, Former D.C. United prodigy and lightning rod Freddy Adu is off to Benfica of the Portuguese League, reports Steven Goff at the Soccer Insider. When Adu came to United at the tender age 14, his arrival inspired fanfare within Major League Soccer that has only since been surpassed by some British geezer. After three up-and-down seasons with United, Adu was sent to Real Salt Lake for a major allocation (a powerful tool in MLS......

While SFist cringed at the fatal dose of crime littering the Bay Area, it found solace in Hillary Clinton's San Francisco campaign headquarters opening, which featured loads of exposed mammary glands. In other news, SF Taxi Commission ruled that Satan's cab must keep its (in)famous medallion number, 666; and in an un-fashion-forward frenzy, San Francisco Fashion Week (chortle) bars bloggers from covering and getting smashed at their shows and parties, respectively. Also, they found a......

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Indie: Sunshine A group of astronauts are on a suicide mission to save a dying Sun, lest the earth perish as well. While it may sound like a plot suitable for Michael Bay's Armageddon 2: Bigger and Hotter, in the hands of director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) and his 28 Days Later screenwriter, Alex Garland, it may......

In times when security fears, whether justified or not, begin to creep over our lives, it's important to remember that the tiny chipping away of legitimate rights can be a slippery slope to unwarranted governmental authority over our lives. We wrote in June about photographer Chip Py's experience in downtown Silver Spring, as well as Kate Mereand's similar confrontations all over D.C., and their subsequent formation of DC Photo Rights, a Flickr group dedicated to......

In her publicity photos, 23-year-old singer-songwriter Melody Gardot is usually seen wearing a pair of dark sunglasses that one initially assumes are a part of a well-cultivated look. In fact, Gardot wears the glasses because of injuries she suffered when she was struck by a car while bicycling home in her native Philadelphia. Prior to the accident, Gardot worked part-time as a cocktail pianist while studying at Moore College of Art & Design. While in......

>> Artomatic comes to a close this weekend, after five long weeks of inundating us with massive quantities of art, free performances, lectures, concerts, film series, demonstrations and workshops, and spirited community building that even your old summer camp counselor couldn't match. If you haven't gone down to Crystal City yet, the old Patent Office location is only a few blocks from the metro, and the art fair only rises up every two (sometimes three)......

Just how do you recruit a 19-year-old woman to live in a studio apartment atop a big chair in Southeast Washington? This was the incredible feat achieved by Charles Wendell Curtis, who the Post profiles in an obituary today. Curtis was the man who built Anacostia's 19 1/2 foot tall Big Chair in 1959 to promote his family's furniture store. The original chair -- when built touted as the World's Largest Chair -- was replaced......

You've read about The Vita Ruins on DCist before. You may have even seen them perform at our 4th Unbuckled concert. When all that buzz was going on about the band, they'd only had a few (literally -- Unbuckled was their third show) performances under their belt. Since then they've built up a reputation that's allowed them quite a bit of luck in booking shows and getting people talking. But the Virginia natives are......

When your alumni game features less than one former player for each year your franchise has played, and none of them play goalie, something might be wrong. The 2006-2007 season was a chance for the Washington Capitals to take a long, sometimes painful look at the prospects it has drafted and traded for in recent years. Over the season, the team discovered that these young players were generally young, inexperienced and insecure. With the right......

A new "old musical" may sound like a contradiction in terms, but that's exactly what Meet John Doe, now playing at Ford's Theater, is. At first, one might wonder if we need a show that takes us back to the days of classics like Kiss Me Kate and Sweet Charity, but with such intelligent lyrics and such a satisfying blend of hope and cynicism, John Doe is more than a nostalgia trip, and doesn't have......

Ain't Named Passion For Nothing Once again, the men of Passion Food's restaurants (TenPenh, Ceiba, D.C. Coast, and Acadiana) get out of their kitchen kits for a nude romp through 2007. Mr. Kliman over at the Washingtonian lets us in on what's underneath the aprons of some of Passion Food's cookmen, like Acadiana sous chef Anthony Piscioneri and TenPenh chef de cuisine Cliff Wharton. Though most aren't totally naked (though I hear Mr. October, Ceiba's......

Councilmember Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) is well known for being thoughtful, energetic, and responsive to the needs of his constitutents. He lords over the District's most diverse and vibrant ward, participating in discussions on everything from transportation to crime to consumer and regulatory affairs. It was no surprise, then, that Graham dove headfirst into last Saturday's tragic killing of 17-year-old Taleshia Ford at Club 1919. He quickly informed constituents of the night's events, pushed Police......

Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to. In Austin, bands are beginning to confirm for SXSW and the rumor mill is up and running. Good thing, too, because we all know how much Austinites love live performances. Austin also found itself in the national spotlight, with Longhorn Legend......

Washington is full of monuments to famous people -- Washington, Jefferson, Einstein, Hahnemann. Hahnemann? Not a forgotten vice president or a general, Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann was the founder of homeopathic medicine. His impressive monument, located at 16th and Massachusetts NW near Scott Circle, isn't too helpful -- it says "HAHNEMANN" on the top, as if everybody knows who he is. There are also a few Latin and German sayings (he was born in Saxony......

Doilies make things look precious, dainty and cute, like snowflakes without the hassle of puddles. They look good on mantels, under candelabra and posh clocks. But doilies made from cheap paper simply look tacky when they frame paintings — exactly the look Marcel Duchamp wanted when he hung the Société Anonyme’s first show in New York in 1920. The Société Anonyme: Modernism for America, currently showing at the Phillips Collection, is the first visiting show......

Washington is a city that likes to fly a lot. With members of Congress and Hill staffers flying to every corner of the country, added to the travel habits of the rest of the D.C.-metro populace, it makes for some busy airports. As anyone who has traveled in the past five years knows, even arriving at the airport the recommended two hours early sometimes just doesn't cut it. As the Washington Post reports today, don't......

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,......

FRIDAY: >> Mike Doughty's band, which we assume will in fact include Mike Doughty, are taking the 9:30 Club stage tonight for a show that as of this writing is still not sold out. If you people need a reason to go above and beyond his music, allow us to present into evidence Exhibit A and Exhibit B. Oh, and Exhibit C: DCist's awesome interview with him back in September. With Kevin Devine, 8 p.m.,......

Good morning D.C., and happy Earthday Eve (if that's a thing). It looks like Mother Nature will be providing plenty of mud in which to celebrate the observance: the weekend forecast is for rain, rain and more rain. Md. Gets Electricity Rate Relief: WTOP reports that Governor Ehrlich has reached an agreement with Baltimore Gas & Electric to forestall the 72% rate hikes that had been looming for Maryland utility consumers. Customers opting into the......

Buck's Has a Cow Over at DCFoodies.com, our restaurant-reviewing pal Jason Storch has run into some legal trouble. It seems that he received a cease-and-desist letter from an attorney purporting to represent Buck's Fishing and Camping. What did Storch do to deserve this? Did he too loudly insist that chef Carole Greenwood stop stalking him through his television set? Did he open a restaurant next door called Jason's Hunting and Whitewater-Rafting? No, it simply seems......

Almost two weeks ago a federal appeals court ruled that a District attempt to impose a commuter tax on the legions of out-of-towners who make their living within the city's borders was unlawful, a violation of the powers of the U.S. Congress to oversee and regulate the District's affairs. While the decision wasn't unexpected -- after all, like it or not, the District is fundamentally a Congressional colony -- it dealt another blow to the......

Good morning, D.C. This lovely shot of some Eastern Market gourds was posted to DCist photos by easement. We'd love to tell you that we're in for the sort of brisk autumn weather that this photo evokes. But today's going to be cloudy, and tomorrow's going to be rainy. And, in even less cheerful news... Behl's Remains Found: The partially decomposed human remains found yesterday behind a Richmond farmhouse have been positively identified as those......

When we first received a press release from one David Jenneson, Canadian writer, stating that he had plans to put the deed to the White House up for sale on Ebay, we thought, gee, this guy must be crazy. But sure enough, there it is, with the bid as of 2:45 p.m. today at around $15,000. With the estimated value at $106 million, seems like a steal to us. So what's the story? Jenneson claims......

How do you best diffuse negative publicity? Well, according to Rev. Willie F. Wilson of the District's Union Temple Baptist Church, you do so by identifying a problem so grave that it necessitates being labeled a "national emergency." And what emergency is that? Young, African-American lesbians. Wilson, a firebrand preacher, community activist, former mayoral candidate, and executive director of the Millions More Movement, first stepped into hot water when in a July 3 sermon he......

This DCist biked down to Dupont Circle yesterday to check out the previously mentioned Meet Borf event that was supposedly going on. This is what we saw: at least a dozen cops; a bunch of young kids giving out anarchist literature, free spray paint, and other information by the fountain; and lots of people chalking random messages or, er, interesting screeds. Talking to a few of the Borf supporters there, they told us that......

We've had some good times with WMATA over the years, haven't we? There was the time some guy was eating a candy bar while entering a station and was arrested. Or the time WMATA officials handcuffed a talkative pregnant woman? And, of course, there was that lovely moment when a 12 year-old girl ate a french fry on a Metro platform and, as a result, was searched, handcuffed, put into a paddy wagon, and kept......

Love it or hate it, D.C. kickball has reached new heights of publicity. Today's Wall Street Journal contains a front-page feature story on the D.C. WAKA and DCKickball adult kickball leagues, complete with a hedcut portrait of DCKickball founder Carter Rabasa. To his credit, Rabasa seems to speak to his audience well: "WAKA is a monopoly, but there doesn't seem to be any structural reason for that to be the case," says Mr. Rabasa,......

Thanks to a friend of DCist, who passed along the info that "Dog Days", the debut novel of Ana Marie Cox, has been moved from an October 2005 release back to January 2006. The word from Riverhead Books, Cox's publisher, is that she is "behind." But given the timing of the normal publishing cycle, "Dog Days" should have been sent to the printer some time in the next four weeks -- with the complete manuscript......

When the Post covered Cricklewood Massive's iPod Jukebox night with a cover story in February we thought the night had surely hit a pinnacle of publicity. Last night we were proven wrong: D.C.'s WUSA 9 sent intrepid reporter Nancy Yamada "in the District" to Cafe Saint-Ex to see just what all the fuss was about. The resulting story "iPod Nights" explains the premise of the event and attempts to liven up what appears to be......

Just a scant two weeks before the publication of Jessica Cutler's "The Washingtonienne," The Smoking Gun points us to the news that former Cutler paramour Robert Steinbuch (at left) is suing her for "invasion of privacy" and "severe emotional distress, humiliation, embarrassment, and anguish". The Smoking Gun has image files of the 21-page document, which does not ask for a specific amount in monetary damages. The "news" has also hit Roll Call's subscriber-only Heard on......