A new pottery studio offering customers a chance to paint their own bowls, mugs and figurines is opening in Shirlington this weekend.
Paint Your Heart Out is throwing a grand opening starting at 11 a.m. this Saturday for its new studio at 2780 S. Arlington Mill Road, where Shirlington Cleaners used to be. The grand opening will include a $50 gift card raffle, and the first 50 guests to make a $50 purchase will be given a complimentary mug to decorate.
A couple of top-five finishes and a notable performance by a freshman highlighted Arlington participation in the Virginia High School League’s Class 6 boys state wrestling tournament.
Fifth-place finishers in Virginia Beach were junior Anthony Morales at 175 pounds for the Wakefield Warriors and senior Zachary Capps at 150 for the Washington-Liberty Generals. Each finished with 4-2 records at the state tourney, with a technical fall and pin among their victories.
When Eddie Kaufholz and his family moved to Arlington nearly five years ago, they were not thinking about starting a business. They wanted to live in a place that was diverse, interesting and full of opportunity, with a school system they could rely on. Arlington fit.
In the years that followed, working out of a home office off Columbia Pike, he consulted with organizations across Northern Virginia and around the country: nonprofits, advocacy groups, mid-sized companies, agencies of various sizes. The work itself was good. But somewhere across all those projects, he started to notice a pattern.
”The agency model has gotten really bloated,” Kaufholz says. ”Layers, handoffs, middle management. The senior people who pitch the work often disappear once it starts. The idea with PILLAR was to strip all of that down; keep senior people on the work, approach each client with humility and care, do world-class strategy and execution, and pass the efficiency back to the client instead of absorbing it as agency margin.”
That thinking, slowly, became PILLAR, the Arlington-headquartered creative, communications and marketing agency Kaufholz founded.
PILLAR, he says, is built on an old idea. ”An idea that has always been possible but rarely practiced: that an agency should be structured to serve the work itself.” The team that delivers the work is assembled around the specific needs of each client and only stays as long as the work calls for them.
”The senior strategist on your kick-off call is the senior strategist writing your messaging,” Kaufholz says. ”Every person on a project is there because the work specifically calls for them.”
PILLAR’s recent work has spanned human rights, executive leadership, higher education, advocacy and direct-to-consumer ecommerce. The roster has included national nonprofits, a national multimillion-dollar direct-to-consumer brand and a number of institutions navigating significant moments of strategic change. The model is built to scale up to be the agency of record for a national brand, or to scale down to design a logo for a neighborhood nonprofit. PILLAR takes equal pride and care in both.
What Kaufholz did not understand when he started, he said, was how much the County itself would matter in making any of it possible. (more…)
A family-owned chain of fast-casual Chinese restaurants, known for having dishes once celebrated by Anthony Bourdain, is eyeing Clarendon for its next location.
Xi’an Famous Foods is planning a new restaurant at 2800 Clarendon Blvd, in The Crossing Clarendon shopping center. The New York City-based eatery offers cuisine inspired by CEO Jason Wang’s childhood in Xi’an, China — including a variety of hand-ripped noodles, dumplings, and a spicy cumin lamb burger favored by Bourdain on the show “No Reservations” in 2007.
A popular West Coast-inspired burrito shop and cafe from D.C. is opening for business next week at Crystal City’s Water Park.
Monstera Burrito opens Monday at 1721 Crystal Drive, bringing its signature San Diego-style, French fry-packed burritos and an extended menu of burgers, bowls, sandwiches and other bites. It’s the restaurant’s second location, joining a residency inside Georgetown’s Grace Street Coffee Roasters that opened in 2024.
St. Agnes Catholic Church in Arlington is hosting its monthly run & walk social on June 18th (Thursday) at 6:30pm. The 3 or 4 mile run (or walk) will start in the back parking lot (off N. Stafford St.) and end at St. Agnes. Participants can enjoy complimentary pizza afterwards. Drinks are BYOB. Extra points if you wear Catholic school swag. Thank you Father Oetjen, who started off our May run from Court House to/from the Marine Corps War Memorial with a prayer (and ran a competitive pace). Also, thank you to the Notre Dame and Georgetown alumni who wore their schools’ colors!
Please RSVP at the link, so we know how much pizza to get. Thank you!
Arlington ended 2025 with 23% more residents unemployed than at the start of the year.
In December, 4,676 Arlington County residents were looking for jobs and 147,611 were employed in the civilian workforce, equating to a 3.1% unemployment rate. That’s a sharp increase from January 2025, when 3,814 were unemployed for a jobless rate of 2.5%.
Falls Church and business leaders celebrated the reopening of a renovated police substation at the Eden Center yesterday (Wednesday).
“This really represents a recommitment,” Mayor Letty Hardi said at the ceremony. “We are really excited. Public safety works best when it is rooted in the community.”
Days Inn Site for Sale — The site of a shuttered Days Inn at 2201 Arlington Blvd is on the market, entitled for an eight-story, 251-unit multifamily building. The 2.4-acre property was approved for redevelopment in July 2023 but the owner did not proceed. Cohn Property Group expects to issue a call for offers by mid-April. [WBJ]
Knox Eyes Crystal City — Cybersecurity startup Knox Systems is nearing a deal for office space in Crystal City that would house up to half of its planned 120-person workforce. The company, which helps tech firms meet federal cybersecurity compliance standards, recently closed a $25 million Series A round. [WBJ]
Memorial Bridge Closure Saturday — Memorial Bridge and Circle will close from 7–10 a.m. Saturday for the Rock ’n’ Roll Half Marathon. Visitors to Arlington National Cemetery should use the Route 110 exit ramp to access the cemetery via Memorial Avenue. [Arlington National Cemetery, ANC/X]
ACFD’s Busiest Engines — Arlington’s three busiest fire engines of 2025: E102 in Ballston led with 3,330 calls, followed by E105 in National Landing with 3,287 and E104 in Clarendon with 3,179. [ACFD/X]
Sands Capital Raises $1.1B — Arlington investment firm Sands Capital has raised $1.1 billion for its third global innovation fund, the largest raise of its kind in the firm’s 34-year history. The oversubscribed fund will target late-stage AI, industrial technology and infrastructure companies. [WBJ]
100KM Closes First Fund — Arlington venture capital firm 100KM Ventures closed its first-ever fund at about half its $25 million target, citing a tough fundraising climate for emerging managers and diversity-focused funds. The firm has made 11 investments so far in early-stage companies with diverse leadership teams. [WBJ]
F.C. Budget Update — Falls Church is expected to fare better than its neighbors as local governments across N. Va. confront budget shortfalls tied to federal layoffs, a weakening office market and the Iran conflict. A budget vote is expected in early May. By contrast, Fairfax County is projecting a shortfall approaching $300 million, while Arlington faces a gap of about $25 million. [FCNP]
Va. Session Wrap-Up — “The just-concluded Virginia general assembly session in Richmond, now with a Democratic Party “trifecta” in charge, turned out better than expected due to the fact that revenues to the state did not nosedive, due to federal program cuts, as many had feared. Falls Church’s state delegate Marcus Simon laid out the picture to the monthly luncheon of the Falls Church Chamber of Commerce at the Italian Cafe Tuesday.” [FCNP]
It’s Thursday — Expect mostly sunny skies with a high near 55 degrees and a gentle south wind at 5 to 7 mph. Thursday night will be partly cloudy with temperatures dropping to around 40 degrees. [NWS]
There’s more local news to explore. Check out WSHnow, with stories from around the region.
Good Wednesday evening, Arlington. Let’s take a look back at today’s stories and a look forward to tomorrow’s event calendar.
The following articles were published earlier today — Mar 18, 2026.
Here is what’s going on Thursday in Arlington, from our event calendar.
Expect mostly sunny skies with a high near 55 degrees and a gentle south wind at 5 to 7 mph. Thursday night will be partly cloudy with temperatures dropping to around 40 degrees and a light south wind. See more from Weather.gov.
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
– Thomas Edison
The MonumentCam screenshot above is used with permission of the Trust for the National Mall and courtesy of EarthCam.
Thanks for reading! If you have something to say about an issue of local note not covered today, feel free to post it as a letter to the editor on our new forum.
Women’s sports fans could soon have a bar of their own in Arlington.
Sarah White, a longtime local restaurateur and partner at Westover Taco, is in the process of buying out of the taqueria at 5849 Washington Blvd. After that?
