Night Driving

When the tired roadside comes alive

I’ve already written about taking long walks at night; I guess I like the cover of darkness, and the way that very ordinary places you see every day look entirely different at night. You rarely see them like that, unless you make an effort.

Last night, I was driving home from a dinner meeting in Arlington, and I had set Google Maps to avoid tolls. That meant I was taking U.S. 50, the old pre-Interstate route into D.C. It’s one of my favorite drives.

First I passed the arch at Eden Center, lit up like a Christmas tree. (It’s on another adjacent road, so I couldn’t get a photo, sadly.) Then I passed the old Kinney Shoes building, repurposed as a laundromat, with the old sign altered but retained. There’s even one tube of neon around the edge that survived the sign’s remodel.