RSS FeedCadwalader Coming to 700 6th ST
Some of the earlier posts on this location can be found here.
(Photo Courtesy of Akridge Website)
Gallery Place to Metro Center – The Solutions
This is part two of two in our Gallery Place-Metro Center subterranean pedestrian tunnel series.
A representative tunnel concept above, as depicted in a Metro presentation [page 18 of the PDF], presents how a GP-MC tunnel could look. If you’ve switched lines on the subway in New York or Boston you probably know all about pedestrian tunnels as station interconnects. Switching from Park Street to Downtown Crossing (Red to Orange – Boston) or Canal/Lafayette to Canal/Broadway (6 to N,Q – NYC) gives you a good idea of the concept. Tunnel construction isn’t cheap and the financing bandied about in the press comes in the form of city money plus the excess returns from selling the Metro HQ building on 5th Street. DC is dangling a financing package in front of Metro to move to Anacostia and Metro may open up a comment period on the matter but there are many priorities competing for attention. No further word since mid-June from John Catoe, Metro’s GM.
I’d gladly walk a tunnel but my current solution takes a different form. This blogger stays away from GP and MC as much as possible during rush hour and transfers at L’Enfant Plaza. Trains don’t bunch up, aren’t as crowded and who doesn’t like rail surfing those shiny, brand, spanking new cars on the Yellow-Green line?
DC Weddings: How To Get Married In 3 Easy Steps
Step 1: Discover bureaucratic nightmare that is DC.
Step 2: Get blood test for syphilis despite how crazy & outdated that is.
Step 3: Decide DC’s not worth it and get married in Vegas.
Despite her online moniker, Mrs Columbo isn’t really a Mrs yet. We’re to be married this summer, right here in PQ, DC. A small, family only affair, we figured picking a caterer, photographer, and wedding dress would be the hard part. Little did we realize that the DC bureaucracy would be the biggest obstacle we’d run up against. Should you decide, like Mrs Columbo and I to get married in DC, hopefully some of the below can help.
First things first: get a blood test for syphilis (welcome to the 1940’s; why not test for the clap while you’re at it?) and when you get the results, take them to the DC Department of Health’s Public Health Laboratory. Your name & the date of the test are then put onto form DHS-366 (aka the “blue card”). $10 per card, checks only.
You have 30 days from the date of the blood test to apply for your marriage license.
Armed with DHS-366 you can now head over to the DC Superior Court, Family Division, Domestic Relations Branch, Marriage Bureau Section to apply for marriage in DC. Here is where the Columbo’s got tripped up, not paying enough attention to the application. You have to already know who will perform your ceremony. You cannot get a marriage license in DC, and then just take it later to whomever you want to marry you. You have to know who the officiant will be prior to DC issuing a license. If you want to change the officiant later, you wait in line and pay again to change this information.
Thinking on our feet (we had not decided who would wed us), we tried to opt for a civil ceremony at the marriage bureau instead, no doubt due to the thoughtfully decorated door in the marriage bureau, leading to the chapel.
However the only available time for a ceremony on our requested day was 10 am. The clerk laughed when we suggested we’d prefer an afternoon wedding. Apparently they don’t do (or at least don’t do many) afternoon ceremonies. Not wanting to start out the day with vows over coffee (and not wanting to change our date) we opted to apply for the license, which would not be issued to us until we named the officiant.
This brings up another rule: DC requires a 3 day waiting period between the time you apply for a marriage license and the date you can pick it up. You pay on the date of application though, $45 cash or check only.
When we decided on an officiant, and I went to get the license, I had a wait of over an hour (despite the fact that I was the only person at the marriage bureau) because no one could get the printers to print the license out properly. The person who knew how to fix the printers came back from lunch an hour later and I was finally on my way.
To recap, for those of you scoring at home (or even if you’re alone), to get married in DC you have to make a minimum of 5 outings to get your license:
1. Go to Dr to get blood test;
2. Pick up test results from Dr;
3. Take test results to DoH;
4. Take results from DoH to Superior Court, apply for license, pay fees;
5. Return to Superior Court 3 days later to get license.
Mrs Columbo & I have to compromise our wedding plans, not the end of the world. I wonder though how many people just end up going to the Arlington Court House or to Vegas?
Gallery Place to Metro Center – The Problem
This is part one of a two part series highlighting the sometimes discussed Gallery Place-Metro Center subterranean pedestrian tunnel.
Living downtown means knowing how to get around downtown. Walk? Car? Taxi? Bus? Segway? Subway? All are options but friends often tout the subway, aka the Metro, as “the way” to move around DC quickly. Faster than the bus, cheaper than the car and less effort than walking or driving, the subway is an attractive travel option especially inside the city limits and close-in suburbs where stations dot popular retail destinations and places to meet up with friends.
Designed as a hub and spoke system in the late 1960s, all of Metro’s lines meet at one of two downtown stations where lines intersect, Gallery Place (Red meets Green-Yellow) and Metro Center (Red meets Orange-Blue); they both are in the top 10 busiest station list [PDF] and mirror the PQ’s growth with Gallery Place’s boardings up 84 % from 2000 to 2005 [PDF]. As rush hour riders know (this blogger being one of them), sardine packed train cars deposit riders during peak hours at these stations with the masses mimicking movements (sometimes noises) similar to a Colorado cattle drive. Metro has looked at the feasibility of constructing an underground pedestrian tunnel connecting the two stations [PDF] to relieve human congestion between the two stations. With an initial usage estimate of 11,750 passengers per day by 2030, Metro is taking the long view.
What if the two stations could act as a true, single central hub? Throw in some underground retail and thoughtful design with public art spaces and the idea becomes potentially attractive. To be sure, there would be downsides including cost and street level disruption to accommodate construction. Getting on the Red Line for one, very short train ride to get to the Yellow Line never struck me as a choice one would make voluntarily and there are times when I feel like John Wayne should be riding herd underground. Later this week, we’ll look at where the tunnel idea stands and one alternative solution.