Archive for July 2003

Helix Hotel

After a hectic day trip to Atlanta, I feel like the man in the mural, slightly off the ground and with papers flying everywhere. It didn’t help that I showed up at National Airport this morning with an e-ticket for a departure from Dulles. As if the terrorist threat announced today against U.S. airlines didn’t make things tenuous enough.

This is another photo from last weekend, another try-to-take-a-picture-while-Fanny-tugs-the-leash affair, like the lily photo I posted yesterday. The mural is in front of the Hotel Helix at Rhode Island and 14th Street. It looks like a Magritte reproduction, but isn’t a reproduction of anything ever painted by Magritte. The hotel used to be a Howard Johnson’s and, judging from the room pictures on the hotel’s web site, it still could be. I just can’t figure out why some people think that this retro-70s crap is cool. The web site reprints a sole admiring (if semi-literate) letter from a customer who suggests, as a compliment, that the hotel looks like it was designed by the Brady Bunch. The next thing you know Nixon will be cool.

Orange Lily

I took this photo last Saturday morning while walking Fanny. It’s tough taking photos when an inquisitive cocker spaniel is yanking on the leash on your other hand trying to explore some interesting, and no doubt disgusting, scent on the sidewalk. In this case it was a discarded chicken bone, no doubt from the Popeyes around the block, that had captured her fancy. Still the photo came out well. Photography is all about serendipity.

Monarch Novelties

I had lunch today at Thai Tanic with Weston, a friend of mine. We sat in the table at the window, which overlooks 14th Street. This photo, which I took yesterday, is the storefront of Monarch Novelties, just across from the restaurant. Monarch Novelties is nestled next to Maison 14, a fashionable little French furniture store.

Monarch Novelties sells the stuff you get if you win Whack-a-Mole on the Rehoboth Beach boardwalk, or if you hit a hole-in-one at the windmill hole of a minature golf course in Atlantic City. What on earth is it doing in the middle of Washington? I’ve never seen a single person go in or out of this store. It’s probably a front. Like the dry cleaners a door up which wants ten days to do your shirts. If I see guys wearing pilot uniforms walk out of either place, I’m calling the FBI!

Seriously, 14th Street remains a diverse collection of the chic and shabby. An El Salvadorian pupuseria, a Caribou Coffee, a liquor store with a Virgin Mary over the beer cooler, the Studio Theatre, a trendy refurbished furniture store which just relocated from 17th Street, Popeyes, that French furniture store I mentioned, a gay bathhouse, two shelters for homeless women, a Latin market, and much more. A decade from now these will probably all be replaced by Gap, Starbuck’s, TGBY, Anne Taylor, and Abercrombie. Which will be a shame. Starbuck’s amd TGBY have already established bulkheads a few blocks away on P Street, between 14th and 15th across from the Whole Foods Market, and there’s a rumor that GAP has optioned some property.

But for the moment, things are fine on 14th. And the “Bird Net on Fired” (“Bird’s Nest on Fire) at Thai Tanic was spectacular. A delicious mound of spicy chicken resting in a nest of fried kale.

Lestat

Chris, a friend of mine, had to put down his dog Lestat today. This is not a picture of Lestat, because I have no pictures of Lestat, but rather a picture I took of a dog that seems to have the personality of Lestat. Big, generous, and wise. Like Chris. We come to resemble our dogs, and they come to resemble us.

Lestat was a Rottweiler that Chris inherited from a dear friend of his who died when Lestat was young. I’m not sure that, at first, Chris wanted Lestat, or that, at first, Lestat wanted Chris, but they became fast friends. And Chris, generous and wise, was as sad tonight as I have ever seen him.

I told Chris that what we learn from dogs is that love outlasts life, because we almost always outlive our dogs. Roger Grenier said in Les Larmes d’Ulysses: “Quand on aime un chien et qu’il vous aime, le malheur est dans le manque de synchronisation entre la vie humaine et la vie animale.” (“When you love a dog, and a dog loves you, the sorrow is the lack of synchronization between the life of humans and that of animals.”).

This remarkable quote comes from an even more remarkable chapter of the book, “Le promenade Rue du Bac,” that you can find translated here.

I know that one day I will be in the same position with Fanny, who is 12. Perhaps there is some consolation in what Paul Valéry said: “Les animaux, qui ne font rien d’inutile, ne méditent pas sur la mort.” (“Animals, who never do anything useless, don’t reflect over death.”)

Our Lady of Budweiser

This beer and wine carry-out in my neighborhood was just bought by the Latin market, Tienda Izalco, next door. Soon afterwards, the Virgin was brought in to keep a close eye on the coolers with the beer and malt liquor. And the condoms, cheap wine, cigarettes and phone cards, which are the only other products for sale in the store.

Bastille Day

This hommage to Bastille Day cropped up over a building on my block this weekend just before Bastille Day. Given the current anti-Gallic sentiment, seeing the tricolore waving proudly against a clear blue American sky was refreshing. No freedom fries, freedom cuffs, freedom vanilla ice cream, freedom kisses, freedom films (think about that for a moment) or freedom poodles for these folks!

Here’s a good example of the current anti-French sentiment. Type “French military victories” into Google, click “I’m Feeling Lucky” and what you will get is this. Have these people ever heard of Napoleon?? Not that I’m a big fan of his, but his victories included making off with the Four Horses of San Marco in Venice and several frigates of Egyptian antiquities. (Granted he was in Egypt because Lord Nelson sunk all his ships and stranded him for more than a year in Egypt).

And where would we be without General Lafayette? And what does W think about the fact that there is a statue of General Lafayette in the park directly in front of the White House? He probably thinks it’s worse than a statue of Saddam Hussein.

Bastille Day

This hommage to Bastille Day cropped up over a building on my block this weekend just before Bastille Day. Given the current anti-Gallic sentiment, seeing the tricolore waving proudly against a clear blue sky was refreshing. No freedom fries, freedom cuffs, freedom vanilla ice cream, freedom kisses, freedom films (think about that for a moment) or freedom poodles for these folks!

Here’s a good example of the current anti-French sentiment. Type “French military victories” into Google and what you will get is this. Have these people ever heard of Napoleon?? Not that I’m a big fan of his, but he made off with the Four Horses of San Marco in Venice and several frigates of Egyptian antiquities, including the Rosetta Stone. (Granted he was stranded in Egypt because ).

And where would we be without General Lafayette? And what does W think about the fact that there is a statue of General Lafayette in the park directly in front of the White House?

Fanny

This is Fanny, the picture promised in yesterday’s post. See what I meant about the floppy ears? I took this picture this evening during Fanny’s pre-dinner walk, and it’s one of the best pictures I have of her, other than a picture that Kim Simpson took. Kim’s a real photographer (unlike me) and her picture of Fanny hangs in my office.

Fanny turned 12 this June and it seems like such a long time ago that I had this scared puppy in a box in the back seat of a car. Neither she nor I knew that we were heading off on such a long adventure.

What We Can Learn From Dogs

Love. Honesty. Serenity.

OK, so now I have to post a picture of my dog, Fanny, who reminds me that life is bigger than I am, that love is not restricted, and that there is a reason for floppy ears.

McPherson Square

A June 30 article in Slate, which I just saw yesterday, featured city blog maps including the Washington DC Metro Blog Map. Click on the McPherson Square metro stop and you’ll find clifburns.net.

Although I live in the Thomas Circle/Logan Circle neighborhood, McPherson Square is the closest Metro Stop. So it seems I should post a picture of McPherson Square. This is a picture I took of McPherson Square one morning during one of the Spring 2003 snow storms.

There’s an urban legend, common in DC, that the position of the hooves on equestrian statues of military figures reveals the rider’s fate. One hoof raised means wounded in battle; two hooves raised means killed in battle; and all four hooves planted firmly on the ground means a peaceful death. McPherson’s horse has one hoof raised but he was killed by rebel troops on July 22, 1864 during a reconnaisance mission.