Can’t Slop, Won’t Slop

Well, hello again, Alexandria! After four whole weeks away from the newsletter factory, we’re back—and we have to admit, the break was pretty nice. We slept in. We read books that had absolutely nothing to do with City Council. We briefly forgot what day the next Council meeting was. (Honestly, we recommend it.) But eventually the siren song of zoning disputes, questionable municipal decisions, and whatever fresh nonsense our beloved Port City has cooked up proved too powerful to resist. So here we are, rested, refreshed, and once again ready to spend an unreasonable amount of time thinking about Alexandria so you don’t have to. 

Now that that’s out of the way, we need to tell you something: that last paragraph was written by ChatGPT. We pointed it to our archives and told it to write an intro to this essay in an approximation of our style and tone [Editor’s note: Jesus Christ that cannot possibly be what we sound like]. You feel differently now about what you just read, right? Knowing that we didn’t write it? Words don’t hit the same when you take away the human element behind them, the individual authorial voice. That paragraph feels empty and just… kind of sucks shit. Even if you think that our regular, artisanally word-vomited output also sucks shit, isn’t it more satisfying to hate-read it knowing that the two of us are specifically responsible for it? You can’t question ChatGPT’s motivations or argue with it after taking its words out of context. Encountering AI-generated text provokes the unsettling feeling of having a one-sided interaction with no one.

We’ve been thinking about the use of this technology in artistic or creative contexts a lot recently thanks to the proliferation of AI-generated images on the social media accounts of Alexandria businesses and organizations. Maybe even more than written content, AI images tend to provoke an immediate reaction in the viewer because there’s no hiding what they are. From overly slick promotional fliers to not-quite-photorealistic graphics lodged firmly in the uncanny valley, they give a lot of people the ick, and these days the ick is getting harder to avoid.

And listen, we get why local business owners are turning to these tools—they’re busy people and these things can churn out a promotional Instagram post as quick as you can type “make a flier for Friday happy hour, logistical details in a grid with too many icons, background image of margaritas held by eldritch six-fingered hands and garnished with plasticized lime slices.” Nothing to it! But we care too much about this community, both its businesses and its people, not to urge our local commercial establishments to think really carefully about what they’re doing here.

For one thing, it’s bad for business. Not all potential customers object to the use of AI graphics, but a non-trivial percentage of them do, and they’re increasingly distrustful of companies that use these images to the point where they’re literally begging them to stop. Sometimes it’s because customers have ethical or environmental objections to AI generally. Sometimes it’s because they find it creepy when the fake food on the AI menu looks like it has eyes or is about to launch into interpretive modern dance. Whatever the reason, why would a business want to unnecessarily alienate its patrons? 

And on the other side of the equation, people who aren’t turned off by AI-generated content are at best neutral about it. Nobody is affirmatively jazzed to scroll past yet another aesthetically homogeneous promo with the same font and the same layout and the same color scheme and the same random splash symbols next to the words. And since they all look like they rolled off the same assembly line in Sam Altman’s Dystopian Slop Mill, they erode each business’s unique brand and accomplish basically whatever the opposite of “standing out from the competition” is. We’re not business experts but after watching seven seasons of Mad Men at least two episodes of Mad Men, we’re pretty sure that’s a bad idea. There’s just no marketing upside here.

But even more importantly, when local businesses flood our social media channels and plaster our public thoroughfares with AI-generated images, it undermines our identity as a community that cares about the arts. Alexandria has worked really hard for a really long time to build its artsy reputation. From arts festivals that draw visitors from around the region, to the nation’s longest continually operated collective of publicly accessible artists’ studios (the Torpedo Factory), city grants for nonprofit arts groups, municipal public arts programs like Waterfront Part’s Site See rotating art and Mayor Gaskins’ new Art in Every Space initiative, the Mobile Art Lab, and cherished community spaces like Del Ray Artisans, Galactic Panther, and the Art League… we fucking love the arts here!!! Last year the city found that our arts and cultural sector generated over $100 million in local economic activity. It is extremely important to us, and not just in ways that you can slap a dollar value on—it’s a core trait that contributes to our shared understanding of what Alexandria is all about, deep down.

AI-generated “art” is antithetical to that identity and these values. Because generative AI models are trained by scraping images from the internet without the original creators’ permission, pay, or credit, using them to create graphics rips off the work of real artists. It deprives local creatives of earning opportunities, while generating content with no artistic value of its own. These graphics lack human intent. They are devoid of meaning, creativity, or authenticity. Why would we want to signal, collectively, that we think it’s good or even acceptable to substitute them for images created by real people? And when it’s not just local businesses but also the media outlets, politicians, schools, religious institutions, and event sponsors whose interactions with us form the fabric of our daily lives that are bombarding us with AI graphics, it further degrades the quality of our communication and our sense of who we are as a community. 

One of the reasons we love Alexandria so much, and why we feel so strongly about this issue, is that our city is special. We are people who care about economic justice, artistic expression, authentic connections, honesty in media, and cultural heritage—qualities that are inherently incompatible with the widespread usage of soulless, enshittified content farm output. Maybe they can get away with that in Arlington because they’re corporate drones who have no personality. But we’re different!!

What we keep coming back to is, there’s really no reason why businesses or other organizations have to do this. Whatever content they were creating before Prometheus stole AI-generated fire from the tech gods on Mount Nvidialympus was fine! Nothing is wrong with putting photos and text together the old-fashioned way. We aren’t that demanding of an audience!! Case in point, there are a lot of businesses in our community that are doing fantastic advertising and promotional work without relying on this technology—just look at Matt and Tony’s luscious pictures of (real) food, Planet Wine’s gorgeous wine tasting posters, and Holy Cow’s funny Instagram reels. These are just the ones we see as Del Ray-adjacent people but we would love to hear positive shout-outs of what other local spots are doing!

And if it bothers you that your favorite local business is wringing every penny of its premium ChatGPT subscription, let them know. Any good business owner is listening to their customers. Worst case, it’ll get you blocked on social media (what’s up, The Zebra) in which case maybe that establishment doesn’t really deserve your support anyway. But if we don’t say anything, if we just let this become the default, we’re going to lose something special about this place and ourselves. We hope we never have to learn firsthand how much we’ll miss it when it’s gone. 

Things You May Have Missed Because You Have a Life 

• The brand new kayak launch on Four Mile Run went missing back in the first week of August. While the culprit ultimately proved to be heavy storms and debris washing downstream dislodging the launch from its moorings, the initial suspicions of an Arlington-led caper would have made this the most nefarious act of naval aggression against our city since that summer DC stole our tall ship for three months.
• A new bookstore called The Long Dark House is opening on King Street, specializing in horror and science fiction. This is exciting news for Old Town readers, who haven’t been spooked by a bookstore since that one time Old Town Books did a window display of The Color of Law.  
• Park and Rec Commission chair Dana Colarulli broke the news on Bluesky that Alexandria is launching a “goat grazing pilot project” to eliminate invasive plants in city parks. Sure, goats are cool and all, but if they needed to find somebody who would eat literally anything Jesse was right there.
• Governor Spanberger stopped by Old Town last week for a scoop of ice cream at Goodie’s in Old Town. Given our recent history of hosting Virginia governors for photo-ops we can only hope Louise Lucas doesn’t decide to stick the beloved local scoop shop with a moniker like the “Ice Queen’s Cone” or some similar silly nonsense.
• When the Foo Fighters played Nats Park this week, Dave Grohl told the crowd that they recorded one of the songs they played “in the basement of my house in fucking Old Town Alexandria,” which is kind of weird because that house is in North Ridge and the only things those two neighborhoods have in common are $200K+ MHIs, above-average Alexandria Times readership rates, and objections to the word “fucking.”
• The U.S. edition of the British tabloid The Sun published a really weird article about Alexandria’s leaf blower ban with the headline, “Countdown until gas-powered leaf blower ban in effect with $500 fines as 160,000 Americans pick up rakes”—which, in case you weren’t up to date on the latest Census estimates, is the entire population of Alexandria. That’s right bitches, every single one of you had better start raking! Even the people who live in apartments. Even the senior citizens. EVEN THE INFANTS!! RAKES FOR EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!

Local Discourse Power Rankings

1. You Idiots Are Doing This Road Wrong (Previous rank: 2). While most of the city has been enjoying a relatively tranquil controversy-free summer, Rosemont residents—like the mythological figure of Ixion, bound to a fiery spinning wheel for all eternity—have found themselves once again unable to escape the unending churn of on-street parking discourse. A city proposal to eliminate somewhere between 2 and 20 parking spaces for the purpose of improving pedestrian safety at intersections in front of Naomi Brooks Elementary has impeded the emotional healing process of locals with unresolved Braddock Road bike lane trauma, resulting in a resurgence of neighbor-on-neighbor listserv violence. But what’s actually fascinating (and to be clear, not in a good way) about this proposal isn’t the arguments of people on both sides of the debate, which are consistent with previous disputes about parking vs. safety, but rather the back-and-forth between city staff and Alexandria’s volunteer Traffic and Parking Board. City code requires TPB to “render advice and make recommendations” to staff about any proposed changes to on-street parking. At the beginning of the summer, staff took public input on two potential Russell Road redesign options but only presented one of them to TPB. TPB then said fuck this (respectfully), we want the other option and that’s what we’re recommending. At which point staff said lol no thanks, we’re coming up with a completely new THIRD OPTION and there’s nothing you can do to stop us!!! So now TPB is mad, residents on both sides are like what the hell just happened, and local government freaks everywhere are confused about what the point of the TPB even is if staff can just ignore what they say (which does in fact seem to be legal under city code). Things have gotten so procedurally weird that we’re not even sure which Idiots are allegedly Doing This Road Wrong™. The aforementioned BRAND NEW THIRD OPTION is going back to TPB for another round of partial review next month, god only knows what sort of Kafkaesque bureaucratic process/psychological torture will be inflicted on Rosemonters next.
2. The Data Center Cannot Hold (Previous rank: NR). A planned data center in Fairfax County on Edsall Road right near the Alexandria City line has garnered a great deal of local attention, and for good reason. Lest the position of this newsletter be somehow ambiguous (tell us you skimmed the opening essay without telling us you skimmed the opening essay) we’re not huge fans of certain outputs from generative AI models, which wouldn’t be possible without the rapid buildout of new data centers—and that’s to say nothing of the environmental impact and public health concerns of these facilities when they’re placed in the middle of residential communities. Long story short (just click the Belmore link in the first sentence, he explains it way way better than we could ever summarize) the data center itself is a by-right use on the site in question, but powering it requires an action from Dominion that is subject to the review of the Fairfax County Planning Commission. So this isn’t our jurisdiction and we have no formal standing, but City Council still took the welcome step of sending a letter to the Fairfax Commission getting our concerns on the record, and local organizers have hosted conversations and forums with city residents to make sure they were aware of what was happening. It will remain to be seen if the city’s actions can influence and sway this process in our favor, but we’re certainly pleased by their efforts so far.
3. Beam Me Up, Scotland (Previous rank: NR). Alexandria just wrapped up an utterly delightful Sister Cities engagement with Dundee, Scotland that saw a delegation of our local electeds travel over with three Alexandria rugby teams (mens, womens, and legends) to play a series of friendlies against our Caledonian counterparts. The mayor’s Instagram page was the key resource here, as she posted wonderful pictures and videos throughout the trip showcasing the connection between our two cities and how fun the competition was—with Alexandria emerging victorious in the legends’ and women's matches, and losing a tight thriller in the men’s showcase. Prior to this year it had been a long time (decades?) since the Mayor’s Cup was contested, and hopefully the success of this event means we’ll be hosting our Scottish friends here at home in the near future.
4. Quit Spraying Games With My Heart (Previous rank: NR). Yesterday the city announced that the long-awaited Del Ray spray park would open in early September. Before you ask why we aren’t conveying this news with a little more excitement, first let us pose a question to you, sweet credulous friend. Are you new here? Listen, we want to believe that it’s finally going to happen, we honestly do, but we’ve been waiting so long for this project to come to fruition that we won’t believe it’s actually done until they open the fountain spigots and unleash the swim-diaper-clad hordes. When the city came up with the idea of converting the old Colasanto Pool site into a splash pad, Barack Obama was still in his first term as president. Facebook hadn’t yet gone public. The number one song was “Somebody That I Used to Know” by Gotye, the “how do you do, fellow kids?” episode of 30 Rock had just aired for the first time and the phrase “hot take” was a fresh new addition to the popular lexicon. We have been through some shit since then!! This project has dragged on so long that even the Holmes Run Trail repairs look up to it like a respected older sibling. So forgive us for curbing our enthusiasm until the whole thing is done and dusted, we promise we’ll be legitimately pumped when we can see the finished product with our own eyes and drink the fountain water with our own mouths [Editor’s note: how many times do I have to tell you not to drink the fountain water].

Alexandria’s Hottest Club Is… Dope Ass Murals

Since the opening essay hinged on an appeal to our identity as a city full of art, we figured it was only right and proper to provide receipts. Show don’t tell, in other words. That Chekhov guy was onto something with that, who knew he was more than just the ominously suggestive gun in the first act gun! Unless, hang on, maybe that works here too—if you talk about local art in the first act, local art needs to turn back up in dramatic conclusion. Hell yeah, Chekhov, you’ve got us covered either way here!

What were we talking about, we had a point here [Editor’s note: did we?]. Oh yeah! We don’t know about you, but we’ve been absolutely obsessed with the ever-increasing number of large murals around town. Partially enabled by a loosening of city policy a few years back, there’s been an explosion of new building-sized pieces of local art all across the city. There’s something about murals that delights in a different way from other kinds of public art. It’s the scale of them, alongside the spontaneity and stumble-upon characteristics inherent to them. It’s how despite all being clustered under the heading “murals” there’s such a wide variation in what that actually looks like in form and location. Some are abstract art, some are promoting a business, some are celebrating a neighborhood or cause, but not a single one of them came from a prompt fed into a robot.

We’re rounded up a few of our favorites that we’ve seen around town, but this is far from all of them. Tell us about your favorite, and tell us which we’ve missed!

Overheard in ALX

From all of our text messages Wednesday morning:

“[ACPS] PowerSchool parent/guardian accounts for Samuel W. Tucker students are now visible. Please log into your email or ParentSquare account to access the information and instructions.”

Between this and the email about school nutrition services that tagged all our students as enrolled at Samuel Tucker it feels like ACPS has taken the repeated admonitions from West End families for everyone to care more about their school communities a little too literally.

We Get Letters

As a fun chaser after our mailbag issue, Ryan R. writes in this week with a neat question that’s got us shaken up:

Having witnessed our beloved ALXtra authors imbibe a cocktail or two (and post pictures of them on Bluesky), I know you both have lots of opinions on drinks and Alexandria - so let's combine those hobbies. If you were to create the MOST Alexandria cocktail you could, what would it be and (perhaps more importantly) what would it be named?

It would be great if you could even set up a little competition amongst your readers to vote on which beverage sounds most interesting, and then convince one of our lovely watering holes to put it on the menu. I'm all for you coming up with multiple suggestions (and multiple names for those suggestions, as I'm sure you will), only ask is that it doesn't contain cherry, since we already do that every year to celebrate our phantom not-king, GW.

And shout out to Port City and Lost Boy for already being the most ALX beer and cider possible. We love you too.

GREAT question Ryan. The rest of you need to take notes, this is the kind of email that all of you should be writing to us. Publicly pontificating ‘pon potent Port City potables is positively provocative [Editor’s note: delete this sentence right fucking now].

So—a couple different ways we could approach this. One way argues that the most Alexandria cocktail would be one that emphasizes ingredients from Alexandria. Motherwell Distilling is currently making an aged gin. Let’s make an Old Fashioned (you heard us) with 3 ounces of the aged gin, a bar spoon of simple syrup, 3 dashes of smoked cherry bitters from Artemisia at the Del Ray farmers market, and garnish with a lemon peel. That’s a pretty Alexandria cocktail—let’s call it the George Drank Here. We could also do a spaghett that uses Port City’s mexican light lager Chela instead of High Life, and that would also be a pretty Alexandria cocktail.

A second approach would be a cocktail that captures an essential theme of Alexandria. We’re talking something like one part fresh espresso, one part mezcal, half part amaro, half part hazelnut liqueur, half part coffee liqueur (Hazel’s Hole). Or maybe equal parts rum, Aperol, amaro, and grapefruit juice (National Airport Flight Path). And let’s not forget a pint of bourbon served warm and drunk quickly (ACPS Synchronous Learning Day). Oh, here’s a good one—two parts vodka, one part marinara sauce, half part dry vermouth, serve in a parmesan salt rimmed martini glass (Yates Pizza Palace Opening Soon).

Why don’t you all go ahead and make some of these [Editor’s note: please don’t make that last one] and tell us which ones you like, or more importantly, tell us what we’ve clearly overlooked. Basically your homework is to drink and tell us about what you’re drinking. We know you can do it, we believe in you.

One Awesome Thing in ALX

Last week the Chamber ALX hosted their 40 Over 40 event, honoring Alexandrians of a certain age making an impact on our community. You can see the full list of honorees here, and it includes an inspiring cross section of city residents from all kinds of non-profits and businesses, big and small. We’re highlighting this here for a couple of reasons. One, we haven’t previously featured The Chamber ALX in our pages, and they’re a key local organization that does a great job organizing and supporting our local businesses and the programming they produce over the course of the year contributes meaningfully to building and sustaining connections in our city.

Secondly, this is just another example of how fortunate we all are to live in a place where people get involved—and stay involved—across all seasons of life. Celebrating the contributions of older Alexandrians [Editor’s note: excuse me, older?? We’re both in our 40s!! We’re not “older”!! We’re… oh shit, ARE we older? Oh… this is very distressing. We’re going to need to sit down and drink a very cold, very tall Yates Pizza Palace Opening Soon and process this] recognizes that we all have the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of our fellow residents, and that we’re a city that makes that possible in all manner of ways. 

Congrats to the honorees, and thanks. As for the rest of you—we’ll see you back here in a couple of weeks.

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 nonprofit in the name of ALXtra’s readers and we’ll feature and write about that organization, like we did here, here, here, here, here and here; 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.