Falls Church, Virginia: an independent city asserting its identity through…stop lights?
After seventy years of steady and often astronomical growth—from 1940 to 2010—suburban Fairfax County Virginia finally slowed in the 2010s to a more modest pace. It had no choice. This county opposite the Potomac River from Washington DC is developed across about 75% of its 390-square-mile land area. Even more impressive is that isn’t even
Memories of Marsh Supermarkets: Kroger tries (half-heartedly) to fill the void of a once-mighty chain.
My latest post is on Urban Indy. It comes with the local news (WISH-TV) announcement that it has now been five years since Indianapolis grocery store chain Marsh Supermarkets closed all of its 44 remaining locations, having been run by private equity firm Sun Capital for the last 15 years. The chain, a staple of
Hoboken NJ: gentrification in a time-lapse overdrive, but without all the improvements.
Hoboken, New Jersey isn’t a particularly obscure suburb. Peering right across the Hudson River toward Greenwich Village, it’s a fortuitously located municipality that basically everyone in metro New York knows. Odds are good that most adults living in the tri-state area have passed through it at one point in time. Tiny though it may
“STUDENT DRIVER” strikes again…or do we expect hired drivers to be amateurs?
As I fine-tune and finish up a much longer blog post, I wanted to fill this dry spell with some amusing content that serves as a follow-up to an unexpectedly popular blog post from about a year ago. I noted last spring the strange, recent proliferation of bumper stickers (magnets in actuality) alerting passers-by of
Footbridge folly: a century-old pedestrian amenity faces a decade of reckoning.
The US earns its reputation for encouraging urban auto dependency, largely by eschewing any good provisions for pedestrians and reducing far too many of its streetscapes to vehicular sewers. Nonetheless, now and then we can come across some remarkable little pedestrian provision that surprises us. And it doesn’t have to be in a historically pedestrian
Spring cleaning: comprehensive post-by-post upgrades.
As the end of April approaches, it’s time I at least provide an update of what’s been keeping me busy–and what has precluded me from getting my normal minimal goal of five analytical blog posts for this past month. It’s most definitely spring cleaning. As some of my most loyal readers my remember, I started
Fred Meyer: fulfilling our quest to find the largest grocery store. In Fairbanks.
If bar trivia offered a question, “What American city has the single largest grocery store?”, would any team get the answer right? One might expect the answer to be a sizable metro area like New York City or Los Angeles, with their high population density and proximity to major shipping ports. Good guess but no
A green screen on Kirby Road—good for all seasons, even when everything else is brown.
Kirby Road drapes itself across the hills and valleys of McLean, Virginia, a Washington DC suburb in northern Fairfax County and among the most affluent communities in the country. In the summer, both the trees and the topography shroud the majority of the palatial homes that line either side of this former country lane. In
Multidirectional sign at a mall restaurant: a guide to the restroom, but why not steer people back to the mall itself?
I rarely feature a one-photo blog article, but this post is an example where I have no real choice. I took a single photo on a lark, not realizing at the time that it would generate a significant analysis that justifies other photos to help flesh out the argument. Thankfully, as is often the case,
The endangered news rack: no longer a source of headlines, now more of a museum piece.
Hot on the heels of those Manhattan Irish pubs, several of which sit frozen in time after St. Patrick’s Day, we encounter another example of Mt. Vesuvius erupting and coating everything in ash. But this time the Pompeii is a much more suburban setting. The Interstate 270 corridor bisects Montgomery County, the most populous county
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Falls Church, Virginia: an independent city asserting its identity through…stop lights?
After seventy years of steady and often astronomical growth—from 1940 to 2010—suburban Fairfax County Virginia finally slowed in the 2010s to a more modest pace. It had no choice. This county opposite the
Memories of Marsh Supermarkets: Kroger tries (half-heartedly) to fill the void of a once-mighty chain.
My latest post is on Urban Indy. It comes with the local news (WISH-TV) announcement that it has now been five years since Indianapolis grocery store chain Marsh Supermarkets closed all of its
Hoboken NJ: gentrification in a time-lapse overdrive, but without all the improvements.
Hoboken, New Jersey isn’t a particularly obscure suburb. Peering right across the Hudson River toward Greenwich Village, it’s a fortuitously located municipality that basically everyone in metro New York knows. Odds are good
“STUDENT DRIVER” strikes again…or do we expect hired drivers to be amateurs?
As I fine-tune and finish up a much longer blog post, I wanted to fill this dry spell with some amusing content that serves as a follow-up to an unexpectedly popular blog post
Footbridge folly: a century-old pedestrian amenity faces a decade of reckoning.
The US earns its reputation for encouraging urban auto dependency, largely by eschewing any good provisions for pedestrians and reducing far too many of its streetscapes to vehicular sewers. Nonetheless, now and then
Spring cleaning: comprehensive post-by-post upgrades.
As the end of April approaches, it’s time I at least provide an update of what’s been keeping me busy–and what has precluded me from getting my normal minimal goal of five analytical
Fred Meyer: fulfilling our quest to find the largest grocery store. In Fairbanks.
If bar trivia offered a question, “What American city has the single largest grocery store?”, would any team get the answer right? One might expect the answer to be a sizable metro area
A green screen on Kirby Road—good for all seasons, even when everything else is brown.
Kirby Road drapes itself across the hills and valleys of McLean, Virginia, a Washington DC suburb in northern Fairfax County and among the most affluent communities in the country. In the summer, both
Multidirectional sign at a mall restaurant: a guide to the restroom, but why not steer people back to the mall itself?
I rarely feature a one-photo blog article, but this post is an example where I have no real choice. I took a single photo on a lark, not realizing at the time that
The endangered news rack: no longer a source of headlines, now more of a museum piece.
Hot on the heels of those Manhattan Irish pubs, several of which sit frozen in time after St. Patrick’s Day, we encounter another example of Mt. Vesuvius erupting and coating everything in ash.
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Recent Comments
- on Memories of Marsh Supermarkets: Kroger tries (half-heartedly) to fill the void of a once-mighty chain.: “Yes, Kroger (the surviving, successful chain) may have prevailed in part because it reoriented its tenure among its portfolio every…” May 21, 22:10
- on Hoboken NJ: gentrification in a time-lapse overdrive, but without all the improvements.: “Yeah, Hoboken largely abides by the scale of neighborhoods in Queens and (especially) Brooklyn. This is no surprise, given that…” May 21, 22:04
- on Memories of Marsh Supermarkets: Kroger tries (half-heartedly) to fill the void of a once-mighty chain.: “loses his touch, or directs it elsewhere.” May 20, 23:29
- on Memories of Marsh Supermarkets: Kroger tries (half-heartedly) to fill the void of a once-mighty chain.: “Sounds about right. Welcome to the lucrative world of venture capital. When a once-capable executive loses his touch, he sells…” May 19, 23:14
- on Memories of Marsh Supermarkets: Kroger tries (half-heartedly) to fill the void of a once-mighty chain.: “There was a Marsh where I grew up in Troy (as well as Kroger and later a Meijer). Everything always…” May 19, 21:26
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