Been house hunting for a typical 3BR with basement family home on the Hill recently?  Then you know there really have not been too many options.  But this Sunday you’re in luck.  There’s a lovely place open from 1 – 4 on F St NE.

812 F St, NE (just 2 blocks south of H St Corridor), is a charming semi detached federal with lots of character.  3 BR, 2 .5 BA, tin ceilings, cork and hardwood flooring, a finished in law suite AND a thoughtfully renovated kitchen with Bosch appliances.  Listed at $710k.

Because it’s Superbowl Sunday, there aren’t a ton of open houses , but there are some interesting ones.  The full list is posted here.

"Tapiz 2," Acrylic and Silkscreen on Canvas, Courtesy of Pepa Leon.

The Brentwood Arts Exchange at the Gateway Arts Center (4pm to 7pm)

The Brentwood Arts Exchange presents Rivers and Memories- the art of E. J. Montgomery and Lilian Thomas Burwell.  Timed to coincide with Black History Month, this visually engaging exhibition plays on a careful balance between fluid and static motion.  Also on display at the center are the works of ceramicist Susan O’Brien, an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire.

Brentwood Arts Exchange at the Gateway Arts Center is located at 3901 Rhode Island Avenue Brentwood, MD

Conner Contemporary Art (6pm to 8pm)

Conner Contemporary starts off 2012 with Bodies and Soul by Patrcia Cronin.  Inspired by 19^th century American neo-classical sculpture, Cronin has created large bronze tombs to protest the Federal Government’s stance on gay marriage.  Cronin’s words explain it best “if I can’t have it in life, I’m going to have it in death.”

Conner Contemporary Art is located at 1358 Florida Avenue NE

G Fine Art (6pm to 8pm)

G Fine Art presents Ian Whitmore’s The Devil, a Shadow, the Notice of a Small Falling Leaf.  In this exhibition, three years in the making, Whitmore grapples with iconoclast Andreas Karlstadt’s anguish of believing paradoxically that religious iconography is blasphemous and should be destroyed while simultaneously fearing divine retribution for their destruction.

G Fine Art is located at 1350 Florida Avenue NE.

 Open Studio dc (6-9pm)

Open Studio dc will present recent prints by Carolyn Hartmann and Pepa Leon.  Hartmann created Open Studio dc as a place both to showcase work and as a local center for printmaking and instruction.  For more information about the Open Studio dc including the exhibition and a class schedule, click here.

Open Studio DC is located at 1348 Florida Avenue NE

Tilted Torch Sweet Things at the Red Palace (Performance Starts at 10pm)

The fun never stops in the H Street corridor.  More naughty than nice, this pre-Valentines day show promises to tease, titillate and entertain! Tickets are $10 in advance and $15 at the door.  For additional details and to purchase tickets click here.

The Red Palace is located at 1212 H ST NE

Phil Hutinet is the Editor-in-Chief of East City Art.  You can get more information about East City Art on Facebook  or follow them on Twitter

Originally uploaded to flickr by tonp1

A weekly roundup of interesting miscellany from our fellow neighborhood bloggers.

Borderstan takes a look at the latest outpost of burger joint Black and Orange.  Anybody for a heavyweight No Burger No Cry??

U Street Dirt asks: is our city as invincible as we think?  Some may wonder if one too many convicted councilmembers will hold us back.

Congress Heights on the Rise is tired of feeling like Ward 8 is a dumping ground for group homes.  Seems everyone has their own Reservation 13.

JDLand has the latest on the expansion of the Cervera restaurant empire with two spots in Near Southeast.

Photo by María Helena Carey

So here we are: the first weekend of February in the good ol’ U S of A.

What is there to do?

For starters, there is apparently some fab game going on– they throw this funny-shaped ball back and forth and the players wear tight spandex. I hear it’s pretty good. If you want to watch this mighty American portent, Lauren will have the bar hookup for you tomorrow! And if you couldn’t care less about the game but have heard some crazy amazing things about the ads this year — like, say, the VW ad, or the creepy babies, or the leaked Ferris Bueller CR-V ad — you can always head over to the USA Today/Facebook Admeter and vote for your favorites!

After the Superbowl — or the first season of that one indie show, perhaps, punctuated by the Puppy Bowl — tune to the Food Network’s “Cupcake Wars” at 10pm EST and watch our own Sweet Lobby as they vie for cupcake supremacy!

Okay. We’ve taken care of your game/consumerist needs and we’ve contributed to your girth. How about we expand your mind? The Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital has you covered! On Saturday 4 February, Patricia Elam will be teaching writing workshops on how to create authentic-sounding dialogue and how to create characters that walk off the page. Click on the links to find out more information, or visit the programs page at the Hill Center’s website.

If you are a fan of the theatre, you can get your tickets online to go The Gaming Table, by 18th century playwright Susanna Centlivre at the Folger Theatre at the Folger Theatre. You will be dazzled by the amazing set, with its right-side-up/upside-down playing card look; you will love the beautiful Restoration period costumes; you’ll enjoy the witty and updated couplets and dynamic repartee. You will be impressed by the excellent acting and you may kick yourself once or twice because you probably don’t go see plays at the Folger as often as you should.

(Shame on you!)

But most of all, you will walk away amazed at the fact that this beautifully and meticulously adapted play, whose original name was The Basset Table –except that no one knows what Basset is anymore– actually passes the Bechdel Test: in the play, there are 1) two or more women, and 2) they talk to each other 3) about something other than a man! 18th century feminism, for the win! The Gaming Table is playing through March 4, and you can get tickets online clicking this link. If you go, make sure to look at the excellent exhibit, “Shakespeare’s Sisters.” In it, you can see a copy of “The Basset Table,” aging quite gracefully.

Whether high or lowbrow, we all hope you enjoy your weekend!

Originally uploaded to flickr by blue2likeyou

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]]> http://www.thehillishome.com/2012/02/its-survey-time/feed/ 0 http://www.thehillishome.com/2012/01/tv-alert-watch-the-sweet-lobby-on-cupcake-wars/ http://www.thehillishome.com/2012/01/tv-alert-watch-the-sweet-lobby-on-cupcake-wars/#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:32:03 +0000 Jon Penndorf http://www.thehillishome.com/?p=24998 You’ve tasted their macarons.  You’ve sipped their hot cocoa (voted one of the best in DC, mind you). You may have even tasted their elegant madeleines.  Now it’s time for the owners of The Sweet Lobby to show what they are made of on the Food Network’s “Cupcake Wars.”

This Sunday after the Super Bowl, you can watch The Sweet Lobby’s Winnette McIntosh Ambrose and her brother Timothy at 10:00 p.m. EST as they battle for cupcake supremacy on “Cupcake Wars.”  Cupcakes have obviously swept the nation into a sugary frenzy, and this Food Network program pits baker against baker to see whose cupcake is crowned king.  Our hometown heroes (both engineers with degrees from MIT, by the way) opened their sweet shop on Barracks Row not long ago, but their reputation for creativity and unique flavors has spread quickly.

You’ll be stuffed from Super Bowl snacks on Sunday so top off your day with video dessert on “Cupcake Wars” and cheer on the Hill’s own!

Additional note: Winnette tells us that fans who would like to watch the episode in the company of other cupcake aficionados can do so at The Ugly Mug, Tunnicliff’s Tavern, and the Elephant & Castle (on Pennsylvania Avenue NW).  Cupcakes will be served at these establishments during the show, courtesy of The Sweet Lobby!

]]> http://www.thehillishome.com/2012/01/tv-alert-watch-the-sweet-lobby-on-cupcake-wars/feed/ 0 http://www.thehillishome.com/2012/01/hill-buzz-132/ http://www.thehillishome.com/2012/01/hill-buzz-132/#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:00:18 +0000 Claudia Holwill http://www.thehillishome.com/?p=24981

Photo by María Helena Carey

• We Love DC declared its love for the Anacostia River.
• Housing Complex suggested Hill East, along with Shaw and NoMa, as ideal locations for “Apodments” — one-room units that can be rented for much less than the more fully equipped apartments going up all over town.
• Curbed DC and Urban Turf shared IBG’s drawings for their proposed apartments at Specialty Hospital at 700 Constitution Avenue, NE.
• After her story on the International Graduate University last week, Housing Complex‘s Lydia DePillis followed up with a post about their retro bathrooms.
• Curbed DC reported that the Eveyln, on the 600 block of Independence Avenue, SE, sold out in fewer than 90 days.
• JDLand brought us updates on the Boilermaker Shops and new photos of the Foundry Loft Apartments.
• All We Can Eat reported that the yet-to-be-named brewery coming to the Boilermaker Shops had a head brewer: Megan Parisi.
• Housing Complex shared the recently released streetcar study, which finds that “benefits from real estate investment spurred by the streetcar would cover 40 to 60 percent of the $1.5 billion construction cost.”
• Urban Turf also also looked at how the streetcars will increase property values.
• Eater DC interviewed the GM of Smith Commons on its one year anniversary.
• Farewell, Capital City Diner: We Love DC, All We Can Eat, DCist, HuffPost DC, and All We Can Eat (photos)

uploaded to flickr by jsmjr

Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, and died the next day. By the time he succumbed to his wounds, his assassin was far away, and it would be almost two weeks before he would be hunted down. Booth and his guide, David Herold, were found at Garrett’s farm in Caroline County, Virginia.

After the troopers had surrounded the barn in which Booth and Herold had spent the night, Herold surrendered, while Booth refused. The barn was set on fire, and trooper Boston Corbett fired on Booth, striking him in the spine, an injury which led to his death three hours later.

Booth’s body, as well as prisoners Herold and two of the Garretts were brought to Belle Plain, a wharf on the Potomac that had been set up by the Union army. There, they were transferred to the John S. Ide, a small ship used by the Navy.

The John S. Ide steamed upriver to Washington, at which point Booth and the three prisoners were turned over to a Colonel Baker, who took them on board the USS Montauk, which was parked just off the Navy Yard, at around 3AM.

The Montauk was a monitor, similar to the famous Monitor, the famous ironclad warship built by John Ericsson.

The next day, under a canvas sheet stretched off the Montauk’s turret, an autopsy was performed. While crowds of people were held back from entering the Navy Yard, a select few were allowed on board to both identify the dead man, as well as determine the cause of death.

Detail of picture published in the Harper

An article published in Harper’s Weekly about two weeks later describes the scene:

Booth’s body was laid out on a carpenter’s bench between the stern and turret, wrapped in a gray blanket, and a guard placed over it. The lips of the corpse were tightly compressed, and the blood had settled in the lower part of the face and neck. Otherwise his face was pale, and wore a wild, haggard look, indicating exposure to the elements and a rough time generally in his skulking flight. His hair was disarranged and dirty, and apparently had not been combed since he took his flight. The head and breast were alone exposed to view, the lower portion of the body, including the hands and feet, being covered with a tarpaulin. The shot which terminated his life entered on the left side, at the back of the neck, a point not far distant from that in which his victim, our lamented President, was shot.

Along with determining the cause of death, it was most important to determine that this was, indeed, the mortal remains of John Wilkes Booth. To that end, a doctor who had removed a tumor from Booth earlier found the scar made by his incision, a clerk at the hotel where Booth had stayed found the tattoo Booth was known to have, and the photographer Alexander Gardner was called on to both identify and take a picture of the body.

In all, Booth’s time at the Navy Yard encompassed less than 24 hours. Later that evening, two men arrived at the Montauk in a small rowboat. They removed Booth’s body, and took it to the Arsenal (today Fort McNair) where it was buried. A few years later, Booth’s brother had the body disinterred and moved to a family grave in Baltimore.

Gardner’s picture of the body has never been found.

Let’s start out on Friday at the Fitness Together studio’s twice-weekly PACK group class at 408 H St, NE.  Show up at 5pm Friday and you’ll get a workout that will leave you too tired to worry about anything else.  Come back Sunday at 11am for a reprisal.  Anyone is welcome, but pre-registration is requested ($20 per person, but bring a friend and you both get $5 off!)

TSNY can always be counted on to take your mind off of anything that’s been bothering you.  Hard to do anything else but focus on staying connected to the trapeze when you’re flying through the air.  Check out what has to be the best date night option on Friday at 8:30p ($55).  Probably won’t help you sleep, but the adrenaline rush can be counted on to make the rest of the evening more fun.

For Saturday, sleep in (you deserve it after all those late nights followed by early mornings lately) and then head to the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop at 1pm for the Space Activation Lab.  Part of their 40 Free Events in 40 Days, this dance experiment will wake up your creative side.  Registration is required.  Then pick up a catalog or go online and sign up for one of their Adult Classes (new classes start February 6th) because, well, you need to plan some Me Time.

Capitol Hill Yoga will help calm the mind with Expanding the Light:  A Monthly Advanced Yoga Practice.  CHY tell us, “With an additional 30 minutes, we have more time to play with the poses we only begin to explore in a regular 90-minute class.”  Unbind the inner yogi from 2-4pm for $35.

But really, channeling the stress and frustration is overrated.  Sometimes you just gotta let it out.  Who knows more about that than the DC Rollergirls.  Check them out in their first match of 2012 this Saturday at the DC Armory.  Doors open at 3pm, and the action starts with the Majority Whips vs Cherry Blossom Bombshells at 4pm, and the DC DemonCats vs Scare Force One at 5:45.  In between, you’ll see The Young Women’s Drumming Empowerment Project, plus they’ll be collecting donations for My Sister’s Place.  Tickets are available for $12 in advance or at the door on bout day.  Afterward, join the Rollergirls for happy hour at Kelly’s Irish Times.

I feel better already.