Washington City Paper: Contents for Mar. 18

The Art of the Deal
Builders took over my block, and all I got was a “rain garden.”

Cover Story

Gentlemen, start your bulldozers.

Let’s begin in Northwest. I want to lay some concrete over, say, all of it. Now you masons: Stack the brick. Build it up. Higher, dammit. Yes. Build it up so it cleaves the clouds. Pokes a hole through the sun. Slaps the Milky Way into a lower-rent neighborhood. Yes. Yes! Yes! Build it to...God!

It’s fortunate most of us aren’t privy to the wet dreams of D.C. developers, lest our society spend all its time at the cleaners. No, most of us have to rely on our observations to assess the rapacity behind the city’s growth. Not that you’d need eyes. You could just as easily walk blind in any direction until you hit a wall. Odds are a construction guy on scaffolding above you will be yelling at you to get your goddamn ass off the work site.

Though you would never guess it in our Reign of Crane, there are limits to how tall, how dense, and how many developers can build. Every so often, one stumbles into an impediment that precludes a thorough deleafing of the money tree. There are historic horse barns and obstinate landowners, and then there’s the biggest impediment of them all: wimpy zoning. Can you construe “single-family dwelling” to mean 85 rooms for cousins thrice removed and lost Aunt Myrtles? Probably not, though that’s not to say nobody has tried.... Continued

Issue of Mar. 18 - 24, 2005

News and Features

The Art of the Deal
Builders took over my block, and all I got was a “rain garden.”
Cover Story By John Metcalfe
A Cut Above
Barbering is the wave of the future for D.C. schools.
The City By Ulrich Boser
Hall Monitor
Selected readings from D.C. Public Schools incident reports*
The City By Mike Kanin
Icy Reception
The Little Caps want to check the boom in rival youth-hockey teams.
The City By Huan Hsu
Price Pick of the Week
Celebrating the District’s Real-Estate Boom
Seller's Market By Constantine Caloudas
Wet Dream
The Mail By Alix Cooper
Monster Garage
The Mail By Anneliese M. Bruner

Columns

Dream Job
Cheap Seats By Dave McKenna
Mall Trampling
City Desk By Jeff Horwitz
Name Calling
City Desk By Jeff Horwitz
BACK IN THE RING
Loose Lips By James Jones

Eats

The Regular
Young & Hungry By Todd Kliman

Movies

A Boy and His Dosh
Film Review By Tricia Olszewski
Twisted Nerve
Film Review By Mark Jenkins

Music

Incorrect Change
Music Review By Sarah Godfrey
Picaresque
Music Reviews By Anne Marson
Dignity and Shame
Music Reviews By Joe Dempsey

Theater

Nanny 911
Theater Review By Trey Graham
Trauma Club
Theater Review By Bob Mondello
The Spitfire Grill
Theater Reviews By Trey Graham
Afterplay
Theater Reviews By Trey Graham

Arts and Events

On the Beaten Path
Artifacts By Dave Nuttycombe
Drawn From Memories
Artifacts By Heather Morgan Shott
THE SPIRITS OF GIVING
Show & Tell By Chris Shott
The Tools of Attraction
From dimple-producing appliances to paralytic depilatories, patent historian Teresa Riordan is happy to share her beauty secrets.
Arts By Sarah Godfrey