Live, Work, Play, Die: The Obligatory Terrifying Halloween Post

On this, the spookiest day of the year, our favorite correspondent, The Peasant From Less Sought After South Reston, made a shocking discovery: After never having a cemetery of its own, a new development just might change that:

We're not dead, we're just Reston.

Well now, fellow New Towners, you can be both!

Whilst on his perambulations through the nether regions of Less Sought After South Reston, the Peasant happened upon our fair burb's first cemetery. True, just like those pop-up stores on the plaza of Comstock's awesome Willie Reston Station, it's only going to be here for a little while, but still...

A few take-away observations:

• A little more upscale branding is definitely in order. Keeping in line with those ever so trendy vowel-less places like the VY and the BLVD, we suggest taking out all those pesky E's and the like. Just call it R CRS CMTRY. There, looks better already.

• The R CRS CMTRY proprietors do, however, have the appropriate corporate logo. We love the symbolism of the vulture, the perfect corporate mascot of other fine companies doing business here such as Northwestern Mutual, Boston Properties, and the like.

• Although the cemetery plot, at approximately 12 square feet, is only 0.03 acres, it no doubt has already been identified by Cathy Hudgins and fellow BoS colleagues as a future site for high density residential redevelopment. Keeping in line with Reston's very, very exciting future as a transit-oriented development community, plans are presumably already in the work for a 30-story high-rise condo on this site. Let the cemetery go the way of brutalist concrete masterpieces, stucco wasteland retail centers, and the like. Admittedly, the 0.03 acre footprint of this plot will limit the number of condos to one per floor and the size of each condo to 12 square feet, but for millennials striding forth into the big wide world after a prolonged stay in the old folks' basement, one's first place of their own doesn't get any better than this.

• Finally, see that fire hydrant behind R CRS CMTRY? What better site to relocate the contentious dog park from Baron Cameron Park so that the swells living nearby can finally have some peace and quiet?

Reston: thanks to R CRS CMTRY, we can now have it all without leaving town. Live. Work. Play. Die.

North of the Toll Road, we're also happy to report that Reston is as trendy as ever. Following the breathlessly covered catastrophe of shark attacks clowns scaring people nationwide, a teevee news person spotted a particularly menacing clown within striking distance of the Metro station:

Won't someone think of the children commuters?

Finally, two Reston authors have come up with the seasonally appropriate Myths & Monsters of Reston, Virginia: The Phenomenal and Frightening Findings of Dr. Padraigin W. Thalmeus, Pds.We haven't been given the opportunity to review the book, but if there's no DRB Demon within its pages, we'll be very disappointed, the end.

Behold Our Hellish Transit-Oriented Future: High-Rise Schools (Updated)

As Reston continues its rapid transition into a transit-oriented hellscape center, we're seeing the county begin to grapple with the inevitable consequences of rapid, quasi-urban development. What's that, are they fast-tracking the much-needed Soapstone bridge across the Toll Road or the pedestrian overpass over Wiehle? No, silly rabbits, that would be crazy! Instead, the county is weighing the possibility of sticking new schools in high-rises, where they won't take up nearly as much (taxable) real estate. Give us some utterly baffling blockquote, BFFs at the Annandale Va Blog:

The Board of Supervisors will hold a hearing Nov. 1 on a new policy to allow the development of “urban” or “vertical” schools in high-density areas or on parcels of limited size.

Because "urban school" has such positive connotations in education circles.

The policy change would also amend the Comprehensive Plan to allow the “co-location of schools with other public uses, such as a library or a recreational center,” and the “co-location of different levels of education and other types of programs in one structure.” The co-located entities would then be able to share facilities such as the cafeteria, gym, or auditorium.

In addition, the policy would permit the adaptive reuse of buildings, such as an office or commercial building, to be used for schools, early childhood education programs, and distance learning.

Too bad that earlier efforts to save the Marcel Breuer-designed API building fell flat. It would have been a perfect architectural fit for Terraset II: Electric Boogaloo.

The policy is aimed at “schools in activity centers where there is no land to build traditional schools,” said David Stinson, of the Facilities Planning Branch in the Department of Planning and Zoning (DPZ). Activity centers include Bailey’s Crossroads, Seven Corners, Tysons, Reston, and the Route 1 corridor.

Our BFFs at Reston 2020 wonder if this means we'll see a new county school in the fancy new Town Center North governmental complex. We've known for some time that the added development will push existing schools to the limit. But we have more questions than answers. For example:

• Will North Reston's fancy astronaut schools (Aldrin and Armstrong) insist on being on the top floors?

• Will students have access to amenities like the cutting-edge 90s cybercafes in Reston's newest mauvescraper?

• If the county does put a school in the same building as the library, will they keep the kids away from the frotteurs who cram the book sales?

• Will PE be replaced by something equally beneficial from a cardiovascular standpoint, like trying to cross Wiehle Avenue?

• If schools are sharing facilities including cafeteria space with "other types of programs," does that mean kids will get access to some of Reston's finest midscale chain dining?

• If schools share space with some of our trendily-named developments, does that mean they'll stop teaching kids vowels?

All in all, this sounds like a sensible proposal with no unintended consequences. We can't wait to send Junior off to SCHL, the end.

Update: The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the proposal.

Reston Man Loses In Jeopardy, Wins in Beards

One of our own was on Jeopardy! last night. Our favorite correspondent, The Peasant From Less Sought After South Reston, watched the teevee so you don't have to:

Runaway!

We are not referring to one of Jackie Jeter's minions at Metro falling asleep at the controls and rocketing down the Silver Line at 11 MPH from Willie Reston into Tysons, America's Next Great City. Rather, we speak of the fate that befell Reston resident Norm Burnosky on Monday evening's Jeopardy.

Facing off with fellow challenger "Susan" against champion "Lani", corporate tax analyst Norm is clearly channeling the original 60's hippie vibe of Reston with his long beard and blinding pinkish-red shirt. As the Jeopardy round proceeds, Norm's strategy soon become clear: hunt down the Daily Double more mercilessly than the DRB conducting a search and destroy mission for red mulch. It works; Norm finds it in the "Islands" category and accurately reads the map graphic to come up with the correct answer of the Azores. He doubles his score to $3,200 but then goes dark for the remainder of the round. At the commercial break, his $3,200 puts him in third place.

The silver-tongued son of the frozen north Alex Trebek notes that the Double Jeopardy categories are a play on the names of contemporary hit TV shows. Norm starts off unevenly; he gets a question from the "House of Cards" category correct for $2,000 but then misidentifies a photo of Hosni Mubarak as Nasser. Champion Lani begins to pull away from her challengers, but Norm then goes on a belated run getting three questions in a row correct to end the round in second place with $6,800. However, Lani has more than double that amount, so Final Jeopardy might as well be called It's Academic.

The Final Jeopardy category is Animals, and it's a doozy: in Greek mythology it's a half-serpent and mother of the Sphinx; in zoology, it's a mammal that lays eggs. Don't know much about zoology, to paraphrase the old song, so for a while we are tempted to think the correct answer is "Beast of Berwickshire", the critter that a while back was terrorizing our doppelganger in Scotland. Susan provides the correct answer of echidna, whatever that is (the spiny anteater, as a quick search of The Google reveals), while Norm comes up with "Medusa", bets it all, and ends up with zero dollars and a third place finish.

Still, props to Norm for a spirited game, even if he now needs to find another source for his upcoming 2017 tribute of $698 to our mauve overlords at RA World Headquarters. Our belated advice to Norm: next time, ditch the non-DRB approved colors for a slightly more earth-toned shirt, and you may get lucky.

One Man's Trophy Tower Is Another Man's One Reston Town Center: A CGI Odyssey Into Reston's Future Tallest Building

So you own a "government services" company and want to impress the GS-17 Assistant Deputy Administrator For Dolphin Bomb Strapping/Micronesian Region that's responsible for 99 percent of your revenues? No better way of reminding him of your careful stewardship of tax dollars his place in the pecking order by showing him the view from this, your new "trophy office tower." Scoff at your competitors far below in Reston Town Center, in their inferior midrise Class A commercial office space! Mock the non-elite peons trying to figure out how to download a smartphone app so they can park in their sad non-wavy parking garages! Because you, wise scion of industry, got in on the ground floor of One Reston Town Center, the mauvescraper soon to bisect the big-box retail of the Spectrum Center along Reston Parkway. Only not the ground floor, silly rabbits. That's for some lowlife business like a Panera or something!

Sorry. We got a little carried away after reading the breathless marketing copy on One RTC's fancy new "web site":

Pivotal. Stunning. Remarkable. Impressive. Sophisticated. Expansive. Sounds like the vocabulary of another developer who's been in the newspapers of late.

But we digress. Not to be confused with the equally fancy "International Tower" rebranding across the Toll Road, One Reston Town Center has provided us with a bunch of the marketing language and awesome CGI renderings we love so bad. There's even an awesome video, complete with CGI people walking around like the ghosts in the machine inhabiting the CGI alternate reality of another exciting Reston development.

The developers do appear to be aware of the fun commercial office building trend of less space per worker, which leads to a comfortable working environment like this:

In case you didn't feel like counting, that's 9 offices and 125 "open workstations." We can't wait to move Restonian World Headquarters into the third cubicle of Row Three on the southwest side of the 9th floor. Cozy!

But let's not dwell on that. The building will have a "cybercafe," which apparently is still a thing? Maybe it will have a T-1 connection direct to America Online and Compuserve. Plus, DEALMAKING.

Folks on the right doing some STONE COLD DEALMAKING. The slackers sitting down nearby? Not so much. COFFEE IS FOR CLOSERS, CHUMPS.

This dynamic duo is doing so much UNDER THE TRELLIS DEALMAKING, they're not watching the gang of roughies loitering nearby.

These CGI folks on the video are CYBER DEALMAKING. Not sure if the woman on the right is contemplating jumping because of some DEALMAKING GONE BAD.

Finally, an illustration that accurately captures the zeitgeist of the contemporary workplace, the end.

Brilliant: Metro Seeks to Address Declining Ridership By Closing Silver Line Stations

After seeing ridership steadily decline in recent years, Metro has, as they say in the movies, a plan: close the majority of its brand new Silver Line stations during off-peak hours. That'll solve the problem!

This is one of a variety of proposals floated in a draft presentation (PDF) of Metro's budget proposals for FY2018. Metro is already making plans to privatize parking at most stations, though probably not at Wiehle (and given how the invisible hand of the free market brought us $13 one-way tolls on the Beltway express lanes, we're excited to see how that works out). And further cuts in service and/or fare increases seem as inevitable as the next track fire or inexplicable single track delay.

Of course, this silver-filled trial balloon is part of a ploy to blackmail encourage Fairfax County and the other jurisdictions that Metro serves into ponying up more money to keep the beleaguered system afloat. And it might work! After promoting Tysons Corner as the next Paris hip urban center, the county isn't going to want all those new fancypants skinny jeans wearing, city-loving residents in Tysons' two ugly high-rises to lose access to their Metro stations in the evenings or the weekends. How would they get to the 9:30 Club, or any other amenities of a real city (with the possible exception of the Container Store) otherwise?

This kind of bloggy outrage is exactly what Metro is hoping to stir up with a proposal like this. Still, it's not a great sign of confidence in the future of your system when your plan to turn around declining ridership is to basically close most of your newest stations most of the time. But for a dysfunctional system, it's par for the course.

We Can't Have Nice Things, Pt. 93: Reston Recycling Center to Close, All Because Lady Bey Poster Incomprehensibly Considered Garbage

Our Other South Reston Confidential Restonian Operative "Southie" sent us an electronic mail with some shocking news: Fairfax County's Reston South recycling center, known more officially as the Fairfax County Department of Public Works and Environmental Services West Ox/I-66 Transfer Station Recycling and Disposal Center's Reston South Park & Ride Recycling Drop-Off Facility (or FCDPWESWO/I66TSR&DCRSP&RRD-OF for short) will close due to "illegal dumping of old furniture, appliances, and other items." By way of proof, the county posted the shocking photo below of the FCDPWE...whatever:

Where they see "garbage," we see some perfectly functional household furnishings, including a totally safe and trustworthy baby seat (once you turn it right-side up and maybe run it through an industrial defumigator). While Chapter 109.1 of the Fairfax County Code now requires curbside recycling, rendering trips to this Mecca of good taste obsolete, we'll be sad to see this monument to Reston's resourcefulness and spirit of neighborly sharing perish. We only hope they keep the poster of Lady Bey as a reminder of happier, or at least less sanitary, days, the end.