Author: Morgan Fecto

Capriotti’s Set to Open in Rosslyn This Month

By Morgan Fecto

 

Sandwich chain Capriotti’s plans to open its storefront at 1500 Wilson Blvd on Tuesday, July 29.

The shop is currently finishing renovations, but Director of Operations for Capriotti’s D.C. franchises Joe Combs was passing out flyers to passersby last week in an effort to recruit employees.

Capriotti’s had hoped to open the Rosslyn location last January, but only announced it had signed its lease in April. The Rosslyn location will be open Monday through Saturday 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Sunday 11:00 p.m. to 7:00.

“We’re known for our fresh pulled turkey and our fresh roast beef,” Combs said. “Our sandwich ‘The Bobbie’ was voted best sandwich in America by AOL. It’s basically Thanksgiving on a roll.” The Bobbie comes with pulled-turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing and mayonnaise.

Founded in Delaware in 1976, Capritotti’s is now based in Las Vegas and has 105 locations nationwide. Some Arlington residents may have already gotten their first taste of The Bobbie from Capriotti’s booth at Taste of Arlington.

Road Closures in Arlington for Fourth of July

By Morgan Fecto

Fourth of July fireworks, as seen from the Air Force Memorial (Flickr pool photo by John Sonderman)

Several roads in Arlington, including some major arteries, will be closed to drivers for Independence Day celebrations tomorrow.

Memorial Bridge and Memorial Circle will be closed all day, from 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. From 1:00 to 11:00 p.m., Marshall Drive will be closed from Route 110 to N. Meade Street, and Meade Street will be closed from Marshall Drive to 14th Street N.

The following closures are also planned in Arlington.

From 3:00 to 11:00 p.m.:

  • N. Meade Street from Marshall Drive to Route 50
  • Eastbound N. Fairfax Drive from N. Pierce Street to N. Fort Myer Drive
  • The exit ramps from Route 50 to N. Lynn and Meade Streets in Rosslyn
  • Long Bridge Drive from Boundary Channel Drive to 10th Street S.

From 8:30 to 11:00 p.m.:

  • Eastbound Route 50 at N. Pershing Drive, with a detour at N. Barton Street or Washington Boulevard
  • Columbia Pike between S. Orme Street and S. Joyce Street
  •  S. Joyce Street between Army Navy Drive and Columbia Pike

Sites in Arlington to view the National Mall fireworks include Long Bridge Park, the Air Force Memorial, Gateway Park, Gravelly Point, the Key Bridge, the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial, the Pentagon Reservation and Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall’s Whipple Field.

Tomorrow at noon, at Whipple Field, members of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment Presidential Salute Battery will fire its ceremonial 50-gun salute in honor of the country’s independence. The salute will involve a cannon firing every five seconds for five minutes.

Arlington County officials urge attendees to use public transportation. The Orange Line’s Rosslyn Metro stop is approximately 5 blocks north of the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial, and the Pentagon City Metro station is near the Air Force Memorial.  Shuttle buses to Long Bridge Park from the Crystal City and Pentagon City Metro stations will be available.

ART buses 41 and 51 will run on Sunday schedules, but all other ART buses will not be running. The Arlington County Sheriff’s Office, courts, community centers and libraries will be closed Friday. Trash and recycling collection will occur as scheduled, but parking across the county will not be enforced.

Flickr pool photo by John Sonderman

Local Writer Chronicles ‘Eccentric’ Arlington

By Morgan Fecto

Arlington County Chronicles cover(Update at 12:25 p.m.) Over the years Arlington has been home to numerous eccentric characters and groups. And those local eccentricities have been faithfully chronicled by Charlie Clark, the man who writes the weekly “Our Man in Arlington” column for the Falls Church News-Press.

Clark peppers his columns with unusual people and Arlington history, and he saved the best 100 columns for his book, he said. Clark will discuss “Arlington County Chronicles,” which was published in April, at Arlington Central Library on Monday, July 7, at 7:00 p.m.

“It’s a little bit of history, public policy, baby boomer nostalgia and neighborhood flavor,” Clark told ARLnow.com. Clark will read from his book at the talk, cherry-picking ones that are “humorous enough in style to bear reading aloud.”

Included in the talk may be some nuggets of local history that attendees were previously unaware of. Readers may be surprised to learn from “Arlington County Chronicles” that:

  • At the Arlington Metaphysical Chapel off Wilson Blvd, church-goers hold seances, give tarot readings and read from all manner of religious texts.
  • There is a preserved dueling ground at N. Randolph Street and Glebe Road, one which bore witness to the famed 19th century duel between Henry Clay and John Randolph, as well as a few of Clark’s own scraps. “Neither was very violent,” Clark said of his childhood fights. “In both cases, my opponent and I agreed, like duelers, to end it after we’d both stood up to the enemy and saved face.”
  • The Doors’ Jim Morrison lived at 2320 N. Evergreen Street in his teen years, and at two other Arlington addresses that Clark gives in the book. “I associate many Arlington sites with the memory of the Doors’ carnivalesque organ,” Clark said in his Morrison essay.
  • When Katie Couric interviewed Warren Beatty, a Washington-Lee High School graduate, on The Today Show, she mentioned that she went to Yorktown and he answered: “What’s Yorktown?” Beatty is one of 14 thespians Clark mentions in his essay “Arlingtonians in Hollywood.”
  • The two oldest retail businesses currently in Arlington, according to Clark, are both shoe stores. The Public Shoe Store on Wilson Blvd and the Sam Torrey Shoe Service on Lee Highway were established in 1938 and 1945, respectively.
  • During the Cold War, Arlington Hall was the hub of a code-breaking operation, where linguists worked to decipher Soviet and Japanese messages for government officials. The operation shut down in 1949 after being infiltrated by Soviet double agents.
  • A stand-off between civil rights activist Dion Diamond and American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell occurred in 1960 during a lunch counter sit-in at what was then the Cherrydale Drug Fair store. A few days after the protest, Arlington restaurants desegregated, Clark said in his essay. “All you had to do was crossover the Maryland and Northern Virginia line to find de facto segregation,” Diamond, then a Howard University student, told Clark.
  • One of Arlington’s wealthiest landowners in the late 1800s may have been the product of a sex scandal, according to Clark’s essay “A Lee Family Scandal.” Nicholas Febrey owned 600 acres of George Washington Forest, in the area of what is now Swanson Middle School. Clark writes that Febrey’s mother, an unwed daughter of a preacher, delivered him as a baby to the wealthy George Washington Parke Custis, who raised him.

Many of the included columns pay homage to the culture of Clark’s parents’ generation, especially his essay about attending “cotillion” dance lessons as an Arlington youth.

“They did a great job of trying to pass their culture on to us, and I feel a little bad that we were so tough to handle,” Clark said. “This is a thank you.”

An additional book talk will be Sunday, July 13 at Cassatt’s.

Arlington Watches U.S. Men’s Soccer Advance in World Cup

By Morgan Fecto
1/10

(Updated at 3:50 p.m.) Summers Restaurant in Courthouse was saturated with beer, World Cup fans and support for the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team this afternoon. Bargoers were on the edge of their seats before the game between the U.S. and Germany even started.

“This is, like, the biggest game of my life,” said Joyce Batka, a soccer fan since kindergarten and supporter of U.S. head coach Jurgen Klinsmann since he played for the German national team in the 1990s. “I’m really torn. I’d love it if there was a tie today so that both teams advance.”

The Germans defeated the U.S. team, 1-0, but because the U.S. lost to Germany by only one goal and Portugal, which defeated Ghana, lost by four earlier in the tournament, the U.S. advanced to the Round of 16.

Batka planned weeks ahead to take the day off from work and watch the game, much like Wes Cronkite, who had his day off scheduled since December. Batka and Cronkite were two of the thousands of soccer fans, new and old, who ditched work today to pack neighborhood restaurants with TVs from noon to 2:00 p.m.

“I haven’t missed a World Cup game since 1994,” Cronkite said. Cronkite was sporting a U.S. jersey, and others showed support with American flags, Hawaiian leis and other displays of team pride.

The United States defeated Ghana, 2-1, to open the tournament last week, and was beating Portugal 2-1 until 94 and a half minutes into the 95-minute game, the Portuguese scored to force a tie. If the U.S. had held on, they would have advanced regardless of their result against Germany.

“They could have closed it out last time,” Courtney Friedman, a soccer fan for five years, said while wearing an American flag poncho, “but that makes this game extra special.”

Although neither team scored during the first half of the game, curses and expressions of frustration filled Summers with each German shot American goalie Tim Howard blocked, leading many fans to pay closer attention to the Portugal-Ghana game. A man with a vuvuzela paced and yawned near the bar.

“They’re not even trying anymore,” a man in the crowd said at the beginning of the second half. “The game is dead.” Germany scored its first and only goal of the game before he finished his sentence.

“These Germans are very boisterous,” Dave Endres, who was at a bar in Tysons on Sunday for the U.S.’s game against Portugal, said.

For the rest of the second half, the crowd was quiet apart from shouts of disagreement at “unfair” calls from the referee, and one man who chanted “U-S-A, U-S-A,” after Ghana scored its only goal on Portugal.

The U.S. team will now face the winner of either Belgium or Algeria in the Round of 16 on Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. It’s the first time in U.S. Soccer history that the men’s team advanced out of the group stage in two straight World Cups. In 2010, The U.S. was eliminated by Ghana in the Round of 16.

Despite the loss, the bar crowd still clapped, cheered and shouted “U-S-A, U-S-A” at the end of the game. Emotionally-drained fans, overall, were all smiles at the end result.

“It was still good,” bar patron Francisco Lainez said. “I mean, they lost, but they still get to the next stage.”

Spice in Clarendon Now Open

By Morgan Fecto
1/5

(Updated at 1:15 p.m.) Spice, the Italian hoagie and Mediterranean food shop at 3033 Wilson Blvd, is now open.

The shop is at the former location of “Le Sandwich,” a French-style sandwich shop that was open for all of 10 days before owner Yasser Mohamed dissolved the business and dismissed its operator. After Le Sandwich closed, Mohamed planned to open Spice to showcase his wife’s “amazing cooking.”

“Right now we’re happy,” Mohamed said. “Our customers seem happy and we’re getting repeats.”

The daily menu includes a variety of Italian cold-cut sandwiches, including a duck prosciutto hoagie, with prices ranging from $7.49 to $10.99. On Monday and Wednesday, Spice sells its chicken, fish and shrimp tacos, with guacamole that Mohamed describes as “so fresh.”

Mohamed also sells his wife’s hummus, moussaka, lentil salad, baba ghanoush and specialty Mediterranean platters that come with saffron rice and salad. The Greek salad with wild Alaskan salmon has been a hit with customers, Mohamed said.

Spice will extend its hours of operation and expand its menu within the next three months to include breakfast, then dinner. The shop is currently open from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., but will open at 7:00 a.m. as soon it can accommodate the breakfast rush.

“My wife does all the cooking and she gets very tired,” Mohamed said. “We want to keep the quality high, so for now we’re just pushing lunch.”

He said he will hire more employees soon. Presently he works a 16-hour day between Spice and his neighboring business, Larry’s Homemade Ice Cream, and his wife works a 12-hour day, “but that’s business.”

Mohamed is also expecting a liquor license for Spice before summer ends, which will be essential when the restaurant eventually serves dinner. Despite the limited hours, Mohamed said he’s been selling out of food almost every day.

“Last Tuesday we were slammed at lunch,” he said. “We sold out by 3:00.”

Philharmonic Partners with Pets for Concert

By Morgan Fecto

popslogo-final_print-227x300To celebrate its 70th anniversary, the Animal Welfare League of Arlington has partnered with the Arlington Philharmonic to stage “Pops for Pets,”  a free concert for people and dogs alike.

The inaugural event will be held at Lubber Run Amphitheater this Sunday, June 29, starting at 6:00 p.m.

Attendees can bring their dogs and a picnic meal, or buy boxed dinners from La Cote d’Or onsite. The AWLA will also hold a raffle for a birdhouse replica of the Lincoln-era White House. The philharmonic will play “marches and animal-related classics” from pieces by Aaron Copland, John Philip Sousa and Johann Sebastian Bach, according to an AWLA press release.

“Both of our organizations are really quite enthused about this, so we’ll see what the public response is,” John Ratigan, board chair of the philharmonic, said. The philharmonic and the AWLA hope “Pops for Pets” will become an annual event.

A combination of the open amphitheater and “accessible” music selection, Ratigan said, makes this event more of a crowd-pleaser than a typical orchestral performance.

Arlington County Board Chair Jay Fisette’s 13-year-old Border Collie-mix, Cassie, will serve as honorary co-chair of the event.

“She is like a little Buddah,” Fisette said of his dog, which he found on the street while visiting family in Texas.

Concert-goers’ donations will go toward funding the event and “the missions of both organizations,” AWLA Board Chair Pat Ragan said. “It’ll be a great community event.”

Following its 7oth Anniversary Summer Soiree, “Pops for Pets” will continue to celebrate both AWLA’s anniversary and their on-going efforts to find homes and provide care for over 3,000 animals.

AWLA was founded during World War II, and the foresight of the founders is not lost on AWLA President and CEO Neil Trent.

“Back in the ’40s they thought of this in a coffee shop with a war going on,” Trent said. “They said hey, let’s help animals… and they weren’t sitting at the corner Starbucks either.”

Retractable leashes will not be allowed at the event. In the event of inclement weather, “Pops for Pets” will be rescheduled for Tuesday, July 1 at 6:00 p.m.

Board Reverses Non-Resident Surcharge Hike for Sports Programs

By Morgan Fecto

County Board member Libby Garvey._Garvey croppedThe Arlington County Board voted Tuesday to reverse an increase in the non-resident surcharge for participants of county-subsidized competitive gymnastics and swim teams.

The Board’s FY 2015 budget called for its non-resident surcharge to increase 50 percent. That would have significantly raised annual fees for three clubs: Arlington Aerials, the Arlington Tigers and the Arlington Aquatics Club.

Vocal protests from the teams and impassioned speeches from the youth team members at Tuesday’s Board meeting led the Board to reverse course and even reject a compromise endorsed by county staff. The Board rejected their April decision by a 3-1 vote, and also rejected County Manager Barbara Donnellan’s revised recommendation to reduce the fee increase to 30 percent.

Libby Garvey cast the lone opposing vote, saying that she supported Donnellan’s compromise, while Walter Tejada abstained. Those voting in favor of eliminating the surcharge increase said they weren’t comfortable with the lack of county dialogue with the teams prior to approval of the increase.

The surcharge will now remain at the current rate of roughly 20 percent more for out-of-county participants.

Arlington County Sports Commission Chair Craig EsherickWhile team members and parents applauded the Board’s decision, Board members questioned whether the county government should be supporting competitive teams in the first place. County staff told the Board that team fees aren’t sufficient to pay for county costs after all facility costs are factored in.

The gymnastics programs utilize the Barcroft Sports and Fitness Center, which is billed by the county as “home to Arlington’s largest gymnastics training center.”

According to Susan Kalish of Arlington’s Department of Parks and Recreation, the overall cost to operate the Arlington Aerials and Arlington Tigers is $473,201, with $221,600 in revenue from the 69 non-resident gymnasts and  $256,250 from the 100 resident gymnasts. Total revenue, at $477,850, slightly exceeds team operating costs, but doesn’t account for the $633,000 in annual facility operating costs at Barcroft.

“The whole issue of us sponsoring elite teams for folks that don’t live in Arlington… does make me really uncomfortable,” Garvey said. “I have to serve Arlington.”

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Photos: Rock Spring Garden Club’s ‘Gardens of the Year’

By Morgan Fecto
1/30

The three winners out of 16 entries to Rock Spring Garden Club’s  2014″Garden of the Year” were announced last week. The winners, pictured above, mix natural beauty with sustainability in their backyard gardens.

“We are so thrilled to win!” first place gardener Mary Jennings told ARLnow.com. “I love that the garden gets some exposure and might encourage others to think of big ways to transform our Arlington outdoor living spaces to be enjoyable and conservation-minded.”

Jennings, a gardener for 20 years and art teacher at Salamander Resort in Middleburg, has an underground rain water collector in her garden. She said her husband installed the rain garden because it catches overflow from their koi pond and keeps water away from their home with a series of buried downspouts.

Susan Murnane, the second place winner and director of training for the AIG’s environmental division, also re-purposed items to create a greener garden. Murnane said she reused bulbs and stone slabs found in the lot undergoing construction behind her house.

“I remember as a little kid making clover tiaras or crowns and now we live in a world where you can’t step in the grass,” said Murnane, who plans to certify her garden as a monarch waystation.

Although none of the three winners are official Rock Spring Garden Club members, each said they appreciated the recognition and camaraderie.

“I might take one Thursday off a month and go to a meeting for people whose finger nails look like mine,” joked Murnane.

Judy and Raoul Wientzen, the third place winners, utilize rain water in their garden as well. The rain water collects in a re-purposed barrel from when Raoul made his own wine, and they use it to water their plants and vegetables, according to Judy.

“We were delighted to win third place,” Judy Wientzen told ARLnow.com in an email. Wientzen, an interior designer for Bevacqua/Wientzen Associates, said she enjoys the seclusion of her garden created by the mature azaleas and oak trees. But she has more avant-garde plant life in mind for future competitions.

“All the plantings, while pretty, are pretty standard items,” said Wientzen of her garden. “We hope to add in some specimens that are a bit more unusual in the future.”

Barber Shop in Lee-Harrison Shopping Center Closes

By Morgan Fecto

Harrison Barber Shop closes in the Lee-Harrison Shopping CenterHarrison Barber Shop at 2505 N. Harrison Street, home of neighborhood fixture “Barber Dan,” has closed suddenly, disappointing long-time customers.

“It was literally there one day and gone the next,” Mary Barrett, who works next door as a marketing representative for MBH Settlement Group, told ARLnow.com.

Customers on the barber shop’s Facebook and Yelp pages lamented the loss of the business. Some Yelp reviewers wrote that free bottles of water, race car chairs, lollipops and balloon animals kept them and their children coming back.

Yelp reviewer Eric G. posted on June 10: “I’ve taken my two boys to Dan for years and we just walked up to the shop to find it closed with no forwarding address. Very sad, as despite the fact that he had fallen on hard times he was always very friendly and did his best to deliver quality service at a good price. We’ll miss Dan and I just hope he’s alright.”

Dan Woodley, the leasing agent for the space, told ARLnow.com that “Barber Dan” made a “personal decision not be a barber anymore.” Dan cut hair for more than 20 years, according to Woodley, and was a barber at Harrison Barber Shop for at least five. Woodley said he did not know exactly why the shop closed.

While many customers gave the shop rave reviews, others were put off by the wait. As the shop’s only barber, “Barber Dan” was not always able to meet demands.

Harrison Barber Shop closes in the Lee-Harrison Shopping Center“A good haircut but a truly painful wait,” wrote Yelp reviewer Jim M. last November.  “Dan appears to have no appreciation of fact that people don’t like to wait while he shuffles around to adjust blinds, get the hit towel, fetch water for customers as they come in. I give up. There are now too many other options in the area with similar prices for boys and men’s haircuts.”

Barrett said that she first noticed the shop was closed two or three weeks ago, but that it remained busy until its final open days. “I was shocked when I pulled up one day and it was for lease,” said Barrett. Dan seemed to her a “friendly man” who was “always waving” and served many families.

Harrison Barber Shop had not posted on its Facebook page since last December, but customers continued to post praise and pictures as recently as June 5.

“Since Dan was a bit of an Arlington institution, having grown up in town (he went to Woodlawn for high school, he said), I’m curious as to what happened,” said former customer Anthony Zurcher, in an email to ARLnow.com. “My kids loved him and were regulars, as were many in the Yorktown and surrounding neighborhoods.”

Zurcher continued:

“Dan could be slow at times — painfully slow. But that was part of his old-fashioned charm. He had a TV that would play movies for the kids — really just one move, Madagascar 2 (later, Madagascar 3) — which would be on a constant loop. I must’ve seen various parts of that movie dozens of times thanks to Dan, but my kids loved it.

At some point after I started going there, he learned how to make balloon animals — really just a sword or a poodle — for the kids. My boys always asked for one whenever they were there, and he always obliged.

I remember one time a patron showed up who was at least in his mid-90s. He had been coming to Dan to get his haircut for at least a decade. He inspired that sort of loyalty.”

Realtors A.J. Dwoskin & Associates have “over a dozen well-known Arlington businesses” interested in renting the space, according to Woodley. The firm will know more about the former barber shop’s future by late July.

IRS Scam Threatens Immigrants With Deportation

By Morgan Fecto

Home Depot gift cards (Flickr photo by Marie Coleman)An Internal Revenue Service impersonation scam has victimized some Arlington-based immigrants, threatening them with deportation unless they drive to Home Depot and add money to pre-paid gift cards.

“So many people already got in trouble,” Shamim Naseer, who received one of these calls, told ARLnow.com. “One of my friends said he paid them $6,000.”

Naseer said that at least four people she knows, including her son, got a call from someone claiming to be an IRS agent. One of her friends, Naseer said, got a call six months ago. The caller in each case told them to add money to gift cards within 10 to 20 minutes or else they would “get in trouble.”

“Some people just don’t know what to do,” said Naseer, who runs an in-home child day care service called Sunshine Day Care in Arlington. The scam may seem obvious to long-time American citizens, but is less so to “recent immigrants who are still figuring out how the tax system operates in this country,” said Sara Barker, a daycare client of Naseer’s.

An identical scam robbed a South Florida woman of $6,000 earlier this month, and a March press release from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said that thousands of people were victims of similar scams.

When Naseer got her call Wednesday, she knew not to believe the scam artist because customers from her sons’ Halal grocery store on Lee Highway warned her after receiving calls of their own, she said. She kept him on the phone so she could report details of their call to the police and the IRS.

After giving her a fake name, phone number and IRS ID number, the man asked Naseer if she had a lawyer. “Tell me what I did wrong first and then I’ll tell you if I have a lawyer,” Naseer said she told the caller. He said that Naseer had unpaid debt and needed to go to the bank to withdraw “cash money.”

“If I hadn’t heard about these scams before then I would have believed him,” Naseer’s daughter Amania, who was with her mother when the call came, told ARLnow.com. “He was so professional and very thorough.”

The caller wanted Naseer to go to Home Depot after she withdrew the $3,000 and add the money to gift cards. “He said, ‘put the phone on speaker so I know you’re taking out the money,'” Naseer said.

“I said, ‘there’s no point in talking to him anymore because I’m not going to do this,'” Naseer said. After she hung up, the caller called back twice. Naseer reported the call to the IRS, who said they received six similar calls.

Amania Naseer said that she was scared because the caller knew her family’s address. The caller also told them he would come to their house after Naseer paid to complete the “paperwork.”

The scam artist who called Naseer’s son said he was from his electric company, and that he would turn off power in their store unless they paid their supposed “bill” in 10 minutes. Naseer did not know if the same caller targeted her son, but she said he gave him the same set of instructions.

One of the victims Naseer knows is a government employee, according to Naseer. “He told me, ‘I’m working for the government too, so I’m hoping my money comes back,'” Naseer said.

The press release advised victims of these scams to report them to the Treasury Department at 800-366-4484 , or to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and add “IRS Phone Scam” to the online form’s comments.

Flickr photo by Marie Coleman

Food Trucks Hampered by Rosslyn Construction

By Morgan Fecto
1/5

Skyscraper construction near the Rosslyn Metro stop may force some food trucks to relocate or scale back their visits to the lunch hot spot.

“It sucks,” Louie Hankins, the co-founder of the Rito Loco truck, told ARLnow.com. “We can only park two or three trucks here where we used to park seven to eight.”

Construction began this winter on the Central Place apartment building, a 31-story skyscraper that’s projected to be completed in 2017, and has resulted in lane closures and parking restrictions on the stretch of N. Lynn Street between Wilson Blvd and 19th Street N.

Hankins said the construction hasn’t drastically decreased his business. Still, he is considering coming to Rosslyn once every two weeks instead of his usual weekly stop.

“It’s taking most of our parking spots,” said Cindy Hernandez, assistant manager of the Rocklands Barbeque and Grilling truck. With the limited space, other food trucks often beat them to a parking place. In that case, the Rocklands truck relocates to Courthouse.

“There’s more parking but fewer customers there,” Hernandez said. Rocklands used to park in Rosslyn five times a week, but they now only come twice.

Some trucks experienced push-back from authorities, like the Korean BBQ Taco Box truck, which received two tickets after parking on N. Lynn Street, according to Yog Noh, who works on the truck. Noh said that they now park on Wilson Blvd outside of Chipotle, where they see less foot traffic. “A lot of the people who buy our food can’t really see where we are.”

The KBBQ truck had at least 80 customers a day on Lynn Street before construction. Now they get 40 daily customers on Wilson. “I think it’s going to affect us because Rosslyn is one of the best spots we come to,” Noh said.

The KBBQ truck is not the only truck officials have asked to move from Lynn Street. According to Urban Bumpkin truck owner John Nguyen, security guards near the Cosi, at the corner of Lynn and 19th Street, started calling the police on his truck this morning. Nguyen claimed he had started parking at a one-hour metered spot, but was forced to move to Ballston for lunch.

“I said, ‘how are you going to write me a ticket if I just got here?'” Nguyen said. “We were parking in a legal spot with no sign. One of the parking enforcers said they were cracking down on food trucks.”

As a result, Urban Bumpkin served 75 customers in Ballston instead of the usual 100 or more they get in Rosslyn, Nguyen said.

Doug Maheu, the Arlington County Director for the DMV Food Truck Association, and owner of Doug the Food Dude food truck, said that parking is always scarce on Lynn Street because “it’s a gateway into D.C.”

“Lynn Street is probably the premiere spot in Arlington right now,”  Maheu said. “Hopefully we can find some other places that are close.”

Maheu is speaking with the county about alternative parking and plans to contact the Rosslyn Business Improvement District. Mary-Claire Burick, executive director of the Rosslyn BID, said the organization is working to find a solution.

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