Tune Inn tuned out!

FIRE!

Last week I was really sad to read that the Tune Inn kitchen caught on fire. It's a well-known dive bar on Pennsylvania Ave., just a few blocks from where I lived in Washington, DC, southeast of the Capitol. Nobody was hurt, but the entire kitchen has to be gutted. Looks like it's going to be a while until one of Capitol Hill's favorite dives is back up and running. The bar, once featured on Guy Fieri's Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, is amping up support on Facebook, trying to raise funds to support employees while the fixing's being done.

In light of this event, I would like to take some time to explore the Capitol Hill bar scene, particularly the block of Pennsylvania Ave. between 3rd and 4th Streets SE (where the Tune Inn is located)...

First things first... the Tune Inn:

It's a little place. Narrow, long bar in the front, wood-paneled, booths in the back. What caught my eye the first time I walked in was the decor. There's local kitsch, plaques boasting pictures of little league teams the bar had sponsored, but most strikingly - animal heads. (Butts too, if you happen to wander towards the bathrooms...) You get a wide range of people here. Old men sitting at the bar. Capitol Hill staffers. The occasional family (during the day). They serve up your traditional bar food - fried, greasy goodness. I got the chicken strips and tater tots there once, quite tasty. The place has a lot of history. The same family has owned and run the bar since 1947. This bar has character, no doubt. It is distinctly American. Friends from Columbia, Mo. - it reminds me a lot of Booches. If taxidermy doesn't bother you, this place will make you feel right at home.


The Hawk n' Dove:

Oh dear... this was one of the first bars I went to in DC and I will certainly never forget it. The Hawk n' Dove (located right next to the Tune Inn) is an intern bar. It's dark inside, very sketchy looking. The first floor is not too far off from the Tune Inn... small, long bar towards the front, various taxidermy decorations. But it's much darker in here, a good place for Hill interns to run off too after a long, hard day of ingratiating work for which they are not paid. From 5-9, you see a younger crowd grabbing beers and cheap wings. My personal favorite was the deep fried "Capitol" onion - think bloomin' onion from Outback. Then after 10p.m., the party starts. The second floor of the Hawk n' Dove is home to a dance floor and DJ spinning top 40 hits and hip hop. The crowd is 18-early 20s (you can get in at 18, but all under 21s get wrist bands). It gets VERY loud. There will be no hope of a conversation. Late at night, there will be a line to get in. Not because the Hawk n' Dove is some fancy, pretentious, hyper-exclusive club - it's just small and can only hold so many drunken interns. As a 21-year old intern who loves to dance but is not totally into the club scene, I had fun here.

Pour House:

The Pour House seems to me like the definition of your standard bar. I didn't spend much time here, but when I did, it was just to sit with some friends, share a pitcher and chat. Everyone else was doing the same. There are a whole bunch of TVs if you want to watch a game, some arcade games and darts. There's music but it's not loud or distracting like the second floor of the Hawk n' Dove. No awkward animals popping out of walls like the Tune Inn. Just your standard pub to chill with friends. There is, however, a second floor here. I unfortunately missed this, but some of my friends got into a political fundraiser being held upstairs at Pour House - complete with free beer. All I heard about this night were raves - likely free-beer-induced, but nonetheless, keep an eye out for open bar fundraisers here.

These three bars are a pretty good representation of the Capitol Hill bar scene. It's nothing fancy. Not pretentious. Not classy. And it doesn't pretend to be anything it's not. If all you're looking for is a no-frills beer with some buddies after work, and you don't care if you are in the company of very old men or very young interns, head to Penn Ave.

Also on this block are some DC hot spots I've mentioned earlier in this blog... Good Stuff Eatery, We The Pizza and my favorite Starbucks in DC.

Last night's celebration, bin Laden & 9/11 - looking back

As I've been writing about last night's celebration of Osama bin Laden's death, one theme kept popping up - the crowd was mostly college kids. That got me thinking... why college kids?

My first thought was, duh, college kids will take any opportunity available to party. And I'm sure that was partly true. But there was more to last night than drunken revelry. While the crowd did smell like booze a bit, it appeared to be less drunken Greeks and more students, like my friends and myself, who had just rolled out of bed, stone cold sober, but totally high on the euphoria of the situation.

Then a memory hit me. I was at the Newseum a few weeks ago with my friend, Jaime, and we visited the 9/11 exhibit there. The exhibit is home to a very poignant video about the disaster that left us both tearing up and walking away silent, and shaken up.

When we finally spoke, we talked about where we were when we found out planes had hit the twin towers. I was walking up the steps at Frank C. Whiteley Elementary School to Mrs. Hogan's sixth grade classroom with my friend Brittany, who told me that planes had crashed into the twin towers. I was 11 years old, and I honestly had no idea what the twin towers were, much less that our entire world had changed forever that morning.

And then, after Jaime and I finished our stories, Jaime said this - I'm trying to remember a time before 9/11, but I can't. I tried, and realized I couldn't really remember either. I can't remember what it was like to go to an airport without a little apprehension, and of course without removing my shoes and tossing out my water bottle. I don't remember a world without the fear of terrorism.

At that's when I realized why it was students who were celebrating outside the gates of the White House that night. They didn't remember either. And when we were told the symbol of the terror that cast a dark shadow over our world for most of our memorable lives was dead, we couldn't help but gather.

I was watching John King on CNN when I heard it. It was surreal, and hard to believe. King kept repeating the phrase "Osama bin Laden is dead, Osama bin Laden is dead," over and over, trying to get it to sink in. This is for real.

I read somewhere that it was silly for us to celebrate, because bin Laden was likely hardly even effective any more. They're missing the point. More than anything, he was a symbol. A symbol of thousands of our people dead, a symbol of evil, a symbol of fear. Yes, we know the fight against terrorism is not over, not even close. But this is undeniably a step. We killed fear.

Videos: Celebration of Bin Laden's Death Outside White House

Here are some videos I took on my iPhone at the celebration outside the White House late Sunday night, after President Obama announced Osama Bin Laden is dead.

The crowd chants "Obama!"

You can catch the end of the National Anthem here as a young man hangs a flag on a light post and a beach ball flies over the crowd

Not sure why... but these next two came out sideways... ate the beginning of this one you can catch they end of "na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye," at the end you can hear a group of students chanting "I believe that we will win" as they jump up and down in the crowd.

Here the whole crowd sings the National Anthem... it gets a bit messy by the end, but that's what happens when you have this many people try to sing

Osama Bin Laden Is Dead

I just returned to my Capitol Hill apartment from the White House, where a mob of people gathered to celebrate the defeat of Osama Bin Laden. Tonight was an epic moment in our country's history and I feel incredibly lucky to have been in our nation's capitol to celebrate it.

crowd outside the White House

I was sitting in my room watching The West Wing when I got a breaking news update on my iPhone from Huffington Post that the president was going to make a speech at 10:30 p.m. EST. I turned to CNN, where I learned first from Wolf Blitzer that the speech would be concerning national security, but not to do with Libya. He said he had his ideas of what was to be said, but didn't want to steal the president's thunder. Then John King let it loose: Osama Bin Laden is dead.

men scaling a light post to hang a flag

It didn't take long for the other students living in my building to bang down on my door. We took off in a full on sprint towards the White House. The walk outside the White House gates was filled with people when we arrived around midnight, and the crowds only continued to grow in the hour or so my friends and I were there.

The crowd was largely comprised of college students. It reminded me a lot of the mob that rushed the field when Mizzou beat Oklahoma at Homecoming last fall. There was non-stop chanting, cheering and singing... everything from a repeated chant of "USA! USA!" and singing of the National Anthem to singing "na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye," chanting "fuck Osama, go Obama," singing "Olé," and chanting "4 more years!" (in reference to Obama's presidency).

the crowd watches men hang a flag on a light post

American flags were EVERYWHERE. People wore them draped over their shoulders, American flag t-shirts, hats, even an American flag bikini. Men scaled light posts to hang flags. When one struggled, the crowd cheered "YES YOU CAN!" People hung flags from the White House fence, and strung them on sticks, tree branches and lacrosse sticks. People climbed trees and carried signs... from Obama/Biden and Bush/Cheney campaign posters to hand-made posters thrown together reading things like "America, Fuck Ya!"

young boy cheers on his dad's shoulders

Inflatable beach balls bounced around the crowd, people crowd-surfed, and the whole placed smell of beer and liquor. I saw one girl lift a bottle of chardonnay.

I saw small children, older adults, but mostly college-aged people. Many races and ethnicities too. A lot of fraternity and sorority letters floating around. Many students shouting "I have a final tomorrow!" or "I have class tomorrow!" I went with a friend who had to be up at 5:30 a.m. to get to work at the State Department.

Overall, this was an incredible experience. The atmosphere was pure jubilation and patriotism.

When I left, more people were coming than going. Drivers on the streets were honking horns, cheering, chanting, hanging out of cars and waving flags. Everyone cheered together, high-fived each other, hugged, jumped, cheered together. Just incredible.

Here are some more pictures from the celebration outside the White House:

One of many wearing a flag draped across their shoulders

Flag on a stick! People were hanging flags on anything they could find.

Every tree in sight was filled with people holding flags.

Camera crew were all over, shooting footage of the scene.

Shutdown Showdown - through the eyes of a 21-year-old intern

Friday was the closest the government has ever come to shutting down in my memory, and I had a front row seat as an intern in DC. I wasn't covering the "shutdown showdown." That task was given to the Daily Herald's fabulous politics and projects reporter, Kerry Lester, who wrote two great stories - As shutdown looms, suburban members look to debt ceiling, and Hultgren: "Cautiously optimistic" deal will be made.

Still, as a 21-year-old, a student, a politics writer and a DC-first-timer, I had an interesting day.

I spent a lot of my time that stormy Friday on Twitter. I followed the feeds of my favorite political news outlets covering the day's events and the politicians pulling the strings. Some fun hashtags popped up. For example, #govtshutdownpickuplines. Huffington Post compiled some of the best government shutdown pickup lines. Another interesting tag was #uterusshutdown, used by some tweeters upset over the Republican attempt to defund Planned Parenthood. (John Stewart and Steven Colbert on Monday each ripped Senator John Kyl a new one over his false claim on the Senate floor that 90% of what Planned Parenthood does is abortions. Watch those clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.)

Twitter led me to another interesting discovery that day, that made government shutdown look a bit less bleak - deals at Capitol Hill bars for government employees if the government shuts down. One bar, Union Pub, was offering patrons with a valid government ID penny drafts from 5-6 p.m. starting Monday. Lounge 201 was offering half-priced martinis all night long Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I live in an apartment building entirely comprised of interns, many government employees working at the House, Senate or White House. After I shared this with them, they were a little sad the government didn't shut down.

One last little social media tidbit here... a fellow reporting intern in my building alerted to me on this movement on Facebook earlier last week, while it was still small. A Facebook group entitled "If Boehner shuts down the government I am taking my trash to his house" emerged on the social media scene, in protest of DC trash services being stopped in the event of a government shutdown. When I checked today at 5:44 p.m., 8,553 people had RSVP'd to attend. The event received a lot of media coverage.

After a long day of pent-up frustration with our government, my intern apartment-mates and I hit up Hill Mexican restaurant Tortilla Coast for margaritas. It was PACKED with suited up Hill workers and reporters doing the same, even a table of congressmen. There, I got into a heated argument with a Senate intern about the political game our government parties were playing.

I also discovered a little website "Isthegovernmentshutdown.com". In large, uppercase letters, the website simply read "NO". Throughout the night, my friends asked me to check whether it had changed to "YES".

And as you know, it did not.

The Chicago Blackhawks Go to Washington

This past Friday, March 11, the Chicago Blackhawks were invited to the White House by President Obama. I was lucky enough to get to cover it, alongside the Daily Herald's Blackhawks writer, Tim Sassone.

Blackhawks President Tom McDonough gives President
Obama a #44 Obama Blackhawks jersey

First off, getting into the White House is a lot more difficult than any of the other government buildings in DC. At the House and Senate office buildings, you can walk in the doors before hitting security. At the Capitol, the main steps are blocked off by guards wielding machine guns, but once you get in one of the side entrances, the security is similar to the office buildings. You can't get remotely close to the White House without passing through a gate and security. It is separated from any streets by a lot of land and not easy to get to.

Once I finally found the correct entrance, I waited in a line of reporters behind a large gate. We each individually stepped up to an intercom where we stated our name and media outlet. After a guard in a little building just inside the gate confirmed our name was on the guest list, he opened the gate. When I walked in, I gave my driver's license to the guard and he gave me a red press badge on a metal lanyard.I stepped into the little building where I went through security and then was directed down a path towards the White House. I started walking with an NPR reporter from the midwest. Neither of us had ever reported a story out of the White House before. We ended up in a clump of reporters outside a little room that led to the South Lawn. I was definitely the youngest there. I recognized WGN's sports reporter, Dan Roan, and then found the Daily Herald's Tim Sassone.

President Obama holds a mini Stanley Cup, given to him
by Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews

All of us were soon herded through a hallway off the side of the White House onto the South Lawn, where we waited about an hour for the event to start. Special guests began to enter the lawn; kids who were participating in the clinic after the ceremony, their families, Blackhawks players who weren't on the team last year, various Illinois politicians. They got front and center seats, while the reporters were set up along the periphery, hardly able to see. The seasoned photographers had brought step ladders. I was left to reaching my arm as high as I could, hoping my iPhone was pointed in the right direction.

The Stanley Cup Championship team finally exited the White House and lined up on bleachers behind a podium on the South Lawn. They were all wearing suits. Jonathan Toews was carrying a mini Stanley Cup. Then the president came out and gave a speech, recounting the season and the winning cup game as if he had followed it every step of the way. Blackhawks president John McDonough presented Obama with a Obama #44 Blackhawks jersey and let him wear the Stanley Cup ring. Toews gave him a mini cup.

First Lady Michelle Obama chats up Patrick Sharp

After the ceremony, the President shook hands with kids in the crowd and the Hawks left to change into jerseys. They came back out, with the First Lady, and held a clinic for DC students. Some of the players seemed more into it than other. Patrick Kane seemed to be having fun teaching kids to shoot a puck and the First Lady spent some time chatting up Patrick Sharp (recently named one of Chicago Magazine's 50 most beautiful Chicagoans).

At the end of the event I was able to sneak my recorder in for an interview with Patrick Kane, getting about a foot or two away from the 22-year-old who scored the Stanley Cup winning shot.

I couldn't feel my feet by the end from standing for hours in heels in the cold, but it was absolutely worth it.

"U.S. House votes to kill a paperwork rule in health care law"

Read my latest story by clicking HERE.

National Press Foundation Awards Dinner

Last night I had the honor and the privilege of attending the National Press Foundation's 28th annual awards dinner. The dinner honors the best in American journalism and is attended by many icons in the industry. This year's attendees included Arianna Huffington, John King, Alan Greenspan and Timothy Geithner, as well as award winners MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell, CNN's Dana Bash and POLITICO cartoonist Matt Wuerker, just to name a few.

John King and Dana Bash
at the awards ceremony

I got this incredible opportunity thanks to Barbara Cochran, former RTDNA president, vice president for news at NPR, executive producer of NBC's Meet the Press and vice president and Washington bureau chief for CBS News. She's also the Hurley Chair at the Missouri School of Journalism, and was able to secure a table for the group of Missouri students I'm here with in Washington. She, along with our program coordinator Wes Pippert, introduced us to many of the night's attendees.

The event was fabulous. It was held in the ballroom of the Washington Hilton. We dined on fancy foods I had never had before.... wild mushroom bisque en croute, pan seared halibut in a pomegranate emulsion, butternut squash puree, roasted baby sweet peppers, baby onion and mushrooms, caramelized pineapple with basil ice cream, lychee glace and cherry crumble, chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon. It was all delicious. I'm not sure what's so special about having baby versions of all the vegetables, but they were tasty.

Ballroom at the Washington Hilton

Everyone received goody bags complete with the latest issue of The Economist, screen cleaning rag and spray sponsored by The Daily and a baby tree. Yes, a baby tree. In a bottle. Not sure where I'm going to plant it in my capitol hill apartment haha.

This night is why I came to Washington. Opportunities like this don't come up anywhere else. I'm 21, and I just had dinner with the big shots from The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, NPR, NBC, ABC, CNN, Google, Hearst, The Huffington Post, AP, Bloomberg and POLITICO. This is why the Missouri School of Journalism is the best people.

At the awards ceremony with Erin Schwartz (left) and Kathleen Majorsky (right).

Panel: Democracy, Dissent and Digital Media in the Arab World

One of the greatest things about Washington, DC is the abundance of incredible learning opportunities that you wouldn't be able to find anywhere else in the nation. This city is filled with a striking wealth of intelligent individuals, knowledgeable on topics that really impact our world today. While my main purpose of being here this semester is to write for the Daily Herald, I've gotten the chance to have some great learning opportunities. This morning was one of them.

I attended an event today at the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill about the effect of social media on the revolutions in the Arab world. I was pleased to find that the speakers went far beyond what we've been hearing about the so-called "Twitter/Facebook revolutions." The panel included Egyptian journalist/blogger Mona Eltahawy, Washington's Al-Jazeera bureau chief Abderrahim Foukara, Amira Maaty from the National Endowment for Democracy, who was in Egypt for the revolution, and Georgetown Internet studies professor Michael Nelson.

Rep. Schiff

Congressman Adam Schiff (D - CA) also made a quick appearance. While all the cameras shot up when Schiff got to the podium, the real meat of the presentation came from the panelists. Schiff's speech was pure, tailored government jabber.

Of the group, my favorite speaker was Eltahawy. An Egyptian, her comments were much more passionate than the others, while still being incredibly interesting, educated and informative. She said this is not the Twitter or Facebook revolution, and was frustrated with those who referred to it as that. It's about people. "Facebook and Twitter did not invent courage," she said. "They allowed a means to express that."

Her views were supported by Georgetown professor Nelson. "At the end of the day, the Internet is not causing the revolution," he said. "But it is enabling it." Though governments may block social media sites, the top 10% who know how to use the Internet well get around it via proxy servers and spread information to the rest of the population. Others combat social media censorship by communicating through dating websites or online games. While people in the Arab world have been so successful in mobilizing via the Internet, using it to set up a government is a whole other monster. President Obama is a good example of this. He ran the most successful online presidential campaign our nation has ever seen, but his use of the Internet while governing has not been as stellar.

Al-Jazeera's Abderrahim Foukara stood in support of traditional media as well as social media as an important force in the Arab revolutions. "Social media has been no surrogate for mainstream media," he said. "It took conventional media, primarily TV, to connect the dots social media set up." In some parts of the Arab world, the illiteracy rate can be as high as 60%. The Internet does nothing for that group. If the revolutions end up being successful and lead to democratic rule, Foukara pointed to a new talking point: why were these people forced to live under tyranny for so long? This brings the conversation onto an international playing field and Foukara says it can't be done on simply social media.

Foukara also threw in some patriotic, American references, always present in DC, saying the foresight of the US Constitution to prevent tyranny resonates with the Arab people.

Fear was also expressed at attempts to regulate the Internet, make it less open and disallow anonymity. The ability to publish work anonymously needs to remain intact for revolutions to take place. Such anonymous publications were a staple in our American Revolution, and the Federalist Papers.

The presentation ended on an interesting note: a comment on how the Arab world stepped up to solve their problem rather than just arguing and playing the blame game. They got things done. I hope to see a little more action like this in Congress. Not violent protests on the hill, of course, but action to move forward and solve our nation's problems rather than looking back to rag on those who caused them.

US Rep from Illinois in New Zealand for the quake

And I got to cover it!

Click HERE to read my latest story "Area congressman in New Zealand when quake hit."

Front page byline! Asian carp

Click HERE to read my first front page story, entitled "Asian Carp Called the Biggest Threat to Great Lakes in Years."

Here's a YouTube video where you can see Asian carp in action.

The real way to learn economics

Of the many many subjects I have studied, from kindergarten in 1995 to college, by far my least favorite has been economics. I've never been able to wrap my head around it... until recently that is.

My high school econ teacher was wonderful. He tried to explain the subject using analogies involving dolphins and tucking his hand into his shirt sleeve when talking about the "invisible hand" theory. He made econ fun, but it never fully sank in. In college, my professor was an evil little man whose 8a.m. class was the first and only class I have fallen asleep in. The class gained a notorious reputation for being impossible, even among the engineering brainiacs down the hall from me in the dorm. Needless to say, I didn't learn much from this class either.

So when I walked into the Rayburn House Office Building for an interview about the implications of China's economic surge on the Illinois manufacturing sector, I was pretty nervous. I had done my research of course, but my previous failures in the realm of economics still daunted me. When the interview was over, I was shocked to hear a complement from the Congressman on how much I seemed to know on the subject. He said I was well prepared. When I returned to my apartment to write the story, I discovered from my notes that I had actually conducted a good interview on economics! And when I wrote the story, I knew what I was talking about!

So moral of the story, for me at least, the best way to learn economics may not be from a text book or amusing analogies, but to throw it in the context of something you do understand or enjoy, like politics. Or maybe it's to have to talk to a US Congressman about it haha.

My story ran on Sunday. Check it out HERE!

My first byline with the Daily Herald

Click here to read "Sen. Mark Kirk pushes banning federal funds to move Gitmo detainees to U.S."

State of the Union

Nothing says diving right in to DC like attending the State of the Union address your second day on the job!

Rather than watching the SOTU from the comfort of my apartment, I trekked up the hill to the capitol in my suit and heels, press pass and trusty reporter's notebook in hand... and having absolutely no idea what awaited me. Literally all I knew was that I had to go to the capitol and the address began at 9 p.m.

As I approached that big white dome that is our capitol, I stuck to what I've found to work so far... put on a pretty smile and ask the guy with the big gun for help. Turns out I had to go through an underground tunnel, I felt so sneaky! I reached a security checkpoint with a bit of a line forming. But with a flash of my press pass, I got to skip right on by that line. "She's with the press, let her through," they said.

When I finally got to the press gallery, it was jam packed with reporters. It was nearly impossible to move, breathe or not sweat. I was definitely one of the younger people in the room. They showed us a short video about what to do in case of an emergency, then they began letting those with tickets onto the balcony.

Tickets. Crap.

I definitely didn't have one of those.

So I resigned myself to the fact that I'd probably be watching the SOTU from the gallery on a TV. I shoved my coat and bag in a cubby and sat down (near the balcony door, just in case) with my notebook, pen and iPhone. Just as the clock was about to hit 9, they announced there was standing room. I tucked my phone away in a cubby (no phones allowed!) and snagged myself a spot on the stairs, mentally preparing myself to stand over an hour in high heels.

I had never seen so many suits in my life. I was surprised to see how friendly people were being, even members from opposing parties. That's not to say everyone was friendly. I don't believe I saw Michele Bachmann smile once.

While to a lot of people I know a political speech sounds dull, but being there in person for the SOTU was exhilarating. People really got into it. I even hear whoops and verbal cheers at certain points, and a chill ran down my spine when the president walked in. The applause was overwhelming. Agree or disagree with his opinions, but the man can give a speech.

Definitely an unforgettable experience. Definitely worth standing for an hour in heels.