A Sunday Outing
March 30, 2015
A READER writes:
I was thinking of Lawrence Auster this weekend when I took my boys out to lunch near my new apartment, which is in the Clarendon neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia. I admit this East Coast stuff is new to me, having recently moved here from overseas, but the scene I witnessed in this restaurant at 1 p.m. on a Sunday was really something to behold.
Immediately surrounding us were: 1) a party of black women, each one big as a house, enjoying the buffet and talking about their new cars, two BMW’s and an Audi A4 (think of how this conflicts with the story of oppression we hear everywhere) 2) a party of six young men, dressed as thugs, two of them sitting and eating crab legs in hoodies with the hoods up and shrouding nearly all their faces and their pants falling down to mid-thigh as they stood up to refill their plates; 3) a 30-something pretty white woman, accompanied by a wimpy-looking black man and staring with obvious hunger every time one of the thugs stood up, exposing his underwear-covered buttocks; 4) topping it off, a perfectly fit and well-attired “gay” couple who kissed upon greeting and then spent the next three minutes furtively looking around for any hard stares or comments, obviously hoping to engender a response.
It was a very rude re-introduction to American life.
— Comments —
Mark Jaws writes:
Clarendon on a Sunday afternoon? Whaddayaexpect? My wife grew up in South Arlington just a few miles from Clarendon. It has long had, in spite of all the business development, a reputation for seediness. Twenty five years ago my now 30-year-old daughter took tap dance lessons in Clarendon. Even back then the crowd looked like something out of the bar scene in the first Star Wars movie. According to my late mother in-law, who was born in Arlington in 1925, the county went Yankee right after the declaration of the War on Poverty and the tremendous expansion of the welfare state, which brought in all sorts of Northern do-gooders intent on eradicating the South. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
