For 51 years, the Annandale Small Arms Range has been a gathering place for local gun aficionados, who often stopped by to pop off a few rounds after work or to chat amiably with Drew Smith, the assistant manager armed with a Glock 9mm pistol on his hip.
But early Saturday evening, the managers of the last gun range inside the Beltway packed up their things and, just after sunset, left town.
Shoppers in the parking lot at the nearby Giant supermarket had been known to jump at the sound of gunfire from the Annandale Small Arms Range on Columbia Pike, which closed Saturday.
(Tracy A. Woodward - The Washington Post)
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A dispute between Smith's bosses and the building's landlords couldn't be resolved, so Smith said he had no choice but to clean out the place, take down the cowboy hat hanging on the wall and close the doors for the last time.
"It's going to be missed," Smith said of the neighborhood fixture on Columbia Pike. "You can't re-create what we have here. . . . Older guys from Annandale just come around to talk. People who shot as kids come by and say hello and sit and talk about life. It's like a barbershop setting."
It was a loosely run place where even novice shooters could plunk down a few dollars and rent a gun for an hour, no questions asked. Targets were hand-cranked on pulleys. The armor plating at the back of the alleys was so old that Smith boasted it had bullets from the past 51 years lodged inside.
Longtime customers called the range a vestige of Old Dominion culture that over the years gave way to the changing demographics in the counties close to Washington.
The range opened when there were barely a handful of Koreans in the area, when acres of farmland lay nearby to the west and south. It was a quiet area of Fairfax County, older residents said.
Now Annandale, known unofficially as Washington's Koreatown, is bustling with commerce and traffic-choked roads.
Stores with Korean signs -- some with no English translation -- surrounded the tiny range, which was in the basement of an aging white building near Columbia Pike and Little River Turnpike.
Koreatown could soon come to this little corner of Annandale, too: Proposals call for the now-vacated basement to be turned into an Asian karaoke club.
"You think we need another karaoke bar?" Smith asked sarcastically. "There are only like three in the span of two blocks."
New and old Annandale did not always mesh easily, although Smith noted that on Fridays, which was "ladies' night," the range would sometimes draw curious young Asian women who came for the half-price bullets and the experience of shooting a gun.
But the range's clientele was largely non-immigrant through the years.
Mark Mills, 46, who has lived in Annandale all his life, said he has accepted the changes to his community, but not all of them make him feel welcome. English is a second language in many of the shops, for instance.
