Where's the Rink?

>When my friends and I walk over to Town Center, we keep noticing this Montgomery County sign on Rt. 28 for an Ice Skating Rink by the Executive Office Building. It would be so much fun to skate so close to our homes. There’s a sign but no rink!

I’ve read all my local history books and can’t find any reference to it. One neighbor who grew up in Rockville knows there was a rink in the area but doesn’t recall skating there.

Who can tell me about the rink? When was it open? Where exactly was it? What was it like? Why and when did it close?

Please let us know in Comments!

POTD: Another Yellow Door

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I really am in a yellow door phase. . . .

Weekend to Weekend 12/28/07

>Rockville New Year’s Eve Guide
December 31, 2007

When you search for a place to celebrate New Year’s Eve, most events are elsewhere. But thanks to our new Rockville Town Center, we now have a few close by alternatives. My advice is to call to check the details and availability.

To Ring in the New Year in Town Center:

Austin Grill Rockville is free to get in New Year’s Eve (and every other night!). Never a cover charge at all the Austin Grills. Jonny and the Stingrays will be playing their blues roots and rock. PLUS, they’ll be celebrating New Year’s TWICE – once at midnight and then again at 1 AM when it’s midnight in Austin. Double the fun! They’ll have $20.08 food specials all day and night, including Crab Cakes, Bacon-wrapped Grilled Shrimp, and the Austin Mixed Grill, which includes a 6 oz ribeye, a 4 oz pork loin, and a marinated portabella mushroom. On New Year’s Day they will be serving up their hardy tex mex brunch. 301-838-4281

Gordon Biersch says that they will have a special deal at $80 per person. There will be a buffet of appetizers and sandwiches, plus all the beer and wine you would like. Champagne at midnight is included, plus a goody bag and “morning” type drinks after midnight. Call and check for details and reservations, because I know you can never get in this brew restaurant. It will no doubt be extremely popular on such a special night! 301-340-7159

Sushi Damo will have a prefixe menu, champagne, dancing, and the Time Square broadcast on a plasma screen. They will be open until 1 am. 301-340-8010

Stonefish Grill will have live jazz entertainment with the X Factor starting at 9 PM. They are taking reservations on a first come basis for $150 per couple with a complimentary bottle of wine on the table - either Esperto Pinot Grigio,Delle Venezie,Italy or Beringer Merlot Founders Estate, California. Choice of Lobster Bisque or Sweet Corn Chowder; then entrée choice of Parmesan Crusted Sole with Lemon Butter Sauce and Capers or Grilled Sea Scallops with Garlic Brocolli and Aromatic Basmati rice, or Tandoori with Spinach Fettucini in a Vodka Cream Sauce, then for dessert either Raspberry White Chocolate Cheese Brulee or a Fruit cup. 301-315-5888

Dinner Only:

La Tasca welcomes you to celebrate New Year’s Eve Spanish Style with a Gala Dinner. Reservations are being accepted from 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM. For $39 per person (tax and gratuity not included) you can enjoy an unlimited tapas dinner off a special menu. 301-279-7011

On Rockville Pike:

Tour Grill will be having a party with live music (the best from Ocean City) and a special four course dinner for $55 per person (with a wine pairing $75 per person). 301-770-3312

Please drink responsibly, stop for all those red lights, and stay safe into the New Year! If you have a suggestion for New Year’s Eve, leave it in Comments.

Email [email protected] if you have a fun, educational or community event to be included in Weekend to Weekend. Also, send along any specials or discounts for Out on the Town. Include links!

We will publish event listings occurring in & around our coverage area (map) on Thursdays. The inclusion of events and specials is at our discretion.

POTD: En Garde!

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Still in my “doorway phase.” It’s like these two are guarding the package between them (See it?).

Rockville Police Blotter 12-03-2007

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been working on some behind-the-scenes ideas to make the >mapped Rockville police blotter work more efficiently. It takes a long time to hand-code each incident to a map, and once it is done I can’t do anything with the set of information but map that one report. I believe I have developed a way to create an ongoing list of incidents that can be mapped. Moving forward, I will be using this new system, starting with the first blotter in the New Year. (For those who care to know such things, I am using the very cool Google Earth.)

Meantime, here is the very large blotter for 12/3/2007. Click on any “pushpin” for a description of the incident. (Remember the map does not come through on email so if you are receiving this as an announcement you will have to come to the blog.)

Thanks to Rockville Living for a pointer to a good batch geocoder.

POTD: Doorway

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I love this vibrant yellow door.

POTD: Caught Red- Handed!

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I wonder if this little fellow will get caught and end up a statistic in our police blotters?

This bonus holiday POTD is our gift to you.

Season’s Greetings!

Warm Holiday Wishes From Rockville Central

Dear Readers:>

Like many others, we plan to go over the river and through the woods (and along the Turnpike in our case) shortly. Barring major, calamitous events that beg for coverage, Rockville Central will be on hiatus until the later part of next week.

You can definitely look forward to a New Year’s-focused Weekend To Weekend from CindyCG and, if I can gather my wits, there may be a brief bit of opinion too.

This has been an incredible year and this little newsletter that started out as a bit of a lark seems to have taken on a life of its own. You, gentle readers, are entirely to thank for that — your comments, suggestions, thoughtful notes, and just the knowledge that so many are out there paying attention has kept us going and pushed us to improve every week.

In the New Year, we are planning a few surprises (good ones) that we hope will make this site more useful and enjoyable. You already know about my hopes to create a better method for mapping police blotters. We are also planning on moving the whole blog to a dedicated address (www.rockvillecentral.com) to make it easier to find for people. Don’t worry, your bookmarks will all still work.

(I may work on the switchover during the holidays. You may visit Rockville Central and find an error page. Do not be alarmed. This will only be temporary and indicates I am hard at work! Come back around later and it should be resolved.)

What else would you like to see from Rockville Central? A dedicated section for the local arts scene? Youth sports coverage? More restaurant reviews? An engaging lecture series? Let us know in the comments section. We can’t do everything, but we can try to add value where we can.

Please be safe, have a wonderful Winter break, and be excellent to each other.

POTD: In The Gloaming

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(With apologies to Annie Fortescue Harrison and Meta Ored.) This is our own Beall-Dawson House, with just a subtle hint of holiday on the outside, decorated inside! You should go look at it this season. I love the lamplight.

(Actually, it’s not in the “gloaming.” It’s whatever the opposite of that word is. But I love the sound of it so . . . yeah.)

Weekend to Weekend 12/20/07

>Events in Rockville - Special History Feature

As we look ahead to making changes to the zoning ordinance and Rockville Pike, it’s always worth a look back in Rockville’s history to provide some perspective.

Beall-Dawson House

Christmas in Miniature: Holiday Tours

Upton Beall, Second Clerk of the County Court, built his mansion house on what was Rockville’s main street so that he would be close to his work at the Courthouse. To make it more prestigious, he placed it on a hill and positioned the bricks on the front of the house differently so that the walls appear to be thicker from the street. When he was building it, troops retreating through Rockville during the War of 1812 used his wood for their cooking fires. Personally I love the Beall-Dawson House because it teaches us about life in Rockville through many different times.

[A previous version of this post erroneously referred to soldiers from another war but the House was completed in 1815. My apologies if I mislead anyone! I don't know what I was thinking. The House even flies the Flag of 1795 with 15 stars and 15 stripes, which was the official flag when it was built.]

While the Beall-Dawson House is always a grand museum, the holiday decorations make it much more so in a simple and non-glitzy way. This year’s theme, Christmas in Miniature, reminds you of the traditions of days past. The decorations draw from the Montgomery County Historical Society collections and include trains and villages. Holiday tours end with hot cider and homemade cookies.

Holiday Tours are through January 6, 2008. Tuesday-Sunday from 12 PM – 4 PM. Closed on holidays. Last tour of the day starts at 3:15 PM. Museum admission is $3 adult/$2 senior & student/Free MCHS members. For more information call 301-762-1492.

The Beall Dawson House has a small but unique gift shop featuring almost every book about Montgomery County. (There’s even one I designed. As I’m in a giving mood, I’ll give one to the first person who can email me the correct title [email protected].)

Sunday, January 6 (and also Sunday, February 3)

Winter Pastimes Afternoon Workshop What on earth did the kids do all day before the Wii and cable shows? How did the parents survive? Come see the many things that helped them make it through winter at the Beall-Dawson House’s current exhibit, Winter Pastimes. Then take the time to make toys and play games. This is a drop-in activity and included with museum admission. 12:30 PM - 3:30 PM. The cost is included with museum admission ($3 adults/ $2 students & seniors).

January 6: Yarn dolls and paper dolls

February 3: Walnut shell crafts

Peerless Rockville

Gift Shop

Although I have mentioned Peerless Rockville before, you may not be thinking about a stop at their gift shop in the Red Brick Courthouse when you visit Town Center. Rockville’s historic preservation organization sells books, miniature wooden buildings, note cards, prints, and posters – all with a Rockville theme. No home would be complete without a copy of Rockville: Portrait of a City by Eileen McGuckian, the founder of Peerless Rockville. They have coverlets picturing historic Rockville sites in both cranberry and Williamsburg blue.

I must warn you though, last January our Red Brick Courthouse was once again made into a real courthouse. You need to go through a full security check and you can’t take any cameras. Make sure your cell phone battery is not dead too. I’ve always thought of this building in historic terms, so to be confronted with a modern day security check seems so out of place.

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Peerless Rockville will be having their 33rd Annual New Year’s Day Buffet Brunch in the Glenview Mansion from 11 AM to 2 PM. They will be providing tours of the Mansion which, as we know, was just listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Live music too! Peerless members $10, non-members $15, and children 5-12 half price. Pay at the door, no reservations necessary. Bring hors d’oeuvre, salad, side dish or dessert.

They will also be having a raffle drawing for a December 2008 vacation for 10 people to a luxury resort in Williamsburg, VA. Four tickets for $20. The raffle benefits their education and preservation programs. Tickets are also on sale at Rockville Art and Frame and the Waygoose.

These are just a few fun ways you can help Peerless Rockville safeguard our heritage, as they work to preserve buildings, spaces, and objects that are important to
our history and sense of community.

Email [email protected] if you have a fun, educational or community event to be included in Weekend to Weekend. Also, send along any specials or discounts. Include links!

We will publish event listings occurring in & around our coverage area (map) on Thursdays. The inclusion of events and specials is at our discretion.

Longer Terms: What Do You Think?

There was more than >fireworks during the Citizens’ Forum portion of the last Mayor and Council meeting. There were some interesting proposals put forward, too.

One in particular stands out and I would like to highlight it.

Former City Council candidate Brigitta Mullican spoke, asking (among other things) for a few answers about the difficulties that beset the most recent election. Council Member Anne Robbins responded, and said that she does indeed have a point and deserves answers.

Council Member Robbins went on to describe how “big-time” politics has entered the hitherto-quiet election campaigns of Our Fair City: more money; outside interest groups; PACs; negative campaigning; and more. She described a symptom that has befallen many a growing city: the institution of the Permament Campaign (though she did not use those words). In such a politicized atmosphere, no sooner does someone take office than they must begin running for the next election.

Robbins raised the possibility of going to four-year, staggered terms (so that every year, citizens would be voting for a portion of the full Mayor and Council).

I have been thinking about some of these things myself, just from an observer’s standpoint. It does feel as if “big-time” politics is increasingly a part of Rockville’s scene. This is not necessarily a criticism, as one could well say that the reason politics is changing is that the stakes are increasing in their importance.

I think the specific idea of lengthening terms has much merit. I am aware that this and other issues have been brought up and discussed by the Charter Review Commission, which issued its recommendations in 2003.

Since I was only freshly settled in Rockville at that time, it is not engraved in my memory — after a question, one of my favorite City staffers, Clerk Claire Funkhouser, reminded me that a four-year term was placed on the ballot and failed. A shame, in my view, but I know there are good arguments on both sides. And there are a lot of other good ideas for changes, too.

What about you? Do you see things changing? Without necessarily pining for the past, what can we do moving forward to make sure politics really works for all Rockville citizens, and results in the governance we need?

What do you think?

Think Fondly Of Your Garden And Scour Your Hard Drive

>Rockville Central reader Kathleen Harris has passed along information about an interesting photography contest being run by Washington Gardener. She noticed a lot of photographs on our site and thought we might be interested. I also know there are a lot of gardeners among our readership, so it all works out well!

Here is the info:

Enter the Second Annual Washington Gardener Photo Contest and have a chance of getting your winning images published! Whether your take the photos in your own backyard, a nearby public garden, or while visiting friends and family in their local gardens, there are so many wonderful photographic opportunities to be found in our region. Let’s show off the best in DC-area gardening!

This year we have added a new entry category for a total of three classifications:

• Garden Views: Beautiful, dramatic, or unusual perspectives of a garden landscape, including wide shots showing the setting. Subject can be a private or public garden.
• Small Wonders: Tight close-up images or macro shots of a single flowers, plant parts, fruits, vegetables, etc. Subject can be photographed in a private or public garden.
• Garden Creatures: Images of insects, birds, frogs, domestic pets, etc. in a private or public garden setting.

This contest offers an opportunity for all levels of photographers to present their best shots of gardens in the greater Washington, DC area. Contest entries will be judged on technical quality, composition, originality, and artistic merit. More than $500 in prizes will be awarded!

For the full details and entry form, see this page (PDF).

Better hurry: You can only submit photos between January 1 and January 19, 2008.

POTD: Hieroglyphs

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I wish I could read these.

P.S. Wonder where the mapped crime blotters have been? Me too. I have been working on a new system for uploading that will save me time and make it possible for me to give you a cumulative mapped blotter. There are some kinks to work out still, so I have just been working away at the system rather than continue the blotters. I hope to debut a new method as the New Year dawns . . . or give up and go back to my old way, which was working fine.

Transition Group Established

Fulfilling a vow made in her >inauguration speech, newly-elected Rockville Mayor Susan Hoffmann has created the Rockville Citizens Mayoral Transition Advisory Group, according to the City:

“The overall purpose of the advisory group will be to identify and prioritize the important issues and problems facing the City over the next two years and to recommend solutions and lay out implementation timelines. Another goal of the group will be to look at the ramifications of possible solutions to the City’s annual budget as well as investigate potential revenue sources.”

Lincoln Park resident Wilma Bell will chair the group, while King Farm resident Lou D’Ovidio (who also works on the staff of Rep. Albert Wynn) will co-chair.

In all, the group has 26 members, including names submitted by members of the City Council. The body’s first meeting is scheduled for January 8, and it expects to complete its work and make recommendations to the Mayor and Council in late March or early April.

List of members (affiliations for identification purposes only):

• Dr. Judy Ackerman: Vice Pres. and Provost-Montgomery College
• Frank Anastasi: Citizen
• John Antonishak: Facilitator
• Andrea Bernardo: Citizen
• Moreno Carrasco: Principal-Richard Montgomery H.S.
• Carmen D’Agostino: Facilitator
• Linda Ekizian: Pres.-East Rockville Civic Assoc.
• Joyce Fuhrmann: Aide to Mont. County Councilmember Mike Knapp
• Del. Jim Gilchrist: Maryland State Delegate (Dist. 17)
• Margaret Griffin: Citizen
• Glennon Harrison: Former City Councilmember
• Jennifer Hughes: Special Asst.-Mont. County Executive
• Joe Jordan: Pres., New Mark Civic Association
• Joan Kleinman: District Dir.- U.S. Congressman Chris Van Hollen
• Paul Love: Board member-Rockville Econ. Dev., Inc.
• George Margolies: Former MCPS Board of Ed. Staff Dir.
• Kate Ostell: Rockville Planning Commission
• Ken Reichard: Asst. to U.S. Senator Benjamin Cardin
• Jim Reschovsky: Citizen
• Agnes Saenz: Community Ministries of Rockville
• John Sparks: President-Mont. Co. Career Firefighters (Local 1664)
• Art Stigile: Citizen
• Susan Tabach: Outreach Coord.- U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski
• Sid Tishler: Citizen
• Eric Wang: Citizen
• Patricia Woodward: Pres., West End Civic Association

(Links go to Rockville Central items that feature these people.)

“This is an exceptional group of professionals who are passionate about Rockville and committed to helping our City continue its tradition of excellence,’’ Hoffmann said. “I know the Council and I are looking forward to receiving their reports over the next few months on City priorities and outcomes that will help all of our residents and Rockville as a whole.”

Special congratulations to Rockville Central team member Frank Anastasi (a Hoffmann supporter who made no bones about it). And congratulations to Rockville Central frequent contributor and friend Joe Jordan.

POTD: The Sentinel

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(With apologies to Richard Burgi.) I know you are wondering, why? Why? I have no answer, other than the view struck me.