Jesse O'Connell & Becky Hammer

The Life in Your Years

1749 was a big year. Denmark’s oldest continuously operating newspaper printed its first issue. Henry Fielding published his comic novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, and several famous European theaters burned down during performances. (It was an exciting time for the arts.) A “corpse riot” broke out

The Road Taken

So how are we feeling Alexandria? How’s everyone handling their Monumental Hangover? It’s been a week and people have been reacting to the news in a variety of ways, but whether they wanted to build the arena or stop it, it seems like almost everyone has expressed a

A Raccoon in the Machine

In last year’s Best Picture winner, Everything Everywhere All at Once, the character played by Michelle Yeoh mistakenly refers to the Disney movie Ratatouille as “Raccacoonie.” She thinks it’s about a chef controlled by a raccoon, and while this is played as a joke at first, it’s

An Alexandria for All Seasons

There are rhythms to life in Alexandria. Seasons, if you will. We’re just about to wrap up Parade Season, for example, a time of year in which the citizenry throngs the streets of Old Town to celebrate men in kilts, men in wigs, and men in kilts again over

Sliding Doors

If you’d asked us in November of 2023 what we thought the main topic of conversation in Alexandria would be in the coming year, you’d have barely had the question finished and out of your mouth before we blurted out “HOUSING!” It couldn’t have been more obvious

Be Our ALXentine

The regular newsletter is off this week but we couldn’t let this romantic holiday pass without proclaiming our deep and abiding love for ALX in the form of some classic Valentine’s rhymes. We hope you enjoy these extremely stupid expressions of our genuine affection for (and amusement with)

Maybe Someday

A lot of people have a hard time saying no. It’s a common issue with various causes—some folks have an innate desire to please, while others fear conflict or confrontation. Americans buy a staggering number of self-help books each year to conquer this difficulty and muster the backbone

What We Owe to Each Other

One of the themes that has cut across a number of recent issues here in Alexandria is the question of our role in the larger region. Are we a solitary city of 158,309 responsible only for ourselves, or are we simply a contributing organ in the body of a

Suit Yourself

It’s a Friday edition of the newsletter yet again as Becky was traveling this week and Jesse went and got himself involved in a small side project, but don’t you worry! We worked feverishly through the night [Editor’s note: ok mostly the early afternoon] to be back

Commercial Break

A few weeks ago in his Tolstoyan monthly newsletter the mayor shared some data that elicited a jump-scare style reaction even among those of us already aware of the underlying situation, and we’ve been meaning to talk about it ever since. He pointed out that of the $856.4

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

Continuing Resolutions

Happy New Year Alexandria and welcome ba-[fireworks go off] and welcome back to AL-[fireworks go off] and welcome back to ALXtr-[fireworks go off] HOLY SHIT ALEXANDRIA, WE GET IT ALREADY, YOU LOVE FIREWORKS. As we were saying [cautiously braces for more explosion noises] as we were saying,

And to All a Goodnight

We’re dropping the standard format and it’s a short newsletter this week as we, like many of you, are already rolling into holiday celebrations and travel and whatnot (Becky in fact has already ventured beyond the borders of our fair city to the distant, strange, and unsustainably arid

Making a List, Checking it Twice

Readers of a certain age will remember the halcyon days of the early 2010s, when a startup digital media company called Buzzfeed popularized something known as the “listicle.” Bored students and work procrastinators suddenly had access to an endless stream of pointless articles about random subjects that were formatted as

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

Ends and Beginnings

The denouement was rather unremarkable when it finally arrived. After a year of work, months of conversation, weeks of op-eds and yard signs, days of increasingly unhinged doomsaying—in a half empty City Council chamber in the small hours of a Wednesday morning in late November, a unanimous 7-0 vote

Thank You

Happy Alexandria Thanksgiving everyone! We’re so excited to kick things off tomorrow with our city’s signature holiday tradition—a fun family road race that’s 2 miles longer than anyone wants or needs it to be. You should be statutorily barred from using “trot” to refer to anything

Queens Boulevard

You guys remember the show Entourage? It was an HBO dramedy that ran for (somewhat inexplicably) eight seasons in the early to late aughts, and followed the lives of a fictional A-list movie star and his buddies from back home. You remember Entourage—it’s the show that Jeremy Piven

Charter Members

We Alexandrians have always been pathological overachievers. Not satisfied with the many hats we wear in our array of day jobs, we also enjoy moonlighting as armchair experts in additional fields of professional practice. Our qualifications arise not from training, knowledge, or hands-on experience but rather from quick skims of

Scared Stiffs

It’s hard to be an adult. When you’re young, you dream of the unfettered freedom of self-determination and give little consideration to the downside of complete agency: the meals that have to be planned, the laundry that doesn’t do itself, the commutes that must be navigated. Being

Ch-Ch-Changes

Change is hard. It’s not our fault; the human brain is hard-wired to favor consistency and reject the unfamiliar. In fact, fear of change is such a universal emotion that literature and film are replete with characters whose stories revolve around it. If you’ve ever sobbed your way

The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Readers of a certain age—35 to 50, give or take—might remember the seminal 2001 crunk track “Raise Up,” in which rapper and Timbaland protégé Petey Pablo encourages people in locations across the world to take their shirts off, twist them around their hands, and spin them like a

An Incoherent Truth

Climate change… yikes, right? You’ve probably noticed that it’s been very warm this year. September, in fact, was the most anomalously hot month in recorded history, inspiring one climate scientist to describe the weather as “absolutely gobsmackingly bananas.” Not a great sign!  Perhaps you’ve been worrying about

Ward Play

There’s an old saying that goes: if you can’t win the game, change the rules. This is a cute expression to print on a motivational poster hanging in the lobby of your scrappy upstart small business. It is not cute when you’re talking about toying with the

Suffrage Fools Gladly

Great news, everyone! It’s a year that ends in a number, which means we here in the Commonwealth of Virginia get to exercise our god- and James Madison-given right to vote. Voting—an every four or two years at best exercise in most decent parts of this country—turns