Occoquan’s newfound popularity has been a boon for the quaint restaurants and shops that line the town’s three-block main strip, as any kind of tourism brings in business. I can’t think of another time on a weeknight I’ve been six deep at a stop sign waiting for other people to go. “I get in traffic jams coming home from council meetings on Tuesday nights now. “It’s quite unbelievable,” Occoquan Mayor Elizabeth Quist said. A place that touts itself as “an oasis and a little-known gem” offering “that personal touch of Main Street USA” has transformed into a virtual-reality superhighway. This nearly three-century-old riverfront town in Virginia’s Prince William County has unwittingly become a hotbed for the new game, which is drawing droves of players to the town as they use their phones to capture make-believe creatures that are living in abundance among Occoquan’s real-life residents (all 1,016 of them). Pokémon Go’s augmented reality has brought them here to the tiny town of Occoquan, and Pokémon Go is augmenting Occoquan’s reality. They stare at their phones and flick their fingers across the screens in a zombielike rhythm that easily could be mistaken for a scene from a dystopian, tech-addled future. They huddle in front of the town hall, gather in circles on the boardwalk, cram onto the brick sidewalks and overflow into the street. A middle-aged government worker just stopping by on her commute home along Interstate 95. They stream into the picturesque colonial town by the hundreds, day and night. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post) This Northern Virginia town has become a hotspot for the game, which some see as a blessing and others see as a curse. ![]() ![]() People play Pokémon Go in Occoquan, Va., on Aug.
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