Can you hear me now? Probably not if you are reading from one of Washington’s underground metro stations. Currently only Verizon and Sprint customers can make or receive calls, but according to the Post, hope may not be far away. The $1.5 billion metro funding bill includes provisions for expanding cell coverage in 20 of the district’s busiest stations, including Rosslyn, Dupont Circle, Foggy Bottom, and Gallery Place-Chinatown.
Join us at Dupont Circle at 1:00 am on the night of Saturday, Oct. 11th into the morning of Sunday, Oct. 12th for a rowdy, noisy march to the hotels where delegates are staying. Bring noisemakers to wake up the caretakers of global capitalism and tell them they’re not welcome in DC!
Dupont Circle is only a short walk away, though, so you should go check out the controlled chaos of an anti-IMF march. I covered Disrupt Georgetown last year and nearly got arrested for it, so I’m uniquely qualified to show you a good time once Homecoming fun fizzles. Here are four tips to keep your head from getting slammed against a wall:
Get messy: Some people think standing on the sidewalk and watching cops and protesters scuffle is a good time. Hardly! Protesters will probably be marching down the middle of the street with bicycle and motorcycle cops encircling them, so you need to run in right from the start and get caught up in the rectangle. When it comes time to escape, be firm with the bicycle police trying to keep you inside.
Stay with the violent ones: Some coalition of vegan pansexual socialists will probably show up with no intention of smashing windows. They’ll complain to you about the masked anarchists (above), and will try and split off from the main protest at one point. Don’t join them. It might be tempting because they’re nicer, but none of them are going to get arrested or smacked around, and that’s what you’re here for.
In August, the Executive Cabinet of GW’s Student Assocation went to a Nationals game together as part of a cabinet retreat. The GW Hatchet, fearless newspaper that it is, started poking around to see how the tickets were paid for, prompting this gem of an email to be sent to the entire cabinet (emphasis mine):
Guys,
Emily Cahn from the Hatchet is calling around looking to find out how retreat was paid for. You are to tell her the following and ONLY THE FOLLOWING:
You paid for your own food and tickets to all events. This includes Nationals, Redskins, Nooshi, Froggys, etc. Then try and throw in something about how you had to stop Vishal from paying himself and you insisted on paying.
This is very IMPORTANT and this email must remain CONFIDENTIAL. Anyone found leaking this email will have appropriate action pursued against them. Do not seek her out, but if she contacts you the above is what you are to say.
–
Greta Twombly
SA President Chief of Staff
Rule no. 1, Greta: you have to be a little more specific in your threats if you expect them to have any effect. Does “appropriate action” mean the leak won’t be allowed to sit at the SA Executive Cabinet lunch table for a week or are we talking death by public stoning?
When Georgetown housing doesn’t have enough on-campus residences available, they hold an eligibility lottery for students who don’t want to brave the wilds of off-campus leases.
When American University’s housing department doesn’t have enough rooms, they pay for their students to live in the Georgetown Holiday Inn, plus free shuttle service. I was feeling good about getting off the waitlist and into a Nevils apartment, but now I’m just jealous.
Via DCist,the first (and best) rap about DC voting rights. It’s got Eleanor Holmes Norton crossing her arms, all sorts of DC residents asking for their rights, and a heartbreaking intro.Best of all, around 2:00 rapper Joe L. Da Vessel complains to Shadow Senator Michael Brown: “Now I know this is delicate, but I could go to war and all I get is shadow delegate?” Brown just shrugs and looks abashed, it’s priceless.
Creative Loafing, the national chain of alt-weeklies which purchased the Chicago Reader and the Washington City Paper in July 2007, is filing for bankruptcy. CP editor Erik Wemple announced the news on City Desk, the City Paper’s news blog, this morning.
A corporate memo released this morning captured the rationale for the move: “The term ‘bankruptcy’ conjures up all kinds of images and demons but it is essentially a legal proceeding designed to give an over-leveraged company the time, process and a safe harbor for which to reorganize its finances. Chapter 11 was the natural place for the Company to go to accomplish an orderly reorganization of our finances.”
…
“This filing has little to do with the acquisition and everyone should feel very proud of what we’ve accomplished,” reads the company memo. “It hasn’t been easy but it has been successful. The assumptions we made have not turned out to be so successful. The print business has been under siege from all quarters with the exception of the one place that counts; audience.”
I’m not sure how the acquisition itself can be successful while the assumptions Creative Loafing made—presumably upon which the acquisition was based—were not. I also don’t really buy the “print is dying” argument as a rationale for Creative Loafing’s troubles. Even though print revenue has been declining, the City Paper and the Reader are still profitable newspapers, as they have been since the ’80’s. Considering that web advertising now only makes up roughly 5% of the City Paper’s overall revenue, it seems to me like Eason may have jumped the gun by switching to a “web-first” model so soon.
On the bright side, at least the editorial cuts mentioned in the Voice’s feature on the City Paper last week are going to be put off for a while.
Speaking of hippos, last weekend I went to the National Zoo and saw its hippo. The hippo’s on its way out, but if you go soon you can see it up-close in the Elephant House. Pretty good deal, especially if the pandas are bashful.
Photo from Flickr user Photo Taker 2 used under a Creative Commons license
They’re getting rid of the hippo. The statue will remain, but there will be no more merchandise with the hippo, and the hippo mascot will be hidden away unless children are around or the “real” mascots are busy.
GW students are suitablyoutraged. They have an awesome mascot that represents one of nature’s noblest beasts, and now their administration wants to throw it away.
In solidarity with our water horse-loving brethren at Foggy Bottom, I offer Jessica Hippo, the greatest hippo in the world (and possibly the greatest animal, too):
The University of the District of Columbia is getting a new president, after a lengthy search process that included unprecedented input from Mayor Adrian Fenty. The Post’s take on the new prez, Allen Sessoms, makes him sound like a stand up guy who doubled the endowment at his last school, Delaware State. That information comes from his resume, though, so beware the unreliable narrator.
The article fails to mention that in 2000 Sessoms resigned the top post at the City University of New York’s Queens College under pressure from the school’s board of trustees, who claimed he misled them about how much money he had raised for an AIDS research center.
As much as I’d like to believe that new leadership will bring positive financial and academic change to UDC, I’d feel better if the incoming president didn’t have a contentious past. Fenty’s tacit endorsement would mean more if the summer jobs program wasn’t all screwed up. If this doesn’t work out, don’t say Vox Populi didn’t warn you.
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