Remember when Amazon announced that it was bringing part of its new headquarters to “National Landing” and we all released a collective “huh?”
“The new Washington, D.C. metro headquarters in Arlington will be located in National Landing,” the tech behemoth’s November 2018 blog post read, describing the heretofore unheard of place as “an urban community in Northern Virginia.” The phrase “National Landing” appears in that press release eight times.
The name came courtesy of local economic development authorities looking to brand Northern Virginia jurisdictions with a pretty bow for Amazon. But as Washington Business Journal explored on the year anniversary of Amazon’s announcement, the name National Landing doesn’t yet have cachet among anyone besides real estate professionals. (Clearly they haven’t been using our slogan suggestions.)
There may be a sea change afoot, though, all thanks to a potential renaming of a strip club. As ARLnow reports, in a snippet flagged by Washingtonian’s Andrew Beaujon, the owner of Crystal City Restaurant Gentlemen’s Club is considering rebranding the establishment as “National Landing Strip.”
“It is definitely something I’m thinking about,” owner Billy Bayne tells DCist. “I’m sure that I should do it.”
The one thing holding him back, he says, is the fact that Bayne’s father gave the gentleman’s club its current name about a decade after he purchased it in 1963. It had previously been called “Arlington Luncheon,” and the new label reflected the then-new name of Crystal City. The renaming also indicated that the joint turned from a regular restaurant into a gentlemen’s club—although apparently it still serves up a mean breakfast.
“When I think about this place, I think about my father—the guy who I thought was the toughest, greatest guy in the world,” says Bayne. “He wouldn’t care [about the name change]. He’d say, ‘Billy, do what you think is right.'”
For now, Bayne is still mulling over the switch to National Landing Strip. But there’s one thing that would sway him in a heartbeat: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who Bayne describes as “a lifeline to this town.” He thinks that “Crystal City is going to get better and better” thanks to Amazon, after years of vacant storefronts. Indeed, signage outside the gentlemen’s club says “Welcome, Amazon. Thank you for choosing Crystal City.”
“I would guarantee you that if Jeff Bezos told me it would help [him], I would do it,” says Bayne.
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Rachel Kurzius