If You Can Keep It

Greetings, gentle readers, from a place somewhere between depression and acceptance on our speedrun through the stages of grief for American moral leadership. We’ve read all the takes (it was the price of eggs, unless it was someone whispering the word “Latinx” loud enough for Bret Stephens to hear that one time) and we’ve read all the post-mortems (it was saying “weird” too much, unless it was saying “threat to democracy” too much) and we’ve eyed up the race for DNC chair like dope-sick junkies looking for a fix (the Parks and Rec character running Wisconsin vs. The Wire character that used to be in charge of Maryland vs. the brother of the Entourage character pretty artfully sums up the current state of affairs).

One thing that has particularly lingered with us these last two weeks is the blunt reminder that America, generally speaking, does not typically care for the people tasked with running it. “Throw the bums out” lacks the fusty Latin propriety of “E Pluribus Unum” but we should probably swap it onto the money anyway since it more accurately captures the default national mood. Seriously though, why are Americans perpetually dissatisfied with those we tap to govern on our behalf? Both of us obviously understand that there are entire social science disciplines that wrestle with the question “what does good governance look like” so we’re not unpacking anything revelatory here… but this is what’s on our mind right now all the same.

Americans to our national leaders every time there’s an election.

It goes without saying there’s not some “one weird trick to get the polity to love you!” but surely distance from the impact of governance matters. People distrust and dislike our federal leaders because they feel removed from everyday concerns, and the impacts of their decisions wind up too diffuse. The current administration enacted consequential new policies on labor protections, consumer welfare, health care costs, and climate progress and most people just… didn’t notice. That—to be blunt—really fucking sucks! If deliverism (the word used by people who listen to an excessive number of political podcasts describing this style of governing) doesn’t yield a durable political coalition, where does that leave us, exactly.

It leaves us, in part, here in Alexandria [Editor’s note: oh thank GOD, I thought maybe this wasn’t a local newsletter anymore]. If distance from governance is part of the malaise, let’s shrink that distance. Let’s look away from the inchoate Muskian oligarchy oozing into focus in a glit-flecked ballroom in the Florida swamps and dedicate ourselves to governance close to home. We—and communities like us—have to pick up the mantle of moral governance so callously discarded by the cavalcade of degenerates and hacks currently Instagram DMing their CVs to whichever venture capital bro winds up running the Office of Presidential Personnel. We have to show that these ideas work, that genuine public service matters, and that we can still, even here on the doorstep of kakistocracy, steward the common welfare. 

It starts with governing proactively, and standing up from the perpetual defensive crouch that progressive leaders (even those here in Alexandria) too often put themselves in. Our local election results indicated that people overwhelmingly [Editor’s note: OVERWHELMINGLY] want certain things: things like abundant housing, roads safe for bikes and pedestrians, investments in childcare, and a welcoming and inclusive community. Given the likely diminishment of federal support as a Cabinet of sex pests and lesser goons Chesterton’s Fence their way across the administrative state, it’s more important than ever to actually deliver those outcomes at the local level. And we can do that while listening to concerns and engaging in genuine dialogue, and adjusting where necessary.

Or as Ted here might put it, ain’t nothin’ to it but to do it.

We must also govern locally in a manner that lets data and evidence play a large role in decision making, especially as these things take a backseat nationally. Showing process rigor, modeling possible outcomes, and giving weight to professional expertise has to be table-stakes here in Alexandria. Personal experience and anecdotal detail can help to shape an overall dialogue, but they cannot or should not be given the full weight of assessing the greatest good for the greatest number of residents. 

Most importantly, we can model here in Alexandria that good governance is fundamentally about making hard choices with limited resources, and then explaining to people why. We do not have endless funds—no government does, federal, state, or local. Governing is ultimately an exercise in prioritization and maximizing the impact of the budget that you have to work with. We should not pretend otherwise. We cannot mislead people by claiming that we can do it all. Our local elected leaders owe it to those that put them in these roles to focus on the community’s greatest needs and champion those most vulnerable, even when it is hard to do so.

No one—especially not us—is saying that any of this is easy. It’s clear how challenging the months and years ahead will be. Yet even while forces beyond our control will shape much of what is to come, we can control how we carry ourselves here in Alexandria. We can control how we deliver a standard of living and a promise of good governance here in Alexandria. We cannot yet say if it will be enough, but we know for certain that here in Alexandria, we will get caught trying.

Things You May Have Missed Because You Have a Life 

• Alexandria will kick off the holidays with the official tree lighting ceremony tomorrow night, an event which will also serve as the conclusion to the city’s ALX275 celebration. Looking back on the last twelve months, we can definitively say that this will go down in the history books as one of the city’s 275 best years. Yessiree, Alexandria has been around for a long time now, and this year sure was part of that time.

• The brand-new romance bookstore on St. Asaph Street closed after only three days in business due to a fire that damaged their building and merchandise. The owner has started a GoFundMe campaign to help the shop reopen, and we encourage everyone to donate generously so that Jesse’s local access to elf smut can be restored as soon as possible.

• The city is launching a new program to recognize Alexandrians who are making their homes more sustainable. Homeowners, renters, and condo dwellers can qualify by taking actions such as conducting a home energy audit, installing LED lighting, logging off, and touching grass.

• Founding Farmers, whose original Foggy Bottom location is one of the few restaurants ever to receive zero stars from Washington Post critic Tom Sietsema, has gotten permission to build a sidewalk patio at its forthcoming Oakville Triangle outpost so that diners can enjoy their meals alongside Route 1 traffic. We don’t typically ascribe supernatural explanations to the passage of land use ordinances but this seems suspiciously like a situation in which someone said “I wish Alexandria’s dining scene was more like DC’s” while holding a cursed monkey’s paw.

Local Discourse Power Rankings

1. It’s Giving… Thanks (Last week: NR). This fall has been, shall we say, a trying time, and people are ready for a fucking break [Editor’s note: it’s us, we’re “people”]. Every conversation we’ve had over the last week has inevitably turned to the question of what everyone’s doing for the holiday and where/how/with whom they’re planning to get shitfaced enough to forget the events of the last month unwind. Unfortunately it can sometimes be hard to relax on Thanksgiving due to travel stress, relatives with diametrically opposed political views, and/or the turkey trot, which you may have heard is FIVE MILES LONG. But one thing that always helps us find a bit of peace and calm, basic bitches that we are, is to honor the spirit of the holiday and take a minute to acknowledge our gratitude for the truly good things in our lives. For example: bourbon. The color all the maple trees in our neighborhood turned in October. Free DASH bus. Our dumb dogs who have no idea what’s going on in the world and are just happily vibing without a single thought in their brains, reminding us that a better way of life is possible. The library book sale. The list is long, but even still it would not be complete without you, dear readers. We’re thankful for all of you [Editor’s note: but especially our paid subscribers]. Happy Thanksgiving, Alexandria!

2. Is Our Children Learning (Last week: 3). [Ominous music, movie trailer narrator voice] In a city where parents thought it couldn’t happen again… [On screen, a woman gasps as she reads an alert on her phone. Her coffee cup falls to the ground in slow motion.] One school survived the battle against lead paint. But just when it seemed safe to send the kids back… [Cut to: a custodian opening a supply closet at Mt. Vernon Community School. A puff of green spores bursts out. He screams.] From the creators of Lead-ageddon comes a new environmental crisis… [A splotchy ceiling tile crashes to the floor during a parent-teacher conference.] This time… it’s mold. [Cut to kids staring at a fuzzy patch of wall fungus shaped like the state of Virginia. A child dramatically whispers, “It’s spreading.”] Only in theaters this fall, it’s BIOHAZARD 2: MOLD SCHOOL. Rated P for ParentSquare. [Text on screen explodes in green dust].

3. Unnecessarily Aggressive Natural Phenomena (Last week: NR). Folks, keep a close eye on your dogs and illegal backyard chickens because the city has issued yet another rabid raccoon alert, the third in less than a month. It’s now incumbent on all of us to be vigilant and keep an eye out for wildlife behaving erratically. Local news coverage says that “infected animals can display aggression, fearlessness, or extreme lethargy” or in other words, the behavior and demeanor of a Maryland driver. While we’re not exactly thrilled with this turn of events there is a silver lining, which is that we still have two months to get our rabies vaccines before RFK Jr. makes them illegal for causing seasonal affective disorder or some shit. Or maybe he tries to eat the raccoons, honestly it’s all in play. What a time to be alive.

4. I Saw the Sign (Last week: NR). As Don Draper once taught us, in Greek nostalgia literally means “the pain from an old wound.” And indeed we feel a twinge in our hearts far more powerful than memory alone as we return each day to Alexandria on Rt.1, and see the Steve Peterson for Mayor sign [Editor’s note: literally had to google to confirm it was actually this and not Pete Steverson] at the Porsche dealership in Arlington. Why is that sign still there?? Did Ol’ Steve take out a 10 year ground lease on that patch of bushes? Was he such a dedicated Porsche dealership customer that the general manager is keeping the sign up in memoriam? Do the maintenance guys and car jockeys working there think the sign is like, official county property and they can’t remove it? Part of us hopes the heat death of the universe will come and go but that sign will still remain on that corner, an enduring monument to one man’s confusingly futile run for an office he didn’t understand, while advertising his candidacy to a constituency that couldn’t vote for him to begin with. In a way the lonely vigil of the last Steve Peterson for Mayor sign is a fitting parable of our times, a relic of a bygone election unsure of why it is still there, but uncertain where to go next.

5. You Idiots Are Doing This Road Wrong (Last week: NR). Mixed results this month in the war on cars campaign to mildly inconvenience cars in the name of safety, as one road redesign project was approved (South Pickett Street) while another got pared back (the eastern portion of the Duke Street in Motion plan). The latter was a frustrating outcome, but we must all remember that as Council giveth multimodal transportation options, so Council taketh away. Or in other words, while progress may be a bicycle wobbling forward along a sharrow’d lane toward a safer future, it also occasionally hits a pothole, gets a flat tire, and decides, “Eh, maybe not today.” In happier news regarding our city’s thoroughfares, Council also approved a pilot six-week closure of the 200 block of King Street starting today and… people absolutely fucking love it?? With the exception of that one troll who can find a reason to leave a negative comment on any ALXnow article regardless of subject matter, the reaction to this move has been overwhelmingly positive. It just goes to show that sometimes you just have to give the people what they want: the ability to cross the street from one shoe store to another location of the same shoe store without having to look both ways first.

Alexandria’s Hottest Club Is… Market Square

Many people over the years have referred to Market Square as the “beating heart” of Alexandria. They’re wrong of course; the beating heart of Alexandria is the Yates Pizza Palace Coming Soon sign. Nonetheless, Market Square is a very important location in our city. Not only is it adjacent to our seat of local government, it’s also a major tourist attraction in its own right, celebrated for such features as “nation’s oldest farmers market,” “weirdly proportioned fountain,” “city’s second-best Christmas tree,” and “flags.” Almost everyone passes through it for some reason or another–to buy Swiss chard and kimchi, to attend a candlelight vigil on the night of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, or just to get from point A to point B. It’s earned hundreds of positive reviews on Tripadvisor as a great place to relax and people-watch despite everyone generally agreeing that it’s too hot in summer, too cold in winter, “not very interesting,” and “just a plaza.” It even managed to earn four stars from a Yelp reviewer in 2012 despite the fact that when he brought a woman there on a date she peed in the landscaping bordering N. Royal Street. The point is, Market Square is a special place where our community can come together and exercise our bodily functions in public celebrate occasions large and small.

Giving a whole new meaning to the phrase “water feature.”

But did you know that the city is planning to renovate the square and is currently taking input on various design options? It’s possible you didn’t hear about this because local officials unconscionably failed to send out a mailer about it, but this project is really important! It’s going to reshape one of our most prominent public spaces in a way that could affect our placement on many different travel publication listicles. The seriousness of this endeavor is demonstrated by the fact that there are somehow five different consulting firms on the design team. The process kicked off this summer and while it generally seems to be going well so far, we do have some questions. In September, the city polled residents on the “activities and events [you’d] like to prioritize at Market Square,” and while it makes sense that “market” came in at number one… “dog amenities” only ranked 17th? And “parades” 19th??? A clear sign in our view that this poll was infiltrated by outside agents.

It’s not lost on us that the top-ranking answer for this question is the image that corresponds most closely with “clandestine shrubbery urination.”

Anyway, assuming they can rebound from that misstep and get the project back on track, the team has released four different design options for the new and improved Market Square. There’s a PowerPoint presentation (or as the kids these days say, “a deck”) presenting renderings full of cute little figures wandering through hand-sketched scenes, like a quaintly neocolonial version of Where’s Waldo except that Waldo is outside City Hall to protest zoning changes. The diagrams explaining where the various design elements would go in each of the four concepts are a bit confusing, though. In particular, the dotted lines showing “circulation patterns” make the graphics look like battle maps from the future showing front locations and troop movements during the Great Shirlington Annexation War of 2032.

The decisive turning point in the Battle of Old Town occurred when the Arlingtonian army withdrew across King Street to get ice cream cones at Kilwins.

One of the elements that’s variable across the four options is the placement of a permanent stage—some of the concepts have one stage, another has two stages, and one of the concepts has no stage at all. It’s an interesting question: do we need to dedicate space to an elevated platform where our local officials can stand as they kick off Founding Fathers Fashion Week or somberly commemorate Integrity Remembrance Day (living on only in our hearts since 2019)? Or is the current ad hoc stage set-up adequate? It seems like something we can be flexible about. But one thing all four concept options hold firm on is the need for some sort of water feature or splash zone, recognizing that public hearings are more fun if at least one commenter shows up in a wet t-shirt.

The Concept 4 fine print states that if you run through the entire line of water fountains before passing through the front doors of City Hall, you get to skip to the front of the public speaker queue.

The real question that’s not addressed in the city’s presentation, though, is what George Washington would have thought about these options as he arrived at the market to deliver his produce in 1764 or whenever the fuck. Why have residents not been polled about that? Granted, he probably would have been too busy wondering what sorcery was used to power the electric streetlights to care about the configuration of the raised planter beds, but we still need to take his viewpoint into consideration. Furthermore, we also couldn’t help but notice that the presentation fails to explain why certain key elements are absent from all four designs, such as a structure to accommodate the pigeons displaced by the demolition of the fountain, a permanent freestanding dunk tank, and most importantly, a pickleball court. What’s the point of hiring five different design firms if none of them are going to give the people what they want and need??? 

If you have opinions about Market Square that are as fervent as ours, or even if you’re normal, the city is collecting feedback on the four concepts and you can share your thoughts with them here. Speak now or forever hold your pee peace!

Overheard in ALX

From the Alexandria Times letters this week:

“Recognize that Alexandrians prize rare parking spaces.”

What makes this line great (and we mean that unironically) is that it’s not entirely clear if the writer means rare like “this is a parking space where George Washington hitched his beloved horse GoddamnJefferson” or if the writer means “there aren’t enough parking spaces” because honestly you could convince us either way. Regardless, we love the image of people in Old Town treating parking spaces like they’re the glowing briefcase in Pulp Fiction, as they are, truly, our civic macguffin.

One Awesome Thing in ALX

If you’re a fan of [Joe Buck voice] The National Football League, you’re likely aware that the Washington Commanders have been playing an unexpectedly frisky and watchable season of football. The team has good coaching for the first time in (tries to count on fingers) a very long time, and they’re led by incandescent rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels and anchored by the steady play of veterans like Bobby Wagner and Terry McLaurin.

It’s been great to watch McLaurin’s excellent season, as he’s long been one of the more underrated receivers in pro football [Editor’s note: Jesse you are not allowed to write an entire paragraph about your fantasy football season and how you drafted McLaurin I swear to god we will cut this entire item]. His reputation as a great player and a better teammate extends beyond the field—as we learned here in Alexandria this past week.

The other co-author of this newsletter pretending to follow along with this discussion.

McLaurin showed up at Mount Vernon Community School a week ago to donate a laundry room in partnership with UnitedHealthcare. Jesse has a third-grader at MVCS and by all accounts the visit was extremely cool and exciting for the students. The rest of us can appreciate the community impact that McLaurin is aiming to have. Recognizing that not all families have access to the kind of non-academic resources that bear on student success is incredibly important, and it speaks volumes about McLaurin that he was moved to do something about it. We’re deeply grateful to him—but we further hope that a needs assessment of other ACPS school communities identifies where else this kind of benefit would be welcome, and we can all come together to organize and provide it. 

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.