Much Ado About Parking

Surprise!! We know we said we weren’t publishing our next issue until March 6, but the best laid plans of mice and newsletter authors often go awry. By this we mean that sometimes we have something to say that just can’t wait three weeks, which might as well be an eternity the way this year is going 🫠.

Between snowcrete and special elections and ICE rumors and women who snort all their food up their nose, there has been a lot to keep up with in Alexandria in 2026—so you may have missed the news that the city is proposing to replace street parking with bike lanes on the stretch of Braddock Road between Russell Road and Mt. Vernon Avenue. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not really that momentous. But the discourse around it has taken an ugly turn, and while Alexandria is no stranger to overblown reactions [Editor’s note: who, us? The city that compared an adults-only sushi restaurant to apartheid??], this one feels nasty even compared to other kerfuffles in the recent past.

To recap, opponents of this project have:

1. Printed and distributed yard signs sarcastically asking “Should I park in front of your house now?” and advertising a “Braddock Road Parking Funeral” on February 23 (the date of the Traffic & Parking Board vote), complete with a skull and crossbones icon; 
2. Published a letter in the Alexandria Times comparing the construction of a bike lane to Trump’s deployment of troops to American cities; and
3. Sent communications to city staff—all of which can be found in the public record of the Traffic & Parking Board docket—berating and insulting them, calling them an embarrassment to the city, accusing them of gaslighting, and claiming that they selected the proposed project design with the express purpose of punishing residents.

To be clear, most of the people weighing in on this proposal—on both sides—have done so calmly and respectfully. And this is an issue where it is entirely understandable that people have different opinions based on the things they prioritize most highly. But like your Facebook-poisoned uncle discovering that American athletes sometimes ski for another country’s Olympic team, the vitriol directed at city staff by a handful of individuals is really harshing the vibe. Since we have a sizeable platform modest platform platform that is bigger than Becky but smaller than Jesse, we feel compelled to speak up [Editor’s note: yeah, for sure, “compelled” whatever you say] against this rhetoric, which goes well beyond the typical talking points of those who prefer to maintain the status quo. Dismissing expert data? Been there done that. Claiming that emergency vehicles will no longer be able to navigate the road? Call us when you have some new material (also, the fire department has been consulted and supports the project, it’s right there in the TPB docket). Even the “bike lanes are fascism” letter is thematically similar to arguments we’ve heard before, just cranked up to 11 and dressed in a bright red wacky inflatable arm flailing tube man costume. But the ad hominem attacks on staff—if we’re going to draw a line somewhere, it has to be there.

And comparing the loss of parking to someone dying? Listen, we’re far from the supreme arbiters of what material should be considered offensive, but the phrase “parking funeral”—directed at a project intended to improve not only mobility but also road safety—hits different after you’ve just read a tribute to a journalist who was struck by a distracted driver and killed in Richmond this week. We mean it—read that sentence again and actually click that link, then come back and tell us if being tongue-in-cheek about who and what is “dying” here feels okay to you. Cyclists have been seriously injured by cars in Alexandria within the last year. A pedestrian was hit on Russell Road right next to the project area less than 4 months ago! “Parking funeral” is gross, and if you’re putting it in front of your house it shows that you have catastrophically lost the plot.

We might not have bothered to write this essay if the behavior described above were an aberration or a one-off incident, but it’s starting to feel like a pattern in a way that should worry all of us. From accusing staff of corruption and “backroom tactics” during the Seminary Road bike lane debate in 2019 to calling for City Council members to be spanked during the Zoning for Housing public hearing in 2023, and even to some wildly aggressive messages directed at public officials after last month’s snowstorm, certain people in this city clearly feel like it’s their right to belittle and verbally abuse public servants who are trying to do their jobs. And it’s not okay, it just isn’t, even when it’s kind of funny, which spanking kind of is.

And yeah, we get it—“why can’t people just be normal,” they lamented in the exhaustingly verbose newsletter that’s its own evidence of a pair of narcissistic personality disorders intense interest in city policy. We have strong opinions about Alexandria too! We know how easy it is to work yourself into a lather about the controversy of the day. We’re not saying that people shouldn’t have opinions, or that their opinions can’t be different from ours. Far from it—a healthy community is one in which all manner of perspectives should come to bear on a given issue. But no one is owed their preferred outcome, and acrimony and hostility are not justifiable means to pursue it.

Because our city cannot function like this. We cannot make reasoned policy choices in an environment of overt bullying and antagonism. When community-oriented projects are interpreted as personal affronts, when staff are addressed like servants who are there to do your bidding, when residents treat public engagement like they’re placing their order at McDonald’s and then smash the drive-thru window if they get a double Quarter Pounder instead of a Big Mac—that’s when basic systems of governance break down. This dynamic isn’t sustainable and it isn’t healthy.

Bringing it back to the bike lanes—do we think this is a good project? Yes, we do (and maybe we’ll write more about that later). Would we be troubled by the behavior that precipitated this unscheduled missive even if we didn’t support the project? We sincerely believe we would. We hope that local decisionmakers will refuse to indulge it, be intimidated by it, or let it sway them in the process of thinking about what’s best for our community as a whole. Just as importantly, we hope that someday soon we’ll be able to debate these issues without losing our ever-loving minds. At a moment when civic virtue and community spirit are being maliciously twisted and taken advantage of, we are at dire risk of further erosion and outright collapse of those values. We cannot contribute to that happening. It has never been more important for each of us to model what it means to have shared and collective responsibility to those around us, not just in what we seek but in how we seek it—to lift our eyes from self-interest’s narrowed field of vision and contemplate the wider horizon of a greater good.  

To conclude on an optimistic note, Lunar New Year was this week. We’re now in the year of the Fire Horse, which signifies a time of forward progress and transformation. Obviously not everyone in Alexandria is on board with the idea of rapid change, we know this, it’s not our first rodeo. But one area in which we can all aspire to transform and improve is how we treat one another. Because while we may or may not end up with a bike lane on Braddock Road, we’re still going to have to look our neighbors in the eye when all is said and done.

Other Stuff So This Entire Impromptu Issue Isn’t Just An Essay

• We hope you’re ready to vote for the fourth time in 40 days because tomorrow is the Democratic firehouse primary for the open City Council seat!! This time we’ve even got an online voting option so we can pick our next councilmember like it’s an episode of Dancing with the Stars. While no one has broken into the foxtrot or Argentine tango on the campaign trail (yet… looking at you, Sandy Marks), it’s nonetheless been an eventful week of campaigning as the local politics sickos were treated to candidate forums and debates every evening. Quick question: do the candidates know that if they give different answers to different groups, we can see that? Like, the words they say are publicly available and not retained inside some sort of magic secrecy bubble? Something to potentially keep in mind. Anyway, we also learned this week that whoever wins the primary will have an opponent in the April general election, Frank Fannon, a person who previously served on Council as a Republican and donates to Republicans and says Republican things but is DEFINITELY an independent. Sure, Jan!
• The Ten Thousand Villages store in Old Town has consciously uncoupled from its parent organization and is changing its name to The World Crafted on King. They’re having some celebrations in the store this weekend so swing on by and get yourself a complimentary chair massage and a cup of fair trade tea.
• The Alexandria Health Department is reminding us not to go near the Potomac until the sewage spill upstream gets fixed. So annoying, usually when we have to deal with shit from Maryland it’s not quite this literal.
• Assuming we get the aforementioned sewage thing locked down in time for tourist season, the Tall Ship Providence is looking for volunteers and taking sign-ups for orientations this weekend. They don’t tell you this, but we heard they let the volunteers take the boat out at night and drag race the water taxi.
• Last but certainly not least, Del Ray Hardware is the recipient of the 2026 Heart of Del Ray award. This is a great pick—we featured the shop as the awesome thing in a previous issue of the newsletter (scroll all the way down, past the *NSYNC puns) so not only is a beloved local institution getting its well-deserved flowers, but we also get to feel prescient and smart. Everybody wins!

All right, that’s enough from us for today—we’ll be back in your inboxes on March 6, for real this time. Have a great weekend, everybody.

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 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.