Sunny Hamburger: The New Grave the the Unknown Soldier

Last night I was keeping my eyelids propped up with red bull & the hot gay bodies down at a 17th Street cybercafe, that's also a prime spot for DC gossip. I have to say, of the many allures of the 17th-Street Queen-corridor, its a virtual smorgasbord for reporters. These boys (and girls) love to talk activist slop. For a city with its head in the desert sands of the middle east, DC's gay population knows where its true heart of political matters lay. And last night that heart was rending (and pumping) for one Sunny Hamburger. Sunny was known as the neighborhood sweetheart, known to moonlight in local bars and signed on to be a boy toy every once and while to make ends meet, though he had a lovely long-term wife. Anyway, in the reverberations from last weekend's food riots, Sunny somehow got himself caught in the middle and shot to death.

The first sentimental, memory-making casualty of our financial dive down the great maw. The official police story is broadcasting this as an average drug bust, alleging that fly-by-night Sunny also was shaking hands with local crack dealers from Mt Pleasant's Bancroft Park all the way down to the less-frequented parts of the waterfront. BUT--talking with the local queens, they say Sunny was as dry as a bone. This story is starting to seem deeper than McCain's repressed Vietnam memories. If anyone's heard about any of Sunny's shady involvements, please comment in.....

Things People Do When Their Bellies Go Concave.

The champagne cork has popped, ladies and gentleman of NW, and the crazy DC bubbles are racing to knock each other around. I can't help but celebrate the acts of violence the riots have sparked. Call me anti-patriotic, but when I saw the sheepish response to food stealing--people putting their hands compulsively on their wallets when they walked their children to school, women covering up their hootchie shirts, men going out to get groceries and fast-walking home--I couldn't help but be disgusted with the gentrified lot of us.

Here's what I've heard about the bonanza of sinful acts since the initial outbreak:
1. 3 dogs in Dupont circle go missing. The buzz at the Jolt-n-Bolt coffee shop is that people are saying there's a dog-stalker feeding off dog meat. Ok, this I really I can't revel in.

2. Numerous men in masks have thrown rocks through Harris Teeter's sliding glass doors.

3. The ABC board will be taking a vote tomorrow night to revoke all Taverna licenses from bar selling food, because they're worried rioters might attempt to hold up smaller establishments.

4. Ok, this is the big one. Police have arrested more than 60 rioters outside the Giant supermarket in Columbia Heights. There's word that families are gathering at an undisclosed location to retaliate for some pretty brutal scuffles with local teenagers.

More as it comes in....

Peace Corps Invade Arlington, or At Least Holding a Knitting Circle About It

What can Mt. Pleasant do as the US location with the world's most concentrated population of Peace Corp Volunteers??

Organize. Or at least talk about organizing. Word at 80s night at Marx Cafe is that dozens of PC Vols. are convening at an undisclosed location--perhaps the burned out building, that newest of Mt. P. landmarks--to discuss the possibility of retaliating on VA rednecks for raiding bodegas just a few days ago. PC-ers are notorious for talking a good game, but the recent riots infuriated them no end, because, they said, it was evidence of anti-Salvadorian bias in the city. Mt P. is known for its Salvadorian population, and since they're getting ready for the Latino-Mt P festival this weekend, PC-ers took on the onus of raising the roof for them. Justly Carmichael, a local resident and bike messenger told me, "This is ridiculous. Five guys come in and rob one of our stores and the Po-Po won't do anything because they don't want to make waves? DC Racism at it's finest."

I've also heard other rumors that some PC-ers want to go use the riot-back to scope out Arlington locations for so-called hidden gardens. Some of these hippies, ascribing to the new pitch to take back the land Virginia stole from DC in the nineteenth century, want to start to plant secret gardens and start growing DC it's own crop of food. It sounds a little hokey to me, but then again, some of these guys did do agriculture in Guatemala. What will Arlington-grown food taste like??? My guess, a pair of gap jeans from the late 90s.

Rrriot Girl

No joke. Riots are back in DC. I just witnessed some Virginia residents race off in their get-away van (duh, if you use VA license plates, we're gonna know it's you rednecks). Word on the streets is the copped a feel at some local bodegas in Mount Pleasant, just across from the burned out building on Mt. Pleasant Street. Pissed off by big prices they came up here to steal some of our "quality food." People on the streets--not to mention Pablo and Maria, the store owners--were visibly upset. Maria also runs a yoga class out of the couple's home a few blocks away, and she said she was probably going to close up shop soon because even yoga wasn't working to calm people's nerves and provide some karmic release. Pablo, who has an MA in cultural anthropology from American University said he'd studied riotology but never thought it would come to this again.

I heard some locals, who were smoking some butts outside Townhouse Tavern, say they heard it was a pregnant woman. Some khaki-wearing dudes walking up 17th Street just then turned around and told them they were spouting some hipster bullshit. "I bet that's just your bleeding hearts making up some socialist shit." So much for sympathy on Main Street.

Boy DC, first you repeat the ills of Reaganomics, now it looks like the start of the MLK riots all over again. Will U Street and Mt. Pleasant burn before some one stops inflation from running away with us?

The Financial Crisis No One Is Talking About

Up here in Mt Pleasant, a few short miles from the suits and stiffs down on Constitution Ave., there's another kind of crisis going on. While they're worrying about the scotch-drinking American Psychos conspiring to get the Feds to pay them for ruining the economy, there are some stinking crazy people up here, on DC's other hill, who don't have three dollars in quarters to buy some food. Stuff has gotten really expensive and really tense at local bodegas. Even the local white hippies are pulling at their coiffed dread-locks over a carton of milk. I don't know why our prices seem so high up here, or maybe America's karma has just roundly gone crazy, but people should start opening their eyes and realizing that this thing is more than about Wall Street or Main Street (who even lives there any more?). Mount Pleasant isn't, anymore.