Nova Armory in Clarendon had their door smashed in an attempted burglary (staff photo by Jay Westcott)
Arlington County police responded to a break-in at Nova Armory early this morning.
The Metro-accessible gun store at 2607 Wilson Blvd had its front door “smashed in” by a suspect, setting off a loud alarm. The suspect reportedly took items but not any guns — the retailer takes weapons off shelves and stores them securely at night.
“At approximately 1:48 a.m. on August 22, police were dispatched to the report of a burglary just occurred,” said today’s ACPD crime report. “Upon arrival, it was determined the unknown male suspect forced entry into the business by smashing a glass door. The suspect then rummaged through the interior of the store before fleeing the scene with stolen items.”
“No firearms were reported stolen,” an Arlington police spokesperson told ARLnow.
Officers searched the area for the suspect but could not locate him. Police were called to the store later today to retrieve video surveillance footage.
“This is an active and ongoing investigation and our detectives are reviewing all the information available to them to identify the suspect in this case,” said the ACPD spokesperson. “We encourage anyone who may have information regarding the incident to contact police.”
Nova Armory was previously burglarized at its former Lyon Park location. In 2022, after moving to Clarendon earlier in the year, a Nova Armory employee chased down an alleged thief who tried to run off with a gun. In March of this year a ski mask-wearing man robbed the store of a gun and ammunition but was arrested on a bus soon thereafter, according to police.
Power outage map as of 2:15 p.m. on Aug. 22 (via Dominion)
(Updated at 9:15 p.m.) Thousands were without power in and around Crystal City and Pentagon City for much of the day due to a widespread outage.
The outage was first reported just after 11:15 a.m. Arlington County firefighters investigated a possible underground explosion and treated a Dominion worker with burns from steam that came out of a manhole, according to scanner traffic.
“At 11:18 a.m. a splice in an underground cable failed causing an arc/flash and 10,000+ outages in Crystal City, Pentagon City & nearby neighborhoods,” Dominion spokeswoman Peggy Fox told ARLnow shortly before 4 p.m. “We’re working to have all customers restored as quickly as possible, hopefully in a half an hour. A worker was treated at the scene and released.”
ACFD also responded to a large quantity of stuck elevator calls in the area, owing to the outage.
More than 10,250 Dominion customers were without power as a result of the outage. The outage map extended into the Aurora Highlands and Arlington Ridge residential neighborhoods, including Oakridge Elementary.
Arlington’s parks department closed the Long Bridge Aquatic and Fitness Center and the Gunston Community Center due to the outage.
As of 5:15 p.m., Dominion said all but 1,229 customers had their power restored, with outages still reported along Crystal Drive by ARLnow readers. As of 9 p.m. all customers had been restored, per Dominion.
As a 23-year-old voter in still-segregated 1960s Virginia, Portia Haskins was convinced she had followed all the rules in order to cast a ballot in Arlington.
Election officials disagreed, saying she had failed to pay the appropriate poll tax still required in the Old Dominion, maintained in part to disenfranchise Black voters.
Haskins took the county, and state, to court. She won, with her case ultimately being folded into the landmark 1966 Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Haskins was an unusual legal combatant, committed to seeking unity.
After her efforts to vote were rejected at the local level, Haskins enlisted support from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to challenge the ruling. She traveled several times to the U.S. District Court in Richmond, then watched as the case and others like it moved to the Supreme Court.
Her reaction at the final outcome? “I was so happy,” she said.
The 6-3 ruling in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections effectively outlawed requiring poll taxes for state elections in those few states, like Virginia, that retained them. The poll-tax requirement for federal elections had been eliminated with ratification of the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1964.
Lessons from the struggle are still valuable today, said Haskins, now 83.
“Everybody has to come together and fight” when they see injustice, she said. “You have to get together.”
Historical photo of Portia Haskins (via Black Heritage Museum of Arlington)
Haskins is among the Arlingtonians profiled in the “From Barriers to Ballots,” an exhibition marking the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Several versions of the exhibition are on display across Northern Virginia, with one at Central Library running through Nov. 4.
The Arlington Historical Society partnered on the exhibition, and was excited about the Haskins presentation, former president David Pearson said.
“She is someone we really wanted to learn about,” he said, pointing to a renewed effort to “really get out the stories of the complete history of Arlington.”
Haskins has been a member of Mount Salvation Baptist Church near the Glebewood neighborhood since 1951, and in the community she has promoted “the spirit of community and empowerment,” said Scott Taylor, president of the Black Heritage Museum.
Haskins lamented that much of the history of the civil-rights movement is being lost in the public consciousness.
“We went through a lot, but people today don’t know,” she said. Young people in particular, she said, “don’t care because they don’t know.”
Her request to today’s youth? “Let everybody know how you feel” and use the ballot box to create change.
“Voting is important. That’s what everybody really needs to do,” Haskins said.
A new sign is installed at Studio PAUSE on Columbia Pike (courtesy of Krista Brick)
The real estate company renovating and redeveloping the Barcroft Apartments is helping a local art studio expand its reach.
After renovating a Western Union in the Barcroft Shopping Center on Columbia Pike, owner Jair Lynch Real Estate Partners donated the lease to Studio PAUSE. There, the Arlington-based studio will host art and writing workshops, which will be free for Barcroft residents but for a fee for other community members.
With loans from Arlington County and Amazon, Jair Lynch Real Estate Partners the Barcroft Apartments in 2021 with plans to set aside all 1,344 units for affordable housing. At the time, it also purchased a Penske rental facility and nearby strip mall, which the company says it has no “immediate” plans to redevelop, but could nonetheless figure into future plans.
Instead, Jair Lynch views the shopping center as a place to foster the existing community at Barcroft — through the arts.
“The Barcroft Shopping Center adjacent to the Barcroft Apartments property is not just a convenient location for an arts center, it is already occupied by beloved retail tenants like Goodwill and Café Sazón,” Krista Brick, a representative for Jair Lynch, told ARLnow.
“The location along the Columbia Pike Corridor encourages members of the Barcroft community and our neighbors to learn from each other in a setting that fosters understanding and expression,” she continued.
The former Western Union space will be the third location for Studio PAUSE, which has also received donations from the county.
“Working with local community advocate BU-GATA and the Columbia Pike Partnership, the location was identified as a prime opportunity to work with Studio PAUSE to celebrate the diversity of Barcroft and empower our residents to tell their story through art,” said Mark Hannan, an investment manager at Jair Lynch, in a press release.
Studio PAUSE — an acronym for “People, Art, Understand, Share, Explore” — was started by Sushmita Mazumdar in 2013. The writer, artist and educator wanted to create a space where people could share stories and explore their creativity. Mazumdar is also part of the Columbia Pike Documentary Project, which will display photos, books and interviews in the new studio space.
The studio currently runs programs in the Gates of Ballston apartment complex, run by nonprofit affordable housing developer AHC Inc.
“We believe the collaboration between Barcroft Apartments and Studio PAUSE will provide a much-needed space for creativity, arts, and mental wellness,” said Columbia Pike Partnership Executive Director Kim Klingler in the press release. “We look forward to collaborating and making this a welcoming space for the community.”
Synetic Theater, National Landing’s edgy physical theater company, has launched a new streaming service allowing viewers to stream theatrical stage productions and original films right to their home devices.
Broadway actor Joey Collins says he plans to leave ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ tour this month (via Instagram)
Joey Collins and vaccine workers (courtesy of Joey Collins)
(Updated 08/25/23) This week will be the audience’s last chance to see former local pandemic response volunteer and Broadway actor Joey Collins star in “To Kill a Mockingbird” at the Kennedy Center.
After 18 months on the road and nearly 600 performances, Collins said he plans to leave the production following the tour’s last performance in D.C. at the Kennedy Center on Sunday.
While the rest of the cast continues on the tour, he will cross the river into Arlington to be reunited with his family and the community he formed doing voter and Covid vaccine outreach.
“I just have to pull the plug,” he told ARLnow. “And it’s not because of the people. I love my cast, crew, and team. I’m going to miss them tremendously. But, obviously, I miss my family too.”
Collins portrays the main villain, Bob Ewell, in Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The play animates the book, which follows Scout Finch as she grows up in Alabama, observing her father, Atticus, defend a Black man who Ewell falsely accused of raping his daughter.
Collins described performing in the play as an “amazing” experience and a “privilege.” Still, he found it difficult to be away from his wife, two high school children, and their Maltese-Shih Tzu mix, Shakespeare — all of whom moved to Arlington from New York in 2019.
“I feel like I’ve missed so much by being on the road,” he said. “And so I really would love to, at least for the next four years, really strive to find work here. So, it’s more about the time and my family than it is about any other aspects of my acting career.”
Collins says he does not have any work lined up. If he returns to live, local theater, partial credit would go toward the type of vaccine outreach he did — which helped regional theaters reopen their doors during the pandemic.
Shortly after moving to Arlington, Collins said he felt a loss of “purpose.” He joined a volunteer effort to register people to vote ahead of the 2020 elections, an experience he noted that “filled my cup.”
“I didn’t really have a community here, and I love helping people,” he said. “I’ve loved volunteering my whole life, but this particular [experience] gave me something that I really needed because we were all isolated.”
Then, a colleague from the voter registration effort told him the county was looking for volunteers to help distribute vaccines in Arlington. He jumped at the chance, seeing it as a way to get theaters up and running again.
“Then I thought, ‘Okay, this is going to be the beginning of getting performative arts back to the public because once enough people are vaccinated, maybe they’ll open up the theatres,’” Collins said.
And open up, they did. Collins got word that the show he initially auditioned for in November 2019 was finally ready to hit the road.
When the tour came to the Kennedy Center last summer, Collins said several fellow vaccine workers came to one of his performances. On another occasion, a vaccine worker approached him after a show during his tour in the Midwest.
“It was a surreal experience, but it was also like a reminder of the impact one might be able to have on the world simply by donating some time,” he said.
While Collins said he is sad to be leaving the tour, he added he believes he will be ending on a fitting note. The actor has now completed a “trifecta” by performing on the Kennedy Center’s three most prominent stages: the Concert Hall, Opera House and Eisenhower Theater.
“I feel very lucky to have checked those boxes, and I hope I can go back through all of them at some point in my career,” he said.
Two weeks ago, Virginia made campaign finance reports public for state level candidates. After review, it shows that over 500 individuals have given under $100 dollars to our campaign! Over half of what we’ve raised has come from Virginia, with most of it coming from right here in Arlington.
I’m humbled by the faith folks here have shown in me and what we are fighting for: ambitious cannabis policy reform, legal representation for renters, progressive tax reform, expanded ability of workers to collectively bargain and much more. Getting into this race, I knew I was never going be the favorite to win the battle for the most $1000 donations, but the faith you have shown in me shows that not only is this candidate a hungry underdog, but that my supporters and excellent campaign team are hungry and scrappy too. That’s why we are going to win.
