Letter to the editor

The first Friday of every month our neighborhood hosts a street festival. It used to be an art walk; there are lots of studios up and down the main street that would display to the public that first Friday, but over time street vendors, fortune tellers, and bratwurst hawkers took over. One of the main reasons we moved to this neighborhood is this festival, which is bigger and better, every month, than the yearly Clarendon Day in Arlington. It's just fun and we love that it's in our community.

The problem is that every month our neighborhood newsletter has a pissy letter from a local resident saying that there's no parking on their street and people are standing near their front yards and they want the whole thing shut down. Since I have tons of free time, I've been working on my own letter telling those whiners to shut their traps. I blame each of them, individually, for the fact that jazz clubs, environmentally friendly dry cleaners, and ice cream shops that were once in the neighborhood are now gone. Apparently these letter writers think that vacant lots full of broken bottles and hissing stray cats are better than businesses.

At least, that's what my letter would have said if I'd sent it a week ago. Then my sister came into town especially for First Friday; we got dolled up and decided that we looked at least as good as the other women cruising up and down the main drag. We sipped our wine and ogled the art and stepped daintily around cracks in the sidewalk, seeing and being seen. Ed walked a little behind us, and we didn't realize he'd stopped until we saw a light saber-waving doofus chasing us down. Oh yeah. The rest of the night two girls in cute summer dresses and chunky shoes, pretending to be sophisticated, couldn't get away from the Dungeons and Dragons escapee who "protected" them. Now I understand why people miss the original low-key art walk and hate the street vendors. Those street vendors have got to go.


Before two more girls' mojo is ruined, shut the whole thing down.