C A P I C O S T I A

Just finished browsing DCLofts.com and found one--ONE--converted loft property in Southeast, on Capitol Hill (of course) called the Bryan School Lofts , ..which are all sold out . The Bryan School was done by award-winning Abdo Builders , and probably cost a vital organ AND a limb to own. Frankly, they are a little too polished for my tastes--scrubbed of all the rugged, Industrial Era charm that ought to be evident in converting an old school, garage, trolley car barn or factory into functional living space. These Abdo lofts look like the Sex In The City ladies hang out there. They're sissy lofts, and I hate'm. Lofts used to be the large, unattractive, slate gray ruins of an obsolete industrial era that no style-conscious yuppy would be caught dead in. In the 1950s, lofts were places, where a large , lower income, working class or struggling immigrant family could stake a claim in the steamy, jazz-scored urban experience...the Big City. They were open frontiers for the ...

With a garden store on the way, could Caribou Coffee be far behind? I have just reopened the featured polls and want very much to hear your opinions about the changes in Penn Branch and the surrounding areas. So far, the Deanwood-Burroughs Avenue area and the MLK Avenue-Uniontown area of Anacostia are the River East neighborhoods that people are saying need the most commercial development. In another poll, people are saying the Fairfax Village-Fort Davis and Uniontown neighborhoods have the most potential. And I agree . Being a large condominium community , Fairfax Village is more transient than the rest of Fort Davis. Should the cost of renting and owning a condo in the Village dramatically increase, the population of the area could change in kind. It is not at all impossible to imagine that garden stores and coffeehouses wouldn't be far behind. As when Fairfax Village went from being a fashionably upscale roost for junior congressmen and Capitol Hill staffers in the 197...

If you are one of those people (and I'm not saying I'm one of them), who people say will sleep with anything--and I mean ANY-thing--and you've thought about changing your ways and cleaning up your reputation, ..maybe, you want to hold off on that. At least, until Saturday morning. Might need a cigarette, after this . Mel Dyer

[Excerpt from "To Fight Another Day", published here, 1/30/10] ...We are good people , and, in spite of those who would prey upon and destroy us — of those, who cruise our tree-lined hills with jealousy and contempt for the peace our parents and grandparents have worked so hard to give us — we ought to go right on being good people. That is the war to be won here, Brancher. We live in a place, where you can look straight up into the sky on a clear, starry night and see a flurry of golden, shooting stars raining like gold coins from the heavens ..or the International Space Station pass overhead, looking very much like a traveling planet. We live in a place, where our children carelessly play outside, well after nightfall, and summer lovers steal kisses in the shade of dogwood trees, ..bewitched by the fragrance of Concorde grapes on a passing breeze—where old, silver-haired friends look back on harder times from the comfort of a porch ..and laugh out loud! We live in a truly...

Penn Branch Center, charming as ever! (Clockwise from top right) Penn Branch Liquors, CVS Pharmacy, Beltway Beauty and Star Pizzeria, below it. (Originally published, July 15th, 2009) She sits at the corner of Pennsylvania and Branch Avenues, this brick and concrete goddess. Our Penn Branch. She sits there, with a mouthful of meatball subs, twinkies and Cool Ranch Doritos and washes it all down with a Colt 45. She sits there, fixing the one good eye she’s got left on you, as your car makes a mad rush for the John Philip Sousa Bridge. For Capitol Hill. National Harbor. Adams Morgan. Cool places. Exotic places. Faraway places, where cafes litter the sidewalk. Where laughter, foreign accents and live jazz tease the imported air. Where people linger. Celebrate. Hook up. I cannot honestly say that I remember the last time I wanted to visit Penn Branch Center, the prehistoric strip mall at the corner of Pennsylvania and Branch Avenues, for anything, ..and I don’t know anyone else, who does, ...

Ben's would be right at home here, in good ole Penn Branch! (Compiled from a photo from Wikipedia ) [*Second Edition] Negotiations with the D.C. Government to open TWO Ben’s restaurants here, in the River East neighborhood of Penn Branch , are “on the fast track”, according to Ben's Next Door proprietor, Mr. Kamal Ben Ali . According to Mr. Ben Ali, the Government is acting as quickly as possible to move the application and licensing process forward for a second Ben's Chili Bowl, styled like the U Street landmark, AND a new Ben's Next Door bar and grill, both to be located at Penn Branch Center. In the interim, the Ben’s restaurant family is researching how best to appeal to the Penn Branch area. “The desire for [family-oriented] sitdown restaurants”, says Mr. Ben Ali, is of primary interest to the (presently unnamed) area representatives they are talking to, and that interest is shaping, “on a conceptual level”, what a Ben’s Next Door at Penn Branch Center mi...

What's the point of having a BC, if there isn't someone sitting on it, drinking steaming, hot coffee ..or eating a freakolicious Buffalo Chicken Sub? That's how the Brangler rolls... Big Chair Coffee n' Grill Open Daily 7am-9pm