News and notes from Reston (tm).

Friday, January 28, 2011

Girl, You Know It's True: More Details Emerge of the Throwback '80s Appeal of Metro's Silver Line

While we've been pointing out for a couple of years that the Wiehle Avenue Metro station will be a shrine to rad '80s art, we've sensed a bit of skepticism among readers of this "web log." "Surely," you must be thinking, "they wouldn't make the centerpiece mass transit project of the 21st century a stylistic throwback to the days of Miami Vice."

Well, please to be checking out this rendering of the fancy redesigned cars that will greet passengers alighting at Wiehle Avenue.

7000 interior.jpeg
Sweet! We're pretty sure the fabric for the seats was inspired by the shirts these two wore on the cover of their 1989 cassingle.

31 comments:

  1. 80's? Please -- don't dis my decade!

    That's a paint job right out of the Age of Aquarius!

    Maybe those Brutalnistas can paint up their concrete bunkers like that -- they are, after all, from the same generation most have banished as a bad, LSD-induced nightmare.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Just Bought A Particleboard MansionJanuary 28, 2011 at 9:55 PM

    I thought Metro was going to rearrange the new series of cars with seats along the walls to allow for more standing room? I guess their seating arrangements are stuck in the 70's too.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Survivalist in an Architecturally Designed Brutalist StrongholdJanuary 29, 2011 at 12:03 AM

    NPDB

    So that's why you are an Alex P Keaton wannabe. I'd say more like Patrick Bateman.

    I'll see you begging for bread sticks at the new Whiele ave station after your shitty IT job goes to Bangalore.

    ReplyDelete
  4. According to the link in the story, Metro is apparently taking suggestions for the design. There's still time for a massive Reston GOTV effort for Russet Brown and/or mauve!

    ReplyDelete
  5. There's that ignorance masquerading as a potty mouth again.

    And Bangalore is a lot more attractive than Lake Anne. They even have functional air conditioning there. How First World is that?

    Time for more soap.

    ReplyDelete
  6. How about you get your own blog and launch your petty wars from it?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Have you ever been to Bangalore, 8:10? Bangalore is by no means more attractive than our Muave Mecca. And the smell there is simply awful. It can only be described as open sewer with a tinge of curry. That might be part of the reason why there are more Bangalorians trying to get to Reston than Restonians trying to get to Bangalore.

    In any case, they have a train system as well. No matter how badly Metro or the MWAA do our train, it can't possibly be any worse than the Bangalore Express.

    ReplyDelete
  8. And what do you have to say about the stench coming from the cesspool erroneously named "Lake Anne"?

    Leila's faded princess, the Rose Gallery, btw, neither smells nor looks anything like a rose and, of course, it's Brutalist architecture stinks too.

    And as to WMATA and WMAA, only Hudgins and Plum with that lot could con the fools who use the toll road and NOT the trains, to pay for it many times over and then pay for the train for decades to come!

    And, of course, no one on either of those boards is elected by those who pay, so how's that for taxation without representation!

    I am gonna go get me one of them Distrik of Corruption taxation w/o representation license plates and stick it on my buggy

    ReplyDelete
  9. 1:27,

    Just out of curiosity, what is your position on the other lakes of Reston?

    ReplyDelete
  10. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  11. They are what they are == "storm-water management ponds" sucking up tens of thousands of your Reston Association assessment dollars per year for "maintenance."

    Elsewhere in Fairfax County, the county takes care of these toxic-waste pools, but in Reston, you have your own duplicative bureaucracy with $200,000-a-year-plus, CEO-inspired titles like "watershed manager," "environmental resources manager," and, get this --- "wildlife manager."

    God forbid, we have Reston wildlife decorating and fitting their dens, nests and hovels in other than that Brutalist standard.

    A fox, a coyote and an emu in its place and a place (called Reston?) for each.

    For this, you pay $540 a year?

    What fools you be!

    ReplyDelete
  12. And yet so many people want to live here, 7:28. And 60,000 more Restonians are projected in coming years. Go figure.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I think Anon 7:28 was denied the secret handshake and is embittered, feeling it necessary to spew his/her venom about our lovely mauve paradise here.

    Oops, did I spill the beans?

    ReplyDelete
  14. Wow...what's been going on here? When did kind of funny snark get replaced with nasty vitriol? This is way less fun than it used to be.

    ReplyDelete
  15. So obviously Anon 7:28 isn't an owner. Clearly he/she would have chosen something else if he/she were making a commitment. So lets just say thanks for the input.

    ReplyDelete
  16. 7:28 just doesn't get it. $540 for the year is a deal considering what we get here. Check out our neighbors to the south and west. $75 month for trash and snow removal, and if you want to go to a pool, 150 more. Even my junior high math tells me we get a lot for our money.

    I even know the secret handshake.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Bob Simon's Metallic Alter EgoJanuary 31, 2011 at 5:48 PM

    @Anon 3:32pm,

    This happens every few months, perhaps when a full moon aligns with Neptune or something, and the tides of Lake Anne shift the equilibrium in one troll's head. Once the tides subside and people stop feeding the troll, he goes away.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Just keep drinking the Kool-Aid and using your favorite word of the decade "vitriol."

    Many, too, wanted to move to Jonestown and where are they now?

    We don't pay a penny for snow removal and trash is built into the property tax, so the it's deductible.

    We can go to a pool (for free) on the very few instances a year we may want to do that and we are not forced to pay for something we don't use. That's one of the many fallacies of liberalism -- force the minority on the majority.

    Thank God you can't get your filthy sticky fingers in my wallet!

    And don't get so excited over your alleged 60,000 new residents. More than a million new residents will be in the metro area and they all have to live somewhere -- including your Brutalist outpost.

    But, with with your obsession with preserving the abominations that now exist, and fighting all of your "charette"-recommended reconstructions, good luck finding places for your alleged new residents.

    ReplyDelete
  19. As much as I hate Section 8, what Lake Anne have to do with it?

    As an outsider (your neighbor to the east), Lake Anne is one of very few things that make your little town worth visiting. North Reston? How is it any better than the likes of Sterling and the rest of the soulless suburbia? You don't like modernist design? But the particleboard suburbia has NO design to speak of...

    ReplyDelete
  20. Lake Anne has a lot to do with Section 8. In fact, your liberal county government took a tax-revenue producing property that was key to Lake Anne's development (the Crescent apartment complex) and turned into a full Section 8 project using tens of millions of your tax dollars.

    Now the taxpayers have lost that revenue source, have to maintain an aged property that was beyond economic vitality and have made Fairfax county itself the largest landlord in the county.

    This all goes against all the recommendations from the "charettes" and other consultant reports, paid for with millions more of your tax dollars, that all recommended serious redevelopment of the Crescent property (as the keystone project for Lake Anne with market-based pricing -- following a very successful project like the much more successful Reston Town Center (which isn't even a part of Reston and burdened by the DRB and RA nooses).

    Not sure how far east you may be, but there's not much east of Reston in Fairfax County that's worth visiting... Tysons Corner? Vienna? Annandale? Seven Corners? Falls Church? (not including the city which is worth a stop)

    ReplyDelete
  21. "Lake Anne has a lot to do with Section 8. In fact, your liberal county government took a tax-revenue producing property that was key to Lake Anne's development (the Crescent apartment complex) and turned into a full Section 8 project using tens of millions of your tax dollars."

    What are you even talking about? So called "Section 8" is a federal program that gives money to private landlords who house low-income tenants. County governments have nothing to do with it. There are at least 9 more subsidized housing programs mentioned (and used) in Fairfax County Comprehensive Plan. No part of the county is spared except Great Falls and northern Vienna (Wolf Trap). I hate them all, all 10, equally, but you have to know your stuff.
    Crescent Apartments (managed by Quantum Real Estate Management, LLC) have nothing to do with Section 8. And Lake Anne modernist architecture you were dissing has nothing to do with Crescent Apartments except being close.

    ReplyDelete
  22. "market-based pricing -- following a very successful project like the much more successful Reston Town Center"

    Unfortunately RTC has its own share of subsidized housing.

    You sound like the kind that thinks that Saddam organized 9/11, evolution is a communist plot and Earth is 6,000 yo.

    ReplyDelete
  23. I like Reston Kool aid. Reston was founded on the principle that there would be a variety of people living here-different races and people with a variety of different incomes. That's why there is such a mix of housing so close together. If you don't like that, then you don't like the very core of what makes Reston what it is.
    I find it very telling that troll 7:34pm brags snottily about getting free snow removal and a free pool. Nothing is free, so someone is paying for it. Which means troll 7:34pm either is paying for it somehow and doesn't know it, so it's a foolish troll, or the troll is being subsidized by other people while complaining about subsidies, which quite sadly means that the troll is like many many people. Expecting something for nothing, and gloating about it.

    ReplyDelete
  24. The principles turned out to be faulty. Later psychological research shows that putting poor people too close to richer people increases stress in both kinds, and jealousy is one of the causes of crime.

    I have no problem with putting different kinds of housing close together as long as it is driven by market demand and not zoning, and paid in full by dwellers themselves, not taxpayers.

    Anon 8:35/8:49.

    ReplyDelete
  25. I call BS on that "research."

    A cite from a peer-reviewed scientific journal or it didn't happen. Something Glenn Beck scribbled on his chalkboard doesn't count.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Well, 7:39, I can tell you anecdotally that I live close to low-income housing and it's definitely raised my stress level. And I think part of the reason that most people chose North Reston over non-North Reston is so that they don't have to be too close to the unwashed masses.

    Besides, I think that most of us at least believe that, when it comes to schools, it's better to have your kids in a school where a smaller proportion of the population receives reduced price lunches than one with a higher proportion.

    As for the crazy Troll trying to equate Reston with Jonestown, I can only say, you're stretching there, Bud. Who would be the good Reverend in our community? Bob Simon?

    Now, if you'll excuse me, I suddenly feel a strange urge for a cup grape Kool-Aid.

    ReplyDelete
  27. There is NO low-income housing in Reston Town Center. Despite the fact that Hugdins' office is there, she's failed completely in bringing in any of her constituents to the RTC.

    She would not want to actually work too close to her needy, entitled constituents, now, would she?

    ReplyDelete
  28. And you need to know your stuff. It's not "modernest," its Brutalist. And it's ugly.

    Your not so fair county spent sixty three milion of your tax dollars to buy the crescent apartments:

    Fund 319
    The Penny for Affordable Housing Fund
    FY 2010 Summary of Capital Projects
    Fund: 319 The Penny for Affordable Housing Fund
    Project # Description
    Total
    Project
    Estimate
    FY 2008
    Actual
    Expenditures
    FY 2009
    Revised
    Budget
    FY 2010
    Advertised
    Budget Plan
    FY 2010
    Adopted
    Budget Plan
    014046 Olley Glen $6,300,000 $0.00 $6,300,000.00 $0 $0
    014196 Affordable/Workforce Housing
    Projects 0 401,632.14 8,026,020.63 512,500 512,500
    014198 Madison Ridge 2,500,000 0.00 0.00 0 0
    014232 Hollybrooke II Apartments 3,350,000 0.00 0.00 0 0
    014237 Yorkville Apartments 250,000 12,458.86 222,096.31 0 0
    014239 Crescent Apartments 63,041,430 3,781,860.53 4,148,331.11 3,000,000 3,000,000
    014240 Sunset Park Apartments 5,000,000 0.00 0.00 0 0
    014250 Fairfield at Fair Chase 306,555 0.00 0.00 0 0
    014252 Janna Lee Village I 13,000,000 6,217,000.00 0.00 0 0
    014253 Janna Lee Village II 5,377,810 2,185,810.00 0.00 0 0
    014254 East Market 145,395 145,395.00 0.00 0 0
    014258 Hollybrooke III Apartments 3,100,000 1,500,000.00 0.00 0 0
    014261 Reston Glen 2,375,000 0.00 0.00 0 0
    014262 Coralain Gardens 5,300,000 5,300,000.00 0.00 0 0
    014263 Bryson at Woodland Park 108,000 108,000.00 0.00 0 0
    014264 Fair Oaks Landing 188,000 188,000.00 0.00 0 0
    014268 Wedgewood 15,757,500 4,856,565.39 4,143,434.61 12,487,500 6,757,500
    014269 Northampton 214,000 0.00 214,000.00 0 0
    014270 Stockwell Manor 183,000 0.00 183,000.00 0 0
    014273 Halstead 176,514 0.00 176,514.00 0 0
    014275 Silver Lining Initiative 0 0.00 1,800,000.00 4,500,000 0
    Total $126,673,204 $24,696,721.92 $25,213,396.66 $20,500,000 $10,270,000
    FY 2010 Adopted Budget Plan (Vol. 2) - 596

    ReplyDelete
  29. Here is the link with a brief of the study.
    http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-153632601.html
    "Living in a well-to-do neighborhood could be hazardous to poor people's health."

    You'll have to pay to access the whole article.

    American Journal of Public Health. Is it "peer-reviewed scientific journal" for you enough?

    But do you really have to be a Professor of Medicine in Stanford to have a little common sense and a little knowledge of human nature?

    ReplyDelete
  30. Here is more of that stuff:

    http://rs.resalliance.org/2006/11/05/poor-people-living-in-rich-neighborhoods-die-sooner/
    "Psychologically, perceiving a discrepancy in social status can cause stress that may affect health, the researchers note."

    How about Nature?
    http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7137/full/nature05651.html
    "Emotions towards top earners become increasingly negative as inequality increases, and those who express these emotions spend more to reduce above-average earners' incomes and to increase below-average earners' incomes."

    But again, a little common sense could told you that, no?

    ReplyDelete
  31. The seat covers in the proposed Metrow train car interiors look reminiscent of the covers on the London Underground/Tube seats. A purple-backed confetti explosion. Maybe that's just for the seats on the Jubilee line there? Right, then!

    ReplyDelete

(If you don't see comments for some reason, click here).