An anonymous reader sent DCist a series of photos of a D.C. Department of Public Works garbage truck driving through a recreation field in Rose Park in Georgetown last Saturday. The tipster described the truck as having hopped the curb to gain access to the "grass of a children's play area" in the park, and wondered whether this was safe. No one was injured, but a baby carriage in the foreground of the images certainly......

In case you missed it in the briefly noted in this morning's news round-up, someone has been setting garbage can fires in Senate bathrooms for a few days now. On Wednesday there were four such fires between 10:45 a.m. and 2 p.m., thankfully quickly extinguished. Police say Wednesdays' fires are connected (duh). And it turns out that similar fires were lit last week. From (subscription-only) Roll Call:Three of the fires set Wednesday took place in......

This is rich: apparently students living in on-campus housing at American University, and at other colleges around the country, are starting to get full-sized beds in their dorm rooms. The Post ran the story this morning as a trend piece, explaining that as universities continue to compete to attract top students, amenities like doing away with the standard, awkward twin-sized beds in college dorm rooms are becoming commonplace. DCist is here to say: this is......

Via the DCist tipline, we heard there may have been a fire at year-old Mt. Vernon Square-area coffee shop Breakwell's, on the corner of 9th and M Streets NW. Sure enough, the windows at the front and along the side of the shop have been boarded up, and there is visible fire damage to the exterior of the building. While checking out the extent of the damage, DCist chatted with the proprietors of WIDE......

>> Don't forget: thousands of dirty hippies and the gun-toting maniacs who hate them are getting together for a big ol' hootenanny down on the National Mall tomorrow morning. It's the War on War on War. >> At the Washington City Paper, editorial assistants who make mistakes aren't just named, they're taken out back and tortured with one million paper cuts using the latest issue while Erik Wemple screams "you're not good enough to......

Registered voters in Wards 1 and 2 received a postcard in the mail a few weeks back announcing the special election scheduled for Tuesday, Aug. 21 -- but in the off chance you quickly tossed in the garbage, allow us to fill you in: In April, D.C. Board of Education member Jeff Smith resigned his seat in protest immediately after the D.C. Council gave preliminary approval to Mayor Adrian Fenty’s school takeover plan, so now......

Day 1 was hot. Day 2 was dusty. And there were enough Amy-Winehouse-inspired hairdos to sink a ship. Our feet hurt, our foreheads are burnt to a crisp, we've got indentations on our noses from wearing sunglasses so much, a serious nap is in order and it's going to take more than one shower to fully recuperate, but the second annual Virgin Festival delivered on its promises of good bands, ecological responsibility, copious amenities......

What with Paris Hilton's release earlier this week and the upcoming celebration of American Independence (sorry, Londonist!), we've been thinking a lot about freedom. Freedom to vote, freedom to choose, and most importantly, freedom to blog. Here are a few things we're happy we've been free to blog about this week. Being the nation's capital, DCist felt especially proud to let freedom ring this week by exposing the really important issues, like how sad they......

“I’m trying to save my ass,” Mike Reynolds says in the opening moments of Garbage Warrior, a superb chronicle of his 30-year quest to bring sustainable housing construction into the mainstream, or at least closer in from the fringes. “That’s a powerful force.” Reynolds, a wunderkind architect and engineer who builds self-reliant “earthships” from the oddly indestructible detritus of an industrial civilization – old tires and plastic bottles are among his most useful materials –......

>> Mic Harrison (formerly of Superdrag) brings some alt-country goodness to the Velvet Lounge tonight, with The High Signs and Julie Ocean (ex-Velocity Girl). Show starts at 9 p.m. >> SILVERDOCS is in its first full day, so head on up to Silver Spring to check out a wide array of documentary film on offer. We'd recommend Oliver Hodge's Garbage Warrior at 8:45 p.m., about New Mexico architect Michael Reynolds, who builds homes out......

Holy smokes! Giant fish on the MTA, Paris Hilton in jail, then out, then in again, Al Gore, goatses, blumpkins, Matt Damon, and baby art critics! It's been a busy week across the Ist-A-Verse, and here's a smattering of what's been going on. In Gothamist's neck of the woods, they found out that many things are possible: A man caught a 40+ pound fish off the Rockaways and took it home on the subway. Graffiti......

I heard some promising construction-like noises coming from the direction of the condemned Shiloh Baptist Church properties this morning, but alas, it seems I was fooled by some friendly garbage men doing their normal Monday pick-ups. Since the buildings were condemned on Wednesday and the church was given orders to complete a list of repairs, including cleaning the interiors, installing new roofs, fixing brickwork and installing gutters, Shiloh has pledged to complete the work......

It was two years ago that we first took notice of D.C.'s new population of coyotes. Back then we worried about the threat of an international incident as the animals made their way to Embassy Row. Today the Post confirms that coyotes continue to roam the edges of Rock Creek Park, bringing them in much closer contact to city residents. This is one case of animal/human cohabitation that can't be blamed on urban development pushing......

A Tenleytown hardware store was robbed by two armed, masked men this morning, prompting a mile-long police chase through the neighborhood, complete with accompanying U.S. Park Police helicopter. If your commute through this area was hell on Earth today, feel free to send these lovely robbers a thank-you note. The Post says that an employee of the Ace Hardware store in the 4500 block of Wisconsin Avenue NW was ambushed by the robbers while taking......

The sun is out, the ice is receding and life in D.C. is returning to normal. So why is there still trash rotting on the corners? Yesterday's garbage-related post prompted comments complaining about the city's malingering trash service such as BrodyV's: Apparently I ought to work for the garbage crew in order to maximize my snow days— my trash hasn't been picked up in over 2 weeks. I guarantee that there's more than one......

What does a young graffiti artist brought down in his prime do? Go back to tagging of course, but this time for a living. Borf, the notorious Virginia-based graffiti artist that spent the better part of two years brazenly tagging everything in the District from garbage cans to highway signs (a sampling of his work is pictured here), may just have found his dream job. After being sentenced to a month in jail last February......

FRIDAY: >> January at 9:30 Club tends to be a no man's land of lots of dark nights with the occassional local line-up thrown in for good measure. So we think it's great that Taint, DC9's weekly queer dance night for electro-indie goodness, and Black Cat's popular Bliss have ganged up to create INFAMY, a late-night dance fiesta featuring DJ Will Eastman and New York's DJ Bill Coleman, with special guest Daisy Spurs. Doors open......

You'd think we'd all have learned our lesson by now: if you say something even mildly embarrassing on the web, more people than your originally intended audience are eventually going to read it. Yet every week we find the wrong people saying the wrong things in the wrong places. This time, it's the Velvet Lounge, being perhaps a little over-zealous in policing its video policies. In June, local musician Lauren Heckman posted to YouTube a......

Anyone who's turned on a television or seen a movie should be familiar with the good cop/bad cop paradigm, which we might describe as the tactic of someone grabbing your prejudices and outrage and lifting it to new levels you hadn't quite prescribed for them, while the other coos in your ear and softly leads you to a place you hadn't intended to go. If that's the case, then the title Good Cop / Bad......

There's a lot of fear being sold these days in D.C. Yesterday District residents were treated to fear from both local and national leaders. President George W. Bush again played the terrorism card in a speech downtown, slyly insinuating that a Democratic victory in November's midterm elections would find Al Qaeda terrorists freely walking the streets of American cities. More locally, mayoral hopeful Linda Cropp doled out some fear of her own, warning of the......

Breaking the law, breaking the law We -ist folks love us some crime, and no misdemeanor is too petty for a post on any of our sites. This week, join us for a rogues' gallery of miscreants major, minor, and alleged. Gothamist gets us started with "Law & Order", muppet style. Oh, you know what isn't a crime? Taking pictures on the MTA. So, why are cops stopping photographers? In other Gotham crime, a......

Though the region got itself in a tizzy over the record rains of Deluge 2006, there was plenty else that happened. We reported on the RAMMYs, saw a coup d'etat at Politics and Prose, marveled at the Washington Times' new intern blog, and debated whether or not Pierre L'Enfant should go to Congress. We checked out The Roosevelt, discussed Freddy Adu's defection from the District, and found out that heavy rains can cause both......

At one point or another, we've all had something we picked up off the street. Be it a couch someone needed to rid themselves of, an old picture frame, even a ratty yet functioning toaster oven -- look hard enough, and the District's sidewalks and the stuff people put on them can serve to furnish or decorate your house. But when does someone's free giveaway become someone else's garbage? We can't just dump trash bags......

Gallery Place/Chinatown is the place to be in the District these days. There's a bowling alley and a Bed Bath & Beyond among many other attractions, and there may even be a pool hall and wax museum in the near future. But what are there not enough of? According to the Post, garbage cans. Apparently the thousands of residents and daily visitors to the lively neighborhood have few places to dispose of their garbage, leaving......

It seems that the District Department of Public Works is about to wave the white flag in the battle against litter. In an announcement posted today on the District's official website, DPW reminds residents that fighting litterbugs is "still an annual struggle" and asks for ideas on how to better wage the war. As a starting point, they link to a 2004 survey of litter and anti-litter efforts in New Jersey, indicating that some of......

The picture above may say it all. They were on the National Mall. They were on the Tidal Basin. Their cars clogged our roads, their baby strollers and large extended families crowded our Metro. They were everywhere. Tourist season has begun, bringing with it the obvious advantage of their disposable income and the just-as-obvious disadvantage of their indisputable presence. As long as they stand right and walk left on Metro escalators, we're guessing a......

By new DCist Food and Drink Contributor Erin Zimmer As legend has it, when a Waldorf-Astoria guest back in the 1940s forcefully requested the hotel's secret red velvet cake recipe, the hotel gave it to her—along with a hefty bill for the prized information. The miffed guest, whose lawyer supposedly advised her that she had to pay, apparently took revenge by spreading the recipe everywhere she could. Whether the Waldorf-Astoria tale is real or no......

Good morning, Washington. With deadlines for signing the stadium lease looming, D.C. officials are considering new options for defraying cost overruns, in their attempt to corral a majority in the D.C. Council. The Post reports today that the latest of such measures is an initiative to sell land adjacent to the planned stadium to the new Nationals owner. That land, which is likely to host a lucrative mix of development, could prove valuable enough to......

Friday in Washington is blithely referred to as "Take Out The Trash Day," as it's the traditional day of the week when our government issues press releases and concludes business in matters that they'd prefer didn't get a whole lot of media attention. Today, Representative Richard Pombo (R-CA), Chairman of the House Resources Committee, included a piece of garbage especially for the District. In the Draft Reconciliation Bill, published today, Pombo and his panel have,......

Good morning, Washington. Today the temperatures will be in the mid 90s. With a heat index back up over 100 this afternoon the weather services has issued a heat advisory in effect from 2 p.m. until 6 p.m., so stay cool. Looking for something to do? Ben Folds is at Wolftrap, George Washington University is showing "Finding Neverland," and the National Building Museum is screening "How to Succeed At Business Without Really Trying," in the......