Bethesda Circulator hours changing

Bethesda Circulator, the free bus that goes around downtown Bethesda, MD every 10 minutes or so is changing its hours. Starting July 1st the hours will be:

• Monday through Thursday: 7 am - 11 pm
• Friday: 7 am - 12 midnight
• Saturday: 10 am - 12 midnight
• Sunday: No service

It used to run (and actually still does through June 30) until midnight Mon-Thurs and until 2am on Fri and Sat. We are getting earlier service on Saturday, it used to start at 6pm on Sat. You can see the route here.

Have you every taken the circulator? Was your experience good or bad?

Like a twig

This was the scene at the beginning of the week on Greentree Road in Bethesda, MD. There clearly had been an accident where a car (yes I am comforable saying it was a car, not a bicycle) knocked down and broke this telephone pole and the fire hydrant next to it. You can see good sized gouges in the ground where the telephone pole hit. Someone must have been going well above the speed limit to do this amount of damage.

UPS at the USPS

I was leaving the post office (the one by Montgomery Mall) this morning and I see a UPS truck out front. I'm thinking the UPS guy needed to mail a letter which seems humorous to me. I've always heard the UPS doesn't ship to post office boxes so I was surprised to see the UPS driver unloading a whole hand truck full of small packages. How very odd.

Mystery Food

I was at the Safeway on Old Georgetown Road in Bethesda, MD yesterday. They had apparently done inventory because there were a bunch of shelves which had paper signs saying "overstock" on them. Not all the food on these shelves had prices. On rack of shelves, however, was more enigmatic, it's sign had the single word "Mystery" scrawled across it.

Housing market still going

The housing market around the country has been pretty week for the past couple of years. Bethesda, MD has held up much better than the rest of the country, even so, it has been impacted. Pre-2008 I saw lots of houses either being torn down and replaced or expanded to such an extent the original house was unrecognizable. The pace of teardowns significantly slowed with the economy. This week however, I was driving down the road and said to myself "There was a house there last week, where did it go?" It is hard to tell yet if this is an anomaly or a resumption of the trend.

More construction on Wisconsin Avenue

I saw today they were doing more cable laying in Bethesda. One lane of north bound MD-355 at Montgomery lane was closed and causing a bit of a traffic backup. They are cleaning up now and it should be fine by rush hour

Beer and Wine in downtown Bethesda

Sometimes your wrong and sometimes your WRONG. Recently I posted about Capitol Beer and Wine and said that "there isn't a lot of options for getting packaged beer and wine in downtown Bethesda, MD". Well, that brought on the comments. There may not be as many beer and wine stores as there are banks, but there are still a lot of them, even if you don't include places like Philadelphia Mikes which also sells beer to go. Here is a rundown of the ones I know of.

The first three are very close to each other, all were pointed out by an anonymous commenter.


Bethesda Beer and wine, 8015 Wisconsin Avenue. Located on MD-355 across from the green-roofed Golden House Chinese takeout. Parking in the rear (what could be better?)



Scarcely a block away is the charming Dunmor's Beer & Wine. An old building that really stands out, looks like a throwback to the 30's, complete with a gravel parking lot and a porch. 8013 Woodmont Avenue.



Moving two blocks north you find Woodmont Market, 8227 Woodmont Avenue. One of the newer contenders, I blogged about it before it opened.


Reader waxwing (who also follows me on twitter) pointed out that Lilit Cafe has a large selection of beer and wine. 7921 Old Georgetown Road near the Auburn Avenue Exxon station. There is a parking lot behind it.



Another anonymous commenter mentioned Cork 57 (though not by name). When this first opened I thought it was a lounge for people at the Mercedes-Benz dealer since it is totally surrounded by it. 4910 Bethesda Ave, across from the Giant Food. Looks to me like there are two parking spaces.


There are still more that no one pointed out.


The county liquor store on Hampden Lane sells beer and wine. It has a gate-controlled lot, but I think it is free too.



Bradley Food and Beverage sells the type of beverages that are the subject of this post. And, it is near Bruce Variety and Strosniders Hardware too. 6904 Arlington Road. Parking in the front for the whole strip mall.



Cork and Fork only sells wine but we will include it here too. 7110 Bethesda Lane.



Bethesda Chevy Chase Beer & Wine, right next to Vace's Italian Deli and the Sandy Spring Bank ends this roundup. 4701 Miller Avenue, a couple of parking spots in the front.

Then there is the previously mentioned, coming soon, Capitol Beer and Wine.

Did I miss any? I sure hope not, but if I did, let me know about them. Do you have a favorite?

Everybody needs a place to park.

This morning I saw something vaguely unusual, there were four police cars parked in front of the fountain at Bethesda Metro Station. There didn't seem to be a burning emergency as they didn't have their lights on, there weren't any ambulances or fire trucks, and I could see three of the cops conversing near the top of the escalator. Twitter and the WMATA alerts are also quiet so I guess nothing big is going on. I wonder how long they will stay.

Capitol Beer and Wine coming to Bethesda

Norfolk Avenue is getting a beer and wine store. I never really noticed, but there isn't a lot of options for getting packaged beer and wine in downtown Bethesda, MD. This will soon change with the coming of Capitol Beer and Wine. It will be located were Limon's Jewelers used to be, right next to the Corner Slice. I saw them busy fixing up the outside of the place last week.

Flushing the fire hydrants

I was walking up Elm Street and saw a lot of water running down the gutter. As I got further along I see they are flushing a fire hydrant out by Mama Lucia's. It is a pretty good stream of water coming through it. It makes me want to put on a bathing suit and splash in the water.

[where: Bethesda, MD]