Washington City Paper: Contents for May. 11

Let the Games Begin
Hosting the Olympics in 2012 is supposed to put Washington on the map. Except that we're already on the map.

Cover Story

Hosting the Olympics in 2012 is supposed to put Washington on the map. Except that we're already on the map.

Photographs by Charles Steck

It's a little before 7:30 on a recent Wednesday morning, and Dan Knise, the man in charge of bringing the Summer Olympics to the Washington area in 2012, is tooling around the pastel-colored banquet room of the Plaza Hotel in Hagerstown, Md. The chamber of commerce of this slow, dusty city has invited him to drop by for its monthly "Eggs & Issues" event to explain to members what the Olympics will mean for their community.

Hagerstown, situated at the crossroads of a couple of major freeways, has created a stout economy of factories and businesses that cater largely to truck drivers. From downtown Washington, the place is a good two-hour drive along some of the most monstrous highways you've ever seen. That's precisely why the chamber's leaders hope to get in on the Olympic act. Tom Riford, the organization's amiable chairman, fancies Hagerstown as a docking point for Olympic spectators—ticket-holders could stay in the city's hotels, and shuttles would transport them back and forth from Metro stations in Maryland. Knise has a similar vision for this and other outlying communities.

Crouching on the peach-and-purple carpet of the banquet room, where a breakfast buffet of Sterno-warm eggs and bacon beckons not altogether invitingly, Knise, in a sharply pressed brown suit, is trying to set up a few easels for his presentation when Riford interrupts him.... Continued

Issue of May. 11 - 17, 2001

News and Features

Let the Games Begin
Hosting the Olympics in 2012 is supposed to put Washington on the map. Except that we're already on the map.
Cover Story By Mark Francis Cohen
Sharp Eye
Finding the cutting edge of weaponry in the courthouse bushes
The City By Jonathan Froehlich
The Writer's Life
The Mail By Martin Morse Wooster
Quick Study
The Mail By Kendra Tramiel
Home Is Where the Heart Clinic Is
The Mail By Bill Mosley
Free Forms
The Mail By Andrew J. Prazuch
Wisdom for the Ages
The Mail By Moira Garayua

Columns

When We Were Creeps
Cheap Seats By Dave McKenna
Rough Start
Loose Lips By Jonetta Rose Barras

Eats

Movies

Dancing With Themselves
Film Review By Joel E. Siegel
Flash Dance
Film Review By Mark Jenkins
Lady's Gambit
Talking Pictures By Mark Jenkins
The Mummy Returns
Film Review By Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
Calle 54
Film Review By Joel E. Siegel
Pavilion of Women
Film Review By Annys Shin

Music

No Fear of Time
Music Review By Brent Burton
Crush Grooves
Music Review By Sean Daly
Cardiff Calling
Music Review By Mark Jenkins
What's Popera, Doc?
InDC By Mark Jenkins
Isolation Drills
Music Reviews By Shannon Zimmerman
Ride the Skies
Music Reviews By Brent Burton
Action Packed: The Best of the Capitol Years
Music Reviews By Pamela Murray Winters

Theater

Come Dancing With the Kinks
Theater Review By Alexander C. Kafka
Love! Valor! Compassion!
Theater Review By Trey Graham

Arts and Events

The Lost Weekend
In 48 sleepless hours, 11 teams of local filmmakers pull art from a hat--or somewhere.
Arts By Dan Gilgoff
Solar Energy Crisis
Artifacts By Louis Jacobson
Life Interrupts Art
Artifacts By Pamela Murray Winters