News and notes from Reston (tm).

Monday, January 31, 2011

What do the RA Headquarters and World War I Have in Common? 'Tranch Warfare'

tranch.jpegHey, remember that time the Reston Association moved its headquarters to shiny new office space with child labor cubbies and lots of room for filing cabinets, only the building owner was on the verge of foreclosure?

Yeah, that was awesome. Well, after narrowly escaping being sold at auction, the building is now part of a protracted battle among its creditors.

Ownership of four Reston office buildings has become entangled in a legal dispute between three New York-area real estate funds after a local developer purchased the properties and defaulted on its loan payments.

D.C.-based developer Penzance Cos. bought a six-building, 750,000-square-foot Reston office portfolio in 2007, near the peak of the real estate market, for $202.5 million.

The buildings make up parts of two office plazas, Parkridge Center and Reston Corner, and Penzance found some success leasing them, signing tenants to 200,000 square feet of space. But Penzance began missing payments on a $107 million loan it took out to finance the purchase of four of the buildings, allowing one of its lenders, a fund of Garrison Investment Group of New York, to assume ownership last fall. A Penzance spokeswoman said the developer no longer has any role in owning or managing the four buildings but declined to comment further.

With Penzance out of the picture, Garrison and other lenders on the original deal began battling for control of the properties... Garrison, though not the main lender on the buildings, used Penzance's default to take control of ownership last fall. Ben Thypin, senior market analyst at research firm Real Capital Analytics, said Garrison "took over the properties with the intention of holding them."

As new owner of the buildings, however, Garrison assumed the $107 million mortgage that Penzance had taken out and almost immediately was asked to pay up by lenders higher in the food chain -- igniting a battle for distressed assets that commercial real estate professionals commonly refer to as "tranch warfare."
As we've said before, this isn't likely to immediately affect the RA, as a tenant with a long-term lease is among the most attractive assets in commercial real estate. We do hope, however, that RA staffers don't start developing nasty cases of "tranch foot."

But if you're like us, there's nothing you enjoy more than learning about the innerworkings of giant equity firms and banks. So get ready for some juicy real estate gossip to be DISHED!
With Garrison under assault, owners of the larger mortgage, from funds assembled by the financial giant UBS and from Normandy Real Estate Partners, a Morristown, N.J., private equity firm, scheduled a foreclosure auction in December to assume control of the properties, according to court documents. Normandy's holdings in the Washington area include more than a dozen office buildings, including 1775 Wiehle Ave., in Reston.

On the eve of the Dec. 15 auction, however, Garrison put the four properties into bankruptcy, protecting them from seizure by creditors. UBS and Normandy filed suit in New York State Supreme Court two weeks later, on Dec. 29, saying "the borrowers' filing for bankruptcy makes Garrison, as guarantor, fully liable for the entire unpaid balance of the loan." They requested immediate payment of the entire loan, including interest, a total of $111.5 million.

All three investment firms, through executives, attorneys or spokesmen, declined to comment.
Oh no, they DIDN'T! Who needs Us Weekly when we can read about slapdowns like this?

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.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Thundersnowprisingpocalypsmageddon 2011 (TM) Flashback: A Photographic Look Back at the 8-Hour Commute That Was

In our continuing Thundersnowprisingpocalypsmageddon 2011 (TM) TEAM COVERAGE (tm), Confidential Restonian Operative "youhavemail" forwarded these photos of the chaos that was Sunrise Valley Drive last night, where folks who managed to thread the needle between the scores of abandoned cars on the Toll Road found this scene of carnage. Get ready to relive the excitement and suspense of sitting, and sitting, and sitting...

Screen shot 2011-01-27 at 2.21.47 PM.jpg
Our operative writes:
Big ups for the folks who pitched in to help get people moving on Sunrise Valley last night. Most people on the road pretty much gave up on trying to make headway and just turned their cars off blocking the rest from getting by.

Screen shot 2011-01-27 at 2.23.57 PM.jpg
And in other BREAKING Thundersnowprisingpocalypsmageddon 2011 (TM) TEAM COVERAGE, Fairfax schools are closed again tomorrow. We're not entirely sure why, but maybe we're just saying that because we have power and paved roads in some proximity to Restonian World Headquarters.

And wrapping up our Thundersnowprisingpocalypsmageddon 2011 (TM) TEAM COVERAGE, at least for the moment, please to be enjoying this photo of Metal Bob in the snow, as the shadows and sky contribute to what appears to be a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but is only Lake Anne, the end.
snowy bob.JPG

Thundersnowprisingpocalypsmageddon 2011 (TM) Update: You Might Need to Cancel That Lunch Date at the Macaroni Grill

power.jpg

Our Thundersnowprisingpocalypsmageddon 2011 (TM) TEAM COVERAGE continues with this handy map of power outages from Dominion Power, where, in the spirit of solidarity with their powerless brethren, they've turned the thermostats up to 74 and left the blender running all night. We'd like to think that having the power lines buried underground helps in a situation like this, but that's cold comfort if you got home last night after sitting in traffic for six hours to discover you're living under one of those non-DRB-approved blue dots. Also, we hope the Macaroni Grill has an emergency generator, as it looks like that lovely quadrant of retail/pasta may be without power.

Of course, if you don't have power, you couldn't be checking to see if you have power on this "web log." Unless, of course, you're using your dwindling battery power on your, whazzitcalled, iPhone instead of conserving it for a frantic 911 call when the snow zombies neighbors arrive at your door, in search of human flesh milk, the end.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Breaking Thundersnowprisingpocalypsmageddon 2011 (TM) Update

As the snow continues to fall and traffic appears to be nonexistent and the lights flicker ever so faintly and we begin pondering "worst case" human cannibalism scenarios, we bring you this heartwarming story of perseverance and camaraderie in the face of adversity, courtesy of the Twitter machine:

pee twitter.jpg


That is all.

It's Baaaaaacck: Fairway Apartments Proposal Reportedly Slouching Back For Another Try

Like an earth-toned creature from a horror movie, the Fairway Apartments redevelopment proposal is apparently slouching towards a second date with planning officials, who used terms like "overwhelming" to describe the initial proposal. Those plans initially called for more than 900 "high-end condominiums" in a mauvescraper and assorted low-rise units on the site of the current garden apartments on North Shore Drive.

Last fall, developer the Fairfax County Planning Commission opted to indefinitely postpone consideration of the project. According to our BFFs at Reston 2020, JBG is now planning to submit a new proposal to the Reston Planning and Zoning Committee next month, the first step down the road to eventual approval. It'll definitely be interesting to see if JBG has taken the myriad criticisms of the original proposal to heart and come up with a new approach that is more in keeping with the neighborhoods around it.

Replacing an aging complex of garden apartments isn't the worst idea in the world--far from it. Planners were right to voice concerns about the scale of the project, which JBG did little to do to accommodate in the first go-around. Other groups were equally justified in criticizing the impact on affordable housing, which the company shamelessly tried to eliminate altogether from the proposal. We'd actually be excited to see a proposal that strikes a balance between higher density and the character of the surrounding neighborhoods.

And that also has lots and lots of these signs:

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

This Week in Crime: Annoying the Noid, Ikea Fever, and What's a Few Missing Guns Among Friends?

noid2.gifNothing annoys the Noid quite like a 17-year-old taking his pizza delivery vehicle for a midnight joyride around our lovely earth-toned community:

A 17-year-old boy stole a 21-year-old man’s car around 12:45 a.m. on Saturday, January 15; the victim was delivering a pizza in the 2200 block of Sanibel Drive.

Officers nearby located the suspect driving the 2000 Ford Expedition in the area of Sunset Hills Road and Wiehle Avenue. After a brief pursuit, the suspect was apprehended. He was taken to the juvenile detention center and charged with grand larceny and felony speed to elude.
Meanwhile, two Reston men and a Herndon man got into a bit of trouble while visiting beautiful Dumfries, which is kind of near Ikea... so maybe they were looking for some semi-disposable Scandinavian furniture when things got out of hand? We're not entirely sure:
Two Reston men and a Herndon man are facing gun charges in connection with a shooting that occurred Tuesday in the 6400 block of Marshall Court in Dumfries.

Prince William County police arrested Lamar Antonio Maurice Johnson, 20, of 1650 Sierra Woods Dr. in Reston (possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, reckless handling of a firearm); Karma Momolu Korvah, 20, 1650 Sierra Woods Dr., Reston (possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, reckless handling of a firearm); and Jared Todd Davis, 19, of 12004 Cheviot Dr. in Herndon (reckless handing of a firearm).

Witnesses heard shots fired and saw the three men leaving the scene in a vehicle, police said. One of them men tried to run away from police on foot, and Virginia State Police, US Park Rangers and Prince William Police K-9s were used to search for him.
The reason for the shooting is unknown and there were no injuries.
Apparently they still haven't found the weapon used in the shooting. That's also a problem in the 2000 bock of Beacon Heights Drive in South Reston, where two guns were stolen from a residence. Which shouldn't be anything to worry about, unless you happen to live in Dumfries or some other exotic port of call along the I-95 corridor.

Finally, a 37-year-old Reston man was arrested on drug-related charges whilst visiting our beautiful neighbor to the west:
Jason Leamnson, 37, of Reston, was arrested for alleged possession of drug paraphernalia at 7:18 p.m. on Jan. 7 in the 400 block of Elden Street.
Man, they sell everything at K-mart these days!

Monday, January 24, 2011

Flashback Monday: North Point Village, 'Everything That Went Before It,' Including Promises of the 'Last Residential Development'

Please to be enjoying this breathless marketing copy, ca. 1989, about the delights that would await homebuyers in North Reston, which developers claimed was built on "everything that went before it."

North Point.jpg

Narrower streets? Center Harbor Road certainly has a cozy, small-town charm, inasmuch as buses aren't allowed to be parked on the sides of the almost-as-narrow Beltway. And we guess street names like Regatta Lane, Brass Lantern Way and Hemingway Drive have "a certain timeless character," assuming that a mental image of Hemingway holding a fancy lantern as he sails into Key West for a three-week bender is "timeless." But otherwise, this pretty much nails it... except maybe for that part about the "last residential development in Reston." Of course, considering the fancy plans for building wood frame apartments on top of a craft store, maybe that talk about building on "everything that went before it" was supposed to be literal.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Reston: Home to LOLFoxes (tm)

photo.jpeg

ZOMG, our Facebook BFFs at the Reston Association totally posted this hilarious "Wall Photo" of some adorable critter. They obviously don't know much about the whole "Web 2.0" thing, as the picture was conspicuously lacking a comically misspelled aphorism, like "I srsly h8 Mondayz" or "Can I Has a Feral Catz Plz?" So we decided to help them out. You're welcome!

We've actually seen foxes running around in the "back 40" (really, more like the "back 0.04") out behind Restonian World Headquarters, so it was reassuring to learn from Claudia Thompson-Deahl, Reston Association’s Environmental Resource Manager, that seeing one in broad daylight doesn't mean you've got a rabid critter on your hands:
Foxes are very, very common in Reston. Sometimes they travel in the storm sewers and I have had reports of people seeing them going down the storm drains. They have become more diurnal (out during the daytime) as we have had more coyotes moving into the area and taking their nocturnal (out at night) hunting slot so we are more likely to see them. Seeing a fox out in the day does NOT mean that he has rabies.

Foxes are a well adapted urban species. They have a wide variety of foods in their diet. They will eat fruit, rodents, rabbits, grapes, raspberries, persimmons, and apples. People and wildlife can co-exist and a few simple rules will help. Dishes of pet food should never be left outside. Meat scraps should never go in a compost bin and garbage cans should be secured from access.

They will even eat sunflower seeds below a feeder if they get hungry enough.
So now we have just have to worry about the ROVING PACKS of feral coyotes prowling once the sun goes down. The next time we go on a moonlit stroll, we'll be sure to bring a Milk-Bone or two.

Election Season Just Began: RA President Throws Hat in Ring For County School Board Seat

hanging-chads-300x242.jpgReston Association President Kathleen Driscoll McKee has said she will run for the Fairfax County School Board's Hunter Mill seat, which is being vacated by Stuart Gibson, who has decided not to run for re-election this fall after being on the board since 1995.

McKee is expected to have competition for Gibson's seat. Gibson is supporting Forest Edge Elementary School teacher Pat Hynes.

Gibson said on Thursday "mostly it is just time" to move on.

"Sixteen years is a longtime commitment," he said. "My children are now in their 20s. ... I think I have had a good impact. I am proud of the things we have done. I have worked with talented superintendents. I have seen all sorts of trends. But one thing that has remained constant - the achievement of our students."

McKee is the parent of four grown children, three of whom graduated from South Lakes High School. She is a former teacher who has a Masters in Education from University of Virginia. Her husband, Mike McKee, is also an experienced educator...

McKee's term as RA president expires March of 2012. A new school board would be empaneled in January 2012. McKee said she will carefully evaluate what her responsibilities would entail should she win the November 2011 election.
Between the school board seat and the RA board elections slated for this spring, it's safe to say election season has officially begun. Maybe it's time to unplug the internets for a while.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Reston: The Magazine Shockingly Fails to Go the Tabloid Route

tabloid cover.jpgWell, looky what a uniformed federal agent dropped by Restonian World Headquarters the other day! When we saw this picture of a baby on the cover, we momentarily hoped that Reston: The Magazine had followed our lead and taken a slightly more tabloidy bent. Let's face it, magazines are in trouble, right? But those hopes were dashed when we realized the headlines on the cover did not include some combination of the words "DEAR LEADER" and "LOVE CHILD," as the accompanying story was actually about how there's a building -- we forget the word for it -- right here in town that has lots of doctors and stethoscopes and whatnot in it. But come on, RA! If we wanted responsible, news-you-can-use journalism in return for our $540 assessment, we would have bought 18.03 subscriptions to U.S. News & World Report instead!

But of course, when we turned to the back of the issue and found our favorite gem, all was forgiven:

wordfind.jpg
Found one! We're just assuming that last word is in there somewhere.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Metro Silver Line Shocker: Trains, Tracks, Malfunctioning Farecard Machines Cost 'Money,' And Lots of It

PH2007101501531.jpgA fancy "audit," probably conducted by some dude wearing one of those hawt green banker visors and operating a crank-powered adding machine, has come up with a shocking revelation: Metro's Silver Line extension, which will bring the Cheescake Factory mass transit to Reston, and ultimately Dulles and the particleboard wastelands of Loudoun County if it doesn't run out of money, might run out of money.

During a meeting of the [Fairfax County Board of Supervisors] Audit Committee Tuesday, Auditor of the Board Michael Longhi noted the tolling rates in the study, which depicts tolls of $7.50 for a full trip on the road 30 years from now, are adequate to repay debt for Phase I of the rail project but don't account for Phase II.

The airports authority currently is scrubbing cost estimates and designs for the second phase of the project, estimated at $3.8 billion, and will competitively bid the contract. Financing plans will be refined during this process.
Awkward! Part of the problem is that the airports authority tried to have it both ways, projecting that the Silver Line would attract 10,000 new daily riders when trying to prove the benefits of the project -- while simultaneously arguing that the arrival of Metro won't affect the number of cars plying the Toll Road when making revenue projections, which are heavily dependent on all those quarters that get thrown into their grimy plastic baskets.
In April 2010, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority commissioned a tolling study that projected toll rate increases that would be needed to support the $1.3 billion in bonds the airports authority issued in 2009 and 2010. The study also projected the amount of decreased traffic that would result from the tolling increases.

However, that study does not depict any decrease in the number of toll road users after the first segment of the new Silver Line opens at the end of 2013, according to a draft report from the county's Office of Financial and Program Audit. Fewer users could decrease the revenue projections.

During 2009 public input sessions on toll increases, about 50 percent of the current Dulles Toll Road users commenting said they would use the Silver Line when it opens.
Oops. Actually, there's a school of thought that suggests that any improvement in roads or other infrastructure won't result in less traffic, but more development (e.g., pretty much the entire eastern half of Loudoun County), but still!
More than 57 percent of the funding for the full $6.5 billion Silver Line construction is planned to come from the toll road. Fairfax County is paying 16 percent, the federal government less than 15 percent and Virginia, Loudoun County and the airports authority will fund the rest...

Upon the auditors' recommendation, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors is expected to ask the airports authority to more fully disclose the impact of drivers making the switch to transit in future tolling studies. The board likely will take up a motion on the matter when it adopts the quarterly audit report next week.
Probably a good idea. And good on Fairfax County for calling MWAA on it.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Denim Wash and Cranberry Cocktails: Meet Your Cluster of the Year

winterport.jpgIt's awards season in Hollywood, but the foreign press missed the really big award this past week, when Winterport Cluster was named the Neighborhood Association of the Year by the RA.

RA has been giving the award since 2000 to the association or cluster who implemented changes to make the neighborhood more environmentally friendly, inspired community involvement, made moneysaving or lighting/security improvements and updated cluster standards.

Winterport's recent changes included removing non-native plants and taking steps to remedy soil erosion.

"It took a couple of years to figure out what needed to be done," said Bob Kraus, Winterport cluster president. "A lot of it was driven by the age of the cluster - we are 30 years old."
We're as much for eradicating non-native plants as the next person, but as somewhat expert "web loggers," we'd like to give the cluster an award based on its fancy website, which forgoes all those fancy Twitters and "Web 2.0" trappings the kids keep talking about to get straight to the heart of the matter:

fun rules.jpg
You had us at "door color." And just thinking about a door painted "Roasted Sesame Seed" is making us hungry.

In recognition of its high honor, the RA will present the cluster with a 90-foot bronze statue of Bob Simon, which will be placed in a visitor's parking space near the entrance to the neighborhood, where it will be visible from the Toll Road until another cluster with an even radder color palette takes home the award next year, the end.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Macaroni Grill, We Hardly Knew You: Lerner Submits Plans for Spectrum Center

no grill.jpg
We knew this day would come someday, but we kept hoping against hope! Last month, Lerner Enterprises submitted plans for its long-anticipated redevelopment of the Spectrum Center, and as we can all painfully see, the Macaroni Grill seems to have been swallowed whole by some giant, distinctly non-Macaroni Grill structure.

According to the Fairfax Newsletter, a land development newsletter printed on green paper (we subscribe for the Jumble puzzle on the back cover), Lerner has submitted detailed plans for the redevelopment of the big box retail shlockfest that county officials approved way back in 2008. Lerner filed a subsequent lawsuit last spring over some complicated back-and-forth about density requirements, but it's not clear if these new plans reflect the outcome of that case, which a cursory Google search our team of legal analysts were unable to determine.

Divided into three sections, the proposed development includes more than 1,400 residential units, 255 hotel rooms, 172,000 square feet of office space, and more than 245,000 square feet of retail space spread across a number of buildings ranging from 120 to 180 feet tall, according to the newsletter. Open space has been incorporated into the proposal, particularly in the section closest to the existing Town Center, but the biggest chunk of open space we see is the parking lot around an existing office building next to Reston Parkway, which isn't part of the Lerner proposal.

The broad strokes of the proposal aren't new, and look pretty much like what the county signed off on nearly two years ago. And just about anything would be an improvement over the big box grandeur of the existing Spectrum Center. But it is with a heavy heart that we move the hands of the Macaroni Grill Doomsday Clock a minute closer to midnight:

new mg clock.jpeg
Tick.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Reston Lakes: Gone to the Birds

Our Facebook BFFs at the Reston Association shared two photos of unusual activity on Reston's lakes this week.

eagle.jpg
Yes, that's a bald eagle basking on Lake Thoreau, a symbol of majesty, grandeur, and appropriate use of earth tones. Nice russet brown plumage!

Lake dude.jpg
And this, of course, is some dodo.

This dude is apparently pushing a snowblower across a frozen Lake Audobon. Beyond the obvious danger of pushing a 50-pound piece of equipment across a thin sheet of ice -- which the RA seems to frown upon for some strange reason -- there's another question: what's the point of blowing a thin coating of snow off an equally thin coating of ice? Is it obscuring his view of some sunken treasure?

Update: Our BFFs at Patch posted a lovely photo of someone playing ice hockey on a lake. Could our friend above, as one of our commenters suggested, be using his snowblower as a zamboni? Depending on how thick that ice wound up being, we may never know.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

This Week in Crime: Jersey Shore II, Plus a Hunters Woods Robbery and Catchin' Up With the Serial Hamburglar

300-jersey-shore-guys.jpegA Reston couple got into what some subliterate cretins America's most admired reality tevee stars might call a "situation" while visiting one of New Jersey's more storied shopping center parking lots.

A Reston couple found sleeping in a parked vehicle is now facing drug charges in Brick, NJ.

Douglas McIntosh, 42, and Stephanie LaFond, 40, were parked at a shopping center on Saturday when a patrolman woke them up. The officer, Joseph Frankopf, also found baggies of cocaine, several open bottles of alcohol, a large amount of cash, marijuana and pieces of drug paraphernalia.

Both were charged with one count each of: manufacturing, dispensing or distributing cocaine; possession of less than 50 grams of marijuana; possession of drug paraphernalia; possession or use of a controlled dangerous substance; Possession of a controlled dangerous substance in a vehicle; possession of open alcoholic containers in a vehicle.
Way to REPRESENT, Reston! A tip of the backwards baseball cap and a Jersey-sized fist pump to them!

Closer to home, a woman was robbed at gunpoint in Hunters Woods Plaza.
A woman was robbed at gunpoint in the 2200 block of Hunters Woods Plaza around 7:45 p.m. on Thursday, December 30. The suspect brandished a gun, grabbed her purse and fled. He was described as black, in his early 20s, about 6 feet tall and between 150 and 180 pounds. He was wearing a black hoodie and blue jeans. The victim did not require medical attention.
Another woman was robbed in similar fashion earlier in the month:
A man robbed a 55-year-old woman of her purse around 12:15 a.m. on Sunday, December 19 in the 2200 block of Stone Wheel Drive. The victim was not injured.
And to catch up on our two favorite serial robbers, suspected serial hamburglar Brad K. Edmonds was indicted last month in Montgomery County, where he was arrested in November, robble robble. And accused serial bank robber Benjamin Luzan Sebastian, of Inwood, W.Va., has been charged with robbing two banks in Reston and two others in Loudoun County in October and November, bringing his box score to six.

Before Christmas, Alfredo R. Prieto was given given two death sentences for the 1988 murders of Rachael Raver and Warren Fulton outside of Reston. Third time was the charm for Fairfax prosecutors, who had tried for the death penalty twice before.

And finally, in Falls Church an unnamed 45-year-old Reston man was arrested for "smoking in a non-designated area" of a restaurant. We should have known when the police there started driving Volvos in the 1980s that we were dealing with communists.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Final Jeopardy: Reston's Dan Jensen Loses Day 4; Walks Away With As Much As $72,804

gameshow.jpgDan Jensen, we hardly knew ye:

The streak has ended. Reston weeps.

Tempting fate once too often with a shirt in a borderline DRB-acceptable white, our native son Dan Jensen loses on his fourth Jeopardy appearance. The reigning champ faces fierce competition from fellow contestants Justin from Canada and Sally, who lives in a nun-run residence in New York City (one imagines the good Sisters hovering over poor cowering Sally, wielding their WMD/weapon of merciless discipline yardsticks as she crams for tonight's appearance: "Faster on the signaling device! Study harder! Pick up the pace!"). Sally takes a $6,400 lead over Dan at the end of round one, and keeps pouring it on in the second round, as does Justin. While Dan does well in the category of brand logos -- perhaps too much time spent in our awesome midscale retail outlets at RTC? -- he ends the second round in last place with $12,400. All three contestants correctly deduce that Jackson Pollock is the correct answer in Final Jeopardy, but Sally bets big and ends up champ at $33,601, with Justine second at $25,300 and Dan third at $14,601.

But we salute Dan for a game well played and for a great run while it lasted. You make us proud, Dan, to call ourselves Restonians.
That, courtesy of our Chief Game Show Correspondent, The Peasant From Less Sought After South Reston.

Jensen walked away from the experience with $72,804. Not too shabby. And for the Dan Jensens of the world, there's this:



Update: If there's one thing we don't know, it's the rules about losing on Jeopardy:
As I recall, and as listed in Wikipedia's Jeopardy entry, third place contestants win only $1,000 for their appearance that day, regardless of how much they win in the game itself, so Dan's grand total for the four days may be "only" $59,203.

Oh well, back to writing about DRB regulations.
If there was actually a game show about that, we'd have enough Turtle Wax to last a hundred lifetimes.

The Day Is His! Reston Man Wins Day 3 of Jeopardy

Categories-celebrity-jeopardy-135860_400_326.jpgChief Restonian Jeopardy Correspondent The Peasant From Less Sought After South Reston weighs in with this update on Dan Jensen, our local boy done good on the teevee, after he survived his third night on Jeopardy:

Dan The Man hits the trifecta (or a hat trick, for you Caps fans) and wins his third game in a row, but not without some heart-stopping moments such as losing his entire $4,200 in the first round's Daily Double when he thinks Simon Bolivar, from whom Hugo Chavez is reincarnated, is buried in Cartagena and not Caracas. Dan is in second place when the first round ends, but rebounds nicely in the second round, thanks especially to his acing the phobia category of "animals who scare me". We think Dan has perhaps spent too much time out in the Reston woods having close encounters with varmints and latex-gloved creepos. Dan ends the second round with $16,800, a substantial lead but not enough to assure victory. In the final Jeopardy category of "Symbols", all three contestants answer correctly that the symbol of two snakes (those varmints again) separated by a staff is a caduceus. Dan wins $18,001 dollars, bringing his three-day total to an impressive $58,203.

We attribute the relatively narrow margin of victory today, some $2,400, to the fact that Dan wore a shirt that was barely borderline DRB-approved in color...some shade of off-white, apparently. Russet brown, Dan, russet brown!
Jensen is a 2000 graduate of South Lakes High School and works at Champps. Too bad he wasn't a contestant on Wheel of Fortune, as he'd start out with an extra P.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Flashback Monday: Potemkin Village Center

Hunters Woods.jpg
Please to be enjoying this undated file photograph of the old Hunters Woods Village Center, back when it was an awesome outdoor shopping plaza instead of the current soulless strip mall configuration that God intended all along. You'd think this lovely photo caught our eye because of the attractive, vaguely DRB-flouting mustard and ketchup flags fluttering in the breeze, but we're actually shocked by the number of highly skilled actors that must have been brought in for this obviously staged photo op. Having been to the old village center in the apocalyptic, end-of-times years before it closed, the only way you'd have this number of people in one place is if they were an army of zombies, in pursuit of human flesh instead of 39-cent apples at Safeway.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

What is Mauve? Reston Man Wins Second Night on Jeopardy

Screen shot 2011-01-08 at 12.02.43 PM.jpgReston's own Dan Jensen won for a second day on Jeopardy, reports our favorite correspondent, The Peasant From Less Sought After South Reston:

Dan the man does it again! After a seesaw struggle in both rounds, he enters Final Jeopardy with a $2,000 lead over his nearest rival. All three contestants correctly answer that of all countries where Spanish is the official language, Venezuela is the last alphabetically. Dan cannot be caught and ends the day with $19,201 in winnings, bringing his two-day total to an impressive $40,202. Viva Danilo!

And he wasn't even wearing a lucky russet brown shirt...rather something blue-gray in tone.
Fingers crossed for another victory--and a DRB-approved wardrobe choice--on Day 3.

Friday, January 7, 2011

We'll Take Earth Tones for $100: Reston Man Wins Big on Jeopardy

gameshow.jpgAnd we thought this was a slow news week! Our favorite correspondent, the Peasant from Less Sought After South Reston, weighs in with an exciting scoop, straight from his living room:

In a continuing quest to fill his brain with all sorts of esoteric and at times useless knowledge (beyond that gleaned from reading certain "official" websites run by professional journalists and/or homeowners associations), The Peasant sprawled out this evening to watch "Jeopardy". Imagine the surprise to find that one of the two new contestants on tonight's show was a Mr. Dan Jensen who comes from none other than Reston, Virginia. His occupation is restaurant manager; one could only hope against hope that he oversees the all-you-can-eat breadsticks and pasta at The Macaroni Grill.

In the first round, our native son proves to have pretty broad knowledge and a lightning fast finger on the answering device (although not fast enough, ironically, to ring in with the answer about the design on the Virginia state quarter). He does nevertheless earn $1,500 on that round's daily double with the correct answer of "The Reign of Terror". No, the question wasn't about those RA Covenants dudes with clipboards terrorizing hapless homeowners who own oversized compost bins, but rather that "off with their heads" chapter in the recent RA Board of Directors election -- strike that -- revolutionary France. Our man Dan ends the first round in the lead with $9,300.

Different story in the second round, as reigning champ Steve comes on strong in both the art and physics categories; we are guessing that Dan snoozed through art appreciation class at South Lakes and that his Mr. Plutonium Cold Fusion in a DeLorean project did not win first prize at the Fairfax County Science Fair. Steve takes the lead, but then in a John Edwards series of moments self-destructs with several big-buck wrong answers. The second round ends in a cliffhanger with Dan at $11,300, $700 more than fellow contestant Maureen and $900 more than Steve.

It all comes down to Final Jeopardy in the category "worldwide media". For a nanosecond we harbor the hope that the correct answer to the upcoming question will be "Restonian World Headquarters", but no, that sneaky Alex Trebek asks about some mainstream/lamestream "news agency whose name means peninsula as in the Arabian Peninsula". Everybody get the obvious correct answer of al-Jazeera, but our man Dan bets big with a wager of $9,701, giving him the championship, a one-day total of $21,001, and the chance to play again. Lucky guy -- that's enough money to pay at least another 35 years of RA annual assessments, or a week's worth of expected Dulles Toll Road fares in the year 2018.

And finally, while Dan is obviously a bright guy, we believe a significant part of his success tonight is due to the fact that he was wearing his lucky shirt that was, of course...mauve.
We wish Dan the best of luck as he moves on to the next round... tonight? We haven't watched Jeopardy in a while, opting instead for more sophisticated fare, but maybe it's tonight. We only hope he chooses a russet brown shirt for Day 2.

You can watch a brief "hometown howdy" from Jensen here, or at least you could if you had an Internet connection faster than a 300 baud modem.

Wiehle Park and Ride Closure Scheduled For Spring Delayed Until... Spring, and What $1.46 Million Gets You in Parking These Days

General Contractor - Gaithersburg, MD - Building a new garage will make room for a boat, or give you the space you need for the workshop you've always wanted.jpegFairfax Connector announced yesterday that the Reston East park and ride lot on Wiehle Avenue will close completely sometime in "Spring 2011," as work begins on the awesome three-car multilevel parking garage for the Wiehle Avenue Metro station. The lot was initially scheduled to close completely by Feb. 27, but the contractors working on the sadly rectangular garage apparently haven't found enough of those orange cones with the blinking lights on top, so they're going to have to stand around somewhere else for a while, maybe install a fanciful bollard or two, etc., until they come in from the manufacturer, but they'll give us a call just as soon as they do, and hey, whaddya want them to do, drive to the bollard factory and fabricate them themselves? Ah, contractors. Right?

Anyhoo, several bus routes have already been shifted to the Reston North lot, which isn't actually in North Reston, in anticipation of the closure, and last month the Board of Supervisors formally approved a lease agreement with Boston Properties that will transform a parcel of property on Sunset Hills Road just south of the Fake Downtown gritty urban core from a vacant parking lot into an interim parking lot, all for the low low price of $1.46 million. That seems pretty steep to fix up and rent a surface parking lot that will be used for a couple of years and then torn down to build a Cheesecake Factory or something, but when you realize that $45,000 of that is allocated to electrical costs, it starts to look like a bargain.

temp parking.jpg
This is what $1.46 million gets you these days, in case you were wondering.

A public meeting will be held to discuss the closure at 7pm Feb. 2, at the North County Government Center.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Guess the Mauve Bits Pt. 7: Earth-Toned Escher

guess7.jpg

Nothing says "slow news week" quite like our ongoing un-contest of mystery easy to identify photos of Reston taken by roving Predator drones the Google machine. We're pretty sure we had a poster of this building up in our dorm room in college, but we wouldn't have guessed in a million years we'd be living near it someday!

As always, make your guess in the comments for your crack at not winning that late-model Buick we keep prattling on about. For those keeping score at home, the over/under on this one should be about 11 minutes.

Update: We have a winner, and it took just seven minutes -- which is a lot less time than it would take to figure out how to get to the top of this twisted triangle of a parking garage.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

On the Twitter Machine: Reston Resolutions, Tech Tears, and TMI

It's been a month or so since we walked down to the basement of Restonian World Headquarters with a flashlight to check on the Twitter machine (which we had installed at great expense next to the hot water heater). Apparently it needs a new filter! Oh, wait -- that was the furnace. But what are the krazy kids on Twitter talking about? Pretty much the same old same old:


resolution.jpg
Now there's a resolution we can heartily agree with! Is there a Macaroni Grill in Centreville?

Screen shot 2011-01-04 at 7.58.27 AM.jpg
Wow. Just wow. Though "Tech Tears" would be a pretty good name for a Devo cover band.

TMI.jpg
Yikes. Way way WAY TMI, as the kids today don't say.

metaphor.jpg
We think there's a metaphor in there or something. We were asleep that day in English.

wesmelllawsuit.jpg
We smell a lawsuit!

post office.jpg
Maybe they were laughing because a GIANT RESTON SIGN was trying to talk to them.

under 25.jpg
Wait a minute. There are people under 25 in Reston?

Screen shot 2010-12-02 at 11.15.31 AM.jpg
Maybe -- but if you're going to buy, we've got some awesome midscale retail to "get your buying on," as the kids today still don't say.

Screen shot 2010-11-02 at 6.37.52 PM.jpg
Magic 8-Ball says: Doubtful.

dreamjob.jpg
Sounds awesome! Oh, wait -- that's what we're already doing. Minus the $500-1,000 a month, anyway.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Road Rules: More Traffic, More Quarters, and 'Great' Falls Gets Its Way, As Usual



This exciting video from the YouTubes captures the sheer excitement of sitting in traffic on Sunset Hills Road while attempting to turn onto Hunter Mill Road and then cross under the Toll Road. There's a point to be made about the design of the intersections and placement of traffic lights, but if watching gridlocked traffic at 5x speed isn't enough to thrill you, just wait until the video shifts to reverse, in 12x speed. Your mind will be blown!

In the meantime, have you noticed that you're paying a quarter more each way for the right to sit in Toll Road traffic and stare at those pylons that will someday bring the Cheesecake Factory Silver Line to Reston? If not, you'll be getting a few nasty $25 surprises in the mail from VDOT sometime really soon. But one intrepid lawmaker is proposing a bill that would require the airport authority to get permission from Fairfax and Loudoun counties before raising rates again. In the meantime, the Toll Road is making what the kids today don't call serious bank for the airports authority, pulling in an estimated $88 million in 2010 -- an increase of 36 percent from the previous year, as only a handful of drivers balked at the earlier round of toll hikes. Money fight!

Of course, all that extra money is going to the awesome Silver Line and its accompanying rad 80s art, which has also just gotten an accelerated infusion of federal funding. Using the feds' projection that the Silver Line will add 10,000 new daily transit riders -- way below original projections -- some snarky columnist pointed out that this works out to $310,000 for each new Metro rider.

Taxpayers would be better off financially giving each of them a brand new Lamborghini Gallardo (MSRP $237,600) or his and hers matching Tesla Roadsters (MSRP $109,000) instead.
Aw hell no, she didn't! Be sure to look for this comment in the upcoming book, A Children's Collection of Transit Funding Snaps, Putdowns, and Practical Bloopers.

And finally, the folks in "Great" Falls who didn't want their pristine McMansions besmirched by smog from Loudoun County cut-through commuters have, not surprisingly, won their many-year battle to prevent VDOT from creating a new turn lane from Rt. 7 to Georgetown Pike. Who knows, maybe they got beloved TV show host Bob Barker to intervene again. Unspecified improvements will still be made on Rt. 7, presumably including an appropriately frightening looking HERE THERE BE DRAGONS sign to keep Loudounites on the straight and narrow and off Georgetown Pike, the end.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Meanwhile, in the Anti-Reston: Not That There's Anything Wrong With That

evil spock.jpegWe've written quite a bit of late how reliably tolerant Herndon has had a bit of a thaw in recent months, as frightened town residents confront the specter of tall buildings and whatnot. They're not even quite as vulgar anymore! So how did our tolerant neighbor to the west ring in the New Year? With Fairfax County's first gay bar, that's how!

So Addictive, which started out as a coffeehouse (thus the name), launched a weekly gay night last summer - a Wednesday gathering that initially consisted of four people, including Jennings and his boyfriend, drinking beer, watching "Modern Family" at the bar and wondering where everybody else was.

Now, the Wednesday night drag shows - featuring a wild mix of makeup, wigs, spangles and Lady Gaga impersonations - fill the place. Their success has persuaded Jennings and So Addictive's owner to swap out the bar's weekly hip-hop and Latin nights and turn their place into the only almost full-time gay bar in Fairfax County, home to more than 1 million people. The new format took effect on New Year's Eve; the only straight holdover on the schedule, for now, is heavy-metal Monday.
It wouldn't be Herndon if there wasn't a heavy metal Monday, after all. But this is a big deal, right?
The arrival of a gay bar in the heart of a quintessentially suburban community nearly 25 miles outside of Washington is a milestone for the gay community. It's also a broader test to see whether a business that caters to gay men and lesbians can succeed and gain mainstream acceptance in a town that was once featured in a book on the 100 "Best Places to Raise Your Family" in the United States.

By flying a rainbow flag directly across from the old Herndon Town Hall on Elden Street, So Addictive already has become a key marker in the gay diaspora. Sarah Gustafson, president of the gay rights organization Equality Fairfax, recently e-mailed the 900 people on her list to announce the "fantastic news" that "yes, Virginia, there is a gay bar in Fairfax County."
Frankly, we would have expected such a place to come to Reston light years before Herndon. Hell, we would have expected such a place in Clifton before Herndon. And in the interest of equal time, there's also this. So everyone's happy, right?
So Addictive's transformation into a full-fledged gay bar has turned at least some heads in Herndon. At Horn Motors, an auto parts store one block down Elden, an employee who answered the phone Friday said of his neighbor: "I don't think you want to print what I got to say."

The general manager, Wayne P., declined to give his last name and wondered whether he should say anything at all, "because anymore you have to be politically correct." Then, he said: "I'm not going to degrade them in any way, shape or form. But I'll be honest with you, I don't believe in that type of lifestyle. But it's not affecting me or my business at all. As long as they keep it orderly, I don't have a problem with it. Hopefully, they work on it and take care of their business and good for them."
"They." "Them." Wonder who else those words have been used to describe in Herndon?

Others are more enthusiastic.
Jimmy Cirrito, the owner of Jimmy's Old Town Tavern, said he welcomed the gayification of So Addictive, which is across the street from his bar. "If somebody's against having a gay bar, then they're against America," he said. "It's freedom. We're all God's people. We do what we want."
Only in Herndon can the guy who runs the place with the pyromaniac bartenders make the most sense.