Spring 2025 Beacon | Welcome to North Woodside

_{Sam Post performs his song about the upcoming county ban on gas-powered leaf blowers at the neighborhood porch open-mic concert on June 15, 2025.}

Dear neighbors, here’s a reminder that Montgomery County’s ban on gas-powered leaf blowers goes into effect July 1. These loud and inefficient machines release dangerous toxic and carcinogenic emissions. As a favor to your ears, your lungs, and especially your musician neighbors, please inform your landscapers about the ban, or hire landscapers who have transitioned to electric. Starting in July, new rebates for landscapers to go electric will be available. Be a good neighbor; respect the ban!
—Sam Post, The Beacon, Spring 2025

Sam subsequently debuted a song he composed about the upcoming gas-powered leaf blower ban at a recent neighborhood open-mic porch concert. It was an audience hit! For those who missed the event or who want to listen to song again, check out a video recording of it below, followed by full lyrics. Enjoy! (And respect the ban!)

For more information about the county’s gas-powered leaf blower ban, see www.montgomerycountymd.gov/DEP/property-care/leaf-blowers/

Gas-Powered Leaf Blower Ban Song
by Sam Post

Lyrics:

In case you don’t know about County Bill 18-22
I wrote this handy song in order to make sure that you do
Montgomery County followed DC and decided to ban
The sale and the use of gas-powered leaf blowers across this land
So now I’m asking you to get out there and help spread the word
‘Cause the number of leaf blowers in this neighborhood is absurd
They’re louder than an airplane
Which is why I started this campaign to complain
Before I go completely insane

Please respect the county’s ban on gas-powered leaf blowers
To me this is religious stuff although I’m not a churchgoer
I know this might not be the thing that you lose sleep over
But every time I hear one I want to use a flamethrower

Leaf blowers are awful for your health and my sanity
So I speak for myself but also for all humanity
I am really trying not to use any profanity
But if you wrote music for your job you would understand me

Now I was hoping to explain this county law with this new beat
But right now there’s a leaf blower going right across the street
It’s making it really hard to concentrate; I’m trying to rhyme
I’ve got two kids over here; so I don’t really have much chance or opportunity
So I’m hoping that this community will show unity against this leaf blower lunacy

I plead with you to respect the county’s ban on leaf blowers
To me this is religious although I’m not a churchgoer
I know this might not be the thing that you lose sleep over
But every time I hear one I want to use a flamethrower

Please mark your calendars
This ban starts July 1st
Please tell your landscaper
This law is on paper
This isn’t quackery so
If you want to be informative
Tell them use a battery-powered alternative

Our country may be turning into an autocracy
But luckily Montgomery county is still a democracy
So if you truly believe in progressive policy
Please help me out
Don’t hire a landscaper unless they plan to make switch
To electric battery power it works without a hitch
If you want to talk more later, I’ll be around the neighborhood
To make my pitch

By Wendy and Lisa, daughters of Gus Bauman (North Woodside)

On Friday afternoon, August 24, 1984, when most Montgomery County officials were away on vacation, a contract developer quietly commenced demolition of the 1938 Art Deco Silver Theatre prior to a scheduled public hearing about designating it as an historic site.

_{The Silver Theatre in 1938, shortly after opening. Black people were not welcome for its first couple of decades. Source: M-NCPPC Historic Preservation
office file}

Because the county executive, councilmembers, county attorney, and planning board chairman were all out of town, our dad—an involved civic leader and prominent land use attorney—received frantic phone calls from county planners about what was happening at the Silver Theatre building.

On the following Monday, the county permitting department, under pressure from Dad and others, issued a stop-work order before the exterior destruction had managed to reach the theater’s unique interior.

Then, on June 15, 1989, following appointment by the county council (and threatened veto by the county executive), Dad took the oath of office as full-time Chairman of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission/Montgomery County Planning Board. Under his leadership, following a decade of bitter struggles, including lawsuits, over what to do about the declining downtown Silver Spring, a new “Plan for the Revival of Downtown Silver Spring” was finally adopted by the county in April 1993. Among scores of action items, the plan recommended the shuttered, deteriorating Silver Theatre for historic designation and reuse as a performance venue. It was so designated the following February.

_{The new AFI Silver Theatre, with a nearly identical façade, welcomes everyone and features a great diversity of film festivals and screenings. Source: AFI Silver Theatre’s website}

Now, as a major film buff, Dad was well aware that the American Film Institute had a very small theater inside the huge Kennedy Center. Perhaps, he thought, the AFI might wish to have a nearby Golden Age movie palace to showcase American and foreign films.

And so, in early 1993, he placed a phone call from M-NCPPC to AFI about his idea. When the citizens advisory committee on possible reuse of the Silver Theatre learned what the chairman—our dad—had done, they were furious with him; they had been pushing for a live-performance venue, not “another movie house.”

The AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center, the saved original theater and two additional screens, opened in April 2003.

For more information about current and upcoming films showing, see afisilver.afi.com.