On the YouTubes: Camps, Clusters, and Color Swatches (We Watch the Reston Association Videos So You Don't Have To)

Much like an experimental film from the late 1960s, this month's edition of Reston Today opens abruptly on a discordant note, with a boisterous group of children of the corn RA campers shouting and waving at the camera before we segue away to Andy Sigle, who is far away from the camps (and presumably out of earshot). And we're off on yet another monthly video tour of what's doin' in our favorite earth-toned planned community!

First, we bid adieu to former RA CEO Milton Matthews, who departed at the end of last month and was credited for his "quiet but effective leadership." No word yet on the RA annexing his home in Maryland to get around the residency requirement that prompted him to move on in the first place, but maybe they're still drawing up the plans.

Next, we learn about all of Reston's "clusters," each of which have "specific design standards." We confess that we momentarily got excited when we saw this (comparative) rainbow of colors as a thick binder of regulations for one cluster was opened in some pretty sweet B-roll footage:

But before we could run to Home Depot to pick up a few cans of that lovely purple on the bottom of the page, we realized those were just the key to the binder's color-coded dividers. Here's the actual approved palette:

Oh, well. That beige with a soupçon of mustard yellow looks pretty good too. We guess.

There was more stuff about the RA camps, which are admittedly awesome, but frankly we had a bit of tinnitus from the opening sequence so we couldn't really fathom what was being said. So we come to the end of another 5 minutes and 23 seconds of our summer (and by extension, our lives) that could have been spent at the beach. Happy summer!