Local (to the DMV) News and Events

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[EmirOfShmo]

Big hit to the Wharf. This place was on my hit list to try...

 

Moon Rabbit’s Sudden Last Supper at the Wharf Stuns Customers

Chef Kevin Tien’s critically acclaimed restaurant along the Southwest Waterfront served its last dish on Monday, May 22

 

Around 5 p.m. on Monday, May 22, when The Washington Post broke explosive news about Moon Rabbit’s failed fight to unionize staff and the domino-effect demise of the restaurant a mere five hours later, shell-shocked regulars dropped everything and beelined to the Wharf for one more taste of chef Kevin Tien’s contemporary Vietnamese cooking at the foot of the luxe InterContinental (801 Wharf Street SW).

The steady stream of somber guests trickling into the hotel’s star lobby-level restaurant included Anthony Nguyen, a devoted Moon Rabbit customer since its start in fall 2020. He immediately ordered an Uber from his house in Bowie, Maryland to snag the last available walk-in seat and soak up his favorite Southwest Waterfront spot he’s visited some 20 times before. Dressed in all black for his final feast for one, he went with Tien’s orange duck and a beautiful bowl of “Tiet Canh Vit” (raw bluefin tuna, beets, crushed peanuts).

 

https://dc.eater.com/2023/5/23/23734245/moon-rabbit-sudden-last-supper-at-the-wharf-stuns-customers-dc-restaurant-closure

[China]

'This should not have happened': Residents fed up after bridge built too short

 

Anticipation over the opening of a new bridge in Halethorpe has turned into frustration and protests after it was reportedly "too short."

 

"This should not have happened. You (have) engineers. This should not have happened," said resident Desiree Collins.

 

The bridge on U.S. Route 1 Washington Boulevard is partially open, but neighbors in Halethorpe and Arbutus wonder when the state will fully open it. They said they have been asking for months, and now they finally know the problem.

 

It's a height flaw. The bridge, which crosses over CSX railroad tracks, is an inch and a half too low.

 

"I understand you get hiccups, but this is just too big of a hiccup. This is not a hiccup. This is a mistake. It needs to be fixed. Somebody needs to be held accountable and it needs to be taken care of," Collins said.

 

Residents also worry about traffic safety, claiming this is dangerous for drivers and pedestrians.

 

"The traffic patterns are so dangerous. You can see there is no room for error as you are crossing the bridge," said David McIntyre.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

President Biden vetoes attempt by Congress to block D.C. police bill

 

President Joe Biden on Thursday vetoed a congressional resolution that sought to block a police discipline and accountability bill passed by the D.C. Council, siding with city lawmakers and advocates in a fight over police reform and self-governance only months after he had signed a separate resolution blocking another D.C. bill.

 

Biden wielded his veto pen on H.J. Res. 42, a measure passed by both the House and Senate that would have repealed the the Comprehensive Policing And Justice Reform Amendment Act, which the council passed on an emergency basis after the 2020 killing of George Floyd by police in Minnesota and sought to make permanent late last year. And he did so on the third anniversary of Floyd's death.

 

"The president... vetoed a congressional Republican-led disapproval resolution that would have nullified crucial police reforms, many enacted in the District of Columbia on an emergency basis in 202o after George Floyd's death, such as banning chokeholds, setting important restrictions on use of force and deadly force, improving access to body-worn camera recording, and requiring officer training on de-escalation and use of force," said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre at a press briefing on Thursday afternoon. "The president has repeatedly said we have an obligation to make sure that all people are safe and that public safety depends on public trust."

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

URL on Hundreds of Thousands of Maryland License Plates Redirects to an Online Filipino Casino

 

Hundreds of thousands of Maryland vehicles are unknowingly a mobile advertisement for a Filipino casino after a license plate URL recently began redirecting to the gambling hall.

 

Vice reports that in 2012, Maryland released a new license plate to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812. That license plate was apparently the default license plate for Maryland cars between 2012 and 2016, and featured a URL at the bottom to www.starspangled200.org. Sometime last year, however, that URL began to redirect to globeinternational.info—the homepage of a Filipino online casino. There, a scantily-clad woman advertises “Phillippines Best Betting Site.”

 

 

A Redditor appears to be the first person to publicly notice the issue, posting on the Maryland subreddit two days ago. The Redditor also posted evidence that the domain has changed hands a few times, but that those webpages were all tied to government organizations like the state or the National Park Service. A spokesperson from the Maryland Department of Transportation told Vice that nearly 768,000 license plates bear the URL.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[ClaytoAli]

Restaurant, Dave Chappelle Comedy Club Planned for DC's Major Reeves Center Redevelopment

 

The Reeves Center is getting a huge glow-up.

 

D.C.’s mayor announced plans on Friday for a major redevelopment designed to honor the District’s historic Black Broadway and add affordable housing.

The project at the northwest corner of 14th and U streets NW will include:

• A new comedy club backed by Dave Chappelle
• A restaurant developed by Carla Hall
• A new Alvin Ailey Dance Theater
• A new Washington Jazz Arts Institute
• 320 units of mixed-income housing
• A 116-key “residential hotel”
• An amphitheater named after former mayor Marion Barry and
• A park named after Frederick Douglass

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/restaurant-dave-chappelle-comedy-club-planned-for-dcs-major-reeves-center-redevelopment/3360028/

[PleaseBlitz]

DC’s Rob Rubba Named Best Chef in the Country

 

https://www.washingtonian.com/2023/06/06/oyster-oyster-chef-rob-rubba-takes-top-honors-at-the-2023-james-beard-awards/

 

Quote

The James Beard Awards—aka the “Oscars of the food world”—were handed out last night at Chicago’s Lyric Opera House. And one of the night’s biggest medals (like, Best Actor big) went to Rob Rubba, who helms the kitchen at Oyster Oyster in Shaw. The restaurant, which is sustainability-focused and vegetarian but occasionally uses oysters, has racked up several honors since it opened in June 2021. The tasting-menu spot—a collaboration with former Estadio owner Max Kuller—holds a Michelin star, topped the Washington Post‘s 2021 fall dining guide, and was named a best new restaurant by Esquire. In the fall, Rubba, who previously ran the late Hazel, was named one of the best new chefs in the country by Food & Wine. The last time a DC talent won the coveted chef award was in 2011, when José Andrés was honored for Minibar. Other winners include the late Michel Richard for Citronelle (2007), Patrick O’Connell for the Inn at Little Washington (2001), and the late Jean-Louis Palladin for Jean-Louis at the Watergate (1993).

 

DC restaurants came up otherwise empty-handed at the awards. Causa, the Shaw Peruvian dining room, lost out to Portland, OR restaurant Kann in the Best New Restaurant category (Oyster Oyster had been a finalist in 2022). And Albi chef/owner Michael Rafidi had been up for the Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic award, which ultimately went to Chutatip “Nok” Suntaranon of Philadelphia’s Kanlaya.

 

[China]

THE FUGITIVE HEIRESS NEXT DOOR

 

In this traffic-choked megacity, a grand old house rots on a quiet side street, shoulder-to-shoulder with the luxury high-rises that replaced its grand old neighbors many years ago.

 

Ferns punch through balustrades gone moldy and black. A thick skin of curling paint peels away, exposing disintegrating concrete walls. Sun and rain course through wounds in the eaves.

 

On an afternoon not long ago, little boys scrabble atop a stone ledge bordering the sidewalk that has kept the world away during the home’s long, sordid decline. They strain on tiptoes, squinting through gaps in the metal sheets and iron fencing that buttress the wall. They hope to catch even the most fleeting glimpse of the last remaining inhabitant of this creaky relic of a bygone era’s upper classes, a figure who sometimes appears, almost like an illusion, behind stained-glass windows that depict idyllic seascapes and pastoral vistas.

 

They call her “a bruxa”— the witch.

 

For more than two decades she has been an object of curiosity in this enclave called Higienópolis, a neighborhood whose name means the city of hygiene or cleanliness. She has ambled for years along its tree-cradled streets, walking her dogs (Ebony and Ivory), with her face obscured by viscous white cream. She could be cordial and unobtrusive but was also prone to outbursts over matters as mundane as city crews trimming branches from trees she liked.

 

A neighbor, who works as a doula, instinctively wanted to reach out to the woman, to help her. An inquisitive journalist was also drawn to the woman and her story, in which he originally saw a tale of societal abandonment. Both wanted to know more about her.

 

What they learned is that she had a dark secret.

 

She’d been hiding in plain view for nearly a quarter-century, a fugitive from American justice, accused in a federal indictment, along with her then-husband, of not paying a servant they brought with them from Brazil, who lived under brutal and physically abusive conditions, essentially enslaved at their home in a Washington, D.C., suburb.

 

Prosecutors wanted to punish her for the crimes they were sure she committed. The FBI was on the chase. But Margarida Maria Vicente de Azevedo Bonetti got away.

 

When Margarida Bonetti’s past was revealed in the summer of 2022, alongside the criticism of her, there was also a spasm of support for her on social media.It became a national obsession in Brazil, leading television broadcasts and topping news websites, but has drawn little attention outside South America’s largest nation.

 

Some days news helicopters have hovered over Bonetti’s house. Crowds of gawkers have gathered in such large numbers outside the home that police have had to be called to clear the streets.

 

He remembers the couple’s daughter, Margarida, as a prim, well-dressed teenager — skirts and dresses, never pants — with gorgeous, meticulously coifed hair. She was shy when her imperious mother was around; more outgoing when she wasn’t.

 

Inside the de Azevedos’ home there was a small room off the kitchen. One of the family servants lived there, according to court testimony many years later in the United States. Her name was Hilda Rosa dos Santos.

 

Dos Santos had been born into a grindingly poor family in Anápolis, a small town nearly 600 miles north of São Paulo. She was one of 12 siblings and never knew her father. When she was a child, she would later say in court testimony, her mother was forced to “scatter” her children because she couldn’t afford to raise them herself. Dos Santos was “given” as a servant, as she put it, to a family that operated a brothel. She was obliged to do hard labor, including tending livestock, and was beaten regularly, she has said. Dos Santos didn’t attend school. She was illiterate.

 

In the early 1960s, when she was about 19 (dos Santos later testified she wasn’t sure of her exact age), she began working for the famous doctor and his wife in São Paulo. The couple had three daughters, including a 9-year-old named Margarida. Over the next two decades dos Santos would be a fixture in the family’s life.

 

In 1972, Margarida married Renê Bonetti — an engineer with a bright future who would earn both master’s and doctorate degrees. In their first years of marriage, the Bonettis lived outside São Paulo while he worked for Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research. As the decade ended, a golden opportunity arose: He accepted a prestigious one-year posting in the Washington area to conduct scientific satellite research at Comsat, a telecommunications company.

 

Margarida Bonetti’s mother suggested they take a maid with them, according to testimony given by Renê Bonetti in his criminal case. She offered the services of dos Santos.

 

A plaque that still hangs outside the front door announces the property as the residence of Bonetti’s father, Geraldo de Azevedo, a prominent surgeon. Bonetti’s mother, Lourdes, told everyone she’d been born in Spain. She boasted of royal ancestry. Bonetti’s grandfather, a wealthy businessman, held the title of “baron” and his image has appeared on Brazilian stamps.

 

In the United States, Renê Bonetti’s career thrived. He stayed for 17 years as a senior scientist for Comsat, followed by a three-year stint as a program manager at Hughes Network Systems. He won an award from NASA for his space research; there was a succession of promotions and pay raises.

 

Margarida Bonetti dressed well, giving every bit the appearance of a wealthy woman of refined tastes, according to Victor Ochy Pang, a family friend and work colleague of Renê Bonetti’s. She was clearly well educated and spoke English well, he said.

 

In Brazil, she’d had the imprimatur of her family’s generational prestige. In Gaithersburg, she wasn’t the instantly recognizable member of the elite that she’d been in Higienópolis. She was a nobody. Though she’d studied engineering in Brazil, according to her husband, she did not work outside the home.

 

Neighbors sometimes wondered about the other woman who lived in the Bonetti home, though few got to know her well or asked many questions, Salmonsen said. Or even learned her name: Hilda Rosa dos Santos. They would see her shoveling snow or raking leaves in shabby clothes unsuited to the weather. During apple season, they’d casually observe her picking apples in the area. “We thought she was making pies,” a neighbor, Oliver Parr, said in a recent interview.

 

In early 1998 — 19 years after moving to the United States — dos Santos left the Bonettis, aided by a neighbor she’d befriended, Vicki Schneider. Schneider and others helped arrange for dos Santos to stay in a secret location, according to testimony Schneider later gave in court. (Schneider declined to be interviewed for this story.) The FBI and the Montgomery County adult services agency began a months-long investigation.

 

When social worker Annette Kerr arrived at the Bonetti home in April 1998 — shortly after dos Santos had moved — she was stunned. She’d handled tough cases before, but this was different. Dos Santos lived in a chilly basement with a large hole in the floor covered by plywood. There was no toilet, Kerr, now retired, said in a recent interview, pausing often to regain her composure, tears welling in her eyes. (Renê Bonetti later acknowledged in court testimony that dos Santos lived in the basement, as well as confirmed that it had no toilet or shower and had a hole in the floor covered with plywood. He told jurors that dos Santos could have used an upstairs shower but chose not to do so.)

 

Dos Santos bathed using a metal tub that she would fill with water she hauled downstairs in a bucket from an upper floor, Kerr said, flipping through personal notes that she has kept all these years. Dos Santos slept on a cot with a thin mattress she supplemented with a discarded mat she’d scavenged in the woods. An upstairs refrigerator was locked so she could not open it.

 

“I couldn’t believe that would take place in the United States,” Kerr said.

 

During Kerr’s investigation, dos Santos recounted regular beatings she’d received from Margarida Bonetti, including being punched and slapped and having clumps of her hair pulled out and fingernails dug into her skin. She talked about hot soup being thrown in her face. Kerr learned that dos Santos had suffered a cut on her leg while cleaning up broken glass that was left untreated so long it festered and emitted a putrid smell.

 

She’d also lived for years with a tumor so large that doctors would later describe it variously as the size of a cantaloupe or a basketball. It turned out to be noncancerous.

 

Click on the link for the full story

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[EmirOfShmo]

^^Looks like 14th Street NW?

[Ball Security]

2 hours ago, EmirOfShmo said:

^^Looks like 14th Street NW?

They said NE neighborhood on the ABC news last night.

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[China]

 

[China]

And the winner of the award for being the best at the most obsolete skill goes to...

 

Virginia Catholic school student wins national cursive handwriting contest

[EmirOfShmo]

The Village Garden (Mechanicsville, VA) grows 300+ different tomatoes (mostly heirloom) & 100+ different types of chili peppers. They do a dinner series in the summer with tomatoes & in the winter with chilis at mostly RVA restaurants but also some in NOVA, DC & VA Beach. It's done in conjunction with Barboursville Winery. We hit a local RVA (Indian) restaurant for the chili dinner last February (8 courses w/ wine). Looking forward to doing it again in '24. 

The Summer Supper Somme series started last night at an RVA restaurant (Shagbark). It continues through August 13th. We're going to hit one of these - probably the Sunday brunch. It will be our first time for the tomato dinner but if it's anything like the chili dinners it should be awesome.

I highly recommend...

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/Ctt8WOpuXfi/?hl=en

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[Ball Security]

58 minutes ago, Cooked Crack said:

 

 

Man, there’s gotta be some more awesomeness to this story. He burns his nephew’s pool set up because he unfriended him on Facebook? I need to hear more.

[Cooked Crack]

Truist, Nike, Safeway targeted in small explosions in Northeast D.C.

 

Quote

The D.C. police and federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are investigating three early-morning explosions that damaged three businesses in Northeast Washington, police said. 

 

The incidents began at 4:30 a.m. at a Truist bank, according to a release, when someone detonated an explosive on the sidewalk outside the building in the 2300 block of Washington Place NE. Minutes later, another explosive was detonated in front of the Nike store in the 700 block of H Street, NE, police said. 

 

Then, around 4:45 a.m., someone threw “a Molotov ****tail style object” at the Safeway grocery store in the 300 block of 40th Street NE, according to the release, which noted that all three establishments were closed and that no injuries were reported.

 

[China]

Prince George’s roller rink cited after stripper event on skates

 

The owners of a Prince George’s County landmark entertainment venue have been cited for allegedly violating their county use and occupancy permit after an online party promoter staged an event that featured strippers.

 

DMV AllSkate Social, a roller skating rink on Branch Avenue in Temple Hills, was cited by Prince George’s County’s Department of Permitting, Inspections and Enforcement Division on April 5, after skaters took to social media to blow the whistle on an event promoted on social media as “Sexy -N- Skate.”

 

The party, which required tickets, was scheduled from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. on April 1. The event featured a cash bar and the promise of “VIP” tables. Online videos showed women on skates performing adult entertainment-style dancing as bystanders showered the rink floor with $1 bills.

 

“Sexy-n-Skate" was promoted on Instagram by a self-described video creator and event host who claims to specialize in “showcasing the finest girls in the DMV area.” Another Instagram account linked to the promoter featured a video preview for more parties upcoming this summer at what appeared to be a residential home with a pool.  

 

Click on the link for the full article

[stoshuaj]

48 minutes ago, China said:

Prince George’s roller rink cited after stripper event on skates

 

“Sexy-n-Skate" was promoted on Instagram by a self-described video creator and event host who claims to specialize in “showcasing the finest girls in the DMV area.” Another Instagram account linked to the promoter featured a video preview for more parties upcoming this summer at what appeared to be a residential home with a pool.  

 

Click on the link for the full article

Ummmm, helloooooo, where are the requisite pics required to make a determination as to the veracity of these scandalous accusations? 

 

and, stupid social media. That’s why we can’t have nice things these days

[Barry.Randolphe]

that actually sounds like a million dollar idea  

[Simmsy]

Ugh, if you thought too many strippers had bruises and skinned knees before...

[BatteredFanSyndrome]

Sheetz with the $1.77 any octane gas wins the 4th of July.  Putting it here because of how many there are in the area.

 

 

[Llevron]

So did anyone else hear that? I'm in Alexandria and I swear I just heard an explosion but nothing looks blown up so it has me thinking another sonic boom 

But like, what? 

[TheGreatBuzz]

2 hours ago, Llevron said:

So did anyone else hear that? I'm in Alexandria and I swear I just heard an explosion but nothing looks blown up so it has me thinking another sonic boom 

But like, what? 

 

Sorry, I had Taco Bell.