Incoming...Minor Pet Peeve Rant
I'm not really sure when this particular societal habit began to annoy me, but I had to address it in words today. I can't stand people that try to cross a busy street prematurely. I must see this attempted about 20 times a day and almost every time is met with a sudden rush back to the curb as a city cab goes speeding by.
Crosswalks in DC have flashing walk/don't walk signs. They even count down for crying out loud. They aren't put there to be cute ambient city ornaments for tourists to look at funny. They are there to protect you and ideally save your life from a bus driver who's texting his buddies about the previous nights Redskins game.
Let me put it bluntly...I don't want to see your sorry dead ass on the concrete in front of me because you couldn't be patient enough to wait 20 seconds.
Okay, now I feel better. Now let's all go for a walk!
A Pause in My Daily Ritual
Each morning I walk to work. It's a daily ritual that doesn't change. Despite the cooler weather, the changing colors of the seasons and even an occasional rainfall, my walk is always there. It's that one part of my day where I can simply enjoy my little corner of the city and get much needed fresh air before I sit in an office for 8 hours.
My walk doesn't always follow the same path. One day I'll walk down Mass Ave. One day I'll head down 7th, 8th or 9th Street. Sometimes I go straight down 10th and cut through Chinatown on H Street. If it's 900 degrees outside, I usually pick the route that affords me the most shade. On mornings like today, I just followed the path of which walk signs allowed me to keep my pace.
The cool thing about this walk is I get to enjoy some of DC's most majestic buildings along the way. The picture above was actually taken a few weeks ago on my morning walk. It was just one of those mornings that I walked a bit slower enjoying the sights and sounds of a city waking up to a new day. When I walked through Mt. Vernon Square like I usually do, the old Carnegie Library just stood there as a testament to the vast monuments of our national city. She's off the beaten path of the national mall and doesn't garner the attention of other more popular buildings in DC. But she's a beauty non-the-less and something I cherish every morning I walk past her.
I haven't found another city on this earth that has left me speechless and standing idly as often as I do in Washington. Something as simple as a daily walk to work becomes a source for so much inspiration in ones life. Thank you DC!
Labels: DC, Urban, Washington
The Sky Says Hello
The image above is what was waiting outside for me when I left for dance tonight. It reminds me of someone in Vegas who thinks the desert sunset is the best. I've never seen the sunset in the desert...maybe I will soon. But she puts on a nice show for us here in DC as well.
New DC Bowl Game Moved
In a move that surprised locals and fellow Nats fans, the Washington, DC Bowl Committee is announcing the first ever Congressional Bowl (we'll call it that for now) will be played at
RFK and not Nationals Park.
Let me get this straight... we get to see Navy. We get to see them play the 9th place team from the ACC. And we get to do this all from the friendly giant-sized toilet bowl known as RFK Stadium? Let me try to quell my enthusiasm for just long enough to ask... WHAT???!!!
With all due respect to the power that be, could you have not found a worse marketing nightmare in the history of bowl games? Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of a bowl game right here in our backyard. I've seen first hand the money and energy it brings to places like San Francisco for the
Emerald Bowl. Imagine college football fans dumping off metro at Navy Yard and littering our sports bars with their brightly colored sweatshirts and funny hats. Imagine the exposure our new ballpark would get on national television during a time when most have forgotten about the last-place Nationals and baseball in general.
But no, we get to invite the college brethren of Navy and the ACC to our fancy "old" stadium in a neighborhood that attracts more hotdog carts of death and empty parking spaces than actual sports fans.
Good luck selling that one to the public!
Labels: ACC, DC, football, Nationals, Navy, sports, Washington
Beers for Siers 3 - Part Three
This is the final posting in a three part series from the 3rd Annual Beers for Siers pub crawl in NYC.
So here we go. After a full visit to NYC, we finally get to the whole point of the weekend...The Beers for Siers Pub Crawl. It's an event that has grown over the years and now includes an official t-shirt, laminated VIP agenda and the cooperation of some 11 bars to hand out lots and lots of beer. Trust me, this isn't for the faint at heart wine snob.
A little background on my boy Siers. Adam and I grew up in Delaware and went through high school together. Adam was the kind of friend who was always there. We both went to different colleges and followed different paths. But through everything, Adam is the one friend from Dover I've stayed in touch with consistently. When Adam moved to Philly after college, I'd drag my buddies up from North Carolina for weekends of chaos in old city. When I moved to SF, he came out one weekend to paint the town red. So naturally I had to come up to NYC when it came time for his annual bar crawl that also coincides with his birthday.
The bar crawl was centered around the upper east side of Manhattan. It consisted of small sports bars, classy little pubs, and very odd redneck watering holes with chicken wire between the bar and the patrons. As they say, Manhattan has a bit of everything...and this crawl would experience that.
At this point, I really can't remember the names of the bars or how many we went to. When you're drinking at this pace, you lose count after the third pub. The good news is Adam had the agenda printed on fancy laminated cards we all wore around our necks. And if you were worried you'd lose the group, all you had to do was look for the bright blue t-shirts with "Model, Citizen" printed on the front.
New York didn't quite know what to think of the blue crew rolling down the street. Some laughed. Some looked on in confusion. Some tried to join the party. Either way, I'm pretty sure we made it to the last bar with everyone alive. And as crazy as it sounds, we even made it down to Chelsea after the last bar for a celebration of karaoke. Beers for Siers was a success and we lived to tell about it.
