To the couple in the black Jetta, the guy in the Altima, the people in the white Chevy pickup, and many others:
IT IS NOT APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR TO SLOW DOWN TO 15 MPH ON A MAJOR HIGHWAY SO YOU CAN PHOTOGRAPH THE DAMAGE AT THE PENTAGON!
Sweet, merciful crap. It seems like every time I drive through the area where VA 110, I-395, and Columbia Pike come together, some halfwit has decided to
1)Slow down and cause traffic backups,
2)have their passenger sit up on the windowsill of the vehicle with a camera,
3)swerve to the passing lane, and
4)take a FLASH photograph of the damaged side of the Pentagon.
Do you have any idea how you look from outside the bubble of your idiotic fantasy-world, where you are the only thing that matters? I don’t know whether to be most insulted as a driver, an Arlingtonian, a photographer, or a person with a goddamned sense of decency. Tonight I came home down 110 after dark and came right up on someone who had stopped-- STOPPED!– on the ramp that merges onto I-395 briefly and then exits to Columbia Pike, where I live. Meanwhile, in the left lane, people were slowing down and looking at the charred side of the building, oblivious to the traffic slamming on the brakes behind them.
SO, to you gawkers, I kindly invite you to
get the hell off the road. You are blocking traffic and sooner or later someone is going to plow into you. The results will be unpleasant. This town has had enough problems this fall.
get a clue about photography. At night, the flash on the disposable Fun-Cam ™ you bought at the Air and Space Museum will not illuminate the Pentagon from two hundred yards away, and the movement of the car will probably smear the image.
get some f*ing discretion. This isn’t Disneyland, it’s my neighborhood. Don’t stick your head out of the car like you’re at MTV’s Spring Break. Go to the makeshift memorial by the Navy Annex with the other onlookers.
Enough people have died here. We don’t need you to cause car accidents just so you can go home and show your neighbors your vacation pictures from Arlington!
I live a block away from the Pentagon. Not only did this make the week following 9/11 a party in a box (State Police blocking off roads, guards outside my bank telling me that even though I was a customer at that bank, I couldn’t use the ATM because it was on DoD property), but it also means that to get onto Columbia Pike, I have to drive right past the Pentagon and the crowds.
The crowds of people who are taking pictures, leaving memorials, etc, which is fine, but if I have to slam on the brakes again because you’re stopped in the middle of the farkin’ road so Aunt Bee can get a GOOD look at the charred hole, I’m-a buyin me a catapult.
Slightly more bothersome to me are the people who pose their families in front of the vista of destruction to get a picture. Seriously-on the weekends you can see herds of people walking over there to get pictures. One little shit was even making rabbit ears behind his sister’s head while Dad took the picture of them with the destruction in the background.
Now I would take a picture of the Pentagon (I live in Maryland). I saw the Pentagon the Saturday after the attacks. Feeling useless and freaked out, I did the only thing I could do at the time (after donating money and blood) - I baked bread and brownies and took it to the Pentagon City Fire Station. I also took my kids with me and explained what we were doing and why.
We saw the destruction on the way home. At that time, there was NO stopping; everything was still blocked off. I’d like to go back and take a picture and keep it for when my children are older. I don’t want them to forget.
But I’d never use it as a freakin’ photo op with my kids.
Not to excuse these idiots (because there is no excuse for driving in a manner that endangers others), but has Virginia put up any signs pointing people to where they might safely take pictures?
I lived in No.Va. for about half my life so far, and still live in the DC area, but I couldn’t tell you where the Navy Annex or the temporary memorial is. If this is as big a problem as you say, then it sounds like something VDOT should spend a few minutes on.
Now this I really don’t understand.
You’d think people would show some respect. I don’t have any problem with people taking a picture; I can understand the desire to be able to say, fifty years from now, “I saw it; it really happened. Here’s the picture I took.” It’s how we’re wired, I think.
But to use it as your backdrop for the family picture - that’s trivialization. Do that with Mount Rushmore or the Lincoln Memorial if you want to. But hundreds of people got killed here, ferchrissake; it’s not just another photo op. Show some respect for their memories, and for the feelings of anyone visiting who actually knew any of the victims.
Well, they’ve got their hands full with the Springfield crash course. Things might have changed since last Monday, (and I just rode VA110–Jeff Davis Hwy from Rosslyn to Crystal City, there may be a sign on Wash. Blvd, but I doubt it.) but no: No signs directing people to the makeshift memorial at the Navy Annex among the dozens of signs taking you to the Pentgon directly.
Anyway, except for Columbia Pike and the surface roads by the Annex and Pentagon City, all of the roads here are designed as limited access highways. People drive at 50-55 miles an hour and to newcomers, it’s hopelessly confusing. Generally I would have assumed common sense would dictate that you don’t stop to take a picture on a narrow highway like that. But then again, for the first few weeks, 395 was subject to sudden stops and starts due to onlookers.
Anyway, the makeshift memorial is at the base of the hill that the Navy Annex sits on, at Columbia Pike and Southgate Road. From I-395 you’d take the Washington Blvd. exit – number 8A and follow the signs directing you to Columbia Pike to the Navy Annex. It’s right in the shadow of the damaged side of the Pentagon.
I have to admit had I been in your part of the Country I would be looking at the Pentagon simply because I have only seen it once in my lifetime from a plane. No need to take my or anyone elses life into my own hands however. With that already said I do however live in a part of the Country where folks from down country come to my neck of the woods to gaze at the beautiful folliage. I say we need to forward this rant to all the friggin trolls who wander around aimlessly gawking at anything and everything except traffic and road signs from the confines of their vehicular bubble to STOP! Get out of your car , truck, off your ten speed or whatever you are using to roam the countryside with, gawk and drool and point at whatever you please!! And let the rest of the world that is still rotating around the axis you so warmly embrace as being YOURSELF, and let us not need to complete our journey albeit short or long with mental visuals of planning your DEATH!!
For Gods sake, what does anyone want with morbid pictures of that terrible day anyhow?? Gonna paste it in the photo album right next to Uncle Joe or Susies 10 birthday party?