Best to drink while sitting in D.C.

Next time you feel like having a drink at home, wear a helmet: According to the D.C. Code, it’s a crime to become intoxicated and endanger your own safety. So if you have a few too many in your own house and fall down the stairs, you could be subject to a $500 fine and 90 days in jail.

Nobody Hillscape consulted was aware of this crime. Melissa Merz, spokeswoman for the D.C. Office of the Attorney General, whose responsibility it would be to prosecute the offense, said nobody in that office had any recollection of presenting such a charge.

Everybody Hillscape consulted, except (perhaps) for District employees, thought the law was laughable when they heard about it. It’s a crime to get drunk and fall down — in private? C’mon!
The law states: “No person, whether in or on public or private property, shall be intoxicated and endanger the safety of himself, herself, or any other person or property.”

Art Spitzer, director of the American Civil Liberties Union for the National Capital Area, says that the endangerment aspect of this law is important to keep in mind.

“If they simply made it a crime to be drunk in your house, that would raise constitutional issues,” he says. But Spitzer thinks the D.C. Council ought to nix the self-endangerment part. “If a person wants to get drunk in his or her own home, and does not become a danger to any other person, that shouldn’t be a crime.”

The attorney general’s office had no information on the origin of this law. In the late 1970s the D.C. Law Revision Commission updated District laws for the home rule era, but some wacky stuff remained on the books. Until 1993, for example, consensual oral sex was a felony punishable by 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

These laws may never be enforced, but the District government is always combating petty vices and sometimes flirting with prohibition. Last year D.C. Councilmember Carol Schwartz introduced legislation to ban alcohol outright. Her bill was a joke — a satire on her council colleagues, who at the time were fixing to prohibit smoking in bars and restaurants. Since the smoking ban went into effect, many smokers prefer to endanger their health at home.

Some travel to Virginia, but that can be risky, too. In June 2006, The Roanoke Times reported that undercover agents visited a watering hole called Mango’s in Fairfax County and arrested two people for public drunkenness — in the bar! “Agents filed administrative charges against Mango’s for allowing intoxicated people to loiter upon the premises and serving alcoholic beverages to intoxicated people,” the Times reported. An officer with the Fairfax Police Department told Hillscape that those kinds of busts are no longer happening.

D.C. police do not arrest people simply for being drunk at bars. Carry your booze outside, though, and you’re in trouble. In the First District this year so far, police have arrested 328 people for public consumption of alcohol and disorderly conduct — more than four times as many as last year. On H Street NE a moratorium against sales of single cans or bottles of beer, malt liquor and half-pints of spirits has just gone into effect.

The Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration (ABRA) is an aggressive enforcer of laws against underage drinking, conducting sting operations against every bar, restaurant and corner store licensed to sell alcohol in the city, whether the targeted business is known for selling to kids or not. Because of the stings, which can result in a shutdown, some bars are so terrified that they will refuse to serve even 40-year-olds with gray hair if they produce a recently expired ID. “Don’t blame us, blame the ABRA,” the manager will say.

On this point, the law says that a licensed business need only take steps “reasonably necessary” to ascertain whether a customer is of age.

Eastern Market: best ’hood

Eastern Market isn’t just better than Dupont Circle, Adams Morgan and Georgetown — it’s better than most neighborhoods everywhere, according to the American Planning Association, which named Eastern Market one of the nation’s 10 best neighborhoods. The APA presented Mayor Adrian Fenty with a certificate at the Eastern Market building on Oct. 2.

“Sitting in the shadow of the nation’s Capitol, the Eastern Market neighborhood has retained its unpretentious, charming nature for more than 200 years,” gushes the APA’s website. “As a result of its original design and the community’s commitment to local preservation, the area has weathered many political and economic storms to emerge today as a thriving residential community with a strong sense of its history as well as its future.”

Other distinguished neighborhoods include Park Slope in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Hillcrest in San Diego, Calif.

Some neighbors might have been scratching their heads about the announcement because people generally don’t refer to Eastern Market as its own neighborhood. It’s a building surrounded by a flea market on weekends. According to the D.C. Office of Planning website, “Capitol Hill” is the only distinct neighborhood in this area.

On the APA website, a map designates Eastern Market as a rectangle bordered by East Capitol Street to the north, the Southeast Freeway to the south, and 11th and 6th streets SE to the east and west. APA public affairs coordinator Denny Johnson says the APA recognized that Eastern Market is a sub-neighborhood within Capitol Hill but wanted to focus on the market and Barracks Row.

On Capitol Hill’s behalf, the D.C. government takes no offense.

“It’s the area of Capitol Hill we see as receiving the award,” says D.C. Office of Planning spokeswoman Anita Hairston. “We’re excited it was awarded.” 

Renovation at CCNV

The $6 million renovation at the Federal City Shelter has led to fewer available beds. A sign in the front lobby of the Community for Creative Non-Violence (CCNV — with 800 beds the largest of several organizations operating in the building) says there are no beds available for intake “due to renovation phasing, until further notice.”

CCNV executive director Abdul Nurriddin says he’d expected that the work would be finished in May. He says CCNV will be short by about 300 beds as contractors redo floors, walls and ceilings on CCNV’s three floors, one floor at a time.

“It’s getting close to hypothermia season,” Nurriddin says.

Department of Human Services spokeswoman Carole Lee, however, says the renovation will not affect the number of beds specifically designated for hypothermia intake.

Carlos Perdomo, president of Keystone Plus Construction, the contractor overseeing the renovation, calls the work a very difficult balancing act: “We’re dealing with human lives.”

Perdomo said Keystone uncovered rotted metal studs behind old walls, among other things, that were unexpected and not included in the original contract. He added that these kinds of things happen in renovations of older buildings. The Federal City Shelter, which can put up over 1,300 people, is the largest homeless shelter in the country. The building is ancient and decrepit.

“In a lot of people’s opinions it would be easier to tear it down and build a new facility,” Perdomo says, “but what do you do with all those people?”