Author: Aaron Kraut

Rosslyn Jazz Festival Lineup Released

By Aaron Kraut

The 22nd annual Rosslyn Jazz Festival is set for Saturday, Sept. 8 at Gateway Park (1300 Lee Highway).

This year’s event, co-sponsored by the Rosslyn Business Improvement District (BID) and the Arlington Cultural Affairs division, will run from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. Admission is free. The festival will feature “Afro Blue,” the Howard University a cappella group that made the 2011 finals of NBC’s “The Sing-Off.”

From the press release:

Afro Blue was named be The Washington City Paper as 2011 Jazz Artist of the Year, received a WAMMIE for best A Cappella Group and best video (Nature Boy), and an honorable mention in the Critics Poll, a professional vocal group category by JAZZ TIMES.

Warrenton native Rene Marie will also perform:

Rene Marie, the award-winning, Warrenton, VA-born singer whose style incorporates elements of jazz, soul, blues and gospel, is a heroine to many. Given an ultimatum by an abusive husband, she began her professional career after 40, leaving a 23-year marriage. Since her debut recording, Renaissance, the singer has evolved into one of the most intriguing vocalists of our time. With her latest release Voice of My Beautiful County (Motema Music), listeners will hear her trademark vocals but will also be struck by the wide variety of songs that she interprets — from Motown to Tin Pan Alley to “America the Beautiful.” The CD is a celebration of America’s cultural diversity.

The lineup also includes clarinetist and saxophonist Don Byron and two-time Grammy-nominated saxophonist Joshua Redman.

Photo courtesy Rosslyn BID

Z-Burger Set For Fall Opening In Virginia Square

By Aaron Kraut

The owners of the growing Z-Burger local burger chain say they plan to open a franchise in Virginia Square this fall, perhaps as soon as September.

In March 2011, Z-Burger co-owner Mohammad Esfahani told ARLnow.com that he hoped to have the location open last summer. But co-owner Peter Tabibian said today the company is now focused on opening its new Columbia Heights location first, in the next few weeks.

Esfahani said construction is ongoing for the 4,000-square-foot space at the corner of Wilson Boulevard and N. Kenmore Street. This will be Z-Burger’s sixth location and first in Virginia.

A BGR: The Burger Joint opened last year in Clarendon, and the location will also face competition from a nearby Five Guys (2300 Wilson Boulevard) and Wiinky’s (3902 Wilson Boulevard), among others.

The two-story red brick building that used to house a video conversion business and a realty company has made way for a new structure. A crew was working on the new building’s interior today (Wednesday). The before and after comparison is below.

 

Local Students To Take On Global Issues At ‘Earth 2100’

By Aaron Kraut

Arlington nonprofit Our Task will host an “intergenerational” conference to discuss environmental and global development issues on Saturday, Aug. 11 at the Arlington Central Library (1015 N. Quincy St.).

Our Task Executive Director Jerry Barney said the conference is aimed at local high school and college students who want to share ideas and discuss what the world will look like in 2100, and what should be done to deal with ongoing deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, population increases and a host of other issues.

“It comes from a growing unease and a growing sense of fear among thoughtful young people that the planet they’re going to inherit is not at all the planet they hope to inherit,” Barney said.

The all-day conference is open to participants of all ages, but for the past six years has attracted mainly local students. They are organized in focus groups and presented with an issue “from the 10,000-foot level,” said Our Task Chair Angeline Cione. They then develop and present solutions.

This year’s opening speaker will be conservation biologist and George Mason University professor Dr. Thomas Lovejoy. Registration is free and will run until the day before the event.

Photo courtesy Jerry Barney

New ‘Ridesharing’ Program To Debut In Arlington

By Aaron Kraut

Zimride, a company that connects long-distance carpoolers through Facebook, launched its “digital ridesharing” operation in the Washington area today.

Arlington residents looking for rides to New York can pay an average of $50 round-trip for a seat in another person’s car, according to Zimride’s Nick Greenfield, who described the concept as “non-creepy hitchhiking,” and the “long-distance version of slugging.”

Users match up with drivers and potential carpoolers by listing whether they smoke, their musical preferences and other personal details. The program first gained traction on college campuses as a way for students to more easily afford travel.

Now, the company is hoping to attract users in Arlington by opening up the site for Northern Virginia to New York road trips.

At least one Arlington resident has posted a ride for this weekend to New York. For $80 round-trip, “Clinton L.” is offering to drive passengers to Manhattan in his Infiniti FX45.

“[I] drive around 90 mph on the highway [and] listen to electronic dance music,” Clinton L. wrote. “Will take a total of 4 people… to ensure the comfort of all passengers.”

Ballston Building Adds ‘Bob Peck’ Historical Marker

By Aaron Kraut

Developers of a new office building in Ballston have added another historical touch to commemorate the old Bob Peck Chevrolet dealership that for decades served as a neighborhood landmark on the same site.

Alexandria-based Bowman Consulting, the landscape architecture firm on developer JBG’s 10-story office building at 800 N. Glebe Road, recently designed and installed a historical marker to honor the dealership’s iconic Googie architecture style.

In January, builders added a diamond-shaped facade to the front of the building to mimic the style. Bob Peck Chevrolet was demolished in 2008.

From the text of the historical marker:

Bob Peck opened his first Chevrolet dealership in 1939 on Wilson Boulevard in Clarendon. In 1964, he moved the dealership west to Ballston to the very prominent corner of North Glebe Road and Wilson Boulevard, 300 feet south of this marker. Taking advantage of the site’s unique location and visibility, local architect Anthony Musolino designed a transparent circular showroom of glass and chrome, with a butterfly roofline whose frieze of diamond-shaped blue panels spelled out “Chevrolet.” The building was an excellent example of Googie architecture, reflecting the era’s prevailing interest in the future — space travel, nuclear energy, rockets — through the use of upward slanting and cantilevered roofs, geometric patterns, acute angles and large sheets of glass.

Musolino’s design evoked thoughts of flight and movement, with its walls of transparent glass and a roof that appeared to float skyward. The transparent showroom was a living billboard. Motorists could see the chrome-trimmed vehicles from the street. Peck Chevrolet became a community icon and a landmark for motorists traveling to and through Arlington. The showroom’s design is represented in the new diamond-shaped frieze of the office building now located at the former Bob Peck site.

 

Photos courtesy Bowman Consulting

New Ethiopian Restaurant Opens on Columbia Pike

By Aaron Kraut

(Updated at 10:05 a.m.) The Karamara Ethiopian restaurant (3205 Columbia Pike), set for a late-August grand opening, is about 10 years in the making.

Owner Selamawit Belete emigrated from Ethiopia to the U.S. a decade ago. Establishing a restaurant, such as the one her family owned in Ethiopia, was always in the back of her mind.

She’ll have plenty of competition.

The nearby Dama Cafe has earned praise as one of the Washington area’s best Ethiopian eateries. Then there’s Harar Mesob at 542 S. 23rd Street in Crystal City and Meaza just over the Fairfax County line at 5700 Columbia Pike.

Karamara had a soft-opening last Wednesday and will be open with an abbreviated menu until Belete can get her liquor permit approved. She expects that process to take a few more weeks.

Arlington Dog Daycare Moving To Falls Church

By Aaron Kraut

Dog Paws ‘n Cat Claws dog daycare (940 S. George Mason Drive) is moving out of Arlington.

The move, to a bigger space at 5818 Seminary Road in Falls Church, will allow the five-year-old business to serve as a dedicated pet adoption center, says owner Ryan Folcher.

The current space, just off of Columbia Pike, allows only for standalone pet adoption events, said Folcher, who also cited concerns about Arlington County’s move away from the type of light industrial zoning his business uses.

“We want to kind of reconstruct the building. But I don’t have the money or time to do that and risk that Arlington just says, ‘No, we’re not going to approve it,'” Folcher said. “The only thing that is zoned for Arlington is high-rise apartments and condos. I was interested in staying but my business model really can’t adopt. Financially, I just need to let the business evolve and that’s not where it’s going to happen.”

Daycare manager Lisa Niel said the current space holds between 50 and 60 dogs a day. Folcher and another employee showed off the new 7,400-square-foot daycare and retail store to clients in an open house on Sunday.

“We’ve already heard feedback from clients dropping off dogs that they love the new space,” Niel said. “We think it will broaden our client base into Alexandria, Bailey’s Crossroads and Fairfax.”

Folcher also cited Arlington County signage restrictions as an issue. Last year, the county told him he could not post temporary signage advertising holiday sales.

He hopes to have the new location ready to open by late August.

Police Start Enforcing Hour-Limit On Food Trucks

By Aaron Kraut

Seoul Food truck co-owner J.P. Goree got a citation and a court date from Arlington County Police on Wednesday.

His crime: Keeping his Korean cuisine food truck in one Clarendon Courthouse parking spot for longer than the county’s 60-minute limit for mobile food vendors.

“We feel like we’re being treated as a second-class business,” Goree said Friday. “We’re a micro-business, aspiring to be a bigger small business and it seems like that’s something that would be fostered by the community.”

Goree said police told food truck owners a few weeks ago that they would soon start enforcing the regulation. In May, Jill Griffin, a commercial development specialist for Arlington Economic Development, said she had heard enforcing the time limit “has been challenging.”

Griffin also said officials hoped to talk with stakeholders this summer to form recommendations for updating Arlington’s vending ordinance this fall.

“If you open at 11 [a.m.] or 11:30 [a.m.] that hour is only going to get you to when you have the longest line right in the very middle of your lunch rush,” Goree said.

Goree said he thinks ongoing tension between food truck owners and brick-and-mortar restaurant owners is behind Wednesday’s enforcement. Also in May, ARLnow.com obtained an internal document from the Rosslyn Business Improvement District (BID) that said “the number, location and type of operation” of food trucks and carts is “inadequately regulated by Arlington County.”

The Rosslyn BID is funded by the property owners who rent space to the neighborhood’s restaurants, delis and cafes.

The Bada Bing truck also reported receiving a ticket Wednesday on its Twitter page. Ice cream food truck Sinplicity tweeted out a similar message. Goree’s court date is Aug. 21. There was no fine listed on the citation.

“If a truck or a car parks at a metered spot, it can stay there for as long as the meter allows,” said Rob Frommer, an attorney with the Institute For Justice, a Ballston-based libertarian public interest law firm. “It doesn’t make any sense to arbitrarily limit how long one particular type of vehicle can remain in one spot.”

Two years ago, the Institute for Justice began a National Street Vending Initiative to help legalize food trucks and vendors. Frommer said Arlington’s own experience with the growing food truck industry helped inform the organization’s goals.

“It seemed like Arlington was doing a good job of embracing the vendors and letting these businesses start up,” Frommer said. “This change in enforcement is an unfortunate and surprising development.”

UrbanArias To Perform ‘Craigslist Opera’ Next Weekend

By Aaron Kraut

Local “contemporary opera” company UrbanArias will put words from Craigslist ads to opera music during a 90-minute program on Aug. 5 at IOTA Club and Cafe in Clarendon (2832 Wilson Blvd).

The performance also includes three “mini-operas” about blind dates and Opera Improv, in which the four UrbanArias singers take audience suggestions to create scenes on the fly.

From the press release:

Craigslistlieder, with music by Gabriel Kahane and text from, well, Craigslist, catapulted the young composer to national prominence several years ago. This is an eight-song set, each of which is an actual, unadulterated ad from Craigslist. Subjects range from the “neurotic and lonely” man looking for a woman who “must have a video game system,” and the crazy woman with an ice cube fetish looking for a roommate, to an advertisement selling “assless chaps.” Kahane’s Mahlerian music is the perfect foil for the hilarious ads.

The show starts at 7 p.m. Tickets are $12 and will be sold at the door.

Pupatella Pizzeria Expanding into Adjacent Storefront

By Aaron Kraut

Pupatella Neopolitan Pizzeria (5104 Wilson Boulevard) is expanding its dining area, hours and menu.

Two years after opening the 1,400-square-foot storefront, owner/couple Enzo Algarme and Anastasiya Laufenberg are taking over the next-door space left by Union Halal Butcher & Grocery. The move will almost double the store’s footprint and allow for a total of about 75 seats with a second dining room.

It’s a long way from the made-to-order food cart the two began operating near the Ballston Metro in 2007.

“It’s been really nice to get to know people from the neighborhood and feel their love and their support,” Laufenberg said. “I’m really looking forward to having a more comfortable space for them to come and eat.”

More space will also mean more hours. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday the pizzeria is open for dinner only.

Laufenberg said once the couple finishes hiring new staff, they’ll be open for breakfast (coffee, donuts and other Italian morning treats) and lunch (sandwiches and pasta dishes).

“It won’t be as crammed and we’re excited because we think it’ll be more relaxed,” Laufenberg said.

Registration Open For 9-11 Memorial 5K

By Aaron Kraut

Registration is open for the Arlington Police, Fire & Sheriff 9-11 Memorial 5K, set for Saturday, Sept. 8 in Crystal City.

The event sold out about a week ahead of last year’s race day, said race organizer and retired Arlington County Police Capt. Matt Smith. Registration is capped at 5,000 runners.

The race starts at 6 p.m. at the DoubleTree Hotel in Crystal City (300 Army Navy Drive). Runners can register online for $25 through Aug. 3, $30 from Aug. 4 to Sept. 7 and $35 on race day. Team registration ends on Sept. 1. Proceeds will be donated to charities including the Wounded Warriors Project and Homes For Our Troops.

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