Have Guitar, Will Sing Songs About Urban Planning

Melanie Hammet jokes from the microphone about the many other potentially sexy subjects she could sing about. Maybe she’ll devote her next album to insomnia. Or vegetables. Or asphalt! Everyone in the audience laughs in that way that nerds do when they’re forced to admit most of the world finds their passion really boring (and we count ourselves among said nerds).

Hammet’s audience at a bar and restaurant in Northwest Washington, D.C. was made up of architects and urban planners, here for a regular happy hour with the local chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism. Most of these people had never before heard of anyone like Hammet: a sassy elected official/singer-songwriter who strums the guitar to songs about zoning ordinances and land use.