Signs & Portents

Here’s the word on the street about the government shutdown. Yesterday the vendors of Havana Banana Breads chalked an open letter to Members of Congress. The message may have reached them; the sign was at Eastern Market on Capitol Hill. The bakery’s owner is a service-disabled veteran.

More street signs here.

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Boxcar Tavern Opens Friday

Eastern Market will have a new neighbor starting Friday. Boxcar Tavern opens on December 30, 2011 at 224 7th Street SE, formerly the site of the Petit Gourmet food shop. Check out the handsome tavern website and the write-up and photos of the interior at Thrillist .

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Top Chef Tour at Eastern Market

Cable TV’s Top Chef tour is parked at Capitol Hill’s Eastern Market this weekend, pitting Carla Hall, Ariane Duarte, and Spike Mendelsohn against each other. The real action is in the bus (above) where six prep chefs and three runners do the real work. On Saturday, two hundred people watched this spectacle, half of them standing in the hot sun. Amazing.

Literary Hill Bookfest 2011

Literary Hill BookFest
Sunday, May 15, 2011
11:00AM to 3:00PM
Eastern Market, North Hall
7th Street & North Carolina Avenue SE
Capitol Hill, Washington DC 20003

If you’re in DC and like to read, stop by Eastern Market this Sunday and meet local authors Louis Bayard, Selene Benitone, Simon Conway, Kim Fellner, Lucinda Fleeson, Maggie Hall, Sharon M. Hannon, Margaret Hollister, Barbara Joe, Katy Kelly, Marguerite Kelly, Kevin R. Kosar, Nancy Lifset, Peter Manseau, Celeste McCall, Diana McLellan, Spike Mendelsohn, Jean Nordhaus, Mark N. Ozer, Erica Perl, Robert Pohl, Richard E. Rubenstein, Ariel Sabar, David Ian Shaman, Richard Treanor, Cathy Travis, Gene Weingarten, John R. Wennersten, Peggy Walton and Bonny Wolf.

More:

“The Literary Hill Goes Live!” Karen Lyon, Hill Rag

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Eastern Market Music Sunday — Free!

The Fall concert series at Capitol Hill’s Eastern Market neighborhood has a fine double bill this Sunday: Karen Collins & the Backroads Band (10:30 AM) and Janine Wilson & Max Evans (1:00 PM).  The concert site is at the corner of 7th Street and North Carolina Avenue SE, in front of Port City Java, across from the historic market building.

The Sunday series, funded in part by the Capitol Hill Community Foundation,  runs another three weeks. The schedule is here.

 

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Eastern Market Music this Weekend — Free!

Celebrate the re-opening of the Eastern Market building by enjoying free music outside, on 7th Street SE, courtesy of the Capitol Hill Community Foundation:

Saturday, June 27

10 AM Yamomanem — New Orleans Jazz

Noon Memphis Gold and Jay Summerour – Blues

2 PM Honky Tonk Confidential – Rockabilly

4 PM Runakuna — Andean music

Sunday, June 28

10 AM Rick Franklin and Friends — Acoustic Blues

1 PM Dead Men’s Hollow – Americana-Bluegrass

 

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Eastern Market Building to Re-Open June 26

UPDATE: Free music at Eastern Market June 27-28.

Capitol Hill’s Eastern Market building will re-open Friday, June 26th, refurbished and re-interpreted, after it was gutted by fire on April 30, 2007. While the 1873 building is of questionable historical or aesthetic merit, it will certainly go down in history for its rehab pricetag: $22 million in public funds.

Great pains were taken to use historically accurate paint colors and streetlamp forms in the adaptive restoration, but astonishing anachronisms (lead-free paint, electric lights, air conditioning) abound. There is no word when historically-correct horse manure and flies will be installed in surrounding streets and alleys.

Eastern Market Schedule

Eastern Market is bustling along as always as Capitol Hill’s  place for fresh food shopping, schmoozing and art, but reconstruction of the fire-gutted original  1873 building seemed stalled and unlikely to meet the planned  June completion date. 

In home remodelling, medicine, or automotive work, once you get under the hood you find problems you didn’t expect. Historic restoration is no different. Deteriorated flooring, corroded steel beams, and weakened brick arches slowed progress, Bill Rice of  DC’s Office of Property Management told Michael Neibauer of The Examiner.

OPM has extended construction hours so market business can blossom in the  spring. Workmen will be on the job from 3:30 PM to midnight weekdays, 6 AM to 3:30 PM Saturdays (never on Sundays) until May.

Holiday Housecleaning at Eastern Market

Washington residents got a holiday gift from the DC Government today. DC’s Office of Property Management is finally rousting the rascals who have mismanaged Eastern Market and is taking direct administrative control on January First.

Management of historic Eastern Market has been contracted out to a phantom DC nonprofit called Eastern Market Ventures (or Venture – documents differ). Who is EMV? Primarily Maryland’s Site Realty Group, with apparent participation by principals of  MilleniuM Real Estate Advisors (which provides the notional DC address — at the Watergate) and New York’s Capital Properties .

Eastern Market Funds to Pay for West Potomac Park Levees

The DC Government will  build a new levee system across 17th Street NW, between Constitution Avenue, NW and the World War II Memorial, and pay for it with $2 million from the budget for rebuilding fire-damaged Eastern Market, reports Michael Neibauer in the Examiner. Repair of the Potomac riverfront levees is long over-due, and the budget reduction should not affect restoration of the historic market building, expected to be completed in the summer.

The Farmer’s Line at Eastern Market is in full seasonal bustle, stocked with plush pines, fine firs, and handsome hemlocks, so don’t wait until summer to come by. All the original Eastern Market vendors are just across 7th Street in the “East Hall,” so order your Christmas goose soon.