Before it throws support to a new, state-of-the-art recreation center in Glover Park—the first in Ward 3 in over five years—the local neighborhood advisory commission wants one burning question answered: Will there be basketball? The group aired its apparent bias against, er, tall people in a list of 121 queries posted in early January on its Web site, four of which were hoops-related. “Will [the Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR)] sign an agreement…to limit adult-league basketball?” the commission wondered. It then segued into this follow-up: “Will DPR bus children to [the center] for after school programs?” In response, a couple of neighborhood residents pointed to racial motives; one asked on an Internet group, “What kind of questions are those?? Obvious subtext: basketball = black people and we don’t want either.” The Glover Park pols deny any prejudice. “We want to know about the programming more for the sake of our capacity issues,” says commissioner Amy Bowman, noting that a crowded court means few empty parking spaces. Says commissioner Tamela Gordon: “We probably should’ve asked an indoor-soccer question, too.”

—John Metcalfe