Aspen Hill -- Less Than Perfect

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Aspen Hill has many problems. Here's an example. In the photo below, please note the house across the street. It's a nice house, it's well-kept, the hedges are trimmed, the cars are new and properly parked in the driveway. However, across the street from this nicely kept house is where, after a night of driving around drinking beer in the car, someone decided to deposit their empties, nicely packaged in the 12-pack carton. This 12-pack carton, probably containing a few bottles which are broken from being tossed out the window, can be cleaned up with a little effort. Other problems are less easily resolved.

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Below, an example of a problem that keeps manifesting all around the neighborhood. It's a Toyota MR2 which is parked on the wrong side of the street, with no license tags. If you will look closely, you can see that there are a lot of leaves around it. It's been there since fall, at least. It's been called in to the Abandoned Autos people, and someday they'll come and get it, I suppose. In the meantime, it's parked on the wrong side of the street, with no tags. That is not a good message to have sent to everyone who drives past it.

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Below are two images of the same Honda Civic. It also has been parked in the same place for at least a month, but probably since fall. It also has trapped a lot of leaves, which means it hasn't been moved in quite some time. It also is parked on the wrong side of the street, just down the road from where the carton of Heineken bottles was discarded.

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Some people just don't like to pay any attention to the "No Parking" signs. Immediately below, a "roll-off" container of landscaping dirt, parked in a no-parking zone, and parked in the street, which probably isn't quite legal.

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Aspen Hill, at least in the part of it which is comprised within the membership bounds of the Aspen Hill Civic Association, Inc., is zoned for single-family detached residential homes. The County has a lot of specialized sub-zoning designations in the area, and I am not certain how they differ from each other. Most of the homes you will see were originally two bedroom or three bedroom homes sold with an unfinished basement. In probably most cases, the basement has two entries, one from within the house's upper story, and one direct entry to the basement from the outside, usually in the rear of the home.

Here, below is a home on Elizabeth Street. It's a nice house, no question about that, and it's well-kept, not hard to do since the "oversizing" was fairly recent. However, it literally dwarfs the home next door.

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Here's a house which might be a bit oversize, below. You may find yourself utterly fascinated by the Assessed Value and size declarations from the Maryland Department of Assesments and Taxation which seems to think that this house encloses only 980 square feet.

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Maryland is a bit less clue-free when it comes to this towering doozy, two views, below. How many occupiable floors is that? Four, I think.

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Across Parkland Drive from the two looming "oversizes" in the previous images, but still on Grenoble, are buildings which I think are associated with Millian Memorial Methodist Church.

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Below, in the middle, another "oversize" home located on Keating near the intersection with Justice.

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Below, the daytime parking at the southern end of Beaver Terrace. I've heard it gets pretty hard to find a parking space there after dark.

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And in conclusion, here's a nice Realtor sign. If I were to attempt to sum up everything that's taken a wrong turn in Aspen Hill over the last decade or so, I could not do it better than does this sign: "Eight Bedrooms -- Price Reduced".

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Below, on Baltic Avenue -- behind the place that had the dumpster parked in the street, seen above -- here's what appears to be a whole other house built in someone's backyard. This was shot from a little field just to the west of the Frost Center, formerly Aspen Hill Elementary.

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