Underground Mysteries

January 24, 2003 8:30 AM

Is Something afoot at the DC Metro's Crystal City station? First its the mysterious derailment on Tuesday, still unexplained. Now a strange man is spotted with vials of a unknown liquid in the station before the system is even open! What's up at Crystal City? [more inside]
posted by Pollomacho (20 comments total)

For those of you that may be unfamiliar with the DC Metro system, Crystal City is the station between National Airport and the Pentagon area on the lines running from suburban Virginia into the center of the city. The system opens at 6:00 AM so a man spotted at 4:55 would be quite out of place. Crystal City serves as a station for a shopping mall, a great place to get lost in the crowd, in a very sensetive part of the area. I'm surprised actually that these stories haven't had more sensationalist news coverage.
posted by Pollomacho at 8:38 AM on January 24, 2003

The system opens at 6:00 AM so a man spotted at 4:55 would be quite out of place.

I know people that live, work and shop within Crystal City, never seeing the light of day. I'm surprised the place isn't teeming with subterranean whackos with vials of strange liquid.
posted by machaus at 8:43 AM on January 24, 2003

I'm resting on the notion that the strange man with the unidentified liquid was just a PC description of a drunk with a snapple bottle of his own pee. Otherwise I just whisked through a metro station on my way to work that is possibly contaminated by biological agents. C'mon, drunk!!!
posted by Mushkelley at 8:46 AM on January 24, 2003

Beware of the C.H.U.D.'s
posted by Pollomacho at 8:46 AM on January 24, 2003

It's also the subway stop for the Navy Nuclear Power Program. (At least it was when I got in back in 1990).
posted by greasepig at 8:50 AM on January 24, 2003

Crytal City is where all the UN Shock Troops are housed, didn't you know?
posted by GriffX at 8:59 AM on January 24, 2003

Crystal City, I mean.
posted by GriffX at 9:00 AM on January 24, 2003

Passengers were led from the train to a grassy knoll and then to the buses.

Hmm. The plot thickens.
posted by pitchblende at 9:04 AM on January 24, 2003

I often wonder about what motivates municipalities to choose certain names of places. Crystal City? Makes me think they're all janked up on the janky jank. Topic? I, for one, welcome our unknown liquid vial carrying overlords.
posted by haqspan at 9:24 AM on January 24, 2003

Must have been during Marion B's administration, back then they WERE "janked up on the janky jank"
posted by Pollomacho at 9:36 AM on January 24, 2003

I'm resting on the notion that the strange man with the unidentified liquid was just a PC description of a drunk with a snapple bottle of his own pee.

So that's why it's called the Yellow Line...
posted by LinusMines at 10:06 AM on January 24, 2003

As long as I could get to the Border's at Pentagon City, I was happy.
But an unexplained derailment near the Pentagon subway stop would be awfully suspicious.
posted by stevefromsparks at 10:10 AM on January 24, 2003

I keep getting Flashbacks from the movie Dark City.
posted by cinderful at 11:23 AM on January 24, 2003

There's trouble in Crystal City with a capital T
Which rhymes with P
Which stands for...

Pancakes!
posted by Vidiot at 11:45 AM on January 24, 2003

I guess DC should have built the Monorail when it had the chance. Its kinda hard to derail when you've got that one great big one! And heck, it put New Haverbrook on the map, just think what it could do to the "Capital of the Free World!"
posted by Pollomacho at 12:18 PM on January 24, 2003

Used to live in Crystal City. Then decided to buy so had to go out to Reston (a condo no less). Hubby still commuted to downtown and was always nervous at how easy it would be to spread something via the metro. We then decided quality of life was more important than everything the DC metro area had to offer (pluses and minuses, like working blocks from a likely target for terrorists), so we've moved to Vermont. Now we just get the terrorists passing by, on their way to more populous place. ;-)
posted by evening at 1:38 PM on January 24, 2003

I thought the derailment was actually closer to the airport...on the scary high part of the tracks. *shudder*
posted by JoanArkham at 2:22 PM on January 24, 2003

Maybe it was the Pee Bottle Bomber?
posted by SweetIceT at 2:30 PM on January 24, 2003

Mmm, vials.
posted by newlydead at 5:14 PM on January 24, 2003

A lot of paranoid people at MF, I guess.

I lived blocks away from the White House, and worked on Capitol Hill for the past 5 years or so. Never really worried about about my safety.
posted by Witold at 12:38 AM on January 26, 2003