Adams Morgan Blog

The Safeway on Columbia Road always seems to disappoint. This week I bought some blueberries, two packages for $3.99 each. It wasn't the plan. I was totally misled by the sign's placement above the blueberries. It's one package for $3.99. Safeway is charging 66.5 cents per ounce of blueberries. I felt totally ripped off after checking my receipt and even asked the clerk to double check the prices. Harris Teeter sign At Harris Teeter on Kalorama Road and Giant in Columbia Heights you can buy two pints of blueberries for 5.00 and 4.99 respectively, or about 15.5 cents per ounce. I went to Safeway again today to double check the blueberry price. It hadn’t change, but the store had no blueberries. The local Safeway staff is excellent, and I have many good things to say about them, but the corporate operations is out of touch with its competition and its residents. At one time, for instance, the local Safeway sold generic store brand diet root beer for $2.50 a 12 pack. I bought ...

I was walking home last night around 11 p.m. (after being forced to see Sex in the City where I was and-I-kid-you-not one of 10 men in a packed theater), and saw a black purse in front of 2630 Adams Mill Rd. It was on the ledge, in the grass, open and some of its contents spilled out. I didn't touch it but flagged down a DC cop driving by and told him about it. He checked it out and called it in. It had all the earmarks of a stolen purse that the thief discarded after removing any valuables before, in all probability, then fleeing in the nearby park.

I don’t know anything about this art but I love it. It’s urban, mysteriously revolutionary and evocative of DC. It’s also disappearing. This photo was taken at 14th and U near the bus stop closest to Columbia Heights. It was on the side of a building that now looks as if it is part of a construction site and behind a wire fence. Judging from the damage on this installation, it will probably disappear soon enough. There’s a similar installation on P Street near 14th, on the exterior wall of the hardware store. One of the things I especially like about this U Street work is how refreshingly different it from the colorfully vibrant, cartoonish and sometimes tiring installations that appear on buildings, particularly in Adams Morgan.

The temporary Mount Pleasant Library is very attractive. Excellent color scheme, comfortable and adds some new vibrancy to the area. The book selection is small; just a fraction of the original collection. But I've used the DC public library’s online reserve system to great success. You can find many stories on the library's shelves. Tonight, I was checking out the library's new book section and to my right on a library shelf was the smiling face of Jim Graham, councilman for Ward One. Imagine. The picture is on some library promotion material. Graham, in case you have missed the red signs he had installed throughout Ward One, is running for re-election. Reading informs which is exactly what Graham didn’t do at the debate in Adams Morgan last week for the Ward One candidates. Graham is running against Jeff Smith, an ex-school board member and Bryan Weaver, who is a four term ANC commissioner. Weaver headed the local commission until he was replaced by a Graham staff member...