SYMHM: High Heel Winner, Red Line Work, Ontario Theatre Woes

From Michelle Lancaster. Follow her and tell her your news on Twitter @MichLancaster or email her at [email protected].

Drag Queens, High Heels and Running for 25 Years

Update: Heels, Wigs, Costumes on 17th Street: We Got Pics!

Send in your gosh darned pictures from last night, already! Share them on the Borderstan Flickr pool.  Borderstan’s beloved Halloween tradition of drag queens, wanna-be-queens and a few competitive runners was held last night on 17th Street: The High Heel Race. This year’s winner, Craig Williams, won for the second time, also winning in 2008. Runner-up Stephen was the 3rd Place finisher last year. Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans was the official judge at the finish line and trophy presenter. The trophy this year was a hand-blown glass slipper full of brandy.

WTOP gave a quick preview of the event, including some good nuggets of history like the date of the first run (1986), its origins (a bet, no surprise there) and some early expectations for crowds. If you have lived in DC for more than a Halloween, have a sense of humor and enjoy some serious pageantry, you pretty much have to go next year.

Red Line to be a CF This Weekend

If you are planning to support friends at the Marine Core Marathon, go out around Dupont or do anything else on our part of the Red Line, just don’t bother. The Metro’s track maintenance schedule will cause single-tracking between Dupont Circle and Judiciary Square to create a safe work zone at Farragut North, says The Washington Post. That station definitely needs some work, and I guess it’s not rush hour but man, what a bummer. Trains will leave the end of the line every 20 minutes or so, and will go through the work zone (one train in each direction) every 20 minutes.

Saving the Other Theatre in the Area

Greater Greater Washington shares the story of the Ontario Theatre at 17th Street and Columbia Road NW. It’s been abandoned, neglected and may ultimately disappear in what historians (or GGW) feel is a blow to history. Sound familar? It should — seems similar to the plight of the Lincoln Theatre. The difference, of course, is that the Lincoln is currently functioning as a theater.

The Ontario, once a neighborhood theater showing first-run movies, one of only two in DC. It was ravaged by the riots after Dr. King’s death, became a Latino community meeting place and then became home to performances by The Clash and Blondie. A building that is more than 60-years-old, which embodies the changing history of the neighborhood and is also a pretty sweet architectural structure? That sounds like historical preservation status-worthy to me.