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Okay, could you tell me your name and your relationship to Petworth? All right, my name is Chris Riley and my relationship to Petworth, my significant other, other half owner of Petworth Cigars. I serve as general manager and Bill is our daytime employee. Glad to be here with him today, and share in this particular moment. So, thank you. Could you tell us about some memorable celebrations you've had in Petworth? Well, just recently and one of probably the most memorable is our day of opening. We were supposed to open on March of last year. Of course, we know the pandemic happened on last year. And so we had to belay that and we were waiting around waiting around for the district to lift restrictions, which never happened. And so in November of 2020, we took a chance—myself, a couple faithful customers came in and watched the games because we were all set up. We were in the middle of NFL football and one of the guys said, "You know, why don't y'all just go ahead and open up now? Whoever comes comes, whoever doesn't doesn't." So on November 12 of 2020 we opened the doors for the first time and during that time there was no looking back. During that time, November 12th, we probably had about three to four hundred people pass through the doors on our first day. So that was a great day for us.

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And so, I think you recently had a block party? Yes, we did. So, we had the first official, DC Smoke in the District of Columbia. And during that time, we worked with the city. We worked with the ANC, we work with the Ward 4 Committee, the friends of Petworth, to get and work on getting the block shut down. We did it for that corner to about where the restaurant is on the end of the street. And we had about a celebration of about 300-350 people come through. By far one of our biggest days, netted us about fifteen thousand dollars for that day in revenue. So it was a great day. It was enjoyable. We had a band. We had a deejay. We had no drama—smoking good cigars, libations. And it was great for the Petworth area. I did have a couple customers come in, not even customers, but residents of Petworth and friends of Petworth come in and said how great the event was for them. All right, looking back on your earliest days in Petworth, how would you say celebrations in Petworth have changed from that moment to the present? I think that in the earlier days, we really—looking at one of the first events that I came to, which was a couple years ago. It was great. It was joyous. It was a great occasion. Now, I think some things have changed in terms of the pandemic, how, you know, looking forward to getting back to the norm of celebrating Petworth as we had used to in the past. So I really, I think it has yet to be seen the greatness that the Petworth area is coming about. The dynamics of what people are doing and the businesses that are opening up in Petworth. So I think we have greater things to come for our future.

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And that was my last question. You tell me like, let's say in the future, 10 years from now: what would you like to see the state of celebrating Petworth would be like? I would like to get back to probably the history and the nostalgia of what the Petworth area meant to not just the newer residents, but the older residents that was here. Petworth certainly has changed for the better and for the good. And so I think we have gotten away from the history of this Petworth area. We're very—it has a lot of history. If I had to do this all over again, there was some pictures that I saw from Petworth back in the day. I probably would have just made it a nostalgia, since we did name this Petworth Cigars. It was just the only name that we wanted to come up with really and looking at my last name, Riley, and the significance of the Petworth area and the gentleman that had the history of Petworth. We share kind of the same [unintelligible]. So I think that we could go back to looking at the history and how Petworth started.