On Saturday night, a few dozen people who live in Alexandria’s Del Ray neighborhood gathered at Judy Lowe Neighborhood Park to bid it goodbye. The city of Alexandria had announced that the park, which abuts US Senator from Ohio and Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance’s house, would be closed “until further notice” due to a request from the US Secret Service. Parking would be restricted to residents on the block nearby, the city said, and law enforcement would barricade the park.
The party “wasn’t anything more than just the community saying goodbye to this space where we gather all the time,” says Becky Hammer, an Alexandria lawyer and frequent poster on Bluesky, the boutique social network where some of the city’s YIMBYs have carved out a discussion space that was partly where the gathering was organized. “It wasn’t a huge rager or anything.” The park features a playground for small children, and Hammer says she’s spent hundreds of hours there.
This being Del Ray, where more than 65 percent of the vote at the precinct near the park went to Joe Biden in 2020, the event had a Democratic tinge—a teenager who attended made Hammer a friendship bracelet that says “Kamala Is Brat”—and this being the United States in 2024, there was blowback on Twitter. Hammer posted a photo of the gathering on Bluesky, where she has 1,500 followers, that indicated they were in front of Vance’s house. Right-wing influencer and aspiring right-wing influencer accounts then shared a screenshot of her post to complain about her identifying Vance’s house, thereby broadcasting what it looks like even further. Harassment ensued. “That’s why I’m not on Twitter anymore,” says Hammer, who has kept her account on the service, though it’s locked.
Alexandria is no stranger to neighbors with boldfaced names. I haven’t heard anyone complain seriously about a locked-down block, especially after an assassination attempt on Vance’s running mate last month that involved numerous apparent failures by the Secret Service. Some grumbling about the inconvenience, sure, but the closures are fairly easy to work around. “Nobody objects to the idea that the park should be closed off,” Hammer said. “I think people are surprised it didn’t happen earlier.” Other attendees shared the same sentiment; one told me Vance would have been welcome if he’d been home and wandered over.
But still, Vance’s presence in the neighborhood is complex. Like his neighborhood in Ohio, it’s got a lot of people who likely count as the type of “elites” he disdains in appearances. A few residents welcomed him with yarn art when he moved in last year but when the Washington Post visited Del Ray last month, most of the quotes its reporters culled were of the grudging acceptance variety—”He’s got to live somewhere,” one person said. Del Ray (where I live, too) is a self-consciously quirky place with a lively main drag on Mt. Vernon Avenue with restaurants, cute shops, and a farmers market on the weekend. Vance appears to have maintained a light footprint in the neighborhood since he arrived. “I think the reaction would be a little different if it was somebody that we all knew,” Hammer said.
The fed-managed rollout of what some people are calling “Fort Vance” wasn’t totally smooth—Jersey barriers first went up blocking a bike lane and sidewalk on Commonwealth Avenue, which the city had promised wouldn’t happen. City officials got on scene quickly and worked things out with the feds. “[O]ur team has been working in close collaboration with our Federal partners to minimize the impact,” Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson told Washingtonian in a text message.
On Monday morning about ten motorcycles from Secret Service Police and DC police were parked in the bike lane next to the Jersey barriers lining the west side of the park. Two tents were set up at either end of Vance’s block, one behind signs alerting pedestrians that they consent to a search if they enter the cordon. Across Commonwealth, new yarn art that reads “☮, ❤️ & Kamala” had sprouted on a telephone pole. One person nearby flew a flag with the Democratic Party’s donkey symbol. “Harris for President,” “Cats for Kamala,” and signs promoting the reelection of Vance’s fellow US Senator from Ohio, the Democrat Sherrod Brown, appeared in yards nearby. Some of them looked like they had been re-angled to face Vance’s abode since I saw them on Friday. The whole scene offered many reminders that in 2024, nothing about living in the DC area is simple.
Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. He was previously with the Poynter Institute, TBD.com, and Washington City Paper. He lives in Del Ray.
