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By Theodore
Fischer, Washington Sidewalk
Saigon, USA. Next
Thursday, the liveliest place around these parts will be the Eden
Shopping Center (Wilson and Roosevelt boulevards, Falls Church), the
Vietnamese community's commercial hub near Seven Corners Shopping
Center. Under a clock tower just like one in old Ho Chi Minh City, it
will be business more frenzied than usual at the dozen or so restaurants
plus drugstores, gift and clothes shops, barbers and stylists, and Eden
Supermarket, seminal source for Asian specialty items. D.C.'s Chinatown,
by comparison, will barely be breathing.
Flicks. All area movie theaters operate on a regular schedule,
bargain matinees and all. D.C. gets an additional theater with the
resurrection Thursday of the Cineplex Odeon Inner Circle 3 (23rd
and M streets N.W.), featuring '97 Cannes winner The Sweet Hereafter.
Asian
eats. Open
next Thursday – with no Christmas pudding on the menu – are 11
designated Sidewalk Choice restaurants serving Asian cuisine. In D.C.: City
Lights of China, Eat First, Jin Ga; in Maryland: A
& J Restaurant (Rockville), Four Rivers (Rockville), Paul
Kee (Wheaton), Tara Thai, (Bethesda); in Virginia: Fortune
Seafood Restaurant (Falls Church), Pho 75 (Arlington and Falls
Church), Rabieng (Falls Church).
Show goes on. The Kennedy Center presents Shear Madness,
the audience-participation mystery-comedy that seems to have opened some
time around the first Christmas, and Smokey Joe's Cafe, a raucous
paean to good old rock 'n' roll. Also, Crossing Delancey is playing
at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington in Rockville.
Alley oops. Christmas Eve and morning are the only time all year
that the 24-hour Bowl America in Gaithersburg closes, but it
reopens at noon on the 25th. Rinaldi's Riverdale Bowl and the AMF
Alexandria Bowling Center are also rolling, as are almost all bowling
alleys.
Parlor games. Babe's Billiard Cafe in Tenleytown will open at 5
p.m. for what is historically "the busiest day of the year."
Maryland players will get behind the eight ball at Bilio Billiards
in Wheaton, and in Virginia Fast Eddie's locations are open in
Fairfax, Alexandria and Springfield.
Tinsel-free
parties. All the Smithsonian museums are closed (the only time all
year), and so is the Holocaust Memorial Museum, but the B'nai B'rith
Klutznick National Jewish Museum invites guests to Family Fun Day –
puppet shows, arts and crafts, singing, storytelling and a scavenger hunt.
Temple Sinai (3100 Military Rd. N.W., 202-686-4730) will hold a
family concert with puppets and Jewish folk music at 11 a.m. And the free
Fun Day at Mishkan Torah Synagogue (10 Ridge Rd., Greenbelt, Md.,
301-474-4223) runs from 2 to 6:30 p.m., with games, songs and food.
Tower of babble. The Tower Records-Video-Books locations in
D.C., Vienna, Rockville, Fairfax and Annapolis will be jumping from 9 a.m.
to midnight – just as they are every other day of the year.
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