There’s a D.C. football team worth the trip to Landover, Md., but it sure as hell isn’t the Washington Redskins — it’s the all-female D.C. Divas, who happen to be the best professional women’s football team in the world.

They defeated their archrivals, the Detroit Demolition, on Saturday in riveting fashion. The announcer called this game “the most anticipated rematch in women’s football history,” and the on-field action lived up to the hype.

The Demolition scored a touchdown late in the fourth quarter that put them within two points of tying the game, but when they attempted a two-point conversion the Divas stuffed ’em, then held on to win the game, 24-22.

The victory was particularly important because Detroit is the only team to have beaten the Divas in years. This season the Divas switched leagues to beat them, following the Demolition’s move to the big-time Independent Women’s Football League from the smaller-time National Women’s Football Association. Now that they’ve beaten Detroit, it’s safe to say that our undefeated Divas are the best team there is. (In their previous contest they clobbered the Cape Fear Thunder, 77-0.)

The team’s 60-woman roster includes teachers, nurses, cops and corrections officers. They practice three times a week and play for the love of the game. There are no prima donnas with multimillion-dollar contracts, and no insufferable owners, either.

Home field is the Prince George’s County Sports and Learning Complex, right next to the abominable FedEx Field. Out on the gridiron, it’s real football — the rules are essentially the same as those used in the big stadium, with very minor differences (kickoffs are from a few yards closer in, for example).

In the stands, everything is way, way better: The crowd at Saturday’s game was an amazing and representative mix of D.C. denizens, and the complex offered free parking, pizza for $2, and beer for $5.

When the game ended, everybody — it seemed mandatory, actually — ran out onto the field and mobbed the victorious Divas. Asked how it felt to play for the best team in women’s football, linebacker Tessa “Ray-Ray” Nelson said,
“EEYYAARRGGHH!!!”

Hillscape and a friend throttled the field goal post but failed to bring it down.

Hats off to the Capitol Hill BID

Don’t give money to beggars, says the Capitol Hill Business Improvement District (BID). Give them the “Giving Card,” a small piece of paper with important addresses and phone numbers for shelters, soup kitchens and hotlines. The card also offers a note to you, the business-goer.

“When confronted by a panhandler, the most compassionate thing you can do is to politely decline and keep walking,” it reads. “If you want to give, give a ‘Giving Card’ and support programs like the ones listed here.”

For four years the Giving Card has been part of the BID’s master plan to make things nicer on the Hill, and a recent BID survey found that residents think this ’hood is safer and cleaner than before. A corresponding detail would be that the area is less hospitable to begging, and it does seem that there are fewer panhandlers around here lately. Perhaps the Giving Card has helped some street people turn their lives around.

Or maybe not.

“Panhandlers pretty much don’t like the Giving Card,” says Patty Brosmer, executive director of the BID. Brosmer stresses that a panhandler is not necessarily homeless and that a homeless person does not necessarily handle pans. So a beggar may only want money and openly resent a card with info on shelters.

Hillscape decided to conduct unscientific field tests of the cards over the past week. I kept several of the cards in my pocket and handed them out whenever asked for change, which happened about a dozen times.

Instead of objecting, panhandlers seemed genuinely appreciative of the cards. Asked if the information was helpful, they said it was. When spied upon from a short distance, they did not throw the cards away.

The BID itself employs several formerly homeless people through the Gospel Rescue Ministries’ “Ready to Work” program, which sets people up with a job and place to live. The BID’s own Gabriel Brow, a recent graduate of the program, says he wishes he’d been handed a Giving Card back when he was a druggie on the streets.

“I would never have been homeless if I had had all the information I needed to get into a shelter,” Brow says. “I would have been thrilled to death.”

Of course, not everybody is as blessed with wisdom and joie de vivre as Brow, who wears a blue cape every day to attract attention to the Ready to Work program, which he calls a “complete solution.” When he makes his rounds on the Hill he personally encourages homeless folks to join up.

Brow says getting a positive response when handing out Giving Cards is a matter of how you present them. The trick, then, is as simple as being polite.

Book Mobile to the rescue!

Capitol Hill’s public library, the Southeast branch of the D.C. Public Library system, has been closed for renovations since the start of May and won’t reopen until June 23. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get a book there, because the Book Mobile is on the scene!

For the duration of the renovation there’s a big white truck parked next to the library on South Carolina Avenue. The vehicle offers books and computers to the general public.

Hillscape entered the Book Mobile and inquired about a particular book on May 31. The database showed that the Cleveland
Park library had it. Library employee O’Dell McDaniel called his friend at the Cleveland Park branch and asked her to bring the book to the Naylor Road Metro station that evening, where he would pick her up as he usually does. He got the book from her and dropped it off at the Book Mobile on his way to Baltimore the following morning. Now Hillscape is reading it.

That’s five-star service.