alex marshall

From one of my recent columns:

I'm not sure how much I should burden the blog with purely local commentary, but The Washington City Paper's Jason Cherkis has too often stepped into it, so I suppose it's worth pointing out that his coverage of local issues has its problems, too. For example, he says "The neighborhood surrounding the ballpark hasn’t changed all that much. It’s still mechanic shops and liquor stores."

I was really against the DC stadium giveaway and in retrospect I'm still against it, but as Avent says it's inconceivable to me that someone who had actually been to the neighborhood would say that, as Jason Cherkis did in the City Paper. There's all this new stuff there and more under construction. It's true that they don't seem to have used a laser to surgically remove each and every mechanic shop and liquor store from the area, but that's good -- it's positive-sum development where lots of new stuff has gone up where, previously, there was nothing. In the meantime, Jason Cherkis has gone on to work for the Huffington Post.