Reston's vibrant Economy Part 31: Image-conscious outdoors types 0, image-conscious nerds 1

In yet another RESTONIAN WORLD EXCLUSIVE, we hear that the Eddie Bauer store in Reston Town Center that's closing will be replaced by an Apple store and its attendant cadre of hip, T-shirt wearing "geniuses." We can't wait!

This Week in Crime: 'Twas the Day After Christmas...

... and all through the Wachovia,
not a security guard was stirring,
not even a... oh, hell. Nothing rhymes with "Wachovia."

Anyhoo, the Wachovia in Hunters Woods Plaza got robbed on Dec. 26, the day after Christmas, just like two Reston-area BB&Ts got robbed, the first on the day after Thanksgiving, by a very energetic bank robber.

An employee of the Wachovia Bank, located at 2264 Colts Neck Road, was robbed on Friday, December 26. The victim, a 34-year-old Reston woman, was working behind the counter around 5:40 p.m. when a man reportedly armed with a gun walked in and demanded money. The victim complied and the suspect fled with an undisclosed amount of cash.

The suspect was described as 25-30 years old with a medium-complexion. He was about 5 feet 6 inches tall with a medium build and wore a dark blue or gray winter coat with a light blue inner collar and red zipper. He also wore blue jeans, dark boots and a navy blue, knit mask.

No word yet on whether this incident is connected with the previous two robberies, but this EXCLUSIVE RESTONIAN footage from the security camera makes us wonder.

Reston's Third Day of Christmas: The Gift that Keeps on Giving

Ebola Reston, the horribly infectious disease so nice they named it after a planned real estate development, has now been officially confirmed in pigs in the Philippines. (Incidentally, be sure to click through to the article to see the picture of the guy running what's called a "pig coupling service" -- a business we're reasonably sure you can't find at the Reston Town Center unless Accenture decides to enter that lucrative consulting market, and happy holidays, etc., the end.)

Reston's Second Day of Christmas: The Most Clever Christmas Song Parody Since "Grandma Got Run Over By The Silver Line'

Now that Metro's awesome Silver Line has been officially approved by the feds, it's time to celebrate in the true spirit of the holidays: By whining about a four-year-old decision not to build a tunnel through Tysons Corner with a "clever" parody of a Christmas carol.

Community activists against the elevated portion of the Dulles Metro Project have taken to a new type of protesting -- singing an anti-rail rendition of the classic Christmas carol, "Noel."

The organizer of the rally, President of TysonsTunnel.org Scott Monett, also sent a letter to Virginia's House of Transportation and Infrastructure urging the government to suspend plans for an elevated train due to aesthetic and traffic concerns.

Ah, yes, TysonsTunnel.org, the developer-funded grassroots group that penned the clever under-not-over slogan that nearly sunk the Silver Line a while back, all to make sure the the urban beauty of Tysons Corner wouldn't be marred by the smoke from the elevated track fires during their moonlit perambulations between the Olive Garden and Bed-Bath-N-Beyond.

In case you don't feel like clicking through to the video, the song is "No El" -- as in elevated train, get it? -- and then some mumbling, and then something that sounds like "merchants" and "traffic-clogged hell." Merry Christmas!

Weird Al Yankovich called, by the way. He wants his shtick back.

Flashback Monday/Reston's First Day of Christmas: Delightful Gingerbread Display Provokes Equally Delightful Racially Fueled Diatribe

Not sure if anything that can be found on the YouTubes technically counts as a flashback, but this video of the heartwarming Gingerbread Haus display at the Reston Town Center Hyatt does date back to 2007. Herein, some chap known as the Right Rev. James W. Bailey goes on a diatribe that starts with gingerbread houses and model trains, and ends with Metro's Silver Line and something about immigrants and Manassas.

Once upon a time, a real train -the Washington & Old Dominion Railroad - ran from Bluemont, Virginia, through the incorporated town of Wiehle, which is now the unincorporated "planned community" of Reston, and all the way to the City of War, Washington, D.C.

But the progressive liberals of Northern Virginia weren't happy with having an old railroad running through the backyards of their quiet, peaceful and crime-free suburbs, so they tore up the tracks and converted the rail line into a public path, a place where they could bike, walk, jog and rollerblade themselves away from the urban horrors of Washington, D.C., the place where most of them worked.

And so the unincorporated planned community of Reston, like so many other communities in Fairfax County, Virginia, became ever so popular over the years, drawing more and more burned out urban refugees to the utopian shores of its peaceful 4 man-made lakes.

And then one day, the progressive liberals of Northern Virginia suddenly realized that so many of them now lived in suburban Northern Virginia communities like Reston that it was becoming almost darn impossible for them to soundly sleep at night because they were spending so much time getting up way before the rooster to drive to work in D.C. so they could drive back home in the very very very late evening.

And so the progresssive liberals of Northern Virginia had a most wonderfully deliciously ridiculously smart idea:
What if we were to build a railroad from D.C. through the crowded backyards of our unquiet, unpeaceful and crime-free-for-all suburban Northern Virginia communities?

I'm not sure if I believe in Santa Claus or not, but what I do know is that's far more likely that I'll see Santa Claus hard at work in Northern Virginia verifying the legal immigration status of the parents of little Juan and Maria in places like Manassas, Virginia, before dispensing their presents, before I'll see Rail to Dulles!

Progressive Northern Virginia Liberals: Taking two steps back in time for every half step forward.

First, huh? Second, while we may not endorse his sentiments, we do like how he refers to the Fake Downtown as "Reston Town $$$enter."

Treepocalypse Now: Defenseless Trees to Be Saved, Forever, By Well-Designed Website

Hey, remember that time that Reston, the "city of trees," decided to deforest remediate its stream banks with a $70 million project that, for that price tag, apparently includes a series of laser-equipped orbiting satellites designed to eradicate any new saplings impertinent enough to push up through its newly napalmed remediated stream buffer zone of rebarb-reinforced concrete walls and cyborg squirrels armed with still more lasers? Yeah, that was awesome. Only there's been a small catch: Turns out people who live in Reston like trees, and when people who like trees get angry, they do things -- things like building a protest Web site.

The Save The Glade Coalition is a group of about 20 Reston citizens who are opposing the way in which the project is proceeding with the revitalization of Reston's Glade Stream. The group has set up a Web site, http://savetheglade.org/, and has started a petition that has already garnered over 100 signatures against the way the project is scheduled to proceed.

The coalition's petition says that the group is "very concerned by the results of the first phase of the restoration project, in the Snakeden Branch. [The Reston Association's] contractor has cut down hundreds of trees, engineered a new course for the stream, reinforced it with huge boulders and clear-cut extensive areas on both sides of the stream. We, the residents of Reston, were never informed that the restoration effort would employ such drastic and destructive measures."

The group is calling for an immediately halt to the project's second scheduled phase--the Glade Stream restoration project--and asks that certain actions be taken before work begins there.

And how will they stop the project? With well-written, tear-jerking prose, that's how:

The Glade, with its walls of thousands of 120-year-old cathedral trees and its carpets of running cedar and Christmas ferns, is what we like to call our “nature house.” It is a unique and wonderful refuge of flora and wildlife where runners, walkers, bikers, and mothers pushing strollers can find an outdoor place of comfort from the hot summer heat and a peaceful refuge in an increasingly stressful world.

We who use it daily look forward to seeing the owls, hawks, woodpeckers, deer, fox, chipmunks and, yes, even the squirrels, who have made the Glade their home. We watch with great joy as the flora blossoms in the spring, the wildlife emerges and the rich, natural beauty surrounds us. And with the onset of winter, we find peace and consolation in the quiet snow-covered landscape, knowing that we are about to have this glorious gift of nature bestowed upon us, once again, as spring draws near.

Awww... that's sweet. Sometimes, Restonians can't help being Restonians. Especially when they can work in a backhanded dig at the DRB:

We never thought we would ever need to defend the Glade from destruction, not here, not in Reston, where residents must petition the powers that be to remove a single tree, and the fate of each tree carefully considered as if it were the last one standing.

Awwww, snap! Actually, the DRB just held a meeting about this project, where the contractor explained the intent of the project:

On December 16, Mike Rolband, founder of Wetland Studies and Solutions, Inc.--the company contracted for the restoration—spoke to a crowd of over 100 people at a Reston Design Review Board meeting. Rolband said that if his company wasn't doing its job correctly, it would not have received the 2008 Land Conservation Award from Fairfax County. "This is a short- term degradation for long-term gain," he said of the restoration project.

He's lucky that he got out of there without being assaulted by reams of well-written prose.

The group has been joined by Marie Huhtala, a former Fairfax County Board of Supervisors candidate. So far, no word on whether Earl the Squirrel will join forces with the Gladesters.

Christmas Just Came Early

This was sitting on the doorstep of Restonite World Headquarters this morning, a gift from an elf Realtor. Guess nobody wants those magnets with the Redskins schedule anymore. Hey, thanks! We'll use it to store all our correspondence from the DRB about our blinking reindeer decorations. Who says Christmas can't last until mid-May each year?

Flashback Monday: From Jamestown to Reston in three easy steps

Maybe we should have paid more attention in school, but we can't make heads or tails of this fancy flowchart, which puts Reston into its proper perspective, somewhere between Greenhills, Ohio, and Newfields, Ohio. Apparently, you start with Jamestown, subtract the malaria, and you get a "company town," like Lowell, Mass., then subtract the distasteful child labor, and you get a "greenbelt town" like Greenbelt, Md., then replace the green with a bunch of earth tones, and you get a "Corporate New Community" like Reston, which as we all know, was a product of an oil company attempting to diversify. But it doesn't stop there! Apparently Reston inspired an actual federal law, the Title VII New Community Developing Act, which funded a dozen or so communities before the project was scrapped during the presidency of history's greatest monster, Jimmy Carter, the end.

This Week in Crime: A very energetic bank robber

The guy who robbed the BB&T on Fox Mill Road on Black Friday is at it again -- and if the security camera photo is any indication, he's been hitting the gym.

A 23-year-old woman, employed as a teller at the BB&T Bank located at 13360 Franklin Farm Road was robbed at gunpoint. On Wednesday, December 10 at around 5 p.m. a man vaulted the counter displaying a handgun. He confronted the teller and announced a robbery. An undisclosed amount of money was handed over and the suspect fled. There were no injuries.

The suspect was described as having light skin, possibly black or Hispanic. He was about 5 feet 7 inches tall, with a stocky build. He was wearing a blue, hooded sweatshirt, khaki pants, white shoes and a black mask.

Detectives have linked this suspect with the bank robbery that occurred at the BB&T Bank located at 2513 Fox Mill Road in Reston on December 1.

Check out that leap! Police may want to be on the lookout for someone with a) an Olympic medal or b) a pommel horse in their garage.

The Not So Hot Zone: When Pigs Attack

Hey, remember the time a bunch of fun-loving monkeys in a lab in Isaac Newton Square all got a variant of the deadly Ebola virus that excited scientists so much they named it after Reston, maybe because the virus looked muave under a microscope, and an author wrote a best-selling book about it, and they shut down the lab and turned it into a daycare center, for human children, (hopefully) after giving everything a good wipedown with a Kleenex soaked in Lysol?

Yeah, that was awesome. And while no kids have been foaming at the mouth of late, Ebola Reston is now infecting hogs in the Philippines, which is where those fun-loving monkeys originally came from:

MANILA, Philippines—The Philippine government warned consumers on Wednesday about the ebola reston virus, which was found to have infected four hog farms in Luzon.

In a joint briefing, the Departments of Agriculture and of Health assured the public, however, that this low pathogenic strain was found to be "harmless" and "predominantly an animal health issue."

"Even if you are exposed to this virus, you will not get sick. This is not like the ebola virus which had hit Africa years ago," officials stressed.

Agriculture and health officials, along with representatives from the World Health Organization and Food and Agriculture Organization, explained that the ebola reston virus has been endemic to the Philippines and was detected in monkeys which the country had exported to the United States. This was in 1989, 1992, and 1996, they added.

They, however, assured that of the 20 human handlers of the monkeys tested positive for ebola reston, only one manifested flu-like symptoms but had since fully recovered.

"What is clear is that ebola reston does not cause death to humans. There is no clear evidence that this can be transferred to a person and cause a casualty," Yap stressed.

Good enough for us. Who wants bacon?

This Week in Crime: Crime and (eventual) punishment

Police finally made an arrest in a September carjacking on Rt. 7, if by "arrest" you mean that the guy turned himself in.

A 52-year-old Reston woman was the victim of a carjacking at about 1:15 a.m. on Saturday, September 27. The woman was in a parking lot near the intersection of Dranesville Road and Leesburg Pike. She was standing next to her 2004 Toyota Corolla when an unknown man pushed her aside and took her car. She sustained minor injuries. The car was later discovered abandoned in Washington D.C.

An investigation by Fairfax County Police detectives resulted in the arrest of a 27-year-old Sterling man. He was charged with one count of carjacking.

Also, an employee at Reston's Learning Tree International was sentenced to six-plus years in prison for possessing child pornography.

Trees vs. Streams: A Planned Real Estate Development Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand

When the folks at Columbia Gas massacred dozens of trees for the sake of some ugly underground pipeline you couldn't even see, we could understand why people got all up in arms. But now elsewhere in Reston, people are flipping out over a teensy bit of collateral damage from the ongoing stream restoration project, in the form of yet another treepocalypse:

David Oliver has lived in his house on Old Trail Drive for nearly 40 years, all along enamored by the neighborhood’s natural surroundings. Oliver put his home on the market for sale on Halloween, attributing the decision to the tree loss in his backyard, a result of the stream restoration project.

"It was beautiful to look at, it was beautiful to walk," Oliver said about his backyard prior to stream restoration work on Snakeden Branch. "What they did is ecological barbarism," he said following a Nov. 5 meeting about a walkway on Soapstone Drive.

Nineteen days later, on Monday, Nov. 24, a group of more than 60 Reston residents, gathered to discuss the merits of the stream restoration work. Not all of the residents gathered opposed the project, but those who did were concerned about the tree loss, which they believe to be excessive, that has resulted from the work.

Alfred Kromholz, another project opponent, warned of the health risks associated with standing water resulting from pools in the streambed designed to slow down the water rushing through the streams and causing erosion. "To what extent will Reston Association be held liable for health problems?" Kromholz asked.

"I moved to Hunters Woods, I did not move to Hunters Streams," Ron Oklewicz, a resident of Triple Crown Road, said. "Reston is the city of trees."

Oh, snap! Besides the fact that we have another entry for our upcoming coffee table book, A Children's Treasury of Wacky Planning Meeting Putdowns, there's the question of where the money for the $70 million project is coming from:

WSSI sells mitigation credits to developers who cannot offset the natural impact in their areas of operation, for example the fourth runway at Dulles Airport or the High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes on the Capitol Beltway bought credits in Reston’s Stream Mitigation Bank. The money from the credits is then used in the restoration project. Under the formula, Reston residents are not paying for the restoration work, most of which is planned on RA property. In addition to the $70 million first phase of the project, Restonians are benefiting from direct contributions from the bank, including $400,000 donated to RA and $650,000 donated to the Friends of Reston.

Wow. So now we know that every time a plane lands at Dulles or a Lexus-driving attorney someday opts to spend $9.50 to drive in the HOT lanes on the Beltway, the money will go to help massacre trees and create fetid mosquito breeding pools in Reston, the "city of trees." Also, $70 million? For that kind of money, you think you could chop down every tree from Reston to the West Virginia line, then salt the ground so no saplings could rise in their place, the end.

Reston's Vibrant Economy Part 30: As relevant as today's headlines

If you don't think Reston businesses aren't ready for the brave new challenges of the upcoming great so-so depression, think again.

Corporate Risk International, a firm that specializes in negotiating with kidnappers, is looking to capitalize on the surge in pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden and elsewhere.

James J. McWeeney, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Reston-based company, said the firm has begun offering its negotiating services to ships concerned about a vessel being seized.

The company charges about $2,000 a day for each one of its negotiators deployed to an incident, McWeeney said, though the price can vary depending on a situation.

Sweet! Sounds like there's more job security there than at your typical D.C.-area gig. Double points, too, for prospective employees with DRB experience.

And if you're not lucky enough to be attached in some way to the new brigand-based economy, don't count on that awesome Christmas party this year.

With today’s teetering economy, many companies are eschewing elaborate galas for more low-key gatherings and rediscovering the true meaning of the holiday office party.

“For the last eight years we’ve had a great holiday party,” says Paul Villella, chief executive officer of HireStrategy Inc. in Reston. “But this year our business is off ever so slightly. It’s like we’re a bit flat, so we’re being cautious and conservative to be in the best condition for our employees.”

Last year Hire Strategy hosted a casino party at a local country club, complete with televisions and cash prizes. This year Villella plans to host his staff at his home.

And who doesn't want to go to their bosses' house for holiday cheer and shrinkwrapped cocktail weenie platters from Cosco?

We're #7! Plus, the death of Bratz

Sunrise Valley Elementary ranked 7th in Northern Virginia in terms of SOL test scores. Hunters Woods Elementary, the only other Reston school that made the top 25, ranked 14th. No word on how both schools, which feed into South Lakes High School, fared in terms of their band programs.

Speaking of band programs, it sounds like Bratz, the symbol of all that was wrong, but not in a racial sort of way, about students who don't look or act like their counterparts from Oakton and whatnot during South Lakes' uneventful redistricting process earlier in the year, are headed for the scrapheap of history. But hey -- at least Mattel can win the occasional frivolous lawsuit.

(Shout-out to Sean for the tip on the Bratz.)

Reston: More than a place...

... it's also a state of mind.

A Loudoun County man was in big trouble over his driveway. And every day it was costing him $10 in fines.

Ram Balasubramanian had painted a Hindu religious symbol on his South Riding driveway for a family event. The six-foot design of swirling red and white paint was pretty enough, but his homeowners association was not impressed. They sent a stern certified letter ordering him to remove it and "return the asphalt to a black state."'

The South Villages Homeowners Association soon sent Balasubramanian a certified letter noting "unapproved modifications" to the driveway. Jonathan Sucher, a representative for the company that manages the association, wrote an e-mail to Balasubramanian last week asking that he immediately remove the design. "This continues to be a fairly contentious issue," he wrote. Sucher did not return phone calls requesting comment.

After an exchange of e-mails with the association, Balasubramanian organized an energetic appeal, polling 20 of his immediate neighbors to see whether they objected to the kolam. Nobody did.

He gathered signatures and appeared before the association's board, made up of volunteer residents, in September. The board listened but ruled against him. One asked why he simply couldn't move the kolam into the garage, where it would be out of sight.

Maybe if he just painted the kolam using soothing earth tones...

Flashback Monday: Reston: The Instruction Manual

When they called Reston a "new town," they weren't kidding. Apparently, it was so new it had to come with an instruction manual. Awesome! Now, 40 some odd years later, we can figure out what they were smoking envisioning for their radical model for new urbanism. We here at Restonian HQ will be reading this sucker cover to cover, because otherwise we'd have to find something productive to do, but in the meantime, here are the gems of wisdom on the page pictured above:

Reston is building 227 town houses.

The town house has a history of many thousands of years in all civilized countries. Examples of town houses in the country can be seen in the French countryside where the farmers, since medieval times, have joined their houses together on village commons for the sociability this afforded; farm land radiated out from the centers. Town houses in cities in the United States have long represented the height of elegance. Examples exist in every city such as Georgetown in Washington, Society Hill in Philadelphia, Washington Muse in New York. Town houses in the country are a relatively new phenomenon in the United States. The movement started in California and has been picked up in Virginia.

Which is why we fertilize the beets next to the parking lot in the cluster's common property before heading off to our elegant social events, or maybe dinner at the Macaroni Grill, depending on which day of the week it is.

Oh, Canada, just be quiet already

Apparently word of Reston's trepediation-filled identity crisis has made its way to the Great White North:

A presentation on how municipalities could be landscaped gave Collingwood council food for thought Monday, but Coun. Ian Chadwick cautioned against taking the idea too far.

"I don't want us to be like Reston, Virginia," he declared.

Oh no he diiiiiint! What could the nice people of Collingwood, which apparently is in Canada, which apparently is somewhere north of Maine and south of the North Pole, where Santa Claus, who clearly is an American, lives, have against our awesome city real estate development? We'll let "Ian" (which kind of sounds more Russian than Canadian -- hmmm) explain:

He said the community is planned to the point where regulations specify what colour a doghouse can be and how far from a house it must be placed.

Which is far more heinous than regulations saying that every object must be labeled in both French and English, necessitating glowing 6-inch letters stating chateau de chien or something like that on the dog houses up there.

Of course, Canada has its own Reston, which just sounds like a lovely place, what with the Loonie-sized hail and the unsolved pipeline field consultant murders and whatnot. But at least their dogs don't have to live in mauve houses, at least when they can see them as the snowpacks recede in late July, the end.

(Shout-out to Seth W., who apparently speaks Canadian fluently, for the tip.)

Metro Silver Line: Better Keep Clapping, Just in Case!

Metro's awesome Silver Line through Tysons, Reston, Dulles and the vast particleboard wastelands beyond just might quite possibly be absolutely going to happen this time, kids, so don't worry about a thing.

Federal regulators have approved a long-awaited extension of Metrorail to Tysons Corner and Dulles International Airport, virtually assuring construction of a $5.2 billion project that regional leaders say is crucial to ease congestion and spur economic growth in Northern Virginia.

By signing off on the project, the Federal Transit Administration reversed its position of almost a year ago, when its regulators declared Dulles rail unqualified to receive $900 million in federal funding, citing cost overruns, delays and concerns about management. The project now heads to U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters and the Office of Management and Budget for final approval. But the transit agency's action is widely viewed as a critical achievement that essentially guarantees the federal funding. Without it, the project would have died, state and regional officials said.

Ironically, the same hilarious financial meltdown that's cratered the real estate market and just about everything else may have ultimately saved the Silver Line's track fire-seared bacon:

Their caution also reflects the widely held view that politics and ideology played a role in the project's problems within the Federal Transit Administration and the Department of Transportation. Peters has spoken publicly several times about the advantages of the privatization of transit; some of her subordinates in the department have worked for private equity companies that have expressed interest in purchasing the toll road.

[U.S. Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.)] said the national credit crisis probably helped the project's chances, because it "dried up" interest among private purchasers who had been eyeing the toll road. "But more importantly," he said, "the ideologues in the administration have given up."

So crack open the champagne and start idling the Escalade on the shoulder of Wiehle Avenue to make sure you're the first to get a space in the shiny new parking garage when it opens in 20..whatever. Right?

The reviews by Peters and the budget office should take about a month, officials said, so they should be completed before the new administration takes over. After that, the proposal goes to Congress for final approval.

Hmm. Better keep clapping, kids!

Meet Your Neighbors: Reston's own Hooverville, or in our case, Targetville (tm)

Reader Tom J writes in:

My wife came home from her job in the Reston Clown Center (RTC) and said that she saw what she believes to be a shanty-town so I Googled "bum town reston" and your blog came up. It's now bookmarked and will be thoroughly read and enjoyed as I'm a native Restonite (Governor Sq./Wainwright/Lake Anne).

Anyway, if you are on Sunset Hills going from Reston Pkwy towards Target she says there is a group of tents/tarps in the woods on the left hand-side between the road and the toll road. Got any insight on this so I don't have to go over there to satisfy my curiosity?

We were skeptical, but we put on pants and hard shoes and hopped into the car to do a little of what the remaining 12 newspaper fogies still employed nationwide might call "reporting," or at least "driving by at 35 mph with a cell phone camera in case we saw something." And the story was actually true! It's actually past the Target and Sonoco in the thin strip of woods between Sunset Hills and the Toll Road (see the helpful annotated photograph above), and there's a giant tarp, surrounded by a small semicircle of one-man pup tents, and people milling about.

All in all, it looked pretty much like our last campout, except that we tend to camp a bit further from major big-box retailers and limited-access highways. Reston's homeless used to hang out in the wooded area near the library, back before it was razed and turned into a fancy-pants condo with an awesome view of a parking garage. Like the deer we're required by sections 4-389 of our HOA covenants to love, they appear to have been driven to smaller and smaller wooded areas. Or maybe they just want quick access to all the fabulous low-priced crap at Target.

So in conclusion, drive by and get a glimpse of the future that awaits us all as the economy continues to flatline, the end.

This Week in Crime: Arrests in South Reston shooting involve more law enforcement than a Krispy Kreme grand opening

Hey, remember that time in October when two people got shot while standing outside in Freetown Court in South Reston, and then everyone forgot about it after making vaguely racist comments about the victims? Well, nearly two months later, police have made two arrests in the shootings, with a little help from their friends:

Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, United States Marshals Service agents and members of the Northern Virginia Regional Gang Task Force coordinated efforts and made two arrests in the shooting case which injured two men on October 6. FBI agents played a significant role in identifying Dennis L. Gil Bernardez, 32, of no fixed address. Gil was arrested in Washington DC on Tuesday, November 25 by the Gang Task Force. He has been charged with aggravated malicious wounding, use of a firearm in commission of a felony and gang participation.

Jose Aguilar Orantes, 18, of 12311 Tigers Eye Court, Reston was arrested in Prince Georges County, Maryland on Monday, December 1 by the US Marshals’ Fugitive Task Force. He has been charged with gang participation and two counts of malicious wounding.

So we're thinking there's a chance this whole kerfluffle might have been gang related, but we'll wait until we know for sure.

The Spirit of the Season, or Restonians being Restonians? You be the judge

We're not exactly sure what we're looking at in this here photo. Is it a) a group of Restonians celebrating the true meaning of the season by congregating in an open space surrounded by the finest mid-scale retail opportunities this side of Tysons Corner or b) a protective human shield surrounding a stray tree Columbia Gas somehow missed on its last go-around?

This Week in Crime: Maybe He Needed the Cash for Black Friday

While upstanding citizens were lining up to buy heavily discounted flat-screen TVs and whatnot on Friday, one enterprising chap decided to rob the Reston BB&T bank on Fox Mill Road.

Fairfax County police have released a surveillance photo of the man who robbed the BB&T Bank branch on Fox Mill Road in Reston Friday evening.

A man entered the bank around 5:45 p.m., drew a gun and demanded money from a 23-year-old bank teller, police said. She turned the money over to the robber and he fled with an undisclosed sum.

The robber was described as either white or Hispanic, around 5'7" and 170 pounds, wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt, khaki pants, a black ski mask, light-colored work gloves and white shoes.

We can only hope the same thing didn't happen on "Cyber Monday." Otherwise, we'll have to start harping about the MASSIVE CRIME WAVE all over again.

Breaking news! Reston apparently full of trepidation, awesome mauve buildings

The day after Thanksgiving, Restonians from North Point to Southgate apparently all awoke to face a new day full of trepidation. So said no less an unimpeachable source than the Washington Post, and once we got out a dictionary, we plowed through the story to see what they meant:

From Tysons Corner to Rockville Pike, communities across the Washington suburbs are aspiring to become what Reston has been for more than 40 years: a place where you can buy milk, take a photography class and commune with nature without stepping foot in your car.

Now, Reston -- which famously pioneered the kind of walkable, environmentally friendly, mixed-use suburban neighborhood that is all the rage these days -- is on the cusp of its own transformation. And some residents say they fear it could lose the delicate balance that made it a model.

Three Metrorail stations are slated to open in the town as part of a planned extension to Dulles International Airport, and high-density developments are expected to be built around at least two of them. Plans are underway to redevelop Lake Anne Village Center, a lakeside plaza in Reston that was modeled after a European village. And several other redevelopment projects that would add density elsewhere in the town have been proposed.

The horror! Fortunately, we have the town's original founder to protect us from this unanticipated, undesired prosperity. Right?

Among the most staunch proponents of change is Simon himself. At 94, he lives on the 13th floor of a high-rise jutting up from Lake Anne Plaza.

Simon said he thinks the execution of his vision was flawed. Only part of the town center was developed to its potential, he said, and the area has too many strip malls that should have been built to be more pedestrian friendly. About 60,000 people live in Reston, although Simon's original plan called for 80,000. Simon estimated that after Metro moves in, 100,000 people will live there.

"Think of it this way. You have a wonderful portrait of your grandmother, and you love it and want to preserve it," he said. "But the frame looks like hell. So you go to a store where they have frames, and you buy a frame. That's what it is. We're not monkeying with your grandmother; we are enhancing her."

Some residents say they fear that Lake Anne will be the first domino to fall in a chain reaction that would turn Reston into a traffic-clogged Manhattan.

Leaving the unsettling image of "monkeying with your grandmother" aside for a moment, let's think about that last statement for a moment. Manhattan? We think it's time for a brief but informative quiz. Study the two photos below closely:


Which one is Manhattan, and which one is Lake Anne? Discuss.

Flashback Monday: Just like Venice -- but which one?

Continuing our tour of exciting Lake Anne developments, here is an early aerial photo of an eerily deserted Inlet Cluster, before either a) people started moving in or b) the invention of the automobile. Unlike Waterview Cluster, which was described as a charming French fishing village (no -- really), Inlet Cluster was purportedly reminiscent of Venice, with model names including "The Venetian." Who knows -- maybe just like in the Italian city, the homes are slowly sinking into Lake Anne. Otherwise, it looks more like Venice, California, following a neutron bomb that obliterated all the cars and people but left the buildings standing. But hey -- happy Monday!