A Belated Introduction

If you've joined recently, this post is for you.

Readers: this coming Tuesday will mark three months that I’ve been writing daily here at The Deleted Scenes! I realize that many of you have signed up recently and/or are not necessarily familiar with my work overall, so I wanted to write a post introducing and describing the newsletter. (If you came in because of my viral pro-pedestrian tweet the other day, you’ll like my writing.)

I also wanted to issue a challenge: I won’t tell you how large the email list is, but I will tell you I’d like to add 50 to it by the time I reach that three-month mark next Tuesday! So if you’re a fan of this newsletter or a particular post here, share it, tweet it, consider an upgrade to paid!

First, the name. The theme of this newsletter/blog is the “deleted scenes” of my writing, and so every time I publish an article somewhere, I do a complementary post here elaborating on certain points, or adding material that didn’t end up fitting, due to space or because it would have taken the article in a different direction. You’ll find posts like that here, for example, with some extra material and photos from a road trip to Staunton, Virginia I did for Strong Towns, or here, where I make some adjacent points on a piece in The Week about liquidation sales, and in The Bulwark on the Sony DAT, a 1980s audio format.

However, this aspect of the newsletter is really just one, and not even the largest one. After all, I’m not publishing articles in magazines every day, but I write here every day. Much of my writing fits, less literally, into the “deleted scenes” theme because it’s a shorter, more conversational version of what I publish elsewhere. It allows me to zoom in on something that might get a sentence in a freelance essay or just not quite fit, but can’t be expanded to a full essay itself. It’s a format where I can work a little something into a few hundred thought-provoking or insightful words, or where I can share interesting things that would be a tough sell for an editor who needs to drive traffic and hit the news cycle.

For example, here are some quick thoughts on small towns and urbanism. Or here’s a piece I did about Bud’s, a 1990s chain in the Walmart portfolio. Have you ever heard of it? I never had, and I have more interest in retail history than a lot of people! Or here, a few hundred words on the different feel of the Maryland and Virginia suburbs, both places I explore a lot (and have lived in).

I also run pieces on food and cooking, since I cook nearly every day, such as this piece appreciating tomato paste or this one with some tips for making Chinese-restaurant food at home. And as with the Bud’s post, or this one on the long and weird corporate history of Vornado, I also touch on retail history from time to time.

But urbanism, land use, architecture, small towns, road trips, and that whole cluster of issues is the real core of what I do. A good deal of my posts and feature articles come about by driving somewhere, exploring, taking pictures, reading local history, and seeing what comes into my head. It might be a meditation on the deep urbanism of rural villages. It might be a weekly “What Do You Think You’re Looking At?” post on a particular, interesting old building. It might be thoughts on urban design, like this post showing that a lot of ordinary suburban streets are wider than original U.S. Highways. I like to write about things that are often seen as wonky policy matters in a more narrative, illustrated, conversation way.

I’m not a planner or trained expert in these matters. I simply became interested in them, particularly after I moved down to the D.C. area from New Jersey several years ago. This area gets knocked a lot for being transient or soulless or lacking in character or not being a “real place.” I very much disagree with that estimation, as I wrote here. There are so many layers of history and culture. The Virginia countryside is also full of beauty and interesting little places.

I also consistently argue that land use and urbanism are not left or progressive issues, per se. They should be of interest to everyone, because we all live somewhere. And from 19th century small towns to old trolley maps, there’s plenty of precedent in this country for density, transit, and good living without an automobile.

I’ve got plenty of material coming up, as well. Thoughts on buffets and COVID. A trip out to West Virginia. Illustrated “walking audits” of Northern Virginia commercial corridors. Much more. In fact, my list of post ideas is growing longer the more I write, and this will remain a daily newsletter for the foreseeable future.

I hope you’ll explore the archives, follow my new posts, and consider subscribing, so you can unlock the full archive plus a weekend subscribers-only post. But more than that, I hope I can make you think or appreciate things, whether in this region or in your own corner of the world.