Running Free

There are few commodities more precious in northern Virginia than a genuine spring day. We get so few of them and and each one is so profoundly delightful and soul-renewing that it’s necessary to attune oneself to the signs that indicate Spring, Yes, Real Spring is soon upon on us, so that we might seize and savor this fleeting period as it rushes headlong past us and into the waiting arms of Two Shirts Before 10am season.

The first of such signs is, obviously, cherry blossoms. First appearing when it’s often still cold and gray or sometimes gray and cold and occasionally cold and windy, the cherry blossoms fire their roseate flares of warning that soon the temps will rise and the tourists will leave and as such, we must prepare. The second sign is mother$%@#ing pollen. Is there an inch-thick carpet of bright green tree spunk all over your car and your porch and oh god it’s in your nose and how is it possible that eyes can even feel like this they watered less that time we ordered the five little chili pepper dish icon off the Thai restaurant menu even though the waiter was definitely laughing at us and yeah, pollen is a sign of spring. The third sign is runners.

When the runners come back, it’s springtime for real. And no of course we’re not talking about the maniacs that “care about their fitness” and “train for races” and “actually show up for their group runs” all winter long, slogging through the streets with shoes full of slush and snot frozen to their cheeks. Those people are nuts. We’re talking about the sun and warm breeze–chasing masses that lace up their shoes when the weather is finally nice and get out there to enjoy our city on foot and get a little sweat in. Because among the many things we get recognized for and lauded for, Alexandria is a great city for running.

We’re fortunate to have a number of first-rate bike trails paved running trails from the Mount Vernon Trail, to Four Mile Run, to Potomac Yard, to Eisenhower Avenue, to Holmes Run (please for the love of god can we finally repair this??), and more. If you’ve run on any of these recently you might have noticed a new public awareness campaign from the city (conveyed on yard signs stuck along the trails) encouraging people to enjoy the trails, share the space, and look out for one another. It’s earnestly very cool that the city is putting effort into optimizing how we all engage in these spaces, which will ultimately make them safer and more useful for runners (fine, and bikers too we guess). Do we wish we had more non-paved running infrastructure? Sure we do. The number of dirt running trails in the city is vanishingly small and figuring out how to grow that number and link them into a connected network à la the Glover Archbold Park network in northwest DC would be a supremely worthwhile effort for the city to tackle over time. Also, public bathrooms.

Beyond infrastructure, we also have a great running culture in Alexandria. For several years the city hosted the US road racing 12K national championship, and it still hosts majorly popular races like the Alexandria Half Marathon (RIP Parkway Classic 10 miler) and the Del Ray Alexandria Turkey Trot. Much of this culture starts with Pacers Running, which many people know just as their favorite local running store down on King Street, but their race-hosting and timing business is equally successful and probably drives a larger portion of their impact on the running community in the region. The running culture in Alexandria is so strong that our former mayor routinely held running town halls that were definitely fun and creative civic engagement opportunities and not just thinly veiled attempts to ensure constituents were too out of breath to ask him tough questions.

Going for a run is also a straightforward way to understand and appreciate why the city puts the emphasis it does on pedestrian safety, and why there is still more work to do. The War on Cars™ looks pretty different from the vantage point of dodging the fender of an SUV that rolled through an intersection without looking to see if someone was running from the direction they checked second. It really reinforces how much more daylighting we need on cross streets and intersections in all our neighborhoods. Some local enforcement of the laws against staring at your phone while operating a 5,000-pound machine would also be welcome.

So enjoy these nice spring days while you can and maybe consider getting out there to run (or walk) around our city. On foot you notice small details and interesting quirks that are easy to overlook when you’re in a car, and you can stop to take in moments you’d otherwise miss. Most of all you’ll come to better appreciate how small and connected our city really is, and how close most things in Alexandria actually are.

Things You May Have Missed Because You Have a Life 

• It’s a jam-packed gardening weekend in ALX with Del Ray GardenFest, Historic Garden Week Old Town Tour, and Greenstreet Gardens Veggiemania all on the calendar, so we hope you’re ready to mulch-itask!!
• Three Alexandria-based restaurants have been nominated for RAMMYs this year: Josephine for best brunch, Andy’s Pizza for fast casual restaurant, and Atlas Brew Works for best beer program. Congrats to these eateries and drinkeries, but once again we’re left shaking our heads in disbelief that the so-called “restaurant” “experts” continue to ignore our city’s finest establishment (the Taco Bell Cantina).
• Speaking of Andy’s, its New York-style slices finished second (behind Lena’s, ahead of Stracci) in ALXnow’s readers choice poll of local pizzerias. Without getting into our thoughts on the correctness of the results [Editor’s note: oh come on, we won’t get that much hate mail] let’s just say it’s impressive for any joint to win this city’s pizza Hunger Games when there’s a new contender opening every time someone sneezes near a goddamn wood-fired oven.
• Former Today Show co-host Hoda Kotb visited a Potomac Yard senior living facility and shared some inspiring words, which surprisingly weren’t “The secret to longevity is drinking chardonnay at 8:30 in the morning.”
• As Alexandria’s foremost Dillon Rule correspondents we feel compelled to note any time localities get enumerated fun new powers, so let’s all put our hands together for our new authority to fine the everliving shit out of derelict buildings! Coming Soon Yates Pizza Extravaganza (Now Featuring Sushi) must feel like someone just walked across their grave.
• Our cup overfloweth with great local ears-edition content, as Council Connection is back with a second episode and ALXnow launched the first in their monthly series of conversations with Mayor Gaskins.

Local Discourse Power Rankings

1. You Idiots Are Doing This Park Wrong (Last week: 3). The city’s plan to close Waterfront Park for two years to build a pump station and other flood mitigation infrastructure is entering the public review process, and reactions are… mixed. While some residents have raised reasonable questions about cost and timing, or reacted with normal sentiments like “Wow that sucks, but I guess it has to happen,” others have taken the opportunity to offer feedback ranging from “Just build a wall to keep the water out” to “The flooding is natural, it’s how we wash the streets.” Some of the commentary is mean-spirited (expressing hope that the rising water takes out the rainbow crosswalk) while some is just confused (questioning whether it’s possible to pump the water back into the Potomac because the river is already full). Mmm. Hell yes. It’s this blend of scientific rigor and emotional restraint that’s so characteristic of Alexandria civic discourse. It’s like the platonic ideal of a local Facebook comment section, you almost love to see it. But seriously though, we’ve got to do something to the waterfront since letting the Potomac reclaim Old Town is kind of not an option at this point. We just got ourselves that nice little bar on the Tall Ship Providence dock!! So to all the people saying “Let’s fix the schools/roads/sewers/unexcavated rifle trench at Fort Ward first,” let’s agree to treat this as a “yes, and” situation, okay?
2. Spring Broken (Last week: NR). The energy around town right after spring break is always a little more unglued than usual and this week has been no exception. After a brief escape from our normal routines, everyone’s brains seem to have short-circuited on reentry. People are driving like they’re trying to outrun their responsibilities, parents are showing up to school pickup in flip-flops and a thousand-yard stare, and we’re all left wondering how we got from sipping tiki drinks from a coconut to arguing about leaf blowers at a civic association meeting. The gorgeous spring weather is just adding insult to injury and making it even harder to motivate ourselves to get anything done. We know we should be catching up on emails or meal planning, but emotionally we’re still on that beach, refusing to come back inside.
3. You Add Some, You Delete Some (Last week: NR). Alas, budget season—indifferent to our post-vacation depressive episodes—continues apace. The week before break there was a bit of a kerfuffle when a member of city council proposed cutting the Office of Climate Action’s budget in half to give a one-time boost to ACPS as part of the add/delete process. A spirited public hearing followed, with residents engaging in what can only be described as a progressive values cage match. It was actually kind of fascinating to listen to a debate where everyone agreed on the principles (kids: good, livable planet: also good) but differed on their relative priority. At the end of the day both the climate office and the schools got to keep their money through the magic of accounting taking funding from something else, proving definitively that we really can have it all and no hard decisions have to be made ever. [touching earpiece] Hold on, we’re being told that’s not correct? And that the decisions will be even harder next year?? Ugh fuck it, we’re going back to Cartagena. 
4. Hot to Logo (Last week: NR). There comes a time in every government agency’s lifespan when it’s due for a brand refresh. You know, a more modern font, a streamlined logo, just a general glow-up. Well, this week it was our local transit agency’s turn and folks… they yassified the DASH logo. That’s right baby, the new mascot isn’t just a plain old bus like you’ve seen around town in the past. It has dimples. It’s smiling. Its eyes are twinkling coquettishly. We want to take this vehicle for a fare-free ride if you know what we’re saying!! Most importantly, this makeover isn’t just aesthetically pleasing, it’s also well-deserved–when your operating performance is that good, you’ve earned the “She’s All That” treatment. Get it, bus!!!
5. Posters Madness (Last week: NR). Following on last month’s whimsical public art display in support of Shirlington’s continued oppression, the local guerilla artist ArlingtonAF has apparently returned to decorate our city streets with wheatpaste and satire once more. This round we’ve been treated to parodies of the (totally real) DeVita for Arlington County Board campaign signs that can currently be found sharing their (totally insane) small-type red-font messages in medians all across Arlington.

The parodies—swapping in the name and headshot of beloved character actor Danny DeVito for the real-life candidate DeVita—offer a range of read-real-goddamn-quick-or-you’ll-miss-it campaign positions, from annexing Shirlington (yes), to punctuation-based modifications to neighborhood names (no), to solving Papal murder cases (allegedly, but sure), to ludicrous additional territory exchanges (how about we keep Chirilagua and we start refer to Aurora Highlands as West National Landing out of sheer spite). We can only imagine how confusing this entire thing has been to normal people who don’t have internet brain poisoning, but hey, everyone needs a little wtf in their daily routine to keep their mind off their real problems.

Overheard in ALX

From the ACPS home page:

“ACPS places educational excellence at the center of everything that we do as a school division.”

From the ACPS “About Us” page:

“Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS) places racial equity at the center of everything that we do as a school division.”

Guys… listen. If you’re going to preemptively comply by changing language on your website in fear of a bunch of half-rate stooges that got law degrees from mailing in clip-and-save cereal box tops, at least put some effort into covering your tracks? This is like Pete Hegseth levels of digital op sec (and his idea of digital op sec was just typing “op sec” a bunch of times like the world’s most geopolitically high-stakes version of Michael Scott yelling I DECLARE BANKRUPTCY!!!).

One Awesome Thing in ALX

Have you ever looked at your local pocket park and thought, “This space would reflect our neighborhood character so much better if it had a koi pond shaped like George Washington’s voluptuous derrière, but I couldn’t possibly find the resources to finance such a labor of love on my own”? If so, we have amazing news for you. The city operates a matching grant program to support enhancements to local parks, trails, and recreational spaces, and it’s currently open to applications! Known as the Community Matching Fund, or occasionally the “PARKnership Program” when RPCA staff are feeling particularly whimsical, this program matches every dollar raised by local organizations and businesses up to $50,000—more than enough to fund that community hammock zone or interpretive squirrel theater you’ve always wanted.

Not sure whether your idea is eligible for funds? The program’s website lists multiple project categories to get those creative juices flowing. This money isn’t just for park upgrades, we’re also talking athletic facility improvements, educational programming, tree planting, and sustainability initiatives. Previous projects that have been funded through the program since it started in 2018 include water bottle filling stations at two soccer fields, a scoreboard and batting cage at the Ben Brenman ballfield, the Samuel Tucker Elementary School community garden, and the renovation of the Woodbine Tot Lot in Fairlington. And a couple of the highest-profile projects it’s supported are finally under construction: the long-awaited Del Ray Gateway “sprayground” (RPCA just fully making up words now) and the Four Mile Run kayak launch.

The matching grant approach is a smart way to structure this program. It lets residents take the lead on identifying what they need most, and by requiring applicants to contribute–either with dollars, volunteer time, or donated goods and services–it ensures the community has skin in the game without shutting out those who lack deep pockets. This year the city has $100,000 in funding available, and applications will be accepted until May 26. Please, submit something or else we’re going to be stuck with Jesse’s request for a solar-powered hydration station at the Simpson pickleball courts. You can find more information on how to apply on the city’s website. 

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.

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