Opinions

When it comes to wi-fi in coffee shops, I’ve had a pretty strong shift in opinion over the past few years. This blog used to be written entirely from a single coffee shop in Cleveland.

During that time I spent a lot time in that coffee shop. I made friends with many of the baristas. I made friends with the owners. And I spent a lot of money. A friend of the blog calculated that I was on pace to spend over a thousand dollars at that coffee shop by the end of the year, and I was fine with that, because it was my favorite local business. If that shop hadn’t been friendly to me bringing my laptop into the store, I still would have gone their occasionally but would have stuck to making most of my coffee at home.

The reason my opinion has changed is because my environment has changed. Coffee shops in D.C. tend to be busy and crowded, and because of high rents, they can’t afford big swaths of open space for dozens of tables, couches, fireplaces and everything else. It’s simply not comfortable to bring a laptop into many of the local coffee houses.

I can sympathize with the guys who run Filter and Qualia and who don’t want to offer wi-fi all the time or even at all. You should really listen to their take on this issue on the Kojo Nnamdi Show. While the people upset with their decision may shout the loudest, I suspect that there are a lot of people who agree with the owners.

In a way, free wi-fi is like free parking. Sometimes it makes sense for businesses , because it’s a means to get people in the door. Sometimes if you don’t have wi-fi (or parking), some customers will go elsewhere. But in a major city, seats in coffee shops (and free parking spaces) are in short supply and high demand. Having a few seats (or parking spaces) that a small number of people hog all day long simply doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t matter if free wi-fi (or parking) is what people are used to. This is just the new reality.

Rob Pitingolo blogs at Extraordinary Observations. The Local Blog Network is a group of bloggers from around the D.C. region who have agreed to make regular contributions to All Opinions Are Local.

In November, I moved into a new home with an alley behind it. I quickly realized that the alley lights (one of which is shown above) get awfully bright and glaring at night.

As you can see from this photo, the light had a glass “bulb” that hung below the hood. It lit up fully, so it gave the effect of a hanging bare light bulb in an otherwise unlit room.

I was resigned to just live with the nightly glare, but then I heard at the most recent Advisory Neighborhood Commission meeting that if you are unhappy with your streetlights, the D.C. Department of Transportation will attempt to mitigate the glare. So I wrote Ron Lewis, my commissioner, and about a week later brand-new lights were installed.

The new lights actually make the alley itself brighter, but without the exposed glass “bulb” the light is more directed downward rather than sideways. It still creates a less than romantic atmosphere in the garden, but the glare into the house itself is significantly reduced.

So let it be known: If your alley lights are glaring into your bedroom at night, give your commissioner a call.

Topher Mathews blogs at The Georgetown Metropolitan . The Local Blog Network is a group of bloggers from around the D.C. region who have agreed to make regular contributions to All Opinions Are Local.

Every year, the business group Virginia FREE rates the Old Dominion’s legislators according to how well they meet the organization’s definition of what it means to be “pro-business.”

Despite the free-for-all conservatism of this year’s General Assembly, the legislature only gets about a “C-plus” grade. The big reason? Lack of progress on improving roads.

Republicans control the Senate, with a split of 20 seats each between the parties and Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling holding the deciding vote. FREE’s figures, however, show that the Senate rates only a 78.4 “pro-business” score, according to an analysis by the Associated Press. The GOP-dominated House of Delegates comes in slightly lower, at 77.7.

Virginia FREE says that the legislative year started well enough with Gov. Robert F. McDonnell pushing to take on $3 billion in new debt for roads, to be used along with another $1 billion in previously unspent funds. But he and the legislature failed to do anything about raising gasoline taxes, which have languished at 17.5 cents per gallon for nearly three decades and haven’t even been adjusted for inflation. “At a bare minimum,” the group says, “new money is required to meet basic maintenance needs, restore viability to the construction budget and ensure that Virginia is a viable partner with the private sector on (public-private transportation) projects.”

The District is fourth on Transit Score, sixth on Bike Score (and fourth to Bicycling Mag­azine), seventh on Walk Score, sixth worst in traffic, and second in tech job growth. The parks folks have decided to get into the headline-grabbing rankings business (successfully) with a new “Park Score,” and D.C. comes in fifth.

The Trust for Public Land ranked the 40 largest U.S. cities on five metrics: the amount of parkland in the city, median park size, the percentage of residents within one-half mile of a park, park spending per capita and the quantity of playgrounds by population.

D.C. placed fifth, after San Francisco, Sacramento, New York, and Boston. The five worst cities are Indianapolis, Mesa, Louisville, Charlotte, and Fresno. Virginia Beach was No. 7, Baltimore No. 15.

[Continue reading David Alpert’s post at Greater Greater Washington.]

David Alpert is founder and editor of Greater Greater Washington. The Local Blog Network is a group of bloggers from around the D.C. region who have agreed to make regular contributions to All Opinions Are Local.

Former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen joins the Wall Street Journal in charging that because the Governor signed Del. Bob Marshall’s bill barring Virginia law enforcement officials from detaining American citizens without trial, that McDonnell has all but scuppered his chances of being the GOP vice presidential nominee. Thiessen writes in a column on The Post’s Web site:

McDonnell’s national security credentials have come into question, thanks to his mishandling of a bill passed by the Virginia General Assembly that disassociates the commonwealth from the military detention of al-Qaeda or its terrorist affiliates who happen to be U.S. citizens. The bill, HB 1160, would effectively bar Virginia state troopers from arresting a terrorist like Anwar al-Awlaki if they knew he would be put in military detention. McDonnell didn’t raise a finger to stop this odious legislation as it made its way through the Virginia legislature. As a result, it passed 97-3 in the House of Delegates and 39-1 in the state Senate.

If the ragged neo-con remnant is against you, Bob, then you must be doing something right. Even when that opposition runs the line between hysteria and hilarity:

Compare McDonnell’s inaction to last week’s fight over terrorist detention legislation on Capitol Hill. When Reps. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Justin Amash (R-Mich.) offered an amendment that would have barred military detention for al-Qaeda terrorists captured in the United States, Republican leaders rallied the GOP caucus to defeat the amendment. Thanks to their efforts, only 19 Republicans voted in favor. By contrast, all but four of the 87 elected Republicans in Richmond voted to have the state employees of Virginia lay down their arms in the war against al-Qaeda. That is a failure of leadership. It is also a serious blow to McDonnell’s chances of becoming the next vice president of the United States.

But for those of those who do not see terrorists lurking in behind every tree, shrub and vegetable stand in the commonwealth, what McDonnell did was rather old-fashioned, even quaint: He signed a bill that recognizes there are limits to federal power, and that sometimes a state must exercise its reserved powers to see that those limits are not exceeded.

That’s the kind of leadership the nation could use a lot more of.

Norman Leahy blogs at Bearing Drift. The Local Blog Network is a group of bloggers from around the D.C. region who have agreed to make regular contributions to All Opinions Are Local.