Archive for the ‘Around Town’ Category

You can still order chicken cacciatore and shrimp scampi at the former Pines of Italy restaurant at 237 North Glebe Road. But now you can also have it with baba ghannouj, chicken schwarma and baklava.

Cleopatra’s Mediterranean Bistro opened in March with little fanfare outside the immediate neighborhood and the local Arabic community. Serving up Middle Eastern food in addition to Italian carryovers from Pines of Italy, Cleopatra’s is as eclectic as it is unassuming. For those who care to indulge, there’s also a bar.

Cleopatra’s prices are exceedingly reasonable, and there are coupons available online to make a visit even more affordable.

During Ramadan (which runs through Sept. 10) the restaurant is offering a $9.95 Iftar buffet that features all-you-can-eat meat, seafood and vegetable dishes.

When Ramadan ends, lunch service will resume, as will the four-night-per-week live music and belly dancing and the late-night live entertainment on weekends.

Owner Sami Khan keeps Cleopatra’s open until 4:00 a.m. Thursday through Saturday. He says many young people will stop by after coming back from the downtown clubs. The restaurant usually draws a weekend crowd of about 100 people, mostly Middle Eastern and mostly in their 30s, he says.

More photos, after the jump.

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Whitlow’s plans to open its new rooftop deck at some point next month, but it will be opening with a different name than originally announced.

Instead of “Fu Bar” — a military reference that also hinted at an envisioned Asian influence — the deck above Whitlow’s on Wilson will now be called… drumroll, please… Wilson’s on Whitlow’s.

Get it?

A few ARLnow.com readers called the Fu Bar name “lame.” (We liked it, actually.) What does everybody think about “Wilson’s on Whitlow’s?”

Photo by Monika & Tim

The first thing Dimas Pinzon did when we got him on the phone was ask if we knew how the guy he helped to save was doing (he’s okay).

A day earlier Pinzon — a.k.a. the man in the blue dress shirt — had jumped into the path of a Metro train to come to the aid of a man who fell on the tracks while having an epileptic seizure. Then, after the train stopped short and he had helped to hoist the nearly 200 pound man to safety, Pinzon gathered the papers he had dropped on the ground and casually got on a train toward Union Station.

It’s hard to imagine a more ideal hero under the circumstances. Pinzon, 57, is a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel. His father, an electrical worker for the New York City transit authority, used to take him on the subway and teach him about the dangers of the electrified “third rail.” Despite knowing the dangers, Pinzon hurtled two electrified rails in his effort to get the victim to safety.

It all started around 12:15 p.m. Pinzon noticed people screaming on the other side of the station and saw that a man had fallen onto the tracks. At the far end of the station, the light of an arriving train was becoming brighter. Sure that the train was going to hit the man, Pinzon called out for him to lie in the crawl space between the track and the platform. The victim, dazed and in pain, slowly started to get up, but was not getting under the platform.

“I saw that the train was slowing down, and I saw the guy standing up and he was wobbling around, so it was like, this guy’s going to fall back or something bad is going to happen,” Pinzon said. “I just said to hell with it, someone’s gotta get to him.”

He jumped onto the track, stepped over both third rails, hurried over to the man and put him in a bear hug. With the help of two people on the platform, Pinzon lifted the man to safety. After being helped back to the platform himself, he asked the station manager to call 911. With the man being taken care of by the other riders, Pinzon collected his papers and went back to the other side of the station, where he boarded a train to Union Station.

“My job was done, and I figured I’d go on with my business,” he said.

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Painted on the side of a cinder block warehouse and facing the popular Shirlington dog park, a large mural of happy dogs, bones and paw prints seems like a nice addition. And it would be fine with county regulators — if it wasn’t for the fact that a dog-related business commissioned it. But since the mural belongs to a small doggy daycare it’s considered advertising under county zoning code — and may eventually have to be painted over. For now, a blue tarp covers the $4,000 mural.

Across the street, a self-service dog wash is covered in graffiti, the result of the owner allowing talented local taggers to use his store as a canvas. As long as the graffiti artists don’t depict any dogs or the word “dog,” the owner has been told, the graffiti is considered art and is not subject to regulations.

Thus is the paradox of county regulations intended to protect Arlington from commercial eyesores but permit public artwork — even if the “advertisement” is actually beautifying a monolithic wall in a run-down neighborhood, it is considered a violation. Yet if the doggie daycare were to paint airplanes or fire trucks or elephants on the side of the wall — which is in plain sight of a steady procession of defecating dogs — it would be perfectly fine.

“For me, the issue is the lack of common sense,” said Kim Houghton, who has sunk her life savings into Wag More Dogs, the daycare in question, which she has been trying to open since July 2009. “I understand the law… but [the mural] adds to the park. Can’t an exception be made?”

No, says county zoning administrator Melinda Artman, who’s in charge of enforcing zoning laws in Arlington.

“Unfortunately, as attractive as that mural is… it meets our definition of a sign,” Artman said. She noted that Houghton did not apply for a comprehensive sign plan, which would have to be approved by the county board but which could have allowed the mural to exist legally.

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The new Nordstrom Rack in Pentagon City opened its doors this morning to a large crowd eager to get their hands on some fashion bargains.

After the store opened, it ‘all hands on deck’ as the newly-hired employees manned every available checkout aisle and held signs aloft to show shoppers where the end of the checkout line was.

Of all the sections in the store, the shoe aisle seemed to be the most crowded this afternoon.

More on Bayou Bakery — On Tuesday we broke the news that David Guas finally picked out the perfect spot for his Bayou Bakery concept: the old Camille’s space in Courthouse. Now the venerable Tom Sietsema has scooped us and a half dozen other local reporters who had been waiting patiently for an interview about the Louisiana-inspired cafe. Guas tells Sietsema that the Bakery will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner and will feature, among other things “muffalettas, layer cakes, root beer floats, blue plate specials,” and a beer selection.

The End of Free Parking in Clarendon? — Starting August 31, the Department of Human Services parking garage in Clarendon will no longer be free to the public between 6:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. With DHS moved out of the building, a private parking lot operator will be taking over. Even though garage parking rates in Clarendon are reasonable, the loss of free parking could result in even more cars coming into the Lyon Village neighborhood looking for street parking at night. More from TBD.

More Trader Joe’s Rumors – That persistent rumor that Trader Joe’s will be coming to Clarendon? We’re now hearing it too. And for everyone’s convenience, we’ve picked out the perfect spot for a new Trader Joe’s. Check out the unoccupied 10,319 square foot retail space in the Clarendon Center project (space #9). It could be a great location for a grocery store, don’t you think? But a higher-up with the developer denied that Trader Joe’s has any plans to move in.

Flickr pool photo by MichaelTRuhl

Today’s complaint of the day isn’t so much a complaint so much as an amusing call to police.

Apparently, a neighbor called police after hearing noises coming from an apartment. The apartment in question belongs to a woman who’s diabetic, and the neighbor thought she might be having some sort of diabetic emergency. The caller said it sounded like the woman was yelling “yes, yes, yes.”

Shockingly, the woman did not come to the door when the neighbor knocked.

Arlington police and firefighters were dispatched to the scene.

Pizza Autentica Adds Ballston Location — Crystal City isn’t the only Arlington neighborhood on the radar for fast-growing local chain Pizza Autentica. WBJ’s Missy Frederick reports that Pizza Autentica has signed a lease at 850 North Randolph Street in Ballston.

Arlington Food Blogger Profiled — The Fairfax Times takes a look at Arlington mom Colleen Levine and her natural food and cooking blog, Foodie Tots. A government affairs consultant by trade, Levine has amassed 2,500 Twitter followers by focusing her blog on kid-friendly, healthy cooking. The recipe for spaghetti caprese — part of Levine’s effort to promote “meatless Mondays” — looks especially appetizing.

Oil Spill Dogs Need an Adoptive Family — Arlington’s Lost Dog and Cat Rescue Foundation is trying to find a home for the last three of 12 dogs brought up from Louisiana after the Gulf oil spill. The shihtzu family — Gizmo, Trixie and Rocky — were given away by their former owner after he lost his job as a fisherman as a result of the spill. The story and photos from Fox 5.

Internet giant AOL is rolling out a local news site devoted exclusively to the Ballston-Virginia Square area. The Ballston Patch will launch on September 13 with a paid, full-time editor at the helm.

As we first reported in February, AOL has been planning on launching dozens of its Patch local news sites in the DC area. Then in May, we noted that the company was hiring editors for two different Patches in Arlington. A “Rosslyn-Court House-Clarendon” Patch may still be in the works, but so far it’s not listed as “coming soon” on the Patch web site.

Over here at ARLnow.com, we’re taking the competition for neighborhood news in stride. So we want to know: what sort of stories in the Ballston-Virginia Square area should we cover that we’re not already covering? What events should we be adding to the events calendar? Please let us know in the comments section.

To be honest, I thought Eric Patrick (@ericisfunny on Twitter) was not going to be very funny.

With the past music, photography and acting aspirations of Real World cast members in mind, I was preparing myself for pity laughter and polite applause when Eric took the mic as the last act of the night on Friday.

The stand-up comedians who preceded him on stage at the sold-out Arlington Drafthouse were actually quite funny — but it was Patrick’s name on the marquee out front. Would the former State Department employee live up to the billing?

In fact… he did.

His confident, energetic and engaging performance was surprising given that nothing on The Real World: New Orleans up to this point has really shown his funny or outgoing side. In an interview after the show, Eric readily admitted that his sole contribution to last week’s episode was carrying a drunk cast member from the sidewalk to her bedroom.

But that’s about to change. Eric says the last three episodes of the season will feature him and his comedy more prominently. And even though he’s “the normal one,” Eric says he wasn’t able to avoid drama with cast member Ryan in some upcoming episodes.

Despite the lack of screen time, Eric says he often gets recognized on the streets of Arlington. He was hoping that basic cable stardom would be a one-way ticket to getting more girls, but says it has instead been a magnet for older men and unattractive women.

“Here’s what I’ve noticed: the bigger the excitement to see me, the bigger the woman,” Eric quipped during his edgy 30-minute act.

In the end, Eric says he loved living in New Orleans, but the Real World experience wasn’t without its low points.

“The pros outweighed the cons, and it was mainly the city,” he said. “It was one of the best cities I’ve been to.”

Eric, 25, returned to Arlington after taping the show and is currently living in his grandparents’ house near Virginia Hospital Center. The grandparents, Roy and Peggy Jones, now live in Georgia and let Eric keep watch over the home, which has been in the family for at least four generations.

The Jonses were at the show Friday night. Mrs. Jones said they’re supportive of Eric — who they described as “quiet” — even when he’s making jokes about receiving oral sex in Roy’s rocking chair.

“That’s fine, it’s life,” Mrs. Jones said. “That’s the way we are, we always support our children… whatever they want to do we tell them to do it 150 percent.”

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