History lovers will be pleased to learn that the top-selling (on newsstands) issue of Arlington Magazine was last fall’s special issue on our county’s storied past. That’s astonishing in this era of digital publishing ephemera and pressure on publications to play it safe with listings of hot restaurants and best […]

Col. Harland Sanders – Kentucky hero, creator of the 11-spice secret to deeee-licious chicken and today a global icon – cut quite a swath through Arlington. I know because I met the goateed charmer in his white linen suit on the Little League football field at Barcroft Park circa 1963, when he ambled out […]

In the secret lives of bees, May marks the middle of “swarm season” when the insects fly and pollinate before the summer season of honey harvesting. Having sampled homemade honey for sale at the County Fair labeled with Arlington addresses, I recently alighted on a few of our community’s dozen-plus […]

Decades before Clarendon became the pub crawl mecca for Arlington twentysomethings, it was home to “Little Saigon.” Though only a few Vietnamese restaurants remain, many locals recall the era from 1975 through the 1980s when Clarendon – long Arlington’s quasi-downtown —was dramatically altered and dubbed “the Mekong Delta” by the press. (As […]

The proposed streetcar continues to roil Arlington and may be put to the populist test in a November referendum. The latest bone of contention in this byzantine debate is a $97,000 study the county commissioned projecting that the Columbia Pike corridor gains $3.2 billion to $4.4 billion in development if […]

The homeless among us are often invisible, the well-dressed speaker noted, and many of them prefer it that way. But Arlington’s community of activists against homelessness was plenty visible April 24, when 300 turned out at a Ballston conference center for the first-ever “Coming Home Breakfast” fundraiser put on by […]

The historic Birchland home is off Arlington’s beaten track. Hidden by stately trees and an imposing stone wall, it has been ensconced for more than a century on the thoroughfare of North Glebe Road at Williamsburg Blvd. The Birch family being one of Arlington’s early-settling landowners, the elegant plantation-style home […]

The Democratic establishment was gobsmacked by the triumph of Republican-turned-independent John Vihstadt in the April 8 county board special election. His 57-41 percent victory over endorsement-rich Democrat Alan Howze – with Vihstadt taking 40 of 52 precincts – is by no means guaranteed to repeat in November when the two […]

Are you familiar with East Arlington? Neither were most of the nearly 100 who turned out at Central Library April 3 to hear a local historian describe this bygone African-American neighborhood torn asunder in 1942 during construction of the Pentagon. East Arlington (or, as its original 1892 subdivision was called, […]

The affordable housing projects built in Arlington blend in discreetly. But the sign labeling the handsome buff-and-brick Arlington Mill Residences at South Dinwiddie and Columbia Pike includes four letters that help brand the Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing. Without APAH’s good offices, the unique four-story apartment building atop a county […]