A rare post from me concerning a non-local D.C. issue, but I'm currently engaged in a heated Twitter debate over whether those hideous blankets with the sleeves, marketed under such names as Slanket or Snuggie, are remotely acceptable. In one corner are those who reasonably argue that these blankets are an abomination, too strange and ridiculous looking to even be considered a reasonable purchase. In the other corner, the comfort-at-all-costs camp, who say that staying......

Am I the only person in the District of Columbia who actually enjoys Black Friday? There's a sickening pleasure in it all, really. Black Friday people watching is about as good as it gets. The cornucopia of wierdos in sweatsuits waiting in frigid lines and jostling for deals that they could just as simply find online is as impressive as any holiday spread. Just as much, the forced eavesdropping of the day might be even......

As we reported earlier this week, the District of Columbia arranged with Metro to open the rail system an hour earlier than normal this morning, at 4 a.m. instead of 5 a.m., in order to accommodate shoppers looking to be the first to arrive for early bird sales on "Black Friday." Metro spokesperson Lisa Farbstein emailed to let us know that 2,287 people rode Metro between 4 and 5 a.m. today, and that the cost......

On Friday, desperate, cash-strapped retailers are hoping you'll show up and buy things (at huge markdowns!1!!!1!). It's a national shopping day so special that it has a name and even a web site. Here in D.C., we don't have a ton of destination shopping centers, but we do have a big one that wasn't open this time last year: the DCUSA complex in Columbia Heights. For those of you planning on heading to Target or......

WTOP and Infosnack are both reporting that Metro's Board of Directors will consider a proposal this week that would allow CVS to sell SmarTrip cards. CVS would sell the cards for $10 (they'd be preloaded with $5 on them), and at no cost to Metro. In exchange, CVS and Metro would come to a cross-promotional arrangement. Infosnack calls the move a "win-win for Metro, CVS and riders." We're all for making SmarTrip easier to buy......

As we mentioned yesterday, gun sales in the District will officially kick off next Tuesday, Sept. 9. But the city's only licensed gun seller so far won't actually be selling guns, he'll just be facilitating transfers from guns purchased in other states. So what about gun shops? In June we predicted that no matter what the Supreme Court's ruling said, the battle over guns in the District would boil down to where they could actually......

On Wednesday WTOP's Mark Segraves reported that handgun sales will officially start in the District next Tuesday, Sept. 9 — just in time for primary election day! There are still no gun stores inside city limits, so the only guns that have been registered in D.C. so far were either registered under the amnesty program or were being stored out-of-state, since federal law requires that new gun purchases must either originate from or be transferred......

The Post finally picked up on the Murky Coffee brouhaha this morning, and it appears it's been a topic of conversation at other locally owned coffee shops around town. We snapped this photo at Big Bear Cafe in Bloomingdale today. Thanks to Catherine Andrews for the tip.......

It's become an epic fight of the caffeinated world. In one corner, the java-head who likes his espresso on the rocks. In the other, the emphatic barista and his posse of "mud" slingers. The overblown scuffle started this past Sunday when blogger Jeff Simmermon stopped by Murky Coffee in Arlington for his usual, a triple shot of espresso on ice. But in a scene reminiscent of Jack Black in High Fidelity or Paul Giamatti in......

Despite warnings from both city officials and your trusted bloggers at DCist, it looks like District residents were visiting gun shops over the weekend in Virginia and Maryland to try to take advantage of their freshly interpreted Second Amendment rights. Fortunately, as the Post reports, gun store owners are holding off on taking advantage of the new business -- they're waiting to see what regulations the city eventually chooses to impose on the purchase and......

It was just a couple weeks ago that we told you about Olsson's plans to shutter its Penn Quarter location -- which it finally did, on Friday. In an email to customers, owner John Olsson had said that "The landlord has other plans for the space," and we confirmed that those plans were to bring in UK noodle shop Wagamama. But the Post reported on Saturday that it looks like there's a lot more to......

Sad news for lovers of locally-owned bookstores: the Olsson's location in the Lansburgh building in Penn Quarter is shutting down. We had heard rumors this was in the works for a couple of weeks, especially after so many author events appeared to be moving to the Dupont Circle location. The email below was sent out to the Olsson's list on Monday. Dear Friends, After 15 years in The Lansburgh building on 7th Street NW, the......

The Associated Press had a story over the weekend reporting that as part of their restructuring efforts, Giant Food grocery stores are discontinuing many products that don't sell as well to make room for larger quantities of fewer products. Those of us who regularly shop at Giant aren't quite sure how to feel about this. The AP quotes a couple of customers complaining that having an even worse selection of items is exactly the opposite......

We can hardly believe it ourselves, but the Harris Teeter in Adams Morgan celebrated its grand opening this morning. The ribbon cutting ceremony for the store, only about five years in the making, took place at a little after 10:30 a.m., with Mayor Adrian Fenty, Ward 1 Council member Jim Graham, and countless Harris Teeter officials on hand to deliver run of the mill remarks and welcome to the store to the neighborhood.......

Just when people thought the Target in Columbia Heights had everything, there's talk of it getting even more. ANC 1A vice chair Anne Theisen sent a message to the Columbia Heights Yahoo listserve saying Target has applied for a license to sell beer and wine. That application, as well as Rumbero's application for a sidewalk cafe on 14th Street, will be discussed next Tuesday at the ANC 1A meeting. Most of the responses on the......

By now you've all heard that Murky Coffee's Capitol Hill location has been shuttered after the city seized the coffee shop thanks to owner Nick Cho failing to pay more than $425,000 in sales tax to the city. The building's landlord has since evicted the coffee shop, so it won't be reopening. Today the Post's D.C. Wire blog brings word that the entire contents of the shop are being auctioned off by the D.C. government.......

There's been a lot of news and even more speculation about how dangerous the blocks surrounding the new Target, across the street from the Columbia Heights Metro, have become since the store opened last week. We posted about a series of muggings that occurred in the general vicinity, especially at the Metro entrance, within days of the grand opening. Good news: WTOP has since reported that a 16 year-old has been arrested in connection with......

In other large chain retail outlet opening news, there's now a Walgreens drug store in the District. Our own Fredo Alvarez snapped this photo of the new store while out and about today, the first of its kind in D.C., at 22nd and M Streets NW. For those of you unfamiliar with the Chicago-based drug chain, it's been the dominant drug store in pretty much every other part of the country for a long......

We're as excited about the convenience of the new Columbia Heights Target as anyone, but we've also been interested to read some of the blowback to Washington Post reporter Paul Schwartzman's gushing piece from Tuesday about the shiny new DCUSA retail development and how it's leading to a renaissance in the neighborhood. The Washington City Paper sees Schwartzman as wearing rose-colored glasses and painting every new project he comes across as another "renaissance" for a......

And, yeah, it pretty much looks exactly like a Target, although it's definitely big -- two full stories of bulk purchasing opportunities. We snapped these photos this morning at the brand new Columbia Heights store, which opened for business at 8 a.m.......

The developers of the new DC USA shopping center in Columbia Heights are still looking for more high end retail, according to a Washington Business Journal article. DC USA, located at 14th and Irving NW, still has about 80,000 square feet of space to fill, which developers hope to fill partially with fancier fare than the Target, Marshalls and Best Buy already planned for the space. Regular readers may recall that Columbia Heights residents complained......

Maryland, like most other states, has some arcane laws still on the books (cf. Virginia's code outlawing the mixing of wine or beer with spirits), but none irks area oenophiles more than the one that prohibits the shipping of wine into or out of the state. The Post reports today that a bill proposed by two Montgomery County legislators would finally change all that. The Maryland legislature's House Economic Matters Committee met yesterday to hear......

In case you somehow missed the news, the Hotel Washington, along with its famous Sky Terrace Restaurant with spectacular views of the White House, closed on Jan. 1 to make way for renovations that will see the historic business turned into D.C.'s first W Hotel. The new hotel should open in about one year. In the meantime, NBC4 tips us off that this morning at 9 a.m. the hotel began a liquidation sale of every......

The Adams Morgan Harris Teeter isn't the only new store soon to open in D.C. that's begun recruiting a large new staff: over the weekend the future Columbia Heights Target held its own job fair, with interviews for the 320 job openings at the huge retailer to be held throughout the end of this week. The Post went down to the job fair and chatted with some of the applicants. The grand opening of the......

In yet another sign that the ridiculously long-awaited Harris Teeter grocery store in Adams Morgan is actually going to open, Ward 1 Council member Jim Graham has posted a notice on his web site that the store will hold a Job Fair on January 9 at the Columbia Heights Community Center on Girard St. NW. Both full-time and part-time jobs at the Harris Teeter are available, and applicants are asked to bring copies of their......

The thinly veiled sexism oozing out of today's Examiner column by veteran local politics observer Harry Jaffe is hard enough to take, but to whomever thought up this gem of a headline, be they copy editor or author, DCist salutes your willingness to go boldly where no human beings in the 21st century were thought to be capable of going anymore. Yes, if the recent Office of Tax and Revenue scandal has taught us......

Reverend Billy and his Church of Stop Shopping are of the opinion that the masses have an opiate other than religion. And if it's the merchandise that keeps us in line, then there is no time of year when we binge on our fix of choice like the holiday season. Bank accounts and credit card statements across the nation can do the testifying for us on this point. And so it is at the most......

FRIDAY: >> Ted Leo and the Pharmacists are at the 9:30 Club with Kristeen Young and Partyline, $15, 9 p.m. Also Saturday with Kristeen Young and Ris Paul Ric. >> DC9's Liberation Dance Party hosts Brooklyn's Jaguar Club. $6, 9 p.m. SATURDAY: >> The Historic Sixth and I Synagogue hosts The Eight, D.C.'s part of a "worldwide Hannukah party" featuring the LeeVees, DeLeon and D.C.'s own Black and White JohnsonsJacksons. $12/$18, all ages, 9 p.m.......

A Giant Food opened this morning on Alabama Ave. SE in Ward 8, making it the only full-service grocery store in the Anascostia ward. It's also the first supermarket to operate in the neighborhood in over a decade. On Saturday the Post ran a story highlighting the lengths Ward 8 residents have had to go to up until today to purchase groceries. The "Camp Simms" Giant joins a bank and a hardware in a shopping......

We've reached another Friday, D.C., but if those light flurries that accompanied you on your way into work this morning gave you visions of a leisurely Saturday snowball fight, you'll likely end up disappointed. Very little accumulation is expected from these flakes, and the weekend will see temperatures back in the upper 40s, with a possibility of some light rain on Saturday morning, according to CapitalWeather.com. If this update doesn't satisfy your weather nerd urges,......