The X2

Two Boots Pizza will be located at 1025 H Street NE. Two Boots Pizza has announced its impending arrival to Atlas District with a few vinyl banners hung on the facade of 1025 H Street NE. Two Boots is a New York City based chain with New Orleans roots. There are 15 locations thus far (the first opened in 1987), so this is not a small time operation. The closest restaurant DC is in Baltimore, with most of them in Manhattan. They do have two restaurants in Los Angeles, however. The concept seems to have wide appeal and the owners plan more stores in LA and in the DC-Baltimore corridor. Two Boots has a great website and just watching the short video in the "About Us" section left me with good feelings about the owners and how they run the place. Things I like: they have a dedicated web page for artists that produce works featured in the restaurants; the  menus include pizzas inspired by The Dude , Big Maybelle , and Cleopatra Jones ; there are two vegan pizzas (h...

I had only been to the H Street Festival twice before, and the last visit was 2009. As a new resident to Carver, I was excited to return not as a visitor, but as someone who is that much closer to connecting with neighborhood traditions in a meaningful way. I spent almost all day there, from about 12:30 PM to some time after 7 PM.  Some personal highlights were: Meeting friends in the crowd -- planned & unplanned, eating both lunch and dinner at the festival, enjoying drinks on two different patios (Imm on H and Ben's Chili Bowl), hearing live music from blog friends Atoms Apart and DC legends Rare Essence, walking something like 5 miles over the course of being at the festival, seeing everyone's awesome clothes (I was in regular t-shirt and shorts), and generally reveling in what now seems like DC's best neighborhood street festival.  The festival seemed to go well after the 7PM endtime! Atoms Apart . Good Stuff! Ten01 restaurant is now Ben's U...

Stating this past Sunday September 18, the DC streetcar began every day operation. For the previous six months, the streetcar ran only Monday - Saturday. I found myself wanting to hop on to run errands (or just get out of house) on Sundays and been reminded half way out the front door that I should look for the next bus instead. However, as of today, the streetcar is running seven days a week with the added bonus of moving to 12 minute headways, down from 15 minutes. Although I did like the predictability of having trains leave Union Station on every quarter hour (4:00, 4:15, 4:30, etc), I like shorter headways better. If they could possibly get that time frame down to 10 minutes, that would complete the loop for the first phase of streetcar implementation, for me anyway. The hours for streetcar are now:  Monday-Thursday: 6:00 a.m. – midnight Friday: 6:00 a.m. – 2:00 a.m. Saturday: 8:00 a.m. – 2:00 a.m. Sunday (and all holidays): 8:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m.  ...

The Georgetown Business Improvement District instituted a cool new program earlier this year that creates more space for pedestrians in one of the city's busiest shopping neighborhoods.  On weekends from April to November, the 3200 block of M Street NW will have widened sidewalks. Basically, a lane of automobile parking has been eliminated on the north and south sides of the street and temporary metal crowd control barriers are placed in the street, blocking a lane and separating auto traffic from pedestrians. My initial observations: 1. The extra space was noticed.  I've been to Georgetown on a busy weekends and yes, I noticed the extra sidewalk space on this weekend. You can mark the difference by simply walking the 3100 and 3200 blocks of M Street back-to-back. The flow is much smoother on the 3200 block. You don't get stuck behind slow pedestrians or window shoppers, and walking two or three abreast doesn't cause pedestrian traffic jams. 2. Bikers th...