Posts Tagged ‘Baltimore’
Posted by Geoff Nelowet / Friday, March 16th, 2012
The wheels of progress have stopped turning for Northern Virginia’s bike culture. What say we take the inflated sense of athletic self-importance for a ride?
By Susan Anspach
Illustration by Matt Mignanelli
Who here remembers riding bikes as a kid?
Who remembers that cool lick of breeze lifting your hair, that healthy burn building in the back of your calves? That sense of sweat-crowned triumph when you reached the top of a high hill, and that electric moment when you released the handlebars and slowly rose in your pedals to a standing position, assured in that moment of your repute as King of Incomparable Equilibrium and Thus the World?
Well, take a seat, Sparky, because the game rules have changed.
In Northern Virginia, biking’s not a leisure activity anymore. It’s a sport. And if you want to play, you need to know what you’re getting yourself into.
For starters, there’s a dress code now. And while it may not seem necessary to slick up in spandex, blinding neon and a helmet fit for a Velociraptor, even if it seems silly to splurge on a lightweight frame for something that never leaves the ground, if you don’t at least try to fit in, they’ll pick you out from a trailhead away.
And that’s exactly where you’ll get yourself into trouble.
Because gone are the days of beaded spokes and basket streamers, my friend, and if you didn’t get that memo, here’s where you don’t want to be on any given spring Sunday afternoon: huffing along the Mount Vernon Trail in sweatpants and the T-shirt you may or may not have slept in the night before; somewhere more than five but (God, you hope) less than 10 miles from your car; at the mercy of every man, woman and child speed Satanist on wheels whizzing past—every one of whom takes enough time, it should be noted, to fix you with the kind of glare you once thought reserved for fascist warmongers.
On the trail, it turns out, you’re worse than a whacked-out jingoist. Oh, yes. You’re far worse. You’re a friggin’ slowpoke.
And for that, may God have mercy on your torturously indolent soul. All three speeds of it. To the community of serious cyclists, the worst thing you can do is hold up traffic. They want to move, and they want to move now. Because you get the sense these people have a lot of pent-up energy. But like, a lot.
When you stop and think about it, it shouldn’tcome as a surprise. Outside of New York City (urban lair, you’ll recall, to the bikemessenger industry, one of the few fields that demands its workers present valid ID in addition to notarized death wish), our region has the consistently worst wait time for wanting to go anywhere.
There’s a lot of great things about this area. I’ll defend it til the day I die. But if you have the need for speed, brother, you really couldn’t have picked a worse place.
For that reason, I can completely empathize with anyone around here with a commute and the need to let off steam. There was a time when the only
way for me to make it from point A to B was air-guitaring the spit out of Motorhead’s “Ace of Spades” (you may have seen me, and you may have laughed, but if you’ve never felt the force of a death-metal cult icon surge through your fingers, you’ve never lived). On the surface of things, there’s nothing wrong with a little dispensation of vigor. Energy is great! Activity is a good thing! Release the endorphins, I always say. Let fly the epinephrine. It’s just when the activity turns to antipathy that I start to get worried.
Here’s why.
All jokes aside, my memories of riding bikes with my parents as a kid through the streets of my hometown are some of the sweetest I have. On weekends and some nights after school, we’d visit one of the local parks, or circle around the historic train station. It sat across from an ice cream parlor whose owners knew us by name and flavor order. (Aww.)
Recently, for old times’ sake, my dad and I tried to recreate the essence of the experience. True, the ice cream shop had long since closed (pour one out for good old Bubblegum Chunk), but we still had our bikes, and our heart. In the spirit of charting new territory, we chucked our two-wheelers in the back of the car and hit the trail close to Arlington Cemetery.
Things started out pretty OK, I guess. The sky was clear; the day was crisp. Sure, the trail was a little crowded, but we live in a crowded place. These are crowded times. And anyway, even if it wasn’t the most breathing room, if you’ve ever fought to plant both feet on the inside of a rush-hour Metro car, you know it certainly wasn’t the least.
Which is why I don’t understand how come, after about 10 minutes of strictly single-file riding—all while, I should add here, hugging the right side of the path (yeah, I know about these things)—the other riders started barking at us like little lost lambs. Little lost lambs with a strong, mutton-y tailwind flapping behind.
These people were out for blood.
My initial reaction was, of course, one of defense. For the record, I’m no baby sheep. I can shoot un-fluffy eye lasers as good as the next guy, and my bark’s not half bad, if I do say so myself.
But then I realized it wasn’t just us. That’s just how these people talk to each other. On the trail, apparently, you can forget about eye contact, and any chance for a friendly “How do you do?”. Learn to woof in place of speaking, and bone up on your directional code words (as far as I can tell, grunts count). Most important: Recognize that anyone in headgear who looks like he or she derived from the Cretaceous Period means business.
I bring all of this up because I know it doesn’t happen everywhere—so I know there’s got to be some other way! But that may not be as obvious as it seems.
If you’re a NoVA native, like me, then you may be surprised to learn that the greater D.C.-Metro region is a veritable hotspot for cyclists. When you grow up in a place, you don’t realize everything about it you take for granted—but I’ve got a friend who once confided in me that he was offered a job promotion that would require a move to Baltimore, and didn’t take it for the simple fact that Charm City, it seems, doesn’t offer enough resources (trail mix, I guess? I don’t know that I want to know what other stuff a bunch of folks who identify with flesh-hungry canines get into) for the wheelie enthusiast.
I want to emphasize here that those were his words, mostly, and not mine. God knows the last thing I need is for the bikers to buddy up with the Hons and come pounding down my door with flaming pitchforks fashioned from wheel spokes dunked in hairspray.
All that aside, however, here’s the crux of the situation: Apparently, we’ve got it going on in a way with the bike paths and stuff! And for that reason, we should all feel welcome to make the most of it.
So to you, presumed non-superjock, non-Baltimorean reader, I propose a new deal.
The next time you get the itch to stretch your legs on the trail, you go for it, yeah?
And I will, too.
You can rest assured in the knowledge that I lately realized the dino helmet would double great as an on-the-go battering device. And if anybody so much as snarls at us, they’ll have this p.o.’ed ram to answer to.
(March 2012)
Posted by Natalie Kaar / Tuesday, April 5th, 2011
Foot Juggling (Courtesy of Daniel Auclair © 2010 Cirque du Soleil Inc.)
Yet another reason I love Travelzoo, tickets to several shows of Cirque du Soleil’s new big-top show, “Totem,” debuting this week in Baltimore, have been reduced 40 percent!
- Thursday, April 7, at 8 p.m. (opening night)
- Friday, April 8, at 8 p.m.
- Tuesday, April 12, at 8 p.m.
- Wednesday, April 13, at 8 p.m.
- Thursday, April 14, at 8 p.m.
- Friday, April 15, at 4 p.m. & 8 p.m.
Buy them while you can.
Happy shopping!
–Natalie Kaar
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Wednesday, July 28th, 2010
The first family of hospitality crowd-sourcing, Nina and Tim Zagat, have released the results of their 2011 Washington D.C./Baltimore survey, an all-too-familiar litany–the Inn at Little Washington continues its decade-long streak of ping-ponging back and forth between the #1 and #2 spots for food; Restaurant Eve remains firmly entrenched in the food top 10–which I highly doubt will surprise any fine dining aficionados or even casual gourmands.
I was, however, interested to see how the D.C./Charm City surveyors stack up against other markets and how often they hit the streets in search of a good meal.
According to Zagat’s, there are roughly 6,500 surveyors actively evaluating 2,400 meals per day across the D.C./Baltimore corridor. While that sounds like a whole lot of eating, our area ranks second-to-last in surveyor meals per week (2.6).
Texans, on the other hand, have gorged themselves into four of the top five spots (Houston – 4 meals per week, Austin/Hill Country – 3.8, Dallas/Forth Worth – 3.6, San Antonio – 3.5).
The economy, of course, is partly to blame.
Approximately 40 percent of local surveyors admitted to eating out less because of forced belt-tightening, while another third of those surveyed copped to more carefully eyeing menu prices when they do step out.
On the upside, over half of the surveyors said lean times have prompted restaurants to beef up their dining deals while approaching 45 percent said the downturn has rekindled a passion for home cooking.
Amateur food sleuths might also be interested to know that Zagat’s stable of local food spies skews female (51 percent) and relies heavily on retirees (60+ year olds comprise 25 percent of their core constituency)–though Gen Xers (30-year olds) and late Boomers (50s and up) account for 23 and 22 percent (respectively) of the roving reporting crew.
Rankings-wise, NoVA restaurants seemed to do pretty well.
We claimed six of the top 20 food slots:
* Inn at Little Washington (2)
* Restaurant Eve (7)
* L’Auberge Provencale (10)
* L’Auberge Chez Francois (15)
* 2941 (16)
* GoolDaeGee (19)
Seven of the top 24 cuisine categories:
* New American: Inn at Little Washington
* Chinese: Peking Gourmet
* Classic French: L’Auberge Provencale
* South American: El Pollo Rico
* Southwest/Tex-Mex: Sweetwater Tavern
* Thai: Thai Square
* Vietnamese: Four Sisters
And scored a handful of entries in the 20 “Key Newcomers” list:
Would love to hear what you all think of the current crop of popularly appointed dining champs AND/OR the Zagat’s scouts among us.
–Warren
Films Connect Food and the Environment
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010
Image: Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital
The 18th Annual Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital will be held March 16-28 in Washington, DC and will feature 155 films. One of the main themes at the festival this year is the connection between food and the environment. 32 of the films will be part of the Food & Agriculture Film Series.
Topics include school food programs, the sustainable organic movement, biodiversity, the slow food movement, food security, migrant farm workers, and urban agriculture. Bonus: The majority of the films are free!
Below is a list of films that relate to our region.
If you haven’t seen Fresh, which features Virginia farmer Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms, you can watch it on March 17 at 7:30pm at the National Geographic Society. Following the screening, you can participate in a discussion featuring the filmmaker Ana Sofia Joanes, Ann Yonkers, Co-director of FRESHFARM Markets, and by phone, Joel Salatin.
Lunch is a short documentary co-presented by the Earth Day Network & Center for Environmental Filmmaking. The film takes a look at school lunch programs, particularly within the Baltimore, MD public school system. It will be shown with the film Potato Heads at American University with a discussion afterwards with the Potato Heads filmmaker and the Director, Avis Richards of Earth Day Network. The film can be seen on March 22 at 7pm and is free to the public.
NORA! A film about Nora Pouillon, DC’s pioneer in the organic and local-food movement and owner of the nation’s first certified organic restaurant. Following the film there will be a discussion with the star herself. The film can be seen for free on March 23 at 7pm and will be screened at the International Student House.
Who Killed Crassostrea Virginica: The Fall and Rise of Chesapeake Bay Oysters. A whodunit film about the decline of the Chesapeake Bay oyster population. Was it the watermen, the oyster farmers, or the scientists who study them? The film can be seen for free on March 21 at 1:30pm at the Carnegie Institution for Science and will be followed by a discussion with filmmaker Michael Fincham and oyster biologist Ken Paynter and Captain Ed Farley.
There will also be films on global water issues, including a film on the restoration of the Anacostia River in Washington, DC (The Meaningful Watershed Education Experience), and a fifteen minute excerpt on chemical contaminants within the Chesapeake Bay (Poisoned Waters: Chesapeake Bay).
For a complete list, visit the film festival 2010 Films page.