Despite the fact that new home sales are moving slower than Michael Vick merchandise, the DC Metro area continues to live by the motto, “The grass is always greener if you build residential apartment complexes on top of it.” You can continue to drive west towards the great outdoors all you want, but as long as your taking I-66, it’s going to be awhile ‘til you find it. People have been moving to the area in droves over the last decade, so much as to skew the Harry-est Town in America sweepstakes that Amazon ran in conjunction with J.K. Rowling’s 7th book. Long story short, they used book sales against 2000 census figures to find it where the most HP7’s per capita were heading.
Who likes commentary on fractions? You do, suckers.
Because there are many, many people in towns like Vienna, Falls Church, and Fairfax, and these many, many people purchased the book, Amazon didn’t see it coming. Therefore, the denominator of their magical formula was understated (there’s a lot more here than in 2000), and it seems like just about everyone in the Metro area was purchasing the wizard tale with reckless abandon. And the worst part? The winning city (Falls Church), was allowed to select a charity for Amazon to donate $5k to “The Mary Riley Styles Public Library Foundation Trust of Falls Church.”
Mary Riley Styles, you lucky, undeserving bastard.
But back to the topic at hand: the residential construction free-for-all.
As I’ve mentioned on occasion, my apartment complex is owned by Camden Living Properties. For Jerseyans, it may shock you that I’ve chosen to live in Camden. Other than the surname of the sap-fest that is 7th Heaven, the only other cultural relevance it has is in the frontrunners for Most Dangerous City. So, the coincidence in nomenclature keeps me safe from errant gunshots and carjacking – a plus, it also leaves me devoid of aquariums within immediate proximity. And just once I’d like to say hello to a dolphin while getting my mail.
Camden, like any other aspiring rental property developer, is working frantically to acquire as much acreage in the Northern Virginia area. While this may be good for their bottom line, it’s confusing as hell for the guests of their tenants. Within 2 miles of y apartment complex, there are two other Camden properties that friends may have seen in passing and therefore assume it is where I live. (These are the people “too good” for MapQuest, not surprisingly.) So how does Camden combat this problem?
By installing oversized chess pieces.
Just down the street from us is Camden Monument Place. It’s on Monument Drive, but so is ours. It’s a place, but so is ours. So in order to give Monument Place a different personality than Fairfax Corner, they hired a crack team of designers and artists to give the new complex its own identity.
They came up with a severed horse head.
Look, I’m all for the equine agenda, but doesn’t this seem a little strange to anyone else? It’s not like they’ve used animal kingdom decapitation at any of their other locations. So there it is, standing on the corner of Fair Lakes and Monument (note: the other Camden property is called Camden Fair Lakes, naturally), for all to see.
Including the poor sap whose view is nothing but the back of a horse head.
1 comment:
It's only fitting that the formerly beautiful, green, gently rolling horse pastures of Fairfax County are being replaced by gaudy faux-art sculptures of horse heads. Good Lord, I'm a horse-lover, and I think that sculpture's awful. Some developer's kid must have done a semester at Academy of Art College...
Post a Comment