While trying to make sense of another posting that I haven’t published I was doing a wee bit of research and came across something in the August 10, 1955 Post:
“THE TAGS Jean Moran uses for the four dining rooms in hers and Georgetown’s (much needed) new restaurant! It is called “The Espionage”….”
1955 and a writer, Mary Van Rensselaer Thayer, is getting excited about a “much needed” new restaurant in Georgetown. Now it has more restaurants than you can shake a stick at. [Mari wildly shakes a twig]. That bit of excitement, seems to be the same kind of hopeful excitement and desire that’s over on this end of Shaw today. But will we have to wait 1/2 a century?
I certainly share your hope about getting new restaurants in the area. It would help if our ANC representatives and some of their acolytes (and, of course,churches) didn’t fight tooth and nail when new restaurants apply for liquor licenses (e.g., Vegetate and Queen of Sheba). I can’t help thinking the real goal is to thwart change in the neighborhood, not to protect it against drunken patrons staggering out of sit-down restaurants.
Like it or not, having a liquor license often is the difference between survival and failure for a new restaurant. Hopefully, Jim Graham’s proposed new regulation will remove one of the weapons the anti-alcohol crowd can use, by amending the required distance from schools, daycare centers, etc. Even though we know we have to keep those toddlers from getting up from their naptimes and sneaking over to Vegetate for a Cosmo!
BTW, Mari, I really enjoy your blog. Keep up the good work.