(Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

A home for go-go

By Shane O’Neill

This week, the Go-Go Museum & Cafe opened in the Anacostia neighborhood of D.C.

As Chris Richards reported, the Go-Go Museum, which opened this week, offers a seven-point definition, painted on a mural as you walk into the space. Go-go is:

If you saw the 1988 Spike Lee film “School Daze,” you’ve heard go-go. The film featured “Da Butt,” a track by E.U. that ended up reaching No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Black Singles chart. In 1992, bell hooks wrote about the song. In 2009, The Roots played “Da Butt” as Serena Williams’s entrance music on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.”

“Da Butt” piqued some interest in go-go in the United States. A few years earlier, Island Records mounted a campaign trying to make go-go happen in Britain. It never quite caught on.

I say that’s okay. What is popular is not always right, and what is right is not always popular.

(Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

Sometimes local subcultures become international cultures: Bronx DJs who pioneered scratch begot hip-hop; music played at the Warehouse nightclub in Chicago became house music; Detroit gave us techno.

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But some genres — even in the age of the internet and cultural omnivorism — remain mostly-beloved in their hometowns: bounce in New Orleans, hyphy in the Bay Area, footwork in Chicago and go-go in D.C.

I wish artists in these genres all the success and money in the world, but I also appreciate the sweetness of a local scene fueled by local passion and local pride.

I was introduced to go-go by my freshman college roommate who grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, and would regularly put on Rare Essence’s “Overnight Scenario” after he had a few Bud Lights. Learning about go-go legend Chuck Brown from him almost made up for all the times he’d get even drunker and blast “Drops of Jupiter.”

For those of you not lucky enough to have someone playing go-go in your dorm room, you now have a go-go museum to get you up to speed. Bonus: I bet it will never ever play any songs by Train.

The Go-Go Museum & Cafe gives D.C.’s music a place to call home The community-led museum in historical Anacostia tells the story of go-go’s creation and endurance.

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(Ethan Swope/Getty Images)

Birkenstocks are comfortable.

But are they art?

No, says a German court.

In an effort to stamp out (yuk yuk yuk) imitators, Birkenstock tried to argue that its sandal design qualified as “applied art.”

What’s that?

As Kelsey Ables wrote, it’s “a designation given to creations defined by functionality in daily life and aesthetic merits.” A court ruled that Birks didn’t qualify for this designation.

I’ve always hated Birkenstocks.

Until 2011, when I found out Chloë Sevigny liked them.

Then I decided I loved them.

Let’s hope Sevigny never starts a cult.

Birkenstock argued its shoes are art. A court put its foot down. In a lawsuit, Birkenstock aimed to combat knockoffs, but the court determined the German footwear does not meet the definition of “applied art.”

(Philip Cheung/For The Washington Post)

Sonia Rao has a lovely profile of Carrie Coon, the actress who appeared in “The Leftovers” and “The Gilded Age.” I love love loved her performance in the film “His Three Daughters” even though I didn’t love love love the movie.

I also love love love that she hails from Ohio and went to school at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Midwest hive rise up!

Coon is on Season 3 of “The White Lotus,” playing a woman on a vacation with friends, trying to recover from a recent divorce. Coon told Rao that she considers resort culture to be “exploitative by nature.”

(Philip Cheung/For The Washington Post)

As Rao wrote, “every ambitious performer hopes to book ‘The White Lotus.’”

It seems that the same is true for every ambitious brand.

“White Lotus” Season 3 has brought us some absurd tie-ins: dresses inspired by the show’s opening credits, suitcases inspired by the characters’ luggage, and an Abercrombie & Fitch collab that already sold out. These are some high-end partnerships!

Look, I love the show and I want Mike White to get as rich as possible off of it. And I understand that we can appreciate a character’s aesthetics without agreeing with their life choices: I want to dress like Carrie Bradshaw, not behave like her.

But personally I have no interest in imitating the “White Lotus” characters, aesthetically or otherwise.

Maybe I’m just out of step with the culture. Apparently people also want a “live experience” of “Squid Game.” You know, that show where people with debt play games that end up literally killing them?

Every day “Black Mirror” seems more and more realistic. Hey, maybe it’s time to open a “Black Mirror”-themed fast-casual restaurant? “Snack Mirror?” Just spitballing here.

I digress. 

Let’s accentuate the positive: “White Lotus” is good and Carrie Coon is good and this profile of her is good. Good!

No one throws a righteous tantrum like Carrie Coon The acclaimed character actress, who appears in Season 3 of “The White Lotus,” has mastered the art of emanating mounting fury.

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Additional research by Olivia McCormack.