Northern charm and Southern efficiency?

Here's a quick story about how, even though city services in DC are so much better than in the bad old days, there still is much to be desired...

I found a license plate from a car in our front yard one morning. I sent a tweet to the DMV, asking what I should do with it. They told me to mail it to the Southwest Service Center. Unfortunately, I didn't have an envelope big enough to do so at the time, so I left the plate next to the mail pile in our entryway, planning to take it to the DMV personally when I got a chance.

That chance came yesterday. After biking to Dupont Circle for a haircut and Foggy Bottom for a appointment with my doctor, I headed down to Southwest to give the plate to the DMV in hopes they could reunite it with its rightful owner.

Since I don't have a car anymore, I've stopped paying attention to when DMV offices are actually open. I didn't realize all locations are closed on Mondays. When I arrived at 95 M Street SW, a few women were talking with the security guard who had come outside to give them directions about when and where else they could conduct their business.

Thinking I might have a chance at simply leaving the license plate with the guard, I told her my story and asked if she could give it to someone when they came in the next day. She quickly responded, "I don't want to be responsible for that. You take it to the police next door."

Disappointed that this was going to be more than a simple transaction on my part, I trudged over to the police station I had walked past moments earlier. After opening the door, I realized I had to walk through a metal detector. I thought about the small saw blade that I often carry with me (handy for taking down illegal signs on lampposts and doing a little illicit tree pruning where kids have torn branches from our young street trees), and then I realized that I had a metal license plate in my hand, so there was no way I could avoid setting off some alarm.

Boldly striding through the arch, I was greeted with a loud beep that caught the attention of a woman behind a desk about 40 feet away. She mumbled something in my direction, but I couldn't hear her over the rumble of an air-conditioner. After letting her know twice that couldn't hear her, she finally got out of her seat and came over to the front desk. I briefly explained the situation, and told her that the DMV guard recommended I bring the plate to the police.

After looking at me quizzically, she turned around to grab a piece of paper and asked for my name, phone number, address, and date and time I found the plate. I couldn't remember the date exactly, but let her know it was some time ago. She asked why I didn't return the plate immediately, and I let her know that I was busy and it hadn't been a priority. "This was my first chance to go to the DMV, and that's why I'm here now," I replied.

The woman (who did not appear to be an officer, as she was not in uniform), took the plate and walked past her desk to a cubicle located behind hers. A uniformed officer emerged, and after a brief discussion, they both came back up to the front counter.

The officer told me to take the plate back over to the DMV. I reminded him that they're closed on Mondays, and he replied that I should go back tomorrow. When I told him that I did not have time to do so later, he shrugged, handed the license plate back to me, and walked away.

At that point, I strongly considered just pitching it in the garbage can and walking out of the building. Thinking better (I really didn't want to provoke the kind of reaction that would get me jailed for some stupid reason), I put the plate back in my bag, laughed, and walked out of the building.

Anyone want a DC license plate? Maybe you could try to find its owner. I gave it a shot, I failed, and I'm ready for someone else to take a turn.

Call these lawbreakers, tell them to stop harming DC's trees

There are people who live in DC and businesses that operate here who don't care to follow DC law. Some of these individuals have a special disrespect for the trees in our neighborhoods. It's time we tell them, en masse, that we are sick and tired of this disrepect and lawlessness.

Below are a series of signs that I came across this morning on my ride into work. I'm passing this information along to the Department of Public Works as well, in hopes that they will throw the books at these creeps and fine them to the fullest extent possible under the law. Unfortunately, that might just be a couple hundred dollars.

In the meantime, I strongly encourage anyone reading this to call the numbers on these signs and give them a piece of your mind. Maybe, if we can shame these people enough (or at least clog up their voicemail boxes), we can get them to stop dumping their garbage on our city.

DC is a beautiful place. Let's keep it that way.

Juicy J is performing at Ibiza nightclub in NoMa this Friday. There's an opportunity to tell four different groups of people that they need to respect city law and not nail signs to our street trees.

• Juicy J's twitter handle is @therealjuicyj. Send him a tweet and tell him the promoter he's hired is a hack.
• His sign was produced by a company called Gig Signs. Their phone number is (609) 420-4242. Call them and tell them their signs don't belong nailed to our city's trees
• The club where the show is happening is Ibiza. Call them at (888) 424-9232 and tell them you don't appreciate their shows being promoted in a way that harms trees.
• There's a number on the signs for "Social Architects," which appears to be the promoter. Call them at (202) 905-3131, and give them a piece of your mind about nailing signs to trees.

Here's another one of Juicy J's signs. These were nailed to trees on the 800 block of K Street NE.

DC House Max appears to be one of those shady companies that buys houses from people in economic distress, then does a shoddy job and flips the house, leaving the new owner with a mess that'll start falling apart after 8 months. They also like to screw their signs to trees. I didn't have a Phillips head screwdriver with me this morning to remove this sign, but it's still located on the 1100 block of K Street NE.

Here's a close-up of that screw and washer. Call DC House Max at (202) 288-3200 and tell them that you're sick and tired of their ilk and what they do to our trees.

Finally, this sign was one of two that wasn't nailed to a tree, but was tied to lampposts on Florida Avenue NE at the entrance to Gallaudet University. It's not legal to put advertising signs on posts without registering them with the city and affixing a date to the signs noting when they were put up. The latter wasn't done, and I'd bet a princely sum that the former wasn't done either. I took them down and threw them out. But go ahead and call (202) 800-2728 and leave a message. Fill up their inbox so they can't actually do business.

Really Giant, this is the best you can do?

Now, while we promised in our introductory post the following:

That doesn't mean we'll hold back on the curmudgeonliness here, but we'll make sure that's not the only thing you'll read.

we didn't mean that there wouldn't be blog posts that were just good old complaining. How about this for an example?


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This is an exterior sign on Giant grocery store #0375, near the Rhode Island Avenue Metro station, on Brentwood Road NE. The store, built in 2002, is having its interior upgraded using Giant's new corporate color scheme. It's good to see this much money being invested in a store that's under a decade old.

Many people in the neighboring Edgewood neighborhood complained when the Safeway at 514 Rhode Island Avenue NE closed, but the writing was on the wall the year before, when I noted that the store was the only one in DC not slated to receive upgrades. The fact that Giant is staying invested in the neighborhood makes it clear that they're not going anywhere anytime soon.

Now, with all that said, someone explain this to me:

This is the new Giant logo that has replaced the sign you saw above. The grimy outline of Giant's old sign is clearly visible here. I just want to know why they didn't clean the wall before installing the new sign.

I mean, this is your face to the outside world, your potential customer's first impression, and you're going to do it half-assed? After spending hundreds of thousands of dollars upgrading your store, you'd think that Giant management would want to make sure to get everything right. This simple oversight—leaving the exterior looking unfinished—undermines all the other work they're doing. If you want me to come into your store, don't leave me with a first impression that screams "cheap".