top posts this week

I don't know if this will become an actual feature, but a few posts over the past week have really caught readers' attention, catapulting Just Up The Pike's weekly readership to the highest level in three years. The blog got 2,800 visits between August 19 and August 26, and people came to read these stories:

"silver spring in name only?" - Using Craigslist ads, I try to find where Silver Spring begins and ends. Greater Greater Washington joins the conversation, noting that people are similarly confused about local identity across Montgomery County, the fabled "land of few names." Even more confused, BeyondDC reveals that he gave all of East County to Burtonsville five years ago.

"an open letter to wheaton" and "four things wheaton's got all to itself" - I politely ask Wheaton to stop complaining that redevelopment will make it "contrived" like Downtown Silver Spring because, hey, I don't see people beating down the door to hang out there on Friday night. To be fair, I follow up with a list of things Wheaton should use to its advantage.

"kiss-in denounces anti-gay discrimination at tastee diner" and on being black, gay and hungry" - It was the biggest story in Silver Spring for a couple of days but seems to have disappeared since: what exactly happened did a black lesbian couple do in the Tastee Diner two weeks ago that got them kicked out? After the ensuing protest, the restaurant's staff responded to allegations of gay-bashing by posting an almost useless surveillance video of the incident.

It's been a great week here at Just Up The Pike. Come back next week for more stories about eastern Montgomery County. As always, tell me what you like - and what you don't like (especially what you don't like) by shooting an e-mail to justupthepike at gmail dot com.