For our complete guide to events for the week, click here.

Tuesday, July 8
• Where else would you want to be tonight but The Washingtonian’s Best of Washington Party at the National Building Museum? The party, from 7 to 10, will feature food from Washington’s best restaurants and an open bar. Plus you’ll get to rub elbows with your After Hours editors! Catherine promises to act professionally and not drink too much. Yours truly agrees with one of those promises. Tickets will be available at the door.

• If you’re going to miss the Best of Party, it had better be to see music duo No Age at the Rock and Roll Hotel. New Yorker pop-music critic Sasha Frere-Jones has sung the praises of this LA punk-rock duo, comparing the band’s distorted, slightly jarring sound to the likes of My Bloody Valentine and the Jesus and Mary Chain. Tickets are $12; 8:30 PM.

WestEnd Bistro's tall topiaries and flowering plants separate its patio from busy M Street.

Come summer, Washington is all about cafe society, and every restaurant with a sliver of sidewalk unfurls the umbrellas and hauls out the patio tables and chairs.

Newcomers to the dining scene have joined in this Parisian-style exodus outdoors. French architect Pierre-Charles L’Enfant, who envisioned Washington as a Paris on the Potomac long ago, would be pleased. Some new addresses for dining al fresco this summer:

Tall topiaries, market umbrellas, and chrome and wood furnishings create a chic outdoor oasis on the wide sidewalk outside the Ritz-Carlton’s French-inflected WestEnd Bistro (1190 22nd St., NW; 202-974-4900). A few blocks away at Hudson (2030 M St., NW; 202-872-8700), oversize beach umbrellas make for an island feel, which is the idea, especially on Friday nights when steel-drum performers provide the tunes and Caribbean cocktails, such as Cruzan-rum mai tais, rule.

Photo by Jennifer Smoose

On May 17, 2006, Benjamin Okeke was on a flight from Baltimore to Boston, dripping with sweat and clutching his chest. The other passengers stared. Was this man having a heart attack?

He wasn’t—he was terrified. In about two hours, Benjamin would be asking his girlfriend, Angelique Manning, to marry him. For the past month, he had kept the cushion-cut diamond in a bulletproof, 007-style briefcase. But when airport security wouldn’t let the briefcase through, he had to move the ring to his left shirt pocket. He clutched the pocket tight and waited to land.

Benjamin, a Colorado native, and Angelique, who grew up in DC, met in 2003 at a law conference in Puerto Rico. There they discovered they were both students at Howard University’s School of Law—and that they both attended DC’s St. Augustine Catholic Church and lived two blocks from each other.

After one night on the Puerto Rican beach, talking and looking at the moon, Angelique knew Benjamin was the one. After three years of dating, Benjamin knew, too. He also knew he couldn’t propose on a holiday or anniversary—that was too predictable—so in early 2006, he shut his eyes, pointed at the calendar, and landed on the May date. He bought a ticket to Boston, where Angelique was working, and hatched his plan.

• Washington Post editor David Maraniss—whose books include biographies of Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Vince Lombardi—takes on Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World. That year’s Summer Olympics were notable for, among other things, a young boxer named Cassius Clay—later Muhammad Ali.

Writes Maraniss: “Cassius Clay paraded through the village before breakfast, gold medal dangling from his neck. ‘I got to show this thing off!’ he kept boasting. . . . Dallas Long, the bronze medalist shot-putter, said nothing when he came across Clay that morning, but thought to himself ‘This guy is such a jerk. He’s never going to amount to anything.’ ”

• Washington native Breena Clarke’s first novel, River, Cross My Heart—set in the Georgetown of the 1920s, when it was largely African-American—was excerpted in The Washingtonian and later was a pick of Oprah’s Book Club. Clarke’s second, Stand the Storm, is about newly freed slaves and again has a local setting:

“Breezy relief came with the turn of the season in the town. It was as if the breath that had been held all of the hot, stuffy summer was loosed. And the breath brought back all the wiry, lanky, rotund, and lop-legged politicians and profiteers to Washington and Georgetown.”

• Daniel Silva’s 11th thriller, Moscow Rules, is out this month. The globe-hopping novel again stars art restorer and Israeli spy Gabriel Allon. Silva, a onetime CNN producer married to NBC correspondent Jamie Gangel, has acquired a following of avid readers and often-admiring critics.

The author has said of Allon: “He’s not someone you’d actually like to spend a lot of time around. In fact, that’s one of the reasons he’s so interesting to write about.”

This article appears in the July 2008 issue of Washingtonian. To see more articles in this issue, click here.

As I hinted last week, the kitchen’s finally done! We had a couple false celebratory days, as there always seem to be. The counters were finally installed a week and a half ago, and the contractors were to come the next day to install the faucet and garbage disposal, and hook up the dishwasher. They realized after unpacking the disposal that a valve was missing. Luckily, they were happy to pick one up the next morning, a Saturday, and come by to finish the job.

Since I chose a pretty big sink for my kitchen (and I LOVE it), I could only fit the faucet in the corner, which isn’t uncommon. But when I went to use it that evening for the first time, I noticed that it was installed as if it were in the center—that is, it swiveled far over the counter and not far enough over the sink. I immediately began checking around and making mental notes for the guys, but that was the only mistake I could find. Not too shabby!

Just when you thought all the Independence Day sales had ended, Tradition de France celebrates its namesake’s own Bastille Day on July 14. Sort through the three floors of French antiques, some of which date back to the days of Louis XV, with prices reduced by 20 to 50 percent. The sale continues through July.

From July 12 through 26, the Brass Knob and its warehouse location, Back Doors Warehouse, will offer 10 to 30 percent off their entire stock of antique hardware—everything from early 1900s doorknobs to lamps circa 1920. This is one of two sales the shops offer each year.

Tuesday, July 8: Local author and Washingtonian contributor Cathy Alter will read from her smart, candid new memoir, Up for Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me About Love, Sex, and Starting Over, at the Georgetown Barnes & Noble at 7:30 PM. You’ll see us there in the front row: We loved following Alter’s hilarious, heartwarming journey so much that we frequently laughed out loud while reading the book. Read our recent interview with Alter here.

Thursday, July 10: Just in time to fight a midsummer chlorine-damaged-hair meltdown: To celebrate the arrival of stylist Maurice Clark to its salon family, downtown DC’s one80 Salon is offering free scalp consultations and Phyto deep-conditioning treatments with all appointments for the day. Call 202-363-1870 for an appointment.

It’s 11 AM on a Friday morning and I’m sitting in my favorite Old Town Fairfax bar, the Auld Shebeen (3971 Chain Bridge Rd., Fairfax; 703-293-9600). I’m preparing for my interview with bartender Aaron Irwin, 32, who asks if I want something to drink. Still in my late-night bar mindset, I think, “He can’t be serious,” and politely decline. A couple of minutes later, he pulls up a chair with a soda in his hand and a smile on his face, and I start to realize just how quickly this family-friendly restaurant and bar transforms itself into the alcohol-infused, music-pumping Thursday-night dance spot I know and love.

Having bartended for ten years, nearly three of them at the Auld Shebeen, Aaron knows all aspects of this Fairfax favorite—from the Irish-music performances to Thursday night’s college crowd to the restaurant regulars. Here he tells us about the bar and what it’s like to be a part of the staff as well as his plans to take his love for music and restaurant management to the next level.