Love her or hate her, Mayor Muriel Bowser is undeniably loyal to her friends—even if that gets her into a little bit of trouble sometimes. In the latest demonstration of playing favorites, Bowser’s government delivered a $500,000 contract to a marketing firm run by one of her longtime friends, 2014 campaign spokesperson Everett Hamilton. That decision has managed to seriously piss off a special commission assembled to address the city’s worsening opioid crisis. Not only did Bowser rush through the contract without checking with the Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission, but members of the group ..read more

The world of graphic design offers a list of apps and tools for various tasks and personal preferences. If you have ever crafted a design, you know those resources. However, the good thing is that the industry competition is lively, leading to the emergence of better-functioning graphic design platforms. VistaCreate might just be one such software solution. We’ve rolled up our sleeves to test VistaCreate and determine whether or not it can become a staple graphic editor, and here’s what we’ve found out. Reviewing VistaCreate’s Functionality and User Experience VistaCreate is an all-in-one grap ..read more

Thank you for supporting local news in D.C. Washington City Paper is reader-supported, and we’re counting on you! Home | Arts Guide | Best of D.C. More than 200 counties in the U.S. lack a source of local news. The proliferation of news deserts makes the work we do at Washington City Paper paramount. Nonpartisan newsrooms are a cornerstone of democracy. We uncover corruption, hold our leaders accountable, and help you engage with your community. We are proud to serve you. But, to keep going, we need your help. Will you support our truth-seeking newsroom during our spring campaign and beyond ..read more

Making artful aerial photographs of despoiled landscapes is hardly a pathbreaking artistic genre, but damned if Tom McMurray’s color-saturated images of scarred mining landscapes in the sprawling Kimberley and Pilbara regions of Western Australia aren’t gorgeous—guiltily so. McMurray is based in Boulder, Colorado, but he was part of a team of photographers and filmmakers who helped make the 2015 documentary Keeping Country about industrial threats to Western Australia. His exhibit at Touchstone Gallery, Lines in Country, includes a handful of small portraits of individuals who live there, but ..read more

The world of online gambling is on the cusp of a major revolution, thanks to the groundbreaking launch of Scorpion Casino and its native $SCORP token. As the platform makes its debut on multiple exchanges on April 15th at 2 PM (UTC), with a listing price of $0.05, the casino industry is poised to undergo a seismic shift that will redefine the way players engage with online gambling. A New Era of Transparency and Fairness Scorpion Casino is ushering in a new era of transparency and fairness in the online gambling space. By leveraging the power of blockchain technology and operating under the st ..read more

A note on the Block Party, by Darrow Montgomery, as told to Mitch Ryals: Sights and scenes are changing so quickly in D.C.—on Georgia Avenue NW, 14th Street NW, and elsewhere. Part of my goal with these mini-essays is to document the old stuff before it’s gone. The twist on this episode featuring the McMillan Reservoir is that things are a already disappearing or are being repurposed. The iconic silos are still there, but they give me the creeps. They look like they belong on an old crematoria or something. But there’s something sort of macabre in the newness, too. Fencing around the site shie ..read more

Seasoned D.C. moviegoers remember when Filmfest DC, could be depended on for a surprise or two. The highlights may vary, but this was a festival that—in its heyday some 30 years ago—was the only place one could see works such as the Hanif Kureishi miniseries The Buddha of Suburbia (1993) or Mani Ratnam’s dazzling musical Dil Se.. (1998). In 1989, a screening of Guy Maddin’s 1988 Tales from the Gimli Hospital from on the University of the District of Columbia campus left the audience in a daze—it was one of those films that made you walk out into the world looking at it a little diffe ..read more

Cooks, bakers, and baristas at both Wydown coffee shop locations in D.C. have filed an intent to form a union after they say their concerns about mismanagement and mistreatment have gone unaddressed.  According to the Instagram page for Wydown Workers United, the employees claim that “management has demonstrated a consistent pattern of disregard for the concerns we have brought to their attention in recent months.” “At both stores, we perceive a lack of urgency in maintaining facilities and equipment,” the post says. “Management has consistently dismissed our concerns regarding espresso m ..read more

Since Avengers: Endgame, and arguably a few years before, superhero films have been circling the drain. They exist primarily to perpetuate themselves, like when Sony makes another movie about a third-tier Spider–Man character just so the company can retain the intellectual property, or when the Marvel Cinematic Universe forces its fans to watch mediocre television just so the latest movie is borderline coherent. For die-hard supporters of the MCU or the numerous Batman movies, fandom is more than mere appreciation. It is an identity. Slavish devotion and parasocial relationships do not exactly ..read more

A ..read more