Some personal trivia about the CFUnited location, Bethesda/Rockville
Note: This blog post is from 2006. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.In my last post, I referred to CFUnited as being in DC. I said that simply because most people don't know what you mean if you say Bethesda, Maryland. I do, because I was born there, 6/4/62, at Suburban Hospital on Old Georgetown Road just down the street a couple miles. :-)
That reminiscing got me thinking some thoughts that others might enjoy on the eve of CFUnited.
First, I'll say that I used to buy burgers at the "Gino's" that was near the spot where the conference hotel now stands. Here's a trivia question for my fellow long-time DC folks: do you know where Gino's (a burger chain now long gone) got it's name? I'm told it was Gino Marchetti from the Baltimore Colts. Wikipedia backs me up. :-)
Here's another: the large open air shopping center behind the hotel on Rockville Pike used to house a large Korvette's department store. Ever wonder about that name? I was told it was formed by some former KORean VETerans. :-)
I grew up skating at Congressional Roller Rink, which was also just up the road a mile (now long gone) in Rockville. It was the center of our lives for many of us, and a great, safe place to grow up. Well, we'd hop the train back and forth to either Rockville Mall or White Flint (which had just opened in the 70's), and I suppose that wasn't too safe. But we could find great old beer cans on the tracks--anyone else ever get into that collecting? Still have mine. I recently started a site to connect with others who may have skated/grown up at the rink, http://congressionalrollerrink.com. :-)
Moving forward a couple decades, those who have attended the Maryland CFUGs, where I used to speak often before moving to Atlanta, will know I've told the story that my ancestors farmed property just a mile away from the conference facility, across the street from where we used to hold the Maryland CFUGs on Parklawn Drive. In the 50's they sold the land and soon thereafter arose the big black Parklawn building.
One last bit of trivia, that few could answer: where and when was the first place I spoke to a CFUG audience? It wasn't the DC CFUG, run by FigLeaf, where I spoke often while I worked there in 1999-2000. It was the Maryland CFUG, back in Feb 1998. Sadly, the records of those early meetings are missing from the archives, but I have it at my old Systemanage site list of past presentations.
OK: one more piece of personal CFUnited trivia. Last year it was determined that only one person (other than Michael) had attended all the CFUnited events, back to when they were first called CFUN and held at the NIH facility. Um, guess who? :-)
If you have other fun CFUN/CFUnited memories or trivia, please do share.
/charlie
