The restaurant Rus Uz (https://rusuz.com/) was a recommendation by Maitland Bottoms, possessor of one of the most amazing names in amateur radio circles. He lived just over the hill from the 2019 AMSAT Symposium in Arlington, Virginia, and took our small group to this wonderful place. Just across the street from the conference hotel, and flanked by a Russian grocery, having lunch here was truly like being on a different continent.
I tell my many GNU Radio friends that live in Eastern Time that I have a policy of never visiting their part of the US. It's not completely true. It's a long conversational trope designed to provide playful geographic banter. But, I am indeed much more likely to travel to the South, to the Great Plains, or to conferences and meetings up and down the West Coast. There's no real reason other than the type of work I do and enjoy doesn't have that many conferences in DC or New York or Boston. The annual information theory conference ITA is in my home town of San Diego. DEFCON is in Vegas. Burning Man is in Nevada. IEEE events and open source conferences tend to be on the left-hand side of the map for the types of things I do.
But Arlington and DC were fantastic! The wait was worth it. Real public transit, completely different architecture, actual weather, unfamiliar trees, and plenty of interesting conversations with people outside the conference.
I stayed in an AirBnB for the first time on this trip. I understand why it's become so popular, but before this journey, that understanding was only in the abstract.
As an event organizer, AirBnB has had a big effect on filling up room blocks. It does threaten the bottom line of conferences that have to guarantee a certain number of rooms in order to get the space to have a conference. If the contracted rooms are not filled, then the conference has to pay for them. This can be a significant liability for organizations without deep pockets that want to put on conferences.
The gig economy has some serious drawbacks, and deserves the criticism it gets, but staying in a peaceful lovely condominium a few minutes' walk from the conference was a completely different and superior experience to living out of a hotel room for a week.
Stepping into the restaurant, the five of us were rapidly settled into tables clustered with gorgeous china. The bilingual menu offered some long-forgotten pronunciation challenges. I last studied Russian a whopping 32 years ago!
The food and the service set us into a world apart and we spent the time slowing down and thoroughly enjoying the experience. The conversation ranged from ATSC-3 integration to Chicago political drama to Debian war stories and more. The company and the conversation and the food were a highlight of this travel.
We then visited the similarly-named grocery two doors down and I stocked up on all sorts of presents for my large family. Everything was appreciated because the items were so different and distinctive. Winning the "I brought you a gift from my business trip" challenge can be hard! Thank you Rus Uz Market :+)
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