On Sunday, July 19, the aisles at Ayers Variety and Hardware were full one final time. Two posters hung in the front windows, covered edge to edge with handwritten notes from customers who'd been coming in for decades. "44 years and in Ayers every week for something essential," one read. "Doesn't seem real," said another. By afternoon the doors were locked for good, ending a 78-year run at 5853 Washington Blvd that started with one man in 1948 and passed through exactly one family transition in all that time.
Three months earlier, on a Thursday night in April at the other end of the same strip, a different kind of crowd showed up. Players from the D.C. Divas and the DMV Queens posed for selfies. Members of DC Shadow Ultimate handed over a signed jersey. Sarah White, standing behind a bar she now owned outright, cut a ribbon and officially opened what she and Northern Virginia press outlets were calling the region's first dedicated women's sports bar. The address was 5849 Washington Blvd, a few doors down from where Ayers would close that summer. Same shopping center. Same year. Two entirely different endings.
If you live in Westover, you already know both stories. What's easy to miss is that they're the same story, told twice.
The Store That Closed Four Days a Year
Ayers didn't lose to a big-box competitor or a landlord hike. Kristy Peterkin, who ran the store with her brother Keith Kaplan on behalf of their father Ronald Kaplan, spent the last year trying to find someone to take it over. She found interest but no one willing to commit what the job actually required. The store closed only four days a year. Running it meant being there essentially every day, tracking down obscure parts, walking customers through home repairs over the phone or by FaceTime, restocking a basement inventory system built up over half a century. That's not a business model most buyers are shopping for in 2026, even a profitable one.
The Kaplans weren't newcomers either. John Wesley Ayers opened the store in 1948 and ran it until his death in 1976, earning a reputation locally as the unofficial "Mayor of Westover" for handing out candy to schoolkids and lobbying the county for sidewalks and streetlights. Ronald and Wilma Kaplan bought the business from his estate in 1977. That's the entire ownership history: two families, one handoff, 78 years.
The neighborhood's attachment to the place was tested once already. When a flash flood tore through the shopping center in 2019, Ayers' basement filled almost to the ceiling and the uninsured store lost an estimated $100,000 in merchandise. Neighbors raised close to $34,000 in a single day to help the store and Westover Market recover.
"The beauty of it was, the community fed the store, and the store fed the community," Peterkin said. "We didn't exist without our loyal customers. We didn't exist without Westover being what it is, and so we did our best to give that back."
That's not a business that failed to find demand. It's a business that failed to find someone willing to run it exactly the way it had always been run. Nobody bought Ayers and turned it into something else. The lease simply ended on July 31, and the space is sitting empty as of this writing, with no announced replacement.
The Bar That Didn't Actually Close
Westover Taco tells the opposite version of the same story. When the taqueria's original ownership group started weighing whether to sell, following the October closure of their Lost Dog Cafe location on Columbia Pike, the buyer who stepped up wasn't an outside developer or a restaurant chain. It was Sarah White, already a partner in the business and a longtime Arlington restaurateur who'd previously run Cowboy Cafe. She bought out her partners and became sole owner.
What she kept says as much as what she changed. The name stayed. The chef stayed. All seven television screens stayed exactly where they were mounted. What changed was what those screens showed. Instead of defaulting to men's sports, they now prioritize the Washington Mystics, the Washington Spirit, the D.C. Divas, and the new Women's Pro Baseball League. White has said the idea grew out of a friendship with D.C. Divas owner and team captain Lois Cook, whom she met in 2022. She's since started offering the Divas volunteer marketing help and wants to sponsor local high school teams as well.
The menu shifted too, though it's still built around the taqueria's original identity. New starters include a $12 guac, salsa, and queso sampler and $10 yucca cheese bites. New platters, running $18.99 to $31.99, range from local mahi mahi to a chimichurri-marinated skirt steak to a dish White is calling "al pastor de Westover." She's also partnering with DJ Melanie B to keep hosting community events at the space, something the old taqueria was already known for.
None of this required a new storefront, a new liquor license fight, or a build-out. It required one insider deciding to stay and redirect what was already there.
Why the Difference Matters If You Live Here
Westover's shopping strip has looked more or less the same for decades. The Washington Post noted last year that the business district has changed little since it was established in the 1940s, and the shopping center itself, owned by George H. Rucker Company and managed by Van Metre Companies since 2017, has stuck to landscaping refreshes rather than reconfiguring who's inside. That stability isn't an accident, and it isn't really about the buildings. It's about who's willing to run what's inside them.
When someone already embedded in a business is willing to take it over, as White did, the transition is fast and the identity holds even as the concept evolves. When nobody is, as with Ayers, the business doesn't get replaced by a chain looking to backfill a vacant storefront. It just ends, and the space sits open until somebody with the specific appetite for that specific kind of work comes along. That's a different rhythm than most people assume when they hear "small business turnover." It's not steady churn. It's long runs punctuated by abrupt stops, because the businesses that define Westover tend to be the kind that only work if someone is willing to be there constantly.
The Rest of the Block Hasn't Moved
Whatever changes on either end of the strip, most of Westover Village's anchors are still exactly where they've always been:
- The Italian Store, the neighborhood's second location, still slicing and pouring the same way it has for years
- Lebanese Taverna, the original location that helped put the strip on the map
- Westover Market, past its 50th year, now drawing extra attention for its beer garden and a newly expanded butcher counter run by the Hicks family
- Trade Roots, the fair trade gift shop and cafe a few doors down
- Toby's Ice Cream, a fixture at every neighborhood event from the Easter Egg Hunt to the holiday Reindog Parade
- The Westover Farmers Market, running Sundays year-round at 1644 N. McKinley Rd, with around 30 producer-only vendors
If your Sunday routine already includes a coffee, a market stop, and a walk past the beer garden, none of that changes this fall.
What's Worth Watching Next
Two things are still in motion. Nobody has announced what, if anything, is moving into the old Ayers space, so that storefront is worth keeping an eye on if you're curious who has the appetite for that kind of commitment next. And separately, Arlington County has been briefing residents on flood mitigation plans along Torreyson Run at 14th Street N, including potential property acquisitions, floodwalls, and road realignment. The Westover Village Civic Association held a community meeting on it this spring and is continuing to track the proposal, which is a much longer conversation than any single storefront but one that will shape the neighborhood's edges for years.
Westover doesn't change by getting knocked down and rebuilt. It changes when somebody already standing behind the counter decides to keep going, or when nobody does. This year, that happened twice, three months and a few doors apart, and it's worth understanding both halves before you decide what either one means for the neighborhood you actually live in.
If you're curious about more of what's shifting across Arlington, from Westover to neighborhoods further down Washington Blvd, Coral Gundlach has been tracking this kind of hyperlocal change in Northern Virginia for over two decades. Whenever you're ready to talk through what any of it means for your own address, you can always book a consultation.
