We reported last year that local arts venue Warehouse was forced to start closing down its 7th Street NW location due to skyrocketing property taxes. The bar and music venue closed last summer, but the rest of the space will continue to run through the Fringe Festival in July. In the meantime, they want to hear from you about how to improve their space when they finally move, and have set up a series of......

Yesterday, I found it difficult to write about Washington's loss over the weekend to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It had nothing to do with the play on the field, which amounted to a carbon copy of the previous week's loss. Jason Campbell strove mightily to lead the team past their mistakes, only to be done in by mistakes of his own. A game changing moment came when the offense failed to obtain some badly needed......

A day after Washington’s loss to…yes—hated rivals, the Dallas Cowboys, I find myself indulging in that oft-snarked out tendency of Redskins fans: the telling of sweet little lies. At least we didn’t get run out of the stadium, as we did against the Patriots. At least we didn’t collapse stupidly, like we did against the Eagles. At least the team we struggled with was a quality team (insofar as anything the NFC produces this year......

At first, it looked like a laugher in progress. It ended as a nailbiter. In a slogging game punctuated by missteps and flukes, the Washington Redskins escaped with a win at home against the Arizona Cardinals. How'd Washington pull out the win? On balance, they just reaped slightly larger benefits from the errors, but credit some missed kicks and the strangest two-point conversion call I've ever seen for the victory. By and large, scoring opportunities......

For anyone living in Washington who grew up in the West, the dearth of authentic Mexican food in this city is likely a constant complaint. D.C. is the home to several sizable ethnic groups, Salvadorans among them, and while we applaud the ready availability of authentic, and delicious, Salvadoran cuisine, the attempts by these same lovely folks to cook Mexican food is almost uniformly terrible. They use the wrong cheeses. They don't know how to......

I have a small confession. Months ago, when I agreed to take over Nats coverage for DCist, I was anticipating a historically bad season. The kind of season that I could tell my children about, and allow me to forever hold my head above future bandwagon fans. So imagine my surprise that on my inaugural post there are a staggering seven teams with worse records than the Nats, despite seven Washington losses in their last......

At a hearing before the Public Services and Consumer Affairs Committee yesterday, the D.C. Council heard testimony both for and against the so-called payday loan industry, which has often been criticized for predatory lending practices. The businesses market themselves as a way for lower income individuals who don't qualify for credit or a bank loan to get emergency cash. The industry's opponents charge that payday loans prey on our society's most vulnerable people by charging......

Baseball’s amateur draft hasn’t quite established the same caché as the NFL, with All Day Draft Coverage, mock “war rooms” and the like. This is partially because baseball’s deep player development system delays the impact of most draftees and partly because baseball’s draft has twenty bazillion rounds. Even without a media circus, though, the 2007 Draft looms large for the Nats and their plans for future development. Many of their decisions over the past few......

With all that went down this week, we thought we thought we'd cheer everyone up by giving everyone a double dose of dogs. It was a rollercoaster ride of emotions this week at DCist. Like the rest of country, we were floored by the news of so many dead coming out of Virginia Tech, and with so many of the victims and their relatives from the D.C. area, we felt it important to pay......

Spring is when we get busy here in the Ist-A-Verse. Very busy. But, after staying bundled-up indoors all winter, it's nice for us to be out, about, and collecting things to write about for you. Here's a glimpse at what's been keeping your favorite citybloggers busily away from home and out of bed. For LAist, strong winds attacked LA on the same day the Feds raided the Crips. Not to fear, though: the Japanese version......

No offense to Mary Steingesser, the artist who attempted to capture the spirit of the District of Columbia for our official 2007 "State Easter Egg" this year. It's a perfectly lovely rendering of the White House on an egg, we suppose. But we just wouldn't be us if we didn't take a moment to point out that a) Using the White House as the symbol for D.C. is so 2004 (2005's egg was the Washington......

Last week Prevention magazine put out its list of the Best Walking Cities of 2007. We were a little bit surprised by the results: 1. Madison, Wisconsin 2. Austin, Texas 3. San Francisco, California 4. Charlotte, North Carolina 5. Seattle, Washington 6. Henderson, Nevada 7. San Diego, California 8. San Jose, California 9. Chandler, Arizona 10. Virginia Beach, Virginia OK, so the top five cities are all plausible, even if we have a hard time......

As mentioned in the Morning Roundup and widely reported in today’s Post and Examiner, Mayor Adrian Fenty announced today his selection of Dennis Rubin to take over the Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department. Rubin resigned from his post as Atlanta's Fire Chief on Monday, effective April 13. Once approved by the City Council, Rubin takes over a department that has had its share of issues, from Chief Ronnie Few’s résumé embellishment to the enormous......

Good morning, Washington. Got Halloween plans? Personally, I'm still trying to come up with a decent last-minute costume idea. My party deadline isn't until tomorrow, fortunately. For those who've got costume parties lined up for tonight, I hope you didn't make any part of your outfit from papier mache — it looks like it's going to be a soggy evening. Jemal Acquitted Of Most Charges: The verdict is in, and prominent District developer Douglas Jemal......

If you've been walking past the intersection of 14th and S streets NW recently (or checked out the small photo we ran in today's Morning Roundup and wondered what it was) you've probably noticed the new, patterned crosswalk in the road that dots the streets with white swirls and colorful stars. We got curious as to what exactly it was (Borf making a dramatic comeback, maybe?), how exactly it got there, and if it......

Who doesn't love Wal-Mart? I mean, how could you not? They roll back prices, they have happy retirees welcome you to the store, they refuse to promote women, they ban books and music from their stores based on their own ideas of propriety...it's nearly a utopia. Unfortunately for one Washington Post photographer, Jim Thresher, his and his lover Laura's blogumentary of their all-expense paid trip across our great nation resulted in a roll back of......

We're awfully sad today at DCist headquarters, after learning this morning that we missed out on spotting Borat (the faux-Kazakh reporter portrayed by comedian Sasha Baron Cohen) trying to gain entry to the White House yesterday, though sadly, to no avail. His visit to D.C. was a brilliant piece of publicity timing, coinciding both with the first official state visit of Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev, as well as the upcoming release of his new film,......

Livan Hernandez is Frank Robinson’s kind of player: crafty, with dogged determination and competitive fire. He wants the ball in every situation. He's eaten innings in big chunks, leading the league in IP for three years straight. He’s loyal, perhaps to a fault. He’s been one of the faces of the franchise in recent years, and was the first player to throw a pitch for the Nationals last year. Despite not having the best......

Calexico is one of the most interesting bands that I had ever overlooked until 2004. For me, it was their collaboration with Iron and Wine’s Sam Beam that put the Tucson collective’s talents squarely on the popular indie map. Though they appeared out of nowhere and were sometimes boxed in as a mere “backing band,” it is now clear that their performance appeal goes as deep as their musical ambitions. Calexico is far from and......

When Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Ian Hunter, Son Volt, and Calexico make a record to save your life, you’ve achieved icon status in the music world. Yet despite his performing in bands since the '70s and solo since the early '90s, Texas-native Alejandro Escovedo is hardly a household name for those who appreciate roots music. And he rarely sells out East Coast shows. But things are changing. Over the course of the past several months,......

It's no secret that this Thursday and Friday afternoon thousands of area employees will "run errands," sneak off to the office TV lounge, or otherwise alt-tab their way through the day as NCAA conference tournament play blesses us all with daytime television that doesn't suck. March Madness isn't the only productivity killer available this week, however. The World Baseball Classic, which began last week with Pool A games featuring China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan, comes......

After the Washington Redskins and the Arizona Cardinals slogged their way through a first half that made an outright joke of the notion of professional athletics, Washington got even and then got over by a 17-13 score in a game that kept their razor thin playoff hopes alive. The first half was largely given over to a surreal orgy of turnovers, mutually engaged in by both squads. Mark Brunell offered up a trio of......

Mmmmmm, pork. Yesterday President George W. Bush signed into law a transportation bill worth some $286 billion, of which $24 billion will go to fund 6,371 special pet projects for Congressional districts both Democratic and Republican. Any opinions on Congressional pork notwithstanding, we here at DCist were curious -- What did the District reap in this astounding windfall of taxpayer funds? Not much. If California and Illinois got most of the pig themselves (545 earmarks......

OK, so there isn't a specific D.C. angle other than it takes place here, but this is pretty monumental news in the larger scheme of things. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, today announced her resignation, the first in over 10 years and one likely to set up what is sure to be a long and brutal battle between conservative factions looking to reign in "judicial activism"......

Redskin running back Clinton Portis and former Washington defensive back Ifeanyi Ohalete, are embroiled in a strange dispute that is sure to one day become a Stare DCisis. The two athletes have ended up in civil court in Maryland over a bizarre contracted agreement over Portis’ jersey number. You see, when Portis came to the Redskins, his preferred jersey number—26—was held by Ohalete. Portis, figuring that it was his jersey’s occult numerological power and not......

It was just over two weeks ago that the Washington Nationals, to great fanfare, took the field at RFK Stadium for the first Major League Baseball game in Washington in over three decades. Years of political bickering, backroom negotiating, and hoping were finally put to rest as the team defeated the Arizona Diamondbacks in front of a capacity crowd. It's not uncommon to see commuters sporting "W" hats, and for those residents living near RFK,......

It's not often that a venue can be the undoing of an artist's performance, but that was the very case for emo-rockers Jimmy Eat World's otherwise energetic show at American University's Bender Arena. While the Arizona-based band tightly maneuveured their way through songs spanning a long career, one could hardly help but feel the dissonance between performance and place. It may have been the basketball arena's bleachers, it may have been the banners touting the......

>> Wins on Friday against the free falling Cleveland Cavaliers and on Sunday against the Charlotte Bobcats coupled with an Indiana Pacers loss at Miami have moved the Wizards into 5th place in the Eastern Conference playoff race with just two games to go. The Wizards overall record now stands at 45-35 and the team has won four in a row since their five game losing streak. With the Pacers two games back with only......

(Editor's Note: Now to the second part of our Nationals opening day's coverage) Let's not get ahead of ourselves here, but go check the MLB standings. Your eyes don't deceive you: The Nats alone hold first place in the NL East this morning. And they got there by stopping the formidable Arizona D'Backs 5 runs to 3 in 8½ innings at RFK Stadium. But before that, there was some schmaltz to get out of the......

Thirty-four years after the last D.C. baseball team slunk out of town, the Washington Nationals play their first-ever home game against the Arizona Diamondbacks at 7:00 p.m. (TV: UPN 20). As if that isn't exciting enough, the Nats arrive with a stadium-warming surprise gift: a winning record (5-4) and a two-game win streak (all road games, no less (of course)). It'll be no small task to keep those winning ways going: The Diamondbacks, even shorn......