I did an overnight stay in Rockville, to go see my classmate Bill Wirths do his Reverend Billy Wirtz act at Hank Dietle’s on the Pike. He does an amazing Blues/Boogie-woogie piano act with the history of Blues and his own story in it mixed in. I don’t know which is more fun…his music or his stories. 

His act is a lot of fun and he travels around the country so if he’s in your neighborhood you should catch it.

So I went down to Rockville, and since I figured I’d be sticking around for a while to explore my old neighborhood, I rented a room at a hotel next to the Twinbrook Metro station. I’ll go into my explorations in another post…things have changed So much that what little hasn’t changed just makes your heart ache. Or mine anyway. But I just want to note one Very happy change I saw next to the hotel.

You may recall this post from June 2021, where I shared the news that a certain despicable cool young people only nightspot was going under the wrecking ball. Some weeks later I ventured down to hopefully watch and get some shots of the pile of rubble it had become, only to see that it looked like it would be spared after all. The entire rest of the site had been leveled, but not that one building. I was unhappy about that, but so it goes.

So the morning after the Reverend’s performance I woke up early and decided to wander around. First thing I did was walk over to the site of what was once upon a time Fritzbee’s (later Fuddruckers) and see if the building still stood.

The massive new project they planned for the site turns out to be a art-deco-ish high rise apartment building with shopping and a Wegman’s at street level…

That’s almost all of the land that was once occupied by the old Radio Shack, some strip shopping (I used to get my art supplies at the Visual Systems store there) and a big parking lot. Some years ago they blocked off Fishers Lane where it connected to the Pike and made it all one big block. This new apartment building is sitting right over where Fisher’s lane used to be. Before I went to bed at the hotel next to it, I grabbed some night snacks at the Wegman’s and thought how nice it would be to live in a beautiful art deco apartment where I had a Wegman’s and the Matchbox across the street, and an easy walk to the Metro. But I am not going back to renting if I can help it.

So I took a wander to explore my old neighborhood, but first see what had happened to Fritzbee’s. It was all the way in the back of that block, almost to the train tracks. Last time I saw the old building it was close by to the new Metro parking garage and fenced off for construction.

It was Gone!

Even better…the site was now a dog park!

I had wanted the site to be sewn with salt. But covered in dog piss and shit is even better! Or to give my post from 2021 a slight rewrite…

Turn the uncool away as a matter of policy, to cultivate the shallow beautiful people, and eventually they’ll flit away to the Next Big Thing and what’s left are all the customers you might have had if you hadn’t pissed them off. And now it’ll be pissed and shit on until Rockville decides to put something else there.