Before becoming a rock star, Jim Morrison attended high school in Alexandria, Va., and occasionally came to Route 1.

Greenbelt author Mark Opsasnick dived deep into the local haunts of the future Doors’ frontman for his latest book, “Orange Brick in Warm Sun.”

Opsasnick told the Hyattsville Wire that he did not include the Route 1 connections in the book because they lacked the “extensive corroboration” he wanted.

But he found evidence that Morrison visited the Stanton Art Theatre on at least two occasions. Located just off Route 1 at 3100 18th St. NE on the border of the Woodridge and Brookland neighborhoods of D.C. just off Route 1, the Stanton was” one of only a handful of theatres in D.C. at the time that showed art, offbeat and foreign films,” Opsasnick told the Wire.

Morrison tended to go to arthouse theaters that were easier to get to from his home in Alexandria since he would have to ride with friends in a car to get to the Stanton.

But he said that Morrison was a big fan of Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein and watched his film, “Battleship Potemkin,” which was shown at the Stanton in November 1959 and in April 1960.

“It is also believed that he was back at the Stanton in January 1961 to see the movie ‘Pull My Daisy,’ the Beat Generation film narrated by his literary hero, Jack Kerouac,” Opsasnick said. “This may have been the only D.C. showing of the film from 1959-1961, and friends recall Morrison having seen the movie while living in the D.C. area.”

The Stanton closed in 1990, and the building is now home to the Grace Covenant Church.

Opsasnick will be reading from “Orange Brick in Warm Sun” at Maryland Meadworks on Sunday, Feb. 18. Doors open at 11 a.m., with a talk at 1 p.m., followed by live music from Hyattsville-based Doors cover band, Love Her Meadly.

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Hyattsville Latin American eatery Cocineros recently added a mixed-drink menu inspired by its owner’s travels to Latin America and the Caribbean, including Cuba and Puerto Rico.

Located at 3513 East-West Hwy., across from the Mall at Prince George’s, Cocineros now includes a sit-down bar with various alcoholic and non-alcoholic drink options alongside its wide-ranging menu of items from Mexico, Central America, and Chile.

The drink menu includes margaritas, mojitos, micheladas, and sangria, as well as beer and wine. Co-owner Carlos Alvarado told the Hyattsville Wire that the most popular drinks on Friday, the first day he started offering mixed drinks, were the hibiscus margarita and the piña colada.

Non-alcoholic versions of the piña colada and daiquiri are also available, along with soft drinks, Jarritos, iced tea and coffee.

Alvarado told the Wire he is also looking to partner with other Route 1 businesses, including area breweries.

He also runs Taqueria Habanero, which had to close its location in College Park when the shopping center was sold.

Along with his family, Alvarado, who previously worked for noted D.C. chef José Andrés, also runs Uno Más in Petworth, Comedor San Alejo in Hyattsville and Tequila & Mezcal in Columbia Heights.

For now, that location is now running out of a food truck in front of its old location in the Campus Village Shoppes at 8145 Baltimore Ave.

Alvarado told the Wire that when construction starts, he plans to keep the food truck somewhere else on the Route 1 corridor until the restaurant can reopen in a new brick-and-mortar location.

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Spice Kitchen West African Grill has gone from a ghost kitchen to a kiosk in a food hall to now its own restaurant.

After a successful run as a tenant at the miXt Food Hall in Brentwood, the popular West African eatery has moved into its own space at 3124 Queens Chapel Rd., in the same shopping center as the new Lidl, which opened its doors on Valentine’s Day.

Owner Olumide Shokubi started Spice Kitchen in 2020 as a ghost kitchen at Mess Hall, a restaurant incubator near the Brookland neighborhood of D.C. The next year, it moved into miXt.

Its menu includes items like fried wings, grilled shrimp and chicken; side dishes such as jollof rice, fried plantains and spinach Efo-Riro, a popular Nigerian vegetable stew; and desserts like puff puffs, which are sweet fried dough balls.

Shokubi, a first-generation Nigerian-American who was born and raised in Prince George’s County where he currently lives, puts a special focus on on suya, a spicy meat skewer that is a popular street food in West Africa.

In 2022, it made Washingtonian‘s list of 10 great new cheap eats in the greater D.C. area, while The Washington Post said his aim was to “Chipotle-fy” Nigerian cuisine by making it accessible to everyone.

Spice Kitchen is open from noon to 9 p.m., Tuesdays through Sundays.

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The Greenbelt Cinema will host a screening and discussion of a documentary about school desegregation in Prince George’s County.

In honor of Black History Month, the movie theater formerly known as Old Greenbelt Theatre will show “The Tower Road Bus” on Thursday, February 29.

The documentary focuses on the school busing efforts that brought 20 Black students from Brandywine to integrate Crestview Elementary miles away in Clinton in the 1970s.

The court-ordered integrations led to violent anti-busing protests in the county and around the country. At Crestview, the effort was overseen by Dotson Burns, Jr., the first Black principal of the majority-White school.

“They definitely didn’t want us there, and we didn’t really want to be there,” one of the 20 students, Karmalita Contee, said in an interview last year.

The 2021 documentary, which won awards at several regional film festivals, was written and directed by Michael Streissguth, who was in the third grade at Crestview when the busing began.

Sponsored by Melanie Cantwell of Long & Foster Real Estate with support from the Greenbelt Elementary PTA, the screening will start at 7 p.m. on Feb. 29, followed by a discussion featuring a panel of guests who had experience with busing in Prince George’s County.

You can see a trailer for the documentary here.

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Pinball enthusiasts have a new hotspot on the Route 1 corridor.

miXt Food Hall in Brentwood, located at 3809 Rhode Island Ave., recently added three new Stern pinball machines to its collection. The machines are themed after “Jaws,” “Guardians of the Galaxy,” and the band Rush.

Although it is based on the 1975 film, the “Jaws” pinball machine is a highly sought-after new release among pinball enthusiasts.

While the selection is much smaller than the dozens of pinball machines that were until recently in a backroom arcade at Mom’s Organic Market in College Park, the new miXt machines are playable using a cashless payment system.

The nearest pinball arcade to the Route 1 corridor is at Players Club on 14th Street in D.C.

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Primark is coming to the Mall at Prince George’s.

The Ireland-based affordable fashion store will move into a 30,000-square-foot space in the Hyattsville shopping center by early 2025.

The space had previously been occupied by a J.C. Penney department store, which announced it would close in 2020 amid a nationwide restructuring as part of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust, which has owned the Hyattsville mall since 1998, at one point contemplated tearing down the J.C. Penney building and building a 360-unit apartment building with first-floor retail on the site.

Joseph F. Coradino, the CEO of PREIT, said recently that a Primark would be “a powerful magnet for driving traffic and attracting consumers” to the mall.

The move comes as Primark is expanding from two dozen locations in the U.S. to at least 60, including Potomac Mills in Woodbridge and Tysons Corner Center in Virginia.

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A new Lidl grocery store will open near Hyattsville on Valentine’s Day.

The latest outpost of the popular German chain will hold a grand opening on Wednesday, Feb. 14, at the former Price Rite location at 3104 Queens Chapel Rd., in the Avondale community of Chillum in unincorporated Prince George’s County, close to Hyattsville and Mount Rainier.

The first 100 customers in line will get gift cards ranging from $5 to $100, with special deals offered on the first day.

Located down the road from the West Hyattsville location of Aldi, a major Lidl competitor, the new 33,000-square-foot store takes up about half of the strip mall.

Other locations around D.C. include Columbia Heights, Takoma Park, and Wheaton.

The Price Rite location was previously a Giant supermarket, famous as the location of a visit from the late Queen Elizabeth II during a 1957 trip to the United States.

The store will be open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.

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