Washington City Paper (Nov. 5, 2021)

CITYPAPER WASHINGTON

THE DISTRICT'S FREE WEEKLY SINCE 1981 VOLUME 41, NO. 12 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM NOV. 5–18, 2021

POLITICS: BLACK WOMEN BEST STUBBORN COUNCIL CHAIRMAN 4 FOOD: CITY PAPER ENROLLS IN PIZZA UNIVERSITY 16 ARTS: DOUG E. FRESH SALUTES CHUCK BROWN 18

Metr-Oh No

A numerical look at what’s right and what’s oh so wrong with WMATA

Vacuum Leaf Collection Program How to Prepare for Leaf Vacuum Collection: Scan here to view your collection date!

• Check the DPW website to confirm your area’s leaf collection dates; • Move vehicles from curb lanes to help ease the leaf vacuum collection process; • Rake leaves to the curbside or tree box at the front of the residence the Sunday before the scheduled leaf collection date; • Remove all cans, bottles, sticks, toys and debris from your piles of leaves—these items can damage equipment and prevent safe and proper collection;

For more information, please visit dpw.dc.gov/service/leaf-collection.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS COVER STORY 8 Metr-Oh No: A Blue Line derailment has highlighted deeper issues with the public transit system.

NEWS 4 Loose Lips: Mendelson’s attempt to block two Black women from the arts commission ends in an embarrassing defeat.

6 Not All Cats Work From Home: Meet the maladjusted cats who work in breweries, gardens, and grocery stores.

SPORTS 7 Kind of a Big Dill: Pickleball is growing quickly in the U.S. and in D.C.

FOOD 16 This Is How We Dough It: Did our food editor pass or fail at Pizza University in Beltsville?

ARTS 18 Oaxaca in the U.S. Opens With Pomp and Some Irony: The Mexican Cultural Institute hosts an exhibit that will take you to another era.

20 Leslie Pietrzyk Captures a Crisp D.C.: an interview with the author of the new book Admit This to No One 22 Film: Gittell on Finch 23 Music: Doug E. Fresh pays tribute to Chuck Brown

CITY LIGHTS 24 City Lights: Browse a pop-up gallery while sipping mezcal, work through some stuff with morgxn, and take in a dizzying array of photos spanning seven decades.

DIVERSIONS 21 Crossword 26 Savage Love 27 Classifieds On the cover: Illustration by Justin Johnson

Darrow Montgomery | 1600 block of Newton Street NW, October 20 Editorial

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washingtoncitypaper.com november 5, 2021 3

NEWS LOOSE LIPS

Jerk of Art Darrow Montgomery/File

D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson refused to hold a hearing for two arts commissioners he deems antagonistic. Then he took an embarrassing loss.

D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson

By Mitch Ryals @MitchRyals Nata lie Hopk inson a ppa r ently wasn’t acting right, so she was almost kicked off the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. The Howard University professor and co-founder of the #DontMuteDC movement has been waiting since May for a hearing on her renomination to the commission, which manages a nearly $40 million budget. D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson has the exclusive authority to schedule such a hearing. And he’s refused to do so.

In the six months that Hopkinson has been waiting, she hasn’t been shy about calling bullshit.

She and Mendelson have traded blows in government documents, news articles and Medium posts. Mendelson has referred to a “mess” within the commission, and though he hasn’t called her out by name, he has noted that the problems he sees seemed to show up right around the time she joined. “The problem is more likely about personalities than

substantive issues,” Mendelson declared in a June report on the confirmation of CAH Chair Reggie Van Lee. The “mess” was obvious to Hopkinson as well. But the problem, as she saw it, was inequitable arts funding. She was particularly concerned about the formula Mendelson wrote into law that set aside 28 percent of the commission’s grant budget for a cohort of mostly White-led arts organizations with budgets of more than $1 million. Those organizations in the National Capital Arts Cohort each received hundreds of thousands of grant dollars without applying through the competitive process that every other organization must go through.

Hopkinson and Cora Masters Barry have been among the most vocal critics of the commission’s historic inequities and of this specific carve-out, and helped to eliminate it this summer.

Mayor Muriel Bowser renominated Hopkinson and Barry to the commission, along with two other Black women: Gretchen Wharton and Kymber Lovett-Menkiti.

But Mendelson has only introduced a vote

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for Wharton and Lovett-Menkiti. Without Council action, Hopkinson and Barry’s nominations would have expired Nov. 3.

After Colby King raised the issue in his Oct. 31 Washington Post column, Mendelson released a public statement accusing Barry and Hopkinson of having “antagonized and alienated their colleagues, and not in a good way.” He quoted unnamed commission members who complained to him about both women using descriptions such as “bomb thrower,” “mean spirited,” and “bully.”

Commissioners told the chairman that one of the two women “cares not a whit about building a coalition.” “F*** White women” is another anonymous quote attached to one or both of the Black women. Mendelson’s statement isn’t clear about who the specific criticisms apply to.

Mendelson also accused Barry, the widow of Mayor-for-Life Marion Barry, of violating ethics and conflict of interest laws by voting on an arts commission grant for her nonprofit organization, Recreation Wish List

Committee.

A list of fiscal year 2021 grantees shows that Barry’s nonprofit received a $60,000 grant from the arts commission, and meeting minutes from Aug. 2020 show the grant awards passed unanimously.

Barry, who is the only paid employee of the nonprofit according to tax forms, did not respond to Loose Lips’ email seeking comment, but her spokesperson, Raymone Bain, forwarded an email from Van Lee that was sent to Mendelson Sunday evening. In it, Van Lee explains arts commissioners’ votes are “completely blind,” meaning commissioners can’t see names of grant applicants when they vote.

“To my knowledge, there has been no inappropriate involvement of any commissioner in voting on grant awards,” Van Lee wrote in the email.

Current and former commissioners tell LL that it has not been uncommon for arts commissioners to vote in favor of grants for organizations in which they’re involved.

During a press conference Monday morning, Mendelson declined to identify the anonymous commissioners he quoted or explain the context of their criticisms. Asked whether those criticisms could be appropriately aired out during a public hearing, the chairman said “I’d rather put this all behind us … than drag it out and amplify that controversy.”

The quotes don’t surprise arts commissioner Quanice Floyd considering the discourse on the commission.

“I know who would describe them as that.

It’s because they’re unsettled,” she says of the entrenched commissioners who were resistant to change.

Floyd, who is Black, acknowledges that discussions about race and equity that Barry and Hopkinson force among commissioners can get tense. But passion is often mistaken for anger, she says, noting that other commissioners have been just as nasty. “And nasty with no agenda,” she adds. “That’s the worst part about it.”

Hopkinson prefers not to engage in anonymous attacks.

“I would love to have a hearing, and if people have concerns about why I’ve advocated for equity, to have that all in the open,” she says. “To use his public office as a platform for slurs and insults against two professional women is unacceptable.”

For Benjamen Douglas, a former arts commission staffer, the quotes mirror the hostility he saw directed at Hopkinson and Barry.

He recalls former commission chair Kay Kendall and current deputy director David Markey questioning why grant funding should go toward supporting go-go music.

NEWS LOOSE LIPS Darrow Montgomery/File

Help Decide D.C.’s New Ward Boundaries!

Natalie Hopkinson “None of that was explicitly racist, but without a doubt overtly racist in terms of their lack of understanding and lack of willingness to understand,” Douglas says. “It was outright derision at the idea we should be supporting the District’s native music.”

In an email to LL, Kendall says Douglas’ description does not match her recollection.

“The Commission has always had a grant category for individual musicians, but after GoGo was named the official music of D.C., the Commission created a funding category just for GoGo musicians as a way to support and highlight that genre of music,” she writes.

Markey notes that CAH provided grants to support a go-go residency in schools and a grant to “engage middle school music teachers with professional development around a middle school [D.C. Public Schools] Go-Go cornerstone.” He denies that he opposed giving grant funding to support go-go music.

A t-L a rge C ou nci l memb er Rober t White successfully maneuvered to remove Hopkinson and Barry’s nominations out from under the Committee of the Whole, which Mendelson chairs, and bring them to the Council for a full vote.

“I’m very worried about the stereotype and double standard of the ‘angry Black woman,’” White told LL in an interview last week. “I’m not convinced that Cora or Natalie did or said anything different than men say or do, but that it’s seen as different particularly when it’s Black women. I’m not prepared for the city in any way to scapegoat two Black women doing work that is necessary.”

Confronted w it h White’s concer n, Mendelson fumed during his Monday morning presser. “Pull something out like that.

Pull a red flag out like that, wave it around,

but it’s not true,” the chairman bemoaned.

As of Monday, Mendelson was confident that White’s efforts to usurp his authority as chair of the Committee of the Whole would fail. But on Tuesday afternoon the Council voted 11-1-1, with Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh voting “present,” and Mendelson dissenting. Hopkinson’s and Barry’s nominations were ultimately approved in a separate 12-1 vote. Mendelson was the lone dissenter.

Mendelson said he believes Hopkinson and Barry’s continued positions on the CAH will hinder the progress the commission has made toward improving diversity and equity.

“I think they want to take a lot of credit for it,” he said. “I think the current chair of the commission deserves much of the credit and the commission as a whole deserves much of the credit.”

Van Lee doesn’t agree. In the email he sent to Mendelson Sunday evening, he “emphatically endorse[s]” Hopkinson and Barry’s renomination. He describes their participation in CAH meetings as “harmonious and collegial,” and writes that “their contribution on the CAH is of critical importance to me so as to not lose momentum or otherwise jeopardize” moving forward with recommendations from a commission task force focused on diversity and equity.

“Had Cora and Natalie never spoken up, we would have been doing the same thing we were doing, which was approving grants to the same institutions over and over again,” Floyd says.

Hopkinson, for her part, is dismayed by the whole ordeal, which she likened to a “middle school food fight.”

“I’m not a politician,” she says. “I’m floating above this.

Washington City Pape has been a part of you It’s time for redistricting! community for forty By law, D.C.’s 8 wards need to be roughly equal in population.

According to the 2020 Census, Ward 6 needs to shrink while Wards 7 & 8 need to grow!

Will you join our com by becoming a memb The Council has released 3 discussion maps for comment!

Go to DCredistricting.esriemcs.com and elissasilverman.com/redistricting to see the maps or draw your own to submit to the Council.

Submit Testimony by November 12:

Email your thoughts to redistricting@dccouncil.us or call us at 202.350.1521

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washingtoncitypaper.com november 5, 2021 5

DISTRICT LINE Michael Loria

Not All Cats Work From Home Meet a few of the Humane Rescue Alliance’s Blue Collar Cats

By Michael Loria As Thor Cheston remembers it, it happened in the middle of a Saturday. The weather was temperate and the taproom door at Right Proper Brewing Company in Brookland was open.

Cheston, the brewery co-owner saw Prima wander out, past the guests enjoying a pint and toward the street. He didn’t expect what happened next.

She dove straight into the bushes and, after a brief struggle, dragged out the body and laid it in front of the door. It was a rat, now dead.

Right Proper adopted the black-and-white cat in 2019 through Blue Collar Cats, a Humane Rescue Alliance program created in 2017 that pairs cats who aren’t suited for traditional adoption with spaces where they’ll have space to roam.

Most of them aren’t ideal candidates for traditional adoption because they get depressed in confinement or they’re scared of people.

“These cats were physically healthy,” says Erin Robinson, a former HRA program manager. “But [they] had no socialization with humans and would not themselves benefit from living inside with people. They hadn’t done it, they didn’t want it, they didn’t like it.” Living indoors was negatively impacting both their mental and physical health.

Releasing these cats outdoors isn’t an option either. They might try to return home and become disoriented; there are environmental hazards like traffic; or they might run into a “cat colony” that shares territory and doesn’t always welcome newcomers. HRA calls these “community cats.” Their notched ears indicate that they were trapped, neutered, and returned to the area

by HRA. Many Blue Collar Cats are former community cats who had to be rehomed because of construction or their feeder (a designated neighborhood resident who feeds them) moved.

Created for this niche cat population, the BCC program was inspired by barn cats, which are typically unsocialized but play an important role in their environment as pest deterrents.

With few barns in D.C., Blue Collar Cats felt more appropriate.“These guys do a job,” Robinson says. “These cats are like manual labor kitties.”

The goal is that, like Prima, they’ll kill any pests, or their smell will deter them.

Rue the cat helped the owners of Greenstreet Gardens with their rodent problem.

For those with rodent problems, the right cat can be a godsend. Before Rue arrived in 2018, Greenstreet Gardens in Alexandria was losing hundreds of dollars to mice chewing through seed bags. At first, operations manager Tim Williams worried Rue was a dud—the cat with a smushed face preferred loafing on cacti. Then she entered a phase where she caught a mouse daily. Afterward, any rodent problems became minimal. Today, you’ll find her lounging on the seed bags in triumph.

The experience isn’t always like that. Rossen Tsanov adopted Sam and Lucy in 2019 to help protect the garden he keeps in Eckington. But, unlike Rue, they were ineffectual, Tsanov realized one evening, when he saw some rats scare them away from their food. “The rats punked them,” he says. “It’s like you have a kid and they’re supposed to be the track champion and then they get dead last.” Partly, he blames himself for feeding the cats in the evening when rodents are active. He started feeding the cats less food earlier in the day and hasn’t seen the rats since.

“They figured out that there’s no constant supply of food,” he says.

Stacy Tannard, owner of Broad Branch Market in Chevy Chase, reached out to HRA last year after she found herself packing up her store every night like it was a pop-up, though she never saw more than one mouse at a time on the cameras. “Mice don’t jump into a loaf of bread and eat the whole thing,” she says. “They jump into every loaf of bread.” It was her first rodent problem in 13 years of business.

But by the time Mac and Cheese arrived, Tannard had already hired a professional and had the problem taken care of. HRA adoptions director Ashley Valm says there are fewer cats in the

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program today as the HRA has developed better relationships with community cat feeders and the behavioral team has improved its training. They also took in fewer cats this year. Pet advocates speculate that could change as eviction moratoriums are lifted.

The program is not currently taking applications. Previously, applicants would fill out a form online and then HRA representatives would reach out to confirm that the space would be appropriate for these cats. “We have these undersocialized cats that previously we had no outcome options for and now there are people climbing up the walls to get these cats,” Valm says. This is a good problem for a shelter to have, in her estimation, even if adopters don’t like to hear it. Similar programs are being developed at Montgomery County Animal Services and Adoption Center and Laurel Cats.

Although there’s little work at Broad Branch, Mac and Cheese now have a home in Chevy Chase. A brown tabby and a Russian blue, respectively, they stick to the basement where they have the run of the place. They can be hard to find and when found, they look at you as if you’re interrupting. Outcomes such as these—a home where the cats can thrive—are what the program aims for.

“We are not a store where you go to pick up a product to solve a problem for you,” Valm says. “We are an animal welfare organization.”

For employees, the cats can be a welcome addition. “[Rue’s] been a good outlet for the employees,” Williams says. “It’s relaxing to just interact with her.” She still prefers the outdoors but in the years that she’s been at Greenstreet, she has grown comfortable with employees to the point that they can pick her up, though she meows softly in protest.

For Tsanov, enjoying that relaxing presence, like he did growing up in Bulgaria, is part of what piqued his interest in the program. “Cats in the neighborhood bring calm, comfort,” he says. “I really like that and I missed it.” Today, Sam and Lucy are cherished neighborhood characters.

But it’s a gamble. “[The HRA] gave me the scenario,” Tsanov says. “Some of them could be more amicable and affectionate, others remain wild forever and you just keep your distance.” In this case, it turned out to be the former. Of the two, Lucy is friendlier, approaching visitors for pets while Sam watches wide-eyed from behind.

Sam and Lucy represent another program trend, which is that most cats end up with homeowners rather than at businesses. But when they arrived, some neighbors raised an eyebrow.

Moving the cats somewhere new entails keeping them confined for at least two weeks until they’re accustomed to the area, but unwitting neighbors called the cops. “People walking by see a giant cage with two cats inside for two weeks and you can imagine what they’re thinking,” Tsanov says.

Others remain skeptical of people, but the pandemic seems to have had some effect on Prima. She used to scarcely be seen during operating hours, but now she walks freely among groups of people, wandering the bar like she’s part employee, patron, and owner. “COVID has changed her,” says Bri, a bartender in the taproom. “It’s made her more social and a better cat.” She notes that children still cause her hair to stand on end.

Still, the scars she gave are hard to forget.

“She’s a killer,” Cheston says. “She’s good for three pets and then she’s done with you. It’s all a ploy to bring you in close and then she can eat your face.”

SPORTS

Kind of a Big Dill Kelyn Soong

Pickleball is one of the fastest-growing sports in the U.S., and D.C. residents have been part of the boom.

Clark Johnson and Lisa Jenkins at Turkey Thicket Recreation Center

By Kelyn Soong @KelynSoong Lisa Jenkins steps forward into the pickleball court, keeping her eyes locked on the bright yellow ball drifting over the net. Her paddle meets the ball, and Jenkins volleys it back to the other team. Thwack! Jenkins and her doubles partner, Clark Johnson, and their two opponents engage in a long rally—thwack! Thwack!

Thwack! Eventually they emerge with the point.

The two tap their paddles in celebration before Jenkins gets ready to serve.

It is just after 10 a.m. on a crisp October day at Turkey Thicket Recreation Center in Northeast.

Jenkins has been playing since 7:30, but she isn’t quite ready to leave. This is where the 60-yearold Hillcrest resident wants to be on Saturday mornings—playing pickleball for hours with friends. Jenkins, who is “happily retired,” smiles at the thought. She rarely competed in sports while growing up in D.C., but for the past two months she’s been playing pickleball, a sport she had never heard of until recently, once or twice a week.

“I’m loving it,” Jenkins says. “I’m making new friends and still being very active at age 60.”

Around the country, millions of others likely share the same sentiment. Pickleball, a racket sport played on a badminton-size court with two or four people, is one of the fastest-growing sports in the U.S., and D.C. residents have been a part of the boom. According to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association’s 2021 pickleball participation report, there was a 21.3 percent increase in

pickleball players from 2019 to 2020. On its website, USA Pickleball proudly cites the report’s findings that there were 4.2 million pickleball players in the U.S. last year.

The District’s Department of Parks and Recreation has noticed the trend. There are currently 34 outdoor pickleball courts in D.C., and DPR Director Delano Hunter tells City Paper in an email that the city “aims to have at least one outdoor court in every ward by spring 2022.” At Turkey Thicket, 12 pickleball courts share space with tennis courts, and four stand-alone pickleball courts were converted from mini youth tennis courts in 2019.

“Pickleball allows DPR to maximize on the very limited recreational space in the District and provide seniors to children an opportunity to stay active and have fun,” Hunter says.

Jenkins says she has reached out to DPR asking them to install pickleball courts closer to her home in Ward 7. In an email to City Paper, a DPR spokesperson lists Hillcrest Recreation Center as one of the locations that is scheduled to receive two pickleball courts that share space with the existing tennis courts.

“I’m hooked,” Jenkins says.

Ben Johns lives less than 10 miles away from Turkey Thicket in College Park. He’s noticed the spike of interest in the sport when he goes to nearby courts to play, but the University of Maryland senior is no ordinary pickleball player. Johns, 22, is ranked world No. 1 by the Pro

Pickleball Association for men’s singles, men’s doubles, and mixed doubles, and travels around the country to compete in tournaments about 20 to 24 weeks of the year.

Johns grew up playing tennis and table tennis in Gaithersburg and only started playing pickleball in early 2016. He was living in South Florida at the time and saw people hitting around near the tennis courts where he practiced. He was intrigued.

“I knew nothing about it,” Johns says, laughing. “Literally had not even heard of it.”

Pickleball is a relatively recent invention. According to USA Pickleball, the sport was founded in 1965 on Bainbridge Island in Washington state by “three enterprising dads,” Joel Pritchard, Bill Bell, and Barney McCallum, as a summertime activity. Accounts of the origin of pickleball’s name differ, but USA Pickleball quotes Pritchard’s wife, Joan, saying she started calling the game pickleball because “the combination of different sports reminded me of the pickle boat in crew where oarsmen were chosen from the leftovers of other boats.”

McCallum believes the game was named after the Pritchards’ dog, Pickles.

The rules are straightforward. A player hits an underarm serve behind the baseline diagonally to the opponent’s service court to start a point, and the perforated polymer ball (similar to a wiffle ball) must bounce once on each side before volleys are allowed. Only the serving side can score a point, and points end when one side commits a fault, including hitting the ball into the net or out of bounds. The server continues to serve until the server’s side loses a point. The middle of the court, also known as “the kitchen,” is a nonvolley zone where players cannot hit the ball out of the air while standing in the area. Games are typically played to 11 points, win by two.

The sport itself, due in part to its origin story and quirky name, is still perceived as a game only played by seniors. But Johns, whose older brother, Collin, played professional tennis, has proved that it can be a fast-paced game played with similar strategies as other racket sports.

“I’d say the very first time I played maybe it wasn’t [instantly appealing],” Johns says. “But the next couple of times, I liked it a lot more and more. The main reasons were I played table tennis and tennis, so it was kind of right in between those two sports, so it fit really well. I was good at it pretty quickly, and it was a lot of fun.”

Johns typically trains at public courts in Rockville or at an indoor facility in Annapolis. He plans to graduate from Maryland with a degree in materials engineering next spring, but does not intend to use it anytime soon. Johns makes far more money from his endorsement deals, sponsors, and tournament prize winnings than he would as an engineer, he says. He has an endorsement deal with Franklin Sports, which makes him a signature paddle. He’s also sponsored by Therabody Sports, Jigsaw Health, and DUPR, a pickleball rating system.

“It’s not a multimillion thing, like basketball or

football or anything like that, but it’s well above what I’d make in engineering,” Johns says. “It’s a very good wage.” Asked to specify, Johns says it’s “well above” six figures and “somewhere in the middle” of six and seven figures annually.

The Pro Pickleball Association pays $25,000 for appearances and $7,500 for the men’s and women’s pro doubles winners, $7,500 for the mixed doubles winners, and $2,500 each for the men’s and women’s singles winners.

It’s nearing 10:15 a.m. at Turkey Thicket, and Jenkins is about to head home. Johnson, her doubles partner, is also preparing to leave after a morning of pickup pickleball. Unlike many others playing today, Johnson, a 47-year-old Van Ness resident, started playing pickleball in the 1980s while living in Seattle.

“This is a PE activity that we did,” Johnson says. “In middle school it was a thing that we did and we were very competitive with it.”

Johnson and his wife and two kids moved to the Philippines for two years but returned to D.C. during the pandemic. His friend started playing pickleball while he was overseas and convinced him to join when he returned. Earlier this fall, Johnson stepped onto a pickleball court for the first time in decades. He remembers that when he left D.C., the stand-alone pickleball courts at Turkey Thicket did not exist. Now, the courts are typically full when Johnson arrives.

“I mean, just this shock and awe that D.C. in the two years that I’ve been gone, you know, they’ve eliminated a tennis court and built pickleball courts,” he says. “Like, how did that happen?”

It’s easy to understand pickleball’s appeal. The sport, as people in the community believe, was already on the upswing prior to the pandemic, but the need for outdoor activities that provided physical distancing helped the game’s popularity.

“It was already expanding at like a crazy, crazy rate, before the pandemic,” says Johns, the pro player. “It was already on that trajectory. So COVID in of itself didn’t do a lot, but it certainly didn’t hinder it.”

Andrew Acquadro, DPR’s citywide tennis director, says that in the three years he’s been in the role, he’s seen the number of pickleball players who are in the department’s database or are regulars who show up for pickup matches triple in number. The players span a wide range in age. “Originally, when I first came on board, it was mostly seniors, and now we have a younger crowd,” Acquadro says.

The demographic at Turkey Thicket on this October morning seems to confirm Acquadro’s observations. There are seniors playing on the same court as recent college graduates. Many appear to recognize each other as fellow regulars.

And as some leave, more arrive. Meanwhile, the tennis courts are about half full. “This,” one of the players says, gesturing around to the packed pickleball courts, “is a sign of the times.”

washingtoncitypaper.com november 5, 2021 7

Metr-Oh No Ongoing train outages derail riders’ lives

By Washington City Paper Staff 8 november 5, 2021 washingtoncitypaper.com

Illustration by Justin Johnson

T

he platform of the Columbia Heights Metro Station is packed during an evening rush hour in late October. The benches are so crowded people are sitting on the stairs. Many have removed their masks and don’t maintain appropriate social distance. When the arrivals board for Yellow Line trains switches from a number of minutes to “DLY,” travelers emit an audible groan. A Christian evangelist yells about how hell is real. Since we’re all underground waiting for a delayed Metro train with a history of catching fire, maybe we’ve already arrived.

It somehow gets worse down the line.

At L’Enfant Plaza, the first southbound Green Line train in a half hour forces hundreds to pack a single train. Riders stand shoulder to shoulder as they attempt to travel to Southeast. One person screams, “Train full!” in a failed attempt to stop congestion. Another rider asks, “What about COVID? They’re going to kill us all.” The doors close and backpacks, bikes, and bodies are forced to jostle together for three stops until the train reaches Anacostia Station.

For the foreseeable future, this is our hellacious reality. WMATA removed all of its 7000-series trains, which make up roughly 60 percent of its fleet, from service after an investigation of a Blue Line train derailment in mid-October. That left roughly 40 trains to shepherd riders along 117 miles of track.

Progress has been slow and minimal.

Additional trains were added to service on Monday, Nov. 1, to ease at least some delays. In an Oct. 25 media briefing, Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld said they had a proposal in the works for bringing the 7000-series fleet back into service. But for the short term, these delays are slated to last until at least Nov. 15.

“I understand from a customer perspective, it’s clearly not what we want to offer, but it is the safest thing that we can offer,” Wiedefeld said during the briefing. “We want to get as many of the existing fleet we have out there to deal with the immediate pressure, but the real solution is getting the 7Ks inspected and monitored in a way that we’re all comfortable from a safety perspective.”

The derailment saga doesn’t involve only the ill-fated Blue Line train, but all of the lives it derailed in the process. Metro’s expansive network allows many residents in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia to rely less on or even live without cars. The website Walkscore lists D.C. as having the fourth best transit network in the U.S., which contributes to it having the nation’s seventh best walk score. Losing trains means longer wait times, puts added pressure on buses, and potentially puts more cars on the road.

One of those people stuck waiting is Cathy, who asked to only be identified

by her first name. She sits in a shelter at Southern Avenue Station with bags of food surrounding her and a ripped jean leg revealing a scar she says is from a knee surgery in April. Cathy says she just missed her northbound Green Line train as she attempts to get to Stadium-Armory.

“It’s really not dumb. It’s backwards,” she says, describing riders being packed like sardines. “This is pathetic, with this six-car train.”

Although she is forced to wait nearly half an hour, Cathy says she refuses to be concerned with the Metro. She’d rather leave the fate of making her train up to her savior, Jesus Christ.

“We’re so interested in doing it our way and it’s not going to work,” she says. “I’ve been here for 67 years. I’m going to get what I get and go home.”

While he may not have let a higher power decide if he makes the train, Jack Sundius attempts a Hail Mary all the same. He saw his Red Line train at Gallery Place on the other side of the tracks and broke into a sprint. He dashed across the bridge and down the escalator but came just short of getting on the train.

“I was so close, too! I could see the doors close, but no,” he says. “Now it’s [a] 14- to 15-minute wait until the next one.”

Sundius says he’s used Metro to get between Gallery Place and Glenmont for the past few months without issue.

Since the derailment, he says, he’s been boarding packed cars and isn’t expecting WMATA to provide a workaround for the shortages. The delays have also made him late to work a few times. While his work knows what’s happening on the Metro, “they weren’t happy” with the tardiness, he says.

He’s not alone. When asked how the Metro outages have affected their lives, Reddit users say they’ve been late to work, flights, and doctor appointments due to delays. Others have had to contort their lives to fit this new reality by paying for car services, relying on buses, or walking for miles. One user even says their mother bought a car after being a faithful rider.

Malcolm, who asked to be identified by first name only, says he’s grateful for Metro while his car is in the shop. However, he got a “slap on the wrist” for being late to work the day after the derailment because he couldn’t get on a packed train.

“If I cared about my job, I’d be more frustrated but I’m just like, it is what it is.

It is what it is. I can’t control it,” he says.

Malcolm’s now delayed in leaving Gallery Place as trains on the Yellow and Green Lines begin to single track.

Overhead signs say it’s due to a medical emergency, which Malcolm says is because of a person who had a seizure on a Metro car. He says he had to talk his girlfriend through how to take care of washingtoncitypaper.com november 5, 2021 9

Darrow Montgomery

them until emergency workers arrived to help him. This has left the train stopped on the platform at Archives and put one of Metro’s few working trains out of commission. These ordinary delays for medical emergencies or technical problems can heavily disrupt a system functioning normally. Riders may have less margin for error when it comes to making trains right now, but Metro also has little wiggle room if anything goes wrong.

Many riders are frustrated with Metro’s issues but Judah Bernard is seeing his beliefs validated. The lessened service represents what he doesn’t like about taking the trains, even when they’re running frequently. The reason he’s even waiting for a train in Dupont Circle is because a heavy rainstorm prevents him from taking other modes of transportation to Mount Vernon Triangle.

“What I don’t like about it is more so the tardiness and sometimes I have to be at a place early,” he says, adding he prefers the “more reliable” and “more direct” options of bikes, scooters, or ride-hailing services because he lives downtown.

As the delays continue, riders familiar with other cities’ transit systems have wondered how a global capital’s trains went so far off course.

Adian Gonzales has spent only a month in D.C. due to an internship, so he’s almost exclusively experienced this sparse Metro schedule. However, he’s from New York, which captured Walkscore’s No. 1 spot in both walkability and transportation systems. Even though New York’s MTA has its fair share of issues, Gonzales says he’s had to convince people back home their subway is much better than D.C.’s.

“When I would post on Instagram, like, ‘Oh, these subway systems are so bad,’ my friends and family from New York would say, ‘No, the MTA in New York is the worst.’ I'm like, ‘No, this one.’”

Waiting for his train at Metro Center, Gonzales reflects on the benefits New York has over D.C.: Trains run 24/7 and more tracks allow for more room for trains. “I’d rather take the delays in New York over the long wait times here,” he says.

The only person who seems to be OK with everything is Cathy at Southern Avenue, who entrusted Jesus to get her onto the right train. She says there’s “no need to worry” about all of life’s, and Metro’s, chaos.

“There’s gonna be some more people who are going to have to deal with what’s going on down here,” she says. “Anybody but Satan.” —Bailey Vogt

Long waiting times for trains at U Street Metro Station during rush hour.

10 november 5, 2021 washingtoncitypaper.com

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1.46 The average number of riders injured each year per million riders in the past decade.

WMATA’s performance reports document rider injuries if they happen during Metro operations, especially when the injury is considered serious or requires immediate medical attention away from the scene.

The majority of customer injuries reported involve slips, trips, and falls. According to the most recent performance report, which covers July 2020 to June 2021, the top causes of injuries within Metrorail were intoxication, inattention/ distraction, and train motion (e.g., quick stops).

But there were several discrepancies within these reports. The report for July 2018 to June 2019 said there was a customer injury rate of 1.38 per million riders, but the July 2019 to March 2020 report stated that this time frame actually had a higher injury rate of 2.17 per million riders. Similarly, Jan. 2013 to Dec. 2013 report said there were 0.10 injuries per million riders, but the report for Jan. 2014 to Dec. 2014 found 0.58 injuries per million riders. There were also seven months of missing data from April 2020 to June 2020, April 2017 to June 2017, and December 2011.

—Michelle Goldchain

3 $2

The cost of one-way weekend rail fare as of Sept. 5.

The number of times the Blue Line train derailed on Oct 12. National Transit Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy said wheels on the 7000series cars had shifted outward, and passing over one switch knocked the train off the rails, but passing over a second switch bumped it back. The same thing happened again almost an hour later before the third derailment stranded the train and its passengers in a tunnel.

—Mitch Ryals

12 november 5, 2021 washingtoncitypaper.com

10 The number of Metrorail derailments in the past decade.

Like clockwork, WMATA has dealt with derailed trains nearly every year for the past decade. With each derailment, WMATA’s response is always to assure their riders that safety is a priority. Most recently, after the Oct. 12 derailment, General Manager Paul Wiedefeld said in a statement, “I want to assure our customers that their safety is driving every decision being made.” WMATA pulled 60 percent of its 1,200-car fleet after the Washington Metrorail Safety Commission ordered the transit agency to remove all of its 7000-series trains. During this same period, Homendy told the Washington Post, “This could have resulted in a catastrophic event.”

In the end, with every derailment, there is risk to not only riders’ wait times, but also their trust in WMATA. At some point, WMATA will have to prove their promise to the public and figure out how to make the Metrorail reliable, both in service and in safety.

—Michelle Goldchain

25, 45, or possibly infinity The number of years until the Georgetown station becomes a reality.

In September, WMATA released its two-year Blue/Orange/Silver Capacity & Reliability Study, which examined and addressed overcrowding on the aforementioned lines that share a single track throughout most of D.C. Of the six proposed alternatives that would alleviate existing problems, four plans include a new (and long-awaited) Georgetown station that would connect to a second, new station in Rosslyn.

Of course, those options land on the pricier side, so the chosen solution remains to be named.

Shortly after the report was released, the D.C. Council penciled $10 million into its FY2022 budget to buy an old gas station site along M Street NW near Key Bridge, which could be the eventual Georgetown Station. Though the study doesn’t dig in to the specifics of each proposed option, it does note that “an

effective solution to the challenges in the [BOS] corridor could take 10 to 20 years or more to deliver.” Local reporters have noted that planning and building a Georgetown Metro stop will take at least 25 years. The Georgetown Voice, which interviewed the president and CEO of the Georgetown Business Improvement District, Joe Sternlieb, reports that such a station could take up to 45 years to complete. Sternlieb, however, says the neighborhood and BID want a station and are focused on making it happen. —Sarah Marloff

29 39 The number of stations with Art in Transit artwork. Those stations include Anacostia, Congress Heights, Georgia Ave-Petworth, Metro Center, Tysons Corner, and Wheaton. —Laura Hayes

The number of trains Metro says are in service as of this week after adding 2000- and 3000-series cars back into service. The older trains were taken out of service and put into “cold storage” due to reduced ridership during the pandemic, Greater Greater Washington reported.

—Mitch Ryals

$58 The cost of a weekly unlimited WMATA Metrorail/Metrobus combo pass.

With a weekly unlimited WMATA Metrorail/Metrobus combo pass costing $58, D.C. is the most expensive of the 10 top U.S. metro systems by ridership participating in weekly pass programs.

(This includes transit systems serving Baltimore, Boston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, Miami-Dade, New York City, New Jersey, and the District.) While the areas these metro transit systems serve vary vastly in size and scope, transit budget and options, ridership, metro area cost of living, and speed and frequency of transit, weekly pass cost is still one useful indicator of fare affordability.

WMATA’s weekly pass is nearly three times the cost of the most affordable (Baltimore Metro SubwayLink’s 7-day CharmCard pass, which costs $21) and approximately 1.6 times the cost of the most expensive among these other metro systems’ weekly passes (New Jersey PATH’s SmartLink Unlimited 7 Day Pass, which costs $36).

Monthly passes are a different, more complex piece of the story. With monthly Metro passes ranging from $72 to $216, D.C. is either the second least costly or most costly of the 12 highridership transit systems nationwide participating in monthly pass programs.

Compared with the other participating major transit systems (a list that also includes San Francisco’s BART and Seattle’s King County Metro), WMATA’s cheapest monthly unlimited rail/bus combo pass costs four times as much as the lowest range for King County’s multi-transit unlimited monthly pass (which ranges from $18 to $189). Like WMATA fares and monthly passes, King County’s are based on point of origin and destination per trip. —Ambar Castillo

91

The total number of Metrorail stations

117

Total miles of track. A lot has changed since Metro first broke ground in late 1969. When it first opened in 1976, it was just one line—the Red Line—stretching from Farragut North to Rhode Island Avenue. It has since expanded to include six lines, which connect 91 stations and cover 117 miles of track. Throughout the 2010s, fewer and fewer people were passing through

those 91 stations. Ridership declined consistently from 2011 to 2018, a period that was punctuated by safety concerns, fires, and delays. Ridership actually rose by 4 percent in 2019 before plummeting during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. That 2019 increase was above average for the nation, which saw an average increase of heavy rail ridership of 2.3 percent that year. But D.C.’s ridership losses during the pandemic have been more severe.

On average, transit systems across the country saw a 60.93 percent reduction in heavy rail ridership in 2020, according to data from the American Public Transit Association. D.C.’s reduction was 71.57 percent.

—Will Warren

94.4

How hot it can get inside a Metro station, in degrees Fahrenheit.

washingtoncitypaper.com november 5, 2021 13

out-of-state residents or federal employees who live in the District and receive a transit benefit.

The program works like this: Metro initially loads $100 on qualified residents’ SmarTrip cards. On the first day of each following month, the agency replenishes the balance used up to $100. The legislation spells out a tiered eligibility, where Medicaid-eligible District residents are first in line, followed by families earning up to $96,000 a year, and then families earning up to $155,000 per year.

Allen has estimated that the subsidy program will cost between $54 and $151 million, depending on how many residents sign up and how much of the subsidy each person uses. The program would be funded with tax revenue that exceeded previous projections, according to a Post report.

The bill also would create a $10 million fund dedicated to improving and expanding bus service, especially in areas with low-income residents, who make up the majority of bus riders. —Mitch Ryals

In the summer of 2019, cooling systems broke in Dupont Circle, Farragut North, and Union Station. (Two systems had been broken for several years, but this summer, Metro didn’t make temporary cooling arrangements.) WAMU/DCist reporter Jordan Pascale visited eight stations with a handheld thermometer to gauge how hot the stations got. With its broken cooling system, the inside of Union Station reached 94.4 degrees— making it the hottest station (that day).

Dupont came in a close second at 93.9 degrees. Forest Glen, however, had a working cooling system and still the temperature registered 91.7 degrees underground. Though the exterior temperature was in the low 90s that day, the outdoor station at Fort Totten reportedly “felt a lot cooler under the station canopy,” while Brookland’s open air platform registered at 92.1 degrees with no reprieve.

The cooling equipment—not air-conditioning, but cool water pumped through pipes surrounding stations—helps ensure station temperatures stay about 10 degrees cooler inside during summer months. During a 2016 heat wave, Metro riders used the hashtag #HotCar

to bemoan train temps that reached hot yoga studio levels. At the time, the Post reported that inside train temperatures could soar into the 90s. (Apparently that wasn’t always the case—in the ’70s and ’80s, according to old Post articles, the Metro actually offered respite from hot summer days.)

—Sarah Marloff

460

Number of sworn Metro Transit Police officers (plus 145 Special Police officers and 90 civilian personnel).

$100 2,000

The amount of monthly SmarTrip balance D.C. residents would be entitled to per month if Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen’s bill is approved.

Allen reintroduced the “Metro for D.C.” bill in October after his initial proposal, introduced in March 2020, fell away due to the pandemic. The bill, which has 10 co-introducers including Allen, would give each qualified D.C. resident a SmarTrip card with a $100 balance each month. The subsidy is not available to

14 november 5, 2021 washingtoncitypaper.com

The number of pounds artist Sam Gilliam’s “From Model to Rainbow” art installation weighs.

It’s part of Metro’s Art in Transit program and can be found on Cedar Street NW outside the Takoma station. It covers 400 square feet and is made from glass mosaic mounted on aerolam panels. It was installed in 2011.

-Laura Hayes

3,110

The approximate number of reported crimes and general complaints that Metro Transit Police failed to investigate, according to a report from WMATA’s Office of Inspector General.

Record-keeping issues such as those cited in an audit of Metrorail released in September, are not exclusive to the transit side of WMATA’s shop. They apply to its police department too. The May audit of MTPD cases from 2010 to 2017 revealed that the transit police agency could only find documentation for 1,445 of the 3,110 complaints, and “most of them only contained a one-page document suspending the investigation.” Of the 1,445 case files MTPD provided, 84 percent “lacked any documentation of investigative activity.”

In its report, the OIG notes that it called out a similar problem in 2012. In that instance, the OIG looked into complaints that MTPD’s criminal investigations division was falsifying investigations.

OIG found discrepancies between what detectives documented and what victims told OIG. The then-chief promised to take corrective action, but OIG determined this year that the fixes never happened, according to its most recent audit report.

MTPD Chief Ronald Pavlik told OIG investigators that his agency began its own audit of this very issue in 2019, but two years later it remains incomplete.

The OIG notes that the delay is yet another cause for concern and perhaps indicates that “top officials have not made this matter a priority and have not officially determined the root cause…”

In response to the audit released in May, MTPD attempted to defend itself with false claims.

Take the example of the only detective internally investigated for failure to investigate. The OIG found 177 cases from 2011 to 2017 for which the detective failed to conduct or document any investigation.

The detective admitted that he failed to document what, if any, investigation he completed. MTPD management opted not to discipline the detective because

too much time had passed. WMATA Chief Operating Officer Joseph Leader claimed in the agency’s response to the OIG audit that the detective improved his performance from 2018 to 2021.

But the OIG notes in a response to the response that MTPD’s claim is incorrect.

Testimony, documents, and internal communication among MTPD command staff show that in 2018 and 2019 the detective “received a subpar evaluation for ‘multiple investigative deficiencies in assigned cases to include lack of communication and follow up with victims/ complainants in his assigned cases.’” The detective was placed on a performance improvement plan, and internal MTPD investigators determined that he “routinely failed to perform duties and responsibilities as a detective” in fiscal years 2019 and 2020. MTPD command staff recommended discipline, but was overruled by command staff, the OIG notes.

MTPD also claimed that the OIG “mischaracterizes the cases under review” and claimed the “overwhelming majority” were misdemeanor cases. In fact, the OIG said MTPD’s internal communication and analysis by the investigative division’s management staff shows that 40 percent of the cases under review were felonies ranging from armed robberies, sexual offenses, kidnappings, and assaults.

4,000

The number of people who’ve signed up for new Capital Bikeshare memberships after Mayor Muriel Bowser partnered with Lyft to offer 30 days of free rides.

Jeremiah Lowery owns five bicycles, but sometimes he prefers to use Capital Bikeshare instead. The bicycle-sharing system that operates in the D.C. area gives him peace of mind.

“It’s something about the comfort of using CaBi and being able to not worry about my bike when I’m out,” says Lowery, the director of advocacy for the Washington Area Bicyclist Association. “If I go to the movies or go to an event and I want to ride a bike there, I might not want to ride a bike back, so Capital Bikeshare gives me those options.”

On a recent October evening, Lowery

was out downtown when he tried to find a bike at a Bikeshare station, but there were none to be found. Lowery, who lives in Petworth, attributes the shortage of bikes and increased usage of Capital Bikeshare to Metro’s ongoing service issues and subsequent delays. In response to the Metro delays, Mayor Muriel Bowser and Lyft announced on Oct. 25 that Capital Bikeshare would offer one free 30-day membership to all D.C. residents.

“The service disruptions at Metro are deeply troubling for D.C. and the region,” Bowser said in a statement. “D.C. is open, and we need a fully functioning transit system to get workers, students, and visitors across the city. We have been intentional, over the past several years, about making Capital Bikeshare more accessible and convenient for D.C. residents, and now we are proud to be able to offer this free one-month membership to every Washingtonian who might need it.”

There are currently 630 bikeshare stations in the D.C. region, with 337 of those in the District, a District Department of Transportation spokesperson tells City Paper. On average, there are 4,500 nonebikes and 1,000 ebikes overall in the region. D.C. will generally have 500 ebikes and approximately 2,250 non-ebikes at a given time throughout the city, the spokesperson adds. According to DDOT, as of Oct. 31, over 4,000 new commuters have registered for Capital Bikeshare since the launch of the promotion. Capital Bikeshare had 25,000 annual members and 300 monthly members prior to the promotion. It now has 4,300 monthly members.

Lowery credits the Bowser administration and Capital Bikeshare for offering the free 30-day membership, but points out that this only reinforces the need for more Bikeshare stations in the city.

“We need to actually increase the infrastructure, increase the number of stations because we're going to get more people on these bikes,” Lowery says.

The DDOT spokesperson tells City Paper the department plans to add “20 new stations a year for the next four years. We are also planning to add 2,500 e-bikes in the next two years, along with hundreds of new non-e-bikes a year, as our old bikes age out of service.”

DDOT acknowledges that while this may alleviate some of the commuting issues the sudden suspension of 7000-series

cars caused, there are people in the city who cannot use bikes.

“While we know that Capital Bikeshare is not a solution or replacement to Metro, our goal has been to provide a healthy solution for some people to move around the District,” the spokesperson says. “We also encourage commuters to make use of our DC Circulator and DC Streetcar services. Additionally, commuters can also visit godcgo.com/ for complimentary transit resources and options to get around the District.” —Kelyn Soong

6,000

The other series of trains sidelined due to safety issues On two separate occasions last year, cars on 6000-series Metro trains on the Red Line detached while passengers were on board. Neither incident resulted in major injuries, but they did cause Metro to temporarily sideline the 6000-series railcars. Investigations by Metro and the Washington Metrorail Safety Commission found loose bolts and connections in the couplers, a large latch at the end of each railcar that connects it to adjoining cars.

Trains involved in both incidents had issues with the coupler assemblies.

This August, the WMSC determined that “Metrorail does not consistently follow its safety certification process, which leads to project activation and use without proper hazard identification and mitigation, putting Metrorail customers, personnel, and first responders at risk.” The report also states that “Metrorail’s failure to follow its safety certification processes contributed directly to the pull-aparts of two 6000 Series trains on the Red Line in fall 2020.”

The first of the two 2020 incidents happened on Oct. 9, when two railcars uncoupled near Union Station. The train was headed from Union Station toward NoMaGallaudet U. Metro spokesperson Sherri Ly told DCist at the time that the train had experienced an “undesired uncoupling” between its second and third cars. The WMSC attributed the train separation to an improperly torqued gland nut, which is also part of the coupler assembly.

The second incident occurred on Nov.

24, 2020, around 1 p.m., when a train headed from Wheaton to Glenmont separated. Metro announced it would temporarily sideline all 6000-series railcars after the incident, which shared similarities with the one that preceded it in October.

“The 6000-series fleet entered service in 2006 with 184 cars delivered over the subsequent three years,” Metro wrote in a release announcing the suspension of 6K cars. “The fleet is approaching ‘midlife,’ the 20-year milestone where railcars are put through a comprehensive overhaul.

Railcars typically provide passenger service over a 40-year lifespan, assuming a midlife overhaul is conducted.”

In December 2020, the WMSC, Metro, and the coupler manufacturer reviewed the coupler assembly from the November incident and found that there were “five loose bolts on the top of the coupler assembly.” One of the bolts was designed to hold the draft bar in place, while the other four bolts were intended to hold in place a guide rail that can help prevent the coupler assembly from rotating. They also found that “the screw-like threads on the draft bar and coupler head were worn or damaged. Corrosion and contaminants were found on the threads of the coupler head.”

The Post reported in early October 2021 that transit officials hope to return all 184 of the 6000-series railcars to service before year’s end.

“Our goal is to return the entire 6000-series fleet to service by the end of the year, dependent on a number of factors, including findings from our inspections,” Metro spokesperson Ian Jannetta told the Post. —Kelyn Soong

$67,598,000 Total cost to run the MTPD in 2020 WMATA budgeted $78,288,000 in 2021 for its police force, and $78,718,000 in the 2022 fiscal year despite losing 42 authorized positions.

$176.5 million Metro’s revenue shortfall for fiscal year 2021 as of Jan. 2021.

washingtoncitypaper.com november 5, 2021 15

This Is How We Dough It Just outside the Beltway, you can major in pizza. I did.

By Laura Hayes @LauraHayesDC Something was very wrong. My first ball of dough sat in front of me ready to be shaped and stretched into a pizza after fermenting overnight. I cupped it in my hands and encountered a rough skin—a bad sign.

As instructed, I placed the ball on a mound of f lour, formed a diamond shape with my fingers, and began pressing the orb into a flat circle. That’s when the skin cracked and out spilled what looked like the guts of a ball of burrata cheese—a soupy mess of stringy dough and cloudy water unworthy of any oven.

These are the tells of overworked dough.

When mixing this batch by hand the previous day, I worked it, reworked it, and worked it again. It made sense. That’s what editors do. We work things to death. But what was an editor doing away from her desk for three days dusted in f lour? I was training to be a pizzaiolo at Pizza University and nervous as hell because my bust of a dough ball didn’t bode well for the practical and written exams looming at the end of the intensive course.

Could I make a Neapolitan pizza in two minutes? Would I be able to do dough math?

Thumbing through the syllabus, it became clear that the ideal Pizza University student is a professional cook who aspires to lead a pizzeria kitchen. Nerves took over as I pursued lessons that covered complex pizzamaking techniques with some business advice baked in. Meeting my classmates brought some comfort.

On day one, a retired police officer, an attorney, a small business adviser, and a handful of chefs were among those who shuffled into a shiny test kitchen to don matching coats and aprons to meet our instructors. You could suss out the professionals by how they tied their aprons around their bellies instead of behind their backs.

Brothers Francesco and Enzo Marra founded Pizza University in 2018 as an extension of their brick oven pizza business, Marra Forni. The classroom is located in one of their manufacturing facilities in Beltsville. Francesco says he’s graduated close to 250 Pizza University students as a part of his mission to mold the next generation of pizzaiolos.

“We could have better pizza if it was part of the foundation of culinary school,”

Francesco tells the class as we take our seats.

“People want to open pizzerias but can’t find trained labor. Italy is the size of Florida and has hundreds of pizza schools. The goal here is to build the prototype.”

Francesco also launched the program because he doesn’t want to see anyone take their 401K and open a pizzeria without the business acumen. “As an immigrant that went through a lot of pain and obstacles learning the culture and language, you never wish anyone to fail,” he says. “If we can, with our education and training, we can put someone in a better place to start this journey.”

When Francesco came to the U.S. from Naples at 21, he didn’t speak English. He started cooking in local restaurants and then ran a distribution company that he sold before he and Enzo shifted their focus to manufacturing brick ovens around 2014.

Now the entrepreneur speaks in adages. “A business without a plan is a plan without a business,” he says. “Cheap is expensive,” he issues as a warning when discussing equipment. “Fire fast, hire slow.”

Most of the ovens, which cost $7K to $60K, are destined for restaurants such as newcomer L’Ardente and standby 2Amys.

But during the pandemic, when restaurants went dark, Francesco says he sold more residential ovens than in the previous six years combined. Pizza was a way of life. Fine dining restaurants such as Reverie and Oyster Oyster sold pies and a number of ghost restaurants entered the market. Pizza boasts a good profit margin. Dough is slang for dollars.

Maybe pizza’s momentum contributed to the fact that my September class was the largest to date with 16 students; 14 men and one other woman came from as far away as California and Florida, most of whom were middle-aged and White. The class costs between $1,900 and $2,100, depending on who’s teaching. In order to report this story, City Paper participated at no cost.

Francesco says he has plans to attract more diverse participants with strategies like bringing in female instructors. After he doubles the size of the classroom, he wants to introduce programs for veterans and returning citizens to enroll with some costs covered.

The instructors had their work cut out for them with this group. Six trained chefs and experienced restaurateurs stood alongside wide-eyed amateurs with dreams of second careers in pizza. Their mission was to teach both groups something new.

Enter lead instructor Giulio Adriani and assistant instructor Aurelio Petra, whose almost sibling-like rapport comes from their relationship as friends and business partners. They have pizzerias in Brooklyn.

Petra can be found at Rosie Pizza Bar most nights, while Adriani is a globe-trotting pizza consultant with every title from certified Neapolitan Pizza Master to World Pizza Champion.

“I’d like to be a role model for passion,”

16 november 5, 2021 washingtoncitypaper.com

Laura Hayes

FOOD YOUNG & HUNGRY

Pizza University instructor Giulio Adriani Adriani says. “Techniques? Everyone can get my techniques. Not everyone can have my passion.”

Neapolitan pizza is the focus of the course.

There are strict requirements governing how to make it, according to a nonprofit established by heads of historic pizzerias in 1984. The Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana preserves the pizza style by issuing certifications and offering courses. Even UNESCO added Neapolitan pizza to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2017.

The first two pizzerias opened in Naples in the 19th century. Your choices were marinara or Margherita. The latter calls for peeled tomatoes crushed by hand, buffalo mozzarella, basil, and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Containing flour, yeast, salt, and water, the dough only needs a minute to cook in a wood-fired oven heated to an impossible-toreplicate-at-home 900 degrees.

One standard has some wiggle room in the modern era—what fuels the oven. Gas or gas-assisted ovens achieve more consistent results than wood-fired ovens with their

wide temperature swings. “You never want to teach judgment to employees,” Adriani advises. “It has some aroma, but it’s mostly a marketing tool.”

The instructors are aware that Neapolitan pizza isn’t everyone’s favorite and also argue it isn’t fully understood in America. “True Neapolitan pizza, you shouldn’t slice it,” Adriani explains. News to me. “It ruins the integrity of the pizza, so you cut it with a fork and knife from the inside out. Americans say it’s soggy. Italians say it’s juicy.”

W hen It a l i a n i m m i g r a nt s s u c h a s Gennaro Lombardi opened the first pizzerias in New York City in the early 1900s, they had to adapt when they couldn’t find the ingredients or equipment to make the pizza they knew. From there came new styles like the ones with crispier crusts that New Yorkers fold today.

Much of the course was spent uncovering how much variety you can create in a crust formed from only four ingredients.

We learned about dough hydration, how to choose flour for its protein content, cooking

FOOD YOUNG & HUNGRY temperatures, and various fermentation approaches. Fermentation and maturation of dough creates enzymes that make pizza easier to digest. There’s nothing Adriani hates more than feeling like one of the bricks from a brick oven landed in his stomach after a meal.

There were formulas to memorize, such as how to calculate the right water temperature when it’s introduced to the mixer, but nothing boggled our collective minds like biga.

The Italian term refers to a portion of dough ingredients that are set aside to ferment in advance, kind of like a sourdough starter.

Using a preferment like biga helps pizzaiolos achieve in 24 hours of fermentation what would normally take 72 hours, according to Adriani. The more fermented the dough, the lighter and more fragrant the crust.

I was still trying to wrap my head around easier strategies like bulk fermentation. So following formulas to calculate what percentages of f lour, water, and yeast to set aside in the biga preferment felt like running hurdles when I signed up for a sprint.

Finally, when it was time to rest our brains, we started working our fingers. First we learned how to mix dough by hand to mimic what happens when the mixer breaks. The instructors told us to reach for the wood bins beneath our work stations. With horror, I realized that’s where we’d be kneading.

My purse was in there. I thought that was its purpose, having seen similar vessels at fine dining restaurants. For those who’ve never carried a purse, the bottom has touched the floor of public bathrooms on drunken nights, the sidewalk when unloading groceries, and other unspeakables. Rookie mistake.

After the manual experiment, we watched Adriani and Petra make large batches of dough in mixers for later practice. They poured one batch into a trunk-size plastic box where it would bulk ferment overnight— meaning it would rest as a large blob instead of pre-rolled dough balls. The dough got too warm overnight and bubbled out of its bin.

“As in the real world things can go wrong so we learned how to overcome an issue,” says my classmate Mike Boyer f rom Pennsylvania. “We now know what an overproofed dough tastes like, why it happened, and how to avoid it.”

“Problem solving is the real secret of a pizza place,” Adriani says. “It’s not, ‘How can they make pizza when everything is perfect?’”

Next we learned how to shape dough balls, press them, stretch them, top them, and slide them on and off giant paddles called peels.

My visions of throwing dough in the air while “That’s Amore” played in the background was wrong. There are other techniques: We tried a slapping method where you tug one side of the dough to gently stretch it using one hand and then slap it over the other hand, then rotate and repeat.

P resentat ions f rom bra nds such as BelGioioso, Orlando Foods, and General Mills were interspersed with learning about the art and science of pizza. Corto, for

example, spelled out the difference between olive oil made from olives harvested in the fall versus the winter. Corto uses fall harvest olives even though the process is more laborintensive, arguing they produce a fresher tasting product. The company representative drizzled his olive oil on top of gelato to prove how it accentuates other ingredients.

“I think they took up too much time,” says my classmate Yvette Imhof. “We didn’t get to some of the stuff we were supposed to learn.” She and her business partners recently purchased a Marra Forni oven and were hoping to get some pointers on how to use it. “If you look at the itinerary, some stuff didn’t happen. I’m sure they have a reason for it.”

The sponsors who presented the course wanted some face time. “Any type of contribution you make, you look for some kind of return,” Francesco says. He also thinks they’re selling some of the best ingredients on the market. “These food manufacturers are looking out for the well-being of our industry.”

Imhof co-owns Lakeside Famous Roast Beef and Pizza in New Hampshire and is opening a pizza restaurant in Aruba with two other classmates. She knows her way around pizza and has worked at several pizzerias starting with Papa Gino’s when she was 15 years old. Still, she says she’d take the class again and would recommend it to peers.

Others ate up the experience, especially pizza fanatics such as Ernest Kollias. He says he’s logged 4 46 hours in an online forum called pizzamaking.com since 2018.

The president and CEO of a business advisory service and tax preparation firm in Pennsylvania got serious about pizza making in 2007, and by 2008 he was building a wood-fired oven in his backyard.

“For years I’d make pizza on weekends for parties and gatherings while fine tuning my recipes and dough management,” he says.

He references the principle from Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, which says it takes 10,000 hours of intensive practice to master something. “In that case, I’m a master of my career and pizza making.”

Kollias says he signed up specifically to learn from Adriani, which was obvious because he was glued to his side. His goal is to establish a foundation that incorporates pizza into a mission to support youth struggling with substance abuse and mental health. He thinks young people—drained by time spent on devices—would benefit from something hands on. He also thinks cooking pizza is uniquely social in the way it’s brought people together for hundreds of years.

Our Floridian classmate, Omar Saleh, geeks out about pizza in the Pizza Dough Addicts Facebook group with 140K members. He’s been practicing with a small portable oven, but sought an apprenticeship or a hands-on course to level up. “I was looking for a reality check, and that’s what I got,” he says. He’s hoping to open a pizza pop-up down the line when his career allows. “Giulio

didn’t give us the golden nugget, but he gave us great mining tools. He wasn’t teaching us the perfect pizza. He was giving us the foundation to make our own.”

There were no other students from D.C., but local restaurateur Peter Bayne of Franklin Hall and Penn Social studied at Pizza University in 2018. Adriani was also his instructor, and the pair hit it off even though Bayne answered too many calls during class.

“You could see he never cut something in his life,” Adriani says. “His brain is the businessman’s brain. I like him and the fact that he’s a funny guy.”

Bayne calls the course a “master’s degree in pizza-making.” He didn’t expect there to be so many ways to manipulate dough.

“Something so simple in nature is so complex and has so many nuances,” he says. I share his takeaway and this one too: “I’m not very good at this, but I’m going to make friends with Giulio.”

Mission accomplished. Adriani came on as a partner in the pizza shop Bayne is opening on 14th Street NW this fall. Slice & Pie is steering clear of Neapolitan in favor of New York pizza by the slice. Bayne hopes to spend some time alongside his staff making pizza even though he graded himself as a C+ student.

I made it through the written exam like it was no “biga” deal. So did my classmates.

Adriani was shocked because the class was full of beginners.

“We had a great final result,” he says. “It surprised me to go through the questions.

Most people got it all right. I thought it was impossible.”

“You were knocking yourself down,” Adriani says when I ask how I fared as a student. “Our job with you was, ‘Let’s reinforce positivity.’ Sometimes you need to enforce negativity because some students think they’re too good. They’re the ones that made more mistakes on the test.”

With the written exam behind me, it was time to prepare a Margherita pizza for the oven in two minutes. This task was the culmination of the course. I pressed and stretched and topped in record time. At this moment I had pie-in-the-sky confidence that I could fill in at 2Amys. But then I failed—not once, but three times.

When it came time to pull my first attempt onto the peel, it got stuck and crumpled in on itself. Adriani was standing by to ball it up and throw it out, but not in a cruel Gordon Ramsay way. He gave me a rare second shot. This time my perfect pie smushed into a heart shape when I slid it into the oven with a flick of the wrist.

To speed things up for my third and final try, Adriani made the pizza himself. All I had to do was slide it into the oven and rotate it near the flame for an even cook. I burned the shit out of it, but they still gave me a handshake and a certificate that sits on my desk back where I belong. It might be a university, but everyone passes.

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ARTS MUSEUMS

Oaxaca in the U.S. Opens With Pomp and Some Irony Michael Loria

After a devastating year for the Mexican tourism sector, the Mexican Cultural Institute opens its doors with an exhibition featuring contemporary Oaxacan artists.

By Michael Loria Contributing Writer Stepping into the Mexican Cultural Institute at 2829 16th St. NW feels like stepping into another era well outside of D.C. Built in 1911, the mansion is decorated with murals and traditional ceramics from the 1930s. This month, it is also home to Oaxaca, Lo Tiene Todo (Oaxaca, it has everything), an exhibition of Oaxacan art and culture as part of novel Oaxaca in the U.S. festivities. The monthlong celebration designed by the government of Oaxaca showcases the cultural patrimony of the state.

Contemporary Oaxacan artists Amador Montes, Sabino Guisu, and Bayrol Jiménez are featured in the exhibit, as is a range of folk art titled “Hecho en Oaxaca” (“Made in Oaxaca”). The Montes and Guisu galleries are on the first floor; the Jiménez and Hecho en Oaxaca galleries on the third. The exhibition, as it coincides with Día de los Muertos festivities celebrated in Oaxaca, as in other states in central and southern Mexico, includes a traditional ofrenda or altar, located in the solarium on the second floor.

Curated by the government of Oaxaca, the exhibition is a response to the precipitous drop in tourism from the pandemic: Since March 2020, spending by international tourists fell by more than half, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI).

“The month of Oaxaca in the U.S. is about understanding on a deeper level Mexico and Oaxaca, so we can reach new proposals for mutually beneficial relationships,” Mexican Ambassador to the U.S. Esteban Moctezuma said at the exhibit’s opening ceremony The exhibition is the third at the Institute since reopening to visitors in July 2021. It follows Catharsis, which featured work from the Institute’s permanent Kimberly Collection, and another exploring the history of the house, which was purchased by the Mexican government in 1921 and served as the embassy until 1989. It’s since been the home of the Institute, which serves as the cultural attaché of the embassy and, in addition to art exhibitions, hosts lectures and workshops on Mexican

Carlos Guzmán designed the ofrenda located in the solarium for Día de los Muertos, with contributions from the Institute’s artistic affairs director Enrique Quiroz history and culture.

By D.C. standards, the house isn’t very old, but it is singularly preserved. The Mexican government made few modifications including the addition of a porte-cochère and the threestory mural by Roberto Cueva del Río. It also features Cueva del Río’s solarium redesign, and another mural by Rafael Yela Günther from 1925 (which was later covered in 1946 for unknown reasons).

In the tradition of Mexican Muralism, Cueva del Río’s work depicts historic moments and celebrates the diversity of Mexican society (though it offers little of the social critique found in the work of his contemporaries such as Diego Rivera). A self-portrait of the artist sitting in a tree can be found on the first floor. The solarium features traditional Talavera Ceramics from Cueva del Río’s home state of Puebla, with representations of the twin volcanoes there and the coat of arms for all the states of Mexico except Baja California Sur, which hadn’t yet been established when the space was redesigned in 1933.

Otherwise the house is original, from the furnishings and tapestries in the library on the third f loor to those in the Château de Fontainebleau-inspired drawing room on the second floor. It also houses a rare Aeolian organ, the pipes of which run from the basement to the fourth floor. “We’re very proud of the house,” Executive Director Ix-Nic Iruegas tells City Paper. “We know that you cannot even fathom what is inside here from the outside.”

Of the three artists spotlighted in Oaxaca, Lo Tiene Todo, Montes is the most established and calls the abstract works on view “Portraits.”

The mixed-media painter blends oil painting, printmaking, photo collage, and text to evoke his subjects. “[The work] has to do with what’s forgotten, with those who passed away,”

18 november 5, 2021 washingtoncitypaper.com

Montes says. “It’s an experience of seeing the dead from a different perspective.” Though the theme honors Día de los Muertos, the work is monochromatic when compared to the folk art upstairs.

Montes’ work follows the tradition of Mexican Breakaway Generation painters such as Rufino Tamayo and Francisco Toledo, both of whom were also from Oaxaca. In form, it has little in common with Tamayo, but they share a similar tone; the melancholy of memory and nostalgia captured by Tamayo is found in Montes’ art as well.

Guisu and Jiménez were chosen to represent the next generation of Oaxacan artists—their work breaks from the expressionist tradition Montes comes from. A multidisciplinary artist known for his neon light installations, Guisu creates works that include sculpture and paintings with the same vibrant electric-like color of his installations.

Jiménez’s work includes paintings and ceramics done in collaboration with fellowOaxacan painter and multidisciplinary artist Rolando Martínez. Jiménez refers to the paintings—abstract works with vibrant colors like Guisu’s—as “pop art.” Unlike Montes’ pieces, his ceramics draw clearly from Oaxacan festivals, and are overtly political. His “Serie ‘El reposo de la máscara’” is a series of papermache masks done in the calenda or carnival style and painted with ceramic paint. Like the masks actually worn at such festivities, they have an almost surrealist quality, albeit with the vibrant coloring reminiscent of Jiménez’s painting, and they’re meant to evoke the same function as Jiménez explains: “When you wear a mask, you’re always playing the role of some other thing.”

“You don’t represent yourself, but something else so that that spirit can make peace with

you,” adds Jiménez. The diablito (or little devil) mask, for instance, might traditionally represent a Spanish colonist, according to Jiménez; however, in the artist’s work, global capitalism is the new conquistador. On each mask there is a discrete logo from megacorporations such as Google.

The Hecho en Oaxaca galleries feature garments, ceramics, photographs of Oaxacan carnivals, and Waldo Hernández’s alebrijes (handcrafted figurines) of imagined animals.

The term “Hecho en Oaxaca” refers to the protected designation of origin status of the work, which is available for purchase. The protected designation of origin status ensures that a product cannot be reproduced outside its area of origin or at least is not legally recognized as such (which is why any Blue Weber Agave spirit produced outside of Jalisco and some areas of Nayarit, Guanajuato, Michoacán, and Tamaulipas cannot be called tequila). Along with stimulating tourism, the government of Oaxaca is trying to secure the patrimony that a designation of origin can bring. Similar objets d’art are available in the first floor store.

The ofrenda was designed by Oaxacan artist Carlos Guzmán with contributions by the Institute’s artistic affairs director Enrique Quiroz. Guzmán’s design features traditional components, including Calaveras Catrinas (skulls of Oaxaca), cartolería, the paper-mache puppets, papel picado (decorative perforated paper), and marigolds.

The tradition of the altar refers to pre-Columbian conceptions of death, in which being forgotten is the most absolute death one can suffer.

It is a space to remember the dead and a place mourners can invite the departed to return to, hence Quiroz’s contributions of mezcal, pan dulce, and chocolate. He added the elements traditionally used to protect the space as well,

MUSEUMS ARTS Bayrol Jiménez addresses new colonialism in “Reposo de la máscara”

Michael Loria

including salt, the indigenous incense of copal, and a sacred or religious figure, in this case St. Michael.

The altar also incorporates elements from the Catharsis exhibition, which was dedicated to the people who died from COVID-19 and offered visitors the option to leave notes for their dead. Quiroz has repurposed those notes here, where they are now on display. “If this culture or this tradition [is] going to help you to grieve your family members and remember them, and if Mexico can bring that to the world, like it has given so much, by all means take it,” he explains.

Quiroz notes that the tradition of the altar is not widespread in Mexico, but it’s become more widely known in the U.S. following representations in the James Bond movie Spectre and Disney’s Coco. Also there are 1.5 million Oaxacan-born people currently living in the U.S., according to Moctezuma. Among Mexican states, Oaxaca has the second highest percentage of people immigrating to the United States, according to INEGI. That migration has been precipitated by a lack of economic opportunity for Oaxacan residents. On the opposite end of that spectrum are the tourism-rich states of Quintana Roo and Yucatán.

The tourism industry and revenues from Oaxacan exports such as mezcal offer a clear

path to growth, hence Governor Alejandro Murat Hinojosa’s slogan, “Oaxaca wants more of the world in Oaxaca and more of Oaxaca in the world.” Tourism had been growing consistently in the state before the pandemic hit. In 2019, the state surpassed the national tourism average breaking its own records, but

COVID hit the industry hard. Oaxaca’s hotel occupancy rates fell from the typical 60 percent to 10 percent during Independence Day holidays last year.

“Oaxaca needs allies like you,” Montes says.

“To bring a little of what is Oaxaca to the world in these moments, as an artist, as a human

being, is vital.”

But ambivalence about the impact of outside influences persists. After the Hierve el Agua petrified waterfall in Oaxaca first closed because of the pandemic, local residents decided to bar tourists from visiting it, citing the exploitation of locals by travel companies and the degradation of the site due to the number of visitors. The site was reopened recently for its potential to create jobs.

This ambivalence is present in the exhibition. Jiménez may not overlap with Toledo in style, but he does share Toledo’s wariness of globalization. In 2002, Toledo famously stopped a McDonald’s from opening in downtown Oaxaca. In “Reposo de la máscara,” the first mask is a pig with a noose hanging from its mouth. Above its snout, there’s the gold key logo of Coppel, a department store found throughout Mexico and known for extending easy credit to its customers. “Then they get you, [they’re] like the executioner of Mexicans,” Jiménez says. “It’s the new type of colonialism.”

The exhibition and the Institute are open to the public Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays; noon to 4 p.m. on Saturdays.

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ARTS BOOKS

Leslie Pietrzyk’s Admit This to No One Captures a Crisp D.C.

By Hannah Grieco Contributing Writer Leslie Pietrzyk is known throughout the D.C. area for her award-winning prose.

Her short story collection, This Angel on My Chest, won the 2015 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, and her 2019 novel, Silver Girl, received a Publisher’s Weekly starred review. She also won the Jeanne Charpiot Goodheart Prize for Fiction from Shenandoah, the Chris O’Malley Fiction Prize from Madison Review, and she was awarded the Pushcart Prize in 2020 for her story “Stay There” in The Southern Review.

After nearly three decades in the area, Pietrzyk recently moved away, but not before writing a collection of interconnected short stories related to Washington. Admit This to No One comes out November 9 from Unnamed Press, but already it’s gathering tremendous reviews for its authentic tone and deeply human lens.

Pietrzyk loves D.C., even as she interrogates it— sometimes ruthlessly.

Pietrzyk sat down with City Paper recently to let us interrogate her back, discussing her craft, her inspiration, and what she’ll miss about the city now that she’s moved away.

Washington City Paper: How would you describe this collection?

Leslie Pietrzyk: Admit This to No One is a collection of linked-ish short stories set in official D.C. Recurring characters include [an imagined] Speaker of the House, his two daughters from various marriages, and Mary-Grace, his personal fixer. Family estrangement, race, gender, abortion—nothing is off the table as these characters grapple with the ways the pursuit of power ripples and informs personal, work, and societal relationships. Can anyone emerge unscathed?

WCP: Who did you write this book for?

LP: Myself, the toughest, most exacting audience I know. Everything I write arises from impossible-to-answer questions I’m trying to tease my way through. Here, I was thinking about various power dynamics.

WCP: What inspired you to dive into politics for Admit This to No One? What was it about D.C. that finally demanded to be written?

LP: Can it be as simple as running out of locations to write about because I’ve lived in D.C. for nearly 30 years? … I wondered why I had never written an entire book set here. I know I didn’t have to turn to politics, but the challenge of the political novel interested me. How to find an arc that feels true without falling prey to the stereotypes? What is the arc, or the cycle, of someone

immersed in official D.C. life? How does power become a currency, and what happens to the people who view their life through the lens of power structures? What are the unspoken rules that govern lives here, and what happens when those rules are broken?

WCP: One of the wonders of this collection is the specificity of the setting. Every story feels like home to those of us who live here. How did you decide where to place the stories?

LP: As this book moved from casual idea to project, I knew I wanted to commemorate some of my favorite D.C. places, especially those that aren’t among the usual suspects of monuments, museums, etc. The Kennedy Center enthralls me; if I could go to one place the night before dying, it might be the opera on a fall evening that’s pleasant enough to stand outside as dusk settles. I’ll grab a Manhattan and appetizers upstairs before the performance, followed by a slow, lingering return to the parking garage at the end of the night. I love being alone in the dim light of that grand hall when the shows are over. So, yes, I wanted to try to find spots that people who live here would recognize but might see anew, as the special places they are.

I admit to thinking about stories and plots as I walked across the Wilson Bridge because that’s what I often do as I walk—distract myself from the sweat of exercising in 3H August (hot, hazy, humid). Honestly, I had about half of a murder mystery in my head one summer! Whenever I had to send characters to a particular place, I tried to think about iconic D.C. details, for example, the caricatures on the wall of the Palm or the way passengers eye other passengers at night in the reflections in the Metro windows.

Many people visit D.C. and see the surface, but I wanted this book to observe real lives here.

WCP: Much like your novel Silver Girl, Admit This to No One’s first story, “Til Death Do Us Part,” pulls us into the daughter’s world completely. The teen angst, the layers of frustration and resentment; the realization, after the fact, that it’s all been an act. How do you tap in to that voice?

LP: Young girls are possibly my favorite characters to explore. Technically, they have no or little useful power—can’t vote, aren’t earning buckets of money—yet there’s nothing scarier than a group of mean teenage girls, or even one teenage girl, rolling her eyes with disdain.

(Maybe that’s just me?) Physically, our youthobsessed culture considers young women and girls to be at the peak of their beauty and “worth”—I’m speaking culturally; of course,

20 november 5, 2021 washingtoncitypaper.com

Susan Hale Thomas

The award-winning author chats about her latest book, working with small presses, and leaving the city she loves.

Leslie Pietrzyk beauty exists at all ages, in countless ways. Yet that fleeting physicality brings a dangerous power that often is misused or misunderstood or unwelcome. Or maybe squandered?

When I’m working with new characters for a big project like these linked stories, I often work with 30-minute writing prompts, pushing my evolving characters into difficult and troubling situations to see how they react, what they’ll say or do. “Til Death Do Us Part” started that way. I also need characters who lie, which teenagers are prone to do. All that said, young girls as characters make me work super-hard, trying to keep their voice on the page sounding current and relevant. In the end, I’m inventing a sort of slangy talk that sounds right without being true to life, since slang passes so quickly through the zeitgeist.

WCP: What was it like to publish a book with an independent press? Why did you choose that route?

LP: Each book takes its own individual journey with highs and lows. In this case, with Unnamed Press, I started with a bunch of stories that I’d basically shoved together because they were all “done.” But the editor took the time to share a vision of how she imagined the stories coalescing into a stronger arc. She left the “how” up to me, which is my favorite way to work: feeling inspired by great ideas and then spending the months ahead puzzling out the bigger picture for myself. [...] And small presses can be quick: I’m grateful to insert an allusion to the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol into a book that appears less than a year later. Small presses make a writer feel her book matters; that books aren’t a commodity but a crucial part of the larger, ongoing conversation about why words matter, why art prevails. Talk about power!

WCP: What would you tell a reader who isn’t from D.C.?

LP: Visit your checklist of monuments and

museums, but also take time to walk through the city, especially as the light is changing, or just find a place to sit and stare. Pre-COVID, I loved to park myself on a bench outside on Capitol Hill and watch busy people pass and cluster—that self-imposed aura of importance fascinates me. Know that D.C. is way wider and deeper and more diverse than those sites on the mall. Check out Old Town Alexandria, where my heart is. Above all, for the love of god, STAND TO THE RIGHT on Metro escalators.

WCP: You’ve recently moved away from D.C. What will you miss? What are you happy to let go of?

LP: Bye-bye, traffic! What I miss, along with some of the sites already mentioned, is that sense of being in an important place where important things happen. This realization is totally unexpected—the sensation must be part of my internalized landscape. But shortly after we left, there was mention of an upcoming march or protest, and I thought with a pang: Oh, I don’t live there anymore. I also miss feeling that the people around me devour books and publications and ideas and want to talk-talktalk about what they’re think-think-thinking.

I miss that paper copy of the Washington Post delivered to my door every morning, and I miss listening to WAMU or C-SPAN radio in the wee hours of the night when I can’t sleep.

(Logistically, streaming means disturbing my husband.) I miss walking down Connecticut Avenue from Dupont Circle to Farragut West on a warm summer night. I’ll sob with abandon when it’s Scottish Walk weekend in Old Town come December. I’ll miss the elegant cocktails at the Columbia Room. And oh…the amazing community of D.C. writers, flourishing amid the backstabbing politicos.

Pietrzyk reads from Admit This to No One at 5 p.m. on Nov. 13 at Politics and Prose.

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Did a robot write Finch?

From Blade Runner to The Matrix, many great works of science fiction have fretted about the moment when robots replace us.

These films unlock ancient anxieties about technology and its power over the humans who created it. Finch is the rare sci-fi story that rejects that anxiety and revels in our replacement. It’s a simple story of a man, his dog, and his robot. Tom Hanks plays the title character, a robotics expert who has survived a climateinfluenced apocalypse with his pup, Goodyear (yes, there’s a story behind the name). They live in peace, but their time is limited; Finch is slowly dying from radiation poisoning. So he does what any postapocalyptic doggie daddy would do: He builds a robot whose sole purpose is caring for Goodyear in his absence.

Fans of Hanks’ earlier canine-centric work Turner & Hooch might be disappointed, as the relationship here between man and dog here is largely symbolic. Goodyear, a terrier mix, is a very good boy. He plays fetch, gets belly rubs, and cocks his head at just the right moments, but he mostly exists as an emblem of Finch’s lingering humanity. Watching Hanks snuggle a dog is a genuine American pleasure that cannot be dismissed, but the film is ultimately more concerned with the relationship between Finch and Jeff, the redheaded robot voiced by Caleb Landry Jones, and to be fair, there’s more to work with there. Jeff must learn to become human. The dog stays a dog.

When a severe storm forces the unorthodox trio to flee their bunker and take to the highway, Finch veers from its sci-fi roots and plants a foot in a few different genres. It’s a bona fide road movie, with the bulk of the story happening inside Finch’s solar-powered RV. With the wide open skies and sparsely populated desert towns, it also feels like a Western, albeit one that reflects the breakdown of a future civilization rather than the ascent of a past one. The

lack of ancillary human characters may have been a financial decision rather than a narrative one (Finch often feels like it is squeezing every penny out of its budget), but there is an undeniable mythic power in its images of desolate towns of the American West.

Still, these winning elements don’t always jibe.

Finch’s efforts to teach robot Jeff how to walk, talk, and care like a human being feel rote, and the “comically mismatched pair who need each other” routine has been done better elsewhere (including in Turner & Hooch). Every beat is predictable, but the lead actors forge a chemistry that makes the stale plot points feel just fresh enough. Hanks dips into his past, straddling the line between his more stoic performances and his purely comic ones, while his formidable presence holds the film’s disparate tones together.

It also allows room for Jeff, the film’s most interesting character, to flourish. He’s a literally wellconstructed character, exuding a tactility that’s rare for cinematic androids. When he moves through the world, you feel his weight, and Jones modulates his voice with insight and nuance. With his stilted speech, he starts out sounding a bit like a digitized Borat, but the more he talks, the more humanity his voice exudes.

It’s a perfectly serviceable film that would have still benefited from a firmer hand. With its blend of sentimentality and trauma, Finch is aiming for the sweet spot created by frequent Hanks collaborator Steven Spielberg, and there are even some late-breaking daddy issues to complete the picture. But veteran TV director Miguel Sapochnik, who directed several episodes of Game of Thrones, doesn’t quite have the craft (or perhaps the budget) to completely tie it all together. Its big moments resonate, but it achieves little cumulative power beyond the obvious. It’s not too challenging to make an audience cry when you’ve got a dying man, a dog, and a charming robot to work with. Whether the film earned those tears is another story altogether. —Noah Gittell Finch is available to stream on AppleTV+ starting Nov. 5.

ARTS MUSIC

Doug E. Fresh’s Valentine to Chuck Brown, Go-Go

By Alona Wartofsky Every go-go fan remembers their first live go-go show. For rapper Doug E. Fresh, it was a mid-’80s “Go-Go Meets Rap” concert at the old Capital Centre in Landover, where he appeared with Run-D.M.C. and Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers. Run advised Fresh to check out Brown’s set, and Fresh was blown away by Brown’s outsize charisma, the exceptionally skilled band, an audience of thousands chanting, “Wind me up, Chuck,” and, of course, Brown’s go-go beat with its multilayered percussion and laid-back funky groove.

“Lord have mercy. I was like, this is unbelievable,” recalls Fresh. “When the beats was coming in and he just started rockin….it was him. It was something about him … and the band was so tight.”

Later that night, he sought out Brown in the dressing room. “I said, ‘Man, that was unreal.

I never seen nuthin’ like this,’ and he started laughing,” Fresh says. “That was my first encounter with the Godfather, and it was like an automatic click. We started talking, and our relationship grew into this bond.” Their friendship lasted until Brown’s death in 2012.

Last month, Fresh released This One’s for Chuck Brown: Doug E. Fresh Salutes the Godfather of Go-Go, a valentine to Brown and the genre he created. The album reflects their personal and professional relationship: For years, Brown’s sets included Fresh and Slick Rick’s 1985 song “La Di Da Di,” and the two shared stages on multiple occasions, including Brown’s 75th birthday celebration on the Capitol Lawn with the National Symphony Orchestra. On stage, their connection was natural and authentic. “I would get on with him, and we would just freestyle,” says Fresh. “We would just go where the energy go.”

This One’s for Chuck Brown is a go-go album, and its nine tracks include new material as well as updated versions of Fresh’s classic hits “I’m Gettin’ Ready” and “The Show.” The second track, “Chuck Brown,” celebrates Brown’s immense cultural contribution: “Gold tooth and hat, guitar and strap / He can sing and rap, no generational gap / Put go-go on the map, he soul searched for that / ‘Bustin’ Loose’ is the track, and now the park is packed / And as the crowd react, you hear a loud impact / From the proud and Black, the drum sounds attract.”

For Fresh, the project was inevitable, a spiritual calling, and the right vehicle for his first solo record in more than 20 years. “My first album that I’m coming back with is go-go,” says Fresh. “What would make me do that? My genuine, sincere love, and appreciation for the creation of go-go.”

The album benefits from the powerful connections the hip-hop icon has shared with the genre ever since that Capital Centre show.

Over the years, Fresh has recorded and performed with Brown, Rare Essence, and Team Familiar. While it is not uncommon for nationally recognized rappers visiting the area to join go-go bands’ shows, few have sustained the relationships in ways that specifically benefit local

musicians. Unlike other rappers, who’ve either jacked go-go beats or collaborated on recordings with go-go artists, Fresh has maintained close relationships with DMV creators.

When Fresh initially approached Brown’s management and family about the project, the reception was overwhelmingly positive. “Doug has always remained a true supporter and fan,” says Brown’s longtime manager, Tom Goldfogle. “It’s a tribute to Doug that he wanted to do this record. I can’t think of anyone else of his stature that would go out on a limb and do a record like this.”

By his own recollection, Fresh fell in love with go-go before he knew what it was. As a preteen, he hung out in a Harlem game room where he played pool, Pac-Man, and Brown’s 1979 hit, “Bustin’ Loose,” on the jukebox.

Once Fresh became a beatbox star and shared stages with go-go bands, he recognized a similarity between the genre’s sinuous grooves and his own free-flowing hip-hop style. “My music had a go-go swing to it,” he says.

But there are other, deeper connections that reach further into the past. “The beat, I just know it instinctively,” he says. “It’s something that connects us back all the way to the beginning of communication … I think that the go-go beat means something. We don’t really know what it is, but genetically, we respond to it.”

Fresh’s sounding board for the project was his longtime friend Donnell Floyd, formerly of Rare Essence and Team Familiar. Their friendship dates back to the mid-’80s. Fresh, who appeared alongside Stevie Wonder at Floyd’s 2019 farewell concert, frequently performed with Rare Essence and appeared on the band’s 1993 single “Must Be Like That.” (Rare Essence performs on Fresh’s 1988 “I’m Gettin’ Ready” and a new remix of the song.) “Doug has an incredible feel for go-go, and for what it is that we do,” says Floyd.

Historically, outside music labels have softened go-go for mass consumption, much to its detriment. Fresh was determined to record an album that was faithful to Brown’s distinctive beat. Some of This One’s for Chuck Brown was recorded live at a local, pre-COVID performance with Team Familiar, which helps maintain the integrity of its go-go sound. “I wanted it to be pure and authentic,” he says. “My job on this project was to present go-go in the right way, and it was important for me to do this with the banner of Chuck Brown and the respect for Chuck Brown.” A forthcoming video for “Chuck Brown” will be accompanied by a brief retrospective of Fresh’s history with go-go.

Last summer, the Recording Academy added go-go to its Best Regional Roots Music Album category. As an internationally recognized icon, Fresh has a strong chance to bring home that or other Grammy awards with this release. “I don’t see go-go as regional. I see it as international, and I think it will continue to grow. It has so much possibility,” says Fresh. “Hip-hop has evolved and changed forms. I feel that go-go has the same potential, as long as the creators continue to create in a fearless way.”

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CITY LIGHTS True to Form Art Show A new art gallery will take over Adams Morgan for just four days. Five local artists will claim— and paint—space at Grand Duchess, a neighborhood restaurant focusing on craft cocktails.

There, Jason Bowers, the curator and project manager of JAB arts, has put together True to Form, a show focusing on form and pattern. While Bowers says the theme represents “calmness and tranquility” to him, he wanted each artist to bring a unique take to the pop-up. For Emon Surakitkoson, this theme looks like “sculptural” black-and-white paintings. She says a “nuance” is revealed in the details within her work. For local artist and activist Luther Wright, a mix of mediums, sources of inspiration, and bright colors add to the concept of “form and pattern.” Joining Surakitkoson and Wright in the show are Nate Mann, Kristyn Lee Moon, and TJ Buttner. Together, their mediums include acrylic paint, pen and marker, polymer clay, and spray paint. Bowers says that unlike traditional art galleries, the True to Form pop-up aims to make art as accessible as possible. Visitors can choose to order food or cocktails from Grand Duchess, or they can simply stop in when the restaurant is open to look and shop. And as part of a live painting demonstration, Buttner will bring his work to visitors in a new way. The Grand Duchess has commissioned him to paint the entire patio, which Buttner will work on Friday and Saturday nights for a live audience. It’s also worth noting that Bowers and the Grand Duchess have been intentional in artist selection in more ways than one: They’re hoping to highlight the link between the arts scene and service industry—several of the artists have worked in said industry. With that in mind, visitors are encouraged to enjoy food and drink during the event. Ilegal Mezcal is offering drink specials all four days, and La Tejana hosts a breakfast taco pop-up Sunday morning.

Stop in, grab a bite, and maybe walk away with your new favorite piece of art. True to Form runs Nov. 4 through 7 at the Grand Duchess, 2337 18th St. NW. instagram.com/jab.arts. Free. —Sarah Smith

City Lights

morgxn

Emma Mead

City Lights

In an oh-so-familiar tale, Morgan Isaac Kerr, better known as morgxn, found his life screeching to a halt in March 2020. His birthday trip to Barcelona ended in a flight home to locked-down Los Angeles, where he quickly found himself kicked off his record label. The months that followed were filled with tough conversations, isolation, and a struggle just to keep going. But it was also during this time that the singer-songwriter went viral: Shortly into quarantine, Billie Eilish publicly credited his 2018 song “home” as inspiration for her Grammy-nominated single “bad guy,” and his pandemic release “WONDER” turned into a social media success, taking TikTok and other streaming platforms by storm. It even caught the attention of Sara Bareilles. Now, the alt-pop singer is back in his native Nashville and ready to kick off his tour with Smallpools. In a way, touring and his soon-tobe-released MERIDIAN: vol 2 are a comeback statement—the sign of a new chapter in morgxn’s life and career. But with an unassuming profoundness, morgxn pushes back on that narrative. Instead, he views his new music to be in conversation with his past releases. He asks, will what he says matter? How can the world carry around the hurt of the past 18 months? Not necessarily in search of answers, the self-processed “explorer” turned inward and then to music. MERIDIAN promises to challenge rules in the way that morgxn does so well—blending beautiful, upbeat tracks with honest, questioning lyrics. Come to his Nov. 7 concert at Union Stage ready to work through your discomfort. It’s in those spaces, morgxn says, the magic of his music truly shines. morgxn opens for Smallpools at 8 p.m. on Nov. 7 at Union Stage, 740 Water St. SW. $25-$35. unionstage.com. —Sarah Smith

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Expats Theatre Presents Pankrác ’45

It’s unusual for someone to turn their personal passions into successful side hustles, but Alec Wightman, a retired corporate lawyer and lifelong music fan, was able to do just that. More than 25 years ago, he became an independent concert promoter in the Columbus, Ohio, area, as well as a board member at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. He used his downtime during the pandemic to write Music in My Life: Notes From a Longtime Fan, a personal account of his time in the music industry, which he will discuss at the Mansion on O Street on Nov. 9. Typically producing smaller concerts with singer-songwriters, Wightman recalls an amusing experience that happened with Art Garfunkel. “The Sunday before the Thursday show, I opened up the Sunday Columbus Dispatch,” explains Wightman. “On their Arts and Entertainment section, above the fold is a big picture of Art with an interview and a little sidebar that says ‘for tickets, call this number’ and it’s my law office!

For the next 48 hours … my office phone is ringing off the hook. I finally, Tuesday morning, shut down ticket sales. I now have way more people than I’ve ever had in the place before. I had to rent more chairs and hire more security guards.... It all turned out just fine.” Alec Wightman’s talk starts at 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 9 at the Mansion on O Street, 2020 O St. NW. omuseum.org $10. —Christina Smart

As the audience settles into their seats, a film loop is projected onto a shelving unit filled with cardboard boxes. It is a collage of documentary footage of German troops in Prague, a speech by former Czechoslovakian President Edvard Beneš (who led the Czechoslovak government-inexile 1939 to 1945), and a dramatization of the assassination of Reich Protector (aka a senior Nazi administrator) Reinhard Heydrich by the Czech Resistance, and German revenge liquidation of the towns of Lidice and Ležáky. The minimalist set design and projections (both by Johnny Dahm Robertson) are an ingenious framing device for Expats Theatre’s timely production of Czech playwright Martina Kinská’s Pankrác ’45. The drama, about the persistence of authoritarianism after its overthrow, is codirected by Melissa B. Robinson and Karin Rosnizeck and translated by Barbara Day. The title refers to the prison where the play is set—where suspected war criminals and collaborators await trial after the liberation of Czechoslovakia following the end of World War II. Five women, accused of collaborating with Nazis, share a prison cell. While their meeting is a product of Kinská’s imagination, four of them are based on real women: Hana Krupková (Sara Barker), a member of the cell that killed Heydrich who’s now suspected of betraying her comrades; Lída Baarová (Stacy Whittle) and Adina Mandlová (Rosnizeck), actors who worked in the German film industry (Baarová had a two-year affair with Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels); and Julie (Lisa Hodsoll), a Jew who survived Auschwitz-Birkenau as a “kapo”—a prisoner assigned to supervise other prisoners. Joining them is “Nová” (Aniko Olah), who refuses to speak. In the courtyard outside their window, the guilty are hanged (the play is not without gallows humor). Is the same fate in store for these five women? Will they be exonerated? Or will the choices they made to survive under Nazism leave them compromised after the Communist Coup of 1948? Pankrác ’45 runs to Nov. 21 at Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H St. NE. expatstheatre.com. $20-$35. —Ian Thal Marvin Bowser

Robert Caplin

Alec Wightman: Music IS My Life

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Courtesy of Mola Empanada

Friendsgiving Market

After their first successful collaboration last summer, online plant boutique and design consulting firm PLNTR is once again partnering with the Southwest art space Culture House to host a Friendsgiving themed market. As Caitlin Tuttle, PLNTR’s co-founder and art director, explains, the goal of the event is to bring people together. “We’re going with the Thanksgiving theme because we want to highlight supporting the community.” Taking place outside at Culture House’s Avant Garden, the dog-friendly market (complete with a doggy photo booth!) will feature local vendors such as Underground Goods, Chocolate City Rocks, and Love, Lori Michelle, as well as live music performances by Bassapella and Venray. Food, including Mola Empanada, and drinks will be available for purchase. The daylong pop-up will also offer two DIY candle-making classes at 1 and 3 p.m., as well as a demo on how to cook friendsgiving side dishes with published chef Jonathan Bardzik from 2 to 4 p.m. (Classes require advanced registration.) But the community support extends beyond the market, which is also partnering with Ward 6 Mutual Aid to raise funds for Serve Your City while also collecting winter coats for local distribution.

“While the event itself is free, we strongly encourage donations for [the] winter coat drive, be it a cash donation or a very gently used coat,” says Tuttle. “This whole event, at the end of the day, is supporting the community by providing a little bit of warmth during the winter season and supporting small businesses that make this city so fantastic.” The market runs from noon to 5 p.m. on Nov. 14 at Culture House, 700 Delaware Ave. SW. plntr.co. Free-$65. —Hannah Docter-Loeb

City Lights

Philip Brookman: In the Light of Memory, 1969 –2021 Philip Brookman is best known as a curator of photography—for two decades at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and more recently at the National Gallery of Art. In that capacity, he’s organized important exhibits on Robert Frank, Emmet Gowin, Sally Mann, and Eadweard Muybridge.

But a new exhibit at the American University Museum focuses on his own photographs. It spans more than five decades of work in a dizzying, even bewildering, array of genres and styles. Curated by Milena Kalinovska, the show features portraiture (including such boldfaced names as Frank, Richard Diebenkorn, Gordon Parks, and Allen Ginsberg, as well as blue-collar workers and cute kids), street photography, documentary work (including an impressively moody series of images from Cuba made in 2012), and some mysterious diptychs that pair people with places. Brookman skillfully uses blurring in some of his finest works: a 2008 triptych documenting a Senate fundraiser through slow-motion handshakes and backslaps, a 2019 multilayered self-portrait reflected in a window, and a soft-focus image from 2021 showing leaves in pleasant hues of green, pink, and orange. Brookman’s most successful effort at roping diverse styles into a coherent whole comes from the images he used in his 2015 “cinematic novel,” Redlands. The images date from the early 1970s and depict the eponymous city in inland California and its environs; they mix Walker Evans-style depictions of vernacular architecture and the slice-of-life road images of Stephen Shore, right down to their shared, washed-out color palette. As with Shore’s roughly contemporary images, Brookman has waited years to be published in book form. But the wait was worth it. In the Light of Memory runs through Dec. 12 at the American University Museum, 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW. Open Friday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. american.edu. Free. A virtual gallery talk between Brookman and Kalinovska takes place at 6 p.m. on Nov. 17. Free. —Louis Jacobson washingtoncitypaper.com november 5, 2021 25

DIVERSIONS SAVAGE LOVE

Need some love advice?

Curious about kinks?

Visit the City Paper website for more Savage Love. washingtoncitypaper.com/ columns

I want to correct you on something you've said repeatedly: A man can “hide” his bisexual orientation. I disagree. I felt my boyfriend was gay or bi immediately, but he flatly denied it. It was so obvious! He sucked at sex, he never initiated, and he was clueless about female anatomy! I was forced to hunt for proof, which I discovered after nine months. Then I mercilessly outed him to friends, humiliated him to his face, and finally confronted him with the proof of his profile on a gay hookup app. I enjoyed every wicked minute exposing his lies and telling everyone the truth because he used and exploited me in a fake relationship. I was wrong about a couple of things.

First, I thought if I asked him if he was gay, he would confess and come clean with me. Wrong, he never did. Second, if he was gay, he wouldn't hide that fact because gays won the LGBTQ rights fight. Wrong. I am a fag hag but only because I like feeling superior and enjoy what I get out of my friendships with gay men. But I’m not interested in fruit juice.

—Furious And Vengeful Ex You are a terrible person, I don’t want you reading my column, and I hope your gay friends come to see you for the toxic person you are and cut you out of their lives—unless they’re just as awful as you are, in which case they deserve you.

To be clear, FAVE, what your ex did was wrong. I have always taken a dim view of closeted gay men who date straight women to throw people off the scent of cock on their lips (assuming your ex was gay and not bi). But if this dude sucked at sex (when he had it with you), never initiated sex (at least not with you), and couldn’t find your clit if you gave him a flashlight (and probably not even then), why waste nine months on him? You could have and should have dumped him the first time the sex was awful, FAVE, or when you first suspected it wasn’t you (or your kind) that he wanted to have sex with.

And for the record, FAVE, anyone can hide their sexual orientation, not just bi men. But many bisexuals don’t come out because they fear being mercilessly outed by angry, bitter, vindictive partners. Again, I don’t have much sympathy for closeted gay men who lie to and mislead women. But if your ex-boyfriend was bi, not gay, and you two hadn’t made a monogamous commitment to each other, he had every right to fuck other people—including other people with penises. —Dan Savage I have a question for you about pubic hair. I’m a straight female in my 40s and began dating someone new recently. We’ve only been dating for about a month and this person keeps making requests that I shave or trim my pubic hair.

I haven’t known this person long enough to feel comfortable making changes to my body on their account. Am I unusual in this area? Is it standard practice now to get rid of pubic hair? I honestly couldn’t care less about my partners’ hair, so long as they’re hygienic. This email may be boring, but I was curious about your thoughts on this topic.

—Lover Interrogates My Pubes Some people get rid of their pubic hair to please

26 november 5, 2021 washingtoncitypaper.com

themselves, LIMP, and some people get rid of their pubic hair to please their partners. You’re not obligated to shave just because the man you’re dating asked you to, LIMP, but unless he’s pressuring you or pouting about it, I don’t think he’s being an asshole. If he asked nicely and you said no and he dropped it, LIMP, that means your new boyfriend can take “no” for an answer and isn’t that a nice thing to know about him? That said, I don’t think trimming your pubic hair to please even a new partner amounts to “changing your body.” It’s not like getting a tattoo or removing a limb—if you don’t like how a trim looks or feels, LIMP, you can stop trimming and, in a few weeks, your natural habitat will be fully restored.

—DS

“If your ex-boyfriend was bi, not gay, and you two hadn’t made a monogamous commitment to each other, he had every right to fuck other people.”

check with him. Not all “Adult Baby/Diaper Lover” play involves power exchange, but when people combine ABDL with D/s, it’s typically the sub who wears the diapers (and has them changed) and the Dom who does the diapering and changing. But if your Dom is into wearing diapers, PADD, he’s already blurring those boundaries, so I don’t see why you can’t at least offer to change his. If having his diapers changed by his sub would make him feel less dominant, he can continue to change his own damn diapers.

—DS I’m a single cis woman in my mid-40s. I’ve never wanted kids, but I did think at some point I’d get married or have a long-term partnership.

That hasn’t happened, which is fine. I’m content with my life, I make good money, I own my own home, and I love and appreciate all of the great things that come with being single (doing whatever I want, whenever I want, and—let’s be honest—farting at home whenever I gosh darn need to). I have a lot of dear friends who are married, and they are family. I accept that I may be single (but not alone!) for the rest of my life, and that’s fine too. But it comes down to this: I need physical intimacy. I’m OK with my life, but I’m not OK never having a sexual partner again. I really, really, really like sex. I want to be with a person I know well enough to get comfortable. But I live in a place where online meetups are either fleeting or scary. And I’m overweight and lack confidence and don’t exactly have all the boys coming to my yard. Give me some guidance, Dan. —She Isn’t Necessarily Getting Laid, Eh?

I’m a woman in a committed relationship with a man and we’ve just started exploring ABDL. I’m the sub, he’s the Dom. I was wondering if it would be OK for me to change his diapers. I want to show him I’m willing to clean him and take care of him too, but I feel like subs aren’t really supposed to take on those roles. And to be a good sub, I really want to know my place. I trust your opinion on these things.

—Pensively Approaching Diapered Dom

Online meetups feel fleeting because most online meetups, like most offline meetups, are fleeting. They’re chance encounters, like striking up a conversation with a stranger in a bar, and like most chance encounters, they typically go nowhere. Occasionally an online meetup is scary in the dude-gives-off-serial-killer-vibe sense, but most are scary in the making-yourself-vulnerable-and-risking-rejection sense— and there’s no avoiding that kind of scary, SINGLE, only building up your tolerance for it.

And finally, SINGLE, and somewhat controversially … if you’re content with your life as it is, and if you value being able to fart whenever you need to, there are married men out there who aren’t getting any at home, SINGLE, and not all of them are assholes. Some are loving, decent guys in loving, low-conflict marriages who’ve decided to stay married for loving, decent reasons. An ongoing connection with a loving, decent woman who doesn’t want more than they can give could obviously make one of these guys very happy, SINGLE, and it might make you a little happier too.

—DS

It’s fine with me if you change your boyfriend’s diapers, PADD, but you’re going to have to

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

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DC SCHOLARS PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL invites proposals for Special Education Technical Assistance and Leader Coaching from 01/01/22 - 06/30/22. The Request for Proposals (RFP) speci�ications can be obtained on and after Friday, November 5, 2021, from Emily Stone via estone@ dcscholars.org. Proposals are due Friday, November 12, 2021 by 5:00 pm.

All questions should be in writing by email. No phone calls regarding this RFP will be accepted.

SELA PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL intends to enter a Sole Source Contract with Apple Education to purchase new iPads. We have selected this vendor based on the price per unit available. Each unit will cost approximately $370. We estimate our total cost to be about $40,000. This is NOT a request for quotes or proposals. Questions or comments to this Notice of Intent should be directed to Ryan Benjamin, Director of Operations, via e-mail only at billing@selapcs. org. Please indicate in the subject of your email: Notice of Intent Question Submission -Apple iPads.

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Employment MANAGER, HR SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT for District of Columbia Public Schools. Bachelor’s degree Computer Science, Information Technology, or related �ield plus thirty six months experience in related IT �ield; Salesforce certi�ication required.

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Station) From 495 / GA Avenue: Exit 31 Georgia Ave. (97) north. Turn left (west) at the 1st traf�ic light onto Forest Glen Rd. Rosensteel Hall is 3 blocks on the right. DC Metro: Take the Red Line to the Forest Glen station. Exit to the Kiss & Ride (Forest Glen Rd.). Follow Forest Glen Rd. west 2 blocks to Rosensteel Hall. FB Page: https://www.facebook. com/LtMRecordShow Website: https://love-themusic.com/ In accordance with Montgomery County, Maryland policies indoor masking is required.

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Includes FREE standard WiFi Scan here for this exclusive offer or visit rcn.com *Internet download speeds may vary and are not guaranteed. Observed speeds may vary based on device, connection, & other factors outside of RCN’s control. Gig Internet offers speeds up to 940 Mbps. See rcn.com/yourspeed for why speeds may vary. Certain equipment may be required to receive Gigabit speeds up to 940 Mbps and/or, 600Mbps or 300 Mbps. RCN substantiates that the cable modem equipment provided, and the configuration of such cable modem, meets the broadband speeds advertised when attached to a wired connection based on SamKnows testing procedures. All speeds not available in all areas. Offer valid for new residential customers or customers with accounts in good standing who have not had RCN service within the last 60 days. Offer expires 11/30/21. RCN’s promotional offer extends defined, set pricing for the period of 12 months after installation. All sales subject to credit check, applicable surcharges, equipment taxes, activation fees, installation, franchise fees, government imposed charges and fees. †FREE install is a $79.95 value and will be applied to the order when the coupon code, DC100 or DCFREE, is entered online. FREE month is applied to the first month of service. ^Additional services, such as equipment, premium channels and other tiers of service are subject to an additional charge and regular increases and not included as part of the package. Price does not include Network Access Maintenance Fee of $6.97 per month. Network Access and Maintenance Fee helps to defray costs associated with building and maintaining RCN’s fiber rich broadband network, as well as the costs of expanding network capacity to support the continued increase in customers’ average broadband consumption. This fee is neither government-mandated nor a tax, fee or surcharge imposed by the government.

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Not all services available in all areas. All names, logos, images and service marks are property of their respective owners. Visit www.rcn.com/hub/about-rcn/policies-and-disclaimers for additional terms and conditions. ©2021 Starpower Communications, LLC. All rights reserved.

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