Friday, February 16, 2007

WT: Illegal Funeral Home on H Street

Phish Tea
Experiencing a deficiency in wacky news? Washington Times to the rescue. They report on the District's efforts to shut down an unlicensed (the owner claims he wasn't operating yet) funeral parlor located at 1337 H Street (the building next to Phish Tea). A search, following an anonymous tip in November, revealed embalming materials within. The owner, who says his family has been in the funeral business for generations, blamed his legal troubles on what he called the "funeral cartel," or the "funeral mafia" (which he claimed excerted pressure on the District to target him).

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UPDATE
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Interestingly, while walking back from the Rock & Roll Hotel tonight, we were greeted by a man walking into this building wearing a jacket with wording that my friend (I didn't have a good view of he jacket) said something about funerals. So apparently, Mr. Ridley (I'm assuming this was him, and not some member of the funeral mafia) is not too afraid to bravely move forward with getting his business in order.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I guess his business plan is dead on arrival.

inked said...

Interestingly, while walking back from the Rock & Roll Hotel tonight, we were greeted by a man walking into this building wearing a jacket with wording that my friend (I didn't have a good view of he jacket) said something about funerals. So apparently, Mr. Ridley (I'm assuming this was him, and not some member of the funeral mafia) is not too afraid to bravely move forward with getting his business in order.

Anonymous said...

people can yell on h street, you can sell singles, you can operate an illegal funeral parlor.....

i hope they don't start enforcing laws.

that would totally destroy the character of our neighborhood.

let everyone do what they want, but just cut back on crime.

wierd place.

Anonymous said...

OMG!!1! Operating an unlicensed funeral home is so 1337!!

Anonymous said...

Is the Phish Tea House still open? When I walked by the other day it looked closed and there was a building permit displayed in the window. Can someone give me an update?

inked said...

Phish Tea is closed. Joe Englert bought the building and is opening the H Street Country Club (an 18 hole mini-golf course with bar) inside the building.

Alan Page said...

an 18 hole mini-golf course?!!? if it was anyone other than you, i'd assume that was a joke. putt putt on h st? geez...englert thinks WAY outside the box.

Alan Page said...

about my above comment...i say that to say that joe is a frickign genius and seemingly no one else sees h street like he does.

inked said...

This golf idea has been floating around for a while. Back when Joe Englert first started working the community meeting circuit he talked about putting in some putt-putt place further down on Bladensburg (not much further down, but past the Argonaut). This seems to be the eventual incarnation of that idea.

Anonymous said...

Washington Times? I thought that was an imaginary paper.

Anonymous said...

geez, inked, seems like every time (well, the last two times) i have left a comment you act like what i talked about was common knowledge and i live in a cave. i know i'm out of the loop, already, cut me some slack....LOL. Sorry I haven't kept up with all of Englert's long ranging golf domination plans...does this make putt-putt on H St somehow less of a good idea?

inked said...

Alan,
sorry. I didn't mean for it to sound that way. The H Street Country Club thing is a relatively new announcement, but I find it noteworthy that this is an idea that's been floating around for a while (but there's no reason to know it had been around unless you'd happenned to catch those meeting a while back). I'm not saying putt-putt is a bad idea. It's an unusual idea, but I'm not going to call it one way or another.