Penguin photog Ron Pace and I thought it would be interesting to get an evening perspective of Blair Mill Road near East-West Highway. This footage was recorded last week.
The best part: My narration accurately identifies Blair Mill Road, which was erroneously tagged as Newell Street in this video’s prequel.
This video is available from The Penguin’s YouTube page.
Photo of Blair Mill Road by J. Deseo/SSP.
This video was taken on Dec 25, 2008, as I walked along Blair Mill Road in South Silver Spring.
For some reason, I persistently referred to the roadway as Newell Street in my narration. (Too much egg nog the night before.) However, this footage is definitely of Blair Mill Road.
This video is also available from The Penguin’s YouTube page.
Video photography by J. Deseo/SSP. Lead photo of a Boston sidewalk by Flickr user Frankh
Update: The video now rolls from YouTube. — JD (Dec 30, 2008)
Two South Silver Spring motels have agreed to mop up the drugs, guns and illicit sex that trash their $90-per-night operations, assistant state’s attorney Maura Lynch announced Wednesday night.
Management with the Days Inn and Travelodge motels (both at 8040 13th St) is on the move to hire more security guards, roll a closed-circuit camera feed into the third police district’s station house, and keep a closer eye on who’s coming and going, Lynch told a dozen South Silver Springers during a community meeting.
It was that, or have the motel properties seized — even demolished — under the state’s nuisance abatement law. That legal nugget allows community organizations (in this case, the South Silver Spring Neighborhood Association) or the state’s attorney’s office to sue landlords or their tenants if the drug dealing gets out of hand.
And DAMN! Did it get out of hand at the Days Inn and Travelodge!
According to a stuffed, three-ring binder that Lynch shared with residents, all kinds of crazy shit was shaking on 13th Street. A guesstimated 200 pages of evidence documented drug deals, overdoses and online pimping, all leading back to motel visitors.
In one section of the binder, vivid color photos showed a topless woman folded over her knees, her face pressed into the carpeted motel-room floor, her panty-clad ass in the air. She had died at one of the motels of a heroin overdose, documents stated. The photo montage included shots of syringes and used condoms scattered around her body.
In another chapter, notes from the state’s crime lab listed evidence gathered from the motels on different occassions — sandwich bags containing a green, plant-like substance, white rocks, a soft yellow powder. The lab notes later identified the stash as marihuana (their spelling), crack cocaine and heroin. Crystal meth was mentioned in one lab report, for a little variety.
Still another chapter contained printouts of Craigslist ads showing big butts in G strings. Accompanying text described female masseurs for hire as “100 percent fuckable” without directly demanding cash for sex. However, the advertiser’s location was listed as “inn call”, which translates to “hooker”, Lynch explained.
To top it off, the ladies of ill repute weren’t ladies — they were underaged girls, Lynch said. According to her, a pimp daddy in a purple Cadillac cruised 13th Street while girls watched porn in the back seat. Later, he would send the girls into the motels to re-enact those porn scenes with johns answering the Craigslist ad. The purple Caddie has since been impounded by police, and the child-prostitution ring quashed.
New measures hammered out between police and motel management could chase away more of the criminal element, Lynch went on. Motel guests must register their rides with the front desk and rock a parking permit, or else get towed off the porous front lot. The idea is to dissuade johns and junkies from pulling a quick drug-and-dash at the motel.
The motels were also ordered to submit logs of their weekend guests, a move that came close to stomping on the Fourth Amendment, Lynch said. The family of four from Ohio probably wouldn’t raise a red flag, but the single guy visiting from Briggs Chaney Road would. In fact, almost half the motels’ visitors live within a two-mile radius of South Silver Spring, third-district police officer Joy Patil said.
“If they came from Wheaton, that was far away,” Patil quipped.
While the motels are under no deadline to bleach the place up, Lynch said the state’s attorney’s office and the PD would review the motels’ new security measures in January.
Photo courtesy of Flickr user Arturo Ponciarelli.
The pressure of opening a restaurant has to be enormous — the cost, the risk, the scrutiny of ruthless critics who don’t give a rat’s ass about the cost or the risk. It can’t be an easy gig.
It probably doesn’t help if that restaurant is a sushi joint located only steps away from dozens of federal fish experts. The Pomegranate Cafe, a small but tidy spot on the ground floor of The Bennington apartments, sits a few yards from offices of the National Marine Fisheries Service. Tough crowd.
So does the Pomegranate Cafe know fish as well as its neighbors do? Um yeah, pretty much.
The lunch special sushi ($8, below) offers among other things three pieces of nigiri — slices of fish lounging on small, individual cushions of rice.
The tuna nigiri has a soft squish and slightly bitter twinge to it, as tuna does; its salmon counterpart leaves a heavy, omega-3 feel on the palette. But that’s raw fish. Take it or leave it.
On the other hand, the shrimp nigiri puts a cooked swimmer on the plate. The flesh snaps pleasantly between the teeth, and its sweetness swirls nicely against the lightly vinegared rice.
Along with the nigiri, the lunch special comes with eight bite-sized pieces of California roll, constructed of sweet imitation crab meat, fresh avocado and rice, secured in a seaweed wrap. It’s the sushi that one imagines when thinking of sushi, and it’s pretty good.
Despite its doppelganger status, the imitation crab meat has a fresh, taut texture and works well against the softer (but not squishy) avocado. The smoky seaweed balances out the sweetness, and tiny orange pearls of fish roe add pop to every bite.
Even better than the California roll is the spicy tuna roll ($4, above), which arrives as six pieces on a plate. The raw tuna is finely chopped without becoming a mealy paste, mixed with hot sauce and creamy mayonnaise, then wrapped in a light layer of rice and seaweed.
The hot sauce is a little spicy (though not spicy ass), and the mayo cools things off with oh so good fatness. It’s tasty.
While the cafe does well with sushi, it needs some help with its hot entrees. The bibimbap rice bowl ($7, below) is a bland patchwork of soy sprouts, shitake mushrooms, cucumber, spinach and either beef or chicken over steamed rice.
Traditionally, this Korean dish cooks with raw egg and a dollop of spicy-ass sauce in the stoneware bowl in which it’s served. Pomegranate’s version dishes it out on the tepid side and with very little seasoning.
Similarly, the bulgogi bento box ($8) is listed on the menu as marinated rib-eye beef over rice. But what arrives resembles ground beef in a sweet teriyaki sauce. Its taste isn’t objectionable, but it’s not rib-eye.
At least the bento box comes along with two plump vegetable dumplings baked (that’s right, I said baked) until crisp. It’s good eats and can be ordered as a six-piece deal ($6).
Seating inside this bright cafe can be limited when the weather is rough, but patio furniture in the adjacent plaza takes that load off on nicer days. The staff is helpful, though the place operates mostly on counter service.
What remains to be seen is whether Pomegranate will cater strictly to the weekday workforce, or if its hours will stretch past 8:00 p.m. to accommodate area residents. At least it operates on weekends for everyone to check out.
Pomegranate Cafe, 1215 East-West Hwy, Silver Spring, (301) 562-9400.
A public plaza between The Veridian apartments and The Silverton condos is really coming together.
Crews have already installed stylish wood benches along the plaza’s entrance on East-West Highway and Blair Mill Road. A few steps from the curb, a round platform waits for public art or maybe a fountain to plug into its protruding wires. Further away from the street, towards the CSX train tracks, a small nook lures visitors to rest on its benches around a small patch of sod.
But just past that nook, beyond the diminutive boxwood shrubs and bare ornamental trees, one finds a flagstone trail in the mulch. The trail lures one closer to the train tracks, up a concrete staircase (above), then to a walkway littered with cable and splintered plywood, sandwiched between the tracks and the apartment building’s garage.
And that’s when it comes into view: a concrete staircase leading into the ground (above), down to a fenced-off tunnel connecting South Silver Spring with the historic B&O railroad station on Georgia and Sligo Avenues.
The tunnel (below) is one of two off-street pedestrian connections between South Silver Spring and the Ripley District. (The other is a bridge behind NOAA office buildings near Colesville Road. That route leads to Ramsey Avenue.) According to Jerry McCoy, with the Silver Spring Historical Society, the tunnel was built in 1945 with the B&O railroad station.
Around 2005, the county-owned tunnel was fenced off to keep pedestrians on Georgia from walking into an active construction site on East-West Highway. There were also issues of people using the tunnel as a public toilet or temporary shelter, McCoy said.
So with construction on East-West Highway complete, does a walkway behind The Veridian signal the tunnel’s reopening? Nope, said Gary Stith, director of Silver Spring’s regional center. Expect the chain link fences to remain at the tunnel’s two openings, keeping the homeless, public pissers and pedestrians out.
Photos by Ron Pace and Jennifer Deseo for The Penguin.
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