Do you ever wonder what scientists do when they’re not doing…. science?  Cafe Scientifique is “a place where, for the price of a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, anyone can come to explore the latest ideas in science and technology.”  The concept started in the UK and now they are springing up all over, bringing folks from all walks of life together to debate and discuss what’s new.  Science-types and English majors are both welcome.

We have two cafes in our transit-shed, lucky us.  One in Annapolis, where Cy Jones from the World Resources Institute is going to discuss water trading tomorrow, September 30.  Like carbon trading, only wetter.  Another in Arlington on October 7, where Dr. Don Wilson from the Smithsonian Institution going to talk about Bats: Myth and Reality.  It’s at the Front Page, in Ballston.  If you’ve ever thought about putting up a bat house, this is your chance to ask all those questions. 

Could be a nice addition to the ‘hood.  If the neighbors aren’t too freaked out, that is.

On any given day, if you’re craving a little art and culture, there is always an exhibit or performance or demonstration to quench your appetite.

Well this Saturday, plan to venture to Penn Quarter for an extravaganza of art and crafts and performances.  Bombard your senses with 2008 Arts on Foot, a one-day visual and performing arts festival that kicks off the DC fall season.

In addition to the outdoor festival on F street between 6th and 9th Streets, the following venues will also feature activities, exhibits and performances:

Smithsonian American Art Museum and Portrait Gallery: The museums will host booths at the street festival that offer hands-on activities for children.

National Theatre: Come to the inaugural performance of Saturday Morning at the National. Carrie’s Dream is a true story of an African-American girl growing up in the rural south. This interactive show features sing-alongs and reflects the humor and struggles of a family coping with life in a segregated society. Performances are at 9:30 and 11:00 am. Though free, tickets are required and will be distributed 30 minutes before the show on a first come, first served basis. The Helen Hayes Gallery at the National Theatre is located at 1321 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW.

Warner Theatre and Woolley Mammoth Theatre: Take a back stage tour of the theaters. See the Arts on Foot events schedule.

Old Post Office Pavilion: Enjoy live performances by the Levi Stephens Band (alternative soul), Phaze II (smooth jazz), Uncharted Waters (smooth jazz funk), and Kirk Lamkin & Pulse Level (smooth jazz). Performances take place on the Pavilion Stage and are free to the public.

Canadian Embassy: Picture enthusiasts will enjoy a collection of 330 images entitled - 50 Years of American Photojournalism. The photos capture moments from the civil-rights movement, the various wars from 1939 - 1989, and famous people.

Landmark E Street: The DC Shorts Film Festival presents free family films with genres ranging from animation to sci-fi to comedy to experimental. Free tickets will be distributed at the DC Shorts booth at 10:00 am on a first come, first served basis.

National Gallery of Art: At 12:30 pm, catch “O Dia do Desespero (Day of Despair),” a documentary style film about the final hours of Camilio Castelo Branco’s life. The movie speculates on the creative process of the 19th-century Portuguese writer.  Then at 3:00 pm watch “The Last Conquistador ” which follows the  controversy over sculptor John Sherrill Houser’s most important commission, the world’s largest equestrian bronze of Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate. Filmmaker John Valadez will be present to lead a discussion after his film.

National Museum of Women in the Arts: Visit the NMWA booth on 8th and F Streets to create your own unique artist’s accordion book.  All materials provided for you to create a masterpiece.

In addition to all the arts activities, don’t miss the wine tastings and culinary demonstrations. A fun-filled day for all ages!

My plan was simple. Sacrifice a vacation for a staycation. While almost everyone else went off to a beach house for some R-n-R, I would remain dutifully at home, slavishly sketching to get a headstart on design deadlines. At least, that was the plan.

Thanks to a crippling mental block that led to hours of staring at blank vellum and obsessively sharpening pencils (yes, I need to get Illustrator), the plan failed. However, once I accepted my fate and gave in, my staycation became enjoyable and allowed me to reconnect with life in the city.

A few high points:

Two blissful hours at the National Capital YMCA. Something so relaxing about turning off your brain and focusing on the body. Working hard and then channeling your inner Viking in the sauna. Heaven.

Brunch at The Heights. The glory of the poached egg, the decadence of building your own Bloody Mary, all at a civilized pace on a sunny day. Walking around Columbia Heights was struck by how beautiful the mature trees are that line Kenyon Street, how many “For Sale” signs are out, how radically different the streetlife is from years before.

Grilling in Adams Morgan. A friend’s tranquil backyard, a wood-burning grill, lamb, bottles of red wine followed by homemade limoncello. A perfect evening, topped with smores.

Low point (well, nothing is perfect):

Drinks at Vinoteca. Hot, crowded, loud. I wish they would just give in to the actual wine BAR concept, busting out the bar pennisula to the main dining room and open up the entire space for drinks. Having everyone crammed into the narrow front space is just not appealing. Oh, and adding flamenco in the tiny front alcove, further cramping everyone in the bar while the dining room remained empty and open, not to mention no sight lines at all - pricelessly bad idea. Why not use the upstairs lounge? Mystified.

If you’re looking for an eating treat this weekend, The Brewers Association has an option for you tonight or in one of two time-slots tomorrow: “SAVOR: An American craft beer & food experience.” They have a lot of verbiage to describe and promote it, but I’d boil it down to this: Why should the wine drinkers have all the fun?

This is an event for people, like me, who think that beer & food go together every bit as well and with just as much potential subtlety as wine & food. To that end, there’s sub-sessions - which they call their salons - that will examine beer & cheese pairings, beer & dips, beer & the offerings of the Chesapeake bay (seeing a trend here?). You might want to check the schedule of salons before you commit to a certain session, since they’re different and not repeated. I’ll be there tonight and hope I can fit into the beer & cheese session. Dips interests me less - I get enough of them in my professional life. [insert high-hat ba-dum-DUM here]

Even if you don’t join the salons the selection of food and beer that is promised to be on hand to sample is prodigious. The participating brewery list is mouth-watering, with a range from locals Starr Hill Brewing Company and Williamsburg AleWerks to semi-locals like Dogfish Head Craft Brewery and crossing all the way to California with stops along the way. Excitingly I don’t recognize about a third of the names, meaning new beer to try.

At $85 it’s not the cheapest food and beverage event ever, but with close to 100 beers to sample it compares very favorably with the kind of wine events I’ve told you about from the Giramondo company, for example, where you sample 4-9 wines at a cost of around $60, and is well in line with the tasting menus at a lot of restaurants.

Photo by Souders Studios as seen in The Best of American Beer and Food

I’ve realized that one powerful symbol of urban life is the little convenience stores that are on about every tenth corner throughout the District. They’re tiny and the cashiers are often boxed in by bulletproof plexiglass, but the shoppers are regulars and the stores are packed to the gills with necessities and odds and ends. They are a neighborhood institution that only exists in a walking—ie, urban—culture.

I recently had a brilliant idea of doing an irregular series of posts that would investigate neighborhood stores from time to time, looking at who shops there, what they buy, and what the general neighborhood vibe is.

I started at my own neighborhood shop, the Euclid Market, but now I’m not sure how great my idea is. The Korean guy working there, Joe, was happy to talk to me, but the shoppers were not; one of them asked if I was “the police.” Also, while the market sells a very wide variety of goods (sardines, Yellow Tail wine, Van Holten’s Pickles in a Pouch, Luna bars, the obligatory pasta/oil/beans/etc, wristwatches, male enhancement herbal supplements), the best sellers weren’t surprising: singles of IceHouse or Budweiser 211, and Newport cigarettes. I have a feeling those goods might be ubiquitously popular throughout much of the city.

So I’m not sure how well this series is going to proceed, or whether the Logan Circle market I had in mind next will really be much different. Perhaps I need to look under the surface a bit more. Suggestions are welcome!

If you love wine but only know that it sometimes comes in red and other times in white (and sometimes it comes in a box), you should really think about taking a Wine Class for Beginners at the Whitemore House in Dupont. From the GiraMondo Wine Adventures website:

This class will cover the following topics:

- Where do wine flavors and aromas com from

- How are these aromas categorized

- How to pair food and wine

- What are the main differences between old world and new world wines

- Basic wine etiquette (restaurant, liquor store, party at home)

When it comes to wine etiquette, is there much more than pulling the cork and taking a swig? Well, besides letting the wine breath sometimes? Anyway, tonight’s class has done sold out, but there is another one scheduled for April 16th and 7:00PM. Until then, happy drinking! I know I’m looking forward to the weather warming up so I can crack open my Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand. A glass or two of that up on the roof deck, well, it just doesn’t get much better than that.

Photo by F1.4

A Grill at Adams Morgan Day …because the weather is perfect for the beginning of cook-with-fire season. Tom and I inaugurated grilling season last night with some steak and grilled zucchini… and this morning I have the red wine headache to show for it.I hope you’re all enjoying the beautiful weather, and many thanks to Flickr user ohad* for uploading this photo to the Metroblogging DC Flickr Pool.

Not that DC isn’t an awesome town for beer drinkers, but in mid-May, it’s going to be the Best Beer Town in America as Savor comes to town. Taking over the Mellon Auditorium for two days in May, bringing brews to town that we don’t normally get. The names are familiar, you’ll recognize Abita, Dogfish Head, Brooklyn Brewery, New Belgium, Stone, Tröegs, Smuttynose, amongst many others. Check out the awesome salons, which include “Getting Started with Beer and Food,” and “He Said Beer, She Said Wine.”

So mark your calendars, beer-lovers, and get your friend who doesn’t drink to drive downtown. Get ready for some excellent beer, and some great catering to go with it. Start setting aside your money, though, each session (there are three) runs $85, so that’s a bit pricy.

Sangria

Originally uploaded by rabataller.

It came as rather a surprise to the Alexandria location of La Tasca when they were cited last year for serving… sangria. Virginia outlawed the serving of beverages that mix beer or wine with spirits 75 years ago, and upon being informed of the La Tasca citation, Jaleo changed its sangria recipe as well for their Virginia location.

Always with thorough coverage of all things alcohol-related, the City Paper has more details on the particular obscurity of Virginia’s ABC laws.

The most amusing detail in all of this, though, is not that a bunch of old fogeys decided to clamp down on liquor sales right after the repeal of Prohibition, but that the bill introduced by state Representative Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria) would introduce an exemption for sangria only, rather than repealing the ban completely. So maybe you’ll get your sangria, but your Kir Royale is totally out of the question.

Who knew I was practicing civil disobedience with all that sangria I made this summer?

Wayan’s DC Photos

How do you improve on the best pizza in Washington DC? Simple, add beer!

Moroni Pizza now has its liquor license so a cold Negra Modelo can arrive with your Diavola pizza, or in tonight’s departure from Italian to Salvadorean specialities, pescado entomatado.

They also added paint, paintings, and even a jukebox to make it cozy. Heads up to local artists: if you want to show off framed works, stop by and talk with the owners.

I will be the guy in the corner rubbing my belly in happiness.

Moroni Pizza
4811 Georgia Ave NW
(between N Decatur St & N Delafield Pl)
Washington, DC 20011
(202) 829-2090