Ting has placed this thing in Carole’s front yard

Hello neighbors! Have you been enjoying the seamless process that Ting employed to lay down fiber optic throughout the ‘hood?

Mark the street. Put down tape. Dig a trench. Come back next week with actual cable. Slop some messy concrete in the trench. Come back two or three more times for fine detail work on the asphalt. This has taken longer than the entire season of The Last of Us (so freaking good — watch it!).

Suffice to say, every time I see those paper No Parking signs lining the streets, I want to mow them down with my scooter. Anyhoo…

Just when we thought our long BevHills nightmare was over, the “Ting has placed this thing in Carole’s front yard” email complaint hit the listserv. Subsequent comments from the peanut gallery have included:

Carol looks ecstatic!

Helpful to know the “box” is called a “passive cabinet” and is allowing hundreds of people to receive symmetrical gigabit speed internet in the surrounding neighborhoods. (ergo, why the city permitted it).

Apologies to Carol, but the box is actually not in her yard but in something called “the public right of way,” and the City gave TING permission to put it there.

It’s beautiful isn’t it?! Wondering how long before a big truck takes one out 

I walked passed it the other day…and my thoughts were…eeee gads…that’s ugly.

Looks like Carol won the Ting eyesore lottery. They should give you free internet for mounting that beast in your yard without asking. 

Of course, it didn’t take long for the optimists among us to recommend that these ugly boxes be painted to become beautiful works of art. I am all for the beautification of BevHills (AS LONG AS YOU DO NOT TRIM MY BUSHES!), so I’d like to present some bespoke creations that I believe really capture the spunk and spirit of our beloved neighborhood.

Take that Dogs of Del Ray! We have the BevHills Bitch Sesh:

West Glebe Road Bridge Completion Countdown Clock

Homage to the Halal Chicken Slaughterhouse Market

Trompe l’oeil scooter parking

A welcoming location to leave those steaming poop bags we all love

Glass recycling art when you can’t make it to the purple dumpsters

Can’t wait to see the creative minds of BevHills add to my initial artistry!

Bev’s Bill of Rights: Sign the Pledge or I’ll Whine About It

Hello friends! It’s election time (June 8th!) and this has been a doozy of a race for Democratic mayor and City Council.

Recently, a group of city residents (let’s call them “Karens”) are asking City Council members and candidates to pledge themselves to a document they are calling the Alexandria Constituents’ Bill of Rights. This shady group declined to name their members or answer questions from our local publications, including who drafted the document and what a rejection of the document means.

But that has not stopped listserv from becoming a non-stop volley of who has/hasn’t signed the pledge, despite an explicit stated ban on posting political content and the fact that this pledge reeks of elementary school class elections (“vote for me and the snack machine will be FREEEEEEE!”).

So, in the spirit of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”, I’ve created my own bill of rights that I will now pester all candidates into signing.

Take the Bev Pledge! Do you solemnly swear to:

• Personally chain yourself to a bulldozer at Chinquapin?
  
• Turn Seminary into a 12 lane freeway?
  
• Start an exclusive Grumpy Gus/“I’d like to speak to the manager” Facebook group of likeminded complainers to fuel your campaign?
  
• Gather every last scooter in the city into a pile and light them in an epic bonfire?
  
• Run on a platform of bitching about the popular incumbent without offering up your own policy?
  
• Picket butcher shops?
  
• Answer a constituent question faster than Justin Wilson? [trick question — this is not possible]
  

If you refuse to sign this, preferably in blood, you are a horrible person and probably have no friends.

Yours in civic pride, Bev
PS: VOTE!

Look out! The poors are coming!

Have you been following the 3 day+ rager on the listserv about supposed plans for George Mason Elementary school?

For those of you that just read this blog for comedic value and can’t be bothered with your idiotic neighbors’ rants, there was a PowerPoint deck that went out from ACPS to parents at the school outlining how they plan to rebuild the aging building. Only, an earlier draft had a mention of the space’s potential for housing, and someone read it and freaked the hell out thinking there was a land grab. The final draft that’s online has no mention of the school being used for housing, but hahahaha who can be bothered to read, and why do facts matter?

In no particular order, the BH listserv worked themselves into a froth about:

• Racism
• Class warfare
• Why people of more modest means would want to live among seven-figure dwellings (Jesus f’ing Christ, people!)
• Greenspace
• The difference between affordable housing and low-income housing
• Parking
• The Mayor’s developer mafia
• Traffic
• Number and types of cars in BH
• The annual salaries of firefighters
• What constitutes an ACPS employee versus a contractor
• Will my home value go down if everyone near me isn’t rich
• The number of square feet a single mom and 2 kids need
• Zoning rules (and wouldn’t these people be better in Del Ray?!)

Honest to god though, I had to pick my jaw off the floor, when I read THIS gem from the lovely Jennifer M.:

What’s perplexing to me is how anyone can think that folks living in affordable housing want to live in a neighborhood with $1M+ homes.  You think that’s going to make them feel better about themselves?  Taking the bus while a neighbor is driving a Mercedes is going to perk them up?  Think they are going to feel like they belong to the local community??  Come on – who would want that?

Seriously, JFC. I hope everyone throws their dog poop bags in your city trash can, Jennifer.

Anyway, I’ve been sitting back writing and rewriting a possible blog post for the past several days, and then I see that my fans have spoken (Thanks, Tom E.! I’ll bring by a halal chicken to reward you for the plug!).

Wait, so this was all one big misunderstanding?  Oh boy…can’t wait to see what Tales from the BH Listserv is going to say about this!!!!

It’s time for Bev to chime in.

May I present to you a one-act play I’ve written, entitled “The George Mason Commons”:

———

The sun is rising and people across Beverley Hills are getting ready to go to work.

A brown-skinned person walks out of the old George Mason Elementary school, recently renamed “The George Mason Commons” because affordable housing brought a wave of commoners into the neighborhood.

She waves at the recycling truck crew as they drive by. After all, they all live in the building. “Damn,” she thinks, “this Beverley Hills neighborhood might not be everything I dreamed it would be. They don’t even have curbside glass recycling here. What have I gotten myself into?!”

She tries to put it out of her mind, only to look up and see one of those fancy-pants single-family-home dwellers drive by in a Mercedes. Sigh. Clearly, she is unable to see a nice car and not hate on herself.

“I’ll show those snobs,” she thinks, walking past the bus stop of lowlife scum waiting for transport to the Pentagon, DC law firms, and other low-class jobs.

Finding a pile of abandoned scooters in a heap across the sidewalk, she heads off, helmetless, toward her job at the newly opened halal butcher shop.

Of course, the fastest option is to zip her scooter down Seminary Road. Ever since the road diet (high five, Mayor Wilson!), she can get to work before the angry picketing crowds show up and ruin her mood. Speaking of mood, she’s having such a fun, fast ride that she waves to all the cars waiting. A few of the drivers see her and honk. “Wait, are those middle fingers?” she wonders. “No, they couldn’t be. Not here. I’m pretty sure those drivers are just telling me I’m #1 based on my eco-friendly commute!”

The scooter breaks down about a block away from work when she jumps it over one of the ridiculously high speedbumps recently installed. “Hmm,” she thinks, “maybe some of Mayor Wilson’s developer cronies put these here.” Angered,  she flings the scooter in the road, because scooter riders do what they want.

Her workday at the butcher is pretty quiet and uneventful, except for all the dogs outside howling because the blood makes them crazy. She ignores the sound, and when she eventually gets bored, her mind wanders. “Man, I’m so lucky to have scored that affordable housing in the middle of Beverley Hills. To think it was all because a sneaky ACPS ‘contractor’ stuck that slide in a PowerPoint deck a few years ago and set it all in motion. Surely, this is the only way a person of color like me could ever gain entrance to such a utopia. I don’t even have a European car.”

With her shift done and unable to find a scooter, she hops on the bus (ew, gross!) and makes her way back to the four-story George Mason Commons building she now calls home.

Walking up to the building, she narrowly avoids stepping in a fresh pile of dog poo that someone neglected to pick up. “What a jerk!” she says. “Dog poo belongs in people’s city-provided trash cans!” At last, the brown-skinned woman climbs the stairs to her apartment. First floor, firefighters. Second floor, trash truck folks. Third floor, sketchy potential child molesters. And finally, fourth floor, the poors.

Home sweet home. As she walks in the door, she can’t help but sing the words to the Weezer song, “Beverly Hills”:
Where I come from isn’t all that great
My automobile is a piece of crap
My fashion sense is a little whack
And my friends are just as screwy as me

Beverly Hills!
That’s where I want to be!
Gimme gimme gimme gimme!
Living in Beverly Hills!

[Aaaaand scene]

PS. How has our opinionated “Donna” not chimed in on this thread after 3 days?? Has anyone checked in on her? Does she have cats? They get so hungry…

Who’s ready for a scooter rage rant?!

I stayed out of the halal butcher hysteria just to keep you all wanting more, but whoooo doggie, the proliferation of scooters has got folks *worked up*.

And by folks, I mean BevHills busybody “Donna”, who uses her spare time when not writing a complaint column in the local newspaper that is literally called “What Bugs Me” to utterly trash her neighbors on an almost daily basis on the listserv.

The subject of her recent ire is the City’s pilot program on electric scooters. To say folks are passionate on either side is an understatement. I’ve ridden them. I’ve also picked up fallen ones and moved them off the sidewalk.

But you know what I haven’t done? Interrogate a kid riding on the sidewalk and write an open letter to his parents to shame them.

Here’s the full rant from Donna:

To the parents of H____ M___ (Bev note: I’m not naming him because, RUDE!):

Did you know he is illegally riding a lime scooter? At the busy intersection of Monticello and Russell Rd.

Obviously under 16 and riding on the sidewalk. NO HELMET too.

Someone used their drivers license and credit card to use the scooter. Do you have a death wish for your son?

There are at least 13 attributable deaths with scooters. At least, those are the ones that have counted. And they were adults with allegedly more sense than a child!

Not a good look accusing parents of having a death wish for their child.

Mad props to the listserv member rewrote Donna’s notable “be kind to animals” email signature:

If you have room in your heart, please don’t publicly shame little kids.  They are children who ask nothing of you and give back so much.  As Ben Franklin said, “mind your own d@mn business.”

By the way, if you haven’t seen the South Park spoof, this is as close as I think you can get to Donna’s blind hatred of scooters 😉