RSS FeedDC Link Roundup: Heard In The ‘Hood
Downtown – The Downtown Neighborhood Association (DNA) weighs in on noise from establishments open at night. [DC DNA]
Penn Quarter – A review from Capital Spice of one of our favorite spots, Wolfgang Puck’s The Source. [Capital Spice]
All Over DC – It’s the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival. How do you celebrate in the modern age? You mix Twitter with Woodstock to get Twitstock. [The Vinyl District]
Mount Vernon Triangle – More woe at the unopened Dumont condo/apartment building. [Life in Mount Vernon Square]
Capitol Riverfront – Diamond Teague Park now has a dock. You will be able to take a water taxi to some of the remaining Nats games. [JDLand: Ballpark and Beyond]
All Over DC – Year-to-date Shotspotter stats posted. For the uninitiated, info on Shotspotter can be found here. [The Other 35 Percent]
Southwest – The Mandarin Hotel’s Mozu restaurant to be replaced with the quadrant’s namesake, Sou’Wester. [Metrocurean]
Columbia Heights – The best and the worst of a neighborhood come out this weekend. [Prince of Petworth] & [The Heights Life]
The Paine Truth At NPG
The liberal Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense (published in 1776) and sharpened the feelings of many colonists challenging the British government’s lock on the burgeoning colonies, the about-to-be United States of America. The Wall Street Journal summarizes the independent minded Paine and the accompanying exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery (8th and F Streets NW) where you can view original copies of Common Sense [Google Book], The Rights of Man [Google Book] and The Age of Reason [Google Book] on display, see portraits and learn the truth about this sparky man. It just goes to show that you don’t need YouTube and Twitter to inspire a nation (although it does make it easier).
How Does Poste Brasserie’s Garden Grow?
“Doesn’t it smell great,” he said. “That’s awesome!” she said. Just a wayward couple in the Poste Brasserie courtyard on a sunny Saturday? Perhaps. But they weren’t oohing and aahing the 1839 architecture of DC’s first General Post Office, now a Hotel Monaco (700 F St NW). Sure, the Poste Brasserie courtyard is now the Penn Quarter’s worst kept secret as an outdoor dining oasis just steps from the heart of Washington. On their own, the smell of a roast pig being readied for Poste Roasts, the lingering sound of jazz exiting speakers wandering the courtyard and a breeze lightening the load of the sun are enough to be appealing. Add in the visuals that real greenery, an honest-to-goodness vegetable and spice garden, bring and you can understand what captivated the couple. It captivated us too so we took a closer look and spent a few minutes with Poste’s Executive Chef, Robert Weland, to dig a little deeper.
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Raking In The Dough
We love the Thursday Farmer’s Market on 8th Street; we look forward to it every week. Sure it’s a tight space with a lot less vendors than the one in Dupont, but it’s our market and it covers the basics well. In our years of going to this market the vendor who is by far the most crowded is the baker, Quail Creek Farm. The photos in this post were taken at about 3:30 pm last Thursday. In the above photo you can see one, maybe two people at some vendors. In the below photo of the baker there are five people at the counter and off camera there were more on the way.
From 5:30 pm or so until the market closes at 7 pm the baker is a mass of bodies trying to get a loaf of bread, a slice of quiche, or a sweet dessert. We like Quail Creek Farm, but don’t kid yourself that it’s the prices that drive their popularity. Loaves of bread are not cheap at this baker, so much so you’d think more people would be making their own bread. Our point here though is that bakers are popular businesses at all farmer’s markets, and we think it shows that a store front bakery could do really well downtown.