Two Households, Both ARLike in Dignity

Happy Friday, Alexan– [slips and falls on a sheet of solid ice] Whew, what a week! We say that a lot, but– [falls again as feet slide on ice uncontrollably while trying to get up] This was even more of a week than usual. It’s not too often that you watch your city get buried in several inches of sleet– [scrabbles on hands and knees before faceplanting again] And then endure the kind of extended cold spell that has you looking up last-minute airfare to anywhere south of the Tropic of Cancer [lies down on ice-coated sidewalk, hoping someone will eventually walk by and help]. 

As if the situation weren’t taxing enough, Alexandrians also had to suffer one additional low-stakes but nonetheless ass-chapping indignity: Arlington has snow plows with funny names and we don’t. It’s so annoying!!! They even have a cool live tracker where they can watch The Big Leplowski and K-Plow Snowdrift Hunter toodle around the county clearing roads in real time. Uggghhhh, we hate how awesome it is. And it brings us absolutely no joy to say this, but it’s not the only thing Arlington has done recently that we kinda sorta respect and want to copy.

Take housing policy for example. Arlington approved several thousand new units of housing in 2025, ahead of our pace even accounting for the difference in population. They had the courage to be the first jurisdiction in the region to get rid of single-family land use. And even though they struggled a bit with branding, calling their initiative Missing Middle (confusing, hard to say if you’re drunk) and then EHO (your mom’s a ho!!), the scope of their reforms still surpassed our superiorly named Zoning for Housing (straightforward, kind of rhymes if you don’t understand how syllabic emphasis works). ZFH Phase Two for the sole purpose of catching up with these assholes, let’s goooo!

Wait, are we really writing an essay about how Arlington is Good, Actually? SHUT UP. We don’t like it either. But we’re committed now so let’s keep going. Transportation—that’s another sector where they’re kind of crushing it. It’s true that our free buses are better than their streetcar (oh wait they don’t have that either). But their performance parking pilot—using street parking sensors in high-traffic corridors to adjust meter rates and operate a real-time map showing open spots—is both an example of innovative 21st century urbanism and a data nerd’s wet dream. Not to mention that they are absolutely smoking us on installing protected bike lanes. The picture on the City of Alexandria’s “about protected bike lanes” website is from Arlington, for fuck’s sake!!!

Wow, this feels horrible. Why did we decide to write this? Okay, parks. Did you know that 99% of Arlingtonians live within a 10-minute walk of a park with public access? That figure is 96% in Alexandria, which is still excellent, but Arlington’s is better and that cannot be allowed to stand. WE MUST BUILD MORE PARKS! THE PEOPLE YEARN FOR PARKS!! Arlington also has a dope aquatic center with a waterslide and a lazy river. And the reason they had actual Pickleball Wars while we just had Jesse getting his ass beat by retirees is that they have [gagging, retching] very nice racket sport facilities.

Are we still going? Did we hit our heads when we fell on that ice earlier? Arlington has some pretty solid sustainability initiatives. They’ve got an on-street food scraps collection program so that residents of multifamily buildings can have easy access to composting services. It won an award and everything. Does anyone have any anti-nausea medication? Arlington’s stormwater pollution program is more ambitious than ours and they’ve installed a number of really beautiful rain gardens and bioretention units in the public right of way. OH GOD MAKE IT STOP. IT HURTS.

Arlington lets people get married in their libraries. They have more than one high school. One of their bars, the Four Courts, is considered a top 10 soccer bar nationally, which isn’t fair at all when we’re the jurisdiction that’s about to become the temporary home to a large number of Croatians!!!

Don’t get us wrong. There are still plenty of things we can’t stand about Arlington—political signs in medians, lack of mayor, “NaLa,” continued occupation of Shirlington—but when they do something good, we should acknowledge their regional leadership shamelessly steal it for ourselves. Because that’s the point of this whole essay, other than staging a public display of masochistic self-torture for our subscribers’ entertainment. We have a lot of fun with the ALX-ARL rivalry thing, it’s generated several of our favorite running gags and some incredibly delightful street art, but at the end of the day we should see this competition as more than a joke—as something that can motivate us, push us to do better, and even inspire us. Just… please don’t tell them we said any of this. We’ll never hear the end of it.

Things You May Have Missed Because You Have a Life 

• Crooked Beat Records in Del Ray is closing at their current location as a result of a catastrophic flood, but hoping to find a new spot to reopen. Their last day (for now) is tomorrow (Jan 31) so if you’ve been meaning to buy some vinyl this is a great time to throw them some support. 
• A change.org petition seeks to allow Coco the emotional support dog to return to Zen Press Juice in Old Town, after the Alexandria Health Department notified the shop owner that dog hair is typically considered an undesirable smoothie ingredient. Not the most important detail in this story… but why is the juice shop dog named “Coco” and not “Piña Colada” or “OJ” or you know “Mango” even. Let’s have a little thematic consistency here people!!
• We learned last week that National Harbor is getting Sphere (as the press release makes clear, not “a Sphere” or “the Sphere,” just… Sphere). And we’re getting… a view of Sphere! As the jurisdiction with the most direct line of sight to this thing, we’re excited to find out how Maryland attempts to out-tacky Vegas. Just picture it, you’re taking a peaceful morning stroll along the waterfront, your vision overwhelmed by a 200-foot tall LED advertisement for Natty Boh, Mr. Boh lecherously winking at you from across the Potomac. Old Town is gonna love this, we cannot wait.
• The Amazon Fresh grocery store in Potomac Yard announced that they are closing, which is nice because now Arlington won’t be the only one in our area with an Amazon project that didn’t live up to expectations.
• The city is paying WMATA an additional $35m to finalize and close out the Potomac Yard metro stop project, bringing the total investment to $385m or about half of what we assume the city has spent on Bobcat rentals this week.

Local Discourse Power Rankings

1. Unnecessarily Aggressive Weather Phenomena (Previous rank: 4). No surprise that Coldfront Supreme comes in at number one this week as we remain firmly wedged up Jack Frost’s ass with potential thawing still several days away. Not that Alexandrians are particularly resilient to winter weather as a general matter, but we were still surprised at how quickly cabin fever set in during this particular episode. Part of the problem could have been that people were already primed for outrage after the Masonic Memorial tried to tell people not to sled there (lol, sure) and local influencers started sniping at each other over whether it was okay to eat sleet aka nature’s forbidden Dippin’ Dots. But what we were not prepared for was the level of vitriol directed at local officials for not plowing every residential cul-de-sac in the city within five minutes after the storm ended on Sunday. And like… look. Did we love being stuck in our houses because the weather decided “3 inches of crunchy rain” was a thing that should happen? Not really! Did the city nail every single aspect of storm response? There was certainly room for improvement, see e.g. the road status website powered by hopes and dreams. But it felt like a lot of the folks who couldn’t tolerate three days of not being able to drive (a) were divorced from the reality of the situation—a generationally severe ice storm for which no jurisdiction in the region could reasonably have prepared, (b) need to seek therapy to address their unresolved covid lockdown PTSD, and/or (c) might finally see the light about the need for enhanced public transportation options, welcome to the war on cars? On the flip side, we really appreciated this essay by Ryan Belmore of the Alexandria Brief about extending some grace during this challenging time not being an asshole. Anyway, we hope everyone stayed safe and warm and didn’t say anything they regret too badly, once you tell a public servant they’re dumber than ChatGPT it’s kind of hard to take that back.
2. Democracy (Previous rank: 3). Alexandria’s valiant attempt to break the Guinness Book of World Records mark for most elections held in a single year continues to roll right along following two back-to-back Democratic party firehouse primaries, and a special election set for February 10th for the SD39 and HD5 seats (information on that election can be found here, and early voting starts this weekend). With Democratic HD5 nominee Councilman Kirk McPike resigning from Council effective February 9th, we know we’ll also have a Democratic primary for that seat (likely in late Feb), and a special election (potentially in late April alongside the anticipated referendum on Congressional redistricting, though that process hit a bump this week with an unfavorable court ruling) bringing our confirmed total of bonus elections to five, at a minimum. In the Council special, so far friend-of-the-newsletter and former Alexandria Democratic Committee Chair Sandy Marks as well as friend-of-the-newsletter and two-time Del Ray Citizens Association president Tim Laderach have both declared their candidacy, and it’s possible (if not likely) more candidates will jump in before the filing deadline. Honestly, instead of “I Voted Stickers” by the end of this year we’re going to be issuing “I Wasn’t a Candidate for Office in 2026” stickers and we’re only going to need to print a few dozen of them.
3. Mr. FBoy Goes to Washington (Previous rank: NR). Sen. Mark Warner drew a new primary challenger last week, and if the contest for our U.S. Senate seat winds up hinging on the candidates’ ability to do tequila shots out of someone’s belly button, Warner may be in a bit of trouble. That’s right, new candidate Mark Moran is best known for having appeared on the HBO Max reality show FBoy Island [Editor’s note: not to be confused with Jack Donaghy’s fake show MILF Island] [Editor’s note: not to be confused with TLC’s real show MILF Manor] a Peabody Award winning Guild of Music Supervisors Awards nominated television program in which 12 “nice guys” and 12 “fboys” compete for the affection of three female candidates and a $100,000 prize. Warner should probably be worried [Editor’s note: no he shouldn’t] given Moran’s ability to point to the success that other reality TV stars have had running the state of Minnesota, or running the federal Department of Transportation, or controlling the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. Reality stars get it done baby!! Moran 26: How You Doin’. 
4. It’s Not Easy Being Green But Honestly It’s Not That Hard Either (Previous rank: NR). After a bit of Robert’s Rules drama, City Council approved a new Green Building Policy last week. Contrary to common misconception, this policy does not establish the shades of green paint that homeowners are allowed to use within the Old Town historic district. Rather, it sets sustainability standards for development in the city using a metric called “energy use intensity” or “EUI,” which we insist on pronouncing as if it were a word. Oooey. Eeeuuyyee. Take it for a spin, it’s got a great mouthfeel. Anyhow, things got a little weird during council’s discussion of this agenda item when city staff proposed one metric, the planning commission recommended another, and Councilmember Elnoubi threw out a surprise third option just to keep everybody on their toes. Normally we don’t approve of policymaking by calling out random numbers like it’s “The Price Is Right,” but in this case it seems to have worked out okay despite some grousing from the JBGs Smith in the audience. Now we have an ambitious but achievable-in-most-cases target that will help the city meet its climate goals. Still no word on the acceptability of forest green, chartreuse, or pistachio window treatments on pre-1800 townhomes, however.

Alexandria’s Hottest Club Is… Getting Your Car Stuck in the Snow

We’ve learned many things this last week. We’ve learned that the typically good practice of a mid-storm shovel is a real bad idea if there’s still three inches of sleet on the way. We’ve learned what snowcrete is, which meant we also had to learn what a mattock is. We learned that using a Bobcat is somehow the most effective and the cutest way to plow our ice-covered streets. And we learned that many many people in our region are going to try and drive around even if the road conditions would make even the hardiest Canadian blanch. We’ve gone ahead and rounded up some of the finest examples of this, in a presentation we’re calling Uber Drivers on Ice. Enjoy!

Make good choices out there everybody!

One Awesome Thing in ALX

Oh heyyyy lookie here, it’s an awesome thing that we have and Arlington doesn’t! Suck it Arlington!!! There’s been a fair amount of local press coverage this week for Volunteer Alexandria’s Snow Buddy program, including this nice ALXnow feature, but we just wanted to highlight it again here because it truly exemplifies the best of our community. The program matches strapping, hearty volunteers with low-income seniors, homebound or disabled residents who are physically unable to shovel snow themselves or can’t afford to hire somebody to do it. Snow buddies are more important than ever after this week’s storm because while the city has suspended the normal sidewalk-clearing requirements, which makes sense because it’s hard for even able-bodied adults to shovel a SHEET OF SOLID ICE, it super duper sucks to be a pedestrian right now—this program will help return our lives to normal sooner (including getting kids back inside a school building!!).

Here are some things we love about this program:

• It helps take care of our most vulnerable neighbors
• Arlington doesn’t have anything like it
• Volunteers get to discover previously unknown muscles in their bodies after shoveling long enough to unlock entirely new forms of pain
• It turns “fuck ICE” from a political slogan into a literal mission statement (except, uh, not that literal, put your pants back on)
• It allows us to continue feeling superior to Arlington

Seeing folks get out there and help each other this week was a welcome counterpoint to some of the online negativity. If any readers volunteered as snow buddies during this storm, you’re officially our heroes. The next time we see you, drinks—and Advil—are on us.

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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