I received a few Twitter messages last night about some crazy happenings — a few people reported manholes exploding and spewing out steam around 14th and Clifton, and another reported that only a handful of the 30-something street lights were on at 14th and Kenyon. One example: Whoa. Potholes blew out (with smoke coming out…

Just learned something — apparently some folks are trying to organize a DC State Fair — kind of like a state fair you might attend in the Midwest or South, and sort of like a county fair (but since District Fair doesn’t have a nice ring to it, they went with state). This year, the…

Here’s your weekly history photo post (formerly Wednesday History, but I keep forgetting to post it on Wednesdays). This 1925 shot is a old gas station at 14th and Belmont with the unusual name of Toot-An-Kum-In. Before you get the wrong idea, that’s a play on Tutankhamun, aka King Tut. The Shorpy page notes the…

How healthy and safe are our restaurants and grocery stores? Very healthy. I just discovered via U Street Girl that the city now has a searchable health inspection website so I decided to take a look at local spots to see how they fared. For the most part, they all fared very well. About the…

So says the City Paper. Apparently Target and Best Buy, both of which are based in Minnesota, gave about $250,000 total to a group running commercials for a Republican gubernatorial candidate who opposes same-sex marriage. A boycott began, the Human Rights Campaign, a gay and lesbian advocacy group, criticized the donations, and the City Paper…