Tomorrow and Tomorrow (and Tomorrows)

Hey everyone! How’s your week been? Ours has been great—we’ve been at a silent retreat in a cave under a rock in the ground with our phones off. Haven’t seen a single bit of local news! And now to take a huge sip of coffee while we look at these local headli-

WHAT?! Smoot Lumber is closing after 200 years?? This is shocking. This is an absolute stunner. We’re sitting here with our jaws on the floor. Man… what a huge loss for the city. What will we do without this thing we’ve come to rely on for so many years, this thing that was dependable and there when you needed it, this thing that helped build Alexandria into the city it is today. We can’t imagine how we get over losing a thing like that. Well, nothing we can do now other than take another huge sip of coffee and see what Mayor Justin Wilson has been up to late- OH COME ON!

Look at that shit-eating grin. He knows what he’s done. HE KNOWS.

Yes Alexandria, it’s true. That seemingly unthinkable day has arrived: Justin Wilson has announced that he is finally planning to sleep more than two hours a night. It’s odd to contemplate a post-Justin future for the city given his centrality to our shared narrative for over a decade now. He was the mayor that led us through covid, and catalyzed our recovery thereafter. He brought a hospital to Landmark and put a poop tunnel under Old Town. He dragged a whole entire goddamn Metro station kicking and screaming across the finish line twenty years after it was little more than a dream of the 90s. He zoned for housing.

He’s still got a year of public service to go, so we’ll save the rest of the hagiography roast until next December. Because even while this news is about him, it’s also not about him. This decision of his has thrust forward into the light, blinking and squinting and awkwardly shielding its eyes, a conversation that had mostly been standing well off in the darkness of stage left… what comes next for Alexandria.

We’re not ready for this. We’re supposed to have answers? And say them? Out loud right now?

We started to see the shape of things to come over the past few days. Current councilwoman (and eyewear icon) Alyia Gaskins has declared for mayor, as has current councilwoman (and United States Postal Service champion) Amy Jackson. It’s possible this field will grow in the weeks and months between now and the March filing deadline, perhaps even giving us a contest the equal of the race that inspired the best piece of local political writing anyone has ever produced. And no matter the ultimate size of the mayoral field, we’re sure to see a bumper crop of council candidates, with incumbents running alongside newcomers jockeying to fill the now expected two vacant Council seats. We’ve written in the newsletter before about how much Virginia loves voting and how important democratic engagement is in the face of rising illiberalism, but well, we guess we were holding the monkey’s paw a little too tightly when we said “we hope we’ll still get to vote in 2024” and that finger curled and now here we are, our cup overfloweth with voting.

So we return again to the question—what comes next for Alexandria? We have before us a set of races for council and mayor that are likely to cleave along lines of progress vs. protectionism, change vs. convenience, zoning vs… fuck, some z antonym. Zillow-bating? Is that something? Whatever—the point is we are about to stage a fairly intense debate about the relative merits and value of trying new things rather than simply holding tightly onto the past. This is an opportunity to push ideas and initiatives we haven’t tried before, to challenge ourselves about the policies and trade-offs it will actually take to live up to the version of the city we see when we look in the mirror. It’ll take courage and vision and patience and grace and it’s exciting but also it’s scary and should justifiably leave us feeling a little uncertain. With all of Alexandria’s possible tomorrows laid before us, the weight of picking the right one—the best one, for all of us—almost feels like too much to bear.

But we will bear it, and we’ll be better off and stronger for it. In the year ahead we’ll argue and listen, we’ll advocate and learn, we’ll make space at the table for all sorts of voices and perspectives, and we’ll go into the tomorrows of our 275th year on the banks of the Potomac the same way this city always has—together.

Things You May Have Missed Because You Have a Life 

• We still haven’t figured out how to spell the word archelogy archealogy archaeology, but the city has nevertheless persisted in continuing to add super cool tools and resources for the amateur archeaologists (fuck, forget it) fans of old shit amongst us—the latest of which is this really dope interactive map of site research throughout the city.

• The 8th Annual Candy Cane bar crawl is in Del Ray this Saturday, and you can register here. Last year Jesse wore an incredibly stupid-looking jacket [Editor’s note: Hey. What the hell.] so if you come out this year there’s a good chance you’ll get to see whatever deplorably festive outfit he has planned as a follow-up.

• Alexandria has settled on an incredibly delicious addition to our ongoing river remediation effort—mussels! These plump and tasty filter feeders are the latest phase of the city’s commitment to a cleaner Potomac River. Now if you’ll excuse us, Jesse is planning to go dump a whole bunch of butter and shallots into Oronoco Bay, and Becky is preparing to file a Clean Water Act citizen suit against him for discharging pollutants without a permit.

• Del Pepper is giving out condoms! Well, okay, technically speaking the Del Pepper Community Resource Center in the West End is distributing condoms from a dispenser in the restroom as part of a city campaign to slow the increasing rate of George Washington’s favorite STDs among both young adults and elderly city residents. BUT for the purposes of this newsletter…. Del Pepper is giving out condoms!

“Wrap Up, Alexandria” follows the city’s unsuccessful rhythm-method campaign “Pull Out, Port City.”

Local Discourse Power Rankings

1. #JustinWilsonsAlexandria (Last week: NR). Okay, we lied about saving the rest of the roast until next December, because we’d be remiss if we didn’t take a moment to pour one out for constituent issues getting resolved in a middle-of-the-night Facebook comment thread. It’s really going to be hard for all of us internet-addled residents of the city to lose the most online mayor we will ever have. Much of the listserv and comment section chatter predictably turned to guessing which developer he’s going to cash-in and go work for (which is a hilarious take because we’ve all seen how our guy dresses—how could he go be a builder when there’s no demand for drab cement brutalism anymore) but that overlooks the key issue here, which is how our city will cope without our Poster-in-Chief. Make no mistake, the mayor is a god-tier poster. He’s on every platform imaginable, at all hours. If he isn’t liking your jokes or posting pictures of whatever bus or train he’s on (or near) (or saw off in the distance) he’s answering questions, often at great length and with mind-numbing detail and accuracy. If he isn’t cyberbullying the authors of this newsletter [Editor’s note: we deserve it] he’s scouring people’s feeds for direct requests for service and often resolving them on the spot. And yeah, we’re writing this section kind of tongue-in-cheek because Justin is also a great sport and puts up with being teased about this stuff, but it is genuinely an enormous service how much of himself he gives to all of us, all of the time. He has moved this city forward in ways visible and invisible, and that’s going to be missed no matter how much he further builds on that legacy over this final year in office. So let’s appreciate him while we can, before he finally logs off to charge his poor exhausted and overworked phone.

2. Causes, Lost or Otherwise Misplaced (Last week: NR). The city must have gotten a bulk discount on sharing strong opinions into public microphones, because we rolled straight from the Zoning for Housing hearings into a public forum about renaming the city streets that currently honor various runners-up in the republic’s most recent armed dialogue regarding the extent of states’ rights (the answer: as far as Abraham Lincoln’s foot will fit up your ass). What struck us most about the Confederate street names testimony was the degree to which it essentially boiled down to: sure these guys were racist dirtbags consumed with preserving an economic system built on human bondage, and yeah maintaining a remembrance of their name is a slap in the face of every right-minded resident of this city… but on the other hand, what if I have to order some new checks. Listen—between the two authors of this newsletter we have moved and lived in literally a couple dozen homes over the course of our adult lives. And each time we moved, we updated our mailing address in the necessary places, changed it on other key documentation like IDs and voter registrations, and you know what, it was fine. It was fine! We promise you it is not the end of the world for your address to change. It’s weird for a week or so and then you never think about it again. Or, you know, you could keep living on a street named for the shittiest cavalry commander to ever come out of West Point—totally your call.

3. Zoning for Armageddon (Last week: 1). Earlier this week a home violently and dramatically exploded in Arlington and predictably some of our most prolific anonymous local commenters seized on this as evidence as to why we should only build single family homes with one-mile setbacks and reinforced concrete blast barriers on all sides. Listen, we get it. Some of you don’t like duplexes. You made that very clear when you stood up during multiple public hearings and voiced your fears about who might live in these suspiciously attached houses, dropping your voices to a stage whisper as you said into the mic, you know, those people. But please, spare us this rearguard attempt at trying to win an argument you’ve already soundly lost by being all “ACTUALLY! The real reason we can’t have duplexes is some maniac might make them asplode!” Save that shit for your Michael Bay fanfic.

4. Stream Resignation (Last week: NR). The city’s natural resources manager jumped on the quiet loud quitting trend this week, and rather than us offer an opinion on the wisdom of publicly and repeatedly disagreeing with your employer over the course of several years, we’ll instead say how exciting it is that this news cycle gave us an excuse to rehash the non-bulldozing of Taylor Run. Never has a project that didn’t happen lived so long in our hearts. At this rate, we’ll be debating soil phosphorus concentrations until the earth is swallowed by the sun or the exposed sewer pipes collapse into the stream, whichever happens first.

5. Is Our Children Learning (Last week: NR). There was a bomb threat at the high school this week, which sucks and led to the loss of a half a day of class time (to say nothing about negative effects on mental health and disrupted parent work days). It also led to the superintendent sending out a message to the entire ACPS e-distribution universe pleading with people to stop being dicks and scaring all of us with dumb pranks. And while this is serious, and we shouldn’t make light of it, we wouldn’t be doing our job if we didn’t point out that the resulting aggregate messaging to the youth of our city this week was (tying up two newsletter items in a neat tidy bow) “don’t bomb the school and please wrap your tool.”

Alexandria’s Hottest Club Is… Scotland

There are certain duos that are so indelibly linked it’s impossible to think about one without the other. Peanut butter and jelly, for example, or salt and pepper. Batman and Robin. Tracks and light poles. “I support affordable housing” and “but not here.” And of course, as all Alexandrians know, Santa Claus and [checks notes] bagpipes. 

The mischievous expression of a mythical folkloric figure about to blast a “Scotland the Brave”-shaped hole through your eardrums.

So, okay, our city is named after a Scottish guy. And the Christmas + Scotland thing makes geographical sense if you consider that the North Pole and the British Isles are quasi-adjacent in the global scheme of things. But can we acknowledge that the Scottish Walk is kind of a weird tradition? It’s just so… specific. Once a year we all have to traipse around Old Town celebrating a country that routinely consumes pudding-stuffed bags of sheep stomach, all while studiously keeping our gazes five to eight feet off the ground to avoid inadvertent encounters with visible male knee-flesh. And if you’re a local notable, you’ve got additional obligations because you also have to dig your obligatory plaid hat/scarf/thong out of your closet and rub elbows with the Dundee delegation while pretending to enjoy alcohol that smells like a decomposing bog [Editor’s note: Pretending?? Come on!!].

Who wore it better: these guys, or Cher from Clueless?

The parade itself is, admittedly, a hoot. One of the clans dresses up like Star Wars characters. Another one carries a wolf head on a spike. Speaking of animals, have you ever seen an army of Scottish deerhounds rounding the corner of Queen and Fairfax? Because you really should. The dogs are the highlight of the event, hands down. The Westies are always gussied up in tartan, while the bearded collies march along with the look of beasts who carry the weight of the universe’s secret knowledge. A lot of people favor the Corgis, but while we can certify that they possess the Fluffiest Butts™ in the parade, they are Welsh and therefore frauds.

Look at these impostors. Disgusting.

But for all that this is the Scottish Walk, the commitment to the theme is half-hearted at best. They’ll let just about anybody into this parade. Random singers? Vintage car owners? Okay sure. Children screaming out the windows of a school bus? Why not. For some reason they let the St. Patrick’s Day Parade organizers join in, which… why?? They have their own parade! It’s literally their whole thing! And they hold it like, basically two weeks from now so they should really be busy getting ready for it! And the largest single contingent being the alumni of a defunct high school in Fairfax County is just baffling [Mean Girls “she doesn’t even go here” dot gif]. If we’re going to let them march they should at least be required to bring out their most famous graduate Hota Kotb with a liter-sized glass of sauvignon blanc to help us ring in the holiday season properly.

“Victory or Death! To Conquer or Die!” is coincidentally also the tagline of Zoning for Housing Phase Two.

But wait! There’s also Bonus Non-Scottish Festive Holiday Content! The weekend also included various holiday events for the haggis haters (and even the haggis neutral) among us. Del Ray came together to light their neighborhood menorah and yet another impressively girthy Christmas tree, leaving us wondering why the folks in charge of acquiring these trees keep shopping at the Hubba-Hubba TILF Farm. Last but not least, the top prize at the Holiday Boat Parade of Lights was won by a bunch of hippos wearing coconut bras, jumping out of gift boxes, and [squints] twerking? Bless this city, we sure do know how to take a normal, innocent event and make it weird.

If you were involved in creating this boat float, please report to the Del Pepper Community Resource Center immediately.

Hope you had a great weekend however you celebrated—and if we missed some weird fun festive thing, tell us down in the comments. Happy holidays!

The Alexandria Times Quote of the Week

“The timing of Smedley’s resignation is interesting, coming just 36 hours after City Council unanimously voted to pass the Zoning for Housing initiative. While Smedley denies Council’s vote had anything to do with his departure, it’s also clear that more people and vehicles crammed onto the same spaces under ZFH is going to create new challenges for the AFD. 

And the looming approval of Duke Street in Motion, which if passed will remove private vehicle lanes in parts of Alexandria’s most heavily traveled thoroughfare, will be a nightmare for emergency responders both during construction and after it’s implemented.”

No. Absolutely not. This is totally and completely wrong. Anyone with two eyes and a brain can see that Smedley is obviously retiring before all the duplexes start blowing up.

One Awesome Thing in ALX

Dedicated readers of this newsletter will recall that in our housekeeping announcements about the benefits of becoming a paid subscriber (access to the comment section! a book club, maybe! other things, eventually!) included a commitment that a third of the revenue that comes in will be donated to a local charity in the name of ALXtra readers, each time that fund hit $500.

Well we are incredibly pleased to share that so many of you have been upgrading to paid subscriptions that we can already make that first donation, which will be going to Carpenter’s Shelter.

For those not familiar, since the 1980s Carpenter’s Shelter has been dedicated to serving Alexandrians facing homelessness and housing insecurity, by providing them shelter, collaborative guidance and support, and a variety of other wrap-around services. In late 2020 they cut the ribbon on their handsome new building in the Braddock neighborhood, prominently and proudly greeting all southbound drivers right there on a corner of Route 1. It’s a remarkable project—10 permanent supportive housing units, a 64-bed residential shelter, a day shelter, and 87 affordable apartments—notably brought together by an innovative partnership between the city, the Alexandria Housing Development Corporation (AHDC), and Carpenter’s Shelter itself. This is a public benefit development model we’d love to see more examples of—because it should not be lost on any of us that the protracted conversation we just had about Zoning for Housing as a tool to address housing affordability was just one tool, and market-oriented solutions cannot and must not be the only ambitious housing policies Alexandria pursues.

We are facing housing challenges across the full breadth of the income distribution of city residents, including (perhaps especially including) our most financially burdened neighbors. Dedicated affordable projects and projects seeking to ameliorate the challenges facing city residents who grapple with housing insecurity are an incredibly important part of what comes next for us. And it matters, quite a great deal in our opinion, that Carpenter’s Shelter is not currently languishing in some industrial corner of the city—far from the services and resources its residents need but safely out of the eyeline of anyone that might otherwise claim to be inconvenienced by its presence—but rather right in the heart of a thriving neighborhood full of market-rate developments, fronting on one of the city’s most prominent arterial roads.

We’re proud to make this donation to Carpenter’s Shelter because we’re proud that they’re here, and we’re proud of the people in this city that worked hard to keep them here and make them feel welcome here, so their urgent mission could help the people that are, yes, also here. If you’d like to additionally support them and their mission beyond our gift as part of your end-of-year giving, you can do so at this link. And thank you, readers, for your support of this newsletter that made this contribution possible in the first place.

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.