Kenwood concerned largest crowd ever could descend on cherry blossoms amidst coronavirus outbreak

Public has been discouraged

from visiting larger displays at

Tidal Basin; Metro stations there

will be closed

Some Kenwood residents are expressing alarm on local listservs that the largest crowd ever could descend upon the neighborhood in the coming days for its famous cherry blossoms. What is raising concerns this year is that District officials have discouraged the public from making their usual pilgrimage to the most famous cherry blossoms at the Tidal Basin in D.C., due to the coronavirus pandemic. To cap it off, Metro has now announced it will be closing two Metro stations convenient to the Tidal Basin to make it that much harder for crowds to visit.

No Parking signs are already up in Kenwood, and there has been no intervention or public messaging from Montgomery County officials so far to protect the neighborhood from being swamped. The fact that virtually everything is closed, and people are understandably looking for things to do outside of their homes at this point, only adds to the anxiety in Kenwood.

To maintain social distance even among the usual number of visitors to Kenwood's cherry blossoms would require people to either go into the roadways, or far onto residents' lawns. With a highly-contagious virus circulating, "many of the residents of Kenwood are quite worried," one resident wrote on a local listserv.

The "Kenwood" letters have been missing from the signs at the River Road entrance of Kenwood in recent days, likely because the signs are being repainted. But one person I spoke to joked that the name was removed to fool drivers from elsewhere in the region who are hunting for those Kenwood cherry blossoms. Not true, of course, but still humorous.