Washington City Paper (July 31, 2020)

THE DISTRICT'S FREE WEEKLY SINCE 1981 VOLUME 40, NO. 30 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM JULY 31–AUG. 6, 2020

A joyful collection of coloring pages to remind you of our shared home

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TABLE OF CONTENTS COVER STORY 9 The Nature of D.C.: Revel in the region’s natural beauty with our illustrators’ coloring pages.

NEWS 4 Loose Lips: A couple and their baby fight the city for their right to emergency shelter.

8 Put It On My Tablet: DC Public Schools students and teachers confront a lack of resources as they prepare for a remote start to the year.

SPORTS 6 Shutout: Lindsay Simpson brings awareness to traumatic brain injuries two years after her accident at Audi Field.

FOOD 18 Jumping Shift: Hospitality pros discuss the forces and events that prompt them to consider leaving the industry.

ARTS 19 Film: Gittell on The Shadow of Violence 20 Child’s Play: Mikael “Lil Kelz” Murray is 5 years old and considered the future of go-go.

21 Books: Sarappo on Brian Castleberry’s Nine Shiny Objects

CITY LIGHTS 23 City Lights: Learn how to nurture a garden in a small space or check out a documentary about a Canadian photographer.

DIVERSIONS 25 Crossword 26 Savage Love 27 Classifieds Cover Illustration: Ronan Lynam

Darrow Montgomery | 3400 Block of 16th Street NW, July 28 Editorial

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NEWS LOOSE LIPS

Access Denied

David Watts

A D.C. family wasn’t given emergency shelter despite relaxed verification rules during the coronavirus pandemic.

At first, David Watts says, he was told he needed to provide proof that he and his family had nowhere else to go. That task was near impossible for a family that’s spent months sleeping in parks, Metro stations, and, when they can pull together enough money, hotels.

Watts, his partner Heather Beall, and their almost 1-year-old son have been seeking emergency shelter in D.C. for more than a year. Most recently, they say they were turned away on July 15, in the middle of a record-setting heat wave.

“She told me it wasn’t nothing they could do for me,” Watts says of his conversation with the intake worker at the Virginia Williams Family Resource Center, where families apply for emergency shelter. “So I told her to have her supervisor call me, and she kept trying to say, ‘Well, it’s nothing we can do for you.’”

He never received a call back. So that night, Watts and Beall slipped through the backyard fence of a property in Southeast and spent the night in a shed. Their son stayed with a family member.

The next day, July 16, Watts called the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless looking for help. Staff attorney Amber Harding inquired with the Department of Human Services, which provided an explanation that conflicts with Watts’ version of the circumstances and that she says runs afoul of the law.

DHS responded to Harding via email that the agency never denied Watts and Beall shelter. “The family abruptly ended the call,” a DHS representative writes in one email. “Due to this, there was no eligibility determination.”

In another email, an agency representative writes that Watts and Beall refused to provide information verifying that they are D.C. residents, a requirement for emergency shelter in the District, and would not provide photo ID. The email says they became “irate” and ended the call before the intake worker could finish the eligibility process.

Watts disputes that he ended the call, and says the intake worker hung up the phone after

Darrow Montgomery

By Mitch Ryals @MitchRyals

promising to refer him to a supervisor. Harding notes that DHS used similar terms to describe Shadon Freeman, a pregnant mother City Paper spoke with last year, who was also initially turned away from Virginia Williams.

Harding says the information DHS asked of Watts and Beall shouldn’t have been required in the first place. Watts receives public benefits in D.C., which require District residency, and DHS has access to a database where they can verify that, Harding says. Additionally, Harding says DHS Director Laura Zeilinger told her in March that the agency wouldn’t initially require documents to determine eligibility for shelter during the pandemic. She committed to place families on an interim basis and collect verification later, Harding says.

Part of the thinking was to avoid sending people all over the District to collect written proof that they have no other safe housing. In the past, DHS has required letters from previous landlords, family members, or friends saying a person seeking shelter can no longer live with them.

“There’s only three things you can inquire about: Are they a family, are they homeless, and are they D.C. residents?” Harding says. “And they’re saying, ‘We want to know everything about this family and where they’ve been.’”

She adds that photo identification is not a requirement for emergency shelter. A spokesperson for the agency declined to comment on the specifics of Watts and Beall’s case.

The coronavirus pandemic has amplified issues and disparities in virtually every aspect of life, and homeless services are no exception. In D.C., people living in shelters who show

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symptoms or test positive for coronavirus are sent to quarantine in a hotel room. As of July 26, no individuals were in remote quarantine, city data show. 331 people in D.C. homeless shelters have tested positive for COVID-19 and 21 people in the homeless services system have died, according to city data.

The D.C. Council expanded the length of time families can stay in a shelter on an interim basis from three to 60 days, with the option to extend that placement as long as the public health emergency is in effect. The declaration is currently set to expire October 9. Harding counts at least 12 families in the past four months who have sought help from the Washington Legal Clinic.

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom launched “Project Roomkey,” a program that leverages FEMA funds to rent up to 15,000 hotel rooms for people experiencing homelessness. By the end of June, Newsom claimed the effort had housed 14,200 people. The Minneapolis Park Board voted in June to allow homeless individuals to camp in city parks. The decision came after more than 200 people set up an encampment in Powderhorn Park after they were evicted from a hotel used as an ad hoc shelter. The encampment continued to grow before the park board superintendent declared the park too dangerous, according to news reports. Police cleared some of the tents and residents last week.

As for Watts, this isn’t the first time he and Beall say they’ve been turned away. In an interview last week, they described three other instances in the past year when they weren’t placed in a shelter. Beall says she was told during one visit to Virginia Williams that she wasn’t

far enough along in her pregnancy to qualify for placement in a family shelter. According to D.C. law, a pregnant woman must be in her third trimester to qualify; otherwise, she is potentially eligible for placement as an individual. At the time, Beall was only five months pregnant.

Beall says she was also denied shelter days after she gave birth and was still wearing her hospital ID band when she visited Virginia Williams.

Watts says he’s provided his DC Jail identification, birth certificate, and social security card to show that he’s a District resident during previous applications. (Watts has a felony record and says he previously served time in prison.

He and Beall were arrested in May, according to the Metropolitan Police Department, though prosecutors did not file charges.)

Each time they were turned away, Watts, who has asthma, says they slept on the streets in downtown D.C., unless they were able to afford a hotel.

“I had to steal, sell drugs just to get my baby mother and me in a hotel,” he says. “It was hard.”

DHS placed Watts and Beall in a shelter a day after Harding got involved in their case, despite the fact that they haven’t provided any additional documents about their residency or other housing options, Watts says. On Tuesday, July 28, they were deemed eligible for permanent placement, and Watts says he’s trying to get a job at the construction site next door to the shelter.

“I just got tired,” he says. “Knowing that I can’t live on the street with no child, self preservation kicks in sometimes. Like look, I ain’t got no clothes. I ain’t got no shoes. This is all I got.”

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SPORTS SOCCER

Shutout

About a month later, D.C. United moved her from the active payroll to disability payments, Simpson says, and according to her lawyer, David Schloss, her workers’ compensation benefits ended last September. That came seven months after the team’s insurance company, Great Divide Insurance Co., sent Simpson to get a medical examination from an independent neurosurgeon, who concluded she did not suffer a head strike.

Simpson, a former University of Maryland women’s soccer goalkeeper, is still struggling with her recovery, and has filed a claim against D.C. United and Great Divide to continue receiving workers’ compensation and recoup lost wages.

There are people in her life, she says, that still have trouble believing what she’s going through. That’s part of the reason she wants to become an advocate for athletes struggling with traumatic brain injuries and their caregivers.

“I have been, pretty much my entire adult life, trying to convince people, and oftentimes people really close to me, family friends, that concussions are real,” she says. “This isn’t made up. These are real symptoms. And just

Two years after her accident at D.C. United’s Audi Field, Lindsay Simpson wants to help other athletes suffering from traumatic brain injuries.

By Kelyn Soong @KelynSoong

Virginia, examined Simpson at the behest of Great Divide on Feb. 28, 2019, and asserts in a report after viewing video of the incident that it was “unlikely based on this film that she actually sustained a head strike.”

In a video of the incident viewed by City Paper, the long metal object appears in the frame and proceeds to fall somewhere near the right side of Simpson’s head and shoulder. She bends forward after the strike, and moments later loses balance and is seen sitting down in a chair while her co-hosts, Dave Johnson and Devon McTavish, among others, check on her.

Hope writes in the medical examination report, obtained by City Paper, that “while she has a slight flinch corresponding with the sound of the railing coming loose, she does not flinch as it goes by her head or move in a reaction to a head strike stimulus. Instead, her movement secondary to the trauma occurs when the railing hits her shoulder. I am convinced that there was absolutely no head strike.”

At the suggestion of her lawyer, Simpson did not read the report. She feels betrayed by Hope’s conclusions after reading excerpts of Lindsay Simpson

Darrow Montgomery

For months leading up to July 1 4, Lindsay Simpson was filled with dread. That date marked the two-year anniversary of what she simply refers to as “the accident,” when part of a railing became dislodged and struck her from above as she prepared for a pregame show during the opening of D.C. United’s newly constructed Audi Field.

Her post-accident world has become insular. Simpson, who served as D.C. United’s sideline reporter and vice president of marketing and communications, spends most of her days recovering and only sees her husband, Nathan Getty, a few family members in the D.C. area, and close friends. But as the anniversary of her accident neared, Simpson, 34, decided it would be an appropriate time to publicly share her story of what she describes as an altered life, no matter how painful the anniversary of that day feels.

“I’m ready to ... stop seeing it, in my own life, as the day my life ended or the day my life changed forever in a negative way and start seeing it as the day God gave me a chance to live,” she says. “And so that’s where I really turned the page and started seeing July 14 not as the worst day of my life, but as my second birthday, because nearly every medical professional I’ve seen has told me that there’s no reason I should be alive.”

Simpson and I first met at the University of Maryland at College Park, where we briefly overlapped during our graduate school journalism programs, and I consider her a friend.

I’ve watched Simpson’s career develop from afar, and had planned to say hello to her during the Audi Field opener, but figured with all the commotion of opening night that she would, in her multiple roles, be a little busy. I would catch up with her another time.

Days after the inaugural game at Audi Field, Simpson told City Paper that the accident left her with a concussion. By her own estimate, that was either her seventh or eighth concussion. She doesn’t remember the accident and didn’t have a “single recollection for weeks.”

“We try to laugh about it and say, I wonder who I was looking for, the Spanish soccer player I [must have] had in mind, and try to make jokes about it,” she says. “But it breaks my heart that I did that to him.”

That year had been shaping up to be the best of her life. She got engaged in January, and then a month later was promoted to vice president of marketing and communications.

Shortly after, D.C. United announced that it would be signing international soccer superstar Wayne Rooney.

She would work late and show up the next morning at 6 a.m. to get in a workout before starting another day at RFK Stadium, the team’s previous home.

“But I wasn’t miserable,” Simpson says. “I was in heaven. It was like every dream I’d ever had was coming true all at once. Then it all changed in an instant.”

On July 14, 2018, prior to the team’s long awaited debut match at Audi Field, Simpson had just wrapped an interview with D.C. United legend Jaime Moreno in the locker room before she headed toward the outdoor set near the pitch for a pregame broadcast.

Fans had not yet filed into the stadium, and

because you can’t see it on an X-ray or read it in bloodwork, it doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

Simpson pauses to gather her emotions as she talks about the aftermath of the accident.

People who were near her have filled in some of the blanks, including the moment she stared Getty in the face and asked him to go get her husband.

6 july 31, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

as Simpson was texting on her phone while on set, she heard a loud clanging noise. A large metal object, described as a “railing” or “railing cap,” fell from above and struck her. Where it hit her depends on who you ask.

Simpson and her lawyer believe it hit her on the head and shoulder. Dr. Donald Hope, an independent neurosurgeon at the Center for Cranial and Spine Surgery in Northern

the report for the first time in a Washington Post article. In response to the report’s findings, Schloss says that Hope “is not a concussion specialist … He’s a spinal spinalist.”

“When I read his reaction, I just started shaking,” Simpson says. “I almost threw up.

I mean, it hurt. It felt like I had just gotten punched in the gut again. And honestly, that’s what the last two years have felt like. It’s just

SPORTS one punch in the gut after another.”

Schloss says that the claim filed on behalf of Simpson is against both D.C. United and its insurance company, and that the club is an “equal party to the case.” While D.C. United is named in the claim, the team asserts it has no control over what the insurance company does.

“It is the club’s hope that the final outcome is just and we wish Ms. Simpson happiness and the best for her health, both mentally and physically,” the team said in a statement to City Paper. “The club respectfully disagree[s] with Mr. Schloss’ characterization of the workers’ compensation process as reported in the Washington Post article. The workers’ compensation litigation is controlled by the insurance company.”

City Paper reached out to Great Divide for comment, but a spokesperson for the company declined to comment on the incident, citing the company’s policy against publicly discussing individual insureds, policies, claims, or litigation.

Schloss adds that Turner Construction, which D.C. United contracted to build Audi Field, has been put on notice for a negligence claim, but that he wants to wait until a possible resolution in Simpson’s case with the insurance company before litigation against Turner Construction begins. “We are aware of this incident, however, we have not

received a formal claim at this time,” a Turner Construction spokesperson told City Paper in a statement.

Since the accident, Simpson has had two surgeries. On Dec. 18, 2018, she underwent a nerve decompression operation on the back of her head and neck to relieve symptoms of headaches and nausea. Early last month, she had surgery on her right arm and hand. Simpson says she started consistently losing feeling and strength in her hand around January.

Sometimes, she struggles with her depth perception, and has trouble remembering events. Grocery stores can be a sensory overload. Her close friend, Samantha Perrie, a former D.C. United video producer, describes the look on Simpson’s face as a “fog.”

“Most of the time I know immediately if this is going to be a day she remembers or if this is going to be a day that she’s not going to remember the next day,” Perrie says.

Simpson still hasn’t seen a game at Audi Field. But in her basement, she has a shelf full of D.C. United memorabilia. Next to it is a hardhat and commemorative shovel from the Audi Field groundbreaking.

“I’m so proud of what I accomplished there,” she says. “I’m so proud of all the things that my staff and my team were able to do … And so I look back on my time there with9.875” a lot of pride and with a lot of joy, and I will always be a D.C. United fan. But it just really hurts

because I gave everything I had. I left it all on the field, but at the end of the day, I was just an employee. That’s where these relationships are hard, because sometimes it’s just a one-way street. And that’s just the way it is.”

Briana Scurry knows how Simpson feels.

In April 2010, the World Cup champion’s playing career ended when an opposing forward’s knee collided with Scurry’s right temple while she was in the net for the Washington Freedom in the now-defunct Women’s Professional Soccer league.

It was her third documented concussion— “the key word being documented,” she says— and she struggled with headaches, anxiety, and depression afterward. Scurry, 48, ultimately had occipital nerve release surgery to ease the pain, but tells City Paper her surgery was delayed due to her legal battles with the insurance company for workers’ compensation.

“I had to fight to actually get the first round of testing to see if the procedure would actually work. Then I actually had to fight to get the OK to get the procedure. Then I had to fight to get the procedure paid for,” she says with a laugh.

“It’s funny now, but it wasn’t funny at the time.

It’s ridiculous is what it is. So I would say all of that took nine months to a year longer than it should’ve taken.”

Her advice to Simpson is that it’s OK to get

angry and upset, and that people she met also had trouble understanding her battle with what is sometimes called an invisible injury.

“A person who hasn’t had a head injury doesn’t understand what it feels like to be disconnected,” she says. “And it’s hard to even explain. It took me years to explain that feeling.”

Simpson intends to focus on the positives. From August to October of 2019, the University of Maryland hired her to do color commentary for four women’s soccer games, giving Simpson a taste of her old life. She’s found projects to keep herself occupied, like learning how to make ice cream, baking, gardening in her home in Alexandria, relearning Spanish (in which she used to be fluent), and teaching herself how to play the piano.

Simpson and her husband recently launched the Champion Comeback Foundation to help support athletes with traumatic brain injuries, and Simpson says she plans to donate her brain to the VA-BU-CLF Brain Bank when she dies.

Schloss says a hearing for the claim is scheduled for December. Until then, Simpson will continue sharing her story, using whatever platform she has to be a voice for people who share her struggles.

“I will ultimately, at the end of my life, say that [the accident] changed my life forever—in a good way,” she says. “I’m not there yet. But that’s where I’m going.”

DC Public

Library

Phase 2 Reopen Services

Anacostia | Benning | Cleveland Park | Mt. Pleasant | Northeast | Shepherd Park | West End | Woodridge

Library Hours: Mon – Fri: 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.

Closed for Daily Cleaning: 2 – 3 p.m.

Saturday and Sunday: Closed

Takeout services include: ■ Book Pick up ■ Remote Print Job Pick up ■ Computer Access ■ Full service printing

These locations are now open for Takeout services.

Bellevue | Capitol View | Francis A. Gregory | Petworth | Shaw | Tenley-Friendship Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library reopening on Sept. 24.

Customers must continue to wear a face mask and practice social distancing.

For more information on additional services and branch re-openings, please visit dclibrary.org/reopen. washingtoncitypaper.com july 31, 2020 7

5.541

NEWS CITY DESK

Parents and teachers insist every student needs their own computer for effective remote learning.

D.C. doesn’t plan to reach that target for three years.

By Amanda Michelle Gomez @AmanduhGomez A Takoma Education Campus parent is raising money for tablets so students in her kids’ school have a device for at-home learning. A teacher at the Ward 4 school is debating whether to do the same and set up a fundraiser to buy student computers to facilitate remote learning, prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, when the 2020-2021 academic year begins. Meanwhile, Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration says it has dedicated enough money to meet the technological needs of DC Public Schools families and advised the Council against spending an extra $1 million in the fiscal year 2021 budget on it. As is clear from the fundraising, some parents and teachers are doubtful the government has enough resources.

“When you talk to teachers and families, it’s quickly obvious that even if the school system said they’ve reached every family in need, actually there are a lot of needs that have gone unaddressed,” says Natalia Banulescu-Bogdan, a parent of a rising preschooler and a first grader at Takoma EC. She knows families who shared devices last school year, once the pandemic stopped in-person learning in late March and forced all 51,000 DCPS students to learn from home. Parents working remotely and school-aged siblings were often splitting computer time, if a family even had a device to begin with. According to Takoma EC’s school profile on the DCPS website, 100 percent of its families are “economically disadvantaged.”

With that knowledge, Banulescu-Bogdan and another parent launched an Amazon fundraiser on July 22 for 50 tablets. “These are basic devices,” she says. “It’s not going to solve the problem for older elementary kids who need high quality tech.” But it might help a preschooler in a family who shares one device or has no internet-enabled devices, she adds.

DCPS is distributing its computers and hotspots based on a family’s existing access. The school district expects to have 36,000 devices for

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Darrow Montgomery

Put It On My Tablet

remote learning available at the start of the school year on August 31, which is enough for 40 percent of its K–12 students. School leaders’ estimate of the technological need is based on “internal planning scenarios,” says a DCPS spokesperson. Further surveying of families in July and August seeks to tease out the actual need.

“Does your student have access to a device for learning at home?” read an online survey sent to DCPS families last week. “If a family doesn’t have internet, they will not get the technology survey—how will you know?” asked someone participating in a July 23 family town hall on reopening schools. “We are doing additional outreach to connect with families who are not online, including phone calls/texts and working with community and agency partners,” an anonymous DCPS moderator replied in a chatroom on Microsoft Teams, where the town hall was held.

The sur veying of families’ technological needs is more detailed and centralized for this school year than last, when individual schools were responsible for sur veying. Some schools decl i ned to ask whether students had “dedicated” access to a computer or “reliable” i nter net access .

Still, some parents and teachers anticipate problems with this school year’s survey. Some families might miss the email or text message about the survey because of life’s many distractions, and some parents might not be the type to ask for help.

Just because a family has a dedicated tablet for a student does not mean a student has all they need for remote learning. A first grade teacher at Takoma EC recalls one of her students who was using a parent’s Android tablet last school year and was not able to access the learning program for math because the application only ran on Apple devices. The teacher, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, says 10 of her 19 students didn’t get the devices they needed until six weeks into remote learning. Even then, students with siblings were sharing devices because there wasn’t enough equipment for everyone. She’s considering fundraising for computers now, in the event that her school hands out one computer per household, as opposed to per student, and prioritizes older students, as it did last school year.

Students aren’t the only ones who need technology. So do teachers. And unlike with students, there is no clear process for teachers to request a computer, according to some educators City Paper interviewed. Katie Norton, a pre-K teacher at School Without Walls, plans to use her personal laptop, a Macbook Pro, for teaching, because it’s higher quality than the ones DCPS provides. She was using it for work before the pandemic as well, because her school-issued desktop computer only functions some of the time. Her co-teacher,

however, borrowed a student laptop for remote learning after her staff computer stopped working. It’s not yet clear how often they’ll be working remotely. Bowser has yet to decide whether DCPS schools will be 100 percent virtual or a hybrid of in-person and remote learning.

“We are not doing any preparation for remote learning. We are waiting for them to make a decision,” Norton says.

Experiences from last school year, when some families went weeks without a computer or internet access before DCPS provided devices for remote learning, make parents and teachers uneasy for this year. And problems with even the most basic school resources, like bathroom soap, during non-pandemic times make some dubious that school leaders will get this right.

“I have a lot of wariness for DCPS. I don’t have a lot of trust in them,” says an elementary school teacher who works in a traditional public school in Ward 2. She requested anonymity for fear of retribution.

She lacks confidence in DCPS’ ability to provide technology to every student in need and anticipates having to purchase equipment herself. “It’s very frustrating that it is a yearly part of my job. It is expected that teachers will do that,” she says.

A coalition of parents called Digital Equity in DC Education asked the Council to invest a total of $17.9 million in the Fiscal Year 2021 budget to ensure every student has a computer this academic year. The Washington Teachers’ Union supports the coalition’s call. The investment would help bridge the so-called digital divide. A 2018 City Paper investigation found technology access to be unequal across schools, with schools in majority White neighborhoods having more computers than those in majority Black neighborhoods.

“Just like every kid got a textbook, the modern standard should be that every kid should get a computer” says Grace Hu, a DCPS parent and coalition member.

“There’s other school systems around us and other charters that are at the one-to-one student-to-device ratio,” Hu continues. “Oneto-one student-to-device ratio is the baseline standard for modern education. And if we’re not gonna take this time during a pandemic to get into the modern era, then when would you?”

The Bowser administration plans to provide computers to every DCPS student in grades three to 12 over the next three years, a plan Digital Equity in DC Education calls “inadequate.” A number of schools in D.C. are already meeting the one-to-one student-to-device ratio, including the city’s largest charter network, KIPP. Because it already meets the ratio in schools, KIPP expects to spend only $6 million on student technology related to remote learning. The

expectation is each of KIPP’s 7,000 students will have a Chromebook at home.

“To ensure we’re all on the same platform for learning and to eliminate the need for device sharing, we deemed it easier to just give all students devices for home vs. having parents opt in,” a KIPP spokesperson writes via email. “Families that opt into the hybrid learning model, where kids will come in one day a week, will have another dedicated device in the building. This will prevent cross contamination, kids forgetting at home, etc.” (KIPP has not yet officially decided whether schools will be a hybrid of remote and in-person learning, and is waiting on the mayor and DCPS to announce their decision July 31.)

The Council declined to add $11 million to the mayor’s proposed $6.9 million budget for school computers, so every DCPS student could have a device this school year. Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen attempted to direct at least an additional $1 million to computers from revenue savings garnered by delaying a tax break for corporations. However, the councilmembers who chair the education committee, Phil Mendelson and David Grosso, swore DCPS had more than enough money for school technology. The tax savings instead went to school-based mental health.

“I’ve heard the same thing from the chancellor anddeputymayor[ofeducation]around[how]they got it covered,” says Allen. “Then I hear from all the schools and all the parents and all the families, and that’s not what they are living on the ground.”

In addition to the $6.9 million through the Empowered Learners Initiative outlined in the FY2021 budget, DCPS will receive $4.9 million in federal coronavirus-related dollars and $1.2 million in additional local dollars for school technology, Grosso writes in an email to City Paper. Among the sources of money DCPS is depending on is the DC Education Equity Fund, which the mayor announced at the end of March. Donors include National Geographic, the defense contractor Northrop Grumman, and the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates.

The DC Public Education Fund, a nonprofit that supports DCPS, set up a separate coronavirus relief fund to raise money for DCPS students and their families. (City Paper’s owner, Mark Ein, chairs the board of the DC Ed Fund.)

Those who watched the calamitous budget process cannot understand why DCPS would advise the Council against investing more in school technology, especially when remote learning is inevitable and families are forced to fund students’ technology needs themselves.

Janeese Lewis George, who defeated Ward 4 Councilmember Brandon Todd in the June primary, heard from six families who needed computers for remote learning and helped raise money for them in the spring. She believes the disconnect she’s seeing between the school district and teachers boils down to the mayor’s control of D.C.’s traditional public schools. (The mayor does not fully control charters.)

“The chancellor is appointed by the mayor who sets this budget, so he is in a bind,” says Lewis George. “What autonomy does he have to say ‘hey, mayor—who has full control of me and my position and who selected me—this budget is inadequate.’”

ILLUSTRATION BY JULIA TERBROCK; Lettering by Ronan Lynam

FREELANCE ARTIST BIOS Ronan Lynam works as an illustrator from his studio in Cleveland Park. His work centers on expressing ideas through vivid and colorful illustration, often capturing the tightness of digital mark making while still retaining a hand-drawn feel, coupled with a hint of traditional media textures. Cleverness, humor, and a sprinkle of pop culture regularly play an important role in conceptualizing his work. As a digital artist, he works on a wide variety of promotional, editorial, and retail projects.

He can be found at ronanlynam.com and on Instagram @ronanlynam.

T

ILLUSTRATIONS BY: Carlos Carmonamedina Maddie Goldstein Ronan Lynam Tenbeete Solomon Julia Terbrock

he blank pages of a coloring book invite boundless creativity. In a coloring book, you can turn the sky green, the grass blue, and the clouds purple. Creativity is cathartic, now and always. So, City Paper creative director Julia Terbrock and I decided to put together a joyful coloring cover package that looks and feels like home in the D.C. area, the home we’ve been missing as we’ve stayed inside for months during the coronavirus pandemic. Inside these coloring pages, you can delight in the familiar nature of the District, Maryland, and Virginia: the National Mall, regional flora and fauna, a scene of seasons on the Tidal Basin, and, as an interstellar bonus, a D.C.-themed trip out of this world. Get out your markers, crayons, and colored pencils, or open up your digital coloring apps. This is for you to explore your imagination and individuality. Color inside the lines or outside the lines. Make our home, with all its charm and character, any colors you want.

—Kayla Randall Find these pages, which you can download to print or digitally color, by Terbrock, City Paper design assistant Maddie Goldstein, and three talented freelance artists at washingtoncitypaper.com/coloringbook2020 .

Carlos Carmonamedina has produced more than 170 postcards for his project DC is my City since early 2016. “During my time in Washington, D.C., I have come to love the rich diversity of people, past and present, and the quotidian dramas through which they shape their neighborhoods,” he says. A Petworth resident and artist, his love for the city has been reflected in the illustrations he made for several early literacy programs at the DC Public Library. He was included on the 40 under 40 list by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He works at the public relations firm kglobal as the senior art director, and can be found at dcismycity.com and on Instagram @carmonamedinastudio.

Tenbeete Solomon AKA Trap Bob is a visual artist, illustrator, and animator based in Edgewood. She uses bold colors and gestures to convey both the humor and struggles of everyday life. Her work is socially conscious and frequently inspired by activism and issues, with an aim to bridge the gap between her audience and her message. Her work is featured in both the digital space and within the local community, from Instagram gif stickers to permanent murals throughout D.C. As the founder of freelance design and product company Trap Bob World, LLC, she has worked with leading corporations, brands, and organizations, including Giphy, Pabst Blue Ribbon, the Elizabeth Warren campaign, BET, and Refinery 29. She was recently featured as a Black-owned business in Beyoncé’s Black Parade Route directory. She can be found at trapbob.com and on Instagram @trapxbob and Twitter @trapbob.

washingtoncitypaper.com july 31, 2020 9

Golden Alexanders (Zizia aurea)

Swamp rose (Rosa palustris) 10 july 31, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

Giant sunflower (Helianthus giganteus)

ILLUSTRATION BY JULIA TERBROCK

Foxglove beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis)

Coneflower (Echinacea angustifolia) washingtoncitypaper.com july 31, 2020 11

12 july 31, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

ILLUSTRATION BY Maddie Goldstein

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14 july 31, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

ILLUSTRATION BY Carlos Carmonamedina

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16 july 31, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

ILLUSTRATION BY Tenbeete Solomon aka trap bob

washingtoncitypaper.com july 31, 2020 17

FOOD YOUNG & HUNGRY

Jumping Shift

Darrow Montgomery

Seeking stability and safety, bar and restaurant workers are leaving the hospitality industry for desk jobs or parenting responsibilities.

Daniel Alexander Lloyd and his 9-month-old daughter, Frida

By Laura Hayes @LauraHayesDC “I feel so much safer here,” Marie Figueroa confesses. “I’m not in a room full of people without masks on talking and eating and having a good time.” After spending most of her adult life behind the bar, the 42-year-old now sits at a desk where she sells Volkswagens. She met the owner of the dealership at the restaurant where she most recently worked. “I decided to move in a parallel direction,” she says. “I enjoy sales. Getting the job was a breeze, I was really fortunate.”

The COVID-19 pandemic is testing even the most experienced hospitality industry professionals. While Figueroa agrees servers and bartenders should be wearing protective gear while on the clock, she says masks make the sweltering summer heat even worse. Customers care enough about the pandemic to know they’re safer dining outdoors, but they haven’t been fun to wait on.

“They’re very rude about CDC guidelines, our smaller menus, and needing reservations for contract tracing,” Figueroa says.

This sort of behavior and other pandemicrelated factors led to Figueroa’s decision to move

on. She attributes her restaurant’s staffing issues to laid-off workers not wanting to forfeit their unemployment benefits by returning to work in uncertain times. They could also fear for their safety. Because the restaurant had fewer available workers, Figueroa was asked to work five 10-hour shifts per week as a server. She declined to name her most recent employer out of fear of retaliation.

“I’m not saying that I’ll never get back into bartending again, but right now, it’s not there,” she says. “I wouldn’t consider myself old, but it’s a lot of physically demanding work. It feels good not to go home and want to fall through the door. Eventually, the party’s gotta be over.”

It’s too soon to tell if the pandemic is accelerating an exodus from the hospitality industry. The reasons bar and restaurant professionals switch careers are complex. Several shared their reasons for departing or exploring new fields, ways their service skills translate to their new roles, and how the hospitality industry needs to evolve for workers to stay employed later in life.

The pandemic prompted Bobby Bump to step away after a decade of brewing beer.

He spent the past five years at Right Proper Brewing Company in Shaw as its lead brewer.

18 july 31, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

On March 17, the day after Mayor Muriel Bowser closed bars and restaurants to onpremise consumption, he was laid off. Now his primary job title is “dad.”

When COVID-19 hit, Bump and his wife had a meeting of the minds. As an architect, she’s the family breadwinner. “It makes sense for me to stay at home with our daughter,” he explains. “There’s no safe way to have child care, or at least nothing we felt comfortable with.” He wants to see a vaccine before he sends his three-year-old daughter to day care.

Even if Right Proper called him back to work, he couldn’t return. “Being a brewer, you have to be on site,” he notes.

Even though Bump expects full-time parenting to be rewarding, he struggles some days, because so much of his identity is tied to the beer world. Even though he’s exited, he still worries about the future of local breweries.

They depend on draft sales at area bars, which are closed or operating at reduced capacities. “I don’t know how they’re staying afloat,” he says.

Daniel Alexander Lloyd, like Bump, is a new dad. His tenure in the local hospitality industry included stops bartending and

managing at Ghibellina (which closed permanently last month) and The Gibson on 14th Street NW, followed by his most recent job at Cielo Rojo in Takoma Park.

“About six or seven months ago, I had the opportunity after we had our baby to go for a slower pace of life,” Lloyd explains. He became an apprentice at Georgie’s Barber, also in Takoma Park. He describes his role there as “the barback of barbering.” Barbacks make sure bartenders have everything they need to succeed—they regularly restock ice and swap in fresh kegs. “Whatever barbers needed, I was there to give it to them,” Lloyd says. “The better I was, the better I made them.”

Slinging drinks at busy bars prepared him to juggle customers who came through the door at Georgie’s. The barbershop paid him to work as a receptionist during his apprenticeship, but they laid him off when COVID-19 hit. They later brought him back, only to lay him off again. Right now, he’s waiting to see what happens next.

“Those guys showed me a lot of love,” Lloyd says of the owners of Georgie’s.

“It’s a blessing in disguise,” he says. Lloyd was worried about contracting the virus and transmitting it to his family even though the barbershop is taking every precaution. “It turned into a doctor’s office,” he says. “We were sanitizing everything. I was checking temperatures when people came in.”

To retain hospitality professionals, Lloyd believes bars and restaurants need to care about people instead of simply filling positions. “You really want to treat the employees you have as well as you can. That way, they care about being there,” he says. “Then they’ll want to help the business. It won’t just be, ‘My shift’s over, let me run out of here.’ That’s big for longevity.”

He’s helped open four restaurants, but at times has encountered operators who weren’t interested in hearing his ideas. “You get tired of trying to help people out and them not accepting it,” he says. If he returns to the industry, it’ll be at a small restaurant where he can make an impact.

Rachel Michel Murray announced on Facebook earlier this month that she had completed a coding bootcamp at The George Washington University and was prepared to leave her 15-year career in beer and bartending behind to become a full-stack web developer, at least for now. “I love the industry and cherish the family I made along the way, but my passion for it was just not the same as when I started so I decided to find something new,” she wrote.

When Murray was 20, she took her first job at the Brickskeller, the Dupont Circle institution that closed in 2010 after playing its part in introducing Washingtonians to craft beer. She also worked at Bourbon in Glover Park, which also closed, and most recently at the Atlas Brew Works taproom. She says the most fulfilling part of her job was educating customers from behind the bar and being involved with the craft beer movement as it crested locally.

After leaving Atlas Brew Works in May 2019, Murray took a sabbatical to contemplate what to take on next. She’s relieved she got out before COVID-19 wreaked havoc on the hospitality industry and the lives of its workers. “I got lucky

FOOD ARTS FILM REVIEW deciding that I wasn’t feeling it anymore,” she says. “Not everyone has that luxury.”

Murray likens coding to bartending because everyone has the same tools at their disposal and the artistry comes from what you build with the skills you’ve honed. She’s pleased that, with her new venture, there’s one more woman coder in the world. But she’ll miss the relationships she built with coworkers as they cranked through busy nights of service in unison.

Like Lloyd, Murray hopes bar owners invest more in their employees. “They’re always looking at numbers, not at their staff and people,” she says. “There are exceptions to that rule, usually when bars are owned by former bartenders.

Hopefully they don’t fall into the same traps.”

Better training is needed, according to Halimah Saalakhan. At 16, she started working in restaurants as a host and worked her way up through a variety of positions including server, barback, bartender, and bar manager.

“There’s not enough training and support,” she says. “Workers get overwhelmed quickly if they have no training.” Depending on tips was stressful, as was not receiving basic benefits like health care and life insurance.

“Sometimes you go to work and don’t even make gas money, and you’re so discouraged and beaten to hell,” she continues. “You still gotta keep your smile on and hope and pray a table will tip 20 percent.” She’s convinced many diners think tips are bonuses, and not how servers and bartenders earn the lion’s share of their money. “It makes people even more discouraged when they don’t get the money for the hard work they’re putting in. It makes them switch places or get out altogether.”

COVID-19 somewhat spurred Saalakhan’s exit from the industry. She was bartending at Satellite Room when it closed at the end of 2019. Then she took a job managing at Buttercream Bakeshop. When the Shaw bakery temporarily closed because of the pandemic in March, she saw it as a sign to focus on her own event planning business, Design Innovation Yourself. It had been a side project for four years.

During the pandemic, Saalakhan has been helping couples set up themed date nights in their homes or hotels, and she’s put on the occasional intimate wedding. She also has satellite businesses selling crystal jewelry and organic dog treats. Soon she’ll partner with Pet Winery to be a wholesaler of non-alcoholic “wine” and “beer” for cats and dogs.

“The hospitality industry taught me how to manage a bunch of different things at one time,” Saalakhan says. “Talking to people has been my

most valuable skill set that I got working in hospitality. We have to learn how to talk to different types of people, feel them out, and make sure they leave happy. It became rooted in me. Customer service is a big part of my business venture.”

Unlike others, Jo McDaniel still has one foot firmly planted in the hospitality industry. She manages Adams Morgan queer bar A League of Her Own, but passed her real estate licensing exam earlier this month, should it prove useful down the line. Other exhospitality industry professionals have blazed similar trails and are giving McDaniel advice.

“If you are good with talking to others, working with urgency, and managing personalities, sales is a good pivot from the restaurant industry,” says Mark Rutstein, who previously worked at JR’s and the now-closed Cobalt in Dupont Circle. Now he’s a realtor with Compass.

“My kid is going to be a senior in high school,” McDaniel says. “I’m figuring out what life looks like when everything isn’t about being a single mom. How I could use the skill set I have outside of bartending? I love running A League of Her Own, but I’m pushing 40. The physical toll of it got me thinking about where I can go from here.”

She knows she eventually wants to buy and sell residential homes.

“Queer women need representation everywhere,” she says. “To be able to potentially sell a queer family their house, I’d be representing our community on another level.

Right now, behind the bar, I’m helping people through their first dates and planning their weddings. When you have regulars, you get to watch people go through that.”

The secret to staying in the hospitality industry a long time, according to McDaniel, is finding a way to make shift work fit into a healthy lifestyle. That can be tough to do if you regularly sleep in until 11 a.m. after late nights. It also helps to have a partner who works similar hours. “For people who stay longer, being childless makes it easier,” she admits.

There are also financial considerations that need fixing. “COVID notwithstanding, being able to make a living in a city that’s as expensive as D.C. would be helpful,” McDaniel says.

“As a manager, you have to work somewhere that can afford to pay a salary. That means not working at fun places that have an impact in the community. My bar will be two years old next month. It’s not enough time for us to have established ourselves. I can stay longer if I have another source of income feeding me.”

Still, she says it will be hard for her to walk away.

“There’s nothing on earth like a really good shift, and you’re always sort of chasing that.”

“I’m not saying that I’ll never get back into bartending again, but right now, it’s not there... it’s a lot of physically demanding work. It feels good not to go home and want to fall through the door.

Eventually, the party’s gotta be over.”

Violent Crimes The Shadow of Violence Directed by Nick Rowland Barry Keoghan has quickly risen to that top tier of actors that I’ll watch in absolutely anything. You might not know his name, but his face, somehow cherubic and demonic at once, is impossible to forget. He was the earnest helper on a boat journey in Dunkirk and the mysterious teenager who torments Colin Farrell and his family in The Killing of a Sacred Deer. He’s terrific in a supporting role in The Shadow of Violence, playing the short-fused son in a closeknit crime family. It’s an archetype that goes back to The Godfather, but Keoghan infuses it with fresh details. With his platinum hair, deepset eyes, and violent temper, he’s a boy trying to hide that he’s nowhere near ready for the real world.

The film is a new twist on an old, essential move. On paper, The Shadow of Violence is nothing special. It’s filled with plot elements that, if you’re familiar with stories about organized crime, you’ve seen a hundred times before.

Even the title sounds like a fake film within a film about Hollywood. But its pedestrian screenplay, based on the novella Calm with Horses by Colin Barrett, is enlivened by the strength of its filmmaking and a collection of truly stellar performances. Keoghan gets the most colorful role, but, guided by first-time feature director Nick Rowland, each actor in The Shadow of Violence creates their own riveting interpretation of our flawed, beautiful humanity.

Our protagonist is Arm (Cosmo Jarvis), an ex-boxer in a Irish coastal town who, after killing an opponent in the ring, has taken work as an enforcer for a local crime family. Dympna

(Keoghan), the hot-headed son of the clan, manipulates Arm into doing their dirtiest work—beating people who have crossed them to a bloody pulp—by making him feel like he’s part of the family. We don’t know the details of Arm’s upbringing, but it’s easy to see that his acceptance into this unorthodox family fills a childhood void. He offers them protection.

They do the same for him.

He is a mountain of a man, muscled beyond description, but Jarvis’ beautifully recessive performance forces us to look deeper. His eyes, tiny slivers set against his enormous physique, reveal a volatile tenderness reminiscent of a young Marlon Brando. As Arm struggles to balance his violent work with his wish to be a presence in the life of his ex-girlfriend Ursula (Niamh Algar) and their son (Kiljan Moroney), a portrait emerges of a conflicted man who has reason to fear both his rage and his compassion.

He lives in two worlds, and each is a liability. It’s only a matter of time before they dangerously collide, and Arm is forced to choose.

It’s a promising feature debut from Rowland, who displays an instinct for storytelling that is well beyond his years. It’s there in his exemplary use of color, like the way Ursula, with her pale skin and blonde hair, seems to blend into the yellow walls of her kitchen, making Arm look even more out of place amidst her domesticity.

It’s in the way he conveys the impact of violence, showing the blood on Arm’s knuckles, without ever reveling in the bloodshed. It’s in the way the story of this boxer-turned-bruiser becomes a universal tale of quarter-life crisis, of trying to get your shit together before your chance at happiness passes you by for good. It’s the rare occasion in which trite material is elevated into high art through the sheer competence of all involved.

—Noah Gittell The Shadow of Violence is available Friday on VOD.

washingtoncitypaper.com july 31, 2020 19

ARTS

Child’s Play

Darrow Montgomery

How a 5-year-old rapper became one of the newest faces in go-go

5-year-old rapper, Mikael “Lil Kelz” Murray

By Alona Wartofsky Contributing Writer Rapper Pinky Killacorn has performed with top go-go group Backyard Band dozens of times, so when someone started echoing her lines during the band’s recent show at Geno’s Ball Park, she assumed it was one of the band members, most likely BYB rapper Carlos “Los” Chavels.

Then she looked down.

Holding down the mic was 5-year-old Mikael “Lil Kelz” Murray, and as she rapped over a go-go version of Megan Thee Stallion and Beyoncé’s “Savage Remix,” he was right there with her, line by line. “I couldn’t believe it was him. Everything I said, he repeated. He was sicing my part up—he siced me up, that’s what he did,” she says, using local slang for acting as a hype man. “His ad-libs were so on point, you would have thought we had rehearsed. He was just cranking—C. R. A. N. K. I. N. G.” Backyard bandleader Anwan “Big G” Glover was also impressed by the pint-sized freestyler. “I have never seen a kid take over and do that,” he says. “He reminded me of

me back when I was a kid and wanted to be in Junkyard. I just saw it all over again: His body movements, the way he grabbed the mic, his call and response. He was attentive, like, I’m not gonna step on your words, but I’m gonna get my words in, too.”

“He’s super ready,” Big G continues. “He’s gonna be somebody’s superstar.”

Even before that outdoor, mask-required July 18 show, which was part of the annual DMV & Beyond event, Mikael had won fans around town and on social media; earlier that week, he was featured on Reese Waters’ “Most D.C. Thing” segment on WUSA Channel 9. He has rapped around town with various ensembles cobbled together by his grandfather, Alphonso “Petey” Murray, a veteran go-go conga player, and others. He is stealing hearts partly because he is absolutely adorable and as talented a rapper and dancer as a child his age can be. But there’s more: At a time when bad news seems relentless on all fronts, Mikael personifies a promise for the future of go-go.

“His mannerisms, the way he dances, the way he played the tambourine, the cowbell, it was amazing,” Pinky Killacorn says. “And his

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voice? That wasn’t rap. That was pure go-go, the fact that he handled himself like that at a go-go onstage, that proves that there is a future for go-go.”

Mikael’s parents, Patricia Coleman and Marquese Murray, like to say that go-go is in his blood. They are not go-go artists—she works at the Harriet Tubman Women’s Shelter and he is a violence interrupter for Cure the Streets— but they are both longtime fans. His grandfather Petey has played with Rare Essence, Pure Elegance, and Junkyard Band at various times. According to Coleman, the boy’s father and grandfather have been showing him go-go videos on YouTube since he was a toddler, when Mikael would enjoy drumming go-go beats on anything—the noisier, the better.

Mikael lives with his mother and two older brothers, aged 12 and 13, in Southwest D.C. In the fall, he begins first grade at Leckie Elementary School. He has always been the life of the party, eager to flex his dance moves for any audience. “Everybody wants Mikael to come to their cookouts and kid’s birthday parties,” Coleman says. “Ever since he was 2, he always wins the party dance contests.”

He spends many hours watching YouTube child sensation Super Siah, but he invariably returns to go-go. His top bands are Rare Essence, WHAT?! Band, and Backyard, and he is particularly fond of Backyard’s Big G and vocalist Leroy “Weensey” Brandon Jr. “Sometimes, I wake up, and he’s already figured out how to work the remote, turn on the TV, and watch Backyard,” Murray says. “I’m just like him. I love Backyard, that’s my number one band.”

Typically, Mikael’s days are filled with football, basketball, or baseball, but since the coronavirus pandemic began, he has sharpened his focus on music. “With the pandemic, there’s not much going on with the sports, so he is on pause with all that and putting 100 percent more into his music,” Coleman says.

He has watched Backyard’s March livestream performance of its Street Antidote album at least 300 times, she reports, all the while an active participant: “He makes drums out of everything, just banging on everything,” Coleman says, “and uses air freshener spray [cans] and my deodorant as his microphone.”

Mikael’s career as Lil Kelz began casually last summer, when Petey assembled a few veteran go-go artists for a neighborhood back-to-school cookout. Later, Julante “G-Magic” Shoatz, keyboardist for WHAT?! Band, Reaction, and TOB, met Mikael at another community block party. G-Magic says he was setting up under the watchful eyes of several kids when Mikael approached him: “He came up and asked, ‘Can I rock the mic?’ I replied, ‘You don’t know how to rock the mic. You don’t know what you doing up there.’ He stood tall and said, ‘Yes I do! I know I can do it.’ So I was like, ‘OK, cool. Let’s see what you got.’”

Clearly, young Mikael had something. A few weeks later, G-Magic brought him to an outdoor show by an informal group of go-go musicians at Fort Greble Park and later posted a video of Lil Kelz rapping on their rendition of WHAT?!

Band’s original track “Crystal Skate.” Go-go artist Michelle Blackwell loved what she saw in that clip. “He is a natural,” she says. “His timing and rhythm look very instinctual, and he has the charisma and energy that is essential in a lead mic. I can’t wait to watch him blossom. He represents the future of go-go. The leadership in go-go must get this kid a band to lead ASAP.” Even before the 2012 death of go-go founder Chuck Brown, many of the genre’s artists have expressed concern about the music’s viability down the road. Gentrification and years of discrimination against go-go artists are longstanding problems; for decades, go-go and bounce beat bands have been unable to book as many venues as their popularity would warrant.

It has been particularly difficult for younger bands to get venues, and as a result, many area youths have gravitated toward hip-hop rather than go-go.

While the tremendous popularity of bounce beat bands suggests that there’s nothing to worry about, many in go-go would like to see more young bands playing either the traditional go-go sound or bounce beat. Advocates for the genre have long argued that stronger

ARTS ARTS BOOK REVIEW

Darrow Montgomery

Intergalactic Planetary Nine Shiny Objects

music education programs in area schools will create more young musicians who can play for bands.

In the meantime, G-Magic is striving to establish his nonprofit, Magic’s Music, to develop young go-go artists with musical instruction. He is currently auditioning young musicians to launch an all-kids go-go band, The Young Drip, that will be produced by his Hitmakaz Production Group. “We’re going to show that D.C. has a new swag, not just old swag,” he says. The new group’s lead talker? Lil Kelz.

“He has a lot of potential,” G-Magic says.

“Right now everybody has seen that video, and we call him the little Rapper, the little RahRah,” he says, referring to Chris Black, the legendary rapper for the Northeast Groovers who is now the lead mic and owner of WHAT?!. “I’m 120 percent sure Lil Kelz will be a future legend if he keeps at what he’s doing.”

Petey also has plans for Mikael, hoping to play in a band featuring his grandson as lead talker.

“The name of the band will be Mikael and the Boys,” Petey says. “I feel so good to know that he’s following in his grandfather’s footsteps. His ambition is serious and he loves go-go. We going all the way with him.”

This summer has been particularly difficult for many in the go-go community: Along with all the financial hardships that have accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic, the loss of young lives due to street violence has been deeply painful. “Go-go has always helped keep kids off the streets,” G-Magic says. “The times I could have been doing wrong, I was at home practicing.

“I really feel like I’m on a mission because this will not only impact the lives of these children, it will also keep the culture alive,” G-Magic continues. “Go-go is our culture and our heritage. You won’t know where you’re going ’til you know where you been. I tell kids all the time, ‘I want to take you off the streets and onto the stage, because any person can be whatever they want to be if they put their mind to it.’”

For Big G, seeing Mikael at DMV & Beyond represents a glimmer of hope in a heart-wrenching summer.

“This is a perfect example of the energy and love the kids have for being positive and doing something great that puts them in a vibe where they can win instead of losing,” he says. “We still got our kids that still really love go-go.

Seeing that boy up onstage doing his thing made me feel so good inside. It was a feeling out of this world, just to look at what God did to continue our tradition of real go-go music in our city.”

For Mikael’s father, who is awed by his son’s ability, seeing him perform at DMV & Beyond evoked profound pride. “He’s 5 years old and he can get down like that,” Murray says. “The whole show was dope. I’m like damn, my son is gonna keep this beat alive. I’m still watching the video over and over, and I’m getting all kinds of calls.”

For Coleman, her son’s performance that night signified all that—and one other notinsignificant development for the mother of an extremely energetic young boy: “He must have worn himself out,” she says, “because when he came home, he got into the shower and went right to sleep.”

By Brian Castleberry Custom House, 319 pages Nine Shiny Objects begins like a science fiction novel, or maybe a Stephen King book. In the summer of 1947, Oliver Danville, a drifter and washed-up actor with gambling debts, leaves Chicago for Washington state. He’s chasing the famous “nine shiny objects” that private pilot Kenneth Arnold saw hovering over Mount Rainier, a real event that kicked off a Cold Warera obsession with UFOs. They moved like saucers skipping over the water, he told the papers, and they ran with it, calling them flying saucers, kicking off Danville’s quest for the aliens inside— and he doesn’t doubt, even for a second, that there are “people” inside, he says. As he hitchhikes westward, he picks up a couple who follow him to Washington, exhibiting the same reverence.

Then we lose them. The thrust of the book is that Danville becomes the leader, called the Tzadi Sophit, of the UFO cult the Seekers, who dream of a utopic, integrated society. But the reader is never privy to the world of the Seekers or their prophetic vision. Instead, the book flips through eight points of view after Danville’s, jumping ahead five years at a time, covering four decades of richly described American life. The perspectives hop across the country as the Seekers do, almost like a collection of short stories. A narrative begins to unfold, slowly: The Seekers leave for Long Island, where they hope to build a racially diverse, radically equal society. But the neighbors in the community up the hill are thoroughly against this kind of living. One night, a dinner party erupts into unseen but devastating violence, and the Seekers are left with a shattered dream.

But that dream continues to resonate with those touched by it in the two decades

after—most notably in the seedy ’70s warehouse commune that Max Felt, just a teenager at the time of the attack, ends up running, where the shiny objects worshipped are sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. Felt’s failed utopia is another cult we don’t see much of. Instead, as with the Seekers, the chapters inhabit the perspectives of the people whose lives have been shaped by these groups’ ideas and hopes. Even after the Seekers are reduced to a tiny group, even after the Sophit is assassinated, they continue to resonate across generations.

On just the level of the writing, the book is a triumph. Author Brian Castleberry’s ability to inhabit each character’s mind, giving each distinct tics in their thought and speech patterns, makes their self-righteousness, confusion, guilt, and hope achingly legible. A plot like this one, where details are spooled out slowly via clues and recollections, could easily leave readers frustrated and disinterested, but Castleberry keeps up the momentum with ease. He draws the book’s social web across decades and thousands of miles, giving the readers plenty of time and space to connect how the characters in each chapter are related—and when there are surprises, they’re earned, and you’ll kick yourself for not catching them sooner. Most masterfully, Nine Shiny Objects makes the tragedy of the Seekers clear without tripping over itself to answer all the questions their history raises (especially in the final chapter, where the book returns to the promise of its otherworldly premise).

Hidden behind the facade of a book about UFOs is a novel about 20th century America, its flaws and its fears. The world changes around the chapters and characters of Nine Shiny Objects like a rolling offscreen force, but very few of the people depicted are the ones doing the changing.

Instead, social progress is seen as an inevitability, not the result of work and struggle. That gives the book a blinkered perspective, but in that narrow focus is a clear-eyed look at the reactionary American mind and the resentment and confusion that so many adopt as a coherent political position.

—Emma Sarappo

washingtoncitypaper.com july 31, 2020 21

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22 july 31, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

CITY LIGHTS voice, and creativity on for size “to make the invisible women who power the fashion industry visible.” The District’s fashion followers will recognize the three panelists transforming the city’s style scene: Fia Thomas, owner of Fia’s Fabulous Finds, the independent secondhand boutique in Petworth; Sam Smith, the Baltimore creative behind New Vintage

by Sam and a handcrafter of healing jewelry; and Leohana Carrera, an ethical fashion entrepreneur, human rights activist, and founder of the clothing reuse business Our ReStore. The three advocates for ethical fashion practices will discuss how their small businesses are modeling a more sustainable fashion ecosystem, and how everyone can tailor their sartorial approaches to be stewards of change. Here’s a sneak preview: Buy thoughtfully, swap enthusiastically, and restyle creatively. The event begins at 6 p.m. on July 31. Registration is available at eventbrite.com. Free.

—Emma Francois

City Lights

Project Implicit

City Lights

Fagara

Fagara is both a Szechuan spice and the name of a 2019 Heiward Mak Hei-yan family drama.

Fagara and Twilight’s Kiss are the two remaining films showing online through July 31 as part of the National Museum of Asian Art’s 25th annual Made in Hong Kong Film Festival. Fagara is the story of a young professional Hong Kong travel agent, Acacia, played by Cantopop star Sammi Cheng Sau-man, who suddenly receives news of her father’s death—then discovers from his cell phone that she has two half-sisters. One sibling, Branch, is a Taiwanese professional pool player, and the other, Cherry, is a China-based fashion seller and influencer. Acacia also soon discovers that her father’s hot pot restaurant is in debt and that it will be up to her to pay the bills and

either run the place or sell it. Fagara’s screenplay is drawn from the 2011 novel My Spicy Love

by Hong Kong romance author Amy Cheung.

Although Cheung’s novels are sometimes stereotyped as “chick lit,” others point to elements in them that go beyond formula, and the movie largely does so as well. While the film touches on Acacia’s relationships with two suitors and the attempts of Cherry’s grandmother to find her a husband, the focus is on finding ways to numb familial pain and to forgive, via food and communication. The movie offers just enough humor to balance out the serious stuff and occasional mawkishness. The seemingly composed Acacia’s resentment of her late father (played by Kenny Bee) is quickly on view, but the funeral scene also establishes that she, like her halfsisters, never really knew her dad well: Acacia arranges a Taoist funeral, but in the middle of the ceremony, she is quietly informed by another relative that her father was Buddhist.

And while we initially see the three sisters as

very different, soon, in a manner that mostly moves beyond cliché, the three bond and work together to find their dad’s hot pot recipe. The film is available through July 31 at asia.si.edu.

Free.

—Steve Kiviat

City Lights

Re-Fashioning D.C. The average American will toss 80 pounds of clothes into the trash annually, but experts estimate that 95 percent of those pre-loved clothes could be repurposed. In an upcoming virtual panel cheekily titled “Re-Fashioning D.C.,” local leaders combating fast fashion will discuss flouting this unsustainable system. The host, Remake, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that frames fashion as a “force for good,” urges consumers to try their purchasing power,

Do you associate certain types of people with goodness, moral purity, attractiveness, or foreignness? Visit Harvard’s implicit bias test portal if you can psych yourself up enough to see your results laid bare. This batch of recognition, association, archetype sorting, and image choice tasks will yield scores for various prejudices. This international research cooperation was created to serve as a public “virtual lab” for hidden bias recognition. By requiring takers to sort through pairings instantly, the test compels snap judgments and introduces a time penalty that makes it hard to trick. Possible results include slight, moderate, and strong labels of bias. And in 2011, the team released a spinoff site: At Project Implicit Mental Health, you can do additional tests that measure the implicit associations you have in relation to yourself. Some gauge, for example, the extent to which you associate yourself with anxiety, poor health, negativity, alcoholism, and sadness. Anonymous data is made publicly available for scientists and used to map implicit bias nationwide, including in D.C. The test has been granted a Golden Goose Award from the Library of Congress and funding from the National Institutes of Health. There’s no true quantitative “screening” for racism, and these assessments, though well-circulated, are not foolproof—and there’s controversy about their interpretation. For curiosity’s sake, however, it’s useful to know what your psyche has done with what you’ve been taught. Though the knowledge is no panacea, it still can have value. And if you’re hoping to rid your subconscious of discriminatory debris, this isn’t a terrible place to start. The project is available at implicit.harvard.edu. Free.

—Tori Nagudi

washingtoncitypaper.com july 31, 2020 23

City Lights

Manufactured Landscapes: The Art of Edward Burtynsky The documentary Manufactured Landscapes spotlights the work of Edward Burtynsky, a Canadian photographer who’s best known for his large-scale images of quarries, oilfields, and waste dumps— the detritus of modern industrial life. Today’s landscape, Burtynsky says in the film, “is the one that we change, that we disrupt, in pursuit of progress.” The photographers and filmmakers effectively show the linkages between the mining of raw materials, their fabrication into consumer products, and their eventual disposal as waste. An ongoing challenge of Burtynsky’s imagery is that it portrays objectively ugly locations with such verve that it’s hard to not also see their beauty, even in such grim places as a ship-breaking operation in Bangladesh or a city being demolished, brick by brick, by its residents before it is to be flooded by China’s giant Three Gorges Dam. Burtynsky tells the filmmakers he’s trying to neither glorify nor damn his subjects; he’s simply trying to show the world as it is.

One of the film’s most compelling moments documents this tightrope walk. At a Chinese coal facility, officials are initially averse to allowing Burtynsky to take pictures, fearing bad publicity. But after being assured that the photographer creates beautiful works, they relent. The resulting image lives up to this promise, capturing massive, rippled piles of coal stretching to the horizon. Though the film is generally respectful, it’s hard not to characterize the documentary’s opening as a sly attempt by the filmmakers to one-up their subject. It begins with a hypnotic, eight-minute long tracking shot, with the camera moving ceaselessly leftward in an enormous Chinese factory filled with employees at work. The film is available through Aug. 4 at nga.gov. Free.

—Louis Jacobson

City Lights

Philosophy and The Good Place NBC’s hit series The Good Place said goodbye to fans this year after four seasons examining the ethics of the afterlife through a comedic lens. One episode explained the existentialism of Kierkegaard through rap; another sprayed blood and guts everywhere as part of a live demonstration of the trolley problem. Dr. Todd May of Clemson University served as one of the philosophical advisors to the show, where he helped the sitcom’s writers break down these moral dilemmas for a television audience. Fans were so interested in the philosophical theories featured in The Good Place that NBC granted Dr. May his own spin-off web series, Mother Forkin’ Morals, to teach viewers about the ethics of everyday life. Now that the show and web series have concluded, Dr. May is continuing the conversation as part of the Smithsonian’s virtual programming. He’ll dive deeper into the philosophical quandaries posed by The Good Place and discuss whether the redemptive ending of the show is truly possible. “Philosophy and The Good Place” begins at 6:45 p.m. on Aug. 5 on Zoom. Registration is available at smithsonianassociates.org. $20–$25.

—Mercedes Hesselroth 24 july 31, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

City Lights

Diet Cig

With a combination of biting wit and unguarded lyrics, Diet Cig’s new album Do You Wonder About Me? is sincere, scrappy, and just so darn fun. On July 31, fans can attend a virtual performance by the band hosted by NoonChorus, an online music venue that has been supporting artists during the pandemic by providing an online performance platform. Half of the proceeds from the show will be split between the Okra Project, an organization that provides healthy meals to Black trans people, and the National Independent Venue Association. Among the local venues supported by NIVA are D.C.’s own 9:30 Club, which is helping put on this show, and Black Cat, where Diet Cig was scheduled, pre-pandemic, to perform in May. Black Cat was just one of the many independent venues forced to cancel countless performers this spring, financially impacting both the artists and the venues. Virtual events like those put on by NoonChorus have helped support the independent music ecosystem in a time when live performances aren’t safe. When advertising the would-havebeen show in May, Black Cat’s website described Diet Cig’s concerts as “a whirlwind of belting and high kicks” with “pure energy as yet unmatched”. Beyond that, their music speaks volumes by talking candidly and cathartically about all those pesky feelings, from loneliness to restlessness to self-liberation. If you’re toting around a little grumpiness and a pinch of vulnerability right now, Alex Luciano’s honest voice over Noah Bowman’s percussion will be the perfect Friday night musical indulgence. Treat yourself to a wonderfully fun sing-along, and humor those buried spooky feelings that only a gutsy punk band can unearth. The virtual concert begins at 8 p.m. on July 31.

Tickets are available at noonchorus.com. Pay what you want; $5 minimum donation. —Ryley Graham

City Lights

Container Gardening 101 Even if you’ve only got a small slice of concrete jungle, your balcony or small yard can turn into a plant-filled oasis with a few simple steps. Container gardening is a method for taking containers, large or small, and growing flowers, produce, and herbs in a tiny space. And there’s perhaps no better time to pick up container gardening as a new hobby. As long as you have a bit of room, fresh basil for homemade pizza and colorful flowers to brighten your long work-from-home days are within your reach. Kristen Menichelli, the master gardener behind Green House Designs, is running a virtual workshop called “Container Gardening 101.” The class will walk through the basics of container gardening, how to effectively manage your space, what hardware and tools you’ll need, and the best budget-friendly places to buy containers. Menichelli’s expertise in gardening, as well as her experience working with sustainable and eco-friendly design, guarantees you’ll walk away from the virtual class with a new appreciation for your front stoop, windowsill, or patch of grass.

Get ready to start planting—a new culinary concoction is just around the corner. The class begins at 1 p.m. on Aug. 1. Registration is available at dclibrary.org. Free.

—Sarah Smith

DIVERSIONS CROSSWORD

Oh!

By Brendan Emmett Quigley

A Right to the City When A Right to the City first opened at the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum in 2018, Allison Keyes wrote for Washington City Paper that the exhibit contextualizes current tension over residential development in D.C. with a decades-long history of gentrification.

In City Lights, Hamzat Sani called it a “must visit.� But you can’t visit right now—COVID19 forced the museum to close its doors. Fortunately, its online staging is more useful than ever. You’ll start with an introductory sense of the exhibit’s purpose: Having “a right to the city� is grounded in city use, equitable transit and development, quality public education, and healthy neighborhoods. Importantly, community activism against that gentrification is also front and center. You’ll learn the history of a predominantly Black and Jewish community in Southwest and how “urban renewal,� “modernization,� and so-called “slum clearance� tactics continue to jeopardize it and other otherwise thriving neighborhoods. A Right to the City then explores Anacostia, Shaw, Brookland, Chinatown, and Adams Morgan.

Between stories of freeway construction, demolished small businesses, and mass evictions, curator Samir Meghelli weaves stories of how these neighborhoods have worked to shape and reshape their identities with shared interests in mind. Ending with a call to action, “Prepare to Participate,� the exhibition makes clear that these aren’t problems of history. Rising real estate prices and deepening inequality are very much problems of today, especially as the country faces down the end of a federal eviction moratorium. The exhibition is available at storymaps.arcgis.com. Free. —Sarah Smith

10. Type of bargain 14. “Well done is better than well said,� e.g.

15. “Now ___ talking!�

16. Payne of One Direction 17. “You’re standing on the burrito cheese I was going to use!�?

20. Horn range 21. French bits of land 22. Some 50-50 question answers 23. “You ___ bother�

25. Soul company 26. Mold and shape The Republic?

33. They work with influencers 36. Firepit residue 37. Who, to Henri 38. Penthouse amenity 39. 2019 Pro Football Hall of Famer who won three Super Bowls with the Patriots 40. “Hogwash!�

6. Not quite closed

1. Green lunch

Across

City Lights

The virtual 2020 Chamber Dance Project season debuting on Friday is not Plan B or C, but ‌ well, choreographer and artistic director Diane Coburn Bruning has completely lost track of which plan this is. The seventh annual season for the District-based company would have been its most ambitious yet, with two weeks of dances accompanied by local chamber musicians debuting in June. Then they downsized to one week in July, or maybe a performance outdoors, and then it was time to grab cameras and improvise. Some of those commissions are now slated for 2021; however, Chamber Dance will unveil three dance films on Friday, for free, for all interested in logging on. Because Chamber Dance is a pick-up summer company, the dancers are based across the United States. Filming took place at a home in Ohio, at Sepulveda Dam in Los Angeles, and at an art museum in Wisconsin. And they are not done dancing yet: On Sept. 24, Chamber Dance will screen a second, more elaborate dance film created by Coburn Bruning and former Studio Theatre associate artistic director Matt Torney. Last year, the pair collaborated on a haunting dance theater adaptation of T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.â€? So let us go then, you and I, to Zoom to see the dancers come and go. New Works 2020 (and Beyond) debuts at 7 p.m. on July 31.

The films are available at chamberdance.org/beyond. Free. —Rebecca J. Ritzel

Chamber Dance Project’s New Works 2020 (and Beyond)

City Lights

41. Hawaiian mackerel (hey, it’s better than another Yoko clue) 42. One way to play piano 43. Kickstarter benchmarks 44. Soprano from the Big Apple?

47. Stupefaction 48. Enjoys greatly 52. Giraffe cousin 55. Eye piece?

58. Phil of Furthur and the Grateful Dead 59. Deck decorated with red and white stripes?

62. Irish-Gaelic 63. Part of the egg used in mayonnaise 64. “Sorry!�

65. Word on the street 66. Barely makes (out) 67. “Gimme it!�

Down 1. Bike racer Peter (hey, it’s better than another Carl clue) 2. Singer who recently had a dramatic weight loss 3. Drink that might come with a leaf

4. Decent number 5. Unquestionably, brief 6. Out of service?

7. President of Mexico?

8. Weaponry 9. Spanish chess piece 10. Like ifs, ands, or buts 11. In ___ of 12. Life of Riley 13. Old Testament prophet 18. Conforms with 19. Wax collectors 24. Flatbread with aloo mutter 25. Had down pat

27. Salma of Like a Boss 28. Eid al-Fitr religion 29. First airport to have an aeroponic garden 30. Blue hue 31. “Thick as a Brick� band, to fans 32. Some artwork 33. The Wire drug lord Barksdale 34. Have a meal 35. Abyssianian greeting 39. Jaguar roller 40. Dr. Martens cord 42. “Boys Keep Swinging� singer 43. “Liquid Swords� rapper 45. Talked on and on 46. Drink garnish 49. Priced, as bail 50. Playing for a fool 51. Twitter upload 52. Cartel headquartered in Vienna 53. Steve with the NBA record for the most regular season wins for a rookie coach 54. Church vault 55. “’Tis but a scratch�

56. Stir (up) 57. Signs, as a contract 60. Tasty bread 61. John Lyndon’s post-Sex Pistols band, initially

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washingtoncitypaper.com july 31, 2020 25

DIVERSIONS SAVAGE LOVE

me o s d Nee dvice? love a Curious about kinks?

e Visit thper City Paor more te f ve. i s b e w age Lo Sav washingtoncitypaper.com/ columns

I’m a 20-something more-or-less lesbian in an East Coast city. I’m primarily into women, and I’m only interested in relationships with women, but I’m sometimes attracted to men and have enjoyed sex with men in the past. For various reasons, I decided a few years ago not to pursue physical stuff with men anymore and I publicly identify as a lesbian. This worked great pre-pandemic, but now, with a tiny social bubble and no dating prospects, I find myself feeling very attracted to a male friend/coworker. He’s 30-something, single, straight, and we’ve hung out a few times since COVID (only outside, and while socially distanced). As far as work goes, neither of us has a management role, we’re in different departments, and we rarely interact professionally. So, hypothetically, the coworker part wouldn’t be an ethical issue if we were to get involved.

I have a feeling he’d be down for a casual pandemic thing, although it’s possible I could be projecting. But I have no idea how to broach this subject. He’s a respectful person and we work for a very progressive organization, so he’s not going to flirt with me since I identify as gay. I don’t know how to bring up in casual conversation that I sometimes like sleeping with men, Dan, and my usual approach to flirting involves a lot of casual physical contact, which obviously isn’t possible right now. What should I do? Should I just let this go? Even though we don’t work closely together, there’s obviously the potential for professional issues if feelings get hurt, and celibacy is obviously a responsible option during this pandemic. But COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions are going to continue and he and I seem well enough suited to keep each other company. I was single and celibate for a while before the pandemic and am feeling desperate to touch another human being. If it’s not a terrible idea, how do I flirt with him without endangering public health, messing up our friendship, or making our work situation incredibly awkward in the event that he’s not into me?

—Craving Organic Viable Earthly Touching There’s no way to ensure that a sexual and/ or romantic relationship with a coworker (or anyone else) won’t end badly—and a little awkwardness would be the least of your worries if this proposed arrangement ended badly. But if your relationships and breakups are generally drama-free, COVET, and if you’ve been friends with this guy long enough to know that his relationships and breakups have been mostly drama-free, I think you should tell him how you’ve been feeling. Ask him if he’s interested in finding a COVID-19 sex buddy, as the Dutch call them, and if he is, tell him you would like to apply for the position.

While most couples meet online these days, COVET, roughly 10 percent of opposite-sex couples—which is what you two would be—still meet through work. And while you’re not interested in anything romantic or long-term, couples that meet through work remain the most likely to marry, which means work relationships don’t always end in tears and/or pink slips and/or lawsuits.

(They do sometimes end in divorce.) People who find themselves attracted to coworkers

26 july 31, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

need to be thoughtful about power dynamics, of course, and cognizant of company policies where workplace romance is concerned. And it sounds like you are being thoughtful, and it doesn’t sound like either of you have power over each other or are likely to ever be in positions of power over each other.

And life is short and this pandemic is going to be long.

So the next time you get together for some socially distanced socializing, COVET, open your mouth and tell this guy what you’ve been thinking. If he’s as liberal and progressive as you make him out to be, he’s no doubt aware that human sexuality is complicated and that while many of us can find a perfect fit among the most commonly understood set of labels, many of us pick a label that doesn’t fit perfectly because it comes closest to capturing some combo of our sexual and/or romantic interest and desires. Don’t think of this ask— don’t think of this disclosure—as walking anything back, COVET, but of expanding and

“... Life is short and this pandemic is going to be long.” complicating what he already knows about you. You remain homoromantic—you’re only interested in other women romantically—but you are sexually attracted to both men and women. In other words, COVET, your heart is lesbian, but your pussy is bi.

If he’s up for being your COVID-19 sex buddy, swear to each other that you’ll handle the inevitable end with grace and compassion. For while awkwardness can’t be avoided, COVET, stupid and unnecessary drama certainly can be. And it’s been my experience that promising in advance to act like grownups ups the chances of everyone acting like grown-ups. Similarly, simply saying, “Well, this might get awkward,” in advance of awkwardness or, “This is awkward,” if things should get awkward reduces the strength and duration of awkwardness by at least half.

Finally, a note to all the guys out there reading this who think COVET’s question gives them license to hit on women who identify as lesbians: No, it doesn’t. Don’t do that. If there’s a lesbian-identified-but-not-averse-to-all-dick dyke in your life, if you work or to go school with a homoromantic-but-bisexual woman who identifies as a lesbian, and if that woman is even remotely interested in fucking you, she will let you know. And even if your hunch is correct—even if your dickful thinking is spot on

and that one lesbian you know does wanna fuck you—being disrespectful enough to make the first move instantly disqualifies both you and your dick.

—Dan Savage This is a letter from a gay guy. If one of my regular kinky playmate friends were to gag and hood me and then fuck me while wearing a condom, would that reasonably be expected to prevent COVID-19 transmission?

—Hoping Or Otherwise Determined You’re less likely to contract COVID-19 if you’re hooded and gagged, and it’ll be even safer if your kinky playmate wears a mask, too. But you should be hooded and gagged before your kinky playmate arrives, HOOD, because if he gets close enough to hood and gag you himself, then he’ll be exhaling all over you and inhaling whatever you’re exhaling. And that—inhaling what other people are exhaling—is the risk we all need to avoid right now. While COVID-19 has been found in semen, the jury is still out on whether semen presents a significant risk of infection, unless a dude shoots so hard his semen is aerosolized and his sex partners are in danger of inhaling his spunk into their lungs. That said, COVID19 isn’t the only thing we need to worry about, HOOD, so he should wear a condom to protect you from HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. The biggest risk, according to health departments from sea (NYC Health) to shining sea (British Columbia Centres for Disease Control), is kissing—we’re being urged to forgo “kissing and saliva exchange” with randos for the moment—so kinky fuckers who get off on wearing masks, gags, and hoods have a built-in, hard-wired advantage.

But no kissing before the hood goes on. —DS Please settle a debate with my “ friend.” I’m correct in that your staff comes up with the clever names of those who submit letters to your Savage Love column, right? My “ friend” holds the delusional belief that the clever names are created by the letter writers themselves. Please settle this with a confirmation that I am correct.

—Friendship Risked In Entirely Needless Dispute A million or so years ago, I began shortening signoffs created by the letter writers—I began making acronyms out of them—to cut my word count and save space. Readers noticed what I was doing and began creating signoffs that, when acronymized, became words that playfully referenced their questions. It quickly became something Savage Love readers look forward to, and it wasn’t long before readers were letting me know they were disappointed when signoffs didn’t result in clever acronyms. So nowadays, when readers don’t go to the trouble of creating clever signoffs for themselves, I do it for them. I would say I come up with roughly half the signoffs that appear in the column, FRIEND, which means you and your friend are both right.

—DS Email your Savage Love questions to mail@savagelove.net

CLASSIFIEDS Legal ADAEQUARE, INC. HAS OPENINGS FOR SOFTWARE ENGINEERS & SYSTEMS ANALYSTS. Includes Senior positions. Must be proficient in one of these areas: (1) Java/J2EE & related; (2) Microsoft.NET & related; (3) SAP Hybris; (4) Datawarehousing/ Bus. Intelligence; (5) SharePoint; (6) Salesforce; (7) IBM Filenet; (8) IOS/ Android; (9) Big Data and related. The positions report to our Chantilly, VA office & require ability to travel to & relocate at various unanticipated locations throughout the U.S. to work on short-term & long-term projects.

Email resume to openjobs@adaequare. com & in the subject field put JOB CODE 202007.

KIPP DC PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS Dance Afterschool Programming Services KIPP DC is soliciting proposals from qualified vendors for Dance Afterschool Programming Services. The RFP can be found on KIPP DC’s website at www.kippdc. org/procurement.

Proposals should be uploaded to the website no later than 5:00 PM ET on August 11, 2020.

Questions can be addressed to kristin. jackson@kippdc.org.

DC SCHOLARS PCS INTENT TO ENTER INTO A SOLE SOURCE CONTRACT – DC Scholars Public Charter School intends to enter into a Sole Source contract with Building Pathways for Property Management Services in SY20-21. The contract will be awarded at close of business on August 10, 2020. If you have questions or concerns regarding this notice, contact Emily Stone at estone@dcscholars.org no later than 5:00 pm on August 10, 2020.

IDEA INTEGRATED DESIGN AND ELECTRONIC ACADEMY PCS NOTICE: FOR PROPOSALS FOR MULTIPLE SERVICES IDEA Integrated Design and Electronic Academy PCS solicits proposals for the following services: * Substitute Teaching Services * Spanish Teaching Services Full RFP available by request. Proposals shall be emailed as PDF documents no later than 5:00 PM on 8/12/2020.

Contact:

bids@ideapcs.org Notice ID : N0096213 SUMMONS CASE NO.: FN2020000770 SUPERIOR COURT OF ARIZONA IN MARICOPA COUNTY Jorge A Ascencio Name of Petitioner / Party A And Suyapa A Ascencio Name of Respondent / Party B WARNING: This is an official document from the court that affects your rights. Read this carefully.

If you do not understand it, contact a lawyer for help.

FROM THE STATE OF ARIZONA TO: Suyapa A Ascencio 1. A lawsuit has been filed against you. A copy of the lawsuit and other court papers are served on you with this “Summons.”

2. If you do not want a judgment or order entered against you without your input, you must file a written “Answer” or a “Response” with the court, and pay the filing fee. Also, the other party may be granted their request by the Court if you do not file an “Answer” or “Response”, or show up in court. To file your “Answer” or “Response” take, or send, it to the: Office of the Clerk of Superior Court, 201 West Jefferson Street, Phoenix, Arizona 850032205 OR Office of the Clerk of Superior Court, 18380 North 40th Street, Phoenix, Arizona 85032 OR Office of the Clerk of Superior Court, 222 East Javelina Avenue, Mesa, Arizona 85210-6201 OR Office of the Clerk of Superior Court, 14264 West Tierra Buena Lane, Surprise, Arizona 85374.

After filing, mail a copy of your “Response” or “Answer” to the other party at their current address.

3. If this “Summons” and the other court papers were served on you by a registered process server or the Sheriff within the State of Arizona, your “Response” or “Answer” must be filed within TWENTY (20) CALENDAR DAYS from the date you were served, not counting the day you were served.

If you were served by “Acceptance of Service” within the State of Arizona, your “Response” or “Answer” must be filed within TWENTY (20) CALENDAR DAYS from the date that the “Acceptance of Service was filed withthe Clerk of Superior Court. If

this “Summons” and the other papers were served on you by a registered process server or the Sheriff outside the State of Arizona, your Response must be filed within THIRTY (30) CALENDAR DAYS from the date you were served, not counting the day you were served.

If you were served by “Acceptance of Service” outside the State of Arizona, your “Response” or “Answer” must be filed within THIRTY (30) CALENDAR DAYS from the date that the “Acceptance of Service was filed with the Clerk of Superior Court. Service by a registered process server or the Sheriff is complete when made.

Service by Publication is complete thirty(30) days after the date of the first publication.

4. You can get a copy of the court papers filed in this case from the Petitioner at the address listed at the top of the preceding page, or from the Clerk of Superior Court’sCustomer Service Center at: 601 West Jackson, Phoenix, Arizona 85003 or 18380 North 40th Street, Phoenix, Arizona 85032 or 222 East Javelina Avenue, Mesa, Arizona 85210 or 14264 West Tierra Buena Lane, Surprise, Arizona 85374.

5. If this is an action for dissolution (divorce), legal separation or annulment, either or both spouses may file a Petition for Conciliation for the purpose of determining whether there is any mutual interest in preserving the marriage or for Mediation to attempt to settle disputes concerning legal decision-making (legal custody) and parenting time issues regarding minor children.

6. Requests for reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities must be made to the division assigned to the case by the party needing accommodation or his/her counsel at least three (3) judicial days in advance of a scheduled proceeding.

7. Requests for an interpreter for persons with limited English proficiency must be made to the division assigned to the case by the party needing the interpreter and/or translator or his/her counsel at least ten (10) judicial days in advance of a scheduled court proceeding.

SIGNED AND SEALED this date FEB 05 2020 CLERK OF SUPERIOR COURT

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