Life & Style | Elevator briefly breaks down at reopened Washington Monument

The newly upgraded elevator at the Washington Monument stopped working just days after reopening to the public following a three-year renovation project.

The National Park Service says there was a “brief interruption in service” for about an hour Saturday.

Spokesman Mike Litterst said Parks Service staffers resolved the issue and visitors who were at the top of the 555-foot stone obelisk were able to return to the ground floor using the elevator.

First lady Melania Trump cut the ribbon Thursday morning as the monument opened to the public for first time since September 2016. It had been closed to replace the elevator and upgrade security systems.

Litterst apologized to visitors for the inconvenience. He said tours were running on schedule later Saturday afternoon.

Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Phoenix home up for auction

An Arizona home that architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed during the last year of his life is going on the auction block next month.

The Norman Lykes House in Phoenix, the last residential property Wright worked on, will be up for bid on Oct. 16, according to Heritage Auctions. The home has been on and off the market over the last few years and was last listed at around $2.7 million.

There will be no minimum starting bid required, the auction house said in a news release.

Wright designed the home, made of concrete blocks and nicknamed the “Circular Sun House,” before his death in April 1959 at age 91.

The 3,095-square-foot (288-square-meter) property in the city’s Biltmore neighborhood has three bedrooms, three baths and is nestled on the edge of a mountain preserve. The buyer would also get all the original mid-century modern furnishings.

Beer flows as overcrowded Oktoberfest opens in Munich

The first keg was tapped, and the beer started flowing as the 186th Oktoberfest got underway Saturday in the southern German city of Munich.

Mayor Dieter Reiter inserted the tap in the first keg with two blows of a hammer and the cry of “O’zapt is” — “it’s tapped.” As tradition demands, he handed the first mug to Bavarian governor Markus Soeder.

Even before the waitresses started bringing the one-liter (two-pint) beer mugs to customers at noon, the festival grounds were so overcrowded that security guards allowed entry only for people with reservations in one of the beer tents.

Revelers — many women in colorful dirndl dresses and men in traditional Bavarian lederhosen — started lining up in front of the gates before dawn to get inside.

Shortly after 9 a.m., the festival’s organizers said the party could begin. The announcement came in German, English and Bavarian — a German dialect so thick and heavy with accent and local vernacular that even many native German speakers from other parts of the country have trouble understanding it.