Late last week and into the weekend, the smartphone-based game Pokemon Go exploded in popularity and has become a pop culture phenomenon. That’s especially remarkable if you consider that the game was only officially released on Wednesday.
Walk around any given Arlington neighborhood last night and you were likely to see people loitering about, glued to their phone — more so than usual, at least. The game takes place on local streets and gathering places across the world, in augmented reality.
Via Twitter there are reports of crowded trains and long waits at stations, although Metro says early indications were that everything was going according to plan. Via Google Maps, traffic appears to be heavier than usual, with lots of red on the traffic map.
Whether you commute via Metro, car or otherwise, we want to know: was your commute slower than usual today?
You’ve heard the term NIMBY — Not In My Backyard — used as a pejorative to describe those who oppose new development near them, even though they might not be opposed to the same project elsewhere. In San Francisco, Seattle, New York and elsewhere, however, YIMBYs are starting to organize.
The Yes In My Backyard movement supports efforts to build more housing, with the goal of building enough housing that supply and demand find an equilibrium and people stop getting priced out of the housing market.
There is a good chance of rain or storms each day of this week, through Friday.
Normally May is one of the more pleasantly sunny and warm months of the year in the D.C. area. Except for a brief period of warmth today, high temperatures this week will struggle to break out of the 60s.
(Updated at 1:40 p.m.) This week, the Arlington County Police Department is holding its annual Spring Pedestrian & Bicycle Safety Awareness campaign.
This morning and for part of the day Thursday, police will be conducting targeted, high-visibility traffic safety enforcement and public education in Clarendon and Crystal City.
The draft plan envisions a tree-lined Lee Highway that’s more pedestrian- and bike-friendly, with mid-rise development concentrated in “mixed-use activity nodes.”
The rationale behind the plan, and the community process that helped inform it, is to set an aspirational vision for future development and transportation improvements along the Lee Highway corridor. The community can thus have more of a voice than if it were to just let piecemeal development take place along the corridor without a unified plan.
Those inspections found more than two dozen damaged power cables along the tracks, the kind which caused a deadly fire and smoke incident in a tunnel outside of the L’Enfant Metro station last year.
With the damaged cables repaired, Metrorail service resumed this morning. Do you think the disruption to hundreds of thousands of people’s daily commutes was worth it?
Fairfax, Prince William and Stafford counties have all decided to close schools on March 1 while voters go to the polls in the contentious presidential primary.
Arlington has no such plans.
Life has largely returned to normal — students went back to school today for the first time since Wednesday, Jan. 20 — though there are scattered reports of continued mail delivery issues.
It was a Herculean task to clear two feet of snow from local roads. Though major arteries were plowed and made passable pretty quickly, as usually happens with large snow storms in Arlington the residential streets remained snow-covered and treacherous for days, prompting complaints.
The latest forecast suggests a “crippling” blizzard is headed for the region, with snowfall totals in the double digits and strong winds possible. And before we go any further, let us remind you that you asked for this just one week ago.
With any winter storm comes a lot of excitement and plenty of panic. How have you prepared thus far? Snowblower gassed up? Are your shovels sharpened? Did you buy the bread, eggs and milk?
Ebbin, who has won the endorsement of the pro-pot group NORML, proposed a similar bill last year, but it failed in the conservative Virginia General Assembly.
The bill, SB 104, would reduce marijuana possession to a civil offense punishable only by fines, like a traffic ticket, rather than jail time. It would also reduce the criminal penalties for marijuana distribution and possession with the intent to distribute.
Where are those plans taking you? Many, no doubt, will stay in Arlington — either at home or at a bar, although Virginia ABC laws preventing establishments from offering an open bar puts a damper on the kind of parties one can attend at bars and clubs.
Many will also likely head into the District to take advantage of the myriad NYE parties, although transportation back is always a challenge. Wait for Metro, try to get one of the few available cabs, pay Uber’s top surge price, or designate a driver and try to find parking — the decision isn’t always ideal.
