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sunday, may 16, 2010
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64, 9 a.m. 70, noon 74, 5 p.m. 67, 9 p.m.
Obituaries Rosa Rio, 107, the last of the original silent-movie organists, had a 97-year career in show business. C6
Make plans
Today looks like it’ll be as nice as yesterday. See the Capital Weather Gang’s update and peruse the Going Out Guide at
washingtonpost.com/local.
THE DISTRICT
Musical surprise
On the Mall, sopranos and baritones from the Washington National Opera burst into five-minute sketches of “Hamlet” and “La Traviata.” C4
Course officials have apparently tamed the sometimes violent, often rowdy and always inebriated Saturday free-for-all that took place for years in the track’s infield during the Preakness Stakes. Last year, they ended the decades-old practice of allowing racegoers to bring all the cases of beer they wanted. Attendance plunged, costing Pimlico a
A
Maryland tradition, long-standing but vulgar, has ended. Pimlico Race
Preakness puts the chug-a-lug back in the party — without going crazy
ROBERT McCARTNEY
baltimore
bundle. This year, they encouraged a return to debauchery — but with limits. It seems to have worked. Sure, the crowd that packed the grassy oval drank heartily
and steadily. Ten thousand paid $20 apiece for red plastic mugs that guaranteed limitless beer. Quite a few were slurring their words after downing eight or more by late afternoon. But everybody agreed that the crowd was much more docile than in the past. Security officials said nobody attempted the notorious “Porta-Potty race,” in which people were once bloodied as spectators hurled full cans and bottles of beer at individuals staggering across the top of a row of portable toilets.
Women were especially happy
at the change. This year, they didn’t come under pressure to flash their breasts, another feature of Preaknesses past. Instead, the 33,200 spectators in the infield laughed, flirted and sunbathed in a relaxed, orderly atmosphere. They tossed beanbags and cheered entrants in a bikini contest. They danced to the music of the Zac Brown Band and O.A.R. Some, though not many, even watched the races. Let’s hope this was the start of
a new Preakness tradition — still pretty intoxicated, still fun, but not violent. “In the past, there were beer cans flying through the air. It was a war zone,” Robert Chernow, 23, of College Park said. Now people can “get really hammered but have a good time without people getting hit.” The key was the bottomless mugs of beer, which seem to have steered a middle path just as the race organizers hoped.
mccartney continued on C4
Gimme shellter
Folks stick their necks out for Md. box turtles, but ICC may be the end of the road
by Katherine Shaver
T
wenty-two miles from the future In- tercounty Connector, 37 Montgomery County residents
who lost homes to the high- way’s construction feast on but- ternut squash, apples and let- tuce in an upstairs bedroom of Sandy Barnett’s Baltimore area home. “Are you hungry, little one?”
Barnett, a retired reptile and amphibian expert, cooed re- cently as she gently lifted a baseball-size box turtle out of the brown mossy carpet of a plastic container. “Okay, guys, let’s get up. Time to eat,” she purred as she turned to an- other container and set down the meal. The tiny turtles — most fit in the palm of a hand — are part of an experiment, sponsored by the Maryland State Highway Administration and applauded by Barnett and other wildlife advocates, to see how well box turtles do after being displaced by a major road project. Since summer 2008, more than 900 turtles have been saved from the ICC’s bulldoz- ers, marking the first time the Maryland highway agency has made an organized effort to move wildlife in advance of roadwork, state officials said. The state is spending $300,000 of the highway’s $2.56 billion construction budget for a Tow- son University study of what happens to 97 turtles affixed with radio transmitters after being moved from woods and meadows in the ICC’s path. The findings will help deter-
on
washingtonpost.com/local
Sniffing out turtles in path of destruction
How hard is it to find little box turtles hiding in the woods? Pretty darn hard. One Maryland volunteer who helps lead a brigade that includes trained search dogs offers an insider’s look at relocating the threatened reptiles before ICC bulldozers move in. Plus, see just how small they are.
C
DC MD VA S
JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON
Growth indicators
At the Beltway and Connecticut Avenue, Answer Man discovers a plastic forest from which will emerge a stand of trees. And it’s all connected to the Intercounty Connector. C3
Artistic, for sure; tax-savvy, not quite
IRS RULE JOLTS SMALL GROUPS
Nonprofits’ exempt status hinges on filing
by Susan Kinzie
Time is running out on the Sus- picious Cheese Lords. The District a cappella group and more than 200,000 other small nonprofit organizations have until midnight Monday to file with the IRS or lose their tax- exempt status under a new law many of them have failed to no- tice. For the first time, the law, in- tended to increase transparency for contributors and more accu- rately measure nonprofits’ bil- lions of dollars in annual activity, requires that those with less than $25,000 in annual revenue file tax forms each year. Clifton “Skip” West III, presi- dent of the Suspicious Cheese Lords and a forensic toxicologist by day, had no idea of the require- ment until just the other day. “I was focused on the artistic side,” he said. On Thursday, West saw a re-
tweeted warning from a nonprofit association. When he clicked through to the IRS Web site, he re- alized with a start, “Oh my God . . . we have to do this, now.” The IRS says that more than 600,000 organizations are affect- ed by the law, approved in 2006, and that many have complied. But the Urban Institute estimates that 214,000 public charities are in
tax continued on C4
PHOTOS BY TONI L. SANDYS/THE WASHINGTON POST
Maryland is spending $300,000 to study and protect box turtles threatened by the construction of the Intercounty Connector. Sandy Barnett has taken in 60 small, sick and injured box turtles found in the ICC’s path in the past two years.
mine whether all the project’s turtle protection efforts — a plastic mesh fence around the work site, requiring contrac- tors to look for turtles before beginning work and calling on volunteers to help in rescues — actually help them survive or amount to little more than feel- good public relations.
“There’s an awful lot we need to know about whether doing something like this is a good idea from a scientific, biologi- cal standpoint,” said Rob Shreeve, the state’s environ- mental manager for ICC con- struction.
turtles continued on C3
Papers say FBI weighed move
by Ovetta Wiggins
Court filings in a lawsuit over stalled plans to build a mixed- used development in Greenbelt reveal that the FBI might at one time have considered moving to Prince George’s County. In papers filed by Greenbelt
Providing ground support
Blue Angels fan Henry Nichols, 8, takes in the sights and sounds of the annual Joint Service Open House and air show at Andrews Air Force Base. Henry and his parents were visiting from Philadelphia, and attending the event was an early birthday present for him. The show continues today. Story, C10.
JAHI CHIKWENDIU/ THE WASHINGTON POST
Tysons rail work comes between stores, shoppers
by Kafia A. Hosh
Tysons Corner merchants on Route 7 along the path of the rail extension to Dulles International Airport are struggling to do busi- ness in a construction zone and won’t get relief any time soon. The work on the first phase of the Silver Line, scheduled to open in 2013, has limited the vis- ibility of many businesses and blocked entrances to parking lots.
Crews spent the past year
burying utility lines and closing service roads along a one-mile stretch of Route 7 between Route 123 and the Dulles Toll Road. The corridor is home to one of Ty- sons’ major retail cores, lined with low-slung strip malls, big- box stores and car dealerships. Rail construction has added to
traffic delays along an already congested route. A midday lane closure last month resulted in a 45-minute backup. “It’s obvious I’m not getting
the traffic I once had,” said Har- vey Kramer, owner of Ranger Surplus at the popular Pike 7 Pla- za shopping center. The store, which sells military and camping gear, opened in 1994. Even ac- counting for the economic slow- down, “I’m sure we’re losing a percent of people who just find the shopping center too incon- venient to get in and out of,” Kramer said. Construction limited access and took away several of the shopping center’s parking spac- es.
“The retail along here makes [construction] harder,” rail proj-
tysons continued on C3
Ventures in its lawsuit against the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, the devel- opment company says that Garth Beall, the managing member of Metroland Developers, had been “secretly meeting with WMATA and the FBI analyzing a potential use of the WMATA property for the FBI’s relocation.” Greenbelt Ventures officials
say the development company had an agreement with Metro- land Developers and Metro to build on the land. A relocation of the FBI head-
quarters “would mean that all of the property would be occupied by the FBI,” the lawsuit says. The revelation about possible plans for the FBI relocation is buried in a 118-page response to a motion by Metro to dismiss the lawsuit. The Greenbelt News Re- view reported last month on the lawsuit and the FBI’s possible re- location to Greenbelt. FBI spokesman Bill Carter said
Friday that there had been pre- liminary discussions “before the
greenbelt continued on C4
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