Falls Church vs. Alexandria
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Anonymous
No because it’s a single data point vs reams go national newspaper articles contradicting you. Look, I live in Alexandria outside of Old Town and Del Ray with no dog in the fight. While Del Ray is beautiful, FCC is just a better jurisdiction to live in otherwise. Alexandria is great for retirees with no need for city services but FCC excels is almost every metric for liveability. Alexandria can barely manage budgets thanks to corruption. |
Anonymous
There is a shelter that is only open in cold weather and only from evening to early morning. People don't live there, it is to prevent hypothermia. It is in a commercial part of town. I am not aware of whatever issues PP is talking about, maybe they will elaborate? |
Anonymous
Another DP. There is more than one poster committed to posting the truth about Alexandria and its problems. It is too bad that you, 15:02, are not smart enough to understand that. Between the flooding, the murders and generally increasing crime, the bad traffic and the bad internet (a monopoly by Xfinity/Comcast), we've got some pretty big problems in Alexandria. I guess in your opinion that makes me psychotic because I recognize the problems? That must make you delusional because you don't. |
Anonymous
+1 We live in Rosemont. I woke up in the middle of the night and heard the rain pounding on the roof, and my first thought was about the poor people in lower Rosemont, Del Ray and Old Town who were getting flooded right then. The flooding is in the roads, and coming up through the toilets and bathtubs in some houses. If you doubt it, get onto Twitter and do a search on Drain Alexandria, or get access to Next Door or Face Book and do a search there. |
Anonymous
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26 years of personal experience isn't enough? It's great that you have lived there so long and have never had any flooding issues. But to say that no one does is just patently untrue. No, the entire city does not flood. I live in a neighborhood that's on a hill, and have never had any issues. But the parts that do flood are a symptom of a city that has mismanaged its sewer infrastructure for decades. And it's callous and false to claim that your fellow Alexandrians don't have any real problems, because some of them have really suffered in these floods. We live in Seminary Hill. When Bill Euille was mayor I sent him photos of our front yard which flooded up to our door way in every heavy rain and down to our basement due to lack of city surface asphalt drainage You know the drains that allow water to flow by gravity through proper grading of streets (high-low)into them. I never got any response from the City or the then Mayor and still there are no surface drains. We spent tens of thousands to dig up our foundation and place foundation drains and put in a larger sump pump. It broke my heart as I had to take out early from my IRA but the street water was deadly. If only Alexandria City council had spent as much on the West End all these decades on the water problems as on the East End build up. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
| Definitely depends on where you are in life. I'd say overall Alexandria is better for most things, activities, bars, restaurants, small city feel, great neighbors, pretty houses and neighborhoods. It does however rank absolute last/worst in public schools. But that's not really a concern for everyone. If you don't have kids, or your kids are grown, or you plan on private, I think you'll be much happier in Alexandria. But really, if you're planning on public schools, FCC or Fairfax is far better. |
Anonymous
| Alexandria for lifestyle 100% BUT ONLY IF you will shell out $40k per kid per year on private school. It's the ugly truth. |
Anonymous
I live in FCC and smoke. |
Anonymous
LMAO, it’s huge at 2 square miles! I will say Washington St. South of Rt. 7 is sketchy. |
Anonymous
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Long - time Alexandria resident. The preposterous noise about our city on DCUM is laughable...
I live in Old Town and drive to Children's National at least once per week. I go to/from in rush hour and it takes 25-30 minutes in the morning, ~30 minutes back if I leave midday, and usually 35-38 minutes back in the afternoon rush hour. I used to live in Del Ray and it was basically the same. Anybody saying there's we're "far" from the city needs to revisit a map. As for "the murders" in Alexandria...how sensationalist. There has been 1 murder this year, and something like 2 in 2021 and 2 in 2020...and all of them were in the west end near 395--nowhere near Old Town, Del Ray, Beverly Hills. Obviously murders are not good they can happen anywhere people live. I've lived in Old Town and Del Ray and they are EXTREMELY safe. Our son used to leave his key inside our front door lock all the time---no issues...we've never had a package theft (and we get a ton of packages left in front of our very public facing door...and we've never know anybody to encounter petty crime and most certainly not violent crime. Our neighbors leave their $1000 strollers in their front yard and porches and no issues. Unfortunately crime has gone pretty much everywhere in the country since the pandemic, but anybody trying to claim Alexandria City is crime ridden is simply lying. You don't have to trust me, look up the numbers yourself (you'll see the overall crime #s are lower than *gasp* DCUM's beloved Arlington). It's like trying to say that CCDC is a crime-ridden hole because there's crime in SE. As for flooding, there are some blocks where the city has completely dropped the ball. There is no excuse. Fortunately we've never lived near any of them. Over the years we've had many friends move here and we always tell them to check things like flood factor and non have had issues. I'd say it's the biggest problem with the city. They say they're really on a path to fix it...but it would be nice to see some actual results. As for schools...the are several excellent elementary schools (lots of threads on this) and GW middle school while crowded is very solid. The high school, now called Alexandria City high schools, offers a ton of programs for a student at all willing to learn and/or who have parents who will hold their kid accountable. The high school is possibly the most diverse in first-ring NoVa in terms of race and SES...<25% white. And something like 40% are hispanic who do no always grow up in english speaking home...so this will bring down test scores etc. The school has one of the lowest student:teacher ratios in the DMV, one of the highest teacher retention rates, and pays them quite well. Look at great school and you'll see that all the numbers are skewed by low income and hispanic students. College readiness is 9/10 for black students, 10/10 for white students, 10/10 for biracial students ...and 1/10 for hispanic students. See how that can sink a great schools ranking and how their GS overall grades kind of wreak of racism? How these most vulnerable kids perform must be improved, but it would not be easy for FCC or Arlington public schools to do either. In a high schools so diverse as ours, some granularity of data is needed. You can send your kids to the public schools here and they won't become rocks. They also won't be insulated from real-world problems that much of NoVa youths are cloistered from. And who knows, maybe they'll do the STEM academy which will probably boom as VT and amazon sets up shop here or perhaps they'll do the Governor's Health Sciences Academy which offers guaranteed admissions to GW's medical school. Maybe they'll join the rowing team which has it's own fancy boat-house on potomac (something I thought only private schools offered). And the comments about Alex suffering a comcast monopoly ... this is no different than much of the DMV. But *newsflash* FIOS construction is now starting in the city. We were notified we'd be able to sign up by the end of this year. The point of this is not to say FCC is "bad" or that Alexandria is "better" -- comparisons like that are stupid. It's like asking if coffee or tea is better. For the unfortunate few who are hit by recurrent (and highly preventable) flooding, they have every right to be pissed at the city's prior (and potentially) current leadership. But other than that very valid gripe, the wild things people say on here about Alexandria city is bonkers. In addition to the stuff above, the city has also has awesome culture/building stock/bars/festivals/restaurants/parks/nightlight/riverfront blah blah blah that most sane people acknowledge. Is the city heaven on earth? No it's not. No place in the DMV is. Is it a great place to live and raise a family? Yes, it most certainly is and evidenced by the perennially small amount of available THs/SFHs in places like Old Town, Del Ray, and Beverly Hills. |
Anonymous
Old Town Alexandria is about 4 square miles at the most and there are two metro stations within that area. FCC is two square miles with a metro station on each of the east and west borders. Yes there are some sketchy areas in FCC and also in OTA What are you LYAO off about? Are you shocked and stunned and amused that FCC is so small? I thought that was pretty common knowledge and is the reason why they have their own highly rated school district. Not everyone's cup of tea but for those looking for a particular experience it's pretty sweet. Housing prices and low inventory, both now and for many years previous, are evidence of FCC's popularity. |
Anonymous
Thank you; I think I know what you're talking about. By Harris Teeter, right? I've seen several homeless people there. |
Anonymous
No, it's on Gordon Rd. over near Shreve Rd. behind Don Beyer Volvo and near the city's property yard. If you see people who appear to be homeless near Harris Teeter it's probably because the Stratford Inn is sometimes used by the city social services department to temporarily house homeless people in need and may also attract lower income people who need a room. That location is also close to the Community Center and library which also attract homeless people because there are showers at the Community Center and both places offer a place to sit and relax and read or whatever. There have been homeless people in FCC, as well as everywhere else, for many many years. I still don't know what the PP meant when they said "The homeless shelter is an issue though." |
Anonymous
Huh. Guess you're forgetting our serial murderer (old news but still), the recent murder in OT, the attempted murder at Bradlee, the increasing gun shots being fired throughout the city, and the most egrigous of all, the October rape of a 14 year old girl at the high school by a group of boys who were all missing from classes from hours that went completely unreported to the community and left that poor girl hospitalized and without any supports, etc. If that's your version of safe then I don't know what to say. Your traffic times are ludicrous. You cannot get from here to Children's Hospital in 20 minutes unless it is the middle of the night and you are speeding the whole way. Ask me how I know. Furthermore, from the hours of 2 to 7 pm on weekdays, getting back in to Alexandria on the GW Parkway can take upwards of 45 minutes because the traffic slowdown begins before National Airport. Again, ask me how I know. I also have no words to describe your cavalier attitude about the Xfinity monopoly. Many of us depend on our internet connections so that we can WFH. If you don't then at least you can respect the opinions and concerns of those of us who do. Furthermore, FIOS still won't be offered to the whole city population, which leaves many residents dependent on the monopoly. You fluffers need to give it up because no one is dumb enough to believe you. Alexandria has significant problems. I and others like me will continue to publicize it because it seems to be the only thing that works. |