Good morning, RVA: 2,125↗️ • 29↗️; Council, Council, Council; and a secret Christmas parade,

What if we got rid of the after-dark prohibition in parks?

Good morning, RVA! It's 33 °F, and today you can wear your boots and jacket! Expect highs in the 40s but lots of sunshine. I think it's still too early in the season for that wintery, wan sunlight, but we'll get there.

Water cooler

Richmond Police are reporting that on November 11th, Nicholas Yarborough, a man in his 20s, was shot to death on the 3000 block of Hull Street.

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 2,125↗️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 29↗️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 212↗️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 84, Henrico: 80, and Richmond: 48). Since this pandemic began, 445 people have died in the Richmond region. The VDH website does not include a warning or note about data processing delays, so I think this is our first real day with over 2,000 reported new positive cases. I've had to change the y-axis on my chart. The COVID Tracking Project says yesterday 20 states hit their record of people hospitalized—including West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina.

Get ready, because I've got a stack of City Council updates for you that I know you'll be thrilled about! First, Council's Governmental Operations committee meets today and will discuss RES. 2020-R056, which requests that the CAO study whether all of this pandemic work-from-home business has actually saved the City money and if it should consider "potentially continuing or expanding such policies after the pandemic." I feel like...yes? Who knows when we'll emerge from forced work-from-home, but I like and look forward to the possibility that folks could work from wherever they like—given the right support. Also, semi-related, we should take a long, hard look at public meetings and consider if middle-of-the-week, right-during-dinner, in-person meetings are the only way to go.

Second, the Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee forwarded Richmond 300 to full City Council with no recommendation. I am displeased, but recognize the lack of support (aka the decision not to give two thumbs up and a recommendation for approval) may have been more technical than anything as the committee was missing a member yesterday. Still, I will blow a gasket if this planning document—one that's been supported by one of the best community engagement processes I've ever seen in Richmond—is not met with hearty support at Full Council. I will accept nothing less than an 8-1 vote in favor, with the full victory-lap situation where each councilmember gives a five minute speech about how hard we all worked on this. Your job between now and December 14th, should you choose to accept it, is to let your Councilperson (and their liaison!) know that you'd like them to vote yes on Richmond 300, ORD. 2020-236.

Third, earlier this week Planning Commission voted unanimously to approve ORD. 2020-217, converting some of the medians around Marcus-David Peters Circle into actual parks. Jimmie Lee Jarvis has a nice thread on Twitter covering the meeting. Importantly, the Commission recommended just the northern medians on Allen Avenue get the park treatment, while the Monument Avenue medians remain public right-of-way. I still don't love this ordinance, but I feel like most of my heartburn—as Councilmember Larson would say—came from the potential loss of the Monument Avenue right-of-way. This amended ordinance seems fine, I guess. Remember that the admitted purpose of this ordinance is to convert these medians to parks so that the laws governing City parks can be used to keep people out. That's mostly the newish law banning guns from parks (which I have no problem with) and the law prohibiting after-dark use of parks (which I think we should change). After reading through Jarvis's thread, it's just super clear that the current after-dark law is inconsistently enforced and could be (probably is?) a source of inequitable enforcement. I'd like to learn more about what repealing this particular prohibition looks like and how we might could go about it.

Karen Newton at Style Weekly has the details on this year's Christmas Parade: "The parade will be prerecorded in an undisclosed location for the safety of the participants. About 80% of the broadcast will be never-before-seen entertainment, stories and musical performances. The remaining percentage will be best-of clips from the past decade of parades, featuring floats, giant helium balloons and memorable moments." That first sentence is wild! My guess as to the undisclosed location: The racetrack.

Are you a young person between the ages of 20-29 and want to participate in a COVID-19 virtual focus group? The Richmond City and Henrico Health Districts would like to "better understand the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors among people in this age range to inform our [COVID-19] prevention efforts." If you're selected to participate you'll get a $50 gift card. Young people! You are mysterious! Tell the Health District about your mysterious ways.

This morning's longread
The Godmother of Soul

Rosanne Cash writes this lovely piece about Sister Rosetta Tharpe, who had some strong ties to Richmond.

She wielded her guitar like a weapon and distorted the sound: a guitar technique that was completely original at the time and would be copied by legions of rock guitarists in the decades after. Her voice was like a freight train in its power and a poem in its expressiveness. A woman playing guitar, singing spiritual songs in nightclubs that harbored all manner of vice, was unprecedented. Gospel singers just didn’t “cross over” to secular music. You were one or the other. She did it anyway, and Black churchgoers, the devoted core of her original audience, were shocked by her nightclub appearances, and shunned her. More than a decade later, mixing secular and spiritual music was still so unacceptable that the great Sam Cooke recorded his first pop song under an alias, in order not to alienate his gospel fan base.

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