Tepid time in the Old Town

Sunday I resumed neighborhood-hunting and hauled myself off to Alexandria, Virginia. Well, Metro hauled myself, after a manner of speaking, which is to say: it did so at half speed, but that’s life in the city.

As I was walking down King Street, I realized that I haven’t been to what the good citizens of Alexandria are pleased to call Old Town for a long time. Possibly in this century. But it really hasn’t changed all that much.

By which I mean it still retains its mixture of snobbery and tackiness, as it balances cheesy tourist businesses and way too many high-end children’s toy shops, clothing shops and whatever else is deemed critical to raising the next generation of high-end conspicuous consumers.

Seriously: the two words that kept cropping up in my mind were "chi" and "chi".

It was a bit of a blast to see a couple of restaurants that I ate in back in the 80s. And I had a good old time in the Torpedo Factory—which started out life as an actual manufacturer of arms in the 19^th Century, but has for several decades been an enclave of artists, with studios, galleries, the Art League School and (now) the ubiquitous coffee bar.

(Speaking of coffee, I had quite a nice latte at Misha’s, but I’ve seen less frightening toilets in Turkey. Does Alexandria have no health inspectors?)

The Torpedo Factory had a couple of these out, soliciting donations:

It occurred to me that if they were serious about separating people from their money they should install a water feature, but maybe this works for them.

If you’re wondering, yes, I did look around at residential areas, but was not encouraged. For one thing, there’s the infestations of tourons, which is year-round but gets worse in good weather. For another, there’s a serious lack of parking, and I’m a fourth-generation Californian. They can pry my car from my cold, dead hands.

And then there are all the lovely historic houses, with their historic plumbing. I saw several that had not weathered Snowzilla well. Viz.:

Which was separated from:

And a neighboring house:

This is the sort of thing that gives me the serious willies.