Kal Penn Coming to Arlington, For Obama
Actor Kal Penn will be making two appearances in Arlington on Monday night, June 11, as part of his work on President Obama’s re-election campaign.
Penn — famous for roles in movies like Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle and National Lampoon’s Van Wilder, and TV shows like House and How I Met Your Mother – will first drop by a young professionals event at Café Asia (1550 Wilson Blvd) in Rosslyn at 6:00 p.m. He’s expected to talk about why he supports President Obama and why Virginia is an especially important state in the re-election effort.
At 7:30 p.m., Penn will greet phone bank volunteers at the Obama campaign’s Arlington office (2408 Columbia Pike).
Following President Obama’s election, Penn left acting for two years to go to work in the White House Office of Public Engagement. He’s currently taking another break from acting in order to work as a co-chair — or surrogate — for the president’s re-election campaign.
Photo via the White House
Your Beermonger: SAVOR Week
Editor’s Note: This sponsored column is written by Nick Anderson, beermonger at Arrowine (4508 Lee Highway).
You may have noticed an unusually high number of special beer-themed events happening around the area this week. Well, you can thank SAVOR for that. SAVOR is a yearly festival run by the Brewer’s Association, a trade association representing the interests of craft breweries. SAVOR features craft breweries from all over America (many of whom aren’t available in our area yet) and focuses on pairing craft beer and food. Over the past few years, SAVOR has quickly become one of the can’t-miss events on the beer geek’s calendar.
SAVOR brings hundreds of big names from the beer business to the D.C. metro area, and as with most of the major beer events (Great American Beer Festival, World Beer Cup, Extreme Beer Fest, Craft Brewer’s Conference) the week preceding SAVOR has become a smorgasbord of insane beer dinners, tap-takeovers, and celebrations of our favorite beverage. Even if you’re just finding out about all of the happenings reading this column, there are SAVOR after-parties Saturday night and at least one SAVOR-themed beer brunch happening Sunday morning.
If I may — a bit of a confession: I’ve only attended SAVOR once. The first year of the festival, I scored a couple tickets from a friend of mine at Dogfish Head and went in with only an idea of what to expect. What I got was a chance to try some amazing beers and meet many of the luminaries of the industry that I had only read about. If you get a ticket (and those can be hard to come by) it’s well worth going just for the access SAVOR provides to some of the best and brightest American craft beer has to offer. This year marks my return to SAVOR after missing the last couple years (when I was working for wine importers and couldn’t justify the expense) and as much as I’m looking forward to it, I’m more excited about and proud of the scene the festival has built around itself in our area.
The word around the campfire is that SAVOR will be held in New York City next year. There’s nothing to say that the move is permanent, but being a defensive “everyone loves NY but hates us” D.C. area guy I can’t help but see some writing on the wall. If the rumors are untrue, that’s just fine by me. But I sincerely hope that if SAVOR is held in New York next year that at the very least the Brewer’s Association considers alternating years between here and there. The D.C. metro beer scene has fought and kicked and screamed for years trying to earn the recognition and respect that other cities have gotten from the beer industry, and now that SAVOR week has become such a benchmark for beer fans all over it would just feel like another example of D.C. having the rug pulled out from under it.
Perry Soulos, Arrowine’s Cheesemonger, and I have talked about it many times and feel like the solution is simple: If SAVOR has grown enough to be held in New York, why not hold a spring and fall session with one here and one there? The number of world-class breweries in the U.S. right now provides a seemingly limitless roster of guests and beers to present, and we’ve seen here with the D.C. event just how much demand there is for tickets. I understand perfectly wanting to take SAVOR to the “big” city, but if anyone from the Brewer’s Association is reading this, please don’t take the excitement and the attention away from all the great things happening in our area.
If you’re going to SAVOR this Saturday, I’ll be the guy wandering around bugging all the brewers who aren’t available here yet. Don’t hesitate to say hi. Until next time.
Cheers!
Nick Anderson maintains a blog at www.beermonger.net, and can be found on Twitter at @The_Beermonger. Sign up for Arrowine’s money saving email offers and free wine and beer tastings at www.arrowine.com/mailing-list-signup.aspx. The views and opinions expressed in the column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARLnow.com.
Open Houses in Arlington This Week
With sunny skies and warm temperatures, this should be a good weekend for house shopping. If you’re on the hunt for a home in Arlington, you’ll have at least 11 open houses to choose from this weekend.
See our real estate section for a full listing of open houses. Here are a few highlights:
4500 Four Mile Run Drive South
Condominium — 1 Bed / 1 Bath
Listed: $199,900
Agent: Lizzie Helmig
Open: Sunday, June 10 from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.
900 Stafford Street North
Condominium – 1 Bed / 1 Bath
Listed: $382,500
Agent: Karrina Brown
Open: Sunday, June 10 from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.
3523 19th Street South
Single Family Detached – 3 Bed / 3 Bath
Listed: $529,000
Agent: Martine Irmer
Open: Sunday, June 10 from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.
20 Aberdeen Street
Single Family Detached – 3 Bed / 2 Bath
Listed: $587,500
Agent: James McGarity
Open: Sunday, June 10 from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.
823 Lincoln Street North
Single Family Detached – 4 Bed / 3 Bath
Listed: $1,149,000
Agent: Ronald Cathell
Open: Sunday, June 10 from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.
2503 18th Street North
Single Family Detached – 4 Bed / 4 Bath
Listed: $1,295,000
Agent: Ruth Boyer
Open: Sunday, June 10 from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.
Safety Improvements Coming to GW Parkway
(Updated at 3:05 p.m.) The National Park Service will be installing a series of safety improvements along the George Washington Parkway, intended to make Memorial Circle and several Mt. Vernon Trail crossings across the parkway less dangerous.
The improvements were announced this morning by Rep. Jim Moran (D). Work on the improvements will start next week and will wrap up by the fall. Among the planned changes, according to Moran’s office:
- “Replacing many of the directional and regulatory signs in the Circle and on Memorial Bridge”
- “Installing rumble strips bumps to alert drivers before each of several specific crosswalk areas”
- “Painting directional arrows, information, and symbols directly onto the pavement to help drivers select proper lanes early”
- “Moving one crosswalk area from where there are two lanes to where it is only one lane wide”
The announcement comes just three days after a cyclist was struck by a car and injured at a trail crossing just south of Memorial Circle. Several other accidents and close calls have been reported at GW Parkway trail crossings over the past two years.
“It’s a confusing area and unfortunately we have a lot of accidents involving bicyclists and motorists and joggers,” U.S. Park Police spokesman Sgt. Paul Brooks acknowledged earlier this week.
Moran says the changes should help make things safer for pedestrians, cyclists and drivers alike.
“The health and safety of those commuting to work or simply exercising along the Potomac River should never be threatened due to poor infrastructure planning,” the congressman said in a statement. “I am pleased the National Park Service has agreed to put needed fixes into the trails and roads surrounding Memorial Circle. With the scheduled improvements, tourists, commuters, pedestrians, and cyclists will be able to truly share the road.”
Clement to Run for County Board, Again
The Arlington Green Party is hoping the third time will be the charm for Audrey Clement.
Clement has been nominated as the Green Party’s candidate for County Board in this fall’s election. It’s her third County Board run in a year, after losses in the November 2011 general election and the March 2012 special election.
The Arlington Greens issued the following statement about Clement’s nomination:
The Arlington Green Party officially nominated Audrey Clement as its candidate for the Arlington County Board in the November 6, 2012 general election at its monthly meeting on June 6. Dr. Clement, who qualified for the ballot in April, has run for County Board twice before. She has pledged to make fiscal responsibility and providing for basic needs over big ticket capital spending projects the centerpiece of her campaign.
Ms. Clement said that she will vigorously oppose spending $300 million in Arlington local funds for an ill-designed trolley on Columbia Pike that will only serve to eliminate affordable housing, and waste funds urgently needed for public schools and other county projects.
Audrey is a long time Arlington resident, an IT consultant, and holds a Ph.D. in political science. She has run twice for the Arlington County Board as a Green against Democratic and Republican opponents. She is an avid bicyclist, environmentalist, and mass transit supporter. Her campaign website is: http://audreyclement.org/
The Arlington Green Party has had a candidate for Arlington county board election for the past six years; in 2009, the Green candidate received about 32 percent of the total votes cast.
Robocall Not Meant to Be Misleading, Shuttleworth Camp Says
The campaign of Democratic congressional candidate Bruce Shuttleworth says a recorded “robocall” placed to local voters this week was not intended to be misleading.
Yesterday the Democratic blog Blue Virginia reported that the call claimed Shuttleworth was “doing a conference call… with [Democratic National Committee] Chairwoman [Rep.] Debbie Wasserman Schultz on women’s issues.” In reality, Blue Virginia blogger Lowell Feld wrote, “this call was simply ‘one of several monthly constituency caucus calls the Chair is making this week, with several thousand total participants.’”
In response, the Shuttleworth camp released a statement it sent to to Blue Virginia.
There was no intent to misrepresent the candidate’s status on the call as anything other than a participant.
In light of the ongoing attacks on Women’s rights in this country by the political right wing, Bruce Shuttleworth is encouraged by the DNC Chair’s initiative to energize women in support of the only party which protects their rights — the Democratic Party. That you don’t think it is important to widely share this initiative is a shame.
Bruce Shuttleworth will continue to encourage the citizens of VA-8 to get active and engaged and to fight for social and economic justice for all citizens. In fact, there will be another robocall going out tonight that will encourage Latino voters to participate in the White House Hispanic Community Action Summit this weekend in the District. We think it is important to support the President and get the Latino community engaged.
The campaign also released a transcript of the call (after the jump). Shuttleworth will face incumbent Rep. Jim Moran in the Democratic primary this coming Tuesday, June 12.
Morning Notes
Rosslyn Outdoor Movies Start Tonight — The season of weekly, political-themed outdoor movies in Rosslyn starts tonight with the 1999 Matthew Broderick/Reese Witherspoon flick “Election.” The movie is scheduled to start at dusk.
Anti-Harassment Ads at Metro Stations — WMATA has placed anti-sexual harassment public service announcements in 28 Metro stations. In Arlington, the ads can be found in the Ballston and Clarendon Metro stations. [Stop Street Harassment]
Opening of Refurbished Affordable Apartments — Community members, local elected officials and affordable housing advocates gathered Wednesday to celebrate the preservation and renovation of Buckingham Village 3 — now renamed “Buckingham Gardens” — as committed affordable rental housing. Ninety-two apartments have been renovated and a new community center has been built as part of the project. [Arlington Mercury]
Margot MacDonald to Play Encore -- Arlington’s own singer/songwriter Margot MacDonald will be performing at Encore Stage, a local youth-oriented theater. The performance will take place this Saturday, June 9, at 7:30 p.m. at Thomas Jefferson Community Theatre (125 S. Old Glebe Road). “Join us for an evening of Margot’s own eclectic rock and favorite covers,” Encore says on its website. “Recommended for ages 10 and up.” [Encore Stage & Studio]
