Spooky Sexy

Halloween is serious business. Lest you’ve suddenly woken up in late October under the misapprehension that this is merely a lighthearted celebration of children’s fun—NO! You’re WRONG! Halloween is serious business. We’re talking about a holiday that traces its roots back to Celtic traditions marking the end of the harvest and the coming of the dark time of year, with costumes worn to disguise yourself from the fairies crossing over from the Otherworld as the barrier between realms thins on Samhain. Serious business. We’re talking about a holiday where people go to great lengths to elaborately decorate their homes and front yards to resemble abattoirs or skeleton-based dioramas or Act 4 Scene 1 of Macbeth. Serious business! We’re talking about a holiday where as a young adult you are faced with the impossibly fraught choice of picking a costume that is spooky or a costume that is sexy. Serious. Business.

Stop laughing, we mean it. Spooky vs. Sexy is the primary taxonomy of Halloween costumes. This is settled science. When you’re going out on Halloween as a young adult (or an adult adult, some of you probably have cooler social lives than we do) you’ve got to decide if you want to respect the grim traditions of the holiday and pick a costume that leans into frightful gore and full identity-concealing disguise, or do you want to look fine as hell. Both options are equally valid to be sure! We love a gross zombie or an unsettling Ghostface just as much as we love a sexy doctor. Now we know what you’re thinking—Jesse and Becky (you say, with your head cocked to the side and a skeptical eyebrow raised) what about a sexy zombie, that’s both spooky and sexy. And this is a good point, but also NO! Do not confuse us with rotting flesh makeup and then also be hot! You’ve got to pick a lane. These are the rules.

Now that we’re all on the same page about there only being two types of Halloween costumes [Editor’s note: you know 90% of our readers are the kind of people that do topical reference to current events costumes, right? Which is obviously a third thing?] we thought we’d kick off this Halloween weekend in Alexandria by rating a bunch of recent local news as either SPOOKY or SEXY. Did we do this same bit last year but with TRICK or TREAT instead? We sure did. Is this evidence that we’re running out of ideas? It sure is. Do we have existential dread about this? We sure do. Happy Halloween everyone!

• Halloween on a Saturday: SPOOKY. So it didn’t really sink in until a day or two ago what Halloween on a Saturday actually means. Our kids are going to have their costumes on sometime shortly after breakfast. Starting around 1pm they’re going to ask us if it’s time to trick-or-treat yet. It’s going to be impossible to keep them occupied and distracted all day and they may quite literally die of anticipation. How was this allowed to happen?! And to make matters worse, it’s the end of daylight saving time! They get an extra hour of non-school-night candy-fueled shenanigans! Anyway, good luck, godspeed, and tell us in the comments your strategy to make it through the day.
• Dumping Flock: SEXY. As of today the cameras are deactivated, baby!!! From now on, if Big Brother wants to spy on us he’s going to have to subscribe to our OnlyFans like everyone else (it’s mostly foot stuff). At Tuesday night’s Council hearing, our local electeds were so fired up to get rid of these cursèd lookie-loo machines that they urged the police not only to turn them off but also to put bags over them just to be super duper sure. We love this energy and also the mental image of a Flock camera wearing a paper bag on its head like it’s an embarrassed fan at a Maryland football game. Adding an element of shame to spice the process up even further, always a fun move. Next steps include examining what can be done about license plate readers on private property and adopting principles to guide any surveillance technology decisions moving forward, which will be proposed and debated at the November 10 Council meeting. It feels really good and satisfying that our leaders are listening and responding to public concerns about this issue, but also it’s an unusual case (and an easy decision) because Alexandrians are unusually united in hating these fucking things. If only public consensus were this unanimous on every issue! Can you imagine??? No 11-hour public meetings. No listserv flame wars. We would have so much more free time to post foot content on our OnlyFans spend time with our families!!

• Halloween Themed Bars: SEXY. If you’re looking for something to do tomorrow night in your spooky/sexy Halloween costume [Editor’s note: We covered this. The third category is TOPICAL REFERENCE TO CURRENT EVENTS. It’s not a good Halloween costume unless you have to spend all night explaining it to people] there’s a dance party and costume contest at Nightmare on the Ave. Speaking of Del Ray’s pop-up bar, they’ve been in a great run of form with lines down the block on weekend nights this whole month, and it’s felt like fully half of our Instagram algorithm has been DMV foodie influencers posting pics and videos of the decor and drinks inside. Not that there was any doubt, but this conclusively proves that any application of dry ice makes something 100% more fun than it would be otherwise.
• ICE Graffiti: SPOOKY. Over the weekend pro-ICE graffiti appeared on the bike path in Mount Jefferson Park and on sidewalks on some surrounding streets. The hastily sprayed stencil messages shared a mostly illegible message about deportation and provided a phone number to call, a number which we can only assume would have been answered by the most in-my-mom’s-basement-waiting-for-her-to-bring-me-Hotpockets voice you’ve ever heard. No you’re not imaging it nasally enough. Nope, more. Not quite nasally enough, imagine even more. Yep, ok, there. Now you’ve got it. Anyway—the chud Banksy that did this was clearly in such a rush (understandably so, it must be terrifying to be cosplaying as a Big Strong Patriot in a leafy bucolic neighborhood at night) that the red, white, and blue tags came out smeared and mostly left the impression that the dipshit in question was celebrating the Fourth of July three months late. God save us from these absolute dorks and their brownshirt fantasies.
• National Maritime Museum: SEXY. A month or so back we wrote about the uncertain future of the tall ship Providence, as it was unclear if the organization that had been supporting its operations on our waterfront was sustainable. But now a new plan to save the schooner has been [puts on CSI: Miami sunglasses] floated, and it’s to make the Providence a central attraction of a new National Maritime Museum in Old Town. On one hand, this feels pretty audacious—one museum to tell the story of everything maritime? That’s going to include all our naval history, all our oceanic exploration history, all our shipbuilding history AND all our cool-ass pirate history?! That feels like too much to cram into one museum. Docents are gonna just popping out at you from around random corners yelling “DAMN THE TORPEDOS” and “REMEMBER THE MAINE” and humming Gordon Lightfoot songs really loudly [Editor’s note: why are all these things about ships that sank and/or exploded, you know there’s plenty of cool boat history that’s significantly less depressing, right?]. On the other hand we need to stay one step ahead of Santa Fe on these tourism rankings, and you know what’s one thing Santa Fe doesn’t have? Access to a fucking ocean. That seals it, we’re all in on this museum—kiss our salty mariner ass, Santa Fe!!
• Not Using AI to Design Your Event Fliers: SEXY. Come on… just look at this beauty. Business owners, trust us when we say that this is all we want!!!

• State Delegate Race: SPOOKY. Last week local activist Glen Pine announced his intention to run in next spring’s Democratic primary for state delegate in HD-5, the seat currently held by Del. Kirk McPike. So… listen guys… [runs a hand down our haggard, exhausted face and takes a 45 second long drag from a cigarette]... we’re not sure we’re gonna make it this time. It’s October. We’ve got local election cycles kicking off in OCTOBER now. The primary is eight months away. Eight months! That’s too many months! We haven’t even gotten to the far side of the midterm elections, and it’s honestly TBD if we’re going to survive the stress and anxiety of those in the first place. Here’s the thing—we used to be civilized about this stuff. Maybe you’d get a candidate for something in December, but for the most part we could be confident that we wouldn’t have to really start paying attention to things until January/February-ish and then it was a brisk few months of hyper-engaged local political stuff after which we could all get back to our lives. We all remember how we barely survived the Year of Voting Once a Month what with all the special elections, but guys… that was THIS YEAR. WE ARE STILL IN THAT YEAR. No thank you. This is too much democracy. This is the Katz’s Delicatessen pastrami sandwich of democracy. We would like to take some of this democracy off this sandwich and save it to have another democracy later, like maybe in February. February would be great. 
• Racketeering in Richmond: SEXY. Speaking of the state legislature, the story that consumed Virginia politics last week was the indictment of Sen. Louise Lucas on federal charges that included conspiracy to commit fraud, money laundering, marijuana distribution, and racketeering. It was a whole dog-and-pony show that involved Kash Patel—somehow carving out time between flying to see his girlfriend perform the national anthem at a senior men’s floor hockey game—standing menacingly near a podium and looking at and/or five feet to the left of a camera. The charging documents quickly circulated online and they were quite the page-turning read, both because of the creative variety of the alleged misdeeds in addition to the sheer volume of text messages in evidence that said things along the lines of “Hello, this is my crimes text message” and “Having received your email about crimes, I was wondering when I might expect you to drop off the crimes reimbursement.” Just absolute top-shelf stuff all around. As for a local connection, dedicated readers might remember the recent period in which Sen. Lucas assumed main character status in ALX regarding her role in thwarting our local economic development efforts. So if anyone at the FBI comes across a basketball arena while you were raiding her properties… would it be too much to ask that you drop it off up here? Do we have to fill out an unclaimed property form first? Nevermind, we’ll figure it out. Just let us know if it turns up.
• Reviving the Beltway Express Lanes Proposal: SPOOKY. Looks like induced demand is back on the menu, boys! Like an undead creature rising from the grave, VDOT’s plan to add two new express lanes to the Wilson Bridge has returned 28 days later 13 months after Alexandria initially killed it. It’s technically better than the first iteration, as it retains the space needed to add Metro service to the bridge in the future, but VDOT’s promise to do a “study” and “mitigate” any impacts to local streets (presumably by doing even more road-embiggening) has our eyes rolling around in our head like a zombie that hasn’t eaten human flesh in a while and is struggling with low blood sugar. It just feels like the people behind this project are infected with the delusion that this won’t create a massive amount of cut-through traffic, noise, and air pollution. Bottom line, this whole thing is a night of the living dead-end and it seems we haven’t seen the last of us having to fight it off. Can any horror movie aficionados tell us, how do we kill it for good? Does Mayor Gaskins have to smash it in the skull with a baseball bat? Because we won’t feel safe until we’re sure it’s officially done shambling in our direction.

• Waiting to Turn Right at Red Lights: SEXY (for pedestrians who enjoy being alive)/SPOOKY (for Old Town drivers who are running late for their lunch reservation at the Warehouse). Speaking of roads, on Monday the Traffic and Parking Board voted to recommend eliminating the ability to make a right turn on red at about 100 intersections in Old Town and you’ll be unsurprised to learn that motorists are having a normal one about this. The Facebook comments on the local news coverage have everything: Unironic uses of the phrase “war on cars.” Rants about the audacity of pedestrians wearing earbuds. Confident assertions that banning right on red doesn’t improve safety (it does). Claims that the Traffic & Parking Board isn’t allowed to do this (it is). Complaints that the law won’t be enforced, but also that the city is just doing this to make money… from enforcement. Gripes that no one goes to Old Town anymore because it’s too crowded. Cyclists taking strays even though this has literally nothing to do with cyclists. All that’s missing is someone saying that Justin Wilson did this to turn Alexandria into Lower Manhattan and we’ll officially hit bingo. And listen… we get it. We’re all busy people. We have places to go. But if you find yourself rageposting in the NBC4 comments because you can’t wait thirty additional seconds to avoid pancaking somebody who’s just trying to cross the street from Trader Joe’s to Harris Teeter to find a halfway decent avocado, please remember that we have more serious things to complain about, like the fact that the extremely hot guy who plays the foreign secretary isn’t in the new season of “The Diplomat.” Get your priorities in order!!!
• Group, Stroller, and Pet Costumes: SEXY. Look, we know that publishing photos from the Del Ray Halloween parade is de rigueur for every media outlet in town so you’ve pretty much seen them all by now. But there are three costumes that we, as a hyperlocal newsletter community, need to discuss.

The Art on the Avenue theme! The tiny model of ALXtra’s editorial headquarters, Gustave! The haunted Pat Miller Square! The Bob Ross!!! AND THERE’S MORE ON THE OTHER SIDE:

The mini St. Elmo’s looks so real we feel like we could almost walk inside for a 12 dollar housemade pop tart. Just impeccable craftsmanship.

All right, this one may be primarily of interest to Becky but as far as Bad Bunny Super Bowl halftime show costumes go, this one is stupendous. Puppy Benito is adorable and his sugarcane field is lush and full. Could only be improved by subbing in the Puerto Rican independence flag with the light blue triangle, IYKYK.

But there’s one more thing we need you to see and we think you will enjoy it:

The pig… is dressed up… as a pig. THE PIG IS DRESSED UP AS A PIG. First of all, if anyone knows who this Del Ray porcine parent is, please smash that reply button immediately and connect us. We have seen this duo around town and we have questions. And second of all, a pig wearing a dog costume of a pig is the funniest thing we’ve ever seen. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you.

• ACHS Football: SEXY. The Titans are playing their final home game of the season tonight and they head into it with a 7-1 record. While we are limited ball knowers at best in addition to knowing next to nothing about the Virginia prep football scene, we’re going to go out on a limb and say that it looks like the hometown side is having a damn fine season. Are we headed for playoff football under the lights? We don’t know! That sounds pretty great though, count us in.
• School Board Four-Year Terms: TOPICAL REFERENCE TO CURRENT EVENTS. Yeah that’s right, we’re bringing in the third option we referenced in the intro!! Last week the joint City Council and School Board committee voted to recommend four-year terms for the Alexandria School Board, with no staggered terms and no change in the board’s size. This isn’t exactly spooky, because it doesn’t seem like a bad idea per se, but it is also decidedly not sexy. It’s the “dressing up as the Super El Niño” of Halloween costumes in that it’s wonky and nobody understands what exactly you’re going for. Is an extra year in School Board members’ terms going to solve all of that body’s problems? Uhh, probably not. Will it help improve governance by giving new members time to get over the learning curve and figure out how to make the most of their elected position? Sure, we guess? It just seems like a bit of a missed opportunity to take a bigger swing since everyone generally seems to agree that the Board as an institution could be a lot more effective than it currently is. Also, let’s not gloss over the fact that part of the discussion around four-year School Board terms was an assumption that Council would also be switching to four-year terms and… did we miss this announcement somewhere?? That seems like way bigger news to us. If we have the same length terms for our elected officials as everybody else on earth instead of the random-ass “we could vote at LITERALLY ANY TIME” system we have now, how are we going to maintain our identity as a quirky and slightly intractable community that marches to the beat of its own drum? Seriously… Alexandria with “normal” “politics”?? We wouldn’t even recognize ourselves. This is honestly upsetting. If anyone needs us we’ll be scheduling an emergency session with our therapists.
• Beavers: SEXY. Move over Jon Husted’s ass, the shapeliest rear end in the United States of America belongs to the Ben Brenman park beaver. This comely creature has been making frequent crepuscular appearances over the past few weeks to the delight of West End semiaquatic rodent appreciators [Editor’s note: uhh, except the person it bit in September]. It’s seemingly not afraid of people, and why should it be? It’s caked up and thicker than a Del Ray Christmas tree, this magnificent beast has nothing to fear from puny humans [Editor’s note: are we just not going to mention the biting?]. If you ever have a free evening and want to witness this voluptuous ecosystem engineer with your own eyes, just make your way over to Ben Brenman Pond and catch this sizzling specimen of Castor canadensis getting busy from dusk till dawn [Editor’s note: if we are the direct cause of someone contracting rabies I swear to god].

• The National Harbor Sphere: SPOOKY. Old Town residents can’t catch a break this week! Not only was their god-given right to proceed through intersections without stopping rudely snatched away from them but Alexandria’s mortal enemy (Maryland) also granted final approval for the Sphere at National Harbor. When this massive glowing orb opens up in 2030 we are never going to hear the end of how bright and obnoxious it is. The White House may look like Saddam Hussein decorated a Cheesecake Factory but the Sphere is going to look like Elon Musk gave ketamine to the Times Square New Year’s Eve ball. It’s tacky and Old Town hates tacky. To be clear, we’re not one hundred percent against it. There is a distinct possibility we may end up enjoying the Sphere’s entertainment programming from time to time. We’re just saying that from a pure cost-benefit standpoint, we’re not sure the value of being able to see the remaining living members of the Grateful Dead perform “Scarlet Begonias” in front of a 300-foot-tall Magic Eye image in 16K resolution is going to outweigh how annoying Old Town amateur historic preservationists are going to be about light pollution for the next twenty years or whenever this venue inevitably goes out of business.
• Thematically Appropriate “I Voted” Stickers: SEXY. Last but certainly not least, in case you haven’t seen them yet the city has rolled out Halloween-themed “I Voted” stickers featuring a pumpkin-headed revolutionary soldier grinning widely because unlike us he is not getting slightly tired of participating in the democracy he struggled so valiantly to establish. They’re amazing!! These stickers have us running to the polls faster than Flávio Bolsonaro boarding a flight to Miami. Everything about them is exquisite—the gothic font, the elegant crescent moon, the spiderweb attached to nothing. If AI was used to design these stickers please don’t tell us because we don’t want to know. Anyone who hasn’t voted yet, let this be your sign to hop on your broomstick and hurry over to the elections office or Beatley Library before these stickers vanish into the night, tomorrow is your last day to get one!

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, 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.