YOU CAN SEE seven bands on a Wednesday night, at a reasonable time and for a good cause. We know, you don't dare believe it, but try, especially since the show at La Casa benefits those who lost things in the recent apartment building fire in Mt. Pleasant.

The lineup is: Fever, U.S. Royalty, Ra Ra Rasputin, the Coats, Kitty Hawk, Sugarcane Crawl and Wild Fictions. And again, all donations made go to victims of the fire.

» La Casa, 3166 Mt. Pleasant St. NW; 8 p.m., donations requested. (Columbia Heights)

TRAVELING CHEF Joshua Ploeg is cooking a seven-course vegan meal for the first 40 people to RSVP. It's a benefit for environmental activist Marie Mason, so you can feel smugly green in any number of ways, which you're choking down tofu and ... you know, delicious vegan goodness.

» The Potter's House, 1658 Columbia Road, NW; 7 p.m., $20 donation requested; volunteers@dcinfoshop.org. (Columbia Heights)

Photo by Jay Howell

TODAY'S THE FIRST DAY of full ticketed enforcement of the new parking restrictions that went into effect in Columbia Heights to help ease the burden on local curbs created by the opening of the massive DCUSA shopping complex.

According to a message from D.C. Council member Jim Graham on the Adams Morgan Yahoo! Group on Friday, those violating the new restrictions over the past 30 days were supposed to have received warning tickets. But real tickets will be issued starting today, Graham says.

If an errant parking official gave you a real ticket during the warning period, Graham says you should contact his office to get the ticket voided.

Get more information on which streets have new parking rules (and what those restrictions are) on this PDF version of a letter from the D.C. Department of Transportation that was sent to Columbia Heights residents.

Photo by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post

AS YOU EXIT the Columbia Heights Metro and emerge at 14th and Irving, you see most of the things you've become accustomed to on 14th St. In other words, scads of cars, grimy streets, bicycles that have been jacked of half their accoutrements leaving sad wheel-less skeletons. The newspaper boxes are covered in graffiti, and the signpoles tend to totter at odd angles.

It's still not necessarily a place you'd want to be after dark, and certainly a place where you'll raise eyebrows if you take out a shiny silver digital camera, wave it around and start taking pictures of...

Continue Reading "Stores in Store: What's Next for Columbia Heights?" »

WE'RE IN THE MIDST of a big transition period for several District neighborhoods. As we reported earlier this week, the opening of part of the DC USA shopping complex has put in place a big piece of the development puzzle there. In Near Southeast, crews are toiling away to prepare the new Nationals stadium for gameplay later this month. And the decision by National Public Radio to remain in the District is stirring up buzz around its selected new home at 1111 North Capitol Street NE.

Our colleague Marc Fisher took a stroll through each affected neighborhood, and his observations make for interesting reading. Click the links below to get to his full blog posts on washingtonpost.com.

» Part One — North Capitol Street: "For now, the stretch of Capitol Street where NPR intends to move is hardly what anyone would call welcoming or pleasant, and given the street's heavy car traffic, it's hard to imagine it becoming a pedestrian-friendly avenue. But if the retail envisioned for both the NPR building and the New Community across the way come to pass, a far less forbidding streetscape may emerge."

Continue Reading "A Changing City: North Capitol St., Near Southeast, Columbia Heights" »

"IT'S IMMACULATE."

Such was one of the high complements that punctuated the din of whirring shopping carts and shuffling feet at the Target store in Columbia Heights on its very first day in business. The pronouncement above came from a woman in her 30s who was pushing a cart near the store's grocery section. Her male companion responded with an emphatic, "Mmm-hmmm."

I arrived with the lunchtime crowd, hours after the store's doors first opened for business. The customers I encountered seemed in turns eager, excited and nonplussed at the notion of shopping where no shopping had been done before.

I fit more into the category of the curious.

Like many D.C. residents, I'd followed the saga of the Columbia Heights Target for years. My interest was piqued way back in 2001, when word that the store would open just blocks away was one of the bits of information that helped lure me out of my native Virginia to a moderately priced efficiency apartment in Adams Morgan.

As I passed the alleged site of said big-box installation, which sat between my apartment on Lanier Place and the Columbia Heights Metrorail station, I found a scene reminiscent of photos I'd found in history books of Berlin circa 1945. The crumbling buildings included a U.S. post office, reduced to rubble except for its facade, which cut into the sky like a jagged stone razor blade.

The rubble was eventually cleared, leaving only the facades and a vacant lot, surrounded by a fence. Which sat. And sat. And sat.

I left Adams Morgan in 2005 with nary a big red bullseye in sight.

But the Columbia Heights I knew back then wasn't a thing like the sparkling, bustling hub you see now. A Five Guys is poised to open in what was once an empty lot near the Metro escalators. The post office facade is now part of the exterior of a still-unopened Best Buy. And, of course, there's the Target itself.

Continue Reading "On Target: Exploring Columbia Heights' New Store" »

DID YOU MAKE YOUR LIST? Check it twice? Save up your allowance?

Good. There's shopping to do.

The long-awaited, much ballyhooed Target store in Columbia Heights — part of the 50,000 square-foot, $145 million DC USA shopping center and the first of the big-box chain's stores inside the District lines — opens its doors this morning at 8 a.m.

But if you're hoping to be the first customer, you're out of luck. D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty beat you to it.

Hizzoner got a sneak peek at the store on Tuesday, WTOP's Adam Tuss reports. While there, he bought batting gloves for his twin sons.

» "D.C.'s First Target Store Set to Open" [WTOP]
» "A Rapid Renaissance in Columbia Heights" [WaPo]

Photo by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post

"THIS WAS A NEIGHBORHOOD where we had tried to get McDonald's, and they said they wouldn't consider it. Today, we'd rather not have McDonald's."

— D.C. Council member Jim Graham on how much has changed in Columbia Heights in recent years, as reported by The Post's Paul Schwartzman.

Once one of the District's most vibrant commercial areas, riot-scarred 14th Street NW struggled over the years to attract new business. But with this month's opening of the giant D.C. USA complex at 14th and Irving streets NW, anchored by a Target store, the last big piece of the neighborhood's rapid revitalization is coming into place, joining other new businesses, restaurants and luxury condos.

Officials and community leaders will gather in Columbia Heights on Wednesday to open the D.C. USA retail complex.

Photo by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post

ALTHOUGH THE NEW TARGET retail complex in Columbia Heights comes with a 1,000-space underground parking garage, some residents still fear that precious on-street parking will see a squeeze even tighter than usual when the businesses there open their doors next month.

The D.C. Council is considering a plan for new pilot projects aimed at keeping the parking situation under control despite the arrival of Target, Best Buy and other businesses that are flooding into the neighborhood.

Continue Reading "Columbia Heights Parking Meeting Tonight" »

WE NOW HAVE an explanation for why D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue computer servers were found next to a trash compactor by the Ruby Tuesday in Columbia Heights last week: They'd been sold at auction and the person who bought them had intended to ship them elsewhere, but ended up abandoning them instead.

Report The Post's Carol D. Leonnig and Dan Keating:

Owners of a United Parcel Service store in Columbia Heights said [Friday] that they found their experience with the servers perplexing and came forward with an account after they read a Post report [on Friday] about the discovery of the equipment. They said a woman in her 20s tried Tuesday to ship the servers to a Pennsylvania address. But after she learned that it would cost $275 and conferred with a man in Pennsylvania whom she described as the buyer, she said she and the buyer had decided to throw the servers away, the store operators said. She asked for help taking them to the nearby alley's trash compactor.

Continue Reading "Update: An Explanation for Trashed Servers" »