Lake Anne Rebranding: Get Your Mind Out of the Gutter, or at Least the Fountain

The perennial rebranding of Lake Anne Village Center got a little more, um, titillating this week when our BFFs at Reston Now pointed out that the current logo is a tad, ah, "suggestive." Give us some good PG-13 blockquote, BFFs at Reston Now:

The current Lake Anne logo has a somewhat retro feel — though the “A” part of the symbol, intended to evoke the fountain in the middle of the lake, did draw some Freudian sniggers on the social media site BlueSky.

You mean the Children's Fountain? Sure, RN, blame it on the sickos on BlueSky, and not your own fevered imaginations.

Because Restonian is always On Your Side, we walked over to the Plaza to see just how suggestive things are, and despite some extremely tame unpleasantness that riled people up nearly 15 years back, we can report there's simply nothing to see here these days, nosiree! Nothing at all, even when you go out back and -- oh, wait:

Computer, ENHANCE:

As noted planned community enthusiast Sigmund Freud once famously wrote, sometimes a flagrant DRB violation is just a flagrant DRB violation, the end.

Hats Off for Cathy Hudgins

Sad news: Just days after Rep. Gerry Connolly passed away on May 21, former Hunter Mill Supervisor Cathy Hudgins passed away on Saturday. Among many other accomplishments, she was instrumental in bringing the Silver Line to Reston and beyond. Here's current Hunter Mill Supervisor Walter Alcorn's tribute and a video honoring her service on the board from 2019:

The Love Song of R. E. Simon

(With apologies to T.S. Eliot, who never named a town Tseton)

Let us go then, you and I,
Where bollards are spread out against the sky
Like earth-toned buildings etherized upon a table

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
Of restless nights in RTC
And midscale restaurants with unlimited bread to eat.

Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go, pay the parking app, and make our visit.

In Wegmans the women come and go
Talking of half-price tangelos.

The yellow trim that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
That brings the ire of cluster covenants so long as it remains,

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "the green space is where?"
Time to turn back and
With a bald spot in the middle of my lawn --
(They will say: "How his lawn is infested with invasive spawn!")

On the bike trail the cyclists come and go
Talking of woonerf and the velodromo.

Do I dare
Disturb the DRB?
Do I dare
Play golf on developable property?
Or go to the casino, wherever that may be?

I grow old ... I grow old ...
The shag carpeting in my conversation pit is rolled.

At Lake Anne, the speed walkers come and go
Talking of concrete and Portofino.

Shall I sweep out my carport?
Do I dare to take Metro to places unknown?
I shall wear off-white flannel trousers, and walk upon the lakes.
I have heard the mermaids singing, mostly saying, "They're manmade. They're fake."
I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding Tysonsward on the waves
Combing the algae blooms of the waves blown back
We have lingered in the Village Centers, the public arts, and the Civic Plazas.
By stucco and plywood wreathed with invasive ivy in 70s red and brown
Till Ashburn voices wake us, and we drown. 

This post was originally published in the Reston Letter.

Words to Live By

Good advice at all times, but especially now, when there's construction and the possibility of a fancy 97-story casino to ensnare all the GS-17s with honeypots to convince them to divulge critical national security secrets about how exactly we strap bombs to dolphins, and, wedunno, lame slot machines and traffic and midscale retail options in Fairfax County's Emerald City, or Paris, or whatever we're calling it these days, the end.

Farewell, McTacoHut, We Hardly Knew You

Before there was an ersatz downtown, fanciful concrete bollards, parking validation, or even woonerf, there was Reston's arguably greatest contribution to suburban planning: the McTacoHut.

The combination of McDonald's, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut, each with ample parking, seemed to tempt the fates with its excessive hubris (and cholesterol). Its location on Roger Bacon Drive served as proof that Reston's early planners actually did have a sense of humor (for further proof, consider the "sunken living room").

DRB-friendly rules confined the Golden Arches within a modest stucco box. The other two eateries didn't even have roadside signs, making them exclusive spots known only to the earth-toned hoi polloi. Even so, the McTacoHut would supplant early Reston fast food gems like Burger Chef and Jack in the Box, which proved incapable of competing with the temptations of three different kinds of carbohydrate-laden products.

And McTacoHut made headlines! A 1970s issue of the Reston Industrial Landsales Newsletter, a real publication that rivaled the New York Times and the Washington Post in circulation among aficionados of industrial land sales, profiled what it called Reston's "fast food park," as if scarfing down doughy breadsticks is as healthy as a leisurely stroll, noting that our Pizza Hut was the second-highest grossing location in all of Northern Virginia.

Sadly, McTacoHut is no more. The McDonald's "modernized" its look, replacing the original building with an earth- toned box. Very Reston, come to think of it. Pizza Hut departed next, leaving us with the original architecture, a bougie pizza place, and the less dignified McTacoPup moniker. And now, with the Taco Bell reduced to rubble as part of a renovation, who knows what will rise in its place -- except that we know it will probably use soda dispensers to inject tortillas with meat.

But we digress. Every time you're on some interstate zipping through West Spittle, Nowhere, and you see a combination KFC/Taco Bell, you can thank the McTacoHut, or not, the end.

This post was originally published in the Reston Letter.

In 2025, Everything's Coming Up (Mocha Mousse) Brown

 

Happy New Year, Reston! In a sign 1) that what comes around goes around and 2) earth tones never go out of style, we awoke to the news that the official color of 2025 is... brown. More specifically, PANTONE 17-1230 Mocha Mousse, "a warming, brown hue imbued with richness." Alrighty then! 

Give us some good color wheel blockquote, Pantone spokesperson:

"Underpinned by our desire for every day pleasures, PANTONE 17-1230 Mocha Mousse expresses a level of thoughtful indulgence. Sophisticated and lush, yet at the same time an unpretentious classic, PANTONE 17-1230 Mocha Mousse extends our perceptions of the browns from being humble and grounded to embrace aspirational and luxe."

Took the words right out of our mouths. But that's not all! In an effort that would make our own DRB blush, there's an entire palette that matches the Color of the Year. Peep it, as the kids haven't said in nearly a decade:

We dunno -- we think we once accidentally painted our window trim Baltic Amber and were threatened with defenestration by paperwork unless we changed it back to good old Reston Russet Brown (tm).

But we digress. Ignore all the haters that say the color matches the national mood, etc. Instead, just tell all your friends and interior designers that everything's coming up Reston! Then retreat to the sunken living room to celebrate the new year with an appropriately colored dessert item. It'll definitely match the decor, the end.

Panic: The Drones are Here

Behold this blurry yet terrifying still from a cellular telephone video someone in the Greater Reston-Herndon Area posted to the Face Book Dot Com Online Web Site yesterday: Clearly, the fleets of drones that have terrorized New Jersey managed to recharge their batteries and fly south.

Now, the naysayers and the haters and the Lamestream Media will have you think that this is merely incoming flights lined up for their final approach to Dulles during the busy holiday travel season, or perhaps a constellation, but we know the real, horrifying truth. And there's proof! We were just grabbing our usual sustenance at the McTacoHutPupa complex yesterday and witnessed this shocking scene of destruction:

Clearly, the drones have come for our Chalupa Supremes, leaving nothing but a pile of rubble and a carefully erected construction fence in their wake. And there's more! At considerable legal risk, we falsified our "web logging" income so we could qualify for a Nextdoor Neighbor Dot Com account in our fancypants neighbor to the north, "Great" Falls. Good thing, too, as we discovered this heinous crime:

Not only did the drones get away with a couple of wreaths, but apparently they managed to nab this poster's CAPS LOCK key and vowels as part of their airborne LARCNY. Oh, the humanity!

In conclusion, we hope the RA, or another equally well-armed organization, manages to set up anti-drone batteries around our most important strategic infrastructure to protect us from the Menace from Above, the end.