Hear Us Out
Longtime readers of ALXtra know that we strive to be practical here in our newsroom blogroom newsletter lair. We work hard to engage with the substantive issues that Alexandria is grappling with and discuss the sort of policy and politics outcomes that are actually reasonable and achievable. We’ve pointed out hyperbole and scaremongering when we’ve seen them and tried to ground discussion of local issues in the forces that truly shape our city, like the annual operating budget and the long range capital improvement program. That’s right: staid practicality and polite decorum is unquestionably the brand for which we are known and celebrated [Editor’s note: why are you making that face?].
But on occasion, you have to stop being practical. You need to take some big swings and think some wild thoughts. Progress is made when we push boundaries and explore ideas that may ultimately prove to be unrealistic, as the very exercise of analyzing and working through whether a Big Idea™ is workable can illuminate underlying challenges and barriers that need to be resolved. The act of aiming high forces us to consider trade-offs and consequences, and in so doing helps us articulate and define what it is we actually value; in other words the process itself can move us closer to the outcomes we want and need, regardless of whether the idea itself proves viable.
With that in mind, here’s a few ideas for Alexandria that we think are worth taking a look at. Are they insane? Yes, yes they are. Are they exciting? We think so! Do most of them immediately run into problems with the Dillon Rule or other things that would quickly disqualify them? Yeah, probably! Like we said, practical ideas these most definitely are not—but with a new council about to be elected in a week and a half, what better time to let our freak flag flap in the wind just a little.
First up, Alexandria should study how to implement congestion pricing on the Route 1 corridor from the Fairfax County line to the Arlington County line. Traffic volume on this corridor is consistently pointed to as an issue worth solving, so why not do it in a way that brings in much-needed revenue? Plate reader and transponder technology has improved to the point that it’s possible to focus the financial impact where we are most interested (cut-through traffic) and reduce the impact on residents driving between neighborhoods within the city. This would also have the benefit of nudging people along this corridor into taking shorter trips by bike or DASH, and reduce pollution from vehicles in an area that is heavily residential. Finally (and most importantly) actually implementing congestion pricing is our chance to beat New York City at something other than who has the most pizzerias.
Next, the city should fund a pilot program of a regional “green bank” that can help get projects off the ground or provide gap financing, conditioning eligibility for that financing on projects agreeing to certain green building goals. The city has recently started to use the bonding authority of the Industrial Development Authority (IDA) more creatively, and funding an effort like this could be one such open-minded use. An idea like this would also be a revenue raiser as increased project starts would grow the tax base, and a sound lending strategy would deliver returns over time. Plus, we know everyone in Alexandria loves banks! Give the people another bank!
Here’s one: we shouldn’t move the city government back into City Hall after the renovation [Editor’s note: dude… it’s like you want George Washington to haunt us]. Seriously though, this project is going to cost a ton of money—why not put that money toward retrofitting the building to be a mix of museum and historical programming space, boutique hotel rooms, conference and meeting rooms, and facilities that support hosting indoor and outdoor events. We already have a meaningful city government presence at the Del Pepper Center, and the residential center of gravity in Alexandria continues to shift westward over time. Let’s concentrate our government presence all in one place on the West End and make the signature building in the heart of our tourist district actually serve the needs of that district. And yes, if you’ve been keeping score at home, much like the first two ideas this would also bring in revenue.
Ok, how about the city exploring acquiring and operating our own electric utility [Editor’s note: *mind exploding sound*]? Such an attempt—known as municipalization, for the nerds in the audience—would allow the city more direct control over the sources of our electricity. The city has justifiably ambitious climate goals, and to achieve them we have to start by quantifying the amount of carbon-free electricity we need to meet those goals; in particular, our goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 50% by 2030 (because 70% of building-related emissions in the city stem from electricity). If Dominion is unable or unwilling to provide us sufficient carbon-free electricity to reach our goals, we should study what more drastic action would look like. Boulder famously attempted this beginning back in 2010 and, uh, was not able to make it work [Editor’s note: look we clearly said this list of ideas was far-fetched] but we still think something this bold is worth looking at.
Oh! What if we build a basketball and hockey arena women’s soccer stadium in Potomac Yard! We swear we’re not just trolling with this—it honestly checks a lot of boxes. All of the post-arena dialogue about Potomac Yard admitted that it’s perfect for an entertainment anchor. The Spirit are an awesome team with a genuinely ambitious and visionary owner, but currently share a home venue with a team that can’t make the fucking MLS playoffs in a different league. And our city has built a deep and meaningful youth soccer cult *coughs* sorry, culture that routinely brings visitors to town from across the region and beyond. A project like this could bring a signature identity and lead to more opportunities to build on the huge business soccer represents.
So there you have it—a perfectly noncontroversial, practical, and achievable agenda for our next city council. We’re sure they can have this all wrapped up by their first summer recess. And while we eagerly await our green bank financed women’s soccer stadium in Potomac Yard powered by public energy and accessed by a congestion-free Route 1, tell us in the comments what insane aspirational ideas you have for Alexandria.
Things You May Have Missed Because You Have a Life
The Alexandria Film Festival is coming up on November 7-10, and it includes a film titled Pickleball Wars which reliable sources tell us is not just home video of Jesse getting thrashed at the Simpson courts by a group of 65 year old women. Make sure to also check out Pennies featuring local resident and friend of the newsletter Laura Engel (and her kids!) in the cast.
The city is hosting a cool pop-up event at the skatepark on Duke Street tomorrow with trick lessons, snacks, and a mobile art lab. They’ll also be taking input on potential improvements to the park, like *squinting at blueprint* installing a light pole in the middle of one of the ramps? That doesn’t sound right. The city would never do something like that!
The superlatives continue to roll in for our fair town, as we were recently named the best place in Virginia for antiquing. This is honestly a weird way to describe shoplifting from Gadsby’s Tavern but hey, we’ll take it!
Local Discourse Power Rankings
Off the Veep End (Last week: 3). Well folks, this is the last issue in which we can refer to local overstuffed cushion enthusiast JD Vance as a vice presidential candidate. After November 5 he’ll either be the VP-elect [shuddering, vomiting, throwing selves into traffic] or just another Del Ray dad with a minivan, a dog, a beard, and strong opinions about how many people should be allowed to live in his
countryneighborhood. Let’s all enjoy our last days in this liminal state by seeking respite from the anxiety and the polls in a calm and dignified manner, by which we mean chalking “Trump’s second-favorite dipshit” on the concrete barrier outside his house. And voting, obviously! If you haven’t hit the polls yet, what are you waiting for?? About 23,000 people have voted early in Alexandria (19.7% of registered voters), which we can’t help but notice is less than Arlington’s current early vote turnout of 20.9%. Are we really going to let those barbarians who allow campaign signs in the public right-of-way show us up like that? That’s unacceptable Alexandria, let’s get the fuck out there and fill in those ballot bubbles.Mind Your BIDness (Last week: NR). For the third time in recent years, a proposed business improvement district in Old Town has failed to garner the necessary support to move ahead. And listen, neither of us owns a business in Old Town so we’re not going to get into the substance of the arguments for or against here. We mostly just want to pause and appreciate how our special snowflake of a city has taken an incredibly commonplace organizational structure and managed to turn it into a massive years-long controversy. That’s peak performance baby. That’s pure uncut medicinal grade ALX.
Is Our Children Learning (Last week: 2). ACPS recently found itself in the enviable position of trading salvos in the local press with their own student journalists following their coverage of the ongoing goat rodeo that is ACPS student transportation. Look–we’re the last people to sit here and claim we have any sort of refined skill when it comes to communicating (have you seen our word counts) but even we know that when faced with negative press expertly written by your own students, the best response is likely not to publish a statement that says “those kids are wrong and they’re not doing what they say they’re doing” followed by “that thing they’re definitely wrong about and not doing, we’re going to make some changes so they can’t do it anymore.” We get it ACPS: you’re not mad, please don’t put it in the newspaper that you got mad.
Innies vs. Onnies (Last week: NR). It has recently been brought to our attention that prevalent in the standard city lexicon is the convention that you live in Old Town, and you live in Del Ray, and you live in Rosemont, but you live on the West End. To which we say, what?? Has this always been the case? You don’t live in the West End, you live on the West End?? Is this the “summering” of Alexandria, one of those weird verb/noun transmutation things but with a preposition [Editor’s note: Jesse stop making up grammar shit, you’re out of your depth]. How deep does this affliction go? Do you live on Seminary Hill? Do you live on the Eisenhower Valley? Do we live in the internet? Don’t answer that. Anyway, this is madness we tell you, madness.
You Idiots Are Doing This Road Wrong (Last week: 4). Or more accurately, these roads. So many roads! They’re all being done wrong, and it’s getting impossible to keep up. Last week the city held an open house to get feedback on the Pickett Street redesign, and while the discussion was medium-spicy (in other words, a 4 on the Bollywood Masala 1-30 heat scale) the real action was over at City Hall on Saturday when Council voted to approve the proposed Eisenhower/Van Dorn interchange overhaul. During the debate, we learned some troubling facts, primarily that if we put a bike lane on Eisenhower no apartment buildings will be constructed nearby. This makes sense because when you make it easier for people to get to a place they stop going there. We guess this means grocery stores and restaurants near the bike lanes will also close? And while we’re trading rumors we’re also hearing that the bike lanes will scare away migratory birds and prolong the regional drought. Sorry but we can’t share our sources of information, it’s confidential. Just trust us when we say that the bike lanes will cause the city’s power and internet to stop working. We may not have any basis for these assertions but when civilization collapses and we’re all living in a live-action reenactment of The Road at least we’ll know who to blame!
Alexandria’s Hottest Club Is… Haunted Buildings
Our city is famously up its own ass about its history, and it’s true that a lot of great and important things have happened here. The Fairfax Resolves were signed at our courthouse, Old Town was established as America’s third-ever historic district, a Taco Bell franchise was canceled because people were worried it wouldn’t have forks… truly, a rich and storied heritage in which we can all take pride. But since Halloween is next week, we figured we’d highlight the darker side of our past, the history so spooky that not even the local ghosts will leave us the fuck alone about it.
It’s common knowledge that our city is a hotbed of paranormal activity. There are a few theories as to why that is. The simplest and most cynical is that Alexandria attracts a lot of tourists, and where there are tourists there are ghost tours (because nothing says “we’re on vacation” like walking around in the dark thinking about people who died violently). But here at ALXtra we like to think it’s more than that. This city has lived through 275 years and several wars. Three-ish centuries is ample opportunity to pick up a stray poltergeist or two, especially given that for much of that time we were swimming in bad juju because our local economy was based on [FILE NOT FOUND].
Whatever the reason, the extremely reputable source USGhostAdventures.com says that Alexandria has the highest concentration of haunted buildings in all of Virginia. According to that website, “Alexandria is a town where unrighteous pacts were made, innocent blood was spilled, and souls were traded with evil under every turn of the moon,” which could either explain our large ghost population or simply indicate that the person running the site has attended at least one local civic association meeting.
One of our most notorious haunted locales is the former Colross Plantation located at 1111 Oronoco Street, now The Henry condo building. We know what you’re thinking—“plantation” is right there in the name, this is gonna be bad. You’re correct! While a lot of people died tragically at this location over the years, the ghost that still frequents the building today is a child who was crushed by a chicken coop in the mid-1800s. This event is directly responsible for the city adopting its current “no backyard chickens” policy [Editor’s note: please do not fact check this]. The mansion that was located on the site when this tragedy occurred was later hit by a tornado and moved to New Jersey. It is impossible to say which of those two events was worse. Are we going to mention that this deeply haunted location is Jesse’s old condo building? No, no we are not. Does it explain so much about him? Yes, yes it does.
Another spooky spot is 210 Prince Street, a townhouse that was once owned by a colonial militia member who was executed by the British for spying. Legend has it that he’s haunted the property ever since, mainly for the purpose of antagonizing any British people who happen to go inside. In the 1930s he’s said to have scared off an English woman who wanted to buy the house by exerting a chilling, malicious presence until she went away. Perhaps unsurprisingly to readers of this newsletter, we love a ghost who’s a petty bitch.
In addition to all these haunted residences, did you know that the City Hall clock tower is also haunted? By a DEVIL BAT??? This is not a euphemism for any former elected officials lingering about the premises, this is like… an actual bat. That’s a devil. And also a ghost. According to local folklore, the most famous sighting of this phantom creature occurred about 50 or 60 years ago when a shopkeeper on King Street, watching a group of rabblerousers threaten to vandalize City Hall, called on the devil bat to save the building. He said that the devil bat appeared and attacked the crowd until they scampered away. After they dispersed the only thing left where the devil bat should have been was a dead skunk. The shopkeeper claimed this proved the devil bat existed and retained the power to transform into a skunk to protect its home. This story is so funny that no additional jokes are required.
Of course, we all know about the legend of the Female Stranger—the mystery woman who died in one of the rooms above Gadsby’s Tavern, helping it become famous as something other than the place where James Monroe once choked on a peanut [Editor’s note: *JD Vance voice* the rules were you guys weren’t going to fact check!!]. You know you’ve really made it as a historical dead person when there’s a beer named after your outfit. And the Zebra has reported on spirits that haunt the spaces currently occupied by Vermilion and Thompson Italian. We’re not exactly experts on incorporeal beings but we are experts on Old Town’s fine dining options, and in that vein… has anybody tried giving them some pasta and a glass of Montepulciano? If we were trapped in a liminal spectral state that’s probably what we would want, just saying.
What ALX locations do you plan on haunting in the afterlife? Tell us in the comments!
Overheard in ALX
From the ALXnow coverage of a bookstore opening:
“If you crave that sensual touch of trailing your fingers softly down the spine of a new book — gasping in the pleasure of opening a new novel for the first time — there’s a new romance-focused bookstore coming to Old Town just for you.”
Finally! A local place to get reading material that makes you horny aside from just the mayor’s monthly newsletter!
We Get Letters
A reader writes in about judge dread:
Right now, the Alexandria Bar Association is considering applications for two judicial vacancies in our local courts, and it sort of blows my mind that no one talks about this outside of the courthouse or the local legal community.
We have a total of seven judges in Alexandria, so two vacancies at the same time is a significant development. The two current openings are on the Juvenile & Domestic Relations Bench, and the Circuit Court. That means we’ll be getting a new judge who deals with our youth in need of services, foster care, or who have been victims and offenders, and all our family offenses; as well as a new Circuit Court judge who will hear our murder trials, preside over our divorces, adoptions, and land use challenges (spurious or otherwise).
Although these vacancies come up routinely, there's incredibly little oversight of the replacement decisions. Historically, the bar association–who holds the interviews and marshalls the applications over to the General Assembly delegation–held great sway over the candidate choice (can’t build a Byrd Machine without a way to turn the gears if you know what I mean). This has typically meant that if a candidate won the bar vote, they (or let’s be honest, for a long time, he) would be the choice for the seat. However, there isn't really that same correlation anymore–it's recently become rare for the Bar’s endorsee (or highest vote-earner) to be picked by the General Assembly. The Delegation decides who will be the pick, and there’s little to no clarity or accountability about the choice itself.
Sometimes they nail it and get someone with exceptional temperament and skill, sometimes they whiff it–and then we're stuck for 6-8 years with someone who may not be the best choice for the job.
The New York Times is investigating how these types of judicial selections are made, with an angle on the fact that many legislators voting on judicial appointments and reappointments practice law before the very same judges when they’re out of session. Anyway… seems like something we should all care about a little more than we currently do.
As we’ve previously established one of us is a lawyer [Editor’s note: it’s not Jesse] and one of us spends a lot of time engaging with questions around federal judicial advocacy [Editor’s note: it’s also not Jesse] so it hits home to see this sort of thing come up in a local context. This is a great reminder to pay attention to this process and hold our state legislators accountable for making good choices here in Alexandria. We can’t afford to end up with our own Clarence Thomas, do you guys even know how expensive luxury RVs have gotten lately?
One Awesome Thing in ALX
Something we love about Alexandria is that the people who live here care about the environment. Like, they really care… possibly bordering on an excessive amount of caring? A “seeing a tree cut down is a valid reason to call 911” amount. The point is, we fucking LOVE THE EARTH!!! Also, another thing we appreciate is that our city provides all sorts of opportunities for residents to plug in, engage, and learn how our local government works. So imagine how much we love a thing that combines both of those other two things!
The Eco-City Academy is an annual city program that gives people a chance to learn about Alexandria’s environmental sustainability efforts and become leaders in promoting a greener future for the community. Note: it’s important not to confuse the Eco-City program (long e) with Echo City (short e), which according to Wikipedia is a “British sound sculpture and music project” founded in London in 1983. If you’re not sure what that means, neither are we! But it definitely isn’t something that can empower you to collaboratively address environmental challenges.
You should seriously consider participating in the Eco-City Academy if the extent of your personal sustainability journey has been limited to drinking at Virginia’s 2014 Green Brewery of the Year (Port City). The program runs for six Thursday evenings starting in January, and anybody age 17 and up can apply. If learning about hot topics like green buildings, transportation emissions, and water resource protections isn’t incentive enough to sign up, you also get free dinner at the meetings! [Jesse and Becky race to the application website despite not having capacity to take on any additional civic duties]. So mark your calendars and prepare to convince the program coordinators that you have a “willingness to learn”–the deadline to apply is November 8!
You can follow Becky @beckyhammer.bsky.social and Jesse @oconnell.bsky.social on Bluesky, or you can e-mail us anytime at alxtranewsletter@gmail.com.
ALXtra is a free-to-read newsletter about current events in Alexandria, Virginia. Subscribe to get it delivered directly to your inbox. Paid subscriptions give you access to the comments. Revenue from subscriptions gets used in the following ways: 1) a third goes into a charity fund, and every time that fund hits $500 we’ll make a donation to a local charity in the name of ALXtra’s readers and we’ll feature and write about that organization; 2) another third of the money will go toward investments in the newsletter; and 3) the final third of the money goes toward self-care for your two intrepid authors.