I am not from DC and have not been to any of these restaurants, but reading through the OP's comments gives the impression that he didn't understand how to best generally approach ethnic restaurants in the US.

Benito's Place is Honduran. They also (if Yelpers are to be believed) put a bunch of Salvadoran, Mexican, and Mexican-American dishes on the menu, probably because there are not all that many Hondurans in DC, Honduran cuisine is not terribly well-known in the US, and thus they think they need to broaden their menu to attract non-Hondurans to their restaurant if they want to stay open. Unless someone gives you clear and specific reasons to believe otherwise, it's best to STAY FAR AWAY from dishes in those categories, the same way you would typically avoid ordering pad thai at a Vietnamese restaurant or hummus at a Moroccan restaurant, even though those dishes were on the menu.

The OP doesn't say exactly what he ordered, only that this and his visit to Sol featured "tacos, pupusas, burritos and suchlike". Precisely none of these dishes are Honduran. Perhaps the OP also ordered the enchiladas hondurenas that appear to be popular among Yelpers, but if he stuck to only tacos and pupusas, I'm not surprised that he had a negative experience.

Picked up the Comte and Principe prosciutto ($4.99) today at Geary. Saw the Societe roquefort as well but passed after seeing it was slices rather than a wedge of cheese. They had more Three Twins ice cream flavors than I usually see. Also a Slovenian pinot grigio for $5.

The item I was really curious about, though, was the Mr. Beer homebrew kit for $20 (not sure which of their products it was, exactly, but it was one of the ones that comes with extracts and bottles along with the fermenter). Beer nerds have mostly panned this brand...but for this discount (GO claims a list price of $60+) I am wondering if it is worth the price just to have a small fermenter and a very cheap intro to homebrewing.

I scored the Trago silver at Geary today for $10, but was hoping for the reposado, which they said they hadn't had in in at least a week. People bulk bought it and cleaned them out.

It seems like there are more and more interesting European wines on the cheap there, but maybe I'm only now paying attention. The Zio Baffa pinot grigio from Puglia ($3, they have tons) looked gimmicky (there's a spiel on the label about how the American behind the wine was making a surfing documentary in Italy) but I quite liked the bottle I tried. The Pata Negra Verdejo from Rueda ($4) I also did not have high hopes for after finding the Pata Negra vintage tempranillo boring at best, but thought the newer white wine was refreshing and tasty.

The Berkeley/SF/Oakland soda measures don't tax diet soda, so your flailing on that count is a total non sequitur as far as those go.

The Philly measure does tax diet soda. That said, there are some pretty good reasons to discourage diet soda consumption too: http://time.com/3628546/diet-soda-bad...

Per capita (sugary) soda consumption is about 4.4x per capita fruit juice consumption in the US. That is, the ratio of sugary soda consumption to fruit juice consumption is over 80/20. (If you include diet soda the total is even higher, over 85/15 soda/fruit juice.) I'll leave it to you to go hunt for the specific figures to double-check - you could use the analytical rigor.

As for sugary coffee consumption, it can't be all that huge a percentage of total sugary beverage intake since the total of *all* coffee consumed in the US per capita is still only about half the total soda consumed. But feel free to call up Starbucks HQ and ask if you'd like to look smarter than the average lazy Internet expert about it!

There are reams of data showing that sin taxes discourage consumption of the sin in question.

There is not much data that, specifically, soda taxes discourage soda consumption (though the early data so far is heartening), but that is because so few places have, as yet, enacted soda taxes. To whine that there is no effectiveness data specifically for a policy that has never been attempted is tantamount to saying that nobody should ever attempt any new policy, even when similar policies from the past provide good reasons to believe that the new policy will be successful.

One three-second search on PubMed brings up piles of studies about the health effects of the consumption of specifically liquid sugar, including this one from 2006 from a Harvard School of Public Health researcher, Vasanti Malik: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/artic...

Note #1: The study is from 2006. Lots more development in this area has occurred in the last decade, and if anything it further supports Malik's claims here of a probable sugary beverage-obesity link.
Note #2: This is one example I chose as an illustration of the overall sweep of the literature and no, it is NOT the only study anyone has ever done on the links between sugary beverages and chronic health conditions, nor is it an outlier. The money quote:

"Although more research is needed, sufficient evidence exists for public health strategies to discourage consumption of sugary drinks as part of a healthy lifestyle."

Didn't see any seeded watermelons at Geary today. They had the usual seedless for $4 each (less for the mini ones).

Tim Tams (original and chewy caramel), $1
Huge 32oz boxes of Kashi sweet potato flake cereal (contains two bags), $5. Too big for me to buy and get home on foot.
Ron Bermudez 12 year Aniversario, $9/fifth. After checking the Rum Howler's 91-point review I grabbed a bottle, but the review is 5 years old and I am not totally certain he sampled the same juice that GO is selling - lots of distilleries are fudging things with age statements lately. Tried a sip at home. Not bad, a little hotter than I was hoping, but definitely worth the price.
Also picked up the Bellucci 100% Italian extra virgin olive oil for $5/500ml. They also have a Toscana olive oil from the same producer for $6/500ml. Oddly, the "original" marked retail price on the latter oil was significantly lower than the 100% Italian.
Gastronomiche Casa 1870 Milo Squid Ink Spaghetti, $2.50 for 500g. Maybe they've had this awhile; I hadn't noticed the spaghetti before, but GO has definitely been selling other, more unusual pasta shapes from this company for months.
No watermelon-lime paletas in the freezer today. Glad I picked up a pack last week.

But lots of other people might. Policy has effects on **marginal** actors, not every single person equally. Christ.

Also, it's not clear from ML8000's post whether he still has access to free food/drink at work. If not, going from $0/can soda to $1/can soda would be expected to have the same effect (drinking less soda) as a very large tax.

(Even if he does still have free soda at work, that he acquired a soda habit from the soda being free suggests that substantially decreasing the price of soda has very real effects on soda consumption. Yet substantially increasing the price of soda obvs has no effect on soda consumption because...magical unicorns.)

Visitacion Valley:

Haagen Dazs Peppermint Bark ("limited edition"), $1.99
Galbani mozzarella balls, $1.49/ 8oz
Rumiano raw milk monterey jack, $4.99/lb (have not tried this, but I like Rumiano's standard jack)

They still may have the Manila Sky ice creams - I got the last jackfruit cashew pint at $1.49, but I feel like I have seen these go out of stock and back in again in the last several weeks. Despite the obvious stabilizers, I rather liked the flavor of the macapuno; quite intense. The avocado flavor I didn't care for so much.

The Geary store was also selling Ocean Spray jellied cranberry sauce at $0.16 a can. Same item was $0.25 at Vis. Valley today. Geary also had a wine I quite liked for the price, the Finca Valdemoya tempranillo rosado from Castilla and Leon. Nothing that special, but a nice, dry and interesting rose wine for $4 (the one review I found online suggested it was "almost bitter", and I don't disagree - but bitter in a good way). Far better than the sticky and awful Flower Press California rose they were selling for $3. Couldn't find the Valdemoya at Vis. Valley.

I picked up the artichoke dip at the Geary location. To me it's virtually identical to the Passport artichoke bruschetta or the TJ's artichoke antipasto, at a lower price.

Also bought the Dara blackcurrant jam, made in Poland for a Danish company. They had a lower-priced blackcurrant jam by a brand that looked similar, but I passed after scrutinizing the label and noticing that unlike the Dara it had sugar, not blackcurrants, listed as the first ingredient.

Spotted the Manila Sky tart green mango and cashew-jackfruit Filipino ice cream. Wanted to try the tart green mango even though IIRC both flavors contained a bunch of stabilizers, but I was too far from home to risk the ice melting. When I got back to GO in a car on Sunday and looked for it, both flavors were gone.