Commenter Paul noted that Thursday’s blustery gusts toppled the sign at the dilapidated Howard Theater, depositing the rusting hulk atop the rickety marquee.  We wonder how long it will be before the marquee comes crashing to the ground.

Neither the sign nor the marquee will survive the renovation anyway.

The LeDroit Park Civic Association meets tomorrow night, Tuesday, February 23, at 7:00 pm in the basement of the Florida Avenue Baptist Church.  (Enter through the back at U and Bohrer Streets)

This month’s agenda:

• Introduction to MPD Third District Commander Jacob Kishter
• Presentation on the Howard University Campus Plan
• Community survey
• Zoning variance request for Howard University Hospital
• Update on the forthcoming park—Jose Sousa, Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development
• Civic Association Volunteer Opportunities

As always, all are welcome to attend.

We wrote earlier about the mountains of snow that plows had piled up in LeDroit Park.  Much of the city of Washington had become like the state of Washington, with snow-capped mounds visible from every window.

Welcome back east.  We caught glimpses of bobcats and dumptrucks hauling away the snow mounds to lands far, far away.

The record snow that accumulated this weekend brought us out to snowball fights and sledding in Meridian Hill Park.  With few stores open and few roads passable, Saturday was a true holiday in the old-fashioned sense.

Howard University Hospital’s groundskeeper was out in heartbeat clearing the hospital’s sidewalks while contractors cleared the hospital’s parking lot. Pretty impressive!

Neighbors dug their cars out of snow and the usually busy Florida Avenue carried more pedestrians then automobiles. The District government sent numerous plows along U Street and Florida Avenue, largely neglecting (understandably) the quiet streets of LeDroit Park.

You didn’t need a 4×4 to get around this weather. These two girls found that a daddy-powered sled was the most convenient form of transportation.

In Dupont Circle, hundreds of people gathered for a snowball fight. We caught the end of it:

Is a white Hummer camouflaged when it’s in the snow? These snowballers were able to spot and pelt it.

This Suburban sped away as soon as the light turned green.

For cars in LeDroit Park, Fourth and Fifth Streets are passable, but the east-west streets are better left to the four-wheel-drives.

More snow is expected Tuesday night and during the day on Wednesday. Were Pres. William McKinley still alive today, he would not only argue the merits of a gold standard with Rep. Ron Paul, but would also scoff at this relative “dusting”.  Though we’ve recorded 45 inches so far this winter, the winter of 1898-99, during McKinley’s administration, set the city’s record, dumping a total of 54.4 inches on the capital!

If you’re tired of the snow, be glad you don’t live in Québec City, which suffers 124 inches of snow each winter… on average!

The National Weather Service is predicting a snow storm to cover Washington from Friday morning through Saturday evening.  The storm is expected to leave 12 – 20 inches of snow.

So far we’ve been impressed with the dedication of Howard University Hospital’s groundskeepers, who are out there within an hour of the first flake to clear the sidewalks.

Here’s a novel idea we found online for a pedal-powered snow plow.  If someone is willing to build it, we’re willing to drive it down every sidewalk in LeDroit Park.

What was that chop chop chop you heard last night? Was it a medevac helicopter landing at Howard University Hospital? Was the president swinging by on Marine One for a nighttime tour of the Gage-Eckington mud pit?

Neither. Last night the MPD, equipped with air support, arrested two people at the illegal casino running out of a house on Fourth Street between Elm Street and Oakdale Place. As early as this summer we heard complaints about the illegal games going on inside. In fact this Las Vegas-upon-Fourth was so popular that its patrons clogged the parking spaces on the surrounding streets. It was only a matter of time before the house (and neighborhood in general) became a target of a violent casino heist.

Neighbors had complained of patrons loitering outside each afternoon waiting for the house to open and for the games to begin. The gambling hosts, for all the nuisances they caused, observed a self-imposed blue law, closing shop on Sunday.

But just as a roulette wheel eventually comes to a stop, the casino’s business had dwindled over the past month. Last night the MPD swooped in to stop it for good. Looks like the two arrested had rolled snake eyes.

We arrived home yesterday evening to a nice surprise.  It looks as though DPW, which suspends regular street sweeping in the winter, had decided that LeDroit Park needed a clean-up.

Not only were the curbs cleared, but the area around the entrance gate was cleared of the debris that collects in the shrubs.

Just in time for tonight’s atmospheric slushy of snow, sleet, ice, and rain.

We were slightly annoyed to hear jack-hammering from our bedroom window at 7:10 yesterday morning, but we were pleased to see what it was all for: the WASA contractor that had torn up the sidewalk a few months ago to repair a water line had now returned to repair the sidewalk.  They healed the asphalt gash with brick!

Happy New Year!

Now pay up.

Our city council and mayor, ever desperate for new sources of revenue, have levied, effective today, a five-cent tax on every paper and plastic bag.  So unless you carry reusable bags in your pockets for every unforeseen trip to the store, get ready to shell out.

The stated purpose of the tax is to clean up the Anacostia River and three or four cents of every nickle collected will go to the Anacostia River Protection Fund.  Some stores have the option of offering a five-cent credit to customers who bring their own bags.  In such cases, store owners will be allowed to keep two of the five cents of the tax they collect.

The bag tax applies to every store that sells food or alcohol.  Since Best Buy sells candy near its check out lines, the tax applies there, too; you’d better take a reusable bag to carry your new DVD player home on the Metro.

Paper bags, which are biodegradable, are also taxed, not because of any potential impact on the Anacostia, but because of politics: store owners feared that a tax on plastic bags would encourage customers to opt for their more expensive paper counterparts.

For those who own cars (your author is not one of them), it might be easy to store one’s bags in the trunk and to pull them out at the store.  The rest of us are expected to carry bags on our persons, which is a nuisance that the mayor, with his city-provided SUV, and the council, with their free street parking in front of the Wilson Building, probably don’t understand.

Our biggest complaint about this tax is not so much the money, but the degree of condescension it exudes, implying that those who use plastic bags are sinners destroying the Anacostia.  Readers of this blog will note our distaste for litter, especially the heaps of it that pile up in front of the Howard Theater on the Block of Blight.  It’s easy to levy a feel-good tax, whereas a sustained effort to fine people who litter and to sanction businesses whose customers litter isn’t nearly as sexy.

New Year, Newspeak

Adding to the condescension is the legislation’s wording, which refers to the tax by the more innocuous word fee, as though city residents are too stupid to identify a tax when they see it.

The District Department of the Environment, which is responsible for administering the new tax (oops, I mean “fee”) has jumped on the Orwellian bandwagon, too, refusing to use the word tax.  Even worse, their campaign against plastic bags (see the image above) is an exemplar of newspeak, urging us to “skip the bag [to] save the river”.  For those of use who don’t litter— the majority of District residents— to “skip the bag” will not “save the river” since we wouldn’t have littered anyway and by reusing other bags, we avoid paying the tax to finance the river clean-up.  Ironically, by skipping the bag, we are not helping to save the river.

Cleaning up the river is a worthwhile goal, but levying yet another regressive excise tax wrapped heavily in moralistic rhetoric is neither honest nor fair.  Financing river cleanup should come from proven sources of river pollution, including sewers (by taxing water bills), impervious real property (WASA already charges a fee for this), and by enforcing anti-littering laws more aggressively.  Many of us, the majority I’d expect, use plastic bags and dispose of them responsibly so they don’t soil our communities and rivers.  Nonetheless, we are the scapegoat pretext for this new tax.

We are willing to bet a shiny nickle that this latest feel-good tax will do little to curb littering and we expect the heaps of garbage to continue to pile up in front of the Howard Theater.

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Over in Shaw, the billboards at the intersection of Fourth Street, P Street, and New Jersey Avenue have been removed after the billboard’s owner, ClearChannel, reached an agreement with the District.

The Other 35 Percent details the billboards’ downfall.  And there’s a video, too:  (skip ahead to 2:30 and then to 4:25 to see the massive billboard crash to the ground.)