Hot days — but not too hot, ideally — mean steady business at Arlington’s ice cream parlors.
Store owners and employees told ARLnow that an unusually hot summer has been driving healthy revenue, although some days this year, intense heat has caused slower traffic even at ice cream shops. In a business built on frosty treats, Mimi’s Handmade Ice Cream owner Rollin Amore has summertime almost down to a science.
The recent closure of Ayers Variety & Hardware was a stark reminder that nothing is forever, even businesses that have built generational relationships with customers.
The shuttering of the store that served Westover for nearly 80 years is also an indication of how challenging current times are for many of Arlington’s other small businesses, community leaders say.
Ayers Variety & Hardware officially closed its doors yesterday (Sunday), but not before customers gave a fond sendoff to the 78-year-old Westover hardware store.
The store was busy with shoppers yesterday morning, making final purchases at the business that has stood in The Westover Shopping Center since 1948. Two posters with notes and signatures from customers were still hanging in the windows this morning.
The owners of a beloved Westover hardware store are reflecting on a 78-year legacy of community investment and support as they prepare to close their doors.
Over the decades, Ayers Variety and Hardware — established in 1948 — built a reputation around friendly, knowledgeable staff who embraced the “small town feel” of the surrounding neighborhood. Spending time to help customers solve household problems and track down hard-to-find items, employees connected with generations of shoppers who knew the retailer as a local fixture.
Ayers Variety and Hardware, the Westover shop generations of Arlingtonians have relied on for the one screw, seed packet or odd gadget they couldn’t find anywhere else, is closing.
The family that has owned the store at 5853 Washington Blvd since 1977 announced the closing in social media posts earlier this afternoon (Sunday). Its lease ends July 31 and the doors will close for the last time “in a few weeks,” owners Kristy Peterkin and her brother, Keith, wrote.
A three-vehicle crash led to a minivan striking the side of a house in the Westover area.
The crash happened around 8 a.m. Friday at the intersection of 22nd Street N. and N. Madison Street.
Westover Taco cut the ribbon on Northern Virginia’s first women’s sports bar last night (Thursday) with a little help from some of the region’s athletes.
Members of the professional women’s tackle football team D.C. Divas and nonprofit tackle football team DMV Queens showed up alongside professional ultimate frisbee players from DC Shadow Ultimate to help celebrate the grand opening of the bar with founder Sarah White.
Arlington’s new “microtransit” pilot program is launching next week, providing on-demand rides in portions of the county with limited transit options.
The program launches next Monday, April 13. It will be available in two service zones: one in Westover Village and the other in a large swath of northwestern Arlington, including all or some of the neighborhoods of Rock Spring, Yorktown, East Falls Church, Williamsburg, Leeway Overlee, Hall’s Hill and Old Dominion.
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?
Westover may soon be home to the second location of a popular Falls Church cafe.
The owners of Rare Bird Coffee Roasters have applied for a permit to open a new location at 5870 Washington Blvd, in the same strip mall as Village Sweet and Stray Cat Cafe. They plan to fill a vacancy left by the former Westover Cleaners.
A man was found dead today along the Custis Trail in Arlington, prompting a police investigation.
The man’s body was found shortly after 11 a.m. near the trail and the intersection of N. Kensington Street and Fairfax Drive, according to an Arlington County police spokeswoman. That’s just east of Westover Park.
A house fire in Westover sent one person to the hospital Thursday night.
The blaze was reported around 7:30 p.m., in the basement of a home on the 5900 block of 16th Street N., about two blocks away from Westover’s shops and restaurants.
