Where Every House Looks Like Tony Soprano's

McBrick McMansion
Originally uploaded by AlexG 82

While attending a conference earlier this week in DC, I stayed at the Bolger Center, which is at once a United States Postal Service "leadership development" training facility (complete with ropes course) and a resort/conference center open to the public. If you have trouble understanding why USPS, which expects to run a $7 billion deficit in 2009, needs a leadership development facility, you're not alone: before it opened to the public in 2004, rumors had swirled for years among skeptical locals about whether "boot camp for mail sorters" was the cover story for a secret government black site. Anyway, it's located in Potomac, Maryland, which as far as I can tell must have the highest proportion of appalling McMansions of any town in America. (Truth in advertising: when you google "appalling mcmansions potomac" the first website that comes up is Toll Brothers.)