City's Latest Blockbuster: The Great Space Battle

Now that Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray are done fighting over luxury boxes at Verizon Center and Nationals Park, they need something new to wrestle over.

Education reform, the master facilities plan for schools, and various appointments to various boards and commissions are all heady issues to chew on -- too heady for our purposes.

We need something petty, something that really doesn't touch the lives of average residents. Got it! Parking spaces -- reserved ones, of course.

Yes, those coveted ones behind the John A. Wilson Building, giving the city's leaders quick access to a back door.

No one wanted to speak publicly about the matter, but here is what we were told:

Gray recently arrived at the building to find both council spaces filled, one by the Tahoe used by his office and the other by a city car belonging to City Administrator Dan Tangherlini. One of the mayor's three spaces (one is where Tangherlini generally parks) was open, so Gray parked there.

That didn't sit well with the mayor's office, we're told. There was the threat of towing. In the mix, we're told, was Johnny Business himself. That's right, John Falcicchio, adviser to Fenty (D) and all-around get-it-done guy. Johnny Business can occasionally get mixed up in giving Gray (D) and his staff members the business and driving them up the wall. He was the one, we're told, hoarding the tickets to the skybox at Verizon Center last year.

In the recent squabble, the tow truck made it all the way to the Wilson Building. But Ronald Collins, deputy secretary to the council, traded words with the mayor's team. Something about how the council controls the parking spaces and how towing the chairman's car might result in a loss of those spaces.

That resulted, we're told, in a retreat.

Water, Water Everywhere

Ward 7 D.C. Council candidate Villareal "V.J." Johnson said he knows he will touch 2,016 people as he campaigns to unseat incumbent Yvette M. Alexander (D).

Johnson is one of three candidates challenging Alexander, who broke out of a pack of 16 candidates to win a special election last year to replace council Chairman Vincent C. Gray as the representative from Ward 7. It didn't hurt that she had Gray's endorsement. He has endorsed her this time around, too.

Robin Hammond Marlin, a Hillcrest resident and community activist, and John Campbell, a barber, are the other Democrats running for the seat.