Longtime Riverdale Park hangout Dumm’s Pizza and Subs will close on Friday, March 31.

Fernando and Debby Gonzalez, who took over the pizza place in 2019 earning praise for refreshing the menu, told the Hyattsville Wire they are closing the pizzeria so they can expand 2Fifty Texas BBQ next door, which has been running short on space given its significant growth in popularity since opening in 2020.

“The dining area was filled up pretty quickly resulting in us not being able to accommodate customers who have traveled an hour-plus to visit 2fifty or turn them down or only offer takeout, specially if there is bad weather due to outdoor seating not being available,” said Debby Gonzalez.

She said the expansion will allow 2Fifty to update its dining room to modern building codes and make it safer, improve wheelchair accessibility and emergency exits and allow for better access for bikes and parking.

The barbecue joint will also be able to expand its range of side dishes using the kitchen at Dumm’s, including some of the menu items from the pizzeria, with 2Fifty’s own spin. Expanding to next door will also allow them to be open six days a week (closing only on Tuesdays).

It will take less than a month for 2Fifty to expand into the new space and they aren’t planning anything “too invasive” so they plan to keep the 1930s-era building they are occupying looking the same as it always has.

Debby Gonzalez told the Wire that 2Fifty will remain locally and independently owned and that they will expand their services for the community, such as fundraising efforts to benefit local schools and continue working with the Central Kenilworth Avenue Revitalization Community Development (CKAR CDC) to fight food insecurity.

A few framed articles about Dumm’s will remain on display after Friday’s closing while special merchandise will be given out for free to patrons visiting the pizzeria through the end of the week or until they run out.

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Popular Uyghur restaurant Marco & Polo is returning to the Route 1 corridor.

Owner Gairatjan Rozi has landed a contract with the Wyndham hotel at 4095 Powder Mill Rd. in Beltsville to reopen the restaurant, which closed its Hyattsville location during the pandemic, now named Marco & Polo Uyghur Kebab and Noodles.

“With its new name, Marco & Polo is back not only with its authentic meals, but with additional new recipes on the menu,” Rozi wrote in an email to customers.

With influences from Central Asia, China and the Middle East — and, famously, influences on Italian cuisine — Uyghur cooking features dishes such as laghman noodles with beef, the dish that Marco Polo brought back to Italy and rebranded as spaghetti.

Another favorite is Big Plate Chicken, a chicken and potato stew served with flat noodles that became trendy in urban China.

Uyghurs (pronounced WEE-grr) are an ethic minority group from western China and Central Asia. Over the last few years, Uyghur immigrants have opened up several restaurants in the D.C. metro area specializing in the cuisine.

The restaurant will open at 6 p.m. on Saturday, April 1. You can text 301-549-0786 for a reservation for the opening night kickoff.

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A Prince George’s County native was the first — and only, to date — police officer to arrest a president, a long-forgotten historical moment that has lately become relevant.

Born into slavery in September of 1842, William Henry West fought in the Civil War before becoming one of two Black police officers in the D.C. police department during the Reconstruction era.

About a year after he was hired in 1871, Private West was on patrol at 13th and M Street NW, near Thomas Circle, watching for people driving at excessive speeds, as a mother and child had recently been injured.

He spotted a horse-drawn carriage going too fast and ordered the driver to stop, only to realize that he had pulled over President Ulysses S. Grant, the former general who led the North to victory.

“Gen. Grant was an ardent admirer of a good horse and loved nothing better than to sit behind a pair of spirited animals,” reported the Washington Evening Star in a 1908 story on the arrest. “He was a good driver, and sometimes ‘let them out’ to try their mettle.”

He gave Grant a warning, but the very next day he spotted him speeding again and chased him for a block to stop him.

“I am very sorry, Mr. President, to have to do it, for you are the chief of the nation and I am nothing but a policeman, but duty is duty, sir, and I will have to place you under arrest,” he supposedly told Grant.

Grant, who reportedly admitted that he had been speeding, was taken to the D.C. police station and released on a $20 bond, the equivalent of more than $400 in today’s dollars, which he forfeited when he didn’t show up the next day for a trial. He was cited at least two other times for speeding while president.

West retired in 1901. He died in 1915 and was buried at Columbian Harmony, a prominent Black cemetery at the current site of the Rhode Island Avenue Metro station that was later tragically destroyed.

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Mount Rainier will be featured in an upcoming episode of WETA’s “If You Lived Here.”

The locally produced public TV show features hosts Christine Louise and John Begeny touring homes for sale in a particular city or neighborhood in the greater D.C. area, along the lines of an HGTV home-buying show.

The half-hour long episode on Mount Rainier is slated to air on Monday, March 20, at 9 p.m., with repeats on Tuesday. It will then be available to stream online or on the PBS app.

The episode will feature a number of local residents and locations, including Realtor Silvana Dias, former mayors Bryan Kneeler and Malinda Miles, current mayor Celina Benitez, Brooke Kidd of Joe’s Movement Emporium, Michelle Darden-Lee of Gateway Media Arts Lab, Michael Janis of Washington Glass School and Margaret Boozer of Red Dirt Studio.

The show, now in its third season, featured Hyattsville in a first-season episode that you can watch online.

Other episodes this season have focused on Adams Morgan, Logan Circle, Bethesda, Navy Yard and Mount Vernon, among other neighborhoods.

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The Purple Line won’t go into service until at least mid-2027.

The long-awaited light rail line faces another construction-related delay, this time due to unexpected complications moving utility lines.

The additional seven months come on top of other delays that put the project four and a half years behind schedule. The 16-mile transit line was originally supposed to open last year.

The project’s backers had hoped that a new contractor, the end of the pandemic and the resolution of lawsuits from Chevy Chase residents would mean a fresh start.

State officials told the Washington Post, which first obtained the report that included the new delay, that they are looking for other ways to speed up construction.

“Building a complex transportation project through a 16-mile corridor of vibrant and active communities is never going to be an easy task,” spokesman David Abrams said.

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Academy Award-winning actress Jamie Lee Curtis received congratulations from everyone, everywhere on Sunday, but one message stood out: From a former star quarterback at DeMatha High School in Hyattsville and University of Maryland alum.

The friendship between Curtis and Tim Strachan began in 1993, after his spinal cord was injured while swimming at Bethany Beach.

At the time, Curtis was filming “True Lies” with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the District, where Strachan’s brother, beau, was working as a grip.

After the Washington Post ran a lengthy story about Strachan’s injury and his rehabilitation, Curtis walked up to Beau and said she wanted to visit him. She ended up visiting Strachan several times and even exchanging phone numbers and emails.

“One day back then a friend of mine came by the hospital room to see me and was most surprised to see Jamie Lee there,” Strachan recalled recently. “Jamie Lee decided that I needed a VCR in my room and had brought it in and was mounting it herself. She was just such a normal person.”

Curtis and Strachan have continued to correspond over the years and he visited with her in person at a book-signing in Bethesda in 2018. After Curtis won the Oscar Sunday, he texted her congratulations:

“I have never had the chance to congratulate an Oscar winner directly, so here it is. Well deserved!”

On Tuesday, Curtis responded, using Strachan’s old football nickname in a Facebook post:

“I love you T! You are the exemplar of life on life’s terms, and you sit up and show up with LOVE and SUPPORT and DEDICATION to FAMILY.”

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The cleanup of the Anacostia River watershed has led to a rebound in local wildlife, including river otters spotted at Heurich Park in Hyattsville.

The Anacostia Watershed Society has been using automatic wildlife cameras to track the return of beavers and river otters along with the usual deer, raccoons and foxes.

River otters are a good indicator of the success of the years-long effort to restore the river, which includes everything from holding Earth Day cleanups to reducing runoff from the roofs of local schools to helping mussels grow in marshy areas.

“Otters tend to eat mostly fish and crayfish, and if the river is too polluted, then they just cannot survive,” the nonprofit’s Jorge Bogantes recently said. “So the fact that we’ve been seeing more recently, especially in the tidal river, is a great sign.”

River otters tend to be active at night and during sunset and sunrise, so you may not see them personally, but you can see evidence of them around, including flattened spots where they hang out, slides into the river and webbed paw prints.

Dogs are also attracted to areas where otters have left their scent and love to roll in it.

River otters have also been spotted by Anacostia Watershed Society cameras at Dueling Creek in Colmar Manor.

You can see images from the nonprofit’s wildlife cameras here.

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