It’s World Cup season and it’s all anyone seems to be talking about this week.

The major sporting event — built on the backs of brutal working conditions for migrant workers — is heading into the semifinals after some tense games last week.

The opening game has 7.2 million viewers in the United States, with an estimated average 227.7 million viewers of the games worldwide every day.

Have you been watching the games? Did you tune in for a single specific game or team, or have you mostly opted out?

Image via Emilio Garcia/Unsplash

The Alexandria Scottish Christmas Walk, one of the biggest events of the year in Old Town, is marching through the city this weekend.

It will be the 51st year for the event, which features Scottish clans, dancers and bagpipes working along a route through the city. The one-mile-long parade starts at 11 a.m. at the intersection of Wolfe and St. Asaph Streets and ends up outside City Hall (301 King Street).

The event, hosted by the Campagna Center and Visit Alexandria, celebrates the city’s founding by Scottish merchants in 1749.

The parade is the centerpiece for a full weekend of holiday activities, including a parade of boats decorated with holiday lights starting at 5:30 p.m. along the city’s waterfront.

The kitschy I Love You sign in Waterfront Park is no more, replaced with a holiday tree, but the big news this week is the announcement of a new art project that will replace the tree early next year.

A new project by New York City-based artist Nina Cooke John called “Two Boxes of Oranges and Admonia Jackson” will be installed in March 2023 and will remain in place until November.

The project features steel beams meant to evoke the series of 18th-century ships discovered in Old Town excavations between 2015-2018.

“Viewed from the park, visitors stand on the outside of the hull with a view onto one side of history,” said the City’s Department of Arts, Recreation, Parks & Cultural Activities. “Once inside, a fuller story is revealed. Visitors move in, through and between the installation reading the text on the ground and touching the text on the steel. Light traces the profiles, reinforcing their form and allowing for a different experience at night.”

Along with the beams there will be pained images of herring, coconuts, gin, a woman named “Jane Tailor” featured in a ship manifest, and other notable parts of the city’s nautical history.

Last week, Mayor Justin Wilson said he sands the city to take another pass at renaming streets throughout Alexandria named for Confederate leaders.

The announcement comes around two years after the city’s last major push to de-Confederate Alexandria, an effort that saw the Appomattox statue on S. Washington Street removed. The city renamed Jefferson Davis Highway through Alexandria to Richmond Highway a year before that.

There’s a fairly extensive list of around 31 streets that are confirmed to be named after Confederate leaders. Another 30 are listed as possibly named after Confederates.

Confederate statues and other honors were widely used throughout the south as a method of furthering the Lost Cause mythology and intimidating Black residents. In Alexandria, some of that history of Confederate street naming goes back to an addition to the city code in 1951 that all north-facing streets be named after Confederates.

Alexandrians making less than half of the region’s area median income could qualify for a new program that will give them $500 per month with no strings attached.

Those living alone and making less than $49,850 per year are eligible, with the income scaling up based on the size of the household.

The program, Alexandria’s Recurring Income for Success and Equity (ARISE), was funded as part of the city’s Covid recovery.

During the pilot phase, 170 randomly selected individuals who meet certain household income limits will be selected. Those selected will be provided with $500 every month for 24 months to spend in any way they choose.

“Guaranteed income pilots have proven to impact poverty and economic inequity by enabling participants to determine for themselves the budgetary strategies that will most benefit them and their families,” the city said in a release. “ARISE will help the city test a bold, new way to ensure people have what they need to make decisions to support their well-being.”

(Updated 3 p.m.) With Halloween just over a week away, do you plan on wearing a costume?

Some locals have been going all-out on Halloween decorations and even some local restaurants have been getting into the holiday spirit.

There are some costumed events around town, like The Birchmere’s annual Halloween event, but there are also more subdued events where costumes aren’t expected, like the Edgar Allen Poe reenactment.

Do your holiday plans involve getting dressed up in a costume this year or something else? If you are planning on getting dressed up, what is your planned costume?

Is Alexandria’s pizza status supreme or is it still a little crusty?

Earlier this week, two new pizza joints opened in Old Town. While among the few by-the-slice restaurants in town, astute readers noted that Fairlington Pizza also serves by-the-slice.

Reaction to the news was a little mixed on social media, with most excited about the new pizza options but a few were a little peeved — saying the city has too many pizza places.

Stop this! We have enough pizza!!! pic.twitter.com/Lsi0B1EAzP

— Becky Hammer (@beckyhammer) October 13, 2022

What do you think? Is Alexandria a good place to get pizza? Are there too many spots or too few? What’s your favorite place to get pizza in Alexandria?

Tomorrow, Alexandria’s City Council is set to review a proposal to bring speed cameras to the city for the first time.

Though scattered across nearby D.C., until a few years ago Alexandria was prohibited from utilizing speed cameras by state ordinance. Now, the city is looking at installing five cameras at various school zones across the city.

The city has seen an overall 10-year decline in car crashes.

“Crash totals from 2011-2020 show a downward trend for all crashes, including those that involved fatal or severe injury,” a city report (page 31 of the pdf, page 4 of the docket) said. “The 2016-2020 annual crash averages by all modes (vehicle-only, pedestrian, bicyclist) and crash type (all and KSI) are less than those seen during 2011-2015. Year over year, vehicle-only crashes had the highest number of KSI crashes followed by pedestrian and then bicyclist crashes.”

Despite the progress, Alexandria has still struggled toward its Vision Zero goal. In addition to speed cameras, Alexandria has also filed for grants to work on overhauling some of the city’s most crash-prone intersections.

Last Friday, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) announced that the Potomac Yard Metro station would not be opening this fall, as they’d been insisting it would for months.

The new opening date is set as sometime in 2023. The announcement also came with an update that the shutdown cutting Alexandria off from the rest of the Metro station would be extended into November.

The delay is the latest in a long series of screw-ups connected to the Potomac Yard project, from a delay earlier this year to Metro and city officials concealing information about the station losing a southern entrance back in 2018.

Beyond Potomac Yard, the announcement came on the heels of a new report casting serious doubts about the safety on the rail line after the Metro system reportedly failed to fully address the issues that caused a train derailment last year.

The final community meeting about a proposal to add lights to multiple athletic fields is coming up later this month.

The City Council has approved funding for lighting of two athletic fields, pending the permit approval process, with other locations open for consideration down the road.

The fields being considered are:

• Francis C Hammond Middle School, 4646 Seminary Road
• Patrick Henry K-8 School & Recreation Center, 4643 & 4653 Taney Avenue
• Jefferson Houston K-8 School, 1501 Cameron Street
• George Washington Middle School, 1005 Mt. Vernon Avenue
• Eugene Simpson Stadium Park, 426 East Monroe Avenue

Feedback to the proposal has been mixed, with some saying the lights would add extra hours for fields that are in great demand. Some neighbors at the fields have shared concerns, though, that lights at the field could create noisy activity late into the evenings.

The meeting will be held virtually on Wednesday, Sept. 21 at 7 p.m. The project is scheduled to go to the Planning Commission on October 6 and City Council on October 15.