Coming soon on this blog: ‘Neighborhood Joints’

The editor of this esteemed blog, Ms. Ashford, asked that I follow up last summer’s insightful, behind-the-scenes story on neighborhood swim teams with a new report. Unfortunately, Ms. Ashford turned down my first story idea, “How I Spent My Summer,” an existential tale of indolence and mid-life angst in the Deep South.

No, she said: (1) children might read the blog, (2) nobody outside of your spouse gives a damn, and, (3) it has nothing to do with Annandale. Try again. As I recovered from surgery earlier this autumn, I came up with a few ideas which passed muster. This is one of them.

We’re planning a series on local retail establishments in the Annandale area, called “Neighborhood Joints,” where we’ll write a residents-eye view of the places we shop, eat, drink, and hang out. We’ll explore the services or goods on offer, their quality, value, and cost. When we can, we’ll provide some background history, the ownership and staff composition, its business model, photos, and the like. We’ll try to provide the reader with an impression of how it feels to patronize the place.

I do have to admit to a strong bias toward the mom-and-pop business. Be it hardware, coffee, recreation, or food, I search out the one-of-a-kind, locally owned places first. I find them very important to creating a vibrant community with a unique identity. We won’t omit national chains from our stories as Ms. Ashford’s ongoing reporting on the new Bloom grocery demonstrates. But our focus will definitively be local. To that end our first subject will be Maxx Fitness, coming soon.