Travels in Montgomery County
Enjoyed a lovely evening with nesme and her vaguely fannish cow-orkers in Silver Spring last night, shootin' pool and mostly winning, thanks to my cunning strategy of hacking around on the table until my opponent sinks the eight ball by mistake.
Galaxy Billiards was the place - it was nice, clean, and smoke-free, and staffed almost entirely by Koreans, which made ordering a bheer a challenge in international relations. They were showing lots of sports, including Michigan State's run to the Final Four, and something on Spike TV with William Shatner in it.
Silver Spring is an odd place. I remember it from my youth as the place where my Dad lived before Mom married him; he was in an apartment on Spring St. and I don't recall feeling any different about it than I did about the city, which was kind of a noisy place that my mother felt was dangerous. Later, Silver Spring became this sort of amorphous blob on the map - anything in Montgomery County that wasn't obviously something else was called "Silver Spring". So, when we lived in Briggs Chaney, it was called "Silver Spring", up in Aspen Hill beyond Wheaton was "Silver Spring", just over the line from P.G. County was "Silver Spring", and so on. Kind of like the Democrats: it was wide enough that it meant nothing. The "Silver Spring" of my youth was still there, now a decaying core around a bunch of suburbs, sitting almost literally just across the street from the District. It hosted a Metro station and not a lot else; I christened it "Where the Elite Meet to Park". The only real inhabitants seemed to be bums who would wander Colesville Road outside of the station, conducting loud conversations with themselves (never each other).
Then they decided to remake Silver Spring, first by adding a mall, then renovating the theatre that they'd tried so hard to close and demolish, but the locals wouldn't let them...and finally, they remade the shopping center at the corner of Colesville and Georgia. This was, according to legend and perhaps the Guinness Book, the first shopping center anywhere, period, though I never knew it in that glory. Now, the multi-year project was finally finished, and they've been hyping it mercilessly all over the town in the form of a nauseatingly cheesy ad campaign.
The final product is...um. It's beautiful, for one. There are small parks and a few minor common areas, including a street-level fountain that kids can actually play in. There are now two theaters...it's all very lovely. And it made my skin crawl. There isn't a single store that's not a chain - there's a Borders, an Austin Grill, a Macaroni Grill, a Ben & Jerry's, and of course a Starbuck's. There are speakers set into the landscaping along Georgia that pipe classical music: Disney World meets The Prisoner. Step over one block and nothing there has been touched.
Of course, I bought into it. I did go to Galaxy and I did buy myself an ice cream at B&J's on the way back. We are all complicit, in some way. But really, would it have killed them to think of the local merchants first? Would they have had to pull such a horrid ad campaign if the place had any personality in the first place? Will there be anybody trying to save that place if it goes south in twenty years or so? End of rant.
nesme will be at something called TechniCon this coming weekend, and she's an artist, so good luck huckstering!
I didn't mention it before, but on Easter, I joined the Columbia United Christian Church. I think God wanted me there...so I went. I know a lot of folks talk about their spiritual callings in dramatic ways, in that they represent a complete rethinking and reliving of their life; they truly feel "born again" in Christ. That wasn't really the way with me; this just seemed a good place to be as a next step. I think my next step in my spiritual journey will be to just be receptive to what God wants of me.
Job-seeking activity is beginning to pick up - or rather the response to it is. Interview tomorrow.
Tonight: Columbia Ale House with Kid-sub-1...it's soccer time! U.S. vs. Guatemala, World Cup Qualifier. All the way to Germany, bay-bee. (Oh, and go Panama, too.) After that, it's a birthday visit to kugelblitz. All the way to ednoria, bay-bee.
Galaxy Billiards was the place - it was nice, clean, and smoke-free, and staffed almost entirely by Koreans, which made ordering a bheer a challenge in international relations. They were showing lots of sports, including Michigan State's run to the Final Four, and something on Spike TV with William Shatner in it.
Silver Spring is an odd place. I remember it from my youth as the place where my Dad lived before Mom married him; he was in an apartment on Spring St. and I don't recall feeling any different about it than I did about the city, which was kind of a noisy place that my mother felt was dangerous. Later, Silver Spring became this sort of amorphous blob on the map - anything in Montgomery County that wasn't obviously something else was called "Silver Spring". So, when we lived in Briggs Chaney, it was called "Silver Spring", up in Aspen Hill beyond Wheaton was "Silver Spring", just over the line from P.G. County was "Silver Spring", and so on. Kind of like the Democrats: it was wide enough that it meant nothing. The "Silver Spring" of my youth was still there, now a decaying core around a bunch of suburbs, sitting almost literally just across the street from the District. It hosted a Metro station and not a lot else; I christened it "Where the Elite Meet to Park". The only real inhabitants seemed to be bums who would wander Colesville Road outside of the station, conducting loud conversations with themselves (never each other).
Then they decided to remake Silver Spring, first by adding a mall, then renovating the theatre that they'd tried so hard to close and demolish, but the locals wouldn't let them...and finally, they remade the shopping center at the corner of Colesville and Georgia. This was, according to legend and perhaps the Guinness Book, the first shopping center anywhere, period, though I never knew it in that glory. Now, the multi-year project was finally finished, and they've been hyping it mercilessly all over the town in the form of a nauseatingly cheesy ad campaign.
The final product is...um. It's beautiful, for one. There are small parks and a few minor common areas, including a street-level fountain that kids can actually play in. There are now two theaters...it's all very lovely. And it made my skin crawl. There isn't a single store that's not a chain - there's a Borders, an Austin Grill, a Macaroni Grill, a Ben & Jerry's, and of course a Starbuck's. There are speakers set into the landscaping along Georgia that pipe classical music: Disney World meets The Prisoner. Step over one block and nothing there has been touched.
Of course, I bought into it. I did go to Galaxy and I did buy myself an ice cream at B&J's on the way back. We are all complicit, in some way. But really, would it have killed them to think of the local merchants first? Would they have had to pull such a horrid ad campaign if the place had any personality in the first place? Will there be anybody trying to save that place if it goes south in twenty years or so? End of rant.
nesme will be at something called TechniCon this coming weekend, and she's an artist, so good luck huckstering!
I didn't mention it before, but on Easter, I joined the Columbia United Christian Church. I think God wanted me there...so I went. I know a lot of folks talk about their spiritual callings in dramatic ways, in that they represent a complete rethinking and reliving of their life; they truly feel "born again" in Christ. That wasn't really the way with me; this just seemed a good place to be as a next step. I think my next step in my spiritual journey will be to just be receptive to what God wants of me.
Job-seeking activity is beginning to pick up - or rather the response to it is. Interview tomorrow.
Tonight: Columbia Ale House with Kid-sub-1...it's soccer time! U.S. vs. Guatemala, World Cup Qualifier. All the way to Germany, bay-bee. (Oh, and go Panama, too.) After that, it's a birthday visit to kugelblitz. All the way to ednoria, bay-bee.