Trust No One
Remember when conspiracy theories were cool? You know, way back in the ancient past, like the 1990s. Before QAnon and Pizzagate and anti-vaxxers and January 6, conspiracies were the domain of TV characters played by extremely hot people traipsing around in the fog, refusing to ever turn on a light when entering a darkened room, doggedly seeking the truth, which was that the government was working with aliens to do… something. Whatever, the details didn’t matter. The point is that they did it very sexily. Who wouldn’t want to be a conspiracy theorist under those conditions? Sign us up!
But a lot of people in Alexandria haven’t gotten the memo that baseless paranoia is now considered a dangerous threat to our democracy and, worse, extremely cringe. We briefly mentioned a few local conspiracy theories in an issue of this newsletter last year—unfounded claims that Council wants to double the city’s population, or that their communications with constituents are somehow evidence of collusion rather than basic politeness and an admirable commitment to their jobs—but the surprise arena announcement has turbocharged local tinfoil hat wearers’ suspicious ideations, and new theories are proliferating.
To wit: the mayor is pushing the arena development because he’s lined up a lucrative job with JBG Smith or Monumental Sports after he leaves office; Council members are taking cash from builders to approve construction in Potomac Yard and elsewhere; Glenn Youngkin is intentionally trying to stick Alexandria with a bad economic deal to own the libs; local electeds want to make traffic near the arena worse on purpose as the latest salvo in the War on Cars. Look, there are certainly legitimate concerns that surround the arena decision, but these are not among them. (We all know that if Justin’s going to work for Ted Leonsis, it’s to be the next Slapshot.) You might as well claim that the DC snow hole is caused by space lasers, George Washington is alive and drinking family style Spagett cocktails with Elvis at Old Hat Bar, or the perpetually vacant Yates Pizza Palace is a front for organized crime (this one might be true actually).
We’ve been dealing with Barack Obama’s birth certificate, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and other assorted nonsense long enough to understand the basic reasons why people start imagining that malicious actors are pulling the strings to orchestrate important events. People need to make sense of the world in order to feel in control, or to understand why they lack control in certain situations. Some just do this in more unhinged ways than others.
A huge part of the problem locally, though, is that people who tend to feel threatened by proposed changes to the city are largely communicating with each other inside of echo chambers that prevent them from hearing opposing views. Sometimes this walling-off happens by choice—it seems like an increasing amount of local discourse happens within private Facebook groups that enforce ideological conformity by gleefully purging dissenters, or on the opinion page of the local paper, which is similarly selective about the viewpoints it publishes. And sometimes it happens by default as folks self-select out of spaces where they’re exposed to unpleasant rants, leaving those with the most extreme negative views to control the conversation. This is how many of the neighborhood listservs feel these days. And, wow, Nextdoor. Have you logged onto that site lately? Normal people simply do not want to deal with that shit.
So when something happens in Alexandria that members of these groups don’t like, it can’t possibly be because a majority of people support it; the only explanation is that something nefarious is afoot. Even election results can’t disprove this belief because the vote is always determined to be invalid in some way—the system is rigged (“we need wards!”), or the voters are rubes who don’t understand the choices they’re making (“we need lower turnout so only informed people will vote”).
All of this can feel very disheartening. When one crackpot theory fades away, another one pops up like we’re all playing the commonwealth’s most annoying game of whack-a-mole. So what are we supposed to do about it? Behavioral researchers say that factual counterarguments don’t work because they don’t address the underlying need to believe the conspiracy in the first place. Science has also shown that the least effective approach is to mock a person for their beliefs, which is disappointing because that’s definitely the most fun option.
But something that has been proven to work is relying on the power of social norms. People routinely overestimate how popular conspiracy theories are, and pointing out that those beliefs are not widely shared can reduce the number of people who find them compelling. Unfortunately for you, right-minded reader of this publication, that means… you need to post more. We know, we know! You don’t want to engage. It’s not great for your mental health. We get it. Our mental health is terrible!!! But for the sake of this community, which is facing a lot of big important collective decisions, we have to stop ceding space to the cranks. So the next time you encounter a listserv email speculating that Council passed Zoning for Housing so they can bulldoze Del Ray for a football stadium (this is a real example! people actually think this!), don’t just keep scrolling—speak up. If the most obnoxious person on your block can do it, so can you.
Things You May Have Missed Because You Have a Life
A woman in Herndon has gained national fame for building a tunnel under her house and documenting it on TikTok. That may sound impressive, but can her tunnel capture 120 million gallons of combined sewage-stormwater overflow volume and prevent it from entering the Potomac River each year?!?
First Del Ray office building gin, now Ethiopian honey wine… is there something going on around here that makes small business owners think we might need a drink?
Our state senator, Adam Ebbin, is planning to reintroduce a bill to allow legal sales of cannabis. Is there something going on around here that makes legislators think we might need to relax?
City Council approved a pilot program to provide mental health services at rec centers. Is there something going on around here that makes local leaders think we might need— you know what, forget it. Message received.
Local Discourse Power Rankings
Not in My Potomac Yard (Last week: 1). Are you ready to talk the arena to death? Because we’re about to talk the arena to death. The city has released its schedule for
public gnashing of teethcommunity engagement on the proposal and we sincerely hope they’ve signed up for the version of Zoom that allows more than 100 people to join the webinar. After all, we’re sure many people have thoughts to add to the discussion about transit modes that could help bring people to the arena: water taxi and gondola are already in the mix, but what about funiculars, toboggans, and the moving walkways that glide you effortlessly down long airport hallways? Note however that despite this surge of information about outreach, the city has not yet answered the question that’s on everyone’s minds: WILL THERE BE A MAILER?Is Our Children Learning (Last week: NR). We officially have a new school board member who gets to deal with, uh, whatever’s happening at ACPS this week, as Tim Beaty defeated Gina Baum in the special election on Tuesday with a whopping 5.5% turnout. It appears that Mr. Beaty’s positions were perfectly *NSYNC with the views of vo— [a disembodied hand appears and raps Becky across the knuckles with a ruler].
You Idiots Are Doing This Road Wrong (Last week: 4). City staff announced their preferred design option—an “elongated roundabout”—for the intersection of Mt. Vernon and Glebe and then immediately deferred consideration of it to later in the spring, instilling everyone with immense confidence in their choices. We’re sure that motorists will have absolutely no problem navigating a peanut-shaped intersection of a type that does not exist anywhere else in the city. However, we hope this deferral gives the project designers time to add one additional safety feature (a sensor-activated gate system that prevents Maryland drivers from coming within three blocks of it).
Winter
WonderlandWetterland (Last week: 2). Okay, this isn’t what we meant when we called it Moist January. As much satisfaction as we take from being right last week [Editor’s note: it’s a tremendous amount of satisfaction], it still sucks that the mid-Atlantic can no longer rustle up a decent snowstorm. It’s the middle of winter! We should not have to deal with this much rain! Basements flooding and local news correspondents tromping around the Old Town waterfront in their galoshes are the stuff of more temperate, pluvious months. How do we get a transfer to the “this feels like it should have been a blizzard, so we’re closing early” alternate universe the afterschool programs are living in? Please advise.Causes, Lost or Otherwise Misplaced (Last week: NR). Council has finally agreed on a proposed course of action for the first batch of Confederate street names, which is… for most of them to stay the same. Is it just us or does the rededication approach they chose feel like a cop-out? It’s hard to get excited about an outcome that allows the ALX Now ~states’ rights~ commenters who may or may not be Nikki Haley blowing off steam after the fifty-seventh pointless GOP primary debate to believe in their hearts that the roads in question are still named after a bunch of double-crossing little bitches who got curb-stomped by Ulysses S. Grant. It just feels like we should be putting in more effort to squash all that, you know? Rededication is not squashing. It’s the Michael Scott yelling “I declare bankruptcy” of racial reconciliation. You can’t tell us that the bad guy’s name the city chose to commemorate specifically for his badness now refers to a good guy’s name or a goddamn time of day and expect everybody to just memory-hole the last hundred and fifty years. That’s not how it works! Should we name a street “Pol Pot Avenue” and then say “just kidding, it’s Pole Pot Avenue now, like the common objects you might find in a hardware store”??? Come on. Give us a break and stop all the hand-waving before you hurt somebody.
Alexandria’s Hottest Club Is… Buy Nothing
We’re halfway through the garbage month of January and the holidays are officially over, which means one thing: it’s time to unload all the well-intentioned but poorly chosen presents you neither wanted nor asked for. Fortunately, Buy Nothing is here to help! Just in case you’ve managed to exist in this city for any length of time without being inducted into this enthusiastic cult of circular economy, Buy Nothing is an online network of hyperlocal groups where people can post items to give away or lend (for free, obviously). These groups—of which there are 16 in Alexandria—are hotbeds of frenzied activity all year round, but they really kick into high gear before, during, and immediately after the winter gift-giving season. Clearing out your kids’ old toys before Christmas/Hanukkah to make room for new ones? Post them on BN. In the market for somebody’s cast-off tchotchkes to regift to your hard-to-buy-for cousin? Yep, it’s BN time. No matter what someone wants to get rid of, someone else is out there who will take it—even (especially?) if it’s animal-themed.
The trick is to do your purging tactfully. You probably shouldn’t use Buy Nothing to divest yourself of presents from your partner or children; they might notice the hand-embroidered pot holders they lovingly selected for you sitting on the porch in a plastic bag with someone else’s name on it. But you can sure as hell use it to get rid of the flea market horse painting your aunt from Ohio sent you! [Editor’s note to any of our extended family members who might be reading this: We would NEVER do such a thing personally. This is just journalism.]
But not all recent activity is holiday gift-related. Items we’ve witnessed changing hands in Alexandria Buy Nothing groups over the last couple weeks have included not just the typical kid stuff (BN is an absolute lifesaver for parents—why do kids need so much shit, and why do they keep growing out of said shit???) but also a pile of bricks, a tapestry, dog toothpaste, and live turtles. In fact, our near-pathological need to pass our unwanted possessions along to someone else instead of throwing them away extends to perishable goods such as incorrect delivery orders and partially eaten food.
This behavior is apparently not “normal,” to the extent that our local Buy Nothing groups were the subject of a profile in the Washington Post last year as well as another one in DCist. These are both great reads if you want to immerse yourself in local controversies that aren’t arena-related. If you thought Zoning for Housing was divisive, just wait till you hear about the Del Ray Buy Nothing Sprout of 2021.
Lastly, Buy Nothing is not only an affordable way to furnish your home (Becky is the grateful recipient of, among other things, a secondhand flat-screen TV) or a mechanism to Marie Kondo your unwanted junk, it can also teach you a lot about your neighbors. Even if you’re just passing items along via bins or porch pickups that require no face-to-face interaction, you can get a fascinating peek into other people’s lives based on what they’re giving away. Perhaps even more importantly it can provide an opportunity to get personally acquainted with the folks who live near you that don’t attend the same schools or community gatherings that you do. Northern Virginia Mag did a nice write-up last month of connections made through the Old Town North BN group. Just think! This could be you the next time you give away a half-drunk bottle of juice that’s fine, it’s not expired, it’s just slightly too sweet for your taste (but may be just right for someone else).
The Alexandria Times Quote of the Week
Here’s yet another letter writer opposing the development at 301 N. Fairfax St.:
I appeal to everyone’s sense of aesthetics, that little control panel that lives in each of our heads that says subconsciously: “this is beautiful, this brings me pleasure.”
Is that what everyone else’s mental control panels tell them? Weird. Ours just keep saying “this is too much pizza.”
We Get Letters
An anonymous subscriber writes:
Last week your newsletter published many terrific days that merit a parade in our fair city of Alexandria. Except one. Your list included an outlier that is a slap in the face to all true Pi Day believers. Some may tell you that January 23rd is Pie Day (“easy as 1-2-3”) but I tell you that is bullshit and I expect better of you. There is only one Pi Day, March 14th, to celebrate. The audacity!! I respectfully ask for a correction.
Wow. We know we publish a lot of hot takes, but this one is downright incendiary. Are you Team January 23 or March 14? Which is the one true Pi(e) Day? Do we deserve to know our electoral candidates’ position on this matter? Sound off in the comments!
One Awesome Thing in ALX
One of the greatest things about this city is that it’s full of people who actually spend time helping their neighbors and making the community a better place instead of just talking about stuff. [Editor’s note: Why are you looking at us like that?] Last week there was a warehouse fire on Wheeler Ave, and after we all stopped panicking over the possibility that Port City burned down—BEER TRAGEDY AVERTED—it was announced that a caterer providing food for Meals on Wheels had been affected. Councilmember Sarah Bagley, ADC Chair Sandy Marks, and others dropped their hot Thursday morning plans to pitch in and help the caterer move operations to a different location so that service would continue uninterrupted. And it did—nobody missed a meal!
A striking aspect of the local news coverage was that the people who depend on Meals on Wheels in order to eat weren’t worried that they’d go hungry because they knew Alexandrians wouldn’t let that happen. This is the latest of many, many examples demonstrating why, despite all the dramatic squabbles, this city—and there’s just no other way to say it—fucking rules.
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.
I believe the old Arthur Treacher’s on Duke Street was a front for money laundering
March 14 - mathematics major here - one of the few in the ADC I’m sure lol