Category: Washington D.C

Pound Coffee now on Capitol Hill

Today I checked out Pound Coffee (621 Pennsylvania Ave SE, Washington, DC 20003), which recently moved to Capitol Hill from NOMA.  I hadn’t yet tried Pound at its previous location, but my interest perked once I heard that they are now serving Kickapoo Coffee from Viroqua, WI.  My favorite cafe in Madison, WI (and by extension, the world…) serves coffee from this roaster, so I had high hopes for a shop that serves it.  It was also apparently the best microroaster in 2010 (by Roast Magazine), so I’m not the only one who loves this stuff.

So Taryn and I stopped by Pound coffee to give it a try.  Luckily, I overheard a conversation between some of the baristas and a manager about the introduction of new size tomorrow….the classic cappuccino, which is 6ozs.  Their normal

Espresso and cappuccino

cappuccino has apparently been 12 oz.  So I inquired as to whether I could obtain one of these new fangled cappuccinos, and the manager seemed pretty excited that I was interested (he was complaining how Starbucks has made many customers expect every espresso drink to be at least 12 oz).  So I might have gotten the first “proper” cappuccino produced by Pound Coffee (that’s going to be my last snobbish sentence in this post, I promise).  It was pretty good.  The foam was near perfect, and the taste was quite nice.  I didn’t take a picture until it was half gone, but the cappuccino had some decent latte art when it was first made.  It didn’t quite match Peregrine, which is just down the street, but it gave me some faith that they will be making excellent cappuccinos in short order.  I also had an espresso, which was ok, but a bit awkward.  I imagine that any failings in their cappuccinos are coming from the underlying espresso.  It is possible that they haven’t quite adjusted for the change in coffees.

But can they seriously compete with Peregrine?  Well, if you really just want the best espresso in the city, then head on over to Peregrine; but Pound also has a full food menu (which looked pretty tasty), and Peregrine only has baked goods.  So if you want very good coffee and are a bit hungry then Pound should prob

Occupy DC tent city in McPherson Square

ably be your destination.

I also headed over to the White House area today for the first time since the “occupation” started.  I have to say, McPherson Square

is a mess.

I think I’m going to try to do some more dc cappuccino reviews this week; I have a lot of grading to do….

New Peregrine Espresso location on 14th st. NW

Peregrine along 14th st. NW
A cappuccino from the new Peregrine; it was good.

I finally got a chance to check out the new second location of Peregrine Espresso, which opened up a few weeks ago at 1718 14th st. NW (a few blocks south of the U st. metro stop).  The shop is a little smaller and a bit more urban industrial (exposed brick abounds) than the Capitol Hill location, but the coffee and baked goods are just as good.  I have yet to formally review Peregrine (I’ll get back to some more reviews next week), but in my opinion they serve some of the best cappuccinos DC.  Some of the baristas who have created such wonderful espresso drinks on Capitol Hill have moved to this location, so you can expect the same artful deliciousness.  Outdoor seating should be set up in the next few months.   Happy (coffee) drinking!

What is the real purpose of a transit system?

Some might answer the above question like an evolutionary biologist; the purpose of a transit system is to maintain its strength and grow.  This at least seems to be the sort of perspective that is creeping into the debate about how to close a budget gap for the DC metro.  Although it is very refreshing to see fare increases be the main strategy, many of the proposals from transit advocates in the area are centered around methods that take advantage of captive customers who are very unlikely to leave the system even with substantial fare increases.

The two main proposals that exhibit this property affect commuters to the city center (up to $0.50 surcharge during peak commuting time) and tourists, along with those who must pay with cash, (with surcharges for paper fare cards – frequent riders typically have a permanent credit card type fare card that would not be affected).  The thinking behind these disproportional increases is quite simple; these sorts of  people are very unlikely to change behaviors after fare increases and therefore metro can charge them more without losing ridership.

Is it wrong to charge disproportionate fees?  Not exactly.  The problem here is not the disproportionate fares themselves; this is done all the time in an effort to change people’s behaviors to more pro-social options.  For instance, you might increase parking fees in an area with the hopes that people will take public transit instead (this might make sense if cars often clog the city center); however, the intent in such a case is totally different from the current case.  It is hoped in the current case with metro that people won’t change their behaviors.  Otherwise these extra fees would not raise the needed funds.

I’m not against most of the proposals that include fee increases but it is important to maintain a just (an ethically justifiable) distribution of burden.  Something radical needs to be done but many transit advocates seem to have lost sight of the actual purpose of any mass transit system, building a just city.  We can take advantage of the circumstances of some so that they carry a disproportionate burden but this sort of strategy is certainly wrong.  After all, models of consumer elasticity can’t tell us what sort of values we should have.

Saving the DC Metro

The DC area rapid transit rail system (called ‘the Metro’) is facing something of a budget crisis this year.  They need to close about a $180 million budget gap for the next fiscal year; the gap itself has many causes but a major one is the reduced travel due to the recession.  Last week, the interim GM of WMATA (the agency in charge of Metro) presented a solution to the problem that features widespread fare increases but minimal service cuts.  I don’t want to go into specifics because other sources have done a great job at analyzing the various options open to Metro but I do want to comment on how open people have been to fare increases.

The worry seems to be the similar for many who speak up against service reductions in place of fare increases; to reduce service to a level such that metro does not fulfill almost all of people’s transportation needs would in fact destroy the entire system.  Many people (including myself) depend on Metro as a main source of transportation.  For many it is not simply a supplementary method but something that is a requirement of normal living and to curtail it would be to breach a certain trust.  People have modeled their lives around the persistence of a robust Metro, therefore limiting that system would also limit their ability to live normal lives.

People are willing to pay a lot to keep Metro healthy because it is, in many ways, a primary method of transportation for much of DC.  I find it unlikely that this aversion in service cuts would take place in many metropolitan areas in the US outside of New York.  Unlike most rail systems in the US, Metro is far more than a commuter system; rather, it is a legitimate transportation system by itself.  Just as with highways, once this is the case it is very difficult to take such a system away from people.

Silver Spring – a pedestrian’s nightmare

Last week I visited the Washington DC area for the first time.  I might have some more comments about my experience in the future but I want to start out with some comments about Silver Spring, MD.  I will be living near downtown Silver Spring, so I wanted to get a feel for the area.  In recent years, Silver Spring has undergone an urban revival of sorts.  Before this time, the area was a typical (somewhat rundown) suburb of DC but a large amount of residential and commercial development along with its access to the DC subway system has made it a very walkable area on paper.  There are a number of grocery stores, shops, cafes, restaurants (though most of these are of a chain variety), so that one doesn’t really need a car in order to live in this area.  Again, on paper, this seems like a very happy place for a pedestrian.

However, when one gets down into the streets it becomes obvious that this city is still controlled by the car.  Several wide and busy streets (highways really) bisect the downtown area bringing with them a ton of through traffic.  At cross walks, this means that a pedestrian must wait for an extremely long time to cross most streets; preference is obviously given to traffic flow along these corridors.  There also seems to be very little thought (or enforcement) of coherent and contiguous sidewalks.  You will be walking along a sidewalk (The east side of Eastern Ave. in front of the Blair’s apartment complex comes to mind) and the sidewalk will simply end for no reason.  I can’t for the life of me understand why this is acceptable.  This trend gets even worse in other locations; there were many instances where a sidewalk only exists on one side of the street and the ‘sidewalked’ side will change as the street progresses.  This means that one has to continually cross a typically busy road simply to walk down the street.  In another instance a sidewalk would degenerate into a curbless extension of a small parking lot, so that there was nothing between pedestrians (squeezing next to parked cars) and traffic than a small line on the pavement.  That sucks.