Joe Flood

Del Ray Ramble: Going Back for Biscuits

I'm in historic, sweaty Del Ray. — I’m in historic, sweaty Del Ray.

Record heat is predicted this weekend. But last weekend was plenty hot for me, so I got my biking in early Sunday morning.

I was up at 7 and out the door not too long after. Sunday morning is the best time to bike in DC, with very little traffic in the city and before the tourists arrive. I cruised over the Memorial Bridge and on to the Mount Vernon Trail. Destination: Alexandria.

Approaching the boardwalk on Daingerfield Island, a cyclist going the opposite way shouted an incoherent warning to me. Wonder what that was about?

Then I saw:

Tree down on the Mt Vernon Trail at Daingerfield Island.

There had been a storm overnight, leaving a massive tree branch across the trail. The bridge was damaged – chunks were missing from it and debris was scattered everywhere. I walked my bike through this mess, stepping over the missing boards.

After having coffee at the Starbucks in Old Town, I decided to take a different route home, to avoid the tree across the trail.

Cameron makes a nice alternative to King Street, a low-traffic route that led me up from the river and to the Potomac Yards Trail, which parallels the train tracks into DC. I followed this new trail for about a mile before detouring into Del Ray on Monroe Av.

There, I passed a beautiful-looking Swing’s Coffee across from a park – that’s where I should’ve had breakfast! I filed that way for next time.

Making a right on Mount Vernon (the avenue, not the trail), I idled through Del Ray. It’s like hipster Alexandria. It was early but there was a line to get in to a place called Stomping Grounds. If only I knew they had biscuits! Another place filed away for next time.

Mount Vernon takes you back to Four Mile Run. Along the way, I passed this bus, which I found very interesting. Traveling the country in a rolling coffee house – that sounds like a dream.

Bus owned by Cllegro Coffee Company. — Bus owned by Allegro Coffee Company.

Rather than take Four Mile Run to the Mount Vernon Trail, I went through Crystal City, stopping to take in this spooky bit of art near some new apartments off Route 1.

Then I got back on the Mt Vernon Trail and returned to DC, just as buses began disgorging hordes of tourists at the Lincoln Memorial. The day only got hotter after that. Glad that I got in my Del Ray ramble early.

I’m going back for biscuits.

Ivy City: The End of the Line

I originally only knew Ivy City as the end of the line, the final destination of the D4 bus that I would sometimes ride downtown. “Ivy City – wonder where that is?” I would think to myself as the bus chugged its way through K Street traffic,

If you live in Northwest DC, vast sections of the city exist only as vague and mysterious notions, sort of like that infamous view of the world from New York poster. Of the other quadrants of the city, you know Southeast as Capitol Hill, Southwest as the place with the brutalist architecture and Northeast… what the hell is in Northeast?

But it’s a big city, bigger than you imagined, sprawling north and east into neighborhoods that look like suburbia and others that look like Newark.

The best way to discover it is by bike. As Hemingway said:

It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best

On a bike, you have a chance to look around in a way that you can’t on a car. It was by bike that I first encountered Ivy City, during last year’s Plaid Ride, sponsored by BicycleSpace. Cyclists dressed in plaid biked down 18th Street, then east across the city on K, before a gentle incline on West Virginia Avenue past Gallaudet University.

When we got to Ivy City, it was an industrial zone of razor-wire fences and and buildings that were being repurposed. BicycleSpace wanted us to see where their new space was going to be.

I recognized the old Hecht’s Warehouse and my mental map of the city reoriented itself – we’re off New York Avenue, I realized. The Hecht’s building is a landmark if you’re driving on New York Av.

Ivy City is being redeveloped. According to the Washington Post, it’s the next cool neighborhood you haven’t heard of.

This pocket-sized industrial district is now home to a brewery, a gin distillery and hot yoga. You can also pay a fortune for a loft in the old Hecht’s building too.

It’s also home to a new BicycleSpace store. I biked into Northeast to check it out and Ivy City.

I was also tempted by bike deals. They had a Jamis Commuter on sale which was sadly gone by the time I got there. No major loss – my Specialized Sirrus is really similar to the Jamis, even if it isn’t as cute.

I ogled the Bromptons, as I do, lusting after these British folding bikes, but then was massively distracted by the Salsa Marrakesh. Such a solidly-built bike, it looks like it could survive the apocalypse. If I ever drop out of society, and travel the world on two wheels, I will do it on one of these bikes.

Ivy City may be the next cool neighborhood but it’s still the end of the line to me. Not near the Metro, and hemmed in by busy New York Av, I don’t get the attraction – there’s a lot of concrete and not many trees. And paying Logan Circle prices to live there? Doesn’t make sense to me but DC real estate left the territory of rational explanation a long time ago.

At BicycleSpace, I bought socks. Figured I had come this far, may as well get something. Then I headed back downtown, where I could get lunch and coffee.

You Can’t Go Home Again: New Belgium Asheville

New Belgium in Asheville

With $4 Fat Tire and a riverside location, New Belgium Asheville is heaven for beer lovers.

I heard of Fat Tire long before I tasted it. A friend spoke of the Colorado brew with a kind of reverence that I found unfathomable. It was just a beer, right? In the years before New Belgium brew came to Washington, DC, she asked for it constantly and was constantly disappointed.

Then, with a mad flourish, New Belgium arrived in a big way for Tour de Fat, a celebration of biking in the city that featured a group ride around Capitol Hill and a day’s worth of fun and games. Not only did I get to try to the amber Fat Tire but also lots of other lovely beers like the hoppy Ranger and the superdrinkable Shift.

I fell in love with New Belgium due to their tasty brews and support of cycling everywhere. It’s a brewery founded by bike lovers! Work there a year and you get a cruiser bike!

A Brewery in Asheville

When I heard that New Belgium was opening a brewery in Asheville, one of my favorite cities, I was drunk with excitement, eagerly counting down the days until I could visit.

And on a Friday afternoon recently, I rolled into the brewery along the French Broad River. Located in a former industrial district, it’s about a five-minute drive from downtown Asheville.

Parking is limited. I hear it gets quite crowded on the weekends. Bike parking is available out front but there didn’t seem to be many cyclists when I was there. (Asheville needs some work on their biking infrastructure. Not sure I’d feel comfortable biking around this Southern city.)

Walking through the front doors, you’re greeted with a beer hall that opens out to a riverview terrace. Drink inside or enjoy the views of the French Broad.

tasting room

lots of beer

outside deck at New Belgium

Beers are $4; samplers are $1.50. Tipping is optional – tips are donated to charity. On tap, you’ll find all your New Belgium favorites along with seasonal and specialty brews. I had a Fat Tire and tried the Heavy Melon, which was too sweet for my liking.

You can also get beer to go – six-packs, sampler packs, growlers and bottles of unusual brews. There’s a big selection of New Belgium swag to purchase; I got a t-shirt.

beer selections

New Belgium gear

What New Belgium needs is a dock along the French Broad. A couple days after my first visit, I went tubing down the river with friends. The brewery was achingly close but there was no way to get up the bank from the river to the brewery. I would’ve loved to restock my tube with New Belgium!

The whole riverfront area is being redeveloped, with trails and other amenities put in there. It’s come a long way from the blighted industrial zone that it used to be in the 1990s.

floating down the French Broad

Asheville is rapidly becoming Beer City USA. Directly across the river is Wedge Brewing, a very funky and cool spot for shirtless people of all ages. Probably my favorite brewery in Asheville – it has a Southern casual vibe that I really like, where hipsters, tourists, rednecks and oldsters all interact. You could picture Greg Allman drinking there.

Not to far away is Wicked Weed Brewing, a mainstay of the Asheville beer scene. And about a 20-minute drive outside of town is the Sierra Nevada Brewery, home to a huge party complex of beer and local food.

“You can’t go home again,” wrote Thomas Wolfe. But after drinking great local $4 beer, how can I go back to DC?

OUTBOX: The Future of Work?

I’ve got one word for you: BOXES. Whether it’s a tiny house or a new transit van, the future is modular. It’s four walls and temporary, brought to you when and where you need it.

That’s the thought behind OUTBOX, temporary outdoor office space constructed in downtown Silver Spring. Created by students at Montgomery College, they describe it as:

OUTBOX is an innovative workspace offering on-the-go professionals a perfect spot to escape the office this season. Work, ideate and create in the fresh air.

Beats the hell out of my windowless, gubment-issued cubicle so I was dying to check it out. OUTBOX is as described, an open-air, covered space with chairs, tables and wifi.

Cool, but probably not necessary in downtown Silver Spring, where there must a dozen places you can work in, from coffee shops to the public library. I’d rather go to Peet’s.

Where this would be ideal, however, are places far from city centers where wifi is ubiquitous. When I was traveling out west last year, I would’ve loved OUTBOX. It would be perfect for a Utah rest stop in the middle of nowhere, allowing travelers a chance to check their email, look up hotels and reconnect to the world.

OUTBOX would also be great at places where you need temporary workspace, like a convention or a concert. It would make a great press room for reporters, social media mavens and photographers covering such events.

Cheap, flexible workspaces are the future. Investing in massive buildings filled with white-collar workers is a waste of money. Why pay for half-empty desks? Here’s to a better alternative, one that employees might enjoy more: the box! It might not be OUTBOX but we’re all going to be working and living in such places pretty soon.

Photography Show: New Orleans by Ben Carver

A friend of mine once lived in the French Quarter of New Orleans. After first visiting during Mardi Gras, I returned every few years, my last trip occurring just a few months before Hurricane Katrina. While everyone knew that the city was basically a big bathtub, and that a storm could fill that bathtub with water, no one expected the unthinkable to happen.

And then it did. What surprised me was the long-lasting impact the storm had. The city was devastated, livelihoods were wiped out and thousands of people left the city forever – including my friend Bob. I visited a year after Katrina and much of the city seemed like a ghost town. It’s slowly recovered since then.

Ben Carver spent three months walking the neighborhoods of New Orleans, capturing the city as it exists ten years after Hurricane Katrina. An exhibit of his photos recently took place at the White Room in Shaw, featuring selections from the 600+ images that comprise this collection.

For anyone who has visited New Orleans, the photos evoke a lot of nostalgia. I’ve been a fan of the city since reading A Confederacy of Dunces, one of my favorite books of all time. It’s unlike any other place in the United States – and I hope it remains that way.

DC to Leesburg by Bike and Metro: A Multimodal Adventure

Last weekend, I rode to Reston, taking a 50-mile bike ride from DC into the outer suburbs of the nation’s capital.

I wanted to ride the WO&D Trail again but wanted to skip over the parts of the trail that I had already done. I would use Metro for that purpose, since you can take your bike on the train on the weekends. With the new Silver Line running out to Reston, it seemed like the perfect solution, allowing me to leapfrog ahead to where I left off last weekend. Bikes and trains – a perfect multimodal adventure!

But, of course, there was track work on the weekend, as always with Metro. Orange line trains were running only every 20 minutes and the Silver Line was terminating at Ballston rather than running into DC.

I checked wmata.com for the next Orange Line train before leaving home. I hurried to Farragut West and was so proud of myself for making the train!

Unfortunately, I blanked on switching to the Silver Line at Ballston and so just stayed on the train to the end of the line in Vienna. Then I biked through the neighborhoods and back to the WO&D.

It’s a beautiful trail that just gets better the further west you go. Every few miles, there’s another town, with a brewery, bike shop and coffee place. I don’t know how people bike the length of it without stopping multiple times. I biked through Reston, Herndon and Sterling without stopping.

But when I smelled the barbecue at Carolina Brothers in Ashburn, I had to stop. Located right next to the trail, it’s awfully tempting.

I actually went past it, thought about it and then turned around and came back. I’m glad I did. It’s a great spot. Casual, fast and filled with cyclists enjoying a mild Sunday afternoon.

Once you get past Ashburn, the trail really opens up. With its long straightaways and miles between road crossings, it attracts the road biking crowd.

For me, I kept on to Leesburg, where I stopped for coffee, of course! My motto: Always Be Coffeeneuring. I had cappuccino at King Street Coffee along with a new doggie friend. Cute place and excellent coffee.

Purcellville and the end of the trail was another ten miles. I decided to save that for a future trip. I turned around and headed back, passing many tempting trailside breweries.

This time I would catch the Silver Line in Reston. The Wiehle Avenue station is right off the trail, though you have to navigate a bit of construction to find your way into it. The station was really anticlimactic. I was expecting something more glamorous. But it looked just any other Metro station complete with a 1970s-era train waiting at the platform. Got on the train and sat there for a good twenty minutes, along with tourists coming from Dulles. Yup, it’s always this way, I wanted to tell them.

The Silver Line train then slowly chugged its way past Tyson’s Corner then down the middle of I-66 before ending in Ballston. Getting off the train, a crowd of confused passengers waited on the platform. The next train into DC wasn’t for another 20 minutes (at least).

Thank god I had a bike! I abandoned Metro and headed for the Custis Trail, flying downhill into Rosslyn, then over the Memorial Bridge to home.

Lesson Learned: Using Metro to leapfrog ahead on the WO&D would be great if the transit system actually worked. But a bike is more reliable.

Let’s Ride to Reston!

It was one of those perfect Sundays in April that forced you outside. Tulips were blooming, the skies were cloud-free and the temperature was inching toward 60 degrees.

No way was I staying inside. I wanted the WO&D Trail, an old rail route that runs for 45 miles and escapes the DC metro sprawl. The furthest I’ve biked on the trail was Vienna. This time, I would go further.

And with my Specialized Sirrus tuned up by Bike Rack, I had the perfect vehicle to get me there. So I biked and biked and biked – up the long hill in Rosslyn, around the fun corkscrew on the Custis Trail, and then the ascent into Arlington, Falls Church and Vienna. Then I kept on to Reston, where I had lunch in their ersatz town center, and turned around.

Strangely, for me, I hardly took any pictures. I was focused on riding.

On the return leg, I started to flag near Vienna so I stopped for cappuccino at Caffe Amouri. The great thing about the WO&D is that every few miles there are breweries, restaurants, bike shops and coffee places. The caffeine was enough to push me back down the trail, where I got to fly downhill on the Custis Trail and back to DC.

I returned exhausted, a little sunburned and strangely un-hungry. I’m not that much of a Strava fanatic (it’s a fitness-tracking app) but I’m embedding this ride because 50 miles – that’s a record for me!

Next Level Craft at the House of Sweden

InstagramDC recently got a sneak peek at the Next Level Craft exhibit at the House of Sweden in Georgetown. This beautiful embassy along the Potomac played host to an exhibit described as:

A mythical wedding, a demonstration, a carnival, a funeral procession, a fashion show or perhaps a combination of all these? A colorful parade of mysterious creatures wander through a fictitious northern landscape carrying unique crafted objects. Who are they and where are they going?

Next Level Craft is not your typical handicraft exhibition – it has its own soundtrack and music video. The renowned young Swedish artist Aia Jüdes has created a playful and different tale of craft, mixing voguing (a modern dance style characterized by perfect, stylized hand and arm movements, acrobatic poses and flamboyant fashion), street art, high fashion, pop culture and electronic music with everything from wool embroidery, weaving and felting to root binding, wood turning and birch bark braiding.

It was a surreal experience, a room filled with bizarre objects and an ever-changing lightshow. Adding to the strangeness was a trippy video of dancing Swedes. So much weirdness for InstagramDC to photograph, as the lights cycled from red to blue.

Best of all, photography was encouraged! It’s a very forward-thinking embassy for hosting this strange exhibit and for reaching out to local photographers to cover it. We had a blast taking pictures of these unique crafts and posing for photos in the weird lighting.

That was cool. But getting up on the roof was even cooler.

There was an amazing view of Rosslyn and the Kennedy Center, from a vantage point that few get to see. It was sleeting but no way was I going to miss this experience.

As a writer, it’s inspiring to see creative work. It’s source material for me. I wrote Murder on U Street, my novel about homicide in DC’s art scene, after having similar experiences. So don’t be surprised if a trippy Swedish art exhibit shows up in a future book 😉

DC Walkabout: Meridian Hill and Millie & Al’s

As mentioned in my previous post, it’s time to walk. Walk hard. I pulled a muscle in my calf so I can’t run for a while. Instead, I’m going to walk around this city – a different direction each time – and blog about the things that I see. This week’s adventure: Meridian Hill and Millie Al’s.

I had to visit Millie & Al’s one last time before they closed. Millie’s is an iconic dive bar that’s been on 18th Street in Adams Morgan for decades.

Leaving my Logan Circle apartment, I set off up 15th Street on Wednesday after work. Musical choice was the excellent new album from Blur, The Magic Whip.

Spring is a funny season in DC. Warm one day, freezing the next. I happened to catch Mother Nature on one of her nice days, mild and overcast.

If you follow me on Instagram, you know that I have Tulipmania. I’m just in love with these splashes of color that blossom all over the city in April. Sometimes, they appear in the most unexpected places, like behind the mysterious Scottish Rite Temple on 16th St. I’m sure the flowers are used in some sort of mysterious ritual. Or maybe they’re just for the neighborhood to enjoy.

I passed the apartment where I used to live, back in the 90s, pre-Whole Foods, when the neighborhood was transitional. At that time, 14th Street was to be avoided, unless you were looking for crack or hookers. Other than the Black Cat, most everything else along the street was boarded up. However, the neighborhood was cheap enough that a recent grad like me could afford to live there.

When I lived at 15th and Swann, I liked to walk up to Meridian Hill Park. Back then it was more commonly referred to Malcolm X Park, but demographic changes have made that moniker seem absurd. People do yoga in that park now. Boot camps drill bridesmaids in the morning. Bros throw frisbees around. Malcolm X Park is no more.

One place that remained from the 90s was Millie & Al’s. I mean literally the same, down to the same Star Trek models hanging from the ceiling and the filthy, cramped bathrooms – part of its charm. It was not a fake dive bar like hipster-friendly Showtime. It was the real thing, a place to sit in a booth and drink pitchers of beer, while you waited for the $1 jello shots sign to turn on.

Millie’s was the first bar I ever went to in Adams Morgan. In the rough and tumble DC of Marion Barry, 18th Street still had a residential character to it – there was a hardware store along the street. The only bars were Millie’s and the even more divey Dan’s. I used to drink with my roommates Bob and Colin after taking the 92/96 bus from our apartment near National Cathedral.

I liked taking people there – it was cheap and had a feel of real DC about it. Broke foreign students particularly liked it. You could go to Adams Morgan on a weekend until around 2003 before you felt like you were entering a riot zone. 18th Street turned into Bourbon Street with brawls and vomit predominant. But I guess must’ve made some impression at Millie’s because I ran into one of the bouncers about five years ago and he remembered me.

Millie & Al’s closed on April 7. This dark drinking hole where beer was sold in plastic pitchers and you had to navigate a stairway to reach a couple of cramped toilets – it fetched a cool $1.8 million. Drinking is big business in DC.

As a lover of dive bars, it would be easy to be melancholy. Gentrification claimed Millie & Al’s. However, this same force revitalized 14th Street and made Meridian Hill Park safe to visit. Progress is a good thing, even when you lose an iconic drinking institution.

DC Walkabout: Sunsets, Tulips and Barbies

I have a calf strain, a sharp twinge that occurred when I was playing soccer about a week ago. It’s prevented me from running. I can only go about a mile before the twinge forces me to stop and walk. The only remedy for this pain is time. Instead of running after work, I had to come up with a new activity.

I decided to do evening walkabouts, ambulatory strolls around downtown Washington. I started last night, just as the rain was tapering off.

My destination: the White House. There I discovered tulips, their petals closed up and sparkling with rain drops.

After taking some tulip pics, I headed for Farragut Square. The rain had stopped and the clouds had cleared in the west. Suddenly, the streets were suffused with a warm, golden light.

And then, in the sky over the office buildings, a rainbow appeared – a good luck sign, blessing the idea of evening walkabouts.

I continued my way up Connecticut Avenue to Dupont Circle. It’s a destination that I’m drawn to again and again. Not only is it a pretty spot, but it represents something to me – it’s where I first got a taste of urban life after coming to DC for college. It was where we went to eat Greek food at Zorba’s (still there) and drink in local bars (most of which are gone or changed names). The sun was just beginning to set as I arrived.

Listening to the Pixies, I headed east on Q St. There was one more destination I wanted to check out: the Barbie Pond Garden. This is a local institution that I have somehow missed. The owners of this house at 15th and Q decorate their garden with naked Barbies. This month’s theme was Easter.

It’s going to be a while before I can run again. The only remedy for pain is time. Instead of running, I’m going to walk in different directions – north, south, east, west – and write and take photos of what I discover in DC.