The latest casualty in Frank Winstead’s war against pedestrians is Politics and Prose, which had to remove its outdoor bench. One step closer to making Chevy Chase a people-free zone.

Roger Lewis discusses the value of sidewalk tables, benches, chess games, and ping pong in his latest appearance on WAMU‘s Kojo Nnamdi Show. There’s a particularly good discussion starting at 19:09 12:27 about the value of sidewalks in older suburbs and misguided opposition to sidewalks in newer ones.

If you listen to the whole thing, start at 6:40 to skip past the hot air coming from the Virginia Republican Senate candidate who believes that we can fix transportation without paying for it by simply gathering together some scientists and engineers to come up with solutions. News flash: transportation costs money, and I didn’t hear him talking about cutting road funding. Update: They’ve corrected the audio stream to begin at the start of the Lewis interview instead of six minutes before.

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.