Best Artistic Protests Sculptures “A Throne Fit for a King” on the National Mall. Photograph by Heather Diehl/Getty Images. Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office spiced up DC’s public-art game. Protesters are securing First Amendment permits to build guerrilla-style resistance art around the National Mall. An anonymous group called the Secret Handshake is behind several headline-making installations, including a sculpture of Trump and Jeffrey Epstein skipping hand in hand and a gold-and-marble toilet inspired by the President’s Lincoln Bedroom bathroom renovation. It hasn’t stopped at statues: A playable arcade game parodying America’s invasion of Iran popped up at the US War Memorial in May.   Best Meet-Cute Heated Rivalry Look-alike Contest It’s hard to overstate the chokehold Heated Rivalry had on us this year. While fans were thirst-posting about the hockey romance online, Aram Matagi and Felix Eller proved that, sometimes, life imitates art. The couple met at Wunder Garten’s look-alike contest in April, winning for their resemblance to brooding lovers Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander. After sealing the victory with a kiss, they went on an eight-hour first date, followed by a rink-side appearance at a hockey game and an UberEats campaign. Is this the most committed PR stunt in local history or are they in it for The Long Game ? Either way, we’re hooked.   Best Use of Gen-Z Slang National Gallery of Art Reels           View this post on Instagram                       A post shared by National Gallery of Art (@ngadc) The curators at the National Gallery of Art have mastered the craft of using Gen-Zisms on Instagram Reels to introduce younger audiences to classical art. Scroll through the videos to see curator Alison Luchs describe 16th-century works as “freshly yassified” and “aura farming.” One Reel garnered more than 10 million views, and Luchs even won a 2026 Webby Award for her hilariously deadpan delivery.   Shittiest News of the Year The Potomac River Sewage Spill Talk about a crappy omen: Washingtonians welcomed 2026 with one of the largest sewage spills in history when the Potomac Interceptor pipe collapsed in January. (The “Pooptomac” jokes wrote themselves.) By the time the break was repaired, an estimated 240 million gallons of raw sewage had spewed into the Potomac River. The Environmental Protection Agency has finished its cleanup, so most of the river is safe for boating and fishing again, but the bellyache isn’t over for DC Water, which is facing multiple lawsuits over the incident.   Best Trolling TMZ DC Since its DC debut in April, LA-based tabloid TMZ has ruffled Washingtonians with its splashy sensibility and the weird internet presence of its reporters. Folks are particularly whipped up about co–managing editor Jacob Wasserman, who’s taken to X to extol his discoveries of overhyped spots such as Founding Farmers and Tatte. Many locals took him seriously, but he was just provoking us—juicing engagement at a moment when TMZ wanted eyeballs on its work. For weeks, everyone talked about it. Local PR shops, take note.   Best New Arrival Linh Mai Baby elephant Linh Mai with bestie Swarna at the National Zoo. Photograph by Brett Kuxhausen/Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. The VIP title at the National Zoo typically goes to the Very Important Pandas. But in February, that honorific was extended to a Very Important Pachyderm, Linh Mai. She’s the zoo’s first Asian elephant calf in nearly 25 years, born at 308 pounds—just a wee little lady next to her multi-ton herd mates. Though Linh Mai’s mom initially rejected her, adopted aunt Swarna has taken the baby elephant under her trunk, avoiding a Punch the Monkey fiasco. Linh Mai loves splashing around, and she’s already developed a sassy personality.   Best Post Pivot The Washington Post Building Miss the Washington Post’s reporting on local arts, news, and sports before the mass layoffs? You’ve got options. Former arts editor Jonathan Fischer landed at the Atlantic, turning it into a competitor for news about Trump’s Kennedy Center takeover. Many of the Athletic’s DC team reporters were previously at the Post, and the Star has hired many Post Local veterans. Some Posties went independent, such as reporter Gillian Brockell, who chronicles ICE on her own site, and music critic Chris Richards on Substack. But perhaps the most significant pivot belongs to the Franklin Square building. The expensive 2015 build-out is no Longer needed for a staff half the size it was months ago, so some lucky office-space seeker can sublease its event space, huddle rooms, and 134 offices—all now surplus to requirements—at a discount.     Best Public Restrooms For a Lavish Lavatory Library of Congress location_onCapitol Hill languageWebsite If you’re looking for a posh yet public porcelain throne, plan your pit stop for the Library of Congress, where bathrooms have marble walls and stunning architecture. For a Covert Commode Air Force Memorial location_onArlington languageWebsite Tucked into a building behind the Medal of Honor Wall, the accessible restrooms are as sleek and modern as the memorial itself. For a Transit-Friendly Toilet National Portrait Gallery location_onPenn Quarter languageWebsite The art-museum washrooms are conveniently located near the Gallery Place/Chinatown Metro, so you can get where you’re going after you gotta go.     Best Local Celebrity We’d Want to Be Stuck in an Elevator With Carla Hall Carla Hall has never been simply a “chef.” She’s a TV personality who has competed on Top Chef, cohosted The Chew, and judged various Food Network competitions. She’s a cookbook author with a baking book, Carla Bakes, out this fall. And she recently collaborated with the team behind Good Stuff Eatery on a fried-chicken pop-up in DC called Bumblebirds. But her latest project may be her most personal yet: an autobiographical one-woman show at Olney Theatre Center called Please Underestimate Me, running through July 12. Hall is known for being funny and joyful, but she also wants to demonstrate that she’s thoughtful and ambitious. We chatted with her about the show, her life mantra, and why you shouldn’t put her in a box. Why did you want to create a one-woman show? I did theater as a kid. A lot of people don’t know that about me. Theater was my first love. I was super, super shy. I saw my first play—it was Bubbling Brown Sugar —in 1976. I left the play remembering this one song, and one of my mother’s friends said, “Put that girl into theater.” And so I did theater at the YMCA. It sort of pulled me out of my shyness but also made it okay to be my weird self. So after The Chew ended—I was 55—I was like, “I really want to get back to theater. What would that look like?” I just sort of started plotting. Have you done any theater as an adult? I did cameos on Broadway. I was in Newsies, I was in Waitress, The Lion King— I was one of the bird ladies. I’ve done improv. I’ve done The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee . Can you explain generally what this show is about? It’s about my life. And the framework is me at a talk show with food—similar to The Chew . I take you through my life, and it’s all in a flashback, like when I was 12 and I was at theater camp, my little stint in modeling, my resistance to actually wanting to cook at a particular time, my time at Howard University. A lot of people assume that if you cook, then you’ve been cooking from a very young age. I absolutely did not want to cook. But I think as you go through this play, you not only understand a little bit about me, you understand my philosophy about life and how I sort of put myself out there to do different things. So what is your philosophy of life? I’m always saying: Say yes. Adventure follows, then growth. That has been my mantra for about 15 years. You say yes, there’s going to be an adventure, whether you think it’s great or not so great, wonderful, stagnating. Whatever experience you had from the point of saying yes to after that thing, you will grow from it. Then it’s rinse and repeat. How did you decide what moments to include in the show? Some of the biggest moments: One, The Chew, two, Top Chef . . . modeling, being an accountant. Some moments of my life that aren’t so great and happy. That was important for me because a lot of times people think, “Oh, you live a charmed life,” but everybody’s life has ups and downs and we still learn from those moments. Those moments color how we are in the world. Why did you call it Please Under-estimate Me? Because I absolutely think I’m underestimated in a lot of things that I’ve done. Because I kind of have this “Oh, shucks” attitude and, like, “Oh, hey, let’s have fun.” People underestimate that person. I was underestimated on Top Chef . I think I was underestimated on The Chew . I think I’m underestimated in a lot of places. This story is all about being put in boxes that I got out of. I realized people are putting up boxes around me. Going to a Black university, that’s a box. Black excellence, that’s a box. Being 50 years old or 44 years old and doing a cooking competition, that’s a box. What do you hope are the takeaways from the audience? I hope that they walk away saying and questioning who they are, who they can be. And if they are in a box, can they get out of that box? Is it their box that they’re putting themselves in or somebody else putting them in a box? You also had a recent pop-up restaurant, and you have a cookbook coming out. So that’s a lot on your plate. It’s a lot. All of these things have been building, and now it feels like they just came about. They didn’t just come about. Like the restaurant—I started two years ago talking about this concept, and we had tried to put it other places. I believe I’m not given more than I can handle. And this is also when you lean on people and you’re like: What can I take off my plate? I don’t have to do everything. I don’t have to control everything. What are your aspirations going forward, both for this show and your acting or theater career in general? I would love for it to tour around the country. I have built my brand and fan base from people who are in second-, third-, fourth-tier cities. If this travels, I really want it to be accessible to people, which is why I love community theater. This ends [in July,] and I have said to my team I really want my schedule to be open after my book comes out. I don’t know what is going to come out of this. And I’m okay with that. I am betting on myself that there will be the next adventure, and I don’t need to know what it is now. What would be your dream role? I want people to be surprised and to not only just consider me doing something with food specifically. Because a lot of times, if I get a cameo role, it’s a chef. Like in Gossip Girl, I had a cameo as a chef. That’s fine, but I don’t have to be in a role that has to deal with food. You’ve been really good in your career about expanding what it means to be a chef, so it makes sense that you’d take an expansive view of that next chapter. Even with the restaurant, one of the things that I wanted to do was to put a piece of my art in the [dining room]. I’m also in visual arts. So culinary is very limiting. And what I am asking other people to do is see creative people as creative and don’t put them in a box. Don’t underestimate you. Exactly. This article appears in the July 2026 issue of Washingtonian.The post Best of Washington 2026: What to Know About DC first appeared on Washingtonian. ...read more read less