Dan Cook has a heart-to-heart with Islands frontman (and former member of the now-defunct Unicorns) Nick Thorburn, over on the main site.

Mayor Fenty quashes dissent and looks good doing it. He never forgot that a 4-4 vote last year in the DC Taxi Cab Commission briefly stopped his meter plans, and now he’s settling scores, replacing three of the commissioners who voted against meters.

The move isn’t surprising to anyone knows how rough the Taxi Cab Commission can be. Why do you think Commissioner Leon Swain packs heat?

Via DCist

Catching any of the 30s buses along Wisconsin used to be like catfish noodling–it takes time, and once you stick your hand in, there’s no telling what’ll chomp down. That might change now that Metro revamped the line last Sunday, hoping to improve its reliability and customer satisfaction.

The 30 series, which runs from Friendship Heights through Georgetown and down Pennsylvania Ave on its way to the Maryland border in Southeast, is the busiest Metrobus line, serving 20,000 riders daily. Due to their extraordinarily long route along some of the District’s busiest roads, they are also among the slowest and least reliable.

In mid-2007, Metro commissioned a study to determine what could be done to improve the line. It noted that riders were most concerned with crowding on the bus, frequency, and timeliness. That study prompted Metro to create 3 distinct route categories: local routes (the remaining crosstown buses), neighborhood connectors, and limited-stop services.

Before the change, all 5 buses were crosstown, now only 2 are. The other 3 bus routes have been replaced with 2 neighborhood connectors and 2 express services. Of use to students are the 32 and 36 locals, which still travel to Southeast, and the newly-created 31 neighborhood, which runs from Friendship Heights to Foggy Bottom.

To ensure that buses do not bunch up in traffic, Metro will also post dispatchers along the routes. If the new system goes as planned, expect a bus roughly every 5-10 minutes along Wisconsin.

Photo from Flickr user FredoAlvarez used under a Creative Commons license

Nanking, a film about Japanese attack on China’s capital, was screened last semester at Georgetown. It was followed by a Q&A session with the film’s producer, Washington Capitals owner and Georgetown alum Ted Leonsis.

Leonsis’s new film, Kicking It, tracks the lives of six homeless people playing soccer in the Homeless World Cup. You can hold your own special screening, either by checking the documentary out at your local movie theater or by ordering it from Netflix after the DVD release.

Charter bus company DC2NY is getting desperate. The company sent out 2 emails in 24 hours yesterday asking for help help against a new mandate forcing all intercity buses to load at L’Enfant Promenade, the only “designated intercity bus zone”.

That order comes courtesy of the District’s Department of Transportation, and means all the companies, including beloved Chinatown buses, will have to leave their native environs. DC2NY, naturally, has a counter-proposal: designating their turf at Dupont Circle an inter-city bus zone too. Their plan to do that involves getting their fans in DC, who have so often benefited from DC2NY’s help with distant concerts or booty calls, to pitch in by emailing Transportation employees and councilmembers.

After all, as those water bottle mongers insist, Southwest is scary! Save Dupont! Write to our favorite  councilman Jack Evans (who conveniently sits on the relevant committee) and help DC2NY load wherever it likes.

Whole e-mail, with a font that practically says, “Remember me, the cool bus? We had great times, didn’t we?”, after the jump

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The Northwest Current has always been one of the city’s most self-indulgent publications. Some of that self-love fell on our faces this week when Current writer and Georgetown grad school alum Krysten Jenci wrote a column about the Georgetown campus.

I can’t link to it because the Current doesn’t believe in the Internet, but I’ve retyped a representative excerpt:

I still remember standing on campus that first night filled with the kind of excitement that made me think I could change the world. Walking farther onto the campus, across the diagonal brick walkway toward the White-Gravenor building, I dreamed of learning great things and meeting important people.

I like Georgetown as much as the next nostalgic senior, but seriously? Get it together, Krysten.