Archives for the 'washington dc' tag
Bag Tax Confuses, Dismays
Washington, DC’s 5¢ tax on plastic bags applies only to stores that sell food. But which ones are those?
The owners of Chocolate Moose, which sells quirky gifts and jewelry as well as candy, were certain the tax didn’t apply to them. Although they received the notice the district sent to all retail food establishments, candy accounts for just 10% or 20% of sales, says co-owner Marcia Levi. “I don’t consider myself a food establishment,” she says. When another store owner asked what she was going to do about the regulation, she decided to call the city, just to be on the safe side. “I explained to them the situation—that only a small part of my business is food,” she said. “They said it does not matter.”
I can’t imagine the headaches this bantamweight bean counting must be inducing in store owners:
Stores keep one cent of every five cents they charge for bags, and two cents if they give customers a credit of at least five cents for each bag (of any sort) that they bring to the store. That provision forced clerks at one local Giant supermarket to intervene in every purchase at every self-check-out terminal to authorize the credit. Under no circumstances, the law says, are stores allowed to pick up the five-cent fee for their customers.
Now imagine your check-out isn’t automated and you have to keep track of how many bags leave your shop so you know how much to pay John Q. Law — or be fined.
At least DC has the manzanas to call it a “tax.” In Connecticut, an identical “fee” was introduced last year by Representative Kim Fawcett but it fell by the wayside once Fawcett, a Democrat, pissed away her political capital voting against gay marriage — this in a state where the Republican governor signed it into law. Fawcett then promptly ran over her own daughter. Man, that was a crazy spring.
Dog Days on Capitol Hill
It has been a big week in the U.S. Senate. Yesterday, the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body passed a bill granting voting rights to the District of Columbia. Today, it got hot dog vending machines.
I hit up the newly installed machine in the Hart Senate Office Building to try out this miracle of modern vending science. Since it was the machine’s first day, a technician from LHD Vending Systems was there buying a few dogs on house (err, House?) for interested passers-by. No word on whether accepting a $2 dog violates ethics rules for Senate staff. Beware the wrath of the guardian of integrity, the two-headed monster known as McCain-Feingold!
I went for the $2.50 all-beef Kunzler dog. The machine has a glass window in the front, you can see your hot dog get plucked from the refrigerated section, cooked (with “infrared,” according to Alex Cifuentes, the helpful on-scene technician/spokesman), deposited in a warmed bun, and delivered though a sliding door.
The dogs are pretty decent—better than boiled or microwaved, if not quite up to true grilled standard. And more miraculous even than the existence of a hot dog vending machine: Normally fast-walking, busy-and-important Senate staffers stopped to gawk at the machine and kibitz while it did its thing. None would go on the record with their observations about hot dogs, though. Let’s just say that several high ranking Senate staffers are pro-hot dog.
Just in case the old saw about Washington being recession-proof turns out not to be true, you can cobble together your very own D.C. version of a Gray’s Papaya Recession Special right on Capitol Hill. Gray’s price these days is $4.45 for two dogs and a drink. At $2 a pop for the dogs and juice and soda machines flanking the dog machine, a similar package is yours for the making.
Diners Hash Out Plans to Weather Recession
I love me a good diner. And I’m even willing to tolerate a subpar one if the structure is as ancient as the waitresses–who must be named something like Bertha, and the kitchen staff something like Hank–and they’ll let me sit there for a while.
Thus I was pleased to see the Washington City Paper’s Tim Carman has a nice piece up today on the place of diners in tough economic times. Right off the bat, Carman nails why anyone worth knowing loves a diner:
There’s something about sitting in a diner, sipping coal-black coffee and shoveling down a syrupy stack of silver-dollar pancakes, that makes you want to spill your guts for hours.
Carman points out that though diners aren’t totally recession-proof, they are (like McDonald’s) capable of and experienced at weathering the financial storm.
If you’re the owner of a restaurant in a recession,” says [American City Diner's Jeffrey] Gildenhorn, “you want to own a diner.”
My favorite diner of all time–my favorite place of all time, ahead of, say, the Duomo in Florence, or Fenway Park–was the old Post Office Diner in Beverly, Mass., where I grew up. I’d go every Sunday morning, without fail, with my grandmother.
Best eggs, toast, home fries, and coffee–which I started drinking at age six–ever. Some Sundays, I’d make my parents take me back for a lunch of lightly salted tuna on a top-split hot dog bun, fries, and a coffee frappe.
I have vehemently hated the French (all of them) since the local Franco-American Club–the landowner–evicted the P.O.D. to make room for parking.
After French people ruined my childhood, I’d have to settle on the Agawam Diner in Rowley, Mass., or the Portside Diner (in nearby Danvers, where my parents now live).
Anyone else have a favorite diner? (Hint: if you are worth talking to, the answer is “yes.”) Where’s it at?
Smoking Inside, Er, Outside the Beltway
I have a piece up today at Culture 11 on how businesses can (and cannot) get around DC & Maryland smoking bans.
Speaking of DC & Maryland, did anyone else notice that NBC kept referring to Sunday night’s NFL game between the Redskins and Ravens as the “Battle of the Beltway”?
And which beltway would that be? 695?
I digress. A snip:
Perhaps the most egregious and subjective requirement of the waiver form is that a filer ordain whether “any like business opened or changed operations in” a waiver seeker’s “general vicinity” since January 1, 2005. (If yes, the applicant must provide an explanation.) For good measure, the application elsewhere describes a “change in operations” as “including, but not limited to a change in chef, manager, wait or other staff.”
In other words, in order to provide a complete response, a waiver applicant must ostensibly survey every nearby competitor to learn the intimacies of their staffing for the previous several years. Of course, a business owner has neither the obligation nor the incentive to aid his competitor.
More here.
Bourdain Kind of Announces Next Season’s ‘No Res’ Schedule
With last night’s Laotian season debut of No Reservations still on my DVR box, I can’t really comment on what Tony’s been up to.
I can, though, talk about what he’s up to now, and what he’s going to be up to soon. Actually, I’ll let him say it:
From Tuscany to Sardinia and now to Lombardi for a couple of days and then the long drive to Rome and then home – and back to work. Meaning: Mexico, DC, Vietnam, Venice, Chicago, Ethiopia, Provence, Thailand – and some other places I forget right now.
No Reservations in my neck of the woods (DC)? How… pedestrian and exciting at the same time.
I can already tell where he’s hitting: bar in Adams Morgan, maybe the bar at the Mayflower, an Ethiopian joint off U Street, and a hot spot each from Jose Andres and Michel Richard. It’d be cool if he hit some ethnic joint in Wheaton or Rockville or anyplace in Northern Virginia or thereabouts (Salvadoran, Korean, etc.).
