(A crowd estimated at 500 gathers outside Ben’s Chili Bowl’s new location on Wilson Boulevard in Arlington. (Photo by Kimberly Suiters/All-News 99.1 WNEW)

Too freaking cool. I will not have to comment this morning on the Jobs Numbers, or the stand-off in Crimea, or the latest razor cut of this awful winter’s sleety mix. I keep looking for the emerging crocus stalks that will signal the arrival of Spring, but it isn’t happening. Rather than plow into the snow-bank that is life in the imperial city, there is good news that needs to be reported.

We will not have to venture down to U Street to get a decent half-smoke, smothered in what has been recognized as America’s finest chili. Ben’s has opened a new outpost in the wilds of Arlington, a signal moment in the Economic Recovery.

First off, I should mention why Ben’s is an institution here. No restaurant becomes an icon of success and renewal without having a decent product. In the case of Ben’s, it is the ‘half-smoke.’ a food peculiar to the District.

A half-smoke is a sausage-like tube with natural casing filled with an emulsified mixture of half pork and half beef. It renders something in taste about midway between a smoked sausage and a regular hot dog. Tourists may have tried a half-smoke from the food trucks that line up outside the museums and think they have had one, since that is what the sign said on the cart. Not so. There is no comparison between the wimpy-limp, steamed sausages served up at the food carts to the ones grilled up to order at Ben’s.

Ben’s has been a landmark for more than a half century at the location on U Street. For those of us who have been around the block a couple times, U Street encompasses the tumultuous history of the District of Columbia north of the stately white marble of the Federal Enclave.

Back in the day, U Street was known as Black Broadway, and Duke Ellington’s band was a regular act on the street, and the rhythm of the age echoed through the bars and ballrooms there. I was working for the phone company at The Bus Station down on New York Avenue a few years ago, and some of the original tenants of the new building regaled us on smoke breaks under the heroic Greyhound marquee which had been retained in the construction of the imposing office building that this location once marked the northernmost advance of urban renewal. Further north from the building things were dicey, and trouble beckoned.

The station had opened in 1940 as an Art Deco marvel of air conditioning and fashionable architecture, jammed with the hoards of newly-minted Washingtonians who came to Washington as part of the coming War Effort. The jailbreak of the bureaucrats to the Virginia and Maryland suburbs left the District north of Pennsylvania Avenue behind, and the riots just about finished the city off.

Writing in the Washington Post a couple years after I first visited my future home in 1970 to protest some war or another, columnist Henry Allen wrote a profile of the Greyhound terminal, and the neighborhood around it. The elegance was gone, and he reported:

“…that bus station smell…the stale, sweet, sooty urban smell of cigar smoke, cold sweat and carbon monoxide; the tart, grimy smell of winos, and the starchy air of the cafeteria, like the mess hall of a troop ship.” T

The City had changed. Instead of leather benches with chrome accents, there were “plastic seats with bolted-on TV sets that nobody watches” and “it was hard not to be jaded at that point, surrounded by the assortment of “pimps, pickpockets. winos, junkies, whores, transvestites, Murphy men, pushers, all-round hustlers and restroom commandos.”

The magnificent marble of Union Station, adjacent to the sprawl of the US Senate office buildings, was barricaded and the tracks only accessible through the vast darkness of the domed waiting room through long white-painted corridors of plywood. You could hear water dripping down the walls and it was frankly pretty creepy.

Over by Building 213 at the Navy Yard, the sound of gunfire was a regular feature. There was an exception to the squalor and despair on U Street: Ben’s Chili Bowl.

Ben and Virginia Ali opened their restaurant in 1958 in U Street in the District, and it’s since become a staple on the D.C. food scene. It stayed open through race riots in the late ’60s that devastated the neighborhood, serving as a sort of informal command post for both police and local activists as the famous Black Broadway shuttered itself and hit the skids.

They even stayed open during the construction of The Metro ‘s yellow and Green Lines, which made the late 1980s U Street neighborhood a wasteland of heavy construction and boarded up storefronts. Ben’s was a light in the darkness- these images are courtesy of the Alis:

The city was changing for the better, and a tip of the topper to the astonishing Mayor Marion Barry, who we hear is ailing these days. His unique and creative approach to governance (the District had been turned over to Home Rule by then) a marvel of both vision and corruption. Our little band of phone company pioneers planned a walking trip from the Bus Station to Ben’s one pleasant spring lunch time, and we were amazed to see the gentrification in progress, and the revitalization of the area.

We feasted on half-smokes smothered in the signature chili, and fries drowned the same way. It was dynamite, and the pictures of the other folks who valued the community resource that is Ben’s were all over the walls:. Pop culture icons like Ella Fitzgerald, Chris Rock, Usher, Bono, Tyrese, Nick Cannon, Chris Tucker, Sarah Jessica Parker, Serena Williams and Bill Cosby grace the walls, along with actual world historic figures like Dr. Martin Luther King and the President of the United States.

Media coverage includes features on “Man vs. Food,” “Oprah,” Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations,” “Good Morning America,” “The Daily Show,” just to name a few.

There have been rumors that Ben’s might expand. The Alis opened a counter inside National’s Park, but the flagship restaurant on U Street was the only sit-down place of business until yesterday. Ben’s opened at 1725 Wilson Boulevard right here in Arlington, with none other than Bill Cosby to cut the ribbon.

The Alis did their market research pretty well. I first ate in that strip mall not long after DESERT STORM. In those days the address was occupied by the superb Vietnamese soup shop Pho ’75. That was in the time of the great South Vietnamese diaspora, and when Rosslyn was the hub of a vibrant Southeast Asian community. Pho ’75 moved further out to Falls Church, in what we know now as Vietnam Town, and was ultimately replaced by Ray’s the Steak, and then Ray’s Hell Burger.

Michael Landrum (“Ray”) is a hell of food guy. His steaks are to die for, and his style autocratic and a bit imperious. His burgers featured things like fois gras toppings, and made enough of a stir that president Obama took then-Russian president Dmitry Medvedev there for lunch, and later munched sweet-potation fries there with VP “Smokin’ Joe” Biden. The first visit generated enough publicity and interest that Landrum was forced to expand the restaurant in place, and then move up the street to a place with a larger footprint.

And as of 10:30 yesterday morning, under leaden winter skies, Bill Cosby cut the ribbon on the latest addition to the vibrant Wilson Boulevard corridor in front of hundreds of Chili Bowl fans. In his remarks, Cosby joked that he wants to be buried at nearby Arlington National Cemetery, where I am planning on spending the rest of eternity when this ephemeral life is gone. Bill said he wanted to join us there, “so his ghost can come by for chili half-smokes as it pleases. Over in that cemetery,” he said, “there is no cholesterol. There are no triglycerides. Eat as many as you like. Double down on the cheese and the fries.”

Ben’s is now in Arlington, and I have a feeling I know where I am going for lunch. I don’t think Tracy O’Grady at Willow will mind- Bens serves no alcohol, so I know where I will be for Happy Hour.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
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Twitter: @jayare303