Forget Black Friday. The next two or three days will likely be some of the busiest shopping days of the year, as procrastinators head to the malls to pick up last-minute Christmas gifts.
Where in Arlington, if anywhere, are you planning on going shopping before Dec. 25? You can select more than one answer.
According to a Delta Associates study cited by the Post, local apartment rents have increased 8.2 percent this year, to an average of $1,643. Rents in the Washington area are at 20-year highs, as people flee the housing market for rentals. Only New York City has a lower vacancy rate.
Earlier this year, we reported on the red-hot rental market in Pentagon City, where the average rent at the beginning of the year was $1,902 and rising. And Pentagon City certainly wasn’t alone in terms of rent hikes in the county.
Now, instead of a blast of snow on Tuesday, as once predicted, snow lovers are being told to wait until Christmas.
Surely, snow fans must be getting a bit frustrated. If there’s one time of year when it would be nice to have some more white stuff on the ground, it’s the holiday season.
Instead, while Fairfax and Loudoun students enjoyed a two-hour early release, Arlington students toughed it out.
It was a somewhat gutsy call, because anything that goes wrong on the way home is going to to be blamed on the administrators. And yes, things did go wrong.
Sure, there are some who will testify that the Chinese restaurants here are no different than anywhere else. But there are also plenty of people who have said emphatically that Chinese food was soooo much better wherever they lived before Arlington (New York City, for instance). For them, finding one — just one — comparable restaurant in Arlington remains a challenge.
What do you think? Feel free to share your restaurant recommendations in the comments.
After all, if yesterday morning’s Orange Line problems demonstrated anything, it’s that for all the suckage, the people you saw jammed onto the platforms still, at that point, considered Metro to be their best transportation option. (Same applies to today’s Blue, Orange and Yellow Line delays.)
But perhaps some are changing their minds.
County Manager Barbara Donnellan told the board on Saturday that the county has received requests for 50-60 snowblowers so far this winter. Arlington only has about ten snowblowers available to loan to local civic associations.
Faced with that news, the board seemed willing to expand the snowblower loan program, the goal of which is to allow citizens to clear publicly-owned sidewalks in their neighborhoods. The program also allows civic associations to clear sidewalks for elderly or disabled neighbors who aren’t capable of doing so themselves.
But what exactly is fueling the expansion? The openings have far outpaced Arlington’s population growth. From a purely economic standpoint, there can only be a few explanations for how so many new bars and restaurants can open and stay in business.
One theory is that we’re spending more and more money going out to restaurants and bars. With so many new options, perhaps residents feel more compelled to go out when they would have otherwise stayed in.
Of those thousands of tows every year, only about 50 result in formal complaints being filed with the police. And of those complaints, the cases where the towing company actually violated a county ordinance is in the single digits, according to an extrapolation of Cooper’s numbers.
When we last wrote about Arlington’s biggest tow company, Advanced Towing, a torrent of hate was unleashed in the comment section. But if such a large percentage of tows are legitimate, then are more stringent regulations necessary?
The Rosslyn-Ballston corridor will be getting not one but at least two new frozen yogurt stores next year thanks to rapidly-expanding D.C. chain FroZenYo.
While some will take a “more the merrier” approach to food in Arlington, others may question whether a three-mile stretch of Wilson Boulevard can really support 5-6 frozen yogurt shops, not to mention numerous ice cream and gelato places.
Contrary to popular belief, the Friday after Thanksgiving is not the busiest shopping day of the year. Americans actually buy more in the days leading up to Christmas.
But Black Friday is one of the biggest “traffic” days of the year at shopping centers, as consumers, unburdened by work or the need to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner, head out to the mall just for the sake of getting out and doing something. And of course there are those doorbuster specials, too.
That’s a 11 percent increase over least year and the highest number of area residents heading out for Thanksgiving since 2007.
“The Washington metro area has one of the strongest economies in the nation, and as evidence of this, we will likely see a double digit up-tick in the number of area residents traveling 50 miles or more from home for the holiday,” AAA Mid-Atlantic spokesperson John B. Townsend II said in a statement.
