Flashbacks:
The RNGC Caddyshackpocalypse
Bollards!
At great risk and personal expense, we have managed to obtain footage from the never-aired pilot of Mad Men, in which the focus was not on a New York City advertising agency, but a suburban Washington defense contractor. In this scene, Don Draper, Roger Sterling, and Sal Romano (portrayed here by their Captain Pike-like understudies) discuss whether it would be more lucrative to strap bombs to dolphins or infect monkeys with Ebola.
Oh, who are we kidding? Please to be enjoying this photograph from 1972 of "three businessmen strolling in front of the Reston International Center," which depicts three businessmen strolling in front of the Reston International Center, perhaps walking to Chilis or whatever good-time eatery existed in that space at that time, the end.
I just happened to be listening to ELO as I pulled this picture up - it was a beautiful thing. So classic!
ReplyDeleteHmmmmm, Anon @ 3:06, are you sure it wasn't one of those LSD flashbacks you were experiencing?
ReplyDeleteWas the sky a multitude of colors? Were the pants bell bottomed? Did you have an unusual hunger for, mmmm, chocolate chip cookies?
...just askin'
Don't know about that, but those ties are definitely giving me flashbacks
ReplyDeleteAhhh.... the 70's. I remember them well. I had a pair of plaid bell-bottoms that I wore with my silky long sleeve puffy shirt. I really don't know what we were thinking...
ReplyDeleteThey're probably coming back from watching one of the XXX flicks that were a staple of the Reston Twin Cinemas. That would certainly go a long way towards explaining their goofy grins.
ReplyDeleteLeows Reston Twin was where Chilis is now.
ReplyDeleteWhen I worked there it had Rain Man and The Rescuers for like 2 years.
Now one can see human drama unfold every night at the Chilis happy hour instead, though the stories now are much the same with simpletons who are good at counting matchsticks and sexy Hungarian mice.
You will note that they are all gazing away from the windowless, lifeless, very ungreen Brutalist building to their right. Is that the former Leow's Twin?
ReplyDeleteThat hideous abomination is now torn down we believe.
Nah. The Movie theatre was in the space that Chili's now occupies. That space was Charlie Chiang's for eons.
ReplyDeleteI sat through one, exactly one, film at that theatre. The year was 1983 and it was a very dark and stormy night. I have no idea how we managed to get from McLean, were we lived, to the twin (imagine that --- ONLY two screens!)cinema at the then unknown place called Reston. It seemed to take hours to get there over dangerous roads (some things in Reston never change) and the toll-it-for-a-few-years-until-it's-paid-for "toll road" was being built. Joke was on us for sure --- who knew that, all these years later, that damn road is still not paid for! But I digress...
ReplyDeleteWe must have hop-scotched through Great Falls somehow and managed to get washed into Reston.
The flick we saw was "Diner." About a town with a real and really gritty urban core -- not the lala land Reston Town Center.
There was no place to eat, no place to do anything. Reston Town Center was still a boreal forest and there was a dreadful forlorn place called "Memco" where the Home Depot is now. I think it was a pre-Costco Costco, but it was literally an island in the middle of the badlands!
I guess LAVC was there, but God save anyone who tried to find it in those dark GPS-less days!
I think this photo is pre-ELO. I keep looking at this pic and thinking Carly Simon, or some old AM radio hits.
ReplyDeleteThink about it - this was the Reston town center before there was a Reston Town Center. No wonder it now feels so lonely and abandoned. At least Reston Kabob is doing well.