{"id":8434,"date":"2011-05-26T17:38:21","date_gmt":"2011-05-26T22:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/?p=8434"},"modified":"2022-05-17T06:40:44","modified_gmt":"2022-05-17T11:40:44","slug":"iconic-views","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/iconic-views\/","title":{"rendered":"Iconic Views"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Skip directly to the bottom if you want to be part of a little contest. Otherwise feel free to read through my blathering<\/del> extended explanation of context for a few moments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I featured a nice Google Street View image of the historic Hume School<\/a> in Arlington County, Virginia recently. It seemed familiar, and not because I\u2019ve driven past it a thousand times but because I\u2019d seen an eerily similar image not too long ago. It dawned on me that this was remarkably close to the winning design for the county tax sticker that will be placed on every motorized vehicle next autumn to cover the 2011\/12 tax year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Arlington<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I live in one of very few localities that still requires windshield decals to prove payment of annual automobile taxes. Many jurisdictions have done away with these stickers as superfluous. They haven\u2019t done away with the tax of course, just the stickers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arlington took the opposite tack and turned it into a contest, but that\u2019s life here in the People\u2019s Republic. Local high school students get an opportunity to participate in an annual design competition. The winner has his or her creation displayed on 155,000 vehicles for the following tax year. The Hume School will be stuck to windshields all over the county in a few months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Previous Images<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

They\u2019ve compiled quite a list of iconic images since beginning the contest in 2005. These are places that embody “Arlington” as distinct from the behemoth directly across the river, the District of Columbia. It\u2019s not easy creating a distinct identity in the overpowering shadow of the capital of the United States, but that\u2019s what the contest attempts to portray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Surprisingly I couldn\u2019t seem to find a comprehensive list of past winners so I had to do some Intertubes digging. I thought at the very least the county would have tracked these awards but I couldn\u2019t find anything. I was able to compile a chronology of decals after some creative searching though. I\u2019ve linked the locations to similar Google Street View images where they are available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n