Tysons Fall Harvest

Today I'm introducing a new category to my blog: "I Will If I Can," a Thursday post about a fun event or activity I hope to get to on the weekend if my busy life allows it. Maybe you'll have better luck than me!!

This Saturday and Sunday, in a continued effort to make the Tysons Corner area livable as well as workable, the Tysons Fall Harvest Festival will offer kid-fun activities like a hay maze, a petting zoo and pumpkin carving, and an adult-fun wine and beer garden offering 75 beers and wines. Horton Vineyards, Arterra Wines and Willowcroft Farm Vineyards will be there, as well as Mad Fox Brewing and Woodchuck Hard Cider.

If you haven't tried out the Silver Line yet, this will be the perfect opportunity to do so. The Tysons Corner stop lets out right at the event space between the Tysons Corner Mall and the Galleria.

Image from Tysons Fall Harvest website

Heading to any fun events this weekend in the D.C.-metro area? Any events you'd like to promote or support? I'd love to hear about them on my Facebook page. Let's create a list of fun weekend "to-dos" for folks!

1st Stage Offers Quality Theater in Tysons Corner

Photo courtesy 1st Stage Theatre website

One thing I love about the 1st Stage Theatre in Tysons Corner is that it is so hard to find. As one of those obnoxious “I-like-something-until-it-becomes-popular” people, I love the secret-password quality of getting to it: You park in a warehouse strip mall off Spring Hill Road, then walk past a doggy day care and a Jazzercise gym to get to the theater door, all the while glancing at other people walking toward the door and thinking, "I hope THEY know where they're going."

But now that the Silver Line has opened, the sparkling new Spring Hill Metro stop is just a half block from the theater. With 1st Stage's engaging and innovative black box performances and its central location just east of Leesburg Pike and just west of Tysons Galleria, I have no doubt that I will no longer be able to keep this gem of a theater to my snobby self.

We discovered the theater last year after reading a Washington Post review about the play Never the Sinner, a dramatization of the infamous Leopold and Loeb killing, when two high-society teens in the 1920s killed a young boy. Six actors took part in this play in the middle of the small black space facing several rows of chairs on risers. And yet, with simple prop switch-outs, old-fashioned sound-effect equipment and striking performances from the lead actors, this small play became bigger than the box, became real and engaging and haunting. I am not a true-crime fan, but I was so fascinated by the performance that I now have a non-fiction book about Leopold and Loeb on my bedside table.

Never the Sinner performed at 1st Stage Theatre. Photo via Washington Post by Teresa Castracane/1st Stage

The website says 1st Stage was established to give young and emerging talent a place to build their resume and gain experience. “We want to be that ‘first stage’ in their careers: a place to struggle with the art, learn from their discoveries and their mistakes, and find pride in what they produce.” They have so many ideals I support that I’ll just quote their website again: “In return, our community gets the chance to experience great theatre. As Tysons Corner grows into a city, it’s going to need more than office buildings and shopping malls to build that ‘pride of place’ that marks strong, vibrant communities.”

Their current production, Take Me Out, is a 2003 Tony Award winner about an All-Star baseball player who reveals that he’s gay. The Washingtonian called the performance “dramatically tense, uneasily sympathetic, and hysterically funny,” and says lead actor Jaysen Wright “does a fine job of making the protagonist remote and unknowable—yet compelling—until his resolve finally begins to crack when circumstances push him to the edge.”

Photo courtesy 1st Stage Theatre website

I may not get a chance to check it out before the play closes on Oct. 12. But I'm looking forward to attending a couple of other performances this season, even if that means I'll have to beat back the throng to get in the door.

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1st Stage Theatre

1524 Spring Hill Road, Tysons, VA 22102

In-Between Tip: 1st Stage will host its annual benefit Saturday, Oct. 18 at 7 p.m. Come support a great local theater and enjoy a fun night out. 

Cursing Ben's Chili Bowl in Virginia

Oh…damn you Ben’s Chili Bowl. You’re evil is what you are. My taste buds were thrilled and my waistline was terrified when I discovered that there would be a branch of the famous D.C. diner opening in Arlington, on my side of the Potomac. How would I resist the thick, spicy half-smokes smothered in Ben's chili when I no longer had close-to-impossible parking or a two-train Metro ride separating me from them?

When I visited the restaurant at 1725 Wilson Boulevard in Clarendon a few weeks ago, it was even worse than I feared:

• The store is bright and clean and welcoming, a spruced up version of its U Street forefather.
• They take credit cards. No more squinting at the ancient ATM machine at the original, cash-only Ben's OR forgoing the chili cheese fries because I don't have enough cash. 
• The Arlington branch has lots of indoor and outdoor seating and you can sit wherever you'd like, unlike the bizarre hierarchy of seating that will get you charmingly yelled at if you sit at the wrong place at the original spot.
• No one yells at you in Arlington.
• The parking lot of the Colonial Village Shopping Center with its many popular restaurants can get a little crowded during prime dining hours, but there is a lot of accessible on-street parking nearby.

Worst of all, I discovered that the one-of-a-kind half smokes and the spicy, condiment-like chili were just as delectable on this side of the river. The shakes were just as spoon-standing thick and the chili-cheese fries were just as deliciously gluttonous. What have you done to me, Ben's Chili Bowl? My waistline may never forgive you.

Ben's Chili Bowl in Arlington

Ben's Wall of Fame

All the Charm of the Original Ben's

The Famous Half-Smoke

Coney Dog and Chili-Cheese Fries

Welcome to Ben's

Real Women Box at Title Boxing Club

I joined the Title Boxing Club in late August to work off the summer cocktails; I’m so sick of the gym and I wanted to work my body in way that felt useful and functional.

But news of NFL players using their warrior strength to abuse the women and children around them has made me think about women feeling vulnerable and defenseless. Has made me think about how much stronger my thighs and upper body and core have gotten in the three weeks I’ve been going to the boxing gym. Has made me think that if, god forbid, I’m in a position where I have to defend myself, I might now have a better idea of what I’m doing.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think it’s a woman’s responsibility to prevent herself from being hit. It’s a man’s responsibility to not hit. But the jab, cross, hook, uppercuts that I’ve been giving the 100-pound bag at the Title Boxing Club might give me an advantage I hadn't had against an attacker I hope I'll never have to face.

Heidi Dallman, trainer at the Title Boxing Club in Falls Church, said that while the club isn’t inherently teaching self defense, the moves learned can give someone the confidence they need to discourage a would-be attacker. “You have muscle memory, and that memory might hold someone off.”

The newly opened Title Boxing Club in Falls Church is not what you imagine when you think of a “boxing gym.” It’s clean and gleaming and light-filled, without the gross 40-year-old couch and the guys yelling, “Adrian,” that Heidi remembers from her first boxing gym. The trainers are friendly and encouraging, pushing you to give a little bit more with enthusiasm and without the drill sargeant. The membership is a cross-section of fit Millenials, suburban moms and dads, and teens and tweens coming in with their parents. And while the hour-long boxing and kickboxing classes are intense, a person of average fitness ability (me!) can complete them and feel like a badass when she’s done.

“Ninety-eight percent of the people who join have no aspiration to get into the boxing ring,” Heidi said. What they want are those incredible boxer bodies, so Title Boxing Club emulates boxing workouts in order to give members those. “There are so many cardio kickboxing classes out there, but you have to be hitting that 100-pound bag to really see changes.”

Smashing elbow into bag = awesome bruise

A typical boxing or kickboxing class is broken up into three parts: a 15-minute warm up session that involves lots of high-energy cardio; a 30-minute session of working the bag, broken up into intervals with quick 30-second breaks; and 15-minutes of core work and cool down. Heidi recommends that people attend classes at least three times a week in order to see results.

She tells the story of a young woman who saw results in less time: The woman had recently joined that old, grubby gym Heidi used to go to. The woman had only been to the gym once or twice, couldn't fight a lick, when, crossing a dark parking lot, a guy ran at her with his skateboard raised over his head to hit her. The woman jumped into her fighting stance, raised her fists, and said, "Bring it on." The guy ran off.

That attack wasn't victimless; the woman cried as she told the story the next day. But when you hear the stat that three women are killed by their intimate partners every day in the United States, you understand how much worse it could have been. Whether it's a stranger or a partner, no real man hits. Real women have options. One of them is to fight back.

If you or someone you know is the victim of domestic abuse, please call The National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. 

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Title Boxing Club

Falls Church-area residents can check out the new gym at 450 N. Washington St. Falls Church; others can click here to find a gym near you.

In-Between Tip: On Saturday, Sept. 27, from 2:30-4 p.m. Title Boxing Club Falls Church will host Safety Blueprint, a women's personal safety workshop. Shawn Rafferty, with 20 years of experience in the public and private security sector, will teach women ways to avoid being a victim. Contact the Falls Church club at 703-992-6888 to reserve a spot. The workshop cost is $50 per person.

Chili Cookoff at Clarendon Day

Next Saturday, Sept. 27, Clarendon Day will descend on Arlington, Virginia with eight stuffed blocks of fun. A 10K, bands, beer, a Kids Zone, arts-and-crafts vendors and a ton of food will all be a part of making 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. fun.

But I would like to direct your attention to the new Lagunitas Chili Cookoff Stage where -- under the new 100-seat tent -- beer will flow from the Lagunitas beer garden, bands will rock, and our dear friend Thad Halcli will once again go toe-to-toe with other chili greats at the DC Chili Cookoff.

Last year was the first year the former DC Chili Cookoff -- once a rowdy, beer-soaked festival in the District -- was held at Clarendon Day. That beer-and-band free-for-all was what first got Thad hooked on the idea of cooking chili for competition. A digital marketer and filmmaker who always had a flair for cooking, Thad began entering area chili cookoffs in 2000 with a schtick: His young daughter and a friend would dress as cowgirls and do a little dance for the crowd. They called their booth, "Two-Step Chili."

Joe and Thad, Rage Against the Cuisine.

Now that young daughter is a college student. Thad and longtime friend Joe Duffus now produce red and green chills under the name "Rage Against the Cuisine."  

Do you have any idea how much work goes into producing chili for these competitions? I didn't. First of all, competitors are under a strict set of rules about what can and CANNOT go into a chili. "It's a very specific Texas-style chili," Thad said. "There can be no beans, no pasta. At some point, when the generations change, I hope the idea of chili will be a little bit broader than it is now."

Secondly, competitors have to provide all of their own equipment to cook at the competition and their setup has to be up to health code standards. That means providing stoves, burners, pans, coolers, water, ways to sanitize, ways to keep your meats and veggies separate, ways to serve it, tents, and trailers to haul the whole set up there and away. "It's like you're bringing your own mini-food truck," Thad said.

Lastly, all that chili served to the judges and all those little cups of chili that you, the eager taste-tester, can try -- that's all at the expense of the participants. Thad said competitions used to offer a small stipend to help cover participants' costs for the chili they would serve eventgoers. No longer. 

"It can be exhilarating if you win," Thad said. "But if you fail, you come back dragging dogeared."

Thad knows that exhilaration. Rage Against the Cuisine has placed second through fifth all around the region. Once, at a Maryland chili cook off, they tied for first. But a toss of a coin determined that the other team would move on to the World Championship competition.

He's hoping to have another shot at it this year. "I'm a relentless competitor, no matter what I'm doing," Thad said. "But these competitions, they're also a way to be outdoors on a nice day, hanging out with your buddy and drinking a beer."

He likes the DC Chili Cookoff's transition from a beer-laden spectacle -- public nudity and booths manned by strippers were a common sight -- to a more family-friendly event. He and his daughter always attended Clarendon Day, even before the cookoff moved there. 

"Clarendon Day is a classic street fair," he said. "There are a lot of family activities and stages for music. It is always on my list as a fun thing to do."

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Clarendon Day

Saturday, September 27, 2014; 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Clarendon Boulevard and Wilson Boulevard between Washington and Highland, Arlington, VA