Washington City Paper (November 19, 2021)

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NEWS: MICROPLASTICS IN THE DISTRICT’S RIVERS 4 ARTS: MUSIC VIDEOGRAPHER CHANGES THE GAME 26 FILM: JULIA CHILD DOCUMENTARY IS BLAND 30

THE DISTRICT'S FREE WEEKLY SINCE 1981 VOLUME 41, NO. 12

The People Issue Photographs by Darrow Montgomery

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TABLE OF CONTENTS COVER STORY 6 The People Issue: Meet a radio show host, a parent advocate, a Black queer historian, an engineer, a hometown coach, and nine other captivating people who call D.C. home.

NEWS 4 Micro Waves: Local scientists and researchers are studying the how microplastics are impacting the Potomac and Anacostia rivers.

ARTS 26 Moshpxt Keeps It Reel: Local videographer JayJay Thakar combines unpredictable style, intricate plotlines, and a love for the artists in his game-changing music videos.

28 Theater: Thal on Mosaic Theater Company’s Birds of North America 29 Galleries: Rudig on Through a Glass Darkly: Mirrors and Vanity at Friends Artspace 30 Film: Gittell on Julia

CITY LIGHTS 32 City Lights: Laugh with Paula Poundstone, watch a Beast court a Beauty, celebrate 30 years of the Lyricist Lounge, and take in Soomin Ham’s latest photo series commemorating soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

DIVERSIONS

Darrow Montgomery | 700 block of Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Nov. 11

31 Crossword 34 Savage Love

Editorial

Advertising and Operations

35 Classifieds

Interim Editor CAROLINE JONES Managing Editor MITCH RYALS Arts and City Lights Editor SARAH MARLOFF Food Editor LAURA HAYES Sports Editor KELYN SOONG Multimedia Editor WILL WARREN Staff Writers AMBAR CASTILLO, BAILEY VOGT Staff Photographer DARROW MONTGOMERY Creative Director NAYION PERKINS Designer KATY BARRETT-ALLEY Audience Growth and Engagement Editor MICHELLE GOLDCHAIN Copy Editor GAIL O’HARA

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On the cover: Nzinga Tull, photograph

by Darrow Montgomery

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DISTRICT LINE

Micro Waves Bridget Reed Morawski

Local scientists and researchers are trying to figure out how microplastics are impacting the Potomac and Anacostia watersheds.

One of the discs Jesse Meiller and J. Adam Frederick retrieved at National Harbor

By Bridget Reed Morawski It was a gloomy Tuesday at National Harbor, with enough rainfall to soak your socks and render your eyeglasses useless.

Save for a few rollicking ducks, few bothered to venture to the water’s edge on such a dreary day.

Except for Jesse Meiller and J. Adam Frederick, that is. They crouched over a dock at the casino and convention hub, marveling at the marine life that had accumulated on aluminum discs they had submerged into this notch of the Potomac River.

In the two weeks since the researchers last examined the discs and sunk them into the waterway, a miniscule menagerie of puffy sponges and gelatinous, mossy creatures known as bryozoans had formed. But while biodiversity is an essential component of their project, the work that Meiller and Frederick are conducting with the discs has evolved since it began: Now, they also want to investigate the presence of microplastics that may stick to the organisms.

Mei l le r a n d F r e de r i c k , w h o wo r k

respectively for American University and Maryland Sea Grant, are among the small cadre of local researchers, educators, and advocates seeking to further the area’s collective knowledge about just how pervasive microplastics are in D.C.'s waterways.

As the name implies, microplastics are tiny bits of plastic either intentionally created that way or bits of larger plastic products that have broken apart. The mere existence of microplastics in D.C.’s waterways is no singular circumstance. Microplastics have been found in waterways across the country, from shellfish on an Alaskan island to 10,000 feet above sea level in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. Closer to home, microplastics have been found in more than 50 Pennsylvanian waterways.

However, urban areas like D.C. tend to have higher concentrations of microplastics in their watersheds than the waterways of less p o pu lated a rea s , accord i n g to Mat t Robinson, an environmental protection specialist with the District’s Department of Energy & Environment.

But even though microplastics have been

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found in waterways and other ecosystems around the country, they’re an understudied topic and it’s currently unclear just how many have accumulated in the Anacostia and Potomac rivers. D.C. doesn’t have a continuous monitoring program in place for microplastics, says Robinson.

“The one thing we have been doing for the past 10 years is we’ve been monitoring the macroplastics [and] the trash in the Anacostia and Potomac [rivers] and Rock Creek,” Robinson says. Because the Anacostia River is one of the most polluted rivers in the country, the federal government has put the city on a “pollution diet” known as a total maximum daily load. Complying with the TMDL essentially means that a jurisdiction must make sure a waterway identified as needing help meeting water quality standards cannot exceed a predetermined amount of pollutants.

To adhere to the TMDL and minimize the amount of plastics that end up in its waterways, Robinson says the District has installed trash traps along the Anacostia, in addition to street sweeping programs, illegal dumping

enforcement, and litter clean-ups. But much of the trash in the waterways isn’t necessarily coming from the District, he says, particularly since the city instated the plastic bag fee in 2010.

“If we can highlight the ecological impacts, the human health impacts, and even the economic impacts from plastic pollution, specifically microplastic pollution, then we can potentially get other jurisdictions to do more, and help us with reducing plastic pollution in our waterways and waterways downstream,” he says. In D.C., “We’re heavily impacted by upstream sources of pollution, yet we’re less than 17 percent of the Anacostia watershed.”

“One reason we’re pushing microplastics research now is that a lot of the TMDL implementation is inspired by aesthetic impacts from trash pollution: We don’t want to see our waterways full of trash,” he adds. “However, there’s been very, very little work done on the ecological impacts of plastic pollution,” especially microplastics, he says, characterizing already published research on our waterways as “very disturbing.”

Still, certain educated assumptions can be made, since we have a sizable volume of visible trash and larger plastics in these waterways, and because microplastics are often shed from such litter, Meiller says.

But scientists prefer concrete research over mere assumptions, which is why, to identify whether or not fish in different parts of the Potomac River’s food chain consume different amounts of microplastics, a team composed of consulting firm Tetra Tech and the University of Maryland researchers will begin dissecting around 200 fish—blue catfish, mummichogs, largemouth bass, and striped bass—from across the Potomac River’s food chain this week.

The fish, euthanized before being wrapped in aluminum foil, were collected this past spring, summer, and fall and stored at a Baltimore area lab, in a walk-in cooler large enough for Tetra Tech fisheries ecologist Bob Murphy to lay down in. (Not that Murphy has—it’s much too cold, he says, joking).

The dissection project was created after Robinson and Murphy gave presentations at a 2019 workshop that highlighted that “we still have little idea of the magnitude and distribution of microplastics within the watershed, much less the potential impact microplastic pollution may be having on living resources,” according to a report summarizing the workshop’s findings.

The workshop was convened by a committee that advises the Chesapeake Bay Program, a partnership of regional governments that have made various agreements to reduce sources of pollution in the watershed and revitalize the ecosystem. One of the recommendations that came out of that workshop was to “collaborate on utilizing the existing bay and watershed monitoring networks to monitor for microplastic pollution,” which led to federal and regional funding of the dissection project and other related projects.

These projects aren’t the only local efforts,

DISTRICT LINE or even the only efforts that these researchers are undertaking. Meiller is also examining sediment and water samples taken with Barbara Balestra, another American University environmental science professor.

And at Nash Run, an Anacostia River tributary near the Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens, American University graduate student Elisa Davey is studying sediment samples. She has already found a “pretty diverse” amount of microplastics, from fibers and bits of Styrofoam to beads.

According to Meiller, if Davey’s research gets published, it will be one of the first published papers on the Anacostia River and microplastics.

Ultimately, research like this can hopefully impact how policymakers understand and subsequently respond to this and other environmental concerns. And while unpublished research can still promote better common understanding, published research has the potential to effect change.

“Peer-reviewed publications are best and are the gold standard,” Murphy says. When it comes to helping policymakers understand the scale or importance of a problem, “even if there is reliable, unpublished research that can provide context to a discussion, only the peer-reviewed, published research is typically considered in decision-making,” Woodlard adds.

But policymakers aren’t the only people who researchers hope will learn from studies of this issue. Educators, academics, and local nonprofits have formed partnerships to help young students understand the ecological impact of their polyester T-shirts or singleuse water bottles.

Meiller and Frederick, the researchers sampling at National Harbor, aren’t collecting the discs just for their own research. They’re also bringing the discs to a Maryland school district so students can see the pervasiveness of the microplastics problem with their own eyes and hoping to soon involve D.C. classrooms and teachers.

The discs are “a passive platform, and we bring them in and see what’s landing on them,” says Christopher “Rusty” LaMotte, a Carroll County Public Schools teacher for the past 16 years. “Not only do we talk about how much [microplastic] is being found there, but this is just a small little disc in a fairly sizable body of water.”

Which leaves the kids asking, “What else is out there?” LaMotte says.

Bridget Reed Morawski

In terms of published scientific literature, “There’s been enough research that has definitely shown some negative [health] effects” from microplastics in general, Murphy says.

Still, what’s published and available doesn’t encompass the entire “family of potential issues that are associated with microplastics,” says Ryan Woodland, an associate professor of coastal ecology with the University of Maryland involved in the fish dissection project. Some of those problems could include bits of plastic obstructing a fish’s digestive system, or the toxins in the plastics leaching into the fish’s tissues and organs, he adds.

“It’s really hard to tease apart all of those possible negative impacts on an organism, because it has to be done experimentally,” Woodland says, adding that other external factors, such as rainfall, complicate the question. “And I don’t know that we have the body of research yet to really understand the full range of possible negative effects.”

The unknown public health impacts aren’t limited to the direct impact of just the microplastics. “Plastics that are out in the environment can actually carry other contaminants, too, along with them,” Meiller says, pointing out potential indirect consequences of traveling microplastics.

“So it’s not just what was intentionally put into [the plastics], but also things that are unintentionally hitching a ride on them,” including certain pesticides, he adds.

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The People Issue Photographs by Darrow Montgomery

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Narrowing down the list of people to include in this issue is never easy, but this year the process was particularly tough, spanning multiple hours and multiple meetings. Was it because Washingtonians have suddenly become more interesting and taken on new, compelling challenges? Was it because we’ve paid more attention to those around us as the coronavirus pandemic continues to evolve and we stay closer to home? Or are all of us more eager to pick up on our neighbors’ energy and excitement during a decidedly dark time?

Why we found so many compelling candidates is ultimately less interesting than the individuals you’ll meet in the following pages. Some have lived in D.C. for their entire lives and others arrived in the District to attend college or take on new jobs. Some lead high-profile projects or teams, and some guide smaller groups in their communities. Examined together, these 14 people—captured in color by the inimitable Darrow Montgomery—reflect D.C. in its current moment. Let them tell you why they’re committed to this place we all call home. —Caroline Jones Photos shot with COVID-19 safety protocols in place at the Lansburgh.

Our thanks to the staff of the Washington Justice for their assistance.

Little Bacon Bear The Voice

With her distinctive voice and booming personality, Little Bacon Bear controls the D.C. area airways through her evening show on 93.9 WKYS. One of the youngest figures in local radio, she constantly displays her versatility and skill with showcases of local artists on segments such as KYS Versus, and she provides intimate and detailed interviews with big name artists such as Megan Thee Stallion, Brent Faiyaz, and Wale. Bacon has also become one of the most sought-after hosts at clubs, concerts, and festivals. —Nayion Perkins As a DJ and someone that works in radio, I’m assuming you have a passion for music. What do you like most about music?

You know, it’s really interesting that you would shape it and frame it that way because I think a lot of the time, it’s about the people. The music is a thing that is not fixed, it’s always changing, it is always evolving, it’s growing, it’s loved, it’s hated, it’s getting better, it’s getting worse. But the people are the thing that is unifying.

They are the one thing that does not change. … The music is the star, but people and the interactions keep it really going.

What do you love most about working in the D.C. area?

You know, radio has afforded me the opportunity to do so many great things. Obviously, I turn on a microphone and talk with thousands of people as far as the Beltway reaches and beyond, but it is so much more impactful to me when I remember someone’s voice. Like there’s a woman who calls my show every day, and her name is Miss Kim. And Miss Kim calls, and she gets the Bacon Challenge wrong every day. And I love that because I know Miss Kim’s voice. And I also know the prisoner that calls me from the prison up top and wants to tell me a shout out, or tells me how much I got him through his day from listening to me from jail. Or going to a kid’s pep rally at their elementary school, and then going to their middle school years later and seeing them, and they’re like five inches taller, and they still remember your name and show you a picture from five years ago. It’s like, this is us.

This is the thing that breaks up the monotony.

What has been your favorite moment working in radio?

For me I always go back to, it’s the prisoners who call in, it’s the grocery store stops, it’s that person in traffic who Little Bacon Bear

washingtoncitypaper.com november 19, 2021 7

calls. It’s somebody seeing you through their reflection in your car window, and they’re pointing at you with their mouth open. Those are all the biggest moments because it reminds you that your work matters, and what you’re saying and doing matters, and the songs that you play matter. If there’s anything that I could walk away from radio knowing, it’s that I did my very best at putting as many people in place as I could. I keep talking about local artists just because of my show KYS Versus, which is devoted to giving local artists a platform on the radio. I want to lend this opportunity and lend this space to as many people as I can, and put them in a good position before they pull the plug on me and tell me I can’t do that no more.

Though I love the idea of a pop-up, I feel they kind of convey that feeling of not having roots or a foundation, not having a place to constantly go. 1296 Upshur: That’s where people knew to go on a weekly basis, and it was created by Black queer people for Black queer people. Those spaces have to be created by the people they’re meant for.

Tell me about the Black Queer History Collective.

Currently I’m building [it] with my coconspirator, Ashley Bamfo, who did the interviews with me for the ClubHouse Oral History Project. … It’s this Black queer space inside the Rainbow History Project for us to prioritize ourselves and work on collecting oral histories from as many Black queer people we can. … Hopefully, in the grand scheme of things, I really want it to be a space that helps Black queer research. … I also have the goal of getting both the ClubHouse and the Coffeehouse on the National Register of Historic Places.

As a DJ, how do you read the room at venues and know you’re going to play one song versus another?

I can usually look out into a room when I get there and kind of know how people are feeling. I can see the awkward girl at the bar on her phone scrolling her Twitter timeline. So I’m thinking of her, but I’m also thinking of the guy who’s over at the bar, and I’m just like, ‘OK, what’s his outfit? What are his shoes? What is he feeling? What is his mood? What is he drinking?’

I’m looking at all of these elements.

I look at the line at the door too. You can play [Drake, Future, and Young Thug’s] “Way 2 Sexy” but there’s 200 other people still outside, you know, so maybe we shouldn’t play that yet. I just look around the room, I decide how I’m feeling, I decide what these people are dressed for, what they’re thinking they’re getting themselves into, and kind of just figure it out.

I tell young performers and young gig workers in general, or anybody that’s gonna be on a stage, that there’s gonna be some awkward moments, and there’s gonna be some sets where you just don’t know what to play. And those are the things that make you stare at the ceiling at night, but those are the gigs that are really important because once you know that you can go in there when the cables are all messed up, and you gotta go in and fix it, you know you can do anything.

Delan “Blue” Ellington

The New Black Queer Historian At 27, Delan “Blue” Ellington has seen and done a lot. Ellington, who goes by they/he pronouns, is working toward a master’s degree in Public History at Howard University. In their time in D.C.—Ellington grew up in Chicago and rural Illinois—they’ve participated in various protests for Black queer rights,

How does collecting Black queer history affect Black queer future?

When I was younger and discovering myself, there was almost no representation. … I never really liked what I was seeing, and I wasn’t really seeing myself. … Knowing how prior generations navigated these spaces allows us and future generations to navigate these differently. It allows them to see what is possible. … It’s to inspire. I want someone to be inspired to do the things that were once done and really create the sense of normalcy with Black queerness, Black genderqueerness, Black transness as a part of Black Liberation.

Delan “Blue” Ellington

including this summer’s actions outside Nellie’s. They also led interviews for the ClubHouse Oral History Project, took part in the ENIKAlley Coffeehouse documentary, and amassed a wealth of knowledge on the city’s Black queer history. —Sarah Marloff A lot of people don’t realize that queer protest can be a form of joy. Is that true for you?

A part of history, and a part of the silencing we do with the history of queer people and queer Black people’s history, is taking away our joy. …

That’s actually where I try to focus my research. That’s why I’m looking into the ClubHouse space of radical Black joy during the HIV/AIDS crisis. It was this place where Black queer people were able to go and just be themselves … And also this place for Black queer political activity.

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What led you to Black queer history?

I’ve always seen that there’s always someone who’s left out. … Black queerness just speaks to me, and I want to help the people who look like me and feel like me in the next generations.

I was really connecting with Sidney Brinkley, who created Blacklight, a Black, queer publication [started in 1979], one of the first ones to exist. He was a Howard student, and he was part of the group of students that started the Lambda Student Alliance—the first LGBTQ Association at an HBCU. … I love that generation—that got decimated

by HIV/AIDS—like Melvin Boozer, Essex Hemphill, Joe Beam, seeing how they had to fight for their own spaces.

Why are spaces so important? And what does the future of those spaces look like? Is it pop-up parties?

Wes Unseld Jr.

The Hometown Head Coach Wes Unseld Jr. worked as a ball boy for the Washington Bullets in the late 1980s, hung out inside the team’s locker room as a kid, and considered his dad’s NBA teammates his “big brothers.” Now, the 46-year-old is tasked with leading the same franchise. The son of the late Basketball Hall of Famer and Bullets legend Wes Unseld, the younger Unseld got his start coaching in D.C. Unseld interned with the Wizards in his senior year at Johns Hopkins University, then worked as a scout before becoming an assistant coach from 2005 to 2011. He also worked four seasons with the Mystics as an advanced scout and assistant coach. —Kelyn Soong I read that you had “no intentions” of making coaching a career when you first started. When did you realize you wanted to be a coach?

That’s not new, so I was very aware of it, and to their credit, they’re also a very educated fan base in general.

They have [the] pulse of the team, and they have their own thoughts, and they see what they like, don’t like, and then they voice it. That’s fair. But I think [my awareness] comes from more my experience and the years that I was here prior to my return.

How would you define your coaching philosophy and approach as a firsttime head coach?

I want to be—people say it’s a “players’ coach.” I don’t know if that’s the right term, but I want players to feel like they can be part of the process, be vested in what we’re doing, have input. Because we all come in with ideas and notions of how we want to do things, but we’re not the ones having to live it. So having their input, especially with the group that I have, we’ve got guys who played in big moments. So the fact that they’ve got a feel for what works and doesn’t work, that feedback is positive.

Ivania Zelaya The Parent Leader

Since joining Platform of Hope, a local nonprofit that connects and empowers families, in 2019, Ivania Zelaya has stepped up as a peer leader. POH leaders say Zelaya embodies the experience of parents lifting up other parents through the uncertainties of the pandemic and shifting D.C. public school policy. A mother of two, a mask maker, and Nicaraguan immigrant with limited English proficiency, Zelaya is also a recent alum of Briya Public Charter School, a Parents Amplifying Voices in Education advocate, and a trusted community member in Columbia Heights. —Ambar Castillo

Wes Unseld Jr.

It was probably after my sixth or seventh year in the league as an advanced scout. That has a shelf life where, no lie, you’re gone an average 20 days a month during the thick of the season.

At that time, I was doing both personnel and advanced [scouting], so you’re just always on the road. And obviously you want to continue to perfect your craft, but that’s when you kind of get a feel for the league, coaching philosophies, personnel, things you like, don’t like. But then it’s also what’s next, because you can’t keep doing that. And I was blessed with an opportunity. [Former Wizards coach] Eddie Jordan was one of my biggest advocates, giving me an opportunity to be with the team as much as possible. So if I had an “off day,” I’d try to be with the team, be around. And when I was, it gave me opportunities to have a voice to run drills, to be part of practice, and they saw merit in that. They really advocated for

me to be around as much as possible, and that kind of aided in my transition.

You’ve been around this franchise and this fan base. How aware are you of how the fan base reacts?

Any fan base wants to be aligned with a winning team or winning culture. I know just from being here so long and living here that they’ve got an incredible, untapped potential within this fan base. They’ll rally behind a team that they really can grab hold of, but [the fans’ reaction] is one of those things that I’m currently not dialed in on. For me, the priority is the group that I have to coach, and I think if we do everything that we’re supposed to do, all the other stuff will fall in line.

Coming into this job, were you aware of—and I’m generalizing here—the cynicism from the fan base around the team and franchise?

How did you first get involved with Platform of Hope?

I learned about POH a few years ago when helping a friend with a program questionnaire. We were both waiting for our girls to leave school for the day, and she was anxious about it, so I advised her to complete the survey when she was at home and feeling calmer.

Then I asked her about the program and learned there was this place where we could learn more about raising our kids and about our social-emotional states as a parent. But before that, I had gotten to know the late Miss Sylvia [Stokes, the POH project and family care lead] when a close friend invited me to bring my daughter for tutoring at Jubilee Housing. Meeting her opened me and my friend up to conversations on parenting. While we lost Miss Sylvia during COVID, we continued attending parenting activities there.

What advice do you give other parents navigating these strange times?

I tell them to stay close to their kids, to help make their kids feel comfortable telling us about any situation or issue that happens at school. That way we can talk about it, ask questions, and advocate for them. Maybe your child has a problem, maybe something they don’t tell you but you can sense it.

Feel free to ask questions, or to talk to others about what’s going on, because otherwise you’ll never know. Get fully involved with their school, or at least ask them how they’re doing on a consistent basis—even if they’re teens.

How would your colleagues describe you as a leader?

Well, some people take my thoughts in stride, some don’t. … I’m not afraid of confrontation. If listening to [the needs of] my daughter means I clash with a school principal, then so be it. …

A close friend has also told me I have a way with words, lots of ideas, and project a certain confidence. Just this Monday we had a POH meeting, and I recommended we hold an activity on a Saturday, and apart from agreeing, other parents started adding their own ideas. … I’ve gone to [Office of the State Superintendent of Education] meetings and advised a concerned parent to see a doctor for their 4th grade child who was struggling academically and see if they could be tested and possibly qualify for special education support. He’s in 10th grade now and is still receiving special education services ... There was this other parent who had concerns about her child possibly being autistic, so I gave her a bunch of OSSE documents I had collected to orient her. I told her to call and see what she could find, and that if she needed someone to go and hold her hand, to call me. …

I’ve been told I have a strong personality, but deep down, I’m a teddy bear.

Who are the great leaders in your life?

My greatest influences are my mother, who had a strong character, taught us discipline, and would sometimes hit us with a belt, a fajaso, as we say in Nicaragua, and my late brother, who became a captain of the Sandinistas, and I would love to just hear him talk.

And I liked the presence and style of teachers I had growing up—I always wanted to be a teacher. Thanks to some resources that POH connected me with, I’m now studying to be a [Childhood Development Associate] at Briya, a course I had started earlier elsewhere but couldn’t complete when I was the mother of a young daughter.

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ball to African American history. … It’s getting into the baseball community, so that’s been my new tribe. I’m in a new chapter in my life.

What is it about baseball?

People say [baseball is] slow, but I feel like when you reach a certain point you like baseball because it slows down, and you appreciate it.

If you go to a baseball game and you sit behind an old couple—I’m an old couple!—people who are still keeping baseball scorecards and not looking at the scoreboard. … It’s meditative. It’s a thing where strategy, at any given time, somebody can do something that you wouldn’t expect.

Everyone wants to be successful, but baseball reminds you that if you got up 10 times and got three hits, you’re a really good baseball player. … I use

Ivania Zelaya

E. Ethelbert Miller The Poet

E. Ethelbert Miller, who’s called D.C. home since 1968, is a writer and literary activist. The 71-year-old may be best known for his poetry, his longtime work as director of Howard University’s African American Resource Center, and for serving on the boards of almost “every major literary organization” in the country. But Miller wears many hats and many other titles including memoirist, baseball fan, and unofficial publicist for writers, friends, and local politicians. (He even offered this editor some “packaging” tips.) Coincidentally, he also wears many physical hats and currently prefers baseball caps. —Sarah Marloff You have a long list of accolades: D.C. Hall of Fame, days named in honor of

you, numerous awards. How do you carry all this?

I think my major contribution is being made now. I’ve been working on a baseball trilogy—the third [book] comes out next year. That work, I feel, is my contribution to American literature. All my awards, with the exception of the one I got for If God Invented Baseball, they’re all [for] literary service. It’s not my work itself.

It’s just another thing in terms of why I’m a literary activist—I try to make sure people are not overlooked or forgotten. But I feel like only now is my actual work being known. I feel I can say, without any sense of arrogance, I can look at the people who are sports critics [saying]: “We have not seen this. We’ve seen a person who had one baseball poem. We’ve not seen anybody who has had a trilogy of baseball poems. The range goes from baseball to visual arts, baseball to music, base-

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E. Ethelbert Miller

baseball as a metaphor. One of my books is The 5th Inning, because the fifth inning, that’s a complete game. I wrote that when I was turning 50. At that time, in terms of the economy, we could be sitting here, they’ll knock on the door and say, “Sign this, clean your office, and be out of here by 5.” Game over. Fifth inning.

What does it mean to a “literary activist”?

I’ve always been concerned … about a number of things, but primarily preservation and promotion. I take pride in the fact that I tried to promote a lot of writers. Some writers claim me as a mentor … that includes Ta-Nehisi Coates, Dwayne Betts. I knew all these individuals when they were starting out. I take pride in that because you always want to make sure what you’re doing while you’re living will have an impact on people coming after.

homogenization of the cuisines and people. I think the [culinary] face of the Arab-speaking world is Lebanese cuisine. The reality is everyone in that region is just as diverse and complex as anywhere else.

I am opening a Palestinian diner hopefully really soon.

What was your proudest moment from the past year?

Nzinga Tull is an engineer working on NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope from the agency’s Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. She helped bring the telescope back online this summer after an essential computer failed. Tull, 46, grew up in Ward 7, and also teaches and performs with KanKouran West African Dance Company and chairs the board of the education nonprofit Teaching for Change. —Mitch Ryals

Being able to use the work we were doing at Shababi as a platform for political advocacy and fundraising. In nine months we raised over $10,000 in direct funds for different support groups for the Palestininan cause.

What was coming out like as someone so public-facing in the restaurant industry?

I was nervous. If I hadn’t noticed other nonbinary transmasculine people in the food space that I made friends with through social media, it probably would have taken me even longer to figure out who I am. I immediately realized I wanted to be the role model I needed growing up. That would have saved a lot of pain. There were a lot of people who are closeted or questioning or considering, and I think I didn’t anticipate that reach-out. Overall the response was privileged in the sense that it was so supportive. Not everyone can put themselves out there, but we do need representatives in the community. I really feel like I’m alive and present, and I wasn’t before for a really long time. That journey to authenticity, in a lot of ways, saved my life.

Are chefs who don’t fit the Michelin mold as cis White males getting the recognition they deserve these days?

Marcelle Afram

Can you offer any advice to young writers or editors?

That’s what you have to do as a writer: You never want to be too far above people. That’s where [there’s overlap with] being a politician—you’ve got the person who’s homeless, you have to speak up, you have to recognize that person. And that’s what I feel I’ve learned. I learned that from baseball.

Marcelle Afram The Beacon

The past two years have been full of change for Marcelle Afram. They took an executive chef job at Michelinstarred Maydan, struck out on their own with Palestinian rotisserie chicken ghost restaurant Shababi, and came out as nonbinary transmasculine in August 2020 at the age of 35. They’ve

been public about it all, serving as a source of hope to those still finding their identities. —Laura Hayes You have roots in cultures with rich culinary traditions. Your grandparents fled Palestine in 1948 and settled in Beirut on your mom’s side and Damascus, Syria, on your dad’s side. Until recently, you rarely cooked food from that region. What has been rewarding about that shift?

I never had an issue seeing other people cook the cuisine of my people.

It was more so I didn’t see enough of the people it belonged to doing it.

There’s a major word that a lot of us from these ethnic groups are using: reclamation. People aren’t familiar with the complexities of people from the SWANA region—South West Asian/ North African. When the narrative isn’t being told from the perspective of the people it belongs to, there’s a lot of

It’s never enough because there’s lost time that needs to be made up, and that’s real. I think about this all the time with the D.C. area. Ethnically it’s so diverse and some of the best food lies outside the city where there are booming ethnic populations. How many of those chefs’ names are we talking about on a daily basis?

What still needs to change in the restaurant industry?

Everything. I’ve been using the word “broken” instead of change. Systems need to be shattered and rebuilt.

Oftentimes we want to amend what has been built by people that in no way ever considered people who come from marginalized places. My plan for the brick-and-mortar is putting quality of life before what’s on the menu. I’m thinking about what my employees need. Break it from the top.

Wait, you’re opening a restaurant?

Nzinga Tull The Engineer

You started dancing at age 3?

Yes! You know, D.C. was Chocolate City in the ‘70s and ‘80s, when I was coming of age, and my parents had very strong cultural Black nationalist sensibilities, and it was important for them that we were in touch with our African heritage.

What does dance mean for you? How has that changed since you were younger?

Dance both grounds me in my cultural identity and makes me feel the freest. And that grounding has sustained me. Even when I wasn’t actively taking classes and performing in junior high and high school, there were still performances here. I would come to the show, and there’s kind of a resonance, a heart tug that says, “This is your community. These are your people.

You’re a part of this continuum.”

You’ve worked on the Hubble telescope for several years. Can you describe that work?

I’m a systems engineer. There are various systems on the telescope: the thermal control that keeps everything hot when it’s supposed to be hot and cold when it’s supposed to be cold; the power system makes sure everything’s got enough juice. There’s pointing control because you’ve gotta make sure the aperture is pointed in the right place in the sky. So mission operations are separated into all these different subsystems. Systems engineers support the coordination of everything.

The telescope ran into a problem this past summer. What was your role in fixing it?

Oh, Lord have mercy! There are several computers on the telescope, but this summer the payload computer, which is responsible for controlling the science instruments, stopped working.

If we can’t command them, we can’t collect data from them. Many of the different critical components have a

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Nzinga Tull

primary and redundant side. So we switched to an alternative side. But because of the design of the telescope, we couldn’t just switch the component that we thought was suspect. We also had to switch to alternative components for data management and other spacecraft functions.

We were down for five weeks this summer. It is a reminder that as the telescope gets older and older, the problems will become more and more complex, and so we have to practice grace with both the telescope and with ourselves.

You’re working for NASA through a contract with your family’s firm, Jackson and Tull. How did the firm get started?

My dad is a civil and structural engineer, and the firm started out doing civil and structural engineering. He and

Michele Casto

the company started out designing a lot of churches, did a lot of infrastructure stuff, bridges. The Franklin Street Bridge was the very first pedestrian walkway in D.C. We did the structural engineering for that. Dad drives through the city making notes on structural integrity to this day. And he’s always been that way.

different in that regard. Maintaining this creative practice through dance compels me to stay in touch with my innate creativity in all things, which is particularly helpful in engineering.

So you saw your dad doing this cool work and wanted to join?

One of the beautiful things about growing up in D.C., especially as a Black kid, that I appreciated more and more as I got older, is that there are all kinds of Black people living in D.C. The full expanse of Black humanity was normalized in my upbringing, which is how we all deserve to exist on this planet—that our existence is just normal, and we have access to everything.

Our existence doesn’t limit us. And I felt very fortunate that that was my upbringing here.

Yeah! He started the business. He’s a Black man from Virginia and wasn’t getting a fair shake in the business space in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and so his mentor and partner said, “Well, let’s start our own thing,” and so they did.

That work feels like it exercises a different muscle than dancing.

At the core, you’re driven by creativity to solve a problem or tell a story. Engineering and the arts are not terribly

12 november 19, 2021 washingtoncitypaper.com

You grew up in Hillcrest, went to Spelman College in Atlanta, and came back. Why?

Michele Casto The Punk Preserver

Librarian Michele Casto may be the cofounder of the D.C. Punk Archive, but she gives special thanks to librarians Maggie Gilmore and Bobbie Dougherty, as well as James [June] Schneider, who is known for his documentary Punk the Capital, along with many others who worked toward establishing the archive. Casto is the go-to person for any questions regarding the archive, thanks to her role in the Washingtoniana Collection at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. She has been a D.C. resident and a DCPL employee for 20 years. —Michelle Goldchain Why did you want to work in libraries?

I studied history as an undergrad and had some sort of aimless jobs after

graduating. I worked as a seamstress.

I worked in a group home. I just didn’t really have a direction career-wise.

I just studied history because I was interested in it, and the inspiration to go to libraries just kind of came kind of out of the blue. … I loved reading, and I loved public service, and so once I sort of thought about that as an idea, it just felt so right.

Can you tell me about the D.C. punk exhibit in the MLK Library?

I felt really strongly about having an exhibit that featured the materials in the punk archive just for those kinds of people who heard about the project and would just want to walk in and see things. … And so, the team making the

people a little taste of what we built.

What’s next?

delivering free meals to homebound seniors, and deep-frying turkeys on Thanksgiving. —Laura Hayes

Starting this summer, we’re going to start having shows on this roof here at MLK. … There will be a call for bands coming soon, so stay tuned.

Tell us about your strategy of only serving one set meal of steak frites.

Restaurants specializing in a single dish are more common abroad.

It’s a great restaurant model because we’re so disciplined in keeping it simple. It’s easier to replicate than a Cheesecake Factory. There’s no food waste, no specials, nothing that our servers have to push on a Monday. It’s easy to hire and retain great staff. By our kitchen only cooking one thing, they get really, really good at it. You can’t be all things to all people and survive the restaurant business.

Why do you think D.C.’s punk history is worth archiving?

It’s not only just that this style of music is unique to D.C., it’s that it means so much to the people in D.C. … When we first started to talk about this project … it felt like what we were going to do is document kind of D.C. punk, meaning the sort of well-known aspects of ... D.C. hardcore: Fugazi, Minor Threat, these kinds of things. But as we started thinking about it a little more, we’re like, “D.C. punk is so much bigger than that. It’s bigger than a certain sound of music, a certain style of music. It’s an approach to creativity. It’s an approach to art. It’s an approach to finding your community and finding your space that has been going on in D.C. before D.C. hardcore and since.”

Through your philanthropic efforts, it’s clear that you view restaurants as stewards of community. How did that start?

The moment it hit me was the very first turkey fry 14 years ago. We clean up, and I had one of my daughters with me, and we go out to my car. It looks like a ticket under my windshield.

Who gave me a ticket on Thanksgiving? I was mad. I grabbed it, and it was a thank-you card from a family who lived a block away in a shelter. If I didn’t cook their turkey for them, they would have been unable to have Thanksgiving together.

Do you have any favorite objects in the archive?

That’s so hard. Well, my go-to answer for that is that Don Zientara donated his original four-track recorder from Inner Ear Studios. This was near the beginning of the project, long before the sad news that he’s having to close down. … Most of what we take in is paper-based materials, but something like that is we can make an exception because it’s this magical piece of equipment that all the early D.C. punk records were recorded on … and it represents this decades-long institution of Inner Ear Studios, and all the amazing work that came out of there and Don Zientara’s genius, and his contribution to this whole scene.

You kicked into high gear during the pandemic.

In March 2020, when they said seniors should stay inside and quarantine because this thing called coronavirus is coming, I didn’t even talk to my business partners. I just did it. I put a tweet out that said “I’m going to feed everyone who needs to be fed,” because I knew we could do it. I felt needed. I felt no one else was doing it. So, fuck it! In March, April, May, and June, hundreds of meals were going out at night. We had a system. We had drivers.

How has the creation of the D.C. punk archive affected the D.C. Public Library?

I can’t even say we were at the forefront of anything because you always learn from someone else, but I do feel like maybe we did inspire people to start similar projects and get excited about documentation of local music. …

It helped change how people think of the public library as somewhere exciting things happen. It’s more than just books. It’s more than just research. It’s also these really awesome programs [and] engagement with local music.

Like, there’s something exciting for you to come experience, but it’s also somewhere where your community is reflected.

Mark Bucher

By August 2020 you founded Feed the Fridge. Now you have 26 community refrigerators filled with free meals from local restaurants and a nonprofit, We Care, to fund your efforts. What makes it successful?

exhibits supported having punk and go-go both have a presence in the permanent exhibits here in the new library, and so even though we still encourage people to come in and dig deeper into the collections, this gives them a pretty good sort of summary. … It just opened a month ago, and people love it. James worked on a video that loops, that has live performances moving through that go across all the decades, and it was just awesome to have a way to show

No one said it would work. “You can’t put food in a refrigerator and not have it tampered with.” We put in tamperproof containers. “Someone is going to put graffiti all over the refrigerators.”

OK, we’ll fix it. “Someone is going to take more than one meal.” So what?

We talked to psychologists and social workers and figured out what we needed to do to the fridges so they’d be appreciated and respected by the communities they serve. They’re all wrapped with words of affirmation

Mark Bucher The Mensch

Restaurateur Mark Bucher is crisscrossing the country on a mission to open 20 Medium Rare steak bistros in five years. Regardless of how little time he has or whether his business partners think he’s being too generous, Bucher keeps himself busy addressing hunger through Feed the Fridge,

washingtoncitypaper.com november 19, 2021 13

chosen by people smarter than me.

“How could it be outside and unsupervised?” Because humans are good.

What was the most memorable moment from the past 20 months of the pandemic?

At one of the food giveaways, a church in Silver Spring, I had this crazy idea.

I went and bought 500 $1 scratch-off lottery tickets. I called it “glimmer of hope” and attached one to every meal.

I don’t know if there are any winners, but to see their faces.

turned her back and said, “Go for it.” I didn’t have any money when I started my business, but what I did have was a whole bunch of stuff at home that I made, and I didn’t know why I made it.

It just evolved.

You help other vendors with their businesses. How? I’m a nurturer. I’m a Cancer. Every

despite the personal tragedies you’ve had recently?

I can’t tell you that I still don’t cry. Just knowing that these men love me so much, I wouldn’t want to disappoint them. They are the reason why I am who I am. They were my big cheerleaders. I tell you the past, gosh, the past two months, it’s been very hard to function. But I create. You know when

Michelle “Noodles” Smith Michelle “Noodles” Smith had $12 in her pocket when she acquired her first storefront in 2003. Now, 18 years later, her intense passion for creating is reflected in Cookie Wear, her store at 810 Upshur St. NW in Petworth. The D.C. native and mother of three shows her eclectic style through clothes, jewelry, suitcases, and more items being added daily. She’s been selling her art since she was 10, and now teaches local artists how to become business owners.

Despite the recent losses of her father and brother, who died within weeks of each other, Smith’s creative spirit pushes her onward. —Bailey Vogt

I like wearing things that don’t match.

They don’t necessarily have to make sense. They just feel good for me at that time. I love vintage. I love retro.

The ‘70s for me, as far as fashion, was by far my most favorite with the bellbottoms. The oversize collars. The big hair. Everything was fun.

Where did you get the name Cookie Wear?

I had someone that believed in me and gave me a shot. I had only $12 in my pocket and my friend at the time owned a building at 3717 Georgia Ave. [NW]. I went in there and I said, “Oh, I would design it this way. And I would do this, and I would do that.” She

The Edifier

Winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting, The Atlantic science writer Ed Yong has exposed what went wrong in the nation’s response to the pandemic, envisioned a vaccine endgame, and elucidated then little-known, little-believed experiences of COVID long-haulers. He also loves writing about whale poop. —Ambar Castillo

Given how badly the U.S. has fared throughout the pandemic, it is quite difficult to wonder if the work that you do as a journalist has any impact.

But people have repeatedly written in over the past few years to say that the work I’ve done has helped them to make sense of these events that can seem so senseless. That the pieces have given them resolve in making safer decisions for themselves and their families at a time when even the highest levels of government were giving them bad advice. People have said that the pieces have helped them open up conversations with skeptical friends and family members to help them make the case that the pandemic is worth taking seriously. People have said that—and this probably matters the most—it has helped them maintain a sense of calm and hope amid all of it.

That, in just understanding more about what is happening, and seeing the bigger picture, they felt a little stronger.

It honestly means more than traffic or awards or any of the other metrics that we gauge our work by.

What is your style?

How did you get your first storefront?

Ed Yong

How do you assess the impact of your stories?

The Undeterred Creative

The name celebrates the relationship I have with my late stepfather. He baked bomb-ass cookies. I was trying to pay homage to him, and I didn’t know how, but if I wanted to learn how to do something, he would bring me the kit.

He would bring me instructions. He’d say, “Do it.” So as I was going through this therapy of losing him and not having someone to channel into, that’s what Cookie Wear came from.

three of them, they wanted to live a good, fun life all the way to the very end. That’s what I’m determined to do.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned covering COVID?

Michelle "Noodles" Smith

Friday or Saturday, people can set up in my store, outside my store, and I help them sell. They have to get their own tent and table. But once they set up, they make money because I’m watching them, I’m correcting them, and I’m supporting them. I’m just grateful for those bad past experiences that I had to learn from [so] that I could give back.

How do you continue to be creative

14 november 19, 2021 washingtoncitypaper.com

you think of those people who sparked that fire in you, you always keep that fire spark.

What’s next for Cookie Wear?

My goal is next year to quit my day job and really evolve off of my creativity and my brands and create a schedule for myself. What I learned from my fathers, who both passed from kidney failure, and my brother, what I saw all

I wrote, in 2018, a story about whether America was ready for the next pandemic or not. At that time, I saw it very much as a science or health story. It became very quickly clear in covering COVID that it’s so much more than that. It’s a crisis that touches on every facet of our society. And, therefore, to make sense of why COVID has been so bad for the states, you need to understand the nation’s psychology.

You need to understand the history of its medical and public health system.

You need to understand its attitudes to sickness, to strength, individualism, its nursing homes and carceral state, its social media architecture. You need to understand all of that. And science and health care are certainly a part of it. But the expansive nature of the pan-

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Experience outdoor holiday shopping in the heart of Downtown F Street between 7th & 9th Streets NW

Nov.19 Thru Dec. 23, 2021

12 p.m. to 8 p.m.

( Closed Thanksgiving Day and Monday, Dec 6 )

7nual

an downtownholidaymarket.com

@DtwnHolidayMkt

DowntownHolidayMarket

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#DowntownHolidayMarket

D.C.’s One-Stop Winter Wonderland Shop Returns to Heart of Downtown November 19 – December 23 | 12PM-8PM F Street, NW between 7th & 9th (Gallery Place Metro Station) Closed Thanksgiving Day, and Monday Dec. 6 Note: The market will operate daily, regardless of rain or snow.

Operated by the DowntownDC Business Improvement District (BID) and Diverse Markets Management, the 17th Annual Downtown Holiday Market, Washington D.C.’s outdoor shopping village, kicks off the holiday season Friday, November 19. The beloved outdoor market returns to downtown Penn Quarter, transforming two city blocks on F Street into a one-stop shop, open-air winter wonderland. Guests can make the most of their holiday shopping experience this winter supporting local businesses and finding unique, festive treasures in the heart of the District through December 23. Whether you’re shopping for friends, family or yourself, the Downtown Holiday Market is your onestop shop for unique gifts.

Here’s what you can find: • More than 70 vendors from the region will showcase unique and handmade crafts, clothing, glasswork, jewelry, paintings, photographs, woodworking and so much more at the market.

• Shoppers can support small business creatives including the new Macy’s STORY, a curated, narrative-driven retail experience, and enjoy overnight accommodations at one of D.C. ‘s landmark hotels through the Downtown Holiday Market’s official hotel partner Kimpton Hotel Monaco Washington D.C. • Food, festivities, and your favorite local entertainment at the mainstage is back while you shop. Guests can also enjoy festive and holiday-themed XR (virtual reality) technology from ARTECHOUSE. In 2005, the DowntownDC Business Improvement District (BID) in collaboration with Diverse Markets Management (DMM) created an outdoor holiday shopping marketplace for the DowntownDC community. Today, DowntownDC is a retail and tourist destination, and The Downtown Holiday Market is at the heart of it all. The Market is committed to environmental sustainability and many Market exhibitors offer fair-trade imports and gifts made from recycled and sustainable resources. The Market is conveniently accessible by public transportation including Metrorail, Metrobus and Capital Bikeshare.

For more information on daily performances and vendors, visit DowntownHolidayMarket.com. Vendors rotate daily, so we look forward to seeing you throughout this holiday season again and again!

Follow us on Twitter @DtwnHolidayMkt and on Facebook and Instagram @DowntownHolidayMarket (#DowntownDCHolidayMarket).

Neil Albert President & CEO DowntownDC Business Improvement District

Mike Berman President Diverse Markets Management

2021 DOWNTOWN HOLIDAY MARKET | Nov. 19 thru Dec. 23 : 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. DAILY | DowntownHolidayMarket.com

EXHIBITORS Find unique and wonderful items offered by over 70 exhibitors.

Please note, exhibitors are scheduled for either the First Half of the show (Friday, November19 - Sunday, December 5), the Second Half of the show (Tuesday, December 7 - Thursday, December 23) or for the Whole show.

Scan here to get all the info on your mobile device at

See the Exhibitor Categories for the participant list, booth numbers, and days of participation.

See the SITE MAP for booth locations.

Downtown HolidayMarket.com

View detailed description of exhibitors and a link to their business at DowntownHolidayMarket.com.

CERAMICS Kerri Henry Pottery #49 Second Half kerrihenrypottery.com Sarah Nickel Ceramics #35 First Half sarahnickelceramics.com

CORPORATE

GIFT FOODS

STORY at Macy’s

Little Tibet Boutique #24, 25 Whole Show instagram.com/ littletibetboutique

instagram.com/macys

Chouquette Chocolates #4 Whole Show chouquette.us

#32 Whole Show

BannerBee Co #31 First Half bannerbees.com

CRAFT Because Science

Maison Soleil #50 Second Half www.maisonsoleil.com

CLOTHES & ACCESSORIES

#54 Whole Show BecauseScienceDC.com

Fuzzy Ink #28 Whole Show fuzzy-ink.com

COLLECTIBLES

#1 First Half

FarEast Antiques #60 Whole Show

Hope’s Journals

Mondepice Spices and Teas #33, 34 Whole Show mondepice.com

getcanimals.com #37 First Half

Indigo Moon #55 First Half

iconsDC #20 First Half iconsDC.com

Jon Wye #29 Whole Show jonwye.com

Jentz Prints #6 Whole Show instagram.com/jentz_prints

CHOCOIDEA #48 Whole Show chocoidea.com H3O Farms #30 Whole Show

Canimals

Art Inca Native #9, 10 Whole Show

SITE MAP

Kiwi Exquisite #35 Second Half fb -> Kiwi-Exquisite

New York Puzzle Company #47 Whole Show newyorkpuzzlecompany.com Rebound Design #55 Second Half

The Capital Candy Jar #F5 Whole Show thecapitalcandyjar.com The Taste of Germany #F2 Whole Show thetasteofgermany.com

The Downtown Holiday Market is centrally located in the heart of Downtown DC, centered at 8th and F Street, NW. It is easily accessible by foot, bike, and Metro (Gallery Pl-Chinatown).

Smithsonian American Art Museum & National Portrait Gallery 801 F St NW

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Hotel Monaco 700 F St NW Courtyard Lounge at Dirty Habit 555 8TH St

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2021 DOWNTOWN HOLIDAY MARKET | Nov. 19 thru Dec. 23 : 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. DAILY | DowntownHolidayMarket.com

Food 6

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7TH ST NW

ENTRANCE Stage

Food 1

9TH ST NW

ENTRANCE

Gallery Place/ Chinatown Metro

GLASS Cecil Art Glass #46 Whole Show Glitzyglass #43 Whole Show Glitzy-glass.com Joy of Glass #23 First Half joyofglass.com New World Glass #23 Second Half newworldglass.com

IMPORTED CRAFTS Baby Alpaca #45 Whole Show From Egypt With Love #53 Whole Show fromegyptwithlove-epy.com IndiBlossom by Anuradha Mehra #31 Second Half indiblossom.com KVZ Designs #8 Whole Show kvzdesigns.com Mundo Handmade #11 Whole Show mundohandmade.com

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PAINTING Art by Zachary Sasim #19 Whole Show zacharysasim.com Green Blanky Studio #51 Second Half greenblankystudio.com Joel Traylor Art #52 Second Half joeltraylor.com Jonathan Blum #40 Second Half Jonathanblumportraits.com Marcella Kriebel Art & Illustration #44 Whole Show marcellakriebel.com Painted Palettes #58 Whole Show paintedpalettes.com Rayhart #22 Whole Show rayhart.com Tsolmon-Art #2 Whole Show tsolmonart.com

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Celebrate the holiday season with the City Choir of Washington and enter the new year in a festive spirit with our annual Twelfth Night concert, featuring Maestro Shafer’s favorite Christmas music for choir, brass, and organ by Gabrieli, Handel, Pinkham and Dirksen.

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2021 DOWNTOWN HOLIDAY MARKET | Nov. 19 thru Dec. 23 : 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. DAILY | DowntownHolidayMarket.com

MUSIC SCHEDULE The Market Screen presents a musical feast of more than 40 performers by some of the area’s best blues, rock, jazz, soul, country, world, and contemporary artists. And of course, it wouldn’t be a “holiday” market without some of your favorite seasonal standards. Check the performer list below, and find more information about all of the performers in the Musical Entertainment section of DowntownHolidayMarket.com.

Friday Nov 19 12:00 PM KICK OFF Market Opening Ceremony 2:30 PM DJ John Murph Jazz Groove 5:00 PM Carly Harvey & The Experience Jazz, Blues Saturday Nov 20 12:00 PM Big Lunch Americana 2:30 PM 49 Cent Dress Classic Rock 5:00 PM Afro Nuevo Latin Jazz, Jazz Sunday Nov 21 12:00 PM Blues Alley Youth Combo Jazz 2:30 PM Lilt Irish, Step Dancers 5:00 PM Ian Walter & Friends Updated Classics Monday Nov 22 12:00 PM Nina Casey Trio American Standards, Blues 5:00 PM Kiss and Ride Blues, Jazz, Soul Tuesday Nov 23 12:00 PM Bill Baker Band Original Roots Americana 5:00 PM Terra Firma Soul, Jazz Wednesday Nov 24 12:00 PM Flo Anito Jazzy Pop 5:00 PM King Street Bluegrass Bluegrass, Country Friday Nov 26 12:00 PM Ruthie’s Acoustic Trio Americana 2:30 PM DJ Crown Vic Global Grooves 5:00 PM Stacy Brooks Band Blues, Jazz Saturday Nov 27 12:00 PM Djangolaya Gypsy Jazz 2:30 PM Chrystylez Bacon Progressive Hip Hop 5:00 PM Fast Eddie & the Slowpokes Blue-Eyed Soul Sunday Nov 28 12:00 PM Clear Harmonies Carolers A Cappella Holiday

2:30 PM Split String Soup Bluegrass 5:00 PM EJB Jazz Straight Ahead Jazz Monday Nov 29 12:00 PM The Royal Magical Prince Snowflake Storytelling 5:00 PM Runakuna Andean Traditions Tuesday Nov 30 12:00 PM The 19th Street Band Folk Rock, Americana 5:00 PM Music Pilgrim Trio Klezmer, Jazz, World Wednesday Dec 1 12:00 PM Dave Chappell Duo Guitar Roots 5:00 PM Musalliance Traditional Folk, World Thursday Dec 2 12:00 PM The Sweater Set Folk Pop 5:00 PM Seth Kibel & The Kleztet Klezmer, Jazz, World Friday Dec 3 12:00 PM Tritone Jazz Trio Jazz 2:30 PM Bump ‘n Grind Groove 5:00 PM Ian Walters & Friends Updated Classics Saturday Dec 4 12:00 PM DC Mudd Old School Blues 2:30 PM Miss Tess Americana, Roots 5:00 PM The Gayle Harrod Band Blues, Soul, Motown Sunday Dec 5 12:00 PM Blue Panamuse Blues, Swing 2:30 PM Alpha Dog Blues Ensemble Acoustic. Blues 5:00 PM De Sanguashington Latin Folk, Cumbia, Vellenato Tuesday Dec 7 12:00 PM Seth Kibel & Sean Lane Jazzy Holiday 5:00 PM Jazz Trotters Traditional Jazz

Wednesday Dec 8 12:00 PM Billy Coulter Duo Acoustic Rock, Americana 5:00 PM The Lovejoy Group Jazz, Holiday Thursday Dec 9 12:00 PM The 19th Street Band Folk Rock, Americana 5:00 PM Janine Wilson & Scott McKnight Acoustic Rock Friday Dec 10 12:00 PM Maureen Andary Jazz, Pop 2:30 PM Leon City Sounds Latin and Island Grooves 5:00 PM Afro Nuevo Latin Jazz, Jazz Saturday Dec 11 12:00 PM Ian Walters & Matt Kelley Blues & More 2:30 PM Ruthie & the Wranglers Rockin’ Americana 5:00 PM Stacy Brooks Band Blues, Jazz Sunday Dec 12 12:00 PM Low Water Bridge Band Bluegrass, Country 2:30 PM Djangolaya Gypsy Jazz 5:00 PM Common Ground R&B, Jazz Monday Dec 13 12:00 PM Flo Anito & Seth Kibel Jazzy Holiday Classics 5:00 PM The Honey Larks Roots, Blues Tuesday Dec 14 12:00 PM Painted Trillium Celtic 5:00 PM Angel Bethea Quartet Jazz Wednesday Dec 15 12:00 PM Nina Casey Trio American Standards, Blues 5:00 PM Surf Jaguars Surf Rock Thursday Dec 16 12:00 PM Dave Chappell Duo Guitar Roots 2:30 PM Elsa Riveros Spanish Rock

5:00 PM Swangbang Swing & Ragtime Guitar Friday Dec 17 12:00 PM Ruthie’s Acoustic Trio Americana 2:30 PM DJ Crown Vic Global Grooves 5:00 PM Fast Eddie & the Slowpokes Blue-Eyed Soul Saturday Dec 18 12:00 PM Karen Collins & Backroads Band Honky Tonk, Country 2:30 PM Kentucky Avenue Modern Americana 5:00 PM Qilatse Project Ethio Jazz Sunday Dec 19 12:00 PM The Capital Hearings A Cappella 2:30 PM Lilt Irish, Step Dancers 5:00 PM Carly Harvey & The Experience Jazz, Blues Monday Dec 20 12:00 PM Stefan Sullivan Vintage Pop/Honky Tonk Piano 2:30 PM All New Genetically Altered Jug Band Jug Band 5:00 PM Ian Walter & Friends Updated Classics Tuesday Dec 21 12:00 PM Billy Coulter Duo Acoustic Rock, Americana 2:30 PM Snakehead Run Acoustic Blues 5:00 PM Los Caribbeat Caribbean

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SPECIAL PROGRAMS MONACO / DIRTY HABIT COURTYARD

Schedule: For Entire Market run Hotel Monaco and Dirty Habit are the official hotel and restaurant partners of the Downtown Holiday Market. Kimpton Hotel Monaco DC will bring the yuletide magic into their courtyard with a tented celebration full of holiday décor, outdoor fire pits, blankets, string lights to set the city festival aglow, and an outdoor pop-up bar with festive cocktail specials provided by Dirty Habit.

ARTECHOUSE DC XR Installation Schedule: For Entire Market run ARTECHOUSE and the Downtown Holiday Market have partnered to celebrate the district’s most joyful season of the year with an all-new immersive extended reality (XR) experience for guests. For a second annual activation, the collaborators are allowing visitors the chance to uncover a hidden layer of XR art at the holiday market to explore limitless creative possibilities whether visiting the market or at ARTECHOUSE’s recently extended exhibition, Life of a Neuron.

To activate the experience this holiday season, Washingtonians and tourists alike can download the free ARTECHOUSE XR mobile app on the Apple and Google Play stores. For more information visit https://www.artechouse.com/xr/.

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WE ’R E BAC K! Thanks for voting us Best Jazz/Blues Venue You Missed the Most NOVEMBER 22

Jean Carne | 11/18-11/21

Deborah Bond DECEMBER 1

Chaise Lounge DECEMBER 6

Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass:

Blues Alley Youth Orchestra /FAME Academy Jane Monheit | 12/2-12/5

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DECEMBER 13

Christmas with AYO DECEMBER 15

Eric Felten “Annual Nutcracker Suite”

Discover Venice in DC | Now Open 8th and G Streets, NW | Free s.si.edu/venice

Lena Seikaly DECEMBER 8

Kenny Garrett | 12/9-12/12

American Artists and the Magic of Murano Thomas Moran, A View of Venice, 1891, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum

DECEMBER 7

DECEMBER 20 Mike Stern w/ Randy Becker | 12/16-12/19

Monty Alexander | 12/27-12/31

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2021 DOWNTOWN HOLIDAY MARKET | Nov. 19 thru Dec. 23 : 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. DAILY | DowntownHolidayMarket.com

Ed Yong

demic has been very eye-opening, and has made the work that much more difficult to do.

What microbe or animal that you’ve studied has taught you the most about being human?

It’s almost impossible to pick any given one. But I will talk a little bit about [my forthcoming] book, An Immense World … It is almost impossible to imagine what it is like to experience the world through the senses of another creature. But I think it is a truly profound act to try to do that. Our perception of the world is so all-encompassing that it is easy to believe that that is all there is to perceive. And that is a lie, an illusion. There are so many animals that can see colors we can’t see, hear frequencies we can’t hear, sense things like electric fields we cannot sense.

By thinking about their senses, and how they perceive the world, we have

a much deeper, richer understanding of the meaning of this reality that we inhabit. I feel that when I think about weird and wonderful creatures. I feel that when I take my dog for a walk ...

Because it’s a thing that, to my knowledge, only humans do. We have the ability to try to step into the heads of other creatures. And it’s such a singular gift that we should be aware of it and cherish it.

Speaking of, what’s the origin of your dog’s name, Typo? And what’s your perception of Typo’s strongest perception?

It was my wife’s idea. We were trying to think of funny writer-related names.

And that’s not the typical dog name.

Cadence, right? It’s two syllables, hard consonants. Also, it means that his full name is Typography, which is what he gets called when he’s been bad. Typo is

Natalie Hopkinson

a creature of smell: When he turns his head to something, I assume it’s more because he wants to smell or listen to it than see it. And at a time when a lot of people struggle to think about the lives of even other humans, it’s a very useful exercise to try and step into the mind of very different creatures than us.

Natalie Hopkinson The Unmuted

Dr. Natalie Hopkinson is an associate professor at Howard University’s Department of Communication, Culture, and Media, and co-founder of the #DontMuteDC movement. Recently, Hopkinson endured an impassioned battle with the D.C. Council over her seat on the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Hopkinson’s graphic showing a glaring bias toward

Whiter wards in arts funding ruffled the feathers of the Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, who lost a bid to block her reappointment.

—Candace Y.A. Montague What is your personal background in the arts?

My dad used to sing. He died in 2015.

We used to tease him because he was a computer systems analyst by day, but he really had a beautiful voice. He sang calypso as a kid in Guyana, and he even went around to nursing homes in Florida. He loved to sing so much.

We were in plays when we lived in Canada. Our whole family was in plays.

Then when we moved to Indiana, my mom was the business manager for the Madam Walker Urban Life Center, which is a historically Black theater. So I was really born into the arts. It was an important part of my family’s life and

washingtoncitypaper.com november 19, 2021 23

my childhood. I grew up in that Black theater.

You based your dissertation at the University of Maryland, College Park, on go-go music, and you’ve written a book about its history in D.C. You have studied its origins extensively.

Why this genre?

I always knew it was important, and I felt that go-go was an important way to carry on those traditions that people think we lost: the fashion, the dance, visual arts, the drums. It’s a way of life that has sustained Black people for centuries, and it’s given us a reprieve from the daily racism and indignities that we have to face. It’s like a refuge.

It is a very special place. It’s a very special thing. And it gives us a voice politically.

Why is the fight to keep creatives of color on the receiving end of funding so important to you?

It’s important to me because this is just who I am. There’s nothing that you could tell me that would make me believe that we don’t belong in this city, that we don’t belong on the arts commission, that we don’t belong on the other end of a grant letter. This idea that certain people are disposable and don’t deserve a voice is not normal to me. I think it’s very important as gentrification pushes people out.

Would you say you are anti-gentrification or pro-D.C.?

I am definitely pro-D.C. Gentrification is a very violent and ugly process. I am pro-inclusive, diverse, vibrant D.C. D.C. isn’t just Chocolate City or Neapolitan or whatever nonsense they’re calling it now. But when you have policies that specifically expel certain parts of D.C., then you are anti-D.C. You lost your husband to brain cancer earlier this year. How did he inspire the fight in you?

You know, he was a great husband. A great human being. And sometimes we would have meetings in the house at the same time and have to split up. But he would hear some things from time to time and be like, “What is happening over there?” He really helped me feel even more outraged than I would have on my own. He would teach me about how procurement works and how public notice works. When I would write articles and trolls would come on there in the comments, he would put on his gloves and defend my honor. He would have the legal knowledge, and he rode hard for his wife. He definitely inspired me.

Psalmayene 24

The Perpetually Evolving Artist Park Slope, Brooklyn, native Psalmayene 24 arrived in D.C. 30 years ago to attend Howard University. The creative community and energy he found in the District have led him to stay here ever since. Known to local audiences for his work as a performer, playwright, and director, Psalm, the Andrew W. Mellon playwright-in-residence at Mosaic Theater Company, is currently preparing for in-person performances of Dear Mapel, an autobiographical work he initially workshopped and presented as a streamed video production in 2020.

—Caroline Jones Have you always known you wanted to be an artist?

I knew that I wanted to be creative, and that I was creative. And then I wanted to share my expressions with the world. And it wasn’t until I was in my early 20s, that I actually embraced this identity of being an artist, you know, because I didn’t go to the performing arts high school in New York City. And my junior high school drama teacher suggested that I audition for the program. And I was scared to at that point, I hadn’t fully accepted that. … But things work out as they’re supposed to. I surely believe that, that everything is written and you’re sort of walking through life on pages that were already scribbled on.

What keeps you in D.C.?

Well, this is the city where I found my wife, so that’s one thing. … I feel like it’s bustling enough to keep me engaged.

But then there’s enough sort of psychic room still, that I can actually think and imagine in ways that just feel in tune with my creative rhythms. And then the community here, I mean, I’ve found a community that’s more like a family.

When you talk about having the sort of psychic space to do that sort of creative brainstorming that you want and need to do as an artist, are there specific places that you go in D.C. or in the area to get that?

So since the pandemic has started, I’ve been going out into nature to get inspiration and to sort of write and find peace. So Rock Creek Park is one place that I love to go whenever I can. I love getting out to Malcolm X Park. … When George Floyd happened, I was just stunned, like so many people were. And I found that writing wasn’t enough for me to process what had happened. I needed another outlet, and that’s when I really started going out into nature in earnest, and it’s become a part of

24 november 19, 2021 washingtoncitypaper.com

Psalmayene 24

my artistic practice now. So I’m out in nature five times a week or so.

Being in nature is a newer thing for you, but you were one of the first creators to take a show, and present it outside in a new context when you did The Frederick Douglass Project, [a 2018 production performed at the Yards’ Marina].

I just like to push myself outside of my own comfort zones, whether those zones are self-imposed, or externally enforced. I think that comes from being a part of the hip-hop generation and culture, where there’s a sense of risk and daring that is inherent in hip-hop.

And if you embrace that, you can’t help but take that into other areas ...

I’m somewhat of a thrill seeker, too. So I think just as part of my personality, always push the bounds and see what

is beyond what we can see, what’s beyond the horizon. It’s part of sort of my upbringing, personality, culture, and then like, just the thrill of it. I mean, it’s fun to try new things. So that’s what keeps me motivated in terms of experimentation and doing things and experiencing things that maybe no one has ever done or experienced before.

Azel Prather Jr. The Disrupter

Azel Prather Jr. is constantly looking for new ways to impact his community.

Teaching early childhood and pre-K classes at KIPP DC Arts & Technology Academy, he uses unorthodox methods to keep his students engaged. This year, he released Move with Mr. Prather, an interactive album he recorded with the help of his students that helps

them count, recognize the days of the week, identify opposites, and practice good manners. His reach extends beyond the classroom. Alongside his partners Aja Sophia and Malik Sneed, he founded Soufside Market, a marketplace that showcases Black businesses every Saturday in Southeast D.C. from spring to fall. —Nayion Perkins You have an outside-the-box approach when it comes to getting kids engaged in learning. How did you adopt this approach?

For me, it was watching it being done the wrong way. Watching people who don’t look like us spread the message or try to teach in ways that we learn through. Primarily the music and dance songs, the YouTube videos that the kids watch and they learn from are by people who don’t look like us, who don’t talk like us, who don’t dress like us, but they’ll try to do it for those three or four minutes to get our attention. I just [got] kind of tired of seeing it. And I refused to play it in my class. I’m like, “Well, if I’m not going to play it, what am I going to do about it? I might as well do it myself.” So that was my biggest thing.

I just wanted to give them something that they can relate to.

Since you released the album, what has been the most rewarding about seeing people receive it?

So many things. Parents letting me know that their kids didn’t know how to count to 100 before they started listening to your song, or they didn’t know all the days of the week before they started listening to your song. Or when I’m at school, and I’m hearing my songs being played in the morning when they’re pulling up, or in the evening when they’re leaving, or the random Instagrams that I get of kids telling their parents, “I want Move with Mr. Prather.” I think it’s weird, but it’s like, that’s what I wanted to happen, I wanted them to want to listen to it and take it in so they actually get something from it. A kid will stop me and be like, “Hey, are you Mr. Prather?” I think that’s dope, you know. I go to work every day. I’m a teacher and a lot of times you don’t see teachers in that light.

I’m right here. I’m going to dap you up, give you a hug, a pound or whatever we gotta do just to let you know I’m human, I’m real, I’m touchable. I’m here with you. So that’s been the biggest reward. Being able to be something for them, you know. Being something to them and being something for them.

The second year of the Soufside Market concluded in September. What motivated you, Aja, and Malik to start it?

Myself, Aja, and Malik, we went to Eastern Market wanting to shop Black, and

Azel Prather Jr.

couldn’t. It was one Black vendor. And we literally went to the table the next week and was like, we got to do something about it. It’s a lot of Black brands that don’t get the opportunity, a lot of Black brands that don’t have the shelf space, Black products that don’t have shelf space in these stores or these places.

So we just wanted to be able to use our platforms and use our resources to be able to do that for somebody else. We put our money together, found a space, bought tables, bought tents, and had our DJ, DJ Loud, who’s been with us the whole time, come out. That’s really what it was, we just saw the lack of Black busi-

ness ... To want to go shop Black and you can’t … It was a big problem, especially in Chocolate City. In an establishment such as that, I can’t go support my people?

So instead of crying about it or whining about it, we’ll give you some way to support our people and the people showed up and showed love.

washingtoncitypaper.com november 19, 2021 25

ARTS MUSIC

Moshpxt Keeps It Reel

By Amari Newman Contributing Writer JayJay Thakar has been transforming the local underground music scene ever since he created the video production company Moshpxt in 2017. He’s directed, edited, and shot more than 100 music videos for hip-hop artists throughout the DMV and other metro areas.

But here, his distinct visuals paired with creative storylines have made him a favorite videographer among local creatives such as Shy Glizzy, Gleesh, Baby Fifty, Q Da Fool, and Big Flock.

Thakar’s unpredictable style contributes to his growing popularity. Every video contains new visual elements, including 3D animations, comic book layouts, intense green screens, or digital Lego characters. They also have intricate plotlines that span multiple videos, and can be as comical as they are genius.

I spoke with Thakar, a Silver Spring native, at his friend’s apartment in Koreatown, while we were both visiting Los Angeles in October.

The laid-back videographer greeted me at the door wearing a shirt with “MOSH’’ across the chest, a Ralph Lauren jacket, and a glistening yellow B.B. Simon belt. He brought me to a two-monitor setup, where he was in the middle of editing a music video he shot a couple days prior for the artist CLIP while he was in New York. Thakar flew from the East Coast city to L.A. for another project with rappers Yeat and DMV native Yung Kayo. Despite being on the West Coast, we quickly returned to Thakar’s roots. He grew up in the Maryland suburbs just outside D.C., and says he felt removed from city life. “The further you go from any city, to be honest, the influence of the culture from that city just fades away,” says Thakar.

“I lived deeper in Silver Spring, not on the border, but still like 20 minutes from D.C.,” Thakar adds. “Where I’m specifically from, there was no public transportation. We were close to D.C., so we got a lot of influence from there, but I didn’t have direct access into the city because it’s hard to get to certain places on the Metro as a kid.”

Although he wasn’t able to explore the city, young Thakar was still an active traveler. “In third grade, I went to India,” he says, noting his Indian American roots. “I also went to Europe, Canada, and other parts of Asia. It made me feel like I was always on the move. Even now, I always feel like I have to be outside traveling and doing something.

I don’t feel comfortable being in one place.”

Despite seeing different parts of the world, Thakar was a sheltered child. He had limited exposure to American music, cinema, and the general culture. “Before high school, I was one of those kids whose parents always tried to look out for their best interest,” he says. “I’m the

@djinhuman

Local videographer JayJay Thakar combines unpredictable style, intricate plotlines, and a love for the artists in his game-changing music videos.

JayJay Thakar, aka Moshpxt

oldest kid, I have two younger siblings, so I had to be a role model, but I didn’t like having that type of pressure on me.”

After he graduated from high school, Thakar began experimenting with vlogging car videos.

“I was really into JDM [Japanese domestic market] culture back in the day, and I still am,” he says. “[It’s] definitely a time period in my life that I draw a lot of inspiration from to this day.”

When Thakar decided to start shooting music videos, he asked his friend KashnDoja for connections. “He told me he knew this rapper named WifiGawd that needed some music videos, and he tapped me in on Twitter,” Thakar says. “Mind you, I never did a music video.”

Thakar shot the video with a friend’s camera that he didn’t know how to use. “[The footage]

26 november 19, 2021 washingtoncitypaper.com

was all blue, I didn’t know about white balance ... I tried to edit it, but I didn’t know how to edit like that,” he says. So he went online to learn editing techniques, and continued making more music videos. “I learned a lot more about music, culture, and everything happening in the city and the world,” he adds. “Making videos became an outlet for me.”

Thakar found a passion in music videos during a time when he was struggling to find a purpose. In college, he couldn’t decide on a degree and found himself working numerous odd jobs.

None of them worked out, he says, but music videos connected him to the community.

“One day I quit my job and stopped going to school and decided to go all in with making music videos,” he says.

Afterward, Thakar elevated his work ethic.

But what stood out to his contemporaries was his genuine personality. Hailing from uptown D.C., rapper The Khan was one of Thakar’s first collaborators. “I met JayJay in the summer of 2017,” the rapper tells City Paper over the phone.

“I had a song with WifiGawd and he shot the music video for us.” The two continued collaborating—forming a friendship. “[JayJay] became a close friend of mine. I’d have him come to L.A. and New York with me to meet different artists.

I saw how culturally important his position could be among artists. So I pushed for that.”

Another artist who locked in with Thakar at the beginning of his career was Rockville rapper Lil Xelly. Thakar liked Xelly’s song “OK” so much that he reached out to shoot a video for it.

ARTS MUSIC It became the very first music video posted on the Moshpxt YouTube page. “At the time nobody was paying me for videos, and he was the first person to pay me,” Thakar says of Xelly. “We started flooding endless videos and it became a really good relationship because we were both hungry and trying to prove something.”

In the winter of 2018, Xelly says the pair shot a new video every week, making close to 50 music videos together (many remain unreleased).

Asked about his collaborations with Thakar, Xelly notes, “[JayJay] was very hardworking. He was with whatever I was trying to do.”

Their collaborations played an important role in Thakar’s development as a videographer. “[Xelly] gave me the space to be creative,” Thakar says. “He never put a cap on what type of video he wanted, he always said ‘Bro, just do you.’”

Thakar taught himself videography that year.

Today he’s often the only person who produces a Moshpxt video from shooting through editing. Although he remains fairly independent in his creative process, Thakar is open to collaborations. “Especially with the right people,” he says. “I’ve even tried to teach people to do stuff.”

One person who benefited from working with Thakar is Montgomery County videographer KarlwithaK. “I’ve been making music videos on my own for a year now. But I interned for JayJay for like two years,” KarlwithaK explains. “I just DM’d him one day when I was trying to find mentors.

JayJay responded, we linked up, and we got along well.” The two worked on roughly 50 projects together during KarlwithaK’s internship.

“He’s very clear on what needs to be done,” KarlwithaK says. “It’s pretty fluid, even if something goes wrong, he always has the mentality that he can fix everything because he does.”

In the past year, Thakar has pushed the boundaries of his creativity and expanded his reach beyond the D.C. region. He kicked off 2021 by collaborating with Atlanta-based rapper Slimesito and local superproducer Dolan Beatz on their joint mixtape, Out On Bond, directing a four-video series that was released alongside the project.

Thakar met Slimesito in 2019, and the two have continued to work together on and off.

Eventually, Slimesito asked him to shoot a music video for the first single off Out On Bond, which received great feedback. It led Thakar to do a video series for the mixtape. “I worked all week long, me and my homie Wavy Dave, we just sat together and went back and forth with so many ideas,” Thakar says. “Then I went back to Sito, and I was like, ‘Let’s continue the story.’”

All four videos were released through WorldStarHipHop. “I wanted each video to be a visual representation of the song, and I wanted it to really hit. I wanted them all to connect and build a story. It’s really hard, but I feel like it worked,” says Thakar, who plans on merging them into one and releasing it as a video.

Dolan Beatz acknowledges Thakar’s presence: “He knew how to take control of the room.

He’d be in there saying, ‘You do this, and you do this,’ but in a way that brought the best out of everybody.” He credits Thakar for always getting his vision across: “The finished product came out like movies. He exceeded all my expectations.”

But as the Moshpxt name grows, Thakar has decided to separate himself from the brand.

Going by Moshpxt professionally overtook his personal identity too.

“I originally started making videos to escape a lot of problems I was going through in life,” he explains. But he became so invested in the brand’s success that it consumed his personal life. “I was just working 24/7. All the old things I used to care about took a back seat. It was strictly Moshpxt stuff. That’s why I got two phones now. One for my personal life, and one for my work life. It gives me the mental space to deal with both,” he says.

With a new outlook on his relationship to the brand, Thakar went on a cross-country music video tour this summer. Filming took him from D.C. to Atlanta, New York to L.A., and back again. He also visited South Florida to road-trip with Mavi, who was on tour with Babyface Ray and Jack Harlow. Looking back on the past few months, Thakar notes: “I shot over 20 music videos this summer with different artists in every city I went to. That’s not even all the videos I shot this year either, that’s

just a section of the year.”

Thakar’s videos often have underlying themes that suggest they’re linked to one another in their own Moshpxt universe. But that universe, Thakar says, feels like a phase.

“I be going through different phases,” he says. “Every artist is different, and every artist has their own signature things that just hit to me. So I want to bring certain elements out of those, and exaggerate it, and make it encompass [that artist’s] entire world.” Today, he wants to focus on what makes an artist stand out, and capture that energy in his videos.

Between nonstop travel and days worth of footage to edit at all times, the work fuels him.

The next thing he plans to release is Moshpxt TV: a 24-hour live streaming app for his videos.

“You can play it in your background while on your phone, you can use it as an app, you can even go on Instagram and have the videos playing in the top corner of the screen,” he says of the yet-to-be-released outlet.

In the span of four years, Thakar has taken his videography skills to an elite level. But, what sets him apart isn’t just his clean editing, immersive visuals, or the talented roster of people he’s shot, it’s the fact that he genuinely cares about the people he’s working with, and the community that watches his videos.

Thakar’s videos can be accessed through his Moshpxt YouTube Channel.

FEATURING Dianne Reeves

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SO VIVACIOUS YOU’LL BE GRATEFUL FOR THE

ARTS THEATER

ITS BUOYANT AIR OF AFFIRMATION. ”

Birds of North America takes you from comedy to elegy

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A Flock of Feelings

“A tufted titmouse!” exclaims John (David Bryan Jackson) as he stands among the autumn leaves and wooden lawn furniture in his yard in some middle-class Baltimore neighborhood. Wearing an olive photographer’s vest over his black-and-white plaid flannel shirt, he tries to interest his adult daughter, Caitlyn (a denim-clad Regina Aquino), in his lifelong hobby of bird-watching. Anna Ouyang Moench’s Birds of North America at Mosaic Theater Company highlights how, as with many activities shared by families and friends—especially those requiring patience and delayed gratification—the point is rarely just about the activity itself, it’s also to maintain connections, gossip, or seek advice.

For many professional theaters, two-handers are an economic necessity in programming a season: Salaries are among the largest expenditures involved. Having a small-cast play is a way of saving money so that the company can afford to stage more financially ambitious productions later in the season. After 18 months of theater spaces being closed, many companies have to be more frugal than usual, even a company like Mosaic, which was able to pivot to presenting streaming shows during the pandemic.

The two-hander format has certain constraints and, while some playwrights have made imaginative use of these constraints, they often gravitate toward either a relationship study or a clash of ideas. Moench deftly handles both as her play tracks a decade of autumns spent bird-watching in the backyard, providing her actors an ample opportunity to show off their dramatic chops and ability to connect. Jackson has a memorably kinetic moment when he uses his hands to illustrate John’s enthusiasm as he explains the aerodynamics of an owl’s wing.

John, of course, is the one who most obviously lives his ideas: A medical researcher, he left a career as a clinician to search for a vaccine for dengue fever, a mosquito-borne tropical virus estimated to kill 40,000 a year (an effective vaccine, CYDTDV, has entered the market since Moench finished the play, but it poses risks that largely limit its recommended use only to those previously infected; other vaccines continue to be tested). John views much of life through the lens of the scientific method: Hypotheses are to be tested; failure means starting over with a new hypothesis. An environmentalist, he avoids air travel and adds solar power to the house to reduce his carbon footprint.

The seasons pass and climate change makes the autumns warmer and warmer, altering the migration patterns of the birds. While that leads to a moment where father and daughter share the thrill of an unexpected flyover by a flock of American Redstarts, it also fuels John’s slow burn that Caitlyn spends years working as a copy editor for a conservative news website

Chris Banks

“

David Bryan Jackson and Regina Aquino in Birds of North America with a blatant pro-gun, anti-abortion, climate change-denying editorial line, while writing a literary science fiction novel on the side. While Caitlyn sees in her parents’ marriage a model of long-term commitment (even if it requires negotiation), her life never goes as planned.

If Caitlyn has a critique of John’s worldview, it’s not that she espouses the ideology of her employers—she simply desires to demarcate the line between what she does to earn a living and who she is—it’s that she realizes much earlier than her father that she doesn’t get to start over. The scientific method uses statistics and protocols, but life is lived by an individual.

The internship that led to her copy-editing job also precludes her from certain industries and employers when it comes time to change; her hypothesis of demarcation is falsified in her own eyes. When her marriage ends after miscarrying, she sees some of her options for family closed off. When John’s well-intentioned effort to explain the science of miscarriages and read politics into her grief, he fails a test of empathy, portending a series of things he, too, cannot take back. What begins as light comedy may avoid tragedy, but it ends as elegy.

Director Serge Seiden approaches the text with a light but graceful touch, his hand most visible in the transitions between scenes when either Jackson or a stagehand deposits more leaves onto the stage. David Lamont Wilson’s sound design incorporates the whooshes, chirps, and trills of migratory birds, but also includes reedy solo improvisations of oboe and bassoon during the transitions. Lighting designer Brittany Shemuga replicates the right quality of sunlight to make the fall colors of Alexa Ross’ set to vividly pop. —Ian Thal Birds of North America runs to Nov. 21 at Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H St. NE. mosaictheater.org. $20–$60. The run will be extended for streaming video.

ARTS GALLERIES Margaret Bakke

Art of Glass Friends Artspace creates a lookingglass lounge for its inaugural exhibition, Through a Glass Darkly: Mirrors and Vanity Immersive art experiences that center the viewer, from first person virtual reality works to installation selfie rooms—are extremely hot right now. In Friends Artspace’s inaugural exhibition, Through a Glass Darkly: Mirrors and Vanity, viewers have the opportunity to—quite literally—see themselves reflected in the art. Featuring a range of artists and home goods designers, the show, which focuses on looking glasses, recasts the familiar object that most people use daily as something beautiful, mysterious, and full of possibility.

Several of the show’s designers draw upon the tradition of Venetian mirrors, and some of the works come from Murano glassworking houses, where techniques for coloring and shaping glass were perfected over centuries.

Such mirrors became prized for both the clarity of reflection, as well as the elaborate frames that hid the edges of the glass or armature.

The show offers a modern-day approach to these timeworn techniques in a mirror by the Murano-based company Ongaro & Fuga with multilayered florals and tinted glass pieces that are aged with a mercury antiquing method.

Lucia Massari is another Venetian glass artist whose design riffs on classic ornamentation, though she takes it a step further, playfully applying the colorful glass rosettes and other elements directly onto the glass in the shape of facial features. Several other artists test the limits of functionality with designs that partially obstruct the viewer’s reflection. Léa Mestres masks a pair of mirrors with bulbous, sculptural smiley faces, a reminder (or perhaps a rebuke) to stay positive.

Isabel Rower’s mirrors are partially covered in a colored glaze, creating a halo effect around the peephole of reflection that remains visible. The frames are intricately painted porcelain bursting with vibrant flora and fauna.

Other mirrors are more conducive to checking for lipstick on one’s teeth, but still quite powerful thanks to their lively framing. Adiskidan Ambaye and Springfield-based furniture designer Jomo Tariku collaborated on a mirror encased with wood carved to look like an Afro pick, and large enough to lean up against the wall. Misha Kahn’s colorful puffed-up frames look deceptively like inflatables, but are actually made of resin and tinted with automotive paint. One echoes a historic federalist mirror design, complete with a patriotic eagle perched at the top of the frame. Two floral mirrors by Anna Aagaard Jensen are especially cheeky—one sprouts a pair of promiscuously

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Anna Aagaard Jensen’s splayed legs mirror next to Laura Soto’s sculptures and Eun-Ha Paek’s hand mirror splayed legs where its stem should be, and both are tinted pink with makeup products—a wink to beauty rituals performed in a mirror.

In the gallery’s bathroom, there’s no typical medicine cabinet or vanity. Above the sink sits an asymmetrical oval mirror with an amber tint that casts a dreamy hue on its surroundings, a collaboration by designers Sabine Marcelis and Brit van Nerven. Another bathroom design by Lukas Saint-Joigny is more frame than reflector, featuring chunky pink and purple resin surrounding a teeny mirror slightly larger than a compact.

Try climbing out of that one, Candyman.

A few of the pieces merely hint at reflection rather than serving as true mirrors. Eun-Ha Paek’s series of sculptures depict ceramic figures holding or sitting next to iridescent mirror shapes. They appear slightly bewildered, as though struggling to make out their reflections in the prismatic glaze. A variety of psychedelic mixed-media sculptures and furniture pieces

by Laura Soto are covered in glittering blobs that appear to drip and ooze, giving the effect of mirrors that have liquified. One is roughly the size and shape of a wall mirror, but not especially reflective.

A lot of people are working from home these days, including gallerist Margaret Bakke, who transformed the garage behind her house into an intimate showroom space now known as Friends Artspace. The homey setting works for a show centered around collectible design, or the idea that useful, everyday objects can also be interesting pieces of art. The wide array of mirrors in the exhibit are like something out of an alternate-dimension Bed Bath & Beyond, and walking up a residential driveway only to find a jewel box of a gallery simply heightens the effect of having gone through the looking glass.

—Stephanie Rudig Through a Glass Darkly: Mirrors and Vanity is on view by appointment through Jan. 7, 2022, at Friends Artspace, 2400 N. Edgewood St., Arlington. friendsartspace.com

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AN EVENING WITH BRANFORD MARSALIS JAN 26 + 27

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“If people aren’t interested in food, I’m not interested in them,” the renowned chef, cookbook author, and TV personality Julia Child once said.

Julia agrees in part. The documentary on Child shows only a surface-level interest in its subject, while lingering over the dishes she created. There are gorgeously filmed close-ups of carrots and onions, pear tart, and beef bourguignon—one of Child’s favorites and the first dish she ever cooked on television. Food photography has become its own art form over the years, but food has never looked so appetizing in a documentary. Your mouth won’t just water.

You’ll be drooling in your seat.

But that’s as good as Julia gets. It’s a wombto-tomb telling of Child’s life that lacks even an ounce of the originality or spark that made Child a sensation. The film charts her volcanic rise from public television curiosity to late-night mainstay, while demonstrating the little quirks that inspired such affection in her fans. Her cooking revealed her humanity, and her desire to connect with others was paramount. In the film, the prose in her first book is described as being akin to “having your hand held through every step of the cooking process.” On her show, she would leave her mistakes in the final edit, instead of reshooting, in order to share with viewers that errors can open the door to new creations. She was almost a philosopher-chef, a new archetype that paved the way for everyone from Rachael Ray to José Andrés.

Living and working into her 90s, Child had a long and fascinating life that surely could have been the basis for good cinema, but Julia takes the most conventional, least interesting approach. At every point, directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West put their emphasis in the wrong place and misunderstand what

makes Child compelling. There’s a long section early on explaining her courtship and marriage to her husband, Paul. It’s sweet and tender, but it drags on for far too long. Child has such a strong and charismatic personality that the backstory is redundant; you understand everything about her just by watching her work.

Her complications, however, deserve a deeper dive, and they get short shrift here— almost as if the filmmakers were afraid of being unkind. They touch on her complicated legacy as a feminist, then quickly abandon it.

Child believed a woman’s role was to serve her husband, but she also was a tremendous model for working women and became one of the first celebrity champions of Planned Parenthood.

It’s a complex subject that needs time to be unpacked for a patient audience, but here it gets only five minutes of screen time. Her vocal distaste for diet culture, for example, seems like a powerful feminist statement, but the film doesn’t even note its significance.

At its best, Julia makes an effective argument for the joy of cooking as a revolutionary principle. When she began her work, America’s food culture was built on Spam, Jell-O molds, and frozen dinners—though under the film’s loving gaze, even these foods somehow look beautiful.

Child’s simple appreciation of the sensual delight of cooking helped transform that world into the one we have today, in which food is far more than sustenance. In today’s foodie culture, it can be an opportunity for cultural education, self-reflection, or hedonistic pleasure. Child made that possible by simply enjoying her work.

Which brings us back to the food itself. Oh, those loving portraits of delicious delectables, both sweet and savory, that leap off the screen and onto your taste buds. Great cinema makes you feel something through its manipulation of light and shadow. The food cinematography is the closest Julia ever gets to feeling like a real film. The rest is just good information delivered with no panache, a dish with no flavor that somehow still leaves a sour taste in your mouth.

—Noah Gittell Julia will be released in theaters on Nov. 19.

THANK YOU

DIVERSIONS CROSSWORD

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton Helps Washington, DC Seniors Choose Home

GOING TOO FAR

By Brendan Emmett Quigley

Forty-one of the answers in this crossword are too long and won’t fit in the spaces provided.

Each of these answers will either begin or end in the gray square immediately before or after it.

When the puzzle is done, all the gray squares will have been used exactly once, and the letters in them (reading left to right, line by line) will spell out a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche.

Across 1. “Memory” musical 5. Old Testament prophet 10. Just starting out 14. Cookie that comes in “the Most Stuf ” variety 15. Get Shorty novelist Leonard 16. Coca ___ 17. Alternatives to some airconditioners 19. Trinity novelist Leon 20. Trattoria order served in slices 21. Subtle shade 22. Bipedal: hyph.

26. La ___ opera house 30. Mooches (off of ) 34. Carrot-munching critters 35. Strictly off-limits 36. Election day: abbr.

37. “Please,” to Shakespeare 39. Shake and quake 42. 2021 hurricane

43. Scruffs of the neck 47. Around the Horn host Tony 48. John Wick, e.g.

51. Cognitive development psychologist Jean 52. Sky-high cost?

54. Slender 57. Shiatsu session 62. Goes down a runway 63. ___ voter 66. Height meas.

67. Most achy 68. Paragraphs before the actual story 69. Where Big Bertha was manufactured 70. Livestock identifier 71. “So much ___!”

Down 1. Brother’s hood 2. Classic font choice 3. Change for a $50, say 4. Soft drink

selection 5. Like some patches 6. Plant used in hay 7. “___ Ramblin’ Man” (Waylon Jennings hit) 8. Four-star: hyph.

9. Part of a triathlete’s stats: abbr.

10. Quito’s country 11. Frayed 12. ___ in Borderland 13. Zap with a gun 18. Nonsensical poppycock

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21. The Clan of the Cave Bear novelist Jean 23. Stay or go, e.g.

24. 59 down prefix 25. Conductor Solti 26. Receptacle at the bottom of a fireplace 27. Rap’s ___ B 28. Dogie collar?

29. Rent out 31. Chapeau container 32. 2001 actor Keir 33. “Look! Over there!”

38. Make, as money 40. Supremely uncomfortably scary 41. It might have sides 44. Work with feet?

45. Narcissist’s focus 46. Ocean spray 49. “No harm, no foul” 50. Get something down 53. Reggae fan 54. Cosmetician Lauder 55. Smooshed circles 56. Old couples 58. Put in the mail 59. Blue planet 60. Spice Girl Halliwell 61. Mulligans 63. Caviar 64. Marked time 65. Former Disney CEO Bob

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housands of seniors in Washington, DC depend on access to high-quality, cost-effective home healthcare.

Such services are critical for seriously ill Medicare beneficiaries—especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Recognizing the value of home health, Congresswoman Norton is leading the way to allow more seniors to choose home.

We thank Congresswoman Norton for sponsoring the Choose Home Care Act, a bipartisan bill that will empower America’s seniors to recover in the comfort of their own homes after being discharged from the hospital. As a safe alternative to skilled nursing home care, the Choose Home benefit would also increase patient and family satisfaction—all while saving Medicare up to nearly $250 million per year.

Choose Home is key to improving America’s healthcare system and strengthening Medicare’s future. The Partnership applauds this effort to enable American seniors to receive more care in the home.

Thank you, Congresswoman Norton, for improving seniors’ access to home health!

Chained dogs suffer day in and day out. They endure sweltering temperatures, hunger, and thirst and are vulnerable and lonely.

Keep them inside, where it’s safe and comfortable.

Photo: Don Flood (donfloodphoto.com) • Makeup: Mylah Morales, for Celestine Agency Hair: Marcia Hamilton, for Margaret Maldonado Agency • Styling: Natalie and Giolliosa Fuller (sisterstyling.com)

washingtoncitypaper.com november 19, 2021 31

CITY LIGHTS City Lights

City Lights

The Kennedy Center Celebrates the 30th Anniversary of Lyricist Lounge As the Kennedy Center celebrates 50 years of the arts in America, the commemoration of 30 years of Lyricist Lounge is a fitting tribute. In the winter of 1991, two teenage hip-hop dancers—Danny Castro and Anthony Marshall—took over a small studio in the Lower East Side for an open mic night. An audience of 25 crammed into the space, packed with sound equipment and wires, and listened as a handful of MCs took the mic to beats played from a cassette player. Evolving into a showcase series, Lyricist Lounge quickly became the sonic playground for both emerging artists and old-school legends, with hip-hop royalty hosting, and record executives in attendance. The Nov. 19 Kennedy Center show features hip-hop luminaries Rakim, Slick Rick, DJ Jazzy Jeff, and KRS-One. The four icons will perform for several hours, harking back to those sprawling old events that lasted all night. “Because we are marking the 30th anniversary, it will be an evening of celebration. For so many of us, it’s been a good year and a half since we’ve been able to be together in shared space,” says Simone Eccleston, director of Hip-Hop Culture and Contemporary Music at the Kennedy Center. “First and foremost, this will definitely be a celebration, and it’ll be a dynamic party that allows us to experience our geniuses and our living legends in real time. Lyricist Lounge has created space and a platform to uplift artists for over 30 years, so it is deeply significant to welcome that institution and these venerable artists to the Kennedy Center.”

The Bridge Concert Series: Lyricist Lounge featuring Rakim, Slick Rick, DJ Jazzy Jeff, and KRS-One at the Kennedy Center starts at 8 p.m. on Nov. 19 at the Kennedy Center, 2700 F St. NW. kennedy-center.org. Tickets are sold out, but check website for updates. —Colleen Kennedy Courtesy of Kennedy Center

Courtesy of Olney Theatre

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast at Olney Theatre Center

In “Be Our Guest,” one of the central and showiest tunes in the hit Broadway adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, the enchanted servants share how they’ve become bored and listless with their lives trapped indoors without any guests to serve. They can’t help but break into exuberant song at the opportunity to finally once again perform a job they love doing. The cast and crew of Beauty and the Beast at Olney Theatre Center is just as jubilant at the chance to entertain after too long of a too-dark break. Director Marcia Milgrom Dodge says she aims to tell a story where “the power of kindness transcends the frightening features of the monster.” She says the production intends to meet the messiness of the real world with the simple enchantment of a fairy tale to reach a deeper understanding of beauty, inside and out. This is one of Olney’s first indoor productions since the start of the pandemic; masks and proof of vaccination will be required for adults, while children under 12 must be masked and accompanied by a vaccinated adult. Disney’s Beauty and the Beast runs to Jan. 2, 2022, at Olney Theatre Center, 2001 Olney Sandy Spring Rd., Olney. olneytheatre.org. $42–$90. —Riley Croghan

Slick Rick, Rakim, DJ Jazzy Jeff, and KRS-One

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City Lights

City Lights

Goodbye, Vienna EP Release Goodbye, Vienna burst onto the pandemic-riddled D.C. music scene with a mix of sheer technical talent and pioneering creativity. Their charisma, imitable guitar solos, complex bass lines, and the frontman’s choirboy innocence sets them apart. Originally expected to be released this November, but pushed to Dec. 15, the band’s self-titled EP, Goodbye, Vienna, showcases what makes this group so special: versatility, vulnerability, and catchy originality. “One More Time” is a modern take on ’70s funk that playfully blends music reminiscent of the Arctic Monkeys into a groovy, fresh number. Written and sung by Will Theuer, the tune is about trying to move on from unhealthy relationships, but not having the mature clarity to cut the cord just yet. For a first-time songwriter, the lyrics are rivetingly relatable and with a full sound and jazzy drum fills, the song is an unforgettable hit. Bassist Collin Henson penned and sang “Ceiling Fan,” a memorable, skater-pop melody that builds up into power rock. The song is about the elusive joie de vivre that breaks up the monotony of everyday life. The chorus rings out, “I feel it in my bones,” with infectious energy that’s impossible not to sing along to. The band’s harmonies are impeccable, and there haven’t been original guitar solos like these since the likes of the Strokes. Theuer’s emotive, mellifluous voice and the band’s innovative indie rock are not to be missed. Picture Weezer going to a jazz club with Stevie Ray Vaughan, and you’ve got Goodbye, Vienna. The sky’s the limit. Goodbye, Vienna’s self-titled EP drops Dec. 15. facebook.com/GoodbyeVienna. —Simone Goldstone Courtesy of Goodbye, Vienna

“Birds,” photo by Soomin Ham

Lingering Glimpses at Multiple Exposures Gallery

Soomin Ham’s oeuvre has been driven by a fascination with the haziness of remembering, a fondness for eccentric photographic techniques, and especially the intersection of the two. In earlier projects, Ham sifted through her late mother’s possessions and photographed them, then freezing those images in a layer of ice and rephotographing them. At other times she has scanned old family photos, printed them on rice paper, left them in water, washed and dried them repeatedly, put them out in the falling snow, and, finally, rephotographed them. Ham’s aggressive interventions produce an almost mystical effect, dulling details and mimicking the mists of memory. In her latest project, Lingering Glimpses at Torpedo Factory Art Center’s Multiple Exposures Gallery, Ham commemorates more than three dozen U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. She began the project in 2016 after seeing their images and feeling the same sense of loss she felt following her mother’s death. Ham began by collecting low-resolution photographic portraits of soldiers killed in action from the internet; she then rephotographed them, processing the film with expired developer and without fixer, creating dark, blurry portraits that disappear over time, like the lives they documented. In Ham’s portrayal, each of the deceased soldiers is unrecognizable. Ham tells City Paper, “I hope the glimpses of anonymity that the viewers capture from the portrait will linger in their memories.” Soomin Ham’s Lingering Glimpses runs through Nov. 28 at Multiple Exposures Gallery in the Torpedo Factory Art Center, 105 N. Union St., Studio 312, Alexandria. multipleexposuresgallery.com. Wed.-Sun., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Free. —Louis Jacobson

City Lights

ID, Please at the Korean Cultural Center Washington D.C. Memory often shapes art. At the Korean Cultural Center Washington D.C.’s current exhibit ID, Please, memories of immigration and mixed cultural backgrounds are the focal points of artistic expression. Featuring pieces from Michelle Cho, YunKyoung Cho, Sammy Lee, Josephine Lee, and Haelim Choi Allen, ID, Please centers around people of Korean heritage experiencing and creating an identity outside Korea. The exhibition includes sculpture, full room installations, paintings, and photographs. While each artist has taken different paths, the recurring themes of split identity, assimilation, and reminiscence take center stage. Throughout the exhibition, these artists show no fear in dredging up uncomfortable and dismaying truths about their experiences. Haelim Choi Allen’s “Assimilation,” for example, features dozens of images of her mother’s passport photo repeatedly pasted on the wall. In “neoltwiggi/seesaw,” artist Josephine Lee lies facedown and seesaws back and forth, a metaphorical description of the many contradictions and balances central to her experience as someone who was born in Korea and lived in Canada, the United States, and South Korea. There is also time to fondly remember. YunKyoung Cho and Sammy Lee built installations featuring hand-sewn linen and “hanji” (Korean traditional paper art), respectively, that beautifully express forms that many Korean immigrants hold dear. Still, the theme of having a foot in two worlds remains a potent force, as seen in Michelle Cho’s work, which emphasizes what her body has experienced during cultural displacement. ID, Please runs to Dec. 3 at the Korean Cultural Center Washington D.C., 2370 Massachusetts Ave. NW. Free. Virtual tours available at @KoreaCultureDC on YouTube and Instagram.—Tristan Jung washingtoncitypaper.com november 19, 2021 33

City Lights

Shannon Greer

Paula Poundstone at the Birchmere

DIVERSIONS SAVAGE LOVE I have a fun little labeling question. I’m a nonbinary person who was assigned male at birth.

I gravitate toward femininity in life and in love.

My question is about the inclusiveness of the label “lesbian.” Is this a label only for women? Or is it inclusive of everyone who is feminine and is attracted to femininity? My goal is to label myself appropriately without infringing on others.

—All Loves Labeled Inclusively As labels go, ALLI, “lesbian” seems pretty darn binary to me. Now, the meaning of any given word evolves and changes over time, of course, and meaning follows use. But lesbian currently means—and is currently used to mean and will most likely continue to mean—a woman who is exclusively attracted to other women romantically and sexually*. So frankly, ALLI, I’m confused about why someone who’s your brand of nonbinary (AMAB, femme, and into femmes) would even want to identify as a lesbian. Since you’re neither a woman nor a man, ALLI, why would you want to use such a gendered label? (Why you might feel entitled to use it is another subject, one I’ll leave that for commenters to discuss.)

That said, no one can stop you from using the term lesbian to describe yourself. You know how they say in anti-anti-cancel-culture discourse that there’s no such thing as cancel culture, only accountability? Well, ALLI, there’s no such thing as gatekeeping or gatekeepers; there are no identity cops out there with the power to make arrests or issue fines. There are only people who might find your shit annoying. In the case of your specific shit, ALLI, some lesbians are gonna find it annoying—extremely annoying—but annoyed lesbians can’t prevent you from self-identifying as a lesbian any more than annoyed Slate writers can prevent Louis C.K. from selling out stadiums. No one can cancel him, no one can gate-keep you. —Dan Savage

want to commit to us. And sometimes we tell ourselves a woman “doesn’t know what she wants” when she just doesn’t want us. And that’s fine. We’re just protecting our own egos. But if we believe that shit without reservation—if we buy our own hype—we’ll be devastated when the ex who couldn’t commit to us because “he doesn’t know what he wants” suddenly knows what he wants. And it’s someone else.

—DS

felt partly responsible since we didn’t have a discussion first. He wound up having a breakout a few days later. We continued dating and used condoms after that until one night when I was high on edibles and he didn’t use a condom. This was after he asked me earlier if I felt comfy going without condoms again and I explicitly requested condoms. We aren’t together now, but it feels really fucked up. He seemed like the nicest person.

—What The Fuck Was That What that was, WTFWT, was fucked up. And that guy wasn’t nice. There’s not a lot you can do about it now besides learning from the experience. First, don’t drop hints. Don’t put condoms on the nightstand and hope the other person takes the hint and uses a condom. Tell the other person the condoms are there to be used and that if there isn’t one on his dick, his dick isn’t getting anywhere near your hole/holes. And if his dick gets near your hole without a condom on it, or if the condom should magically disappear after his dick is in your hole, you’ll be filing a police report. And second, don’t make requests, explicit or otherwise. From here on out, WTFWT, make demands. Unambiguous, unequivocal demands. And go get tested. —DS

“Don’t make requests, explicit or otherwise. From here on out, make demands. Unambiguous, unequivocal demands.”

Across her 40 years as a professional comedian, Paula Poundstone has found success not only in smart, observational humor, but also in improvisational crowd work. “It was the strongest thing that I did, so I embraced it instead of running away from it,” Poundstone tells City Paper.

“It’s the most fun.” She is best known for her many appearances on NPR’s Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me! comedy news quiz show, as well as her two books, her voice work in the 2015 animated film Inside Out, and her podcast, Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone. Influenced by the likes of Lily Tomlin and Carol Burnett, Poundstone was the first woman to perform stand-up at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and her HBO special, Cats, Cops and Stuff, was listed as one of “The 5 Funniest Stand-Up Specials Ever” by Time magazine in March 2019. On Nov. 19, 20, and 21, Poundstone will perform at Alexandria’s Birchmere, a venue she is familiar with. Poundstone says she’s been performing at the venue for about 20 years. “I love going to the Birchmere,” she says. “Usually, I talk to people with the most interesting jobs. I think really they’re all CIA, but they just lie about what they do.” While she has a track record of commentating on politics (in 1992, she provided live coverage of the 1992 Democratic National Convention for The Tonight Show), she says that she never talks about politics as an expert when she’s in the D.C. area. Instead, she tells City Paper she prefers to speak as a “voter who is hanging on by a string, who is just trying to figure it all out.” Paula Poundstone performs at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 19, 20, and 21 at the Birchmere, 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria. birchmere. com. $55. COVID vaccination or a negative test required. —Michelle Goldchain

I’ve been flirting with this guy from my class. He’s four years older and seems very into drugs and certain subcultures, but he also maintains an active social media persona. We’re planning on going out, but I already know that he would fit into an unhealthy pattern of mine: guys who aren’t sure what they want and are reluctant to make commitments. Do I just enjoy the sex that could occur? Or do I steer clear to protect myself?

—Should I Fuck This Intriguing New Guy? Depends. After identifying this unhealthy pattern—your propensity for getting attached to guys who aren’t sure what they want and/ or can’t commit—have you been able to enjoy sex without allowing yourself to get attached to guys with commitment issues? If the answer is yes, SIFTING, if you can trust yourself not to catch feelings for someone, then go ahead and fuck this guy. But if the answer is no—if you can’t fuck a guy without catching feelings—then don’t fuck this guy.

Zooming way out—and this is not a comment on your situation, SIFTING, or your dating history—but sometimes we tell ourselves a man has “commitment issues” when he just doesn’t

34 november 19, 2021 washingtoncitypaper.com

I’m a 31-year-old cis woman living in the South.

Dating here is a nightmare. It feels like everyone got married at 22 and is super into Jesus. I just broke up with someone and got back on the apps, and the first date I went on was amazing.

Really cool liberal, age-appropriate dude with a similar sense of humor. I had so much fun, and we exchanged numbers. And then ... nothing. I bit the bullet and followed up and still haven’t heard anything. At what point do I write this guy off as a ghost? And how do I deal with the utter disappointment of being ghosted by a dude I really connected with?

—Ghosts Are Horrible I took a call on the “Savage Lovecast” last week from a woman who was angry about being ghosted by a man—a neighbor whose front door she had to walk past every day—and then she saw the coroner wheeling the guy’s dead body out of his apartment on a gurney. Like the meme says, “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.” As for your battle, GAH, look on the bright side. The first date you went on after getting back on the apps went pretty well! There was no second date, and that’s too bad, and assuming he isn’t dead, it was rude of him to ghost you like that. But if there was one guy in your area you could have an amazing first date with (even if it went nowhere), GAH, it’s not unreasonable to assume there are other guys in your area you could have equally amazing first dates with (dates that might go somewhere).—DS I WENT DOWN ON A FRIEND THIS WEEK AND I NOTICED SHE HAD A GROWTH ON HER LABIA. I AM SURE IT IS FINE BUT ANY IDEA WHAT IT WAS? —WHAT WAS THAT I HAVE NO IDEA BUT IF THE GROWTH WAS IN A SPOT YOUR FRIEND MIGHT HAVE DIFFICULTY SEEING. YOU SHOULD SAY SOMETHING TO HER SO SHE CAN GET IT CHECKED OUT BY A DOCTOR. —DS I dated someone recently for a few weeks and had sex, it was unprotected, and I found out immediately after that he had herpes. I was annoyed because I had condoms next to the bed. But I also

Married cis straight man here. You’re my gay crush.

Given the chance, how would you seduce me? I’ve never had man-sex before, because I really like pussy and the way women feel, but I think I could do it for you. You’ve always been my celeb “man-pass.”

How can we get this started? I’m just a straight guy writing to a gay guy, asking him to fuck him.

—Lusting After Dan Straight guys who make passes at gay men assume we’re all going to think, “OMG, this is my one chance to sleep with a real man!” In reality, LAD, what most gay men are thinking when a straight guy hits on us is, “Jesus Christ, this dude is gonna shit all over my dick.” Now, that thought doesn’t stop some gay men from sleeping with straight-identified guys who are bi or gay and closeted, LAD, nor does it stop some gay men from sleeping with the rare straight but situationally heteroflexible guy with a very specific crush on one of us. But it’s always annoying when a straight guy assumes his straightness is an aphrodisiac that drives gay men wild and asks questions like, “Given the chance, how would you seduce me?” That framing assumes I would try, or would want to try, if I had the chance.

So, you could say, I’m just a gay guy responding to a straight guy, asking him to get over himself.

—DS * A shout out to all the asexual lesbians who are attracted to other women romantically but not sexually, and to all the aromantic lesbians who are attracted to other women sexually but not romantically. I see you and your pride flags, I am familiar with your anime avatars, and I affirm the validity of your lesbianism.

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

CLASSIFIEDS Legal REMEMBERING JAMES James Earl Jones, passed away from Cronovirius on May 16, 2020 in Washington DC at the young age of 83. He was survived at this time by his daughter Brenda Marie Jones and Janice Morgan.

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DC SCHOLARS PCS REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS - Fiber Internet Access Services Notice is hereby given that DC Scholars Public Charter School has released a Request for Proposals (RFP) for Dedicated Fiber Internet Access. Details and service levels are identified within the formal posted RFPs. Interested Respondents must have an E-rate SPIN number and abide by the response directions in accordance with the RFP and supporting documentation. Complete responses must be received on or before 12:00 P.M. E.S.T. on December 15, 2021.

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THE INSPIRED TEACHING DEMONSTRATION PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS: Data Dashboard The Inspired Teaching School requests proposals from a contractor or firm to create or adapt an existing web-based platform with data dashboard functions to support ongoing decision-making at the school. The full RFP can be requested by contacting kate.keplinger@ inspiredteachingschool. org. Proposals will be accepted until 5:00pm on Friday, December 3, 2021. Submissions should

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