84 years ago, sometime in May 1929, the old Hyattsville High School baseball team lost their beloved opossum mascot. This was not good news for the squad, which was hoping to rely on their mascot for good luck as they headed into the county championships.  They had a right to be nervous too. All year long their original possum mascot had, according to contemporary press reports, brought the Hyattsville High School athletic association an apparent bounty of victories. The 1928-1929 school year saw Hyattsville High School athletes claim repeat victories in county soccer, basketball and track …

The big winner in yesterday's Hyattsville City Council elections is undoubtedly facial hair.  Before yesterday, Mayor Marc Tartaro, in the form of a close cropped beard, was the only Hyattsville elected leader to sport facial hair. Every other sitting city council member was definitively babyfaced either by choice or biological circumstance. Then yesterday, Hyattsville voters sent four facially hirsute candidates to city council. Now, residents of Hyattsville's Ward 2, Ward 3, Ward 4 and Ward 5 can go about their lives secure in the knowledge that at least one of their ward's two council …

What if Hyattsville doesn't have a Mi Patio noise problem, but instead has a problem with area residents crying wolf over neighborhood noise? It's one way to interpret the data behind the noise complaints which some residents have lodged against Mi Patio, the West Hyattsville restaurant which has applied for a permit allowing expanded entertainment options. The application has drawn opposition from some nearby residents who complain of hooliganism, late night noise and regulatory issues at the restaurant. According to police incident logs provided to Hyattsville Patch by the Hyattsville City …

Just a quick, friendly reminder for the chronologically unaware or chronically gullible: today is April Fools day.  So keep an eye out for hoaxes. (For instance, Youtube is not actually shutting down its website to select the best video uploaded to its site over the last 10 years.)  And you don't have to worry about becoming an April Fool while reading the pages of Hyattsville Patch. All of our stories are, and forever will be, legit.

File this under election news which slipped past my attention. Voters in Ward 5 have another candidate vying their votes in this spring's city council races. Three days ago, one Pastor Herrera filed to run for one of the two open council seats from Ward 5.  Trouble is, I overlooked a promptly dispatched email from City Clerk Laura Reams alerting me to this fact. Learning of his filing after business hours yesterday, and before I could get a chance to inspect his filing documents, I have yet to obtain Herrera's contact informatio to arrange an interview to learn more about him.  Anyways, here'…

Did news of this weekend's shooting in West Hyattsville make you think twice about living here? While other news stations were content to keep their coverage of Sunday's drive-by shooting on Hamilton Street to brief items, WTTG Fox 5 dug deep into their bag of metaphors and produced this breathless piece of journalism on the shooting which left two people injured.  The anchor introduces the shooting, which saw 19 shots fired, as something which resembled the "wild west". Reporter Karen Gray Houston went on to say it was like something out of a movie. A bit hyperbolic? To be sure. One wonders …

It's Tuesday, and for residents living in some of Hyattsville's eastern-most neighborhoods, that means it's trash day. Here's a little Vine video showing a brief looping-time-lapse of some of our city's public service workers doing their thing to make our town a nice place to live.  Wondering when trash day is in your neck of the woods? Check out these maps to see when you need to set out your trash in Hyattsville. Tuesday Trash Route Map Wednesday Trash Route Map Thursday Trash Route Map Friday Trash Route A and Friday Trash Route B maps. Also, recycling is collected by the county waste …

Hyattsville Mayor Marc Tartaro wants to make one thing clear: a description, offered by him during last Monday's meeting of the Hyattsville City Council of the minimum sidewalk network he'd like to see in University Hills, is in no way his final proposal for pedestrian pathways through the neighborhood. In a Sunday evening phone call to Hyattsville Patch editor Michael Theis, and through city spokesperson Abby Sandel on Monday, Tartaro reiterated that his "minimum point of departure" for University Hills sidewalks, as he described it during last Monday's meeting, was intended as a starting …

This is what it's like outside right now.  And all the time, if you're me, plus or minus a rain factor of one. 

Hey Hyattsville! I want to reassure you that I an still alive, though I spent the second half of last week recovering from a fever. Unfortunately, my self imposed quarantine meant that I missed a much anticipated city meeting which reviewed the results of the University Hills sidewalk survey.  While I couldn't report on the he-said-she-said aspects of the meeting, city officials did make the survey response data public. From that data, a portion of which gauged the neighborhood's receptiveness to sidewalks on a street by street level, we can plot on a map the areas of University Hills where …

Ever wonder what it was like to ride the old streetcar system which helped establish Mount Rainier, Hyattsville, College Park and other Rhode Island and Baltimore avenue communities in Prince George's County? Well, wonder no more. Yesterday, the folks over at our local metro-area urban policy blog Greater Greater Washington picked up on a 14-minute video recently uploaded to YouTube which follows the old DC Transit streetcar line 82 from 5th and G streets NW (near the Verizon Center today) north to what is today the Branchville neighborhood of College Park. For reference, the old DC streetcar…

The Hyattville area saw its share of big news in 2012. Now, with five days to go before the end of the year, let's look back at some of the biggest local stories of the year. The following list shows the top 10 most-read local stories of the year. 10 - Friends, Teammates, Teachers Mourn Rico Webb DeMatha students and staff struggled to deal with the grief left by the sudden passing of 17-year-old Alabama State football recruit Rico Webb, who died suddenly in late February.  9 - City Council: No Agenda Approved, No Meeting About the only thing the Hyattsville City Council could agree on at its…

Patch was on hand as priests, decons and parishoners of St. Jerome Catholic Parish in Hyattsville prepared to celebrate midnight mass on Christmas Eve. From all of us here at Hyattsville Patch, we wish you and yours a merry Christmas, happy holidays and a joyful new year.  Sincerely, Michael Theis Editor, Hyattsville Patch

A wide open field for prospective West Hyattsville politicos looking for a seat on Gallatin Street  But who will run? It's a mystery for now, but whoever decides to will likely be competing for votes in a much more critically engaged neighborhood than in years past.  One council member from each ward is up for election this spring. Earlier this week, Councilor Ruth Ann Frazier (Ward 5) and Councilor Carlos Lizanne (Ward 4), whose seats are both up for election this May, revealed in media reports that they would be retiring from the dais. News that Hyattsville's Wards 4 and 5 seats will be …

I had a chance last night to do something which I haven't done since my fifth grade year in 1994: spend a Halloween in Hyattsville. (Side note, before I get too far into this column: UPLOAD YOUR HALLOWEEN PHOTOS TO OUR GALLERY, ABOVE!) As a child, especially as a young, elementary school aged child growing up in Hyattsville, Halloween was always a special time because the neighborhoods really seemed to get into the spirit of things. I have fond memories of trick-or-treating down 40th Avenue in central Hyattsville, whose residents seemed to always have the most remarkable Halloween decorations…

The Hyattsville Arts Festival kicks off this Saturday at 11 a.m. Here's what you need to know: Where is it? The festival will be held downtown at the Shoppes at Arts District Hyattsville at the intersection of Baltimore Avenue and Jefferson Street.  What is it? It's a celebration of the local and regional arts community organized by the Hyattsville Community Development Corporation. This is the fifth year of the event. Last year's arts festival drew close to 2,500 people to downtown Hyattsville, according to organizers.  Who will be there? More than 50 local and regional artists, designers, …

Ever wanted to call your city council member to complain about a pothole or praise the work of a city employee, but you didn't know who to call? Well, you can now cross that excuse off of your list of reasons to not be engaged in your community because Hyattsville's website now features an upgraded City Limits Verification Page.  The upgraded site now allows you to see not only if you live in Hyattsville, but which ward you live in.  Why haven't you heard of this before? The applet has not had an official launch just yet, according to city Communications Manager Abby Sandel at Monday's …

The Hyattsville Wire has a fascinating interview with local high-flying acrobat Andrea Burkholder.  Her day job, as one half of the ensemble Arachne Aerial Arts, includes devising and executing beautifully choreographed performances which combines trapeze artistry, gymnastics and ballet.  "We do not create work that is about the tricks, as circus work is," Burkholder told the Wire in an email interview. "But we do stay committed to using our apparatus as the means to convey our work." The result is simply mesmerizing (for proof, see video above). Burkholder, a resident of the Hyattsville Arts…

Area Catholic schools begin the fall semester today. For Hyattsville residents, that can mean additional traffic considerations along the Route 1 corridor as the city's two parochial schools return to session.  Both St. Jerome Academy and DeMatha Catholic High School will be welcoming students back for the new school year today.  The St. Jerome school day kicks off with an 8 a.m. assembly at the cafeteria lot featuring the morning prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. The school will have a 1 p.m. dismissal on Monday. Full school day schedule begins on Tuesday for St. Jerome students, with a 3…

Last night, the Hyattsville City Council gave formal, final approval for a city charter amendment which redraws the city's political boundaries. The charter amendment was unanimously passed with barely any comment.  The new ward boundaries don't unseat any incumbents, but it does dramatically alter the local legislative landscape for a few neighborhoods. Residents of Ward 3, currently represented by Councilor Tim Hunt, were the most likely to see their wards change, especially if they lived in neighborhoods on the southern end of Hunt's ward. Because of the mid-decade annexation of the …