Vowel Movement: Consonant Explosion More Unnerving Than A Cold Plunge

Following in the footsteps of some of Reston's trendier, or at least blockier, apartment complexes, this vaguely Welsh-sounding business is currently under construction in RTC West, whatever that is. For those of us over the age of 27 and/or not goatee-adorned "brand consultants," this loosely translates to "Sweathouse" in English, and will apparently be a place where you can sit in an infrared sauna followed by a cold plunge to, wedunno, sweat all the vowels out of your system?

We've got a fever, and the only cure is more consonants!

We're old enough to have the name, like Proust's madelines, spontaneously remind us of some of our favorite TV sitcom characters:

Who among us didn't laugh along with the SWTHGZ, the end.

The DOGE Days of Summer

There's been a lot of talk about efficiency these days, but why does it have to stop with the gubmint? As the founding members of the Department of Cluster Efficiency (DOCE), we and our employee (a 21-year-old named Big DRBs) have taken over the RA headquarters and stayed up 23 hours a day for the last four months finding ways to save us all money on our annual assessments. Here's what we've found so far: 

Swimming pools. 15 of them is way too many, especially when we have all those lakes, just sitting there! Sure, there are some algae blooms and whatnot, but a tube of Neosporin is a heck of a lot cheaper than a pool pass. 

Sunrise Valley and Sunset Hills. Clear waste—why do we need two roads when one would do? Call it Midday Motorway and be done with it. 

Yard waste pickups. We have common areas for a reason, right? As an added bonus, dumping all our leaves into those otherwise underused spaces will deprive Reston's dreaded invasive plants of sunlight. Win-win. 

Color palettes. Why do we need all these wasteful colors like Sea Foam and Copper Taupe? Look at our neighbor to the east, Vienna, and just paint everything a nice uniform brown. 

McTacoHut. Clear inefficiency. We've already lost the Hut, resulting in 33% savings, but why do we need two drive-throughs when one could dispense both round meat discs and tubular meat sacs? 

Library. There's talk about building a new one, but who reads books these days? There are plenty of quality free newspapers and blogs out there. 

Electric car charging stations. We do need those, for reasons, and preferably near Terraset Elementary, which bears an uncanny resemblance to our fancy new stainless steel pickup truck. 

Tot lots. Why coddle the youngest Restonians? Just give them some rocks and sticks and let them play in the parking lots. Again, Neosporin. 

Two golf courses. Don't worry, some out-of-towners are already hard at work on that one, the end.

This post was originally published in the Reston Letter.

Meanwhile, in the Anti-Reston: Herndon is Apparently Big Game Country, Just Barely

It's been a while since we've chronicled the exploits of our friendly neighbor to the west, in large part because we haven't chronicled much of anything of late the arrival of Metro has made the town a less distinctive part of the much larger, more uniform sprawly "Dulles Corridor," whatever that is.

But we digress! Yesterday, we learned that the town, despite its easy access to the Silver Line and some fun artisanal tunnels, is officially bear country! Grab your tranquilizer gun and read some good nature time blockquote from our BFFs at Channel 4:

A black bear who spent hours in a tree on a busy street in Herndon, Virginia, on Monday was safely captured and taken to Shenandoah National Park, wildlife officials said.

The ordeal prompted a crowd of onlookers to gather nearby — even as police told residents to keep their distance.

Herndon police blocked off the 800 block of Elden Street around 3:30 p.m. in both directions after the male bear was spotted in the tree. Earlier in the day, residents saw him roaming their yards in a neighborhood.

The police dubbed the bear "Elden," because why not, it's fun. 

So long, Elden, we hardly knew you!

Update: Turns out it's not just unruly undomesticated mammals who appreciate our neighbor to the west.  HOA-hating posters on the Face Books apparently do too:

Lake Anne Rebranding: Get Your Mind Out of the Gutter, or at Least the Fountain

The perennial rebranding of Lake Anne Village Center got a little more, um, titillating this week when our BFFs at Reston Now pointed out that the current logo is a tad, ah, "suggestive." Give us some good PG-13 blockquote, BFFs at Reston Now:

The current Lake Anne logo has a somewhat retro feel — though the “A” part of the symbol, intended to evoke the fountain in the middle of the lake, did draw some Freudian sniggers on the social media site BlueSky.

You mean the Children's Fountain? Sure, RN, blame it on the sickos on BlueSky, and not your own fevered imaginations.

Because Restonian is always On Your Side, we walked over to the Plaza to see just how suggestive things are, and despite some extremely tame unpleasantness that riled people up nearly 15 years back, we can report there's simply nothing to see here these days, nosiree! Nothing at all, even when you go out back and -- oh, wait:

Computer, ENHANCE:

As noted planned community enthusiast Sigmund Freud once famously wrote, sometimes a flagrant DRB violation is just a flagrant DRB violation, the end.

Hats Off for Cathy Hudgins

Sad news: Just days after Rep. Gerry Connolly passed away on May 21, former Hunter Mill Supervisor Cathy Hudgins passed away on Saturday. Among many other accomplishments, she was instrumental in bringing the Silver Line to Reston and beyond. Here's current Hunter Mill Supervisor Walter Alcorn's tribute and a video honoring her service on the board from 2019:

The Love Song of R. E. Simon

(With apologies to T.S. Eliot, who never named a town Tseton)

Let us go then, you and I,
Where bollards are spread out against the sky
Like earth-toned buildings etherized upon a table

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
Of restless nights in RTC
And midscale restaurants with unlimited bread to eat.

Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go, pay the parking app, and make our visit.

In Wegmans the women come and go
Talking of half-price tangelos.

The yellow trim that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
That brings the ire of cluster covenants so long as it remains,

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "the green space is where?"
Time to turn back and
With a bald spot in the middle of my lawn --
(They will say: "How his lawn is infested with invasive spawn!")

On the bike trail the cyclists come and go
Talking of woonerf and the velodromo.

Do I dare
Disturb the DRB?
Do I dare
Play golf on developable property?
Or go to the casino, wherever that may be?

I grow old ... I grow old ...
The shag carpeting in my conversation pit is rolled.

At Lake Anne, the speed walkers come and go
Talking of concrete and Portofino.

Shall I sweep out my carport?
Do I dare to take Metro to places unknown?
I shall wear off-white flannel trousers, and walk upon the lakes.
I have heard the mermaids singing, mostly saying, "They're manmade. They're fake."
I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding Tysonsward on the waves
Combing the algae blooms of the waves blown back
We have lingered in the Village Centers, the public arts, and the Civic Plazas.
By stucco and plywood wreathed with invasive ivy in 70s red and brown
Till Ashburn voices wake us, and we drown. 

This post was originally published in the Reston Letter.

Words to Live By

Good advice at all times, but especially now, when there's construction and the possibility of a fancy 97-story casino to ensnare all the GS-17s with honeypots to convince them to divulge critical national security secrets about how exactly we strap bombs to dolphins, and, wedunno, lame slot machines and traffic and midscale retail options in Fairfax County's Emerald City, or Paris, or whatever we're calling it these days, the end.