Good morning, Arlington. It’s Friday the 13th.
What are you superstitious about?
Opinion
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If you spend enough time listening to Arlington’s police frequencies, you’ll notice that people love calling in to complain about things. Since complaining is so popular, we’re launching a periodic feature called the “complaint of the day,” to highlight the most humorous, outrageous or otherwise unseemly complaints received by police.
When it comes to citizen gripes in Arlington, noise complaints and “aggressive driver” complaints are common, but far and away the most frequent complaint is the parking complaint.
In an editorial — who knew the Times still covered local issues? — the paper claims the combined “angle collision” rate at the four intersections where cameras are installed is a mere 0.15 incidents per month.
The Times also says that rear end collisions doubled last time Arlington installed red light cameras.
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As of 2:30 this afternoon, election officials had counted 12,621 signatures, out of the 14,350 required by law to get a referendum on the ballot. Election staff are nearly finished with their “second pass” through the 761 petition sheets submitted by the Committee for a Better Arlington. A third pass is unlikely to yield a significant number of additional signatures.
Arlington County General Registrar Linda Lindberg says her staff has completed their second pass over about 700 petition pages. Since about 10,200 signatures were validated during the first pass, that means the second pass is, on average, validating 3.5 additional signatures per page. But with only 61 pages to go, it’s likely that the petition will only have about 12,900 valid signatures going into the third pass, which is expected to start Monday.
Arlington is home to a relatively new establishment that may be the country’s only restaurant dedicated exclusively to Tunisian cuisine (at least the only one with a web presence and decent SEO).
Chez Manelle (2313 Wilson Blvd) opened in Courthouse late last year. It is a small, independently operated eatery, with a unique vibe, a unique menu and some good old-fashioned friendly service.
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Since it’s Friday, we decided to share a recent email (and accompanying photo) from Mike.
It seems that he recently visited Northside Social and was pleasantly surprised by the experience.
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Tonight the County Board is expected to advertise public hearings on the blandly-named but far-reaching Crystal City Sector Plan 2050.
The plan sets a vision of the new Crystal City that will emerge once dozens of federal agencies and thousands of federal jobs move out as a result of the Base Realignment and Closing Act.
Every afternoon for the past week — and quite possibly for longer than that — this Loudoun County Transit bus has parked itself on the right shoulder of the busy ramp from Route 110 to Route 1 in Pentagon City, forcing cars to veer to the left as they drive by.
Other commuter buses in the area like to idle on the side of bumpy, narrow Old Jefferson Davis Highway while waiting to pick up passengers in Crystal City, but for some reason this bus likes the on-ramp.
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But ask just about any Arlington resident who lives within earshot of Route 1, I-395 or I-66 what they think of Rolling Thunder, and they’ll probably have some uncharitable things to say about the “Thunder” part of the Memorial Day weekend tradition.
In fact, the gadfly blogger over at Arlington Yupette may have hit a nerve with this post about how the noise seems to be getting worse every year.
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I’ll just say it: Arlington doesn’t get enough good thunderstorms. And when storms do approach, too many times it seems we get a “close call” — like last night, when we caught the edge of a storm and then were forced to watch as lightning flashed in the distance.
C’mon, weather gods, give us some legit wind and hail (without destruction of property or other bad things happening, if possible, although a short power outage would be fine by me).
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AVN’s production values are impeccable. It’s remarkable that the county is producing interesting community video content that could be mistaken for a Food Network show or a local news broadcast.
But it’s a bit discouraging that, before we linked to them, the two videos had barely 100 views between them on YouTube. It begs the question: is there a better way to promote AVN online?
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Ryan left WRC two months ago after failing to agree to a new contract. If the experience of other on-air talent at the station is any guide, the contract proposed by WRC management may have included a pay cut.
Starting today, Ryan will appear on WJLA’s 11:00 p.m. newscasts, while Hill will remain on air at 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. They will appear together during severe weather events, according to the Washington Post’s Paul Farhi.