I suppose this ties into both Suki series, since I never mention a payphone in either. In the draft for the second Suki With A Twist story I mention landline phones in a hotels. I recall people my age complaining about disappearing payphones a few years ago, but have not heard much about it lately. For the geomapped versions of these pictures in higher resolution, click the link below each one.
All of the locations are in the Crystal City Underground. The maps show the approximate position of the camera's corresponding "above ground" location.
There is one more location I need to shoot, by the old food court. The last two images above are from the north end. There are two remaining payphones closer to the METRO, behind the security desk at the public restrooms across from Dunkin' Donuts.
I spent a bit of the weekend taking pictures of AnimeUSA.Org con attendees and posted them on the SukiProject blog. Keyword AnimeUSA. The care taken in making these costumes is amazing.
Books on display, in order listed above, at Park Sundries
Park Sundries is center left in this frame, behind the black car.
Entrance to 2231 Crystal Drive (Crystal Park III). Park Sundries is in the left in frame.
This is as near to "ground zero" as one can get in the novels, making it a very special location to me. Suki and her mother's offices are one block south, on the 2300 block of Crystal Drive.
In Suki With A Twist: Part One, the spa Suki attends is nearby, she and her friends dine at the Steak House on the 11th floor of this entrance. Her apartment is several blocks to the north, on the same side of the street. In Suki I, she walks past this location from her mother's office on the way to the METRO station and she walks past it several other times, including a few times with John the morning after their first date.
Much of Suki III: Never Let Us End, occurs near here too.
Many thanks to all who frequent Park Sundries and those who purchase my books there.
In the 2030s environment set for both Suki book series, there is mention of "the hyperinflation" from earlier years. Inflation is under control, but prices may seem higher to the reader compared with today. I didn't want to change the form of currency, I stuck with the history that I am used to where prices go up and so do salaries (actual inflation) with a nod or two at price appreciation. Manufactured goods continue to be cheaper and cheaper in adjusted dollars, etc. In Suki I, Patricia tries to tip a pizza deliveryman $100 and she uses the same amount to bribe a cab driver into letting Suki smoke in the car. Table dances at exotic dance clubs are $1000, but all of the items for a new gourmet kitchen are less expensive than a high-end refrigerator today.
No, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is not an ally of mine trying to make my books come true. His latest move of printing $600 Billion, to buy bonds and flood the economy with money, is a made-to-order act to guarantee high inflation for the next several years.
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I will sweeten the pot and help out a fellow business person at the same time. If you send me a picture of you wearing a "Got Suki?" t-shirt (pictured above) I will autograph any of my paperbacks that are in your collection and Iwill pay the return postage! Also, any contributor I can find named on the book will autograph it too. I see three of them every week, so you are guaranteed three autographs. OK, one of them is a translator, so he is only named on two books but I am sure he will be cool about it. Just shoot me an email JohnTagliaferro [you know what goes here] Gmail [and the rest].
Recent story and comments at SukiProject.Blogspot.Com.
In the news today is a story (at the link above) about a worm/malware attack affecting various industries in several countries, including Iran. Not many details yet and the idea is a familiar one: Shut down an infrastructure by disabling the automated systems that control it.
What I did in the book was guess a little bit at the future, using my almost five decades of life experience with evolving technology, as to what the Iranians might have in the 2030s. Since I do not have a clue now, nor at the time of the outlining and writing, what the Iranians have, I took a stab at what might be around in general twenty years from now and had the Iranians ripping-off systems that are slightly dated.
I started with a view of US forces in the Continental US (CONUS) and gave my male lead some credit for the systems being used by US/Israeli Allied forces. Autonomous aircraft and trucks were a big thing, makes for a good visual for the mind. There needed to be a supply scheduling system tying all that together, so I made one up and to illustrate it, I had a US Marine with a small staff monitoring the Eglin Air Force Base deployment operations.
One thing I was trying to avoid was having the couple involved in brutal, horrible, violent encounters like were in the books that preceded Suki IV. The "drama" for this book was their work with the government and John's son being in the war zone. By this time, John's son and Suki's best friend are a couple too. That was enough emotional tension for me.
John's muscle-car building and aviation program management skills come in handy, since he is one of the "geeks" assigned to defeat Iranian cargo aircraft and he gets to help out with the rolling stock. However, one thing I did differently than what has been described in the current story about Iran, the Allies are actively targeting specific functions within Iranian machines.
Not to be left out, I gave Suki a breakthrough. She discovers the "Allah Hack" to bypass the biometric locks on all of the Iranian equipment.
Interesting picture forwarded by one of my military fact-checkers. A stripped bicycle, vicinity 12th & N, NW:
I was passing I & 7th and met this nice young lady distributing Street Sense "Where the poor and homeless earn and give their two cents." It began in 2003 and it is certainly and contains some interesting stories. If you see these folks, give a donation and take a look at their paper.
Zoom in on the green sign on the corner. This is where all that Stimulus Money went!
All this only generally relates to the 2030s environment of the Suki series. Some feedback I have gotten about how I depict DC is that nobody there has any manners in the 2030s. I am here to tell you, they are generally short on manners now and I don't see it changing for the better in the future. In Suki I some of the overly regulated nature is mentioned. It may be mentioned in the first three books in that series. I may have give the impression that DC and MD are impoverished, which was not my thought at all. What I was trying to bring out is if people live in a nanny state it does not matter what their income, they have a a tendency to behave badly when not under the watch of the authorities and sometimes right in front of the police.
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.
A new event in the 2000s and '10s, Vintage Crystal continues into the 2030s of Suki and John's world.
The Crystal City Business Improvement District (BID) is turning up the heat with the return of the flavor-filled fourth annual Vintage Crystal. The spice is back with more wines, food, music and dancing. Building on last year’s Latin-themed success, Crystal City will once again be serving up tasty tapas, tempting tequila, and a ton of fun.
This is what I call a Libertarian neighborhood party. Everything is on private property and the local businesses provide all of the entertainment. If I mention this in any of the Suki series books, the security will be privately contracted and professional in the 2030s, rather than the arrangement Arlington County is involved in as pictured.
Activist groups protest in Arlington, Virginia, frequently, against the “new plantation system”. In Virginia, the police cannot use “voyeur cam” evidence, nor government security cam evidence, as the only evidence against people for traffic violations. An officer must be present to issue a ticket. This results in a “misunderstanding” with drivers from DC and Maryland having the impression that they can do anything if a police officer is not present.
Northern Virginia and Manhattan have the highest concentration of voyeur cams in the USA and their images can be used in civil suits. When DC and MD drivers injure people or, in most cases, damage very expensive vehicles of their victims, they are held liable in VA courts. They frequently do not have enough insurance coverage to cover the damage and lose their homes. Then the protestors come in and disrupt traffic for hours or days because of the “plantation boss” who just “won” a house in DC, to pay for their ongoing medical treatment, of course.
Above is part of the 2030s setting for both Suki series novels. The budding Arlington County 'libertopia' is surrounded by jurisdictions full of people who are used to government handouts and not used to individual responsibility. When working through how the concept was going to be presented in the books I only mentioned a demonstration in front of Suki's apartment and the couple spends time in John's neighborhood of Rosslyn instead.
Below, some pictures from my friend, Kourtney "Coach" Young and his video record of Crystal City Under Siege, 12 March 2009:
In this case, from 2009, the ANSWER crowd has some beef with KBR. Video is available on YouTube, mostly uploaded 22 March 2009, if you are interested in more of what these demonstrators had to say.
See Suki's neighborhood on the map of Suki's World:
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.
At the Crystal City 2600 Crystal Drive Starbucks I saw a guy reading Suki I just a little while ago. Was interesting, bordering on thrilling, as I glanced his direction and saw him turn a page with a look of interest on his face. He read it for several minutes. I never anticipated any thoughts or feelings I might have if I saw someone reading one of my books.
The Concord Starbucks, as it is known currently, is the one that inspired #OpBookDrop by Ami Hendrickson, on Twitter. Actually, that man was reading the book that I left that day. It is also a location in Suki I that the couple visits on an early date. The pictures below are recent at that location.
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.
