Flight of fancy

I misjudged the opening time of the Arlington Costco on Saturday, so I took a walk around the neighborhood to kill half an hour.

The neighborhood in question is Pentagon City. It’s across I-395 from the actual, you know, Pentagon, but it’s kind of Pentagon-themed.

Apparently it’s a creation of the Metro system—when the Blue Line opened its Pentagon City station in the late 70s, it was onto an empty field. There were old neighborhoods nearby, but not at all what you might call happening, which is the way it’s promoted now.

Since then it’s been thoroughly developed: high-rise office buildings and apartment blocks, trendy restaurants, parking meters and the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City—a substantial shopping mall with all the usual chain and department stores that you’ll find a few miles away in Tysons Corner. Actually, when I lived in Northern Virginia before, the only reason I ever came to this part of town would be to go to the Nordstrom at Fashion Centre. And I didn’t do that more than about twice.

Well, as I said, the built-up area is Pentagon-themed. The apartments and parking garages that are part of the Pentagon Row strip mall adjacent to Fashion Centre are designated by branches of service: Air Force, Navy, etc. So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised on my walk around the Costco area to find a little patch of green between the très expensive Millennium at Metropolitan Park apartments and the newly-opened Whole Foods with this sculpture:

I didn’t notice any other representation of our military might. I suppose there might be a tank somewhere, or maybe a multicolored submarine. Or perhaps those are for future development phases. You never know.