Meanwhile in DC

While the Zoo’s patriarch panda is showing his age, there may soon be such a thing as a free (school) lunch, Massachusetts Avenue will be seeing changes, and other news of the day over in the District.

• What comes next for the only hospital east of the river? [WAMU]
• Remembering D.C.’s poet laureate. [WCP]
• And a bit of street haiku. [Popville]
• Judge orders slumlord to negotiate with tenants of a Congress Heights building. [WCP]
• Brightwood worries about recent gun violence. [Post]
• Tian Tian is getting old. [Post]
• More on the rats. [Kojo]
• Massachusetts Avenue is getting some much needed improvements. [Current]
• Homeless advocates sleep outside. [NBC4]
• D.C. Council considers giving free lunch to all students. [WAMU]
• In the event you want to run on a day meant for sitting around on a couch. [Washingtonian]
• The latest restaurants from the owners of Compass Rose features global grandma cooking. [Washingtonian]
• D.C. music store owner sets out to fix instruments. [WJLA]
• The latest threat to Metro: disgusting quantities of human hair. [NBC$]

A profile of D.C.’s line cooks, the results from a race pairing triathletes and bikeshares, and other news of the day over in the District.

• Bowser is keeping mum on her administration’s progress in finding a new operator for the only hospital east of the river. [Post]
• Jury selection has begun in inauguration protest cases. [Post]
• Triatheletes got competitive with D.C.’s six bikesharing companies. [Express]
• Meet some of D.C.’s line cooks. [WCP]
• A case for genever. [WCP]
• Or cookie dough-flavored punch? [Eater]
• How the Museum of the Bible handles slavery, the bible, and the Confederacy. [Post]
• National Native American Veterans Memorial has put out a call for design submissions. [East City Art]
• D.C. is getting a second new ice skating rink. [Curbed]
• Shouk is opening up a much larger spot near Union Market. [Popville]
• The Thanksgiving travel forecast. [NBC4]
• Justice Department threatens D.C. over sanctuary city status. [WTOP]
• Spotted on Barrel’s sandwich board. [Popville]
• Beer + axes = ? [Washingtonian]

The mayor went on a rat walkabout, the outcry grows over a plan to end sports on the National Mall, Anacostia is getting a bookstore and more news of the day over in the District.

• D.C. officials rail against GOP tax plan. [Post]
• And how it could affect the local housing market. [UrbanTurf]
• Let my people go (play sports on the Mall). [Post]
• More of that. [WAMU]
• Anacostia is getting its first bookstore in more than two decades. [Curbed]
• Cherry blossom trees throughout the season. [Post]
• Get ready to roll your eyes. [Washingtonian]
• Rooftop ice skating! [Post]
• With a side of luxury igloos? [Washingtonian]
• Ohioians skip school trip to D.C. over safety concerns. [WAMU]
• Bowser took a rat walk in Dupont. [NBC]
• Should this couple get a handicapped street parking spot? [WJLA]
• Things people have tossed over the White House fence recently. [Washingtonian]
• Car2go is phasing out their trademark Smart cars though it will take a little while. [Jalopnik/Twitter]
• The Palisades is getting two pre fab homes. [WBJ]
• D.C. filed raze applications for Barry Farms. [Curbed]

After hitting all kinds of heat records, D.C. marks a new low; the Health Department put the kibbosh on goat yoga; and other news of the day over in the District.

• Why it took 100 years to get a WWI Memorial started in D.C. [WAMU]
• The District just launched two new programs to help vets. [NBC4]
• The Health Department has again kicked down the idea of goat yoga. [Washingtonian]
• Saturday marked D.C.’s official first freeze of the season, setting a cold record for the date. [Post]
• Meteorologists are also expecting more snow this season than last. [NBC4]
• Help name a NoMa park. [Survey Monkey]
• Woman foils mid-day home invasion in Southeast by pushing burglar out of the house. [Post]
• DCist’s weekly movie picks lives on! [PP]
• Boy appears to have been hit by a police cruiser while riding his bicycle, but a police review board finds “insufficient evidence” of the accusation. [Post]
• Meet two more entrants into the At-large D.C. Council races. [Post]
• Can confirm: this local frozen pizza company definitely doesn’t suck. [WCP]
• Reminder to have working carbon monoxide detectors, particularly around this time of year. [WJLA]
• United Medical Center nurses say the Bowser administration is giving their contract the runaround. [WBJ]
• More Metro trains were on time this quarter. [WAMU]
• And a “long-awaited” report on how to fix the system. [Post]
• While some lawmakers think that fare evasion shouldn’t be criminalized. [Post]
• Alert: Free waffles. [Facebook]
• Student group advocating for only heterosexual marriages will get to keep its funding. [Blade]
• Partner in Tadich Grill says he knew nothing about racially motivated family estrangement, and the company lost millions because of it. [Post]
• Moorish nationalists lay claim to D.C. mansion. [NBC4]

Winter is coming (for the weekend) a month early, while &pizza quibbles with @pizza, the Shay loses yet another tenant, the National Park Service wants to ban sports from the National Mall, and other news of the day over in the District.

• A strong cold front arrives to freeze over the weekend. [WTOP]
• Bad Saint gets more good reviews. [Eater]
• Cory Booker has strong feelings about D.C. statehood. [Twitter]
• Beware these blocks: the District’s busiest speed and red light cameras. [WUSA9]
• ANCs most definitely have some things to say about dockless bikes. [Current]
• What a revamped C&O Canal might look like. [Current]
• The days of sports and other recreational activities on the National Mall may be numbered. [Post]
• A rocket launch will be visible from D.C. (and most of the mid-Atlantic) on Saturday. [CWG]
• High school and college students stormed the Capitol to demand a “Clean Dream Act.” [Post]
• Ward 4 councilmember wants to lower D.C. Water fee for cemeteries and other institutions struggling to pay. [NBC4]
• &pizza says the UK’s @pizza is an “unremorseful and unauthorized copycat”. [WBJ]
• Dupont’s Thomas Nelson Page House changes hands. [WBJ]
• This is happening. [Post]
• From a familiar byline: The Shay’s Chrome store is packing it in. [Washingtonian]
• Southwest’s The Bard development gets a new architectural script. [UrbanTurf]
• Folks are, quite understandably, concerned about shootings near schools in Southeast. [WJLA]
• About that urine throwing incident on the X2… the suspect was sentenced to 120 days in jail. [WJLA]
• Neighbors fight to stop alley building from being restored into a house. [GGW]
• Walter Reed kicks out program that provides service dogs to veterans, apparently out of the blue. [WTOP]

You’ve heard, by now, the big news over at DCist. Exactly one week ago, a scrappy, vital link in the increasingly fragile local news ecosystem was unceremoniously snuffed out by a union-busting billionaire.

I’m deeply proud of the work we accomplished at DCist in my two-year tenure as editor-in-chief, which was made possible by the dedication and creativity of multitudes of writers who came before us. The archives of the site serve as a record of a growing city, an encyclopedia of 13 years of life in the nation’s capital that was by turns hilarious, enraging, informative, and never boring.

As a journalistic endeavor, we aimed to be a knowledgeable friend, a site where you could have found an enterprise investigation into failing playing fields and detailed coverage of inauguration protesters next to updates about the latest protest and information about how to stream free movies courtesy of the public library. In between, we dug up stories about a bartender who inadvertently got thousands of calls from C-SPAN viewers, chronicled how black yogis are changing the largely white yoga community, warned you not to let your dog poop on this guy’s lawn, and so much more.

Each day, we started that wide-ranging conversation with our “Morning Roundup,” a compendium of the stories that we were reading and thought our audience would want to peruse as well.  There’s still excellent and vital journalism happening around town. So until further notice, and without further ado, I’ll be rounding up dozen or so of the stories each day that continue to chronicle and change life in the District of Columbia.

• Meet 21 people who are doing interesting, important things around town. [WCP]
• In a meeting with the mayor, people pretty much just wanted to talk about garbage and rats. [Popville]
• The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts thinks the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge plans “lack grace.” [WBJ]
• Congress is trying to change how sexual assault is reported on the Hill. [CNN]
• “Visiting it is like going to a really macabre candy store–except instead of sweets, there are tapeworms.” [The Atlantic]
• 186 D.C. bars can serve alcohol until 4 a.m. on Veterans Day weekend. [ABRA]
• D.C. Council will pony up $36 million to add parking at Union Market. [GGW]
• Keep up with the latest in the District’s culinary scene via DCist’s former food editor. [DrinkDineDC]
• And drink to your home city or state at these themed bars. [WCP]
• In case you’re looking for $400 high tea or an $830 Mean Girls staycation. [Washingtonian]
• Georgetown’s West Heating Plant just became a historic landmark. [Curbed]
• Hustlerz 2 Harvesters is bringing urban agriculture east of the Anacostia River. [WCP]
• Councilmember wants to make it illegal to discriminate against abortion providers. [Popville]
• Reflections on DCist from the folks over at Greater Greater Washington. [GGW]
• A D.C. school is being investigated for failing to report a teacher’s suspected child sex abuse. [NBC4]
• More than 1,000 people who live around Union Station are without power this morning. [Post]
• SafeTrack is technically done, but Metro is still shutting down the Glenmont end of the Red Line for more than two weeks, starting at the end of the month. [Post]
• Reopening the perennial debate: who has the worst drivers in the region? [WAMU]
• The forthcoming Anacostia Busboys & Poets is once again delayed. [UrbanTurf]