The Deleted Scenes - New and Old #41
Lost Highway, Washington City Paper, Eddie Dean, September 27, 1996 Last week’s installment of this series also began with a piece like this, about U.S. Route 1 in Maryland. This article is about the same highway in Virginia, in the stretch south of D.C. This is a whole genre, an article that takes the uniquely American assemblage of pre-war and early post-way roadside junk and sees the best in it, that sees a continuity, a long, sprawling, linear place. The author describes driving home on Route 1:
There is something unique and almost magical about these old corridors at night, when the old signage lights up and the run-down details of the place are hidden. I struggle to capture what, exactly, that specialness is. This article does as a good a job as any. Against the Stream: The forgotten pleasures of analog media, The Yale Review, Jason Guriel, January 10, 2022
And:
Read the whole thing. It really gets at how infinite, amorphous choice, with no effort, can restrict your mind and make it shallow, as well as shorten your attention span. At a deeper level, it suggests that the real crux of why physical/analog formats never quite died and are now seeing a resurgence has little to do with the formats themselves, with their aesthetics or nostalgia or nerd-cred, but rather with the necessity of a little friction and effort built into making use of them. (I’ve been meaning to write up a full-length post on this theme as well, so stay tuned!) To Travel D.C.’s Beltway Is to Sample the Flavors of the World, Bon Appetit, Amiel Stanek, January 5, 2022
I just wrote about one of these places, a heavily Vietnamese strip plaza in Virginia called Eden Center (here for Strong Towns, and yesterday in this newsletter.) The food gets a lot of the attention in this kind of coverage, and it’s great. But what interests me even more is that these very standard, often aging suburban locales have evolved into such diverse and lively places, and almost always without any kind of large-scale planning. Anyone who lives in the D.C. region is probably aware of this phenomenon, but many from outside of it are surprised at the cultural and culinary weight of our suburbs. I love it. The American Room, The Message, Paul Ford, July 30, 2014 This is one of those pieces that’s at once sort of much ado about nothing, and a fascinating dive into a whole unseen world. I’m not sure what, exactly, the point is, or even if there is one. But it’s in this list, so give it a read. Related Reading: Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to help support this newsletter. You’ll get a weekend subscribers-only post, plus full access to the archive of over 200 posts and growing. And you’ll help ensure more material like this! You’re a free subscriber to The Deleted Scenes. For the full experience, become a paid subscriber. |
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What a Strip Mall Can Be
Thursday, January 20, 2022
Northern Virginia's Eden Center is neither standard sprawl nor modern redevelopment
Olive and Other Oils
Wednesday, January 19, 2022
What Do You Think You're Looking At? #41
A Wide, Wide Road Revisited
Tuesday, January 18, 2022
When weather humbles the work of traffic engineers
Still Renting After All These Years
Monday, January 17, 2022
Thoughts on the generational aspect of our housing crisis
Preserved by Abandonment
Saturday, January 15, 2022
An ordinary, stunning find in old suburbia
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