Still Life With Robin: Plugs for Blogs

Photo by By Elvert Barnes, Hyattsville MD, via Wikimedia Commons

by Peggy Robin

If the Cleveland Park Listserv doesn’t fully meet your desire to keep up with the latest goings-on in the neighborhood and around the city, you may want to satisfy your addiction with some stronger stuff. I can turn you on to a few places that can give you more of what you crave.

First up is another listserv, this one run by our local police. Find out about police alerts, lookouts for suspects, arrests, traffic advisories, and get answers to questions about police activity, all without leaving the safety of your Yahoogroup run by Second District Police Station (Idaho Avenue and Newark Streets). To join the listserv and receive messages by email, go to the homepage at https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/mpd-2d/info and hit the purple +JOIN button and follow the prompts to sign up.

If you’re looking for local news of a more comforting (and filling!) nature, then subscribe to an e-newsletter that delivers the latest word on restaurants, cafes, bars, food trucks and other purveyors of food and drink. Eater DC will enable you to be among the first to line up for the hottest new food truck, or let you follow a chef who has jumped ship from one restaurant kitchen to another, or get you to try that phenomenal new menu item at the place that created it, before it’s imitated all over town. This is one blog that always leaves you hungry for more. Go to http://dc.eater.com/and click on the person icon on the front page to sign up.

For those with an appetite for something a bit more concrete –I mean literally concrete, as well as being about things made with brick, glass, steel, and  other materials used to create the buildings and infrastructure of this city, I recommend reading Greater Greater Washington, an always thoughtful and often controversial blog on urban planning policy in the DC metro area. The most frequently discussed topics – public transportation, public land use, density, gentrification, streetscapes – can never be described as light reading -- but it’s not all wonkiness and nerd-dom at GGW; just when your eyes are about to glaze over from floor-to-area-ratios, you’ll find unexpected delights in the myriad of images of the city posted in the Greater and Lesser Washington Flickr Pool:  http://www.flickr.com/groups/1424233@N20/pool/.

No worries about wonkiness at my go-to blog for DC nightlife, theater, arts, events, and fun -- DCist, You can read it on the web or get a daily newsletter with the highlights (go to http://dcist.com/ and click on “More” and then “Newsletter – Subscribe.” My one caveat is for anyone born before 1980: All articles are written with Millennials in mind as the target audience. A typical recent headline: 3 Stay-In Date Night Hacks for Millennials (http://dcist.com/2015/04/3_stay-in_date_night_hacks_for_mill.php).  If you are Gen X or older, be prepared to feel your age.

And finally a plug for another neighborhood-centric site, the always lively Prince of Petworth (http://www.popville.com/ ), a/k/a Dan Silverman, who not only fills you in on the goings-on in his neck of the woods but will also branch out to bring you items of interest wherever he may find them. Take, for example, his pick for “House of the Day” – this Cleveland Park classic: http://www.popville.com/2015/04/house-of-the-day-1658/. Perennial topics are housing trends, the comings and goings of stores and restaurants, news photos and videos sent in by followers, and to help you chill out, “Your Afternoon Animal Fix” featuring adorable pooches and kitties. POP really puts the “Pet” in Petworth!

-------------------------------

Still Life With Robin is published on the Cleveland Park Listserv and on All Life Is Local on Saturdays.