Tuesday, February 2, 2016

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 19th 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.




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