the club edition

All of today's stories have a theme: Clubs.

- Two million dollars is a small figure on this wish list taken by Montgomery legislators to Annapolis this month, but it's what the County would like set aside for opening the Birchmere music club in Silver Spring. (Also on the list: A new courthouse in Rockville; an interchange at Georgia and Randolph; the Purple Line.) The "Future Home of the Birchmere" sign is already up on the former J.C. Penney building on Colesville Road. Who knows how long it'll be before I can see a show without going into D.C.?

- Club Friday, a popular social club for the tweener set at the Potomac Community Center, (membership and dues required! How Potomac.) has spread to the Fairland Community Center, but not as successfully.

What occurs to me is that neither the Scotland Community Center, located in the only housing project in Potomac (and one with a gang problem, which has led to some major race-baiting at Churchill High), nor the East County Rec Center, a mile away from Fairland in the poorer Briggs Chaney neighborhood, have Club Friday programs. If anything sounds like a gang deterrent, it'd be something that got kids off the streets on a weekend night. How about that, MoCo?

- The "big family" otherwise known as Indian Spring Country Club shared one last cocktail before the property given over solely to golfers and promgoers for decades becomes a 773-home development by Winchester Homes. Judging by the $700,000 homes I saw in Clarksburg yesterday, Lord only knows how much an Indian Spring home might cost. (I wonder if the "big family" will buy one as well.)

Hey, why not give your two cents in regards to this or other Just Up The Pike stories? You know you've always wanted to start a debate via Internet . . .