Regarding Ruggers - I'd never have imagined I'd see a picture my friend Timmy appear under the caption "Big Bad Bottom", but that's what happens when the Blade's graphics departments includes you in a really bad R-rated photomontage. (The online version deletes the offending text, but I assure you it was there in print.) You just never know what kind of publicity you might get yourself into when volunteering your "rugby jock's game-worn jersey" to a charity auction.

In semi-related news, the local press has been all over reports about the planned construction of a $15 million gay and lesbian (and B & T!) community center at Mary Force Stead Playground and Park, where DC's gay-ish rugby team the Renegades practice. The site of the center has been controversial. The development - reportedly now at the "lease-signing stage" - would eliminate the old carriage house that serves as the park's focal point, as well as the surrounding basketball courts and playground, and replace them with a substantial building and an underground parking garage. It is unclear what might happen to the athletic fields behind the carriage house, although it's hard to imagine they'd be available during construction. Not one of the articles I've read mentions our rugby friends' use of Stead, although the InTowner's opinionated "news" piece did describe Stead Field twice as "by all accounts woefully underutilized."

I've yet to see much legal analysis, but it seems to me that a gay community center is quite a stretch from the required use of the land, which was donated by the Stead family "for the perpetual use of the children of Washington." Bequest instructions normally have to be strictly observed, except when circumstances have so changed that the original purpose is moot or incapable of being realized. Say what you will about the maturity of urban homos, I would not be surprised to hear about a lawsuit challenging the plan as inconsistent with the original land grant. After all, neighborhood politics is hardball in D.C.

However this plays out, I suspect the ruggers are about to find themselves smack in the middle of a charged situation mixing local politics, lawsuits and high emotions on all sides.