Bowing to labor difficulties, problems with outdoor tables and a “desire to get some balance into my life,” Hill restaurateur Tom Glasgow has called a halt, after 28 years, to the weekend breakfast ritual, which brought long lines of hungry people to the sidewalks of the famed old market.

Some read dire portents into Glasgow’s decision, made over the holiday hiatus, to end forever the creation of thousands of blueberry pancakes, which were only one of the reasonably priced delicacies on the unchanging Glasgow menu of fried eggs, grits, French toast, deep-fried fish and potatoes.

Glasgow’s secret, if truth be known, was to reject utterly the common wisdom of today’s highflying restaurateurs, not to mention health sages. Having taken over the lunch counter in the 1970s from Jeanne Boone, who herself had done workingmen’s and -women’s breakfasts for years, young Tom Glasgow and his wife, Nancy, decided that no change was best. And so it seemed, as highbrow restaurant critics, travel writers and hacks of every description seeking to fill their blank pages and screens with revelations of the obscure fell about in transports of delight over Eastern Market’s plain fare.

Local residents flocked and even made a point of bringing out-of-town visitors to Saturday breakfast as a way of showing off the unique “thing about the Eastern Market,” as one shopper put it last week.

The fact that the biggest change of all has now happened points not to flaws in the Glasgow philosophy but partly to the parlous condition of the market itself and the uncertainty of its direction.

“Frankly, I am more concerned about the future of the market now than in any time in the past,” a somber Glasgow said. He pointed to decisions by market Manager Stuart Smith, who, Glasgow said, has allowed weekend crafts vendors to encroach on outdoor dining areas, cutting back the number of tables he can use and leading to stormy confrontations between merchants and Smith and his partner, Bruce Cook.

Another problem has been the huge success of Sunday opening at the market, which led to a six-day workweek for Glasgow’s staff of seven.

But most Market Lunch customers dwelt on the good times past, carefree Saturday mornings when after a stroll or a bike ride to the market’s east façade, friends saw friends in a long line that stretched from the northernmost old wooden door to the plaza half a block away.

Few resented time spent in that line, not even busy officials, impatient members of Congress or Supreme Court justices. The slow procession in itself was a drama and a microcosm, a passage from the busy and pleasant sights of vegetable commerce into the cavernous hall where the late Mary Alice Cole took orders, shouting “stack blue” or “buck blue” (meaning buckwheat pancakes), to the cooking and serving crew. Its best-known members included the now-retired Brenda (“Little General”) Anderson, Glasgow himself and an ever-redeemable alcoholic chef who was regularly fired and then rehired.

It was in that line that most got their local news, of the most recent crisis facing 7th Street, of the gently decaying old market and the Hill itself. And it was in that line that the fierce preservationist spirit to keep the market as it has been — in spite of changers, upscalers, sanitizers, modernizers and the whole Dean & DeLuca crew of supposedly well-intentioned improvers — began.

What next? New hours. Only lunch on Saturday. “And there will be no more blueberry pancakes,” Tom Glasgow said. “If it comes to the worst, we can just start it up again.”

Where are the arts?

City planning almost never makes headlines, even though it is probably the most significant, and surely the most lasting, work of a city administration. For proof, the 1901 McMillan Commission plan, an attempt to organize the Mall and the legislative heart of Washington on Capitol Hill, is the city we see today.

It will take 30 more years to see if the impact of the city’s new version of a mighty, far-reaching plan will bear fruit for the ages. But no less is expected of former city planning czar Andrew Altman, now in charge of the “Anacostia Waterfront Project,” a plan that will completely remake the eastern edge of the city clear from the confluence of the two rivers to the Maryland border.

There’s one striking difference, however, between what happened in 1901 and what’s to happen if Altman takes full advantage of his franchise: While the McMillan Commission was loaded with elite artists, landscapers and architects, Altman’s collaborators are businessmen, community activists and bureaucrats. In 1901, architect Daniel Burnham fought for the beautification of the Mall by advocating the removal of the city’s main railroad station and the building of Union Station. By his side were Frederick Law Olmsted, sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and architect Charles F. McKim.

Altman’s team has not one outstanding artist, not to knock the accomplishments of Anacostia Waterfront Corp. (AWC) board members. The chairman of the AWC board is former Indianapolis Mayor (now Northwest D.C. resident) Stephen Goldsmith. Members include Eric W. Price, former deputy for economic development to Mayor Anthony Williams (D); developer Mitchell Shear, a partner in a firm with a large project now under way on the Southwest waterfront (Waterside Mall); Carl Cole, longtime Anacostia clean-water advocate and community activist; Loretta Tate, former head of the Marshall Heights Community Development Corp.; well-known Hill activist Greg Farmer, and ex-Verizon executive Marie Johns. Williams is expected to propose two more members representing labor and environmental interests.

Not only are there no artists, architects or landscapers in executive positions, the whole job is under a difficult time squeeze because of the demands not of Congress but of Major League Baseball, which wants a land-use plan by April. Can Altman, skilled at compromise and balance, find vision as well?

The fun has only just begun

Why wait for baseball? There’s spectacle aplenty on tap at every session of the new D.C. City Council since the addition of the three new members: Vincent Gray (D-Ward 7), Kwame Brown (D-At large) and, of course, former Mayor Marion Barry (D-Ward 8).

Take just the nearest and most obvious issue, baseball itself. New members will seek to overturn the nervously wrought one-vote majority by which Mayor Anthony Williams (D) gained passage for his bill to finance the half-billion-dollar stadium at 1st and P streets S.E.

All three of the new men oppose the stadium. Barry has pledged to stop it and has even promised to raise protest crowds and make a public spectacle to prevent the spending of so much money on other than human service, housing and job needs.

Meanwhile, Council Chairwoman Linda Cropp (D) has turned a deaf ear to pressure from the newcomers, all of whom ousted longstanding incumbent Democrats, for important committee roles.

All chairmanships are firmly in the hands of incumbents, with the Hill’s Ward 6 council member Sharon Ambrose (D) getting a top committee, Economic Development. Barry, for instance, by Cropp’s recommendation, is to get seats on the Education, Libraries and Recreation Committee, the Finance and Revenue Committee, the Human Services Committee and the Public Works and Environment Committee. But it’s notable that the most important committee, Finance and Revenue, is chaired by Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), no ally of Barry’s; similarly, the former mayor has few allies on his other committees.

The infighting has already begun, with the first shot fired by Ward 5’s Vincent B. Orange Sr., new chairman of the council’s Government Operations Committee. He deftly preempted Barry’s favorite political position — summer jobs for all D.C. youths — by proposing just that.

METRO

• Barry Watch: The old pro, sporting a beard that makes him look like a French intellectual, has been quick to seize the spotlight on the new City Council by insisting he be called “Mayor-Councilman Barry,” under the rubric that a mayor, like a yacht club commodore or an ambassador, never loses the honorific. Chairwoman Linda Cropp, however, points to protocol and will call him “councilman or council member.”...

• Rent rebuff at Eastern Market: When market Manager Bruce Cook sent around a memo asking for a 3 percent rent increase for inside merchants (no increase for outside vendors or North Hall operator John Harrod), the merchants balked, sending in checks for the previous rent. “No long-term lease, no rent hike,” snapped Eastern Market Community Advisory Committee rep Bill Glasgow, whose Union Meat Co. is the market’s largest tenant. ...

• Barry Watch II: Hill residents are chuckling about Barry’s recent mini-interview with the Post’s District weekly, in which the former mayor reveals that the impression he’d most like to change is that “I am a womanizer.” Mayor-Councilman Barry’s favorite book? “The Bible.”

• Quote most deserving of reprinting: “Neighborhoods going through the classic cycle of discovery, coronation, cliché, prestige and non-affordability.” — New York Observer Dec. 20 ...

• More and more residents of tout luxe Penn Quarter are dumping cars, parking tickets and garage-rental fees for the new on-site rental service Zipcar, which rents small cars for $7 per hour, $49 per day, all extra fees included. Check the site at www.zipcar.com/Z2b. ...

• Mark Jan. 15 (this Saturday) on your calendar for a trip on the ship Odyssey — going nowhere. The palatial cruise and dinner ship is the unusual site of the next D.C. Heritage Tour, led by Laura Brower of Cultural Tourism D.C. It will explore the history and development of Southwest Washington with pictures and two hours of presentation, while attendees munch and sip light refreshments. The address is 600 Water St. The time is 10 a.m. It is free. ...

• Parking break: The city is suspending residential street sweeping until March 21, which means that Hill residents and others can leave their cars at curbside on normal sweeping days without apprehension.