Musically rooted in guitar and fiddle traditionalism but not stuck in the past, Monroe may sound best here when she weaves somber lyrics into the upbeat countrypolitan pop of “If Love Was Fair.”

Ashley Monroe performs at 8 p.m. at Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, 600 I St. NW. $22–$25.

—Steve Kiviat (202) 408-3100. sixthandi.org.

NOW OPEN! 807 V Street NW, between 8th & 9th Streets NW, next door to the 9:30 Club, Washington, DC 20001

NOW PLAYING

Enjoy Drinks, a Movie, or Both!

Washington’s hottest new theatre and lounge, Atlantic Plumbing Cinema, is now open. Located in the U Street Corridor, the theatre features a full bar with food selections, six auditoriums with oversized, plush leather seats, advance reserved seating and automated ticketing kiosks.

BETHESDA ROW CINEMA 7235 Woodmont Ave • Bethesda, MD 20814 • (301) 652-7273 E STREET CINEMA 555 11th Street NW • Washington, DC 20004 • (202) 783-9494 WEST END CINEMA 2301 M Street NW • Washington, DC 20037 • (202) 534-1907

Gift Cards Available at the Box Office or Online store.landmarktheatres.com landmarktheatres.com

For Email Updates Join Our Mailing List filmclub.landmarktheatres.com

washingtoncitypaper.com OCTOBER 23, 2015 45

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PARTICIPANTS WANTED FOR RESEARCH STUDY Young men & women are wanted for a study on health-related behaviors. Participants must be ages 18-20. Earn up to $200 if eligible! Visit http://depts.washington.edu/uwepic/ or email Project EPIC at UWepic@uw.edu for more information.

General AIRLINE CAREERS begin here – Get started by training as FAA certifi ed Aviation Technician. Financial aid for qualifi ed students.

Job placement assistance. Call Aviation Institute of Maintenance 800-725-1563

Health Care/Medical/ Dental Dentists, F/T needed to work in inner city DC serving large Medicaid population for MD Dental Center PC. Will work at multiple locations of employer in DC, at homeless shelters & mobile dental service van. Some weekend work. Trav req’d between employer’s offi ce locations in DC. Must have D.D.S. or for deg equiv; must have full & unrestricted dental license in D.C. Reply by mail to Dr. Vikas Arora, MD Dental Center, PC, 777 H Street, NE, Washington, DC 20018.

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Internships The LeadingAge communications team is looking for a digital communications (social media) intern to help us engage audiences via social media. We seek someone who can create conversations, and engage our followers. This paid internship offers a fl exible schedule and it may continue for up to 240 hours. Requires related education; one or more years as a social media power user; or equivalent combination of education and experience. www.LeadingAge.org LeadingAge provides a dynamic and collegial work environment; and a Woodley-Park Zoo Metro location: 2519 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20008 EOE M/F/Disabled/Veterans Please submit your resume online at http://www.leading ag e.org / Wor king _ A t _ LeadingAge.aspx through our “Digital Communications (Social Media) Intern” vacancy link. Principals only and no phone calls please.

Miscellaneous Managing Director in Washington, DC sought by Efiia Consulting LLC, F/T, to maintain detailed proj sched, track IT proj, incl status risk issues & provide meeting logistics & documentation for Integrated Project Teams. Reqs Bach or frgn equiv in Bus, Mgnt, Econ or rel fl d +5 yr exp as project manager. M-F, after-hrs on-call req’d.

Up to 20% trav req’d btwn US, UK, CA, & Australia. Mail resume to HR Manager @ 734 15th St NW, Ste 1200, Washington, DC 20005.

Producer, The Agenda with Ari Rabin-Havt at SiriusXM Radio: Producer for The Agenda with Ari Rabin-Havt, a national daily political talk show focused on progressive politics and Beltway intrigue.

May be assigned to more than one program and perform slightly different functions across programs.

Apply at : https://careers-siriusx m.icims.com / jobs/ 10 9 81/ producer%2c-the-agenda-withari-rabin-havt/job

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Across 1 Home run hit 6 Historical stretch 10 Soup with soy cubes 14 Columbus’ caravel 15 Knick Anthony’s nickname 16 In the mouth 17 Website with the threads “What to look for in a funeral home?” and “Is there life after death?”

19 Ratted (on) 20 Gems on Precious?

22 One who knows every word on every album 25 ___ feeling 26 “When I get my hands on you!”

27 Bayer painkiller 29 Warm up, as leftovers 32 Fancy style 36 Cerveza often served with a lime 38 Throw out there, as a simple-toanswer question 40 Ren Faire time 41 Undeclared earnings?

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23 Spanish KITCHEN ASST., SOUS CHEF, & KILL BED BUGS! Harris Bed KITCHEN COORDINATOR. MonFormula 1 racer Bug Killers/KIT Available: HardFri. 5AM-1PM. Must speak & un15 16 Fernando ___ ware Stores, Buy Online/Store: derstand English. 202-726-0053, homedepot.com foodfirstdc@gmail.com.

24 Butterflies 19 28 Entertainer Cars/Trucks/SUVs Salon whose work is 21 Cash For Cars Any Car/Truck.

Majesty Barber Hair Studio in never seen Running or not! Top dollar paid.

Hyattsville seeks licensed BarWe come to you. Call for Instant 26 30 Irrational Man bers, Stylists, Braiders, Make Up Offer: 1-888-420-3808 www.

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2 chairs for booth rent or for comOut with the old, 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 31 Star Wars: The mission.

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Force Awakens Post your listing 38 39 40 OutParlour withSalon theisold, In Singers http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/ X-Wing pilot looking for wanted 2 sing in choir Washington Stylists. and dedicated premiere of ecclectic Gospel with theFunnew Postto the 4 with ___ Dameron City Paper 42 43 craft a must. Education and Benemusical written by David Griffi ths.

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Event is December 5 at 5:30pm athttp://www.washingt19th Street Baptist. Email: Dathreateningly 46 Washington City oncitypaper.com/ vid@journeytoworship.org Financial Services 34 Group of Moving? Find A Paper Classifieds 49 50 51 Gifted Drummer needed for top battleships Helping Hand Today Are you in BIG trouble with the http://www.washingtoncitynotch Band. call Mik. 703-232IRS? Stop wage & bank levies, paper.com/ 35 Microscopic 4710 wwww.thebandeternity.com 54 55 56 liens & audits, unfiled tax returns, 37 Sharpshooter’s payroll issues, & resolve tax debt Upcoming Shows FAST. Call 844-753-1317 skill 60 61 62 D&A Presents 39 Big name in Moving & Hauling Indian Classical Instrumental 65 66 67 lighters and pens Music - Sitar & Tabla 42 Flapper costume With Two Maestros of India 70 piece http://www.washingtonPanditYOUR Sugoto Nag - Sitar FIND OUTLET. citypaper.com/ 43 From parts Pandit Subhankar Bannerjee 73 Out with the RELAX, Tabla UNWIND, elsewhere old, In with the (Also introducing Sneshesh and REPEAT CLASSIFIEDS 48 George W. Bush Archik on Sitar & Tabla) new Post your HEALTH/MIND, BODY Presidential 15, 2015, 4:30pm listing with 7 Country where Ronald of many & atNovember SPIRIT Center sch.

Jane E Lawton Community RecPROFESSIONAL LOCAL MOVERS the potato TCM flicks Washington http://www.washingtoncireation Center, Large Social Hall 50 Killer robots on www.novaexpressmovers.com FIND YOUR 4301 Willow Lane, Chevy Chase Gets licked typaper.com/ Cityoriginally Paper Doctor http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com / Who Green Movers. Local and out of Md 20815 came from OUTLET. RELAX, “... go on” state, residential and commercial.

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Events The Shoff Promotions Comic Book & Sports Card Show will be Saturday October 24 from 10am3pm at the Tysons Corner Virginia Crowne Plaza 1960 Chain Bridge Rd 22102 ( near the Metro Silver Line Tysons Corner stop )shoffpromotions.com The Ballroom will be full of dealers selling a wide assortment of Gold, Silver, Bronze & Modern Age Comic Books, Non Sports Cards including Magic etc , Hobby supplies too and Vintage LP Records PLUS Vintage to present day Baseball, Football, Basketball & Hockey sports cards & sports memorabilia Admission $3 but $1 off if you mention this ad and 18 and younger are FREE Info: shoffpromotions.com

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ELECTRONICS

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Round waffle “I got it, I got it” Blue hue Animal in headlights 72 Change for a Benjamin 73 Thing squeezed on a salad

Down 1 Blocking letters 2 Nintendo avatar 3 ___ Taylor (women’s clothing store) 4 It may have a point in the forest 5 Some fancy lamps 6 2015 Baseball Hall of Fame inductee John

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

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

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LAST WEEK: BLANK SPACE O L D S

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S O D A N E W E R H O N E

E R O S E Moving?JFind A RHelping E O N Today C E Hand I V I D U A L C N E S T S P E C R A R I T Y A R T H O F I T M A L E L S I N K S Out with the S A C C E S S old, In with the Z A K new PostJyour E U N listing with E W R L D R I D E Washington G I N G E City APaper S L O X E S

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Molly Marie Spillman: Each day I love you & your sparkling green eyes more than the day before. You’ve opened up my whole universe & I can’t imagine my life w/o you by my side. You’re an original: beautiful, thoughtful, sensitive, funny, clever, strong; Be just mine 4-ever?

Out with the old, In with the new Post Comic Book & Sports Card Showyour listing with Saturday October 24 from 10am3pm at the Tysons Corner VirginiaWashington City Crowne Plaza 1960 Chain Bridge Rd 22102 ( near the Metro SilverPaper Classifieds Line Tysons Corner stop ) Info: shoffpromotions.cm

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Out with the old, In with the new Post your listing with Washington City Paper Classifieds http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com / Fri & Sat, Oct. 23 & 24 at Midnight!

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Lost & Found

Backpack On the 28th of September my mum lost her backpack on the Blue Line, (direction Franconia-Springfi eld) station Arlington Cimetry, with camera and holiday-pictures. If you’ve found it...the pictures would mean a lot to her. You can contact me on balevelien@yahoo.com. Thank you!

Volunteer Services

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

Twitter: @wacdtf

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Pregnant? Thinking of Adoption? Talk with a caring agency specializing in matching Birthmothers with Families Nationwide. Living Expenses Paid. Call FINDAbby’s YOUROne OUTLET. 24/7 True Gift Adoptions.

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