Flores-Gambino 51st Annual Memorial Day Picnic

This year marks the 51st annual celebration of the Flores Gambino Family Memorial Day Picnic, in the Penrose neighborhood off Columbia Pike. This year featured a bit of singing and dancing in the rain.

Homegrown live music was the highlight again (with some special guests like local punk/rock legend Skeeter Enoch Thompson, and Trevor Young, lead guitar player from the group SOJA), homemade covered potluck dishes of every taste and description, barbecue, relatives, friends, neighbors, moon bounce for the kids, and much good cheer.

Thanks again to Maria Flores, Joe Flores, Maria "Pete"Durgan, and the whole Flores Gambino clan. Great hosts, South Arlington icons - and they know how to throw down and party, every year since 1965. All good, all good.

Photography by Lloyd Wolf.

Patrick Henry Elementary School - Community mapping crew 2

Additional pictures of the 3rd grade community mapping students in teacher Nathan Erwin's class at Patrick Henry Elementary School, just off Columbia Pike.

They are studying the environment, animals, clean streets, and other topics they find are important to the community, and creating illustrated maps to document their findings.

A lively and bright bunch.

Photography by Lloyd Wolf.

Patrick Henry Elementary School - Community mapping crew 1

The Columbia Pike Documentary Project has continued its work with Patrick Henry Elementary School teacher Nathan Erwin's third grade class project on community mapping.

Thanks to Mr. Erwin and the enthusiastic students in the League of Learners.

Photography by CPDP intern Chenxing (Charlotte) Yang.

Food Star - a change is gonna come

The Food Star Grocery store, and the stores surrounding it in the small shopping center at 950 S. George Mason Drive in Arlington Virginia (at the corner of S. George Mason and Columbia Pike), has been a fixture for decades.

It is due to be demolished soon, to be replaced by a development named the Columbia Pike Village Center. This new development will be six stories tall, and is planned to have a larger grocery store (possibly one owned and run by the Harris Teeter Corporation), additional retail stores, 365 market-rate apartments, a three-level parking garage, and a public square. It is being developed by Reston-based Orr Partners.

Changes.

It will be interesting to see if any of the ethnic businesses and foods - and pinatas - will thrive or be included after the building phase of this new project has been completed.

CPDP photographer Duy Tran, who has lived along Columbia Pike for his entire life, documented the store and the shopping center for posterity.

Photography by Duy Tran.