Brentwood’s miXt Food Hall will hold a wellness festival with free yoga, stretching and massage on Saturday, Jan. 20.

Located at 3809 Rhode Island Ave., the food hall will hold the Raise Your Health Festival from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The event will include free self-care services such as yoga, massage, stretch therapy and DIY wellness workshops as well as a pop-up market featuring businesses centered around health.

Attendees can try also Relish Market infused mocktails at the miXt Bar and enjoy featured healthier options from the vendor’s regular menus.

The Relish Your Health Festival is sponsored by Relish Market, which is located at miXt Food Hall and sells fresh, organic pantry and wellness items like teas, condiments, mushrooms and sea moss products, among other things.

Pop-up vendors and partners on hand will include DeColonaise (organic vegan hair & body products), Soultry (jewelry, skincare and apparel), Lumos Collective (reiki infused candles and body products), Plant Based Pirate (cacao products), The Rounds (a zero-waste grocery delivery service) and Riverdale Park’s Bikram Yoga Works, which will be handing out free class vouchers.

Free activities during the festival include make-your-own-tea-blend with Relish Market, chair massage by Zack & Mia and individual stretch therapy sessions by Riverdale Park’s The Stretch Loft and some scheduled workshops:

11:10-11:30 a.m. Yoga Demo with Bikram Yoga Works
Noon-12:30 p.m. Make Your Own Shea Butter with Soultry
12:45-1:20 p.m. Traditional Cacao Ceremony with Plant Based Pirate

You can sign up for the workshops at the festival. They will be on a first-come, first-served basis, with 10 to 15 slots per workshop. The schedule is subject to change.

You can get more information or register for the festival here.

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The city of Hyattsville has installed several solar-powered messaging boards in local parks.

Designed by Cambridge, Mass.-based Soofa the signs use the same electronic ink screen technology that is used in a Kindle e-reader, which makes them dramatically more efficient than traditional screens.

The kiosks were installed recently at Driskell Park, Heurich Park and on the Rhode Island Avenue Trolley Trail near The Spot pop-up park.

The kiosks automatically show messages from the city’s Facebook page and online calendar along with other city news and updates.

The back of the kiosk has a wayfinding map and links to important city contacts.

In other cities, Soofa kiosks have been used to provide real-time mass transit information, updates on air quality and weather forecasts.

A few years ago, the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission installed free solar-powered charging stations designed by Soofa at Lake Artemesia.

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Popular Riverdale Park-based restaurant 2Fifty BBQ will open a much-anticipated new location in D.C.’s Mount Vernon Triangle on Saturday, Jan. 13.

Located at 414 K St. NW, near Founding Farmers, the new location will serve a meat-market style of barbecue in which customers can specify the exact weight of the serving they want, a popular way of serving barbecue in Texas.

“This will allow our customers to have more control over their budget whenever they visit us, allowing them to order any quantity they want instead of a fixed pound/half pound,” co-owner Fernando and Debby Gonzalez told the Hyattsville Wire.

The new space will allow 2Fifty to branch out. The restaurant has doubled the capacity of its Riverdale Park smokehouse, which will handle all proteins for both locations while the Mount Vernon location cooks all sides, sauces and bread.

The kitchen space at the Mount Vernon location will also allow 2Fifty to permanently add pulled lamb and whole hog to its menu, which had previously been rotating specials.

The restaurant, which has been named one of the most-anticipated openings in D.C. by Axios and Eater D.C., will be open from 11 a.m. until it runs out of meat, Wednesdays through Mondays.

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A Riverdale Park locksmith has gone mobile-only and shut his brick-and-mortar store after 64 years, due to lingering effects of the pandemic.

Ernie’s Lock Co. was started in 1960 by Ernie and Elsa Boswell and changed hands several times before current owner Eric Paretino took over.

Throughout that time, it maintained a storefront at 4500 Queensbury Rd., a block from the historic Riverdale Park town center.

Walk-in customers, including contractors, large commercial accounts and landlords, would buy new locks and have keys duplicated by hand.

But Paretino told the Hyattsville Wire that walk-in business dropped dramatically during the coronavirus pandemic and has never recovered.

“2019 was one of the best I’ve had in years, so no one saw that coming,” he said.

He said that the pandemic caused many landlords to shift to buying cheap new doorknobs on Amazon and then throwing them away rather than hiring a locksmith to re-key the doors once or twice a year.

Paretino shut the storefront just before new year’s and now runs the business out of a van kitted out with his equipment and his home workspace in Bowie.

He’s still offering the same services at the same website, email and phone number, but he’ll have to come to customers. He recommended that landlords and others who regularly have locksmith needs set up an account.

Paretino is in the process of selling the building where the locksmith was located, but it’s unclear yet what the new owners will do with the space.

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Hyattsville native Kendra McIntyre is featured as a dancer in the new film remake of “The Color Purple.”

A 2010 graduate of Northwestern High, McIntyre used to hold classes and workshops at Joe’s Movement Emporium in Mount Rainier as a dance educator, performed at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in College Park and worked with Prince George’s County students before moving to Los Angeles

McIntyre, who studied dance at Temple University, also worked as a middle school dance teacher in Montgomery County prior to heading out West.

While supporting herself by offering private dance lessons and classes for adults and children, McIntyre — who goes by Kendra Marie professionally — has had roles in the film version of the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical “In the Heights,” the Netflix musical “The Prom” and a commercial for Remy Martin.

In an interview, McIntyre said she and others were not told what the audition was for when they were invited to try out, and she was excited to learn it was for “The Color Purple” remake.

“The original film is such a staple in the Black community and also in my life,” she said, noting that she and her sister often imitated the iconic handshake in the movie.

Courtesy of Kendra McIntyre

She was cast as part of the “skeleton crew,” a group of dancers and choreographers that workshop how the dances will go and appears in the movie as well.

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The town of Riverdale Park has drawn up plans to repurpose an Army Reserve building located near Whole Foods.

Built in 1950, the 30,000-square-foot building at 6601 Baltimore Ave. next to the Station at Riverdale Park is no longer needed by the U.S. Army.

The town has put together a proposal to turn the building into municipal offices and a community center for things like continuing education, ESL classes and meeting spaces for local groups.

The plan would also remove parking lots on more than a third of the six-acre site and plant trees, grass and flowers to create a stormwater retention area. A paved biking and hiking path would wind through the area, as shown in the illustration below.

Under the plan, the federal government would give the land and building — worth an estimated $7 million — to the town for free, although it would have to spend money to develop the site.

In a recent letter to residents, Mayor Alan Thompson said the plan envisions taking a piece of land that is contributing to flooding problems in the area and turning it into a solution.

The town council will get an update on the status of the project next week.

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Shoppers along the Route 1 corridor will no longer get disposable plastic bags at most stores, as a new county ordinance went into effect this week.

As of Jan. 1, Prince George’s County has banned retailers from offering single-use plastic bags and is promoting paper and reusable bags instead.

The change is designed in part to reduce litter which typically ends up in storm drains and, eventually, the Anacostia River. While plastic bags used to be the most common trash found in the river, a recent study found that they have dropped dramatically due to recent changes in the law.

“Plastic bags do not biodegrade and contaminate our local waterways, causing harm to marine life, clogging our storm drains, and littering our streets and communities,” county environmental director Andrea Crooms said in a recent press release.

There are some exceptions. The ban does not apply to bulk produce, bakeries, fish and meat, flowers or dry cleaning.

The ordinance also requires retailers to charge at least 10 cents for every paper or reusable bag they provide, although exceptions are provided for prescription drugs, take-out meals and drive-thru fast food.

Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties have similar bans that went into effect this week.

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