The best in Washington, DC things to do, entertainment, nightlife, culture, arts, fashion and more.

Where & When: What to Do This Weekend

By Catherine Andrews

Didn't you get the memo? The Office Space movie festival is back. Plus, the Chocolate Lovers Festival, World Yoga Day and Super Bowl are all happening this weekend. Check out our picks and, please, try to remember the cover sheets!

Looking for Super Bowl good times on Sunday? Check out our extensive list of bar parties and specials. If you’re more of a foodie, we’ve got a roundup of restaurants and bars offering Super Bowl specials as well.

Thursday, January 31: It’s time for the Bi-Annual TPS Report Managers Meeting—or as it’s better known, the Arlington Cinema ’n’ Drafthouse’s Office Space movie festival. An $8 entrance fee gets you a DJ, a movie trivia contest, and, natch, a viewing of the cult-classic film. If you come dressed as a character from the movie, you even get a two-for-one screening pass. 2903 Columbia Pike; 7 PM.

The Modernist Society continues its monthly series of hip, intellectual discussions (including free booze) tonight at Bourbon (2321 18th St., NW) with Anthony Lappé, a journalist and award-winning television producer who’s written a new graphic novel called Shooting War. Free; 8 PM.

Friday, February 1: Didn’t catch punk icon Patti Smith when she played at the 9:30 Club recently? See her in a much more intimate setting tonight at 7:30 in “An Evening of Spoken Word and Song with Patti Smith” at the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture (Eighth and F Sts., NW). She’ll be performing songs and reading poems inspired by the papers of artists from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art. General admission $50, Archives members $40. Purchase tickets here.

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Checking Out: Le Bar at the Sofitel Lafayette Square

By Jasmine Touton

Welcome to Checking Out, a new feature where we explore some of the area’s most interesting and swankiest hotel bars. This week we hit the sleek, Frenchified Le Bar at the Sofitel Lafayette Square.

A couple enjoys drinks at Le Bar.

A sleek canopy announcing the French lounge Le Bar invites the pre-dinner or pre-night-on-the-town crowd to veer toward its illuminated, tree-framed entrance. A further invitation: A doorman immediately swings open the double glass doors of the Sofitel Lafayette Square (806 15th St., NW; 202-730-8800), the hotel that houses the upscale, plush, and pricey bar.

The first sips of some unique, exciting-sounding cocktails aren’t as inviting—at least when it comes to the bar’s signature L’enfant (Grey Goose vodka, Chambord, Grand Marnier, and lemonade) and the Lychee-opolitan (vanilla vodka, lime, and lychee juice). The L’enfant—French for “child”—doesn’t have the smile-widening taste one might expect from its namesake or its lemonade-infused promise. The Lychee-opolitan, topped off with the bobbing, white Asian fruit it’s named for, offers less of a perfume-sweet lychee flavor and more of a strong, syrupy taste.

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Biker Chic on K Street: A Look at the New Tattoo Bar

By Peter Bryce

Steps away from bustling Lima and DC Coast, the intrepid newcomer lounge Tattoo Bar is gradually carving out its own niche. With a sweeping leather booth stretching the length of the dimly lit bar, chainlink walls, and posters of body art draped everywhere, the place radiates biker chic—whatever that may mean. And it’s as a worthy addition to the burgeoning scene of upscale lounges revitalizing nightlife on formerly stodgy K Street.

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AFI Silver Celebrates the Coen Brothers With a Festival of Their Films

By Alejandro Salinas

In anticipation of Oscar night, the AFI looks back at the career highs (and lows) of the directing duo.

With those bangs, who needs a cattle stun gun to scare people?

Joel and Ethan Coen’s win for No Country for Old Men at the Directors Guild of America Awards on Saturday has all but put the little bald statuette in the bag for the brothers. With critical buzz and a healthy box-office performance, the film is this year’s Oscar frontrunner.

But before they were picking up award after award for giving Javier Bardem the ugliest hairdo in cinema history, the Coens showed us that a whole lot could happen in the middle of nowhere (if “nowhere” happened to be close to Fargo, North Dakota) and gave a then-neophyte Tara Reid the most memorable—and unprintable—line of her career in The Big Lebowski.

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Understanding Your Life Through Music: A Mahler Scholar Brings His Passion to DC

By Peter Bryce

Baritone Thomas Hampson discusses performing Gustav Mahler's works.

The music of Gustav Mahler can be a total reawakening at best, a dark and unapproachable frustration at worst.

Known for dense orchestration and powerful themes, the Austrian composer’s symphonies and songs are remarkable for their capacity to simultaneously delight and confound audiences, to obfuscate and enlighten, to present a challenge to listeners unique among the canon. “I don’t think one can deny that it is a very intense evening,” says Thomas Hampson, who, accompanied by the National Symphony Orchestra, brings his rich baritone to Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder at the Kennedy Center this week.

The Kindertotenlieder—literally, Songs on the Death of Children—are a set of five pieces set to the poetry of Friedrich Rückert. Mahler handpicked them from the original cycle of 425 poems that Rückert wrote in the year after two of his children died. The subject matter is grim, but Hampson hears something more in the music: “It’s not just an emotional foray into the death of children. It is more a process of coming from the darkness of grief to the lightness of, if not acceptance, at least realization.”

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Belly Up: Kim Moffatt of the Reef

By Alejandro Salinas

Belly Up interviews our favorite bartenders around town. This week, it's the charming Kim Moffatt of the Reef. Got a bartender you think we should interview? Email candrews at washingtonian.com.

Want to see more photos from Washington events and parties? Click here for Washingtonian.com's photo slideshow page. 

In photographs, Kim Moffatt appears to be barely at the cusp of adulthood. Her eyes sparkle with a gleeful mischief more characteristic of a collegiate undergrad than of a seasoned bartender. Her voice is so warm and sweet, it calls to mind a batch of freshly baked chocolate-chip cookies. Not that 28-year-old Moffat, who does double duty as bartender and pastry chef at the Reef (2446 18th St., NW; 202-518-3800), would like the comparison. “I don’t like making cookies,” she confesses. “I love eating them and they’re easy to make, but I hate baking them.” What’s her problem with cookies? “Christmas comes around and you know you have to bake 50 dozen cookies because you’re ‘the baker.’ ” Fair enough.

At the Adams Morgan bar where she serves drinks to rowdy weekend crowds of twentysomethings, patrons and coworkers call Moffatt “Kim Kimmers,” and she’s got her very own Facebook fan group. The group, Moffatt clarifies, is something of a joke among her close friends, but with her infectious personality and killer looks, it’s no wonder this Atlanta native has won a steady stream of followers.

How long have you been working at the Reef?

Four and a half years—so a long time. I waited tables and worked my way up to bartending. It took three years to get behind the bar because pretty much someone has to die or quit in order for you to get to bartend. I like it; it’s good. I’m not planning on going anywhere else.

When did you start working as the pastry chef?

That’s just been recent. The girl who was the pastry chef here quit, and the chef asked me if I wanted to do it. I’ve been baking forever and I go to culinary school, so it was just a good way to keep in practice. Eventually I want to own my own bakery and then a patisserie where you come in, have good wine and beer, and eat fabulous desserts.

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Let the Good Times Roll: Where to Celebrate Mardi Gras in Washington

By Elizabeth Farrell

New Orleans’s first Mardi Gras parade of 2008 was in early January, and the big day of Fat Tuesday (February 5) is fast approaching. Can’t make it to the Big Easy this year? Check out how Washington celebrates Carnival. (The official colors of the season are purple, green, and gold, and it’s always appropriate to come masked.)

Mardi Gras Celebration
K Street Lounge

Saturday, February 2, 8 PM
Hosted by Professionals in the City, this Carnival blowout promises specials on beer and wine, special vodka drinks, music and dancing, and lots of beads. Also, you can enter to win a trip to Iceland. Professionals in the City members can buy tickets for $10 before January 25; membership is free.
1301 K St., NW; 202-962-3933
prosinthecity.com
kstreetdc.com

Ceiba
February 1 through 5, Ceiba is celebrating the season with samba bands, beads, and masks. The Latin American restaurant will also offer a signature Carnival drink, the Ceiba Samba (pineapple-infused Cachaça and a scoop of passion-fruit sorbet with a sugared rim).
701 14th St., NW; 202-393-3983
ceibarestaurant.com

Clarendon Mardi Gras Parade
February 5, 8 PM
Organizers plan to throw 5,000 pounds of beads at this year’s parade in Arlington’s Clarendon neighborhood. It starts at Veitch Street near the Court House Metro stop and ends near the Clarendon stop. The grand marshal is Doug Hill, Channel 7’s chief meteorologist.
703-812-8881
clarendon.org/mardi.html

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