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Rejuvenating Loudoun
AOL workers, from left, Maggie McCanner, Art Prediger, Kim Rote, Nathan Lucas, Christy Abramson and Rudy Ormsby gather at Clyde's Willow Creek Farm.
(By Tracy A. Woodward -- The Washington Post)
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So, what do young professionals do for fun in Loudoun?
"How old do we look?" said Jason Richards of Leesburg. "We have kids."
Better go to Clyde's. That's where the young people hang out, they said.
At Clyde's Willow Creek Farm in Broadlands, the youngest-looking guy at the bar is 26 years old -- and has three kids. He moved to the area to build a house for his family.
"I just work and play with my kids," Paul Sacher said. "That's about it."
Finally, at Shisha Lounge in Sterling there is a small group of college-age adults smoking hookah. Two are foreigners, au pairs for Loudoun families. And three live with parents and attend community college.
The restaurant managers promise that the young people really show up on the weekend.
Still, the county has trouble shaking the image of being a Metro-less suburb full of families and strip malls.
Erin Martinez, 23, grew up in Loudoun and works for the county. For nightlife, she'll drive to Alexandria. Loudoun lacks personality, she said.
"Everything is so cookie cutter," she said.
Raj Lal, 22, said as soon as he and his friends turned 18, they started to frequent the District's clubs and hookah bars. Today, he said, he treks downtown at least twice a week, even though his two jobs are in Ashburn and Sterling.
Though Arlington and Montgomery counties have become known for their trendy eateries and pockets of urbanism, their numbers of young adults have decreased, while they are growing in outer Northern Virginia and the District. In Arlington, the number of people in their 20s has dropped from 22 percent of the population in the 2000 census to about 14 percent today.
