Pegged to the story of Eric Sheptock, a homeless man in D.C. who has blogged about homeless issues all the way to CNN, NPR, and the Washington Post, the Washington City Paper has put together a guide of where to go in the District to access the Internet for free if you don’t have a computer.

Barring the D.C. Public Library system, which maintains about 600 free computers, or, not nearly enough to service the 40 percent of residents in City Wards 5, 7, and 8, WCP has put Georgetown’s Lauinger Library first in that guide:

“The best place in the area for virtually unlimited, unmonitored computer use. In what Georgetown officials say is ‘a conscious effort to reach out to the community and the city,’ the library is open daily from 8 a.m. until 11 p.m. to anyone with a photo ID. On the main floor are 45 computers equipped with Windows Vista and available to anyone, though they tend to be for short-term use.

“The real sweet spot is downstairs. Open 24 hours most days (closed between 3 a.m. and 8 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday nights), the basement’s Gelardin New Media Center has roughly 65 computers with a basic version of Windows; the chairs are soft, the lighting not too bright, and the computers all come with keyboard wrist pads.”

Flattering us further, reporter Amanda Abrams gives props to the Corp: “Best is the second-floor café, which is open until 2 a.m. many nights and offers dirt-cheap bagels with cream cheese,” she writes. While service can be notoriously slow at said café, Midnight Mug, we have to agree, those are some damn good, cheap bagels.

But a few points of information, D.C. residents: Not all 65 downstairs computers are available for anyone to use. Any computers that do extra stuff—video editing and scanning, for instance—required a Georgetown login that only students and employees have.

And Abrams incorrectly reports that through clever navigation of our “idiosyncratic entry scheme for outsiders,” you can enter the Library at 10:45 p.m., just before they start turning away outsiders, and “no one will care whether you’re a student or not.” In fact, the Department of Public Safety scours the Library almost every evening checking to see if you have a University ID once it’s time for outsiders to leave. If you don’t, adios.

Still, she closes with strong advice.

“[G]et ready for sensory deprivation—if you spend too much time in the windowless Gelardin Center, it will start to feel like a dungeon.”

Want a shot at your own 15 seconds of internet micro-micro-fame? Start following us on Twitter (GtownVoxPop) and, if you’re connected to Georgetown, we’ll return the favor and you’ll automatically be in the running!

Former Voicer Phil Perry was impressed by JT Jr.’s patriotic lunch choice.

Mara Hollander was unimpressed by the little store’s meat options.

Read the rest of this entry »

Abstinence or else!

This week’s City Paper cover story focuses on our coreligionists at Catholic University and the implications of an alleged sexual assault for their extraordinarily doctrinaire sex policy. The ending focuses on an extremely disturbing case of alleged rape, but the bulk of the piece is spent detailing what exactly a sexual conduct policy for a more pious Catholic college looks like:

• Sex is technically punishable by probation or even expulsion (although, during the 2006-7 school year, the only year statistics are available, there was not a single incident of sexual misconduct on the books).
• Not only are contraceptives banned on campus (obvs), students are encouraged to go to events like a talk on “Natural Family Planning” which involved “[t]his husband-and-wife team [coming] to my dorm lobby and [telling] us all how to avoid pregnancy naturally—by going in and measuring your mucus levels.”
• Masturbation is not allowed, either (although, shockingly, they’ve had a tough time enforcing that).
• Sexual assault is included in the same category of violation as consensual premarital sex, masturbation, and the use of contraceptives.

Next time you complain about having to schlep out to CVS for condoms, keep in mind it could be so, so much worse.

CUA Tower Blogs reports that unidentified perpetrators have destroyed, stolen, and tossed thousands of editions of its newspaper, The Tower. The comic shown above, which appeared in The Tower in response to an ongoing campus discussion about gay rights and the Catholic church, was taped to the door of The Tower’s office, before which an unknown also suspect placed several shredded newspapers.

But whatcha gonna do about it? City Paper reports that because the papers are free, the Metropolitan Police Department doesn’t consider the incident theft. Tower members aren’t satisfied with Catholic University’s response, either. Its Editor-in-Chief told City Paper:

“University administrations, have only offered consolation, saying there is not much they can do, other than it might be a violation in the student code of the University. Our Department of Public Safety has been of little help. They have disregarded our requests to see the video tapes and have said that the investigation will take a long time and not to expect any answers. Our staff has conducted our own investigation and has been able to determine who the culprit(s) may have been, but without seeing the tapes, we can not pursue anything.”

Washinton City Paper faced this same problem when its publisher caught a vendor wrapping fruit with its issues.

In its heyday, the then ultra-conservative Georgetown Academy got a similarly disappointing response from Georgetown University administrators when several of its issues wound up in the trash. Their solution? Get a U.S. News & World Report columnist on the case.

Photo from CUA Tower Blog.

Who, Georgetown? You should totally date him.

If you’ve been following Georgetown’s ascension through the manly ranks of the D.C. area, it’ll please you to hear that once City Paper’s Amanda Hess allowed that we out-manlied the Brookings Institute, we testosteroned past the Heritage Foundation in her Manliest in the D.C. Workplace bracket to become the manliest thing on D.C.’s think-tank and academia scene.

But that’s the end of the line, says Hess: no one out-brawns the U.S. Senate.

“Bros before hos”

In October, I used a method developed by City Paper’s Amanda Hess to see which Georgetown publication is manliest. Yesterday, Hess ran the numbers on the University administration and it’s almost a sweep for patriarchy:

Though the mascot of D.C.’s most prestigious university, the Hoya (or “What”), reeks of namby-pamby intellectualism, its unofficial representative, the Bulldog (or “Mean, Scrappy Animal”) restores the institution’s manliness.

President John J. DeGioia (Male, 10 points)
Provost James J. O’Donnell (Male, 9 points)
Interim Dean, G’town College Chester L. Gillis (Male, 8 points)
Dean, Grad. School Timothy A. Barbari (Male, 7 points)
Dean, Walsh School Robert L. Gallucci (Male, 6 points)
Dean, McDonough School George G. Daly (Male, 5 points)
Dean, School of Contin. Studies Robert L. Manuel (Male, 4 points)
Dean of Students Todd A. Olson (Male, 3 points)
Director of Athletics Bernard M. Muir (Male, 2 points)
Office of Int’l Prog. Dir. Katherine Bellows (Female, ZERO)

That’s nearly a perfect score, and too glass-ceilinged for the Brookings Institution to compete with.

Photo from Flickr user World Economic Forum used under a Creative Commons license

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.

City Paper is hosting a Funniest College Video Contest, which sounds like a good idea until you learn that they’re co-hosting it with the inane American Pie/Old School rip-off College, and that the grand prize is 4 tickets to see Carlos Mencia live. At least the first 50 entries get free t-shirts. But seriously, CP? I thought you were cool.

Interesting Carlos Mencia aside: you probably know he’s accused of stealing jokes, but did you know people call him Carlos Menstealia for it? Exactly the kind of person I want to win tickets to see.

It’s easy to find high-end chain retail in Georgetown, but we’re desperately lacking in the hand-decorated moleskin journal/reconstructed t-shirt/jewelry made from recycled balloons departments. Luckily, we have Crafty Bastards.

Between 10 and 5 today at the Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Silver Spring, indie crafters will showcase their wares at the annual festival, either making you kick yourself for not thinking of turning old library books into purses first, or wonder why a designer felt it necessary to create a fetus-shaped cookie cutter. There’ll be a lot of Etsy staples like knitted cupcakes and printed t-shirts, but also unique items like “The Prick Cushion” (an anatomically-correct pin cushion), oil portraits of the cast of The Office, and elaborately crafted shadow puppet toys.

City Paper sponsors Crafty Bastards, and it’s tough to get past their judging panel for a spot at the fair. Along with the deserving vendors, Bastards also features music, food, a craft supply swap, and a ton of workshops on printmaking, crocheting, and more. Because of the fair’s success in the its first four years, there will be two this year (the second one coming along in September), but all items are one-of-a-kind and probably won’t make a repeat appearance.

The Pyramid Atlantic Art Center is located at 8230 Georgia Avenue (Silver Spring Metro on the Red Line.)

-Sara Carothers, Voices Editor

Is anyone surprised that former mayor Marion Barry boxed in a car before going to a radio interview? The mayor-for-life has obviously softened in his old age, since thoughtless parking is only the post-lunch nap to his feast of kleptocracy and mismanagement. His constituents in Anacostia continue to love him, though.

Anyone interested in Barry’s rollercoaster rise and fall and rise, and the ride DC took with him, should read Dream City. Lauinger Library has a copy.