Perhaps if Wayan’s couch guest is still looking for a place to stay, he should take a gander at HotPads.com. HotPads appears to be a mash-up between google maps and wikipedia, offering a user-friendly at-a-glance look at available housing options inside the beltway.

Users can customize their search requirements by zip code, city, county or state, using a variety of variables. A quick Georgetown search turned up not a whole lot, whereas a quick search of my home zip code turned up two rental possibilities.

Looking for a roommate? You apparently can use that feature too, although it turned up zilch for me. This appears to be a great tool for relocation professionals who know naught about the new city they’ll call home. Doing a quick search of cities such as Seattle and Boston turned up a whole lot of useful information.

These three Notre Dame former college roommates moved to the D.C. area and created HotPads in early ’05, relaunching the site last month. The best thing about HotPads? It’s totally free.

Between HotPads and The D.C. Crime Map newcomers to D.C. can learn much more about prospective neighbours before they even put down a deposit. Say ‘sayonara’ to moving in sight unseen, suckers.

Silver Spring and Takoma Park residents or anyone who enjoys strolling, jogging and biking the Sligo Creek Parkway may be interested in volunteering for tomorrow’s 5th annual Sweep The Creek. The trash clean-up event is sponsored by the Friends of Sligo Creek and they provide bags, gloves, drinking water and snacks. Participants also receive commemorative National Public Lands Day posters, t-shirts, and more.

If I hadn’t already made plans to go the National Book Festival and the Magical Montgomery arts festival, I would definitely be there to pitch-in. Stay tuned for reviews of those events.

Since Takoma Park is known for its food Co-ops and Vegetarian/Vegan restaurants, it’s only natural that they would have a Farmers Market. Located on Laurel Ave. at Carroll (map), the market is held every Sunday year round, although you are better off visiting spring through fall. Featuring fresh, locally produced fruit, vegetables, baked goods, meat, and eggs, if you’re used to paying Whole Foods prices for such items you’re in for a pleasant surprise. Happy, healthy eating!

Related Post: Vegan in DC.

I recently signed up for Meetup looking to join a particular group interested in Web standards. How boring, right?

Anyway, as part of the signup process I was asked to divulge my home address and opted into a mailing list that keeps me informed about other groups and their meetings in the neighborhood. This is where things get interesting. So, the question is, can you make a correlation between the local population and such a list? You be the judge.

• Reiki
• Polyamory
• Raw Food
• Tarot
• Alternative Energy
• Metaphysics
• Gnostics
• Experimental Music
• Hybrid Cars
• Sierra Club
• Vegetarian

What, no Vegan group?

Before you jump down my throat, I don’t have anything against counter-cultere. If I could afford to I would live in San Francisco. Plus, there are a lot more groups and I certainly wouldn’t consider all of them “alternative.”

Now, I realize that Daily Candy is just trying to help out one of their sponsors, but are we as bad as the author there suggests? “Folks in these parts just don’t seem to take the same pride in their neighborhoods as those in other towns.”

Sure, we’re no Chicago or New York in terms of our love for neighborhoods and names, and the District doesn’t officially recognize the names of the neighborhoods here, but I’d say there’s some serious love for the neighborhood in DC. Jenn even feels bad she can’t get into the ANC meeting!

What say you readers? Are we as neighborhood apathetic as Daily Candy says? If you’re feeling like you want to represent, though, check out DistrictTees or Neighborhoodies.com.

this is huge news. i was very (pleasantly) surprised to read of this in the Post this morning.

full article

Linda Schade and the Takoma Park-based TrueVoteMD have really done an amazing job on this issue. they even persuaded Ehrlich to reverse himself and support paper ballots. the power of collective action at its finest.

Bubble? Bubble? What Bubble?

Real Estate assessments are up 21% on average. Trinidad is up 47%. Congress Heights up 41%. Median House price in the District is $400,000 right now. But it’s not all painful news, as the homestead exemption’s up to $60,000, and the rate per hundred dollars has gone down to 92 cents, but that does make the annual tax bill on a $400,000 house over $3,000.

I know from personal experience that the assessments went up in Arlington, as I’m looking at yet another net increase in my taxes, though the rates won’t be set until mid April. How’d your assessment go this year?