VIA MYFOXDC:

WASHINGTON – The D.C. police union says a detective accused of unholstering his gun at a snowball fight faces a possible 10-day suspension.

The Fraternal Order of Police said Detective Michael Baylor learned about the proposed suspension Tuesday and plans to appeal. The police union is representing Baylor, who does not have an attorney.

In a report dated Feb. 4 and obtained by The Associated Press, the police department’s internal affairs bureau says Baylor acted “confrontational” as he approached a large crowd in northwest Washington in December. The review also says Baylor failed to report stopping a man he thought had thrown a snowball at the detective.

A D.C. police spokeswoman says she cannot comment on personnel matters.

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VIA THE WASHINGTON POST:

On Feb. 23, a select group of Washingtonians received an intriguing e-mail: “The orange arrow is pointing at you,” the subject line read.

It was an exclusive invitation to “an exclusive underground anti-restaurant,” the e-mail explained. “Because the DNA of the magical dinner is unmapped, these events will evolve, month to month, season to season, place to place & plate to plate.”

The invitation alone wasn’t enough for diners to make the cut, however. For the privilege of attending Orange Arrow’s inaugural, $125-a-head dinner, guests had to agree to abide by certain rules.

“If you can’t/won’t eat certain things, this is not for you.”

“No crybabies, whiners or buzz kills can come to our party. This isn’t reality television.”

“Don’t try to sell your ticket on Craigslist. Failure to show basic decency gets you on the blacklist.”

Reached by phone, Orange Arrow’s co-founder, a James Beard award-nominated chef, made no apologies for the invitation’s tone or defiant exclusivity. “We don’t want them in if they’re not fun or interesting,” said the chef, who requested anonymity. “This is a private club. In a restaurant, you’re a whipping post. This is a completely different thing.”

In a city best known for its see-and-be-seen culinary destinations, a new breed of underground restaurants is emerging. These supper clubs shun pomp, circumstance and plebian steak dinners in favor of more-offbeat dining experiences. Some operate as for-profit businesses. Orange Arrow plans to obtain location and liquor permits for its ambitious suppers, which will host as many as 150 select “hungry, hedonistic gypsies” at venues that range from a museum to an alleyway. Others lurk in a legal gray area, accepting “suggested donations” for the food and wine to get around requirements for business and liquor licenses. Hush, the brainchild of a former World Bank staffer, invites no more than 16 for an intimate evening of home-style Indian food and culinary storytelling. There are even traveling underground restaurants. On Feb. 20, 40 in-the-know hipsters surrounded a long table to eat garlicky shrimp (and learn to suck out the heads) at the area’s first Wok + Wine event.

Already, demand is strong. Orange Arrow sold 30 percent of its tickets within 24 hours; it requires visitors to visit http://orangearrowdc.com to list a reference in order to get past the virtual velvet rope. After just one month of taking reservations at http://hushsupperclub.wordpress.com, Hush has an e-mail list of 300 interested diners, and every meal has had a waiting list. “The demand is unbelievable,” said the host, who goes by the name Geeta and runs Hush out of her home in Northwest Washington. “I thought, you know, I’d join Twitter and send out some e-mails and maybe some people would check it out. I thought it would take six months to build interest, not 10 days.”

Unlicensed restaurants have long prospered overseas. In Hong Kong, si fang cai, or speak-easies, in private homes are considered by many to have the best food in the city. But clandestine kitchens are a more recent phenomenon in the United States. The Ghetto Gourmet, which began serving meals in the basement of an Oakland, Calif., apartment in 2004, was one of the earliest. Soon, the concept spread to big cities everywhere. In Atlanta, RogueApron threw an event in an alley between boarded-up houses. In New York, patrons of A Razor, A Shiny Knife have together learned to carve a 150-pound boar. In Washington, two professional chefs launched a short-lived underground experiment, also called Hush, in Eastern Market in 2007. But it wasn’t until this year that the trend took off in earnest.

Washington’s new underground restaurants generally divide into two categories: amateur cooks who want to offer a new kind of experience and recovering restaurateurs who want to set their own rules.

Hush falls into the first group. For between $50 and $75 per person, Geeta serves the dishes she grew up eating in her mother’s kitchen, including dhokla, steamed lentil-and-rice flour cakes, chana masala (chickpea curry) and sweet carrot halwa. It’s a way of sharing her Gujarati culture and her religion, Jainism, which prescribes a diet that bans root vegetables as well as meat and dairy products. “If you want fine dining, go to Rasika,” Geeta said, referring to the popular restaurant in Penn Quarter. “This is the comfort food I’ve been served since I was in the womb.”

The message comes through food and storytelling. At a recent dinner, Geeta told guests about when, as a young girl, she was given her first masala spice box. She encouraged the roomful of strangers to talk about what was interesting and meaningful to them. “We live in a divisive town. We could go the whole night talking about Sarah Palin,” Geeta told the group as they sipped their welcome cocktails, made with coriander-and-saffron gin. “But we are more than what we do. I want you to share things, things that maybe you didn’t think anyone would be interested in in Washington, D.C.”

Whether it was the cocktails or the encouragement, it seemed to work. After some initial nervous chatter, the group of 20- and 30-somethings ate, drank and talked about the Olympics, what they’d cooked during the recent snowstorms and meddling in-laws. Yana Kravtsova, a 33-year-old lawyer, taught software project manager Scott Forman and Rakesh Surampudi (who followed instructions and avoided saying where he worked) the Russian way to make a toast. At midnight, Forman began playing the piano. The last guests left at 1 a.m.

“It’s very refreshing,” said Kravtsova. “I like the concept. Hanging out with strangers is not a very Washington thing.”

Wok + Wine’s mission is also to bring people together. The club was founded in November 2008 by New Zealand native Peter Mandeno, 38, as a way to broaden his social network in New York. In 2009, Mandeno organized 20 events there as well as in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, London, Madrid and Washington.

Wok + Wine’s formula is simple. Interested diners sign up at http://www.woknwine.com on a first-come, first-served basis. Only 40 people are admitted. Tickets usually cost $35. Twenty-four hours before the event, guests receive an e-mail revealing the location of the party. Wok + Wine offers one kind of wine — all the easier to meet someone by filling up their glass, the theory goes — and one kind of food: jumbo shrimp stir-fried with garlic, salt, crushed red pepper flakes and cilantro in a high-powered portable gas wok.

The Washington event skewed heavily female. During the first hour, guests sipped a 2007 Quinta dos Grilos (it retails for between $10 and $12) and milled around the 6,000-square-foot apartment in Shaw. At about 8 p.m., everyone was called to the long wooden table, lined with banana leaves. Mandeno scattered the shrimp down the center, and his partner, Yrmis Barroeta, explained how to peel them and suck out the heads. In case anyone forgot, a sign was posted on the wall to remind them: Rip. Lick. Bite. Suck.

Guests muscled their way closer to the table. Conversations sparked easily as several people struggled to eat the shrimp as directed. “The structure definitely makes it easy to talk to one another,” said Sylvia Yu, an employee of the Department of Health and Human Services who had heard about Wok + Wine through a friend. “Getting your hands dirty is messy and kind of sexy. It’s fun.”

Underground restaurants run by chefs are, not surprisingly, more elaborate. The goal of Orange Arrow, the chef said, is to create a place where “people who love food want to go,” not another bricks-and-mortar restaurant that has to serve steak and salmon and make the rent. The first dinner is at the end of the month.

Another underground restaurant, operating out of the Northwest home of two former Washington chefs since June 2009, offers guests half a dozen passed hors d’oeuvres and cocktails, then a multi-course tasting menu paired with wine. On a recent evening, the appetizers included seared scallop with roasted beets, cauliflower soup with Oregon black truffle, steak with Brussels sprouts and sunchokes, roasted rockfish with corn grits and turnip greens, and black truffle ice with vanilla cake. The suggested donation: $195 per person.

The restaurant’s founders said they had tired of the relentless pace of the hospitality industry. But after time away, they missed cooking for friends and food lovers. “We missed the interaction,” the founder said. “So we found a different way of doing it.”

The restaurant has no fixed schedule. Dinners happen about twice month. The chefs set up private dinners upon request or get the word out via friends and the Internet. Guests tend to be people who love food but are tired of the restaurant scene, the founder said. In general, the restaurant serves 10 to 20 guests at each dinner.

Despite their questionable legality, underground restaurants don’t seem to be ruffling any feathers.

Rob Wilder, co-founder of ThinkFood Group, which owns seven Washington restaurants including Jaleo and Zaytinya, has attended two underground dinners with friends and says he has no qualms about any unfair advantage the hosts might have over legal restaurants like his. “If it’s five nights a week and anyone can knock on the door, give the password like a speak-easy, they’re over the line,” he said. “I don’t see a few people doing a few of these a month as competition. I think it’s part of D.C. becoming a more vibrant, fun, adventurous food community.”

A D.C. health department spokeswoman said she was unaware that such operations are taking hold here. The department requires that inspectors visit any establishment that “relinquishes possession of food directly to a consumer,” including restaurants, grocery stores, convenience stores, bakeries, delicatessens and caterers. Operators also must be located in an area zoned for commercial business, and they must obtain a business license.

But the hosts say that because they request donations and not payments, their events are no different from dinner parties where guests are asked to pitch in for the cost of the meal.

“In some ways, my intention is to be very public about my desire to spread my culture and my cuisine,” said Geeta. But she never reveals her name. Just in case.

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VIA DCIST:

The Post reported earlier that the very first gay couples to get legally wed in the District of Columbia this morning were Jeremy Moon and Bryan Legaspi, a pair of White House staffers, and James Betz and Robert Hawthorne. The two couples appear to have held their marriage ceremonies nearly simultaneously, one inside the courthouse in judges chambers, and the other just outside the building.

Meanwhile, three of the couples we talked to last week, who were among the first to apply for their marriage licenses, were wed at the Human Rights Campaign headquarters in Washington, D.C. this morning. HRC has released video of all three ceremonies, between Angelisa Young and Sinjoyla Townsend, Reggie Stanley and Rocky Galloway, and Darlene Garner and Candy Holmes, which we’ve posted below (note the running time is over 40 minutes).

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VIA DCIST:

Plenty of local love from Michelle Obama, as the White House announced today that two out of three commencement speeches the first lady has agreed to make this year will be right here in the District.

The biggest news from the local perspective is that Obama will address graduating seniors at Anacostia Senior High School on June 11. This will mark the second time the first lady has chosen to deliver a speech at a D.C. public high school. Last year, she spoke at the commencement ceremony for the Washington Mathematics Science Technology Public Charter High School.

Before she goes to Anacostia, Obama has also pledged to address graduates at The George Washington University on May 16 — but only if they complete 100,000 hours of community service before then. GWU students have been working toward fulfilling the first lady’s service challenge all year, and we seriously doubt they’d let her down.

Obama will also speak at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff on May 8.

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Marketing Associate

Key Staffing Solutions is hiring for a (Marketing Associate). The position is full-time with a starting salary of $30,000-$40,000 a year. The entry level position is an excellent opportunity for a recent college grad looking to start their career with a company in which they can grow and learn. REQUIREMENTS: • Bachelor’s Degree with a very strong GPA • Excellent Communications Skills, both Oral and Written • Should be Team and Goal Oriented • Intellectually Rounded. If interested, fax your resume to (301) 738-9359.

Free Job Fair

Residents can attend a Free Job Fair on Saturday, March 27th, 2010 in the Laurel-Bowie area. More than 30 companies will be on site to hire you on the spot. For more information, call Ron at 202-413-2875.

Part-Time Unarmed Security Officer

OMNIPLEX World Services Corporation has an immediate opening for a Part-Time Unarmed Security Officer. The responsibilities of the position include but are not limited to the following: security patrols, access control, security related personnel escort duties, traffic, parking control, law and order duties, as well as security and fire safety surveillance. If interestedin applying, fax your resume to (703) 652-3101.

VIA FORBES:

The country may have started its long haul back to economic recovery — if recent news that consumer spending increased slightly in January is any indication. But even so, most Americans still aren’t ready to brag about their paychecks.

Except, perhaps, in Loudoun County, Va., where median household incomes are higher than anywhere else in the country. This affluent suburb of Washington, D.C., where families take home a median $110,643 annually, tops our list of America’s 25 richest counties.

Loudoun is emblematic of the counties where the highest incomes are found. The country’s riches tend to trickle away from big cities. It’s not major metro areas raking in the biggest salaries; rather, it’s the tony suburbs just outside big-industry centers that soak up big-city money.

Glitzy Southern California and big oil states are largely absent from the list: 19 of the 25 richest counties in the country are on the East Coast. In part, that’s because our list looks at the middle incomes, and counties in the East tend to be smaller, thereby allowing for less of a spread between the richest and poorest workers.

Data for our list come from the U.S. Census Bureau, which conducts the annual American Community Survey, a smaller-scale version of the decennial census. The most recent data are from the calendar year 2008 and include 1,889 counties.

Wealth Radiates From the Capital

It’s not surprising that workers in Loudoun do well. The federal government generates a wealth of jobs, keeping unemployment in the D.C. metro area at a low 6.2% (the national average is still near 10%). The best-paid workers from D.C. take their money home to Loudoun, where jobs have grown 4% between the second quarter of 2007 and the second quarter of 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But a big chunk of that healthy income goes toward maintaining the good life. Loudoun homeowners pay a median $4,844 per year in property taxes. Tax burdens are similarly high in a lot of well-off counties.

Like Loudoun, a number of the country’s wealthiest households are tightly concentrated in counties around the nation’s capital. Six of the richest counties lie on the outskirts of Washington: Fairfax County, Va., Arlington County, Va., Stafford County, Va., Prince William County, Va., Charles County, Md., and Alexandria City, Va.

Not far from D.C. lies another cluster of wealthy counties. Howard County, Md., a suburb of Baltimore, has a standout school system with standardized test scores that consistently beat out the national average, and median household incomes of $101,710. In nearby Montgomery County, where 59% of residents over 25 have an advanced degree, households bring in a median $93,999. Historic Calvert County, Md., has profited from its roots as a tobacco-rich farmland as well as its proximity to Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, and claims a median income of $89,049.

Read more here.

VIA THE WASHINGTON POST:

Turn in a pothole. The District Department of Transportation has launched its second Potholepalooza campaign to attack the ruts created by the harsh winter.

In last year’s month-long campaign, the District patched more than 6,000 potholes that were either reported by the public or discovered by the city’s crews of pothole patchers.

This year’s campaign began over the weekend and will continue through April 5. The goal is to fix potholes within 48 hours after they are identified. People can add to the list by phone, online report, Twitter or e-mail.

Some of the fixes are quick and simple. They involve an application of a cold mix that hardens quickly in a small pothole before it has time to get bigger. Some are more complicated, and require a crew of workers to clear debris from a large area — perhaps half the size of a bus stop — then pour and spread a pre-ordered amount of asphalt.

When you contribute your nomination, be ready with the location, including the NW, NE, SE or SW quadrant in the District. Give as much detail as possible, including the approximate size and depth of the pothole. (But don’t stand in traffic and measure it.)

How to Report a Pothole
– Phone the Mayor’s Call Center at 311.
– Use the Online Service Request Center at 311.DC.Gov.
– Tweet to www.twitter.com/DDOTDC.
– E-mail to Potholepalooza@DC.Gov.

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Angels of Hope Ministries, Children’s Outreach of Anacostia SE, D.C., is reaching out to the children of Haiti through practical Packages of Hope.

Packages of pampers, under garments and feminine sanitary items, will be personally distributed during a missions tour in Port Au Prince.

If you would like to donate items, drop them off Wednesday, March 10 and Thursday, March 11 from 6pm-8pm both days at 2430 Elvan Road SE, Washington, D.C. 20020 or call 202-344-6656. You can also contact Rev’s Alfred and Claudia Harrison via email at alharrison1@verizon.net.

Prince George’s Community College is hosting several events during Women’s History Month.

A workshop will be held called “Build Healthier Relationships During Oops! What Happens When Relationship Expectations and Respect Aren’t Clearly Defined” Thursday, March 18th , 1-3 p.m. in Marlboro Hall Rooms 2102 and 2090.

This event is free.

For more information, call 301-322-0181.

The Washington Redskins Charitable Foundation  will again be providing one high-potential, low-income high school senior with a $25,000 college scholarship. The Foundation chose to establish a $25,000 college scholarship that will be disbursed throughout the student’s collegiate career because oftentimes with smaller scholarships, students are forced to search for additional funds or drop out of school after their freshman year.
In 2009, Ballou Senior High School student Clayton Armstrong was selected as the first recipient of the Foundation’s scholarship. The scholarship, administered by the DC College Success Foundation (www.dccollegesuccessfoundation.org), will provide one deserving student in either the District of Columbia or Prince George’s County, MD with a college scholarship that will be disbursed in $5,000 increments annually. The DC College Success Foundation has established a strong working scholarship model that places scholarship recipients in a mentoring program that requires the student to work with a mentor during their freshman year to help ensure success.
High school seniors attending either a District of Columbia Public School or Prince George’s County Public School may apply for the scholarship by visiting https://apply.collegesuccessfoundation.org/dc/ .
To be eligible to apply for the scholarship, the student must:

Ø       be committed to earning a bachelor’s degree
Ø       have a 2.75 GPA or better
Ø       commit to participate in a program to support retention in college
Ø       be eligible for a college Pell Grant
Ø       have filed a FAFSA, if eligible
Ø       be planning to enroll or to actually be enrolled full-time as a college student, 12 credits or the equivalent for the semester
Ø       have participated in interscholastic athletics during high school
Ø       have demonstrated an active and willing participation in community service throughout high school

The deadline for students to apply for this college scholarship is April 9.