Port City Dispatches: Bike Lanes, Amalgamated Classic Clothing, Sugar Gliders and Potomac Yard Park

Here are some of the week's important, interesting and fun stories concerning Alexandria and its people.

From Alexandria Patch sites:

Traffic Board: More Compromise Needed in King Street Bike Lane Proposal — By Drew Hansen

Plans for bike lanes in a short segment of King Street between Russell Road and Janney’s Lane are on hold after Alexandria’s Traffic and Parking Board deferred action of the city’s proposal Monday night.

The majority of speakers at the hearing expressed support for the plan, but many residents along the stretch of King Street said they did not believe the narrowing of travel lanes and the removal of 27 on-street parking spaces to create buffers and install bike lanes would improve safety on the busy roadway.

Speeding in that stretch of King Street is a frequent problem and 30 vehicular crashes have been recorded in the last five years.

The Traffic and Parking Board recommended city staff implement pedestrian improvements of the proposal but come back with a plan for traffic calming and bicycle access that includes more compromise.

More:

• Thousands Brave Frigid Alexandria Turkey Trot — By Drew Hansen
• Colony of Sugar Gliders Surrendered to Alexandria Animal Control — By Drew Hansen 
• Potomac Yard Park to Open Dec. 14 — By Drew Hansen 
• Waterfront Market and Cafe Opens — By Drew Hansen 
• Mama Reacer's Staff Distributes Thanksgiving Turkeys  — By Drew Hanse
• Obama's Drug Czar Visits Holy Cow for Small Business Saturday — By Drew Hansen 
• APYC Christmas Tree Sale Underway — By Drew Hansen 
• Alexandria Police Distribute Thanksgiving Meals — By Drew Hansen 
• Farewell, Bill Rogers! — By Drew Hansen 
• Animal Control Report: Rooster Captured — By Drew Hansen 

From elsewhere:

The Manhattan Vintage fair is the sort of place where 12-time Tony nominees go shopping for theater costumes alongside socialites in search of a flapper dress. Gene Elm and Shelley White, the owners of an Alexandria vintage clothing store, recall staffing their stand in 2009 and chatting with clients who browsed through their racks of clothing from the 1920s to early 1970s.

Elm recalls meeting an older woman with a British accent who carried a shopping list. Instead of looking for groceries, though, she was thumbing through tweedy-looking skirts. She chose two, and as she was leaving, she turned to Elm and said, “By the way, these are for Scarlett Johansson.”

Two months later, the movie star wore clothes that had once been stored at an Arlington warehouse onstage in “A View from the Bridge.” The Broadway performance would win Johansson a Tony Award, and earn Elm and White a prominent place in costumer Jane Greenwood’s Rolodex.

“Aunt Jane has been very good to us,” White said.

If you want to get into the costuming business, it helps to have an “aunt” with 16 Tony nominations. Greenwood has been working on Broadway for five decades and teaching design at Yale University for nearly 40 years. She bought clothes from White and Elm for three of her next Broadway projects: “Million Dollar Quartet,” “Driving Miss Daisy” and “That Championship Season.”

When she doesn’t need them herself, Greenwood has been recommending White and Elm to designers across the country; most recently, their clothes turned up at St. Louis Opera for “South Pacific” and in Seattle for the new musical “Secondhand Lions.” In 2014, their projects include dressing Alan Cumming and Michelle Williams in Roundabout Theatre’s revival of “Cabaret.”

Not bad at all for a 6-year-old vintage clothing business that is essentially a two-person operation run out of a 1,000-square-foot store in the Del Ray neighborhood of Alexandria, and a small warehouse in South Arlington. Amalgamated Classic Clothing and Dry Goods is what they call the shop.

• Alexandria Council Orders Manager to Hold Line on Taxes Next Year — By Pat Sullivan, The Washington Post
• Man Convicted on Racketeering, Prostitution Charges in Alexandria — By Rachel Weiner, The Washington Post
• Alexandria School Board Seeks Input on New Superintendent — By Michael Alison Chandler, The Washington Post
• Alexandria to Hand Count All Paper Ballots in Recount For Attorney General — By Michael Lee Pope, Alexandria Gazette Packet
• Alexandria Children Find Forever Homes For The Holidays — By Katie Smythe, AlexandriaNews.Org
• Breaking the Cycle — by Anna Harris, Alexandria Times
• When Grosser Met Peralta — by Jim McElhatton, Alexandria Times