80spocalypse Now: Yet Another Reston 'Landmark' Falls To The Wrecking Ball

From the Facebooks, this poignant cellular telephone photograph depicts the demolition of this 30-year-old office building along Sunrise Valley Drive, right next to where a legitimate brutalist masterpiece of concrete and unflattering right angles was flattened last year to make room for some unremarkable townhouses. Looks like our efforts to spark a similar wave of support for preserving this equally iconic reminder of the last great unfettered Fairfax County building boom went unheeded. As another great real estate developer might say, Sad!

#Nabra

• New Yorker: A Muslim community responds to a murder

• More than 1,000 attend vigil.

Nabra's vigil this evening #powerful #weareone #humanity #peace #love #blessings #JusticeForNabra #nabra #NabraHassenen #RIPNabra #vigil pic.twitter.com/gLw6LwYG7n

— zohra ibrahimi (@ItsZohr) June 22, 2017

• 'It could have been me.'

• Vigil 6:30pm Wednesday at Lake Anne Village Center.

• ADAMS Center fundraiser.

• Vigils nationwide.

• Pressure grows to classify slaying as hate crime.

• Community mourns.

Flashback Monday: A Video Trip Back To 1987, When Woodsy Reston Was Even Woodsier

Set the controls of the Earth Toned Wayback Machine to 1987, when YouTubes user "Cowboy Frank" recorded a fancy VHS "video tape" of a motorcycle ride through our woodsy nirvana. The picture above shows "Cowboy Frank" driving up (then, as now, as shall ever be) Temporary Road, taking in the breathtaking vista of our favorite "stressful city-like shopping center" ELITE clump of trees while navigating around the shockingly boxy cars that were the vogue then. Of course, given the size and weight of video recording equipment back then, it's a surprise the motorcycle didn't tip over every time "Cowboy Frank" made a turn.

Thrill along to this exciting loop around an even woodsier Reston of yesteryear, from a starting point on Chimney House Drive near Lake Anne, to North Shore to Wiehle to Fairway to (then as now) Temporary Road to Reston Parkway (nee Reston Avenue) to Baron Cameron to North Shore and back home. Mostly you see woods. Lots and lots of woods, interspersed with some of the finest motor vehicles of the K Car era. A few "highlights":

Tall Oaks Stucco Wasteland on the left, invisible then as now. No CGI grannies for another three decades, but there's some rando dude out for a relaxing stroll down Wiehle on the right.

The intersection of Reston Avenue and Baron Cameron, with Home Depot (then Hechinger's? Definitely not Memco?) in the background. Classic big box architecture is timeless. And speaking of which...

Back in the 80s, no big box stores surrounded the then massive four-story office building soon to be home to Reston's tallest mauvecsraper. Which of course means that the Macaroni Grill is still to be, and still to be cut down in the Great Chain Eatery Attrition of the Oughts.

Dammit! We told ourselves we were not going to cry, the end.

No Way To Run A Railroad, Or A Swimming Pool For That Matter

Confidential Restonian Operative “Adam” sent us this "Twitter pic" of the useful signage to help people do the one thing they voluntarily go to RA Headquarters to do: pick up a pool pass. Apparently more people than usual are having trouble with what we're going to stop calling WebTrak and start calling PoolRTC, in honor of another exceptional app the people of Reston love, so they've set up a process to help people through.... the process.

Now, we’re not what the kids call “UX” design experts, but any process which requires this much explanation is probably not the most efficient. We feel sorry for the front office staff at RA headquarters trying to help people through this mess, though the multiple lines and explanations make a trip to the DMV look distinctly non-Soviet by comparison.

Also, if we’re going to have this fancy rule requiring pool pass applicants to submit photos in order to crack down on the menace of BIG TIME SWIMMING POOL FRAUD, couldn’t they have added a, whazzitcalled, “upload button” to the WebTrak SwimRTC system instead of requiring people to send photos to a random email address? And what’s next, urine samples so they can sequence the DNA of perpetrators of future pool “accidents” and bring them to justice?

Alls we know is that the RA loves their flowcharts, like this one to remind them to actually tell people before they start ripping up fields and whatnot:

Looks like we should have opted for the UX major instead of the "web logging" one when we shelled out for our PhD by mail degree, the end.