In the libertarian world of 2030s Virginia in general and Crystal City in specific, private parks are the norm. They are open to the public 24/7, clean and safe. Public parks are where one goes to have trouble find them. Below are some of the privately owned parks as they look in the 2010s.
12th Street Park:
In the 2030s, this is the only private park in Crystal City that is not considered safe. The developer on the south side tries to keep it guarded, but the developer on the north side continues to make it accessible, rather than providing recreation space on the north end.
Outdoor sales of what was considered contraband and vice in earlier decades is rampant, but just a lure for thieves.
In Suki With A Twist: Part One, I describe a concept for parking garage traffic control. A quite simple system, actually. John is returning one of Suki's cars, a vintage Jaguar, as soon as he enters the underground parking garage he is guided by arrows that illuminate in the floor and on the posts of the garage. Suki's car has a reserved parking space and the system reads the radio-frequency tag (RF Tag) in the license plate of the car. The tag still has a visible number and does not appear any different than a 2010 Virginia license plate.
John uses a different system for his vehicles. The paints he uses on his vintage muscle cars are infused with nano-tags that report corrosion, ruptures in the paint system, leaks, etc.
Today I got a little video of a 2010 parking ticket and the current technology behind that. The video is pretty bad (my fault for being a bad camera operator), but you may be able to see the handheld device the Arlington County Parking Officer uses to record information and issue the ticket to a silver Mercedes convertible, VA tag XJL-2173:
Part One
The driver arrives and is none too happy, for something he must have known was wrong when he parked there.
There are several competing views on the government charging for parking on the street. In my opinion, that street was already paid for and people in the area pay for its maintenance through various other taxes. This is especially true in Arlington County, VA, where the streets are paid for through fuel taxes and an annual vehicle tax. One problem that arises with free street parking is employees of the local businesses take those spots before patrons can get park there ans spend money. A counter to that is, the neighborhood has plenty of underground parking, at reasonable rates during the week, free on weekends and evenings. For my books, I think I will stick with plenty of "free" parking in the area.
In Suki I, John parks one of his muscle cars across the street from Suki's apartment over night.
Before I began the outline for Suki I, I set down some rules for the environment the characters would be living in. Being set in the USA just a few years in the future, I decided that the country would be no more legally homogeneous than it is now. That ties into something I have noticed across the country, when people get used to their local laws they seem to think that they are the same everyplace. Certain laws anyway, which has run people into problems for decades, even centuries when it comes to Eastern vs. Western property rights rules.
In this case, a simple towing of a vehicle that happened a few days before this post:
Nothing particularly exciting there, on the face. The land owner has designated certain parking spots reserved for this-or-that. The land owner has made an arrangement with a wrecker company to monitor parking and remove vehicles that are parked without permission on the land.
Now imagine that adjoining jurisdictions, Washington, DC and most of Maryland, have different rules, where parking in areas like the one this vehicle was towed from being mostly controlled by the government and must be marked in a certain manner. Just for fun, imagine that the tow trucks in these areas are government trucks, not contractors, so being towed is less of a risk. When the drivers from that environment arrive in Virginia and just grab a spot because they think they can get away with it with maybe a ticket, they get a rude awakening when they discover their vehicle has been privately towed and is going to require a substantial payment to retrieve.
The above example is too minor for the short novels that I write, so there is a mention of a demonstration in Suki's neighborhood over someone from DC or MD losing their home for destroying a Virginian's property with their under-insured vehicle and bad driving habits.
The video above was taken from across the street from Chipotle, 2231 Crystal Drive, Arlington, VA 22202.
I placed John's condominium in Rosslyn, a community in Arlington County, VA, for several reasons:
- Several fantastic condominium buildings were being constructed around the time I began writing the outline for Suki I, in 2008. They had features like private elevators for each unit, ample parking, modern amenities, and high-level security.
- Close to a METRO station.
- Easy access to I-66 and other major highways.
- A generally quiet, safe neighborhood with a generally dense population of women within his dating age range within blocks.
- A great view (the view from John's balcony is borrowed from the view from Rep. Charlie Wilson's (D-TX) apartment, see Charlie Wilson's War).
The book begins in "the mid 2030s" and several years before that John's building was under construction. The contractor uses some unconventional techniques, advanced even for the future, that create problems with the inspectors (even though that is much less of a problem than in the current day) and slow the pace of filling the building.
John gets his premium unit at a great discount, good because he had a financial setback due to a fire in his old building and getting laid off from his defense contracting job. He started a new business, bought a bare condo and started building everything out, including his own furniture.
The way I write the METRO system of the future, there is a one-time (low) fee to purchase a SmarTrip card, that is supposed to identify the user. However, privacy advocates swap the cards in the old Food Court of Pentagon City Mall. The idea is to let METRO officials know ridership, but not know exactly who is going where. Transportation professionals doubt the story that the system cares about ridership at all, since all trains are eight cars long and they run 24 hours per day, seven days per week. Maximum capacity is always available and new techniques allow for track maintenance with minimal disruption.
The Cafe John likes to visit in his neighborhood.
In the 2010s, the closest Starbuck's Cafe to John's condo is the one pictured above. By the time he moves to the neighborhood, it is much larger and the building he lives in is closer to this location than the one that inspired my description of his building.
Another view of John's neighborhood and the cafe.
Yet another view of John's neighborhood.
This is just stupid and I am not putting anything like it in John's neighborhood. It is a solar powered trash compactor. In the future, valuable varieties of trash from buildings like John's is sold to keep condo fees down. The unsellable trash is removed, for a fee, by trash companies and eventually ends up in landfills. The landfills are located in places that can't use the land for much else and they profit from the refuse of others. Buildings lining the streets have trash receptacles that pay for marketable trash and there are severe community fines for leaving unmarketable trash on the street. Scroungers scour the few public trash cans for marketable trash.
Not long after meeting John in Suki I, a stranger offers to light Suki's cigarette near here. The water park is one of Suki's favorite spots in Arlington and she hopes to have her wedding ceremony here one day, if she ever finds a man who wants a Libertarian wedding (no wedding license).
A park that Suki enjoys in the first Suki series. She walks past this park between her apartment and work at her mother's office at 23rd and Crystal Drive.
Suki's apartment appears in most of the books. Located near the intersection of 15th Street South and Crystal Drive, in Crystal City, Arlington, VA 22202.
In Suki With A Twist, everything is store bought of the finest quality available in the 2030s.
Suki and John's first night together is in Suki's apartment, in Suki I. In Suki II: Sunshine Returns, almost everything happens in Suki's apartment from the point John rescues Suki from Sunshine. Much of Suki III: Never Let Us End happens in her apartment too.
Suki's apartment is at this intersection in both series. A previous apartment of John's, from the first series, is near here too.
Suki's apartment faces the river and airport, to the right of the shot. In the Suki With A Twist series, Suki keeps her import sports car collection in the underground parking garage.
In both series, the buildings on the west side of Crystal Drive (left side of shot) are much taller. In Suki With A Twist a covered pedestrian overpass crosses Crystal Drive, connecting the apartment buildings to The Underground.
Mentioned in the first series, occasionally there are protests in Suki's neighborhood by people from Washington, DC and Maryland. In the 2030s, Virginia requires people to be financially liable for damage they cause, especially while driving. When a DC or MD motorist loses their home the usual activists arrive in force to protest the "plantation mentality" of Virginians. These protests resemble this video (shot in DC, 2010, near one of John and Suki's favorite restaurants):
