DC FRIDAY

SOCIO-ECONOMIC CLEANSING: THE SINGLE SALES BAN

MIKE DEBONIS, CITY PAPER Many of the least, last, and lost have a favorite pastime: buying a single beer from a corner grocery, popping that baby open on the sidewalk, and making a day of it. Such were the recent Friday afternoon plans of Bill Herris, a 36-year-old patron of the Martin Luther King Grocery in Anacostia. "I'll go anywhere where they got singles at, so I go to the south side," he says, standing at the store's Plexiglas cashier's window ready to shell out $1.25 for a 24-ounce can of Olde English 800. "This is the south side."

Herris is what you might call a malt-liquor refugee. Since summer, he and his fellow individual-serving aficionados have been shut out of the north side-meaning Ward 4, where the single-sales ban pushed through by then Councilmember Adrian M. Fenty finally went into effect in August after court challenges.

Now, if Barry and his colleague from Ward 7, Yvette Alexander, have their way, Herris & Co. might be completely shut out of the single-beer market east of the Anacostia River. In December, Barry and Alexander both introduced legislation that would ban the sales of single beers in each of their ward's liquor stores. . .

Peter Cho, who owns Martin Luther King Grocery, says he's opposed to the Barry measure because his customers are opposed to the Barry measure. To that end, his store-one of 90 or so east-of-the-river liquor-selling establishments-has signs posted warning of the potential singles ban, complete with phone numbers for Alexander and Barry.

Cho says he's not that surprised by Barry's stand. "I don't see Councilmember Barry walking down the avenue like he did in his younger days," says Cho. "He needs to come out and talk to the people."

Sitting outside Cho's store is 41-year-old Washington Nationals employee Rico Seabrooks, who says he's not a single-beer buyer himself but still took the time to head down to the John A. Wilson Building to testify against the singles ban. His perspective: Banning singles would mean more problems, since he says "bootleggers" would buy cases and sell singles illegally on the street.

LIKE THE new regulations for cab drivers and street vendors, the attack on single sales is another example of the socio-economic cleansing of DC, so much easier than ethnic discrimination because there's no law against being mean to those less fortunate than oneself. In fact, it's hard to think of a more obviously discriminatory routine rule than to allow some people go to a pub and buy single drinks but not to let poorer residents, who can't afford to bar hop, do the same.

NOMA, NO WAY

GRID SKIPPER - You know your neighborhood is phony when it's perpetually followed by a definition: NoMa is a toponym that has yet to be printed or spoken without its parenthetical epithet (North of Massachusetts Avenue), nor without a false explanation that it's just like any of New York's groovy acronym'd 'hoods, e.g. SoHo, TriBeCa, and DUMBO. Actually, NoMa is Washington's latest and greatest gentrification un-success story, the unfinished fairy tale of one eager band of pocket-protected urban planners. The neighborhood was drawn up as everything north of Mass Avenue, east of 2nd Street, NW, west of 2nd Street NE, and south of New York Avenue. That's about 35 fill-in-the-blank city blocks which after more than a decade have yet to be referred to as "NoMa" by anyone who lives there. Sorry guys, but two mentions in the Washington Post does not a neighborhood make. We're still not buyin' it. . .

While attempting to pull a hipster neighborhood out of a hat, the city is disappearing the quarter's actual history and thereby losing the one essential ingredient to "character." Before NoMa there was Swampoodle, the capital's very own shantytown populated by Irish immigrants dating back to the great potato famine of the 1850s. . . According to NoMa BID, Washingtonians should be clamoring to move to NoMa because "It's new, it's here, it's 24/7." Actually, NoMa won't get going until 2012, which gives you four years to save up for a house in another yet-to-be-renamed ghetto near you. There's already talk of SoFa (South of Florida Avenue), and you know that can't be too far away from MoFo

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DC SHORTS

DC EXAMINER Efforts to boost pre-kindergarten programs in the District have cleared a legislative hurdle in the D.C. Council. The Committee of the Whole, which includes all 13 council members, unanimously approved the bill. The legislation would enroll more 3- and 4-year-old children in early childhood education programs and make the curriculum for those programs more rigorous. Advocates say about 12,000 children are enrolled in pre-K programs, but another 2,000 eligible children are not.

WJLA - Volunteers are grateful by the overwhelming donations a community has given for the victims of the Mt. Pleasant fire. Ginny Heredia with Neighbors' Consejo is thankful for the people who have been donating, "You see all the food, you see all the toiletries, you see all the clothing. We are at capacity, which is a good place to be at." All three stories of Neighbors' Consejo are full of things donated for fire victims. "This is only one room, it's up the ceiling fan as you can see," said Heredia. Classrooms are packed with even a sofa three floors up and newly dropped off bags just outside the garage are piling up. Now the organization has to move everything here to storage, holding it for when over 200 fire victims find new homes. Many have been moved to a Best Western hotel and are awaiting more permanent housing from the city.

COUNCILMEMBER EVANS has withdrawn a bill to overturn a recent Historic Preservation Review Board decision to landmark the Third Church of Christ, Scientist."

WASH POST Tom Revell, a retired U.S. Postal Service employee who died March 7 of a heart attack at Fairland Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Silver Spring, could throw the high, hard one. Blessed with a 90-mph fastball in high school, where he was a football and baseball phenomenon, he pitched professionally for the Indianapolis Clowns, coached the Bowie State University baseball team and was inducted into the Negro League Legends Hall of Fame in 2003. He was 62. . . He signed in 1966 with the Indianapolis Clowns. The team originated in 1929 and combined circus-style silliness and high-caliber baseball. It was composed of African American and Cuban players who barnstormed the country until the 1970s. The Clowns, which also played in the Negro American League, gave blacks an opportunity to play professionally during and after the long decades of baseball apartheid, which ended in 1947 when Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers. Several Clowns players, including the legendary Satchel Paige and a young cross-handed slugger named Hank Aaron, ended up in the major leagues.

INTERESTING PROFILE ON THE CURRENT NEWSPAPERS in City Paper: "Headquartered in the basement of a MacArthur Boulevard office building, the Current is actually several weekly papers-the Georgetown Current, the Dupont Current, the Foggy Bottom Current, and the Northwest Current (two editions) - with a combined circulation of about 60,000 in the District's most affluent communities. (The company added another, Voice of the Hill, in the mid-'00s.) That's double the total circulation of about 30,000 a decade ago. Other vital signs follow suit: The Current's advertising volume has gone up, on average, about 15 percent a year over the past eight years, helped along by merchants as varied as Bloomingdale's and College Hunks Hauling Junk. Editorial staff stands just shy of 10 full-timers-that's up from less than three in the early '90s, when Publisher and Editor Davis Kennedy bought the outfit."

MEMBERS OF THE UNITED FOOD AND COMMERCIAL WORKERS Local 400 who work at Safeway and Giant stores throughout the metro Washington area are in a fight for the future of retail jobs. Under increasing pressure from big box stores and non-union groceries like Harris Teeter, Safeway and Giant are pushing for a contract that rolls back hard-won benefits such as affordable healthcare and pensions.

THIS YEAR'S ARTOMATIC will be at the Capitol Plaza I Building, 1200 First Street, NE May 9 - June 15.. Site Selection for visual artists will be held April 12–15.

THE HUMANITIES COUNCIL is requesting proposals for projects dealing with community heritage, history, and preservation projects in the District of Columbia. More information a the website

DC ALMANAC

MAYFLOWER HOTEL

NY TIMES The doormen and bellhops in white gloves and dark brown suits at the soaring Mayflower Hotel have come to recognize the subtle signs: attractive women who carry no luggage, dressed tastefully but, in stilettos and lacy camisoles, seeming a touch too sensual to meet a chubby Commerce Committee lobbyist for cocktails. Sometimes they walk straight to the elevators. If it is after 10 p.m., a security guard might stop them, leading to an awkward conversation, but a discreet call upstairs usually sets minds at ease.

More often, these women, who earn $500 to $5,000 an hour attending to guests, slip onto a stool at the wood-paneled Town & Country Lounge in the lobby and order a club soda with lime; no elaborate drinks, because the client will appear within minutes to usher them to a handsomely appointed room. . .

"We are in the business of selling rooms," said a former manager of the Mayflower, speaking on the condition of anonymity as he searches for another job in the clubby world of fancy hotels. "And the escort services are in the business of keeping our guests happy."

The Mayflower is one of the dowager madams of Washington, whose curving facade, murals and extensive gold leaf suit a city of grandiose ambition. President Harry S. Truman called the hotel "Washington’s second-best address." The White House is a five-minute walk from the front door.

J. Edgar Hoover lunched there every day for 20 years, taking a blandly predictable chicken soup, cottage cheese and grapefruit. Charles Lindbergh celebrated the first-ever solo trans-Atlantic flight in a Mayflower ballroom. Franklin Delano Roosevelt penned his first inaugural speech in Room 776.

Marion S. Barry Jr., the former mayor of Washington, was convicted in 1990 on a misdemeanor drug charge after being accused of using cocaine while staying at the Mayflower in 1989. Members of the House pursuing the impeachment of President Bill Clinton interviewed Monica Lewinsky in the hotel’s 10th-floor Presidential Suite a decade later. . .

"In March of 1933, a former New York governor, President Roosevelt, was composing a history-making speech in his room here thinking that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," Dan Ruskin, who has played at the piano bar since the Eisenhower administration, said in an e-mail message. "Now, almost to the day, 75 years later, another New York governor is making history. He’s in his room thinking the only thing we have to fear is - getting caught."

Asked about the hotel’s reputation, John Wolf, a spokesman for Marriott International, which owns the Mayflower, declined to rebut the specifics. "It is our company’s policy to comply with all federal, state and local laws," he said in an e-mail message. "We also respect the privacy of our guests, subject to the safety and security of other guests and the public.". . .

The Town & Country is a favorite watering spot for an eclectic collection of Washington types: lobbyists, journalists, F.B.I. agents, diplomats and the occasional congressman or intelligence operative. The bartender, Sambonn Lek, stirs 101 varieties of martinis, including the Electric Lady and the Naughty Lady (he said he took the Ted Kennedy off the menu to "leave him alone"). . .

George Dasch, the German spy, turned himself in at the hotel in 1942. He demanded to speak with Hoover, who, as it happens, was eating downstairs. (Another noon, the FBI. chief looked up to see the No. 3 on the agency’s Most Wanted List. Hoover ordered the man arrested and returned to his soup.)

John F. Kennedy’s amour-de-mob-moll, Judith Exner, kept a room at the Mayflower and would slip over to the White House when the First Lady was out of town. (A Kennedy biography also details a presidential assignation with the actress Angie Dickinson in the Mayflower.). . .