Nats Park

A few Sundays ago, we went to our first Nats game at the new stadium. I think we both agreed that the experienced was mixed. The day we went was pretty crowded since the Nationals were playing the Orioles. Of course, the stadium is brand new, and so everything looked great and new. Our seats were great, just a few rows back from the Nats' dugout on the first baseline. The field was beautiful, and the jumbotron was very... big.

BUT, it was also really hot, and we had seats in the sun and we didn't realize they got ridiculously hot in the sun. Liz had a hard time sitting in them because her shorts weren't long enough to provide protection. There are big ugly parking garages that sit and block any sort of view of the city past the outfield walls. It seems they're still ironing out the kinks even after 3 months of being open. The lines were long, they ran out of concessions, and the food was super expensive. It's true the stadium doesn't have much character, I guess, but I'm not sure what kind of character I'd expect from a brand new stadium.

I am really hopeful, though, that when they finish developing that part of town that it will be lively and fun and full of action. It seems that will happen, but you never know. And hopefully the team will win more than lose. That could never hurt.

Seth Hurwitz in WashBizJournal

Here's a profile of Seth Hurwitz from a few years back in the Washington Business Journal. In the midst of all the discussion around the SS Music Venue Saga, this article is interesting reading.

Stage presence
As the region's dominant music promoter, 9:30 Club co-founder Seth Hurwitz relishes his place in the spotlight, and at home

What's in a DC identity?

In the WashingtonPost, there have been some recent articles/postings regarding what it means to be living in DC. On one hand, there was a Marc Fisher post from his blog that disputes the fact that, as is usually said, "nobody's from here".

Then, there's an article here that sort of contradicts that by playing into the idea that most people that live in the DC area are not from here. This article asks "transplants" to name aspects or places about DC that remind them of their home. So that kind of made me think they were implying that DC can be viewed as a place that is representational of the country. Or that it should be viewed that way. As is appropriate for the capital of the country. That idea would make it okay that nobody was from here and give the city more of an identity, although one that fits in w/ the "DC-as-only-a-government-town" identity. (And it also provides DC with an identity that is not "look how many things we have that NYC has! We're cool too!")

But as Marc Fisher points out, the identity suggested in the second article is not really accurate. His post was refreshing, since it is a common thought that most people that live and work here were not born here. I, for one, was born in DC and have lived in the metro area my whole life. Sometimes I wish I had at least lived in another city somewhere else, but I'm not losing sleep over it.

Crime in the old 'hood

We still pay (distant) attention to what's happening in our old Columbia Heights neighborhood, usually via listservs, blogs, etc. It seemed like Shaw was really the hot spot in terms of scary amounts of shootings and gunfire. But things have been bad down in CH lately, at least from what's coming into our browsers. The below links are to stories on the washingtonpost.com, but we also heard about these incidents from the various listservs we still subscribe to. Call us vicarious DC residents, for lack of a better term. Or maybe the interest is that we lived there for 2 years (not a huge amount of time in terms of residencies) and still are curious to see and hear what's happening there. What new development is opening? What ridiculous thing will Jim Graham say or do? Is the crime getting better or worse? It appears that crime is getting worse... Pretty bad when a drive-by occurs a block away from where a cop car is stationed and on watch.

Halloween violence

Then, 2 days later...

Crafty weekend

This past weekend was fairly busy but fun. And the beautiful fall weather didn't hurt one bit. I don't usually do a blow-by-blow, but here goes...

Friday night we went over to A&E's for a pizza dinner. We got to see their baby girl who is very cute and also their 2.5 yr old girl as well. So it was good catching up w/ them -- sounds like everything is going well.

Saturday afternoon my mom came by for a visit w/ Jane and brought over a bracelet that used to be my sister's when she was a baby. So I guess you could say Jane gets her first family heirloom. It's great to have that stuff. Saturday night we went over to T&R's for a party which was cool. We don't get to see them very often, so it was good to see them for a bit, plus we got to see their little daughter who ain't so little anymore. Jane came w/ us cos she likes to party. Well, only if it's early. Well, okay, she likes to party somewhat, and then when she doesn't, she really doesn't. So we left at around 8pm -- it was a quick stop at the party.

Later that night I watched Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, which is a Korean movie and part of a thematic trilogy about revenge and vengeance. The second movie in the trilogy was Old Boy, which is very good but disturbing. It was also controversial because there was speculation that the VA Tech shooter may have been "inspired" by the movie in some way. In any case, SFLV was decent but disappointing to me even though it seemed to get high marks from others on netflix.

Sunday, to top off our weekend, we headed down to Adams Morgan for the Crafty Bastards Arts and Crafts Fair that was put on by the City Paper. We took the metro down -- Jane's first time! -- and walked over from our old 'hood, Columbia Heights. The development and building that's going on at 14th and Irving is pretty incredible to see. It looks completely different now that the structures are up for the DCUSA mall and the various condo/apt buildings. Wild. Liz and I couldn't help but speculate how bad the traffic will be once everything's up and running. But w/ the metro stop right there, hopefully that'll diminish traffic some...

Anyway, on our way to Adams Morgan we walked past Mt. Pleasant and were pleasantly (sorry) surprised to see that the DC Fiesta 2007 was going on in Mt. P. We didn't stop but I *did* manage to spot Ian MacKaye standing on Mt. P. Street. He's easy to spot, and I figured he'd be at something like that, but still I was pretty impressed w/ myself. After that I started singing Everybody Knows by the Evens in my head because there's a line that goes "Washington is our city". Don't know why really, but I did.

Got down to the Crafty fair, and it was crowded. Many, many booths. A big product being sold: t-shirts! I don't think there really is that much of a demand for t-shirts, but hey what do I know? I think every other booth sold t-shirts of some sort. But we did pick up a bib for Jane and some mounted photos of DC. Then we popped over to Lauriol Plaza for some Mexican for lunch and to feed Jane.

After lunch we hightailed it back to CH metro to get our girl home! She did really well while we were out. We were very happy with how she handled it, and she was in a good mood just about the entire time. We then got home and Milton came over w/ some Chinese for dinner, so we chilled out w/ him that evening.

Government Re-Issue

It's taken me a little while to find the time/energy to get in front my computer to post this, but here's how the show went...

Bill and I went down to the old Rock and Roll Hotel on Sunday night to check out the John Stabb Benefit and of course catch Government Issue. I can't say I remember the last hardcore show I've been to, but it certainly did dredge up some memories for me (some good, some bad). But that was part of the point of going down there. The other part was to contribute to John Stabb's medical bills.

This is the first show for me at the RnR Hotel. Not a bad place... smaller than I expected, but fine. Guess I expected something closer to the size of the Black Cat. As an aside, boy, that neighborhood is still plenty rough. And not even rough around the edges, just rough all over. So, that's one thing that reminded me of going to the old shows back in the 80s when they were mostly held in the rougher neighborhoods. There was a good sized crowd there when I walked up, with a lot of people hangin' in front of the Hotel. I was expecting to see a mostly older crowd and was surprised by the mostly younger crowd. Both Bill and I were hoping to run into some old aquaintances, but that didn't happen. We didn't really see any familiar faces. I guess I was slightly disappointed, but fine.

There were several opening bands, all of which were hardcore and none of which I had heard of. Not surprising. One of the openers, from DC I believe, liked to introduce their songs by way of something like "this one's about the growing divide between the rich and poor and the reduction of the middle class" or "this one's about the plight of immigrants all over the world". For me that just sucks the wind right out... talk about dry. As a matter of fact when they used that first introduction, someone in the audience yelled out "Then why are you wearing a Brown t-shirt?" because the guitarist had a Brown University t-shirt on. And the singer's response: "what?" Not to get too down on these guys but that was pretty comical. I'm sure they believe in what they do, but I'm just not down with that. The irony is that you can't understand any of the lyrics. But I did enjoy seeing what hardcore was up to these days and slightly reliving some older days. The last opener was pretty decent. We also found out that 76% Uncertain had cancelled at the last minute. As we joked, guess they really were at least 76% uncertain to play.

Anyway, GI came on next. Brian Baker on bass, Tom Lyle on guitar, John Stabb on vocals, and William Knapp on drums, who I think is from 76% Uncertain. Guess the rest of the band couldn't make it down from Connecticut. So GI was a lot of fun, although it was clear that they hadn't practiced much (in fact they didn't really -- see below). I guess I was hoping for a full blown, blow the roof off show. They were definitely good, but not like I imagined/hoped for. Instead it was a loose and relaxed set that sometimes felt like a practice since they stopped songs a couple times and then restarted. To the best of my memory, here's what they played (this is not in order):

I'm James Dean
Asshole
Fashionite (an a capella version)
Religious Ripoff
Familiar
Sheer Terror (introduced as the song that scared Glenn Danzig)
Boots are made for walking
Teenager in a box
Circles (the Faith song)
Stepping Stone
Mad at Myself
Where You Live
Jaded Eyes
Understand

So everyone seemed to be having a great time. The crowd was into it, and danced that funny dance of theirs. Actually, I got blindsided in the back by some dudes who rushed through the crowd from the back of the room to the pit and knocked me on my ass. Hate that. I hated it when I was younger and I hate now. So that was the bad memory of the evening.

After the set, and while the crowd was trying to get an encore, Stabb came out and talked for a while telling everyone how really, really grateful he was for all the support he's had since his assault. Henry Rollins sent him a bunch of money, he said. He also explained how the reunion came together and that everyone in the band basically didn't practice as a unit until the sound check that day. They practiced their respective parts independently, but not together at the same time until the sound check. And they had only learned 15 songs and that was it. Brian Baker also came out to tell the audience that, yes, they had played all the songs they learned and that was it. But hey, if everyone wants to hear the set again, we'll do it! And so, they launched into the set again. At this point, the thing deteriorated into a bit of a sloppy affair, but nobody seemed to care. They didn't get all the way through the set again before they decided to end things. And that was it. Fun but fleeting.

Uline Arena / Washington Coliseum

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The Uline Arena (or Washington Coliseum) down by Union Station is being renovated and redeveloped by Doug Jemal. When I heard about the development, I wanted to find out more about the building since I wasn't that familiar with it in the first place. Turns out it has some kind of interesting history behind it -- I had no idea. And it's a pretty unusual looking building for DC. I've ridden past it many times while riding on the eastern leg of the Red Line to Silver Spring and always wondered what it was.

For one thing, it was the location of the first Beatles concert in the US on Feb 11, 1964! Wild. Here's a picture from that show.

The cover photo of Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits was taken at a concert at the Washington Coliseum in 1966.

In the '80s, go-go bands like Chuck Brown, Trouble Funk, and Rare Essence played there.

Here's a pretty thorough history of the facility from the Washington Business Journal.

Most recently, it has been used as a parking lot and as a waste facility. It's in pretty rough shape now, so here's hoping they do a good job in redeveloping it. Check out some pics on flickr.

Government Issue

GI is waaay under-represented on youtube. This is from an '88 show at Maxwell's in Hoboken, NJ. 2 songs.

Minor Threat

Live from 930 (?), circa '82 (?).

Marginal Man

Live from GWU, '85. Posted to youtube by Mr. Kenny Inouye.

Rites of Spring

Live from 9:30, '85.

Dag Nasty

Live at 9:30 circa '84 (?) w/ original singer, Sean Brown.

Slickee Boys

vintage studio video

The Faith

live from wilson center '82. check out the lack of thrashing.

Marginal Man

live from the wilson center '84. this was included on the cd version of double image.

Kingface

More old DC stuff... this is a Kingface video probably shot at 9:30. Yea, I've been trolling youtube.

Teen Idles

Here's an oldie... from 1980 at the Chancery in DC.

Joe Englert

Friends of mine already know about my semi-fascination with Joe Englert. As an armchair observer of DC and participant in DC nightlife, I would definitely say that Englert has done a lot for DC. In fact, I'd say he's done as much as anyone has for DC.

When we were all younger, his bars and clubs were our bars and clubs of choice: 15 Minutes, Insect Club, Planet Fred (later the Lucky Bar), Crowbar, Big Hunt, etc. All those places were go-to places and we had a lot of fun there. When we reached "club age," we first went to the standard places (the only places if you asked us) -- places that weren't Rumors or whatever other mainstream bars were going on at the time. We mainly wanted a cool place to hang out that played cool music. Those places were Poseurs and then Backalley Cafe and then Cagney's.

But after those three places closed up, it seemed like there wasn't a place to go hang out and dance as well. But then 15 Mins opened up, and we were there what felt like every weekend. We'd see Joe at 15 Mins, and he'd give us passes or would say hello at the door. We'd see him at Planet Fred all the time. There was a lot of youth mis-spent there. We felt like regulars -- felt like we belonged.

Now, Englert is working on fixing up H St. NE. He's got six bars going on now, and is working on luring in more businesses. I gotta say I'm rooting for the guy. It seems like he's really got some work cut out for himself at H St. I went with Scott to see Retisonic at the Red and the Black about 6 months ago. The Atlas District (what they're calling the strip on H St NE) right now is still pretty desolate and rough. But who knows -- if anybody can pull off revitalizing the strip, it might be Joe. If I had the energy, motivation, and balls, I'd love to do what he does.

(Oh yea, and his favorite band is the Pogues, so he's okay in my book right there. As a matter of fact we saw him when the Shane MacGowan movie showed at Visions. He was there with his wife, Lynn, who went to my high school. Small town.)

Some Englert links:
Wash City Paper: Englertification
The Goodspeed Update
Wash Business Journal
WaPo on Atlas District

Some Englert H St Bars:
Red and Black
Palace of Wonders (Showbar)
Rock and Roll Hotel