Good morning, RVA: Sigh, Gun Hole; meals tax collection mess; and fundraising emails

I thought I could avoid writing about Richmond’s Gun Hole.

Good morning, RVA! It's 29 °F, and that might be as cold as it gets this week. Temperatures will warm up over the course of the day and should land somewhere in the mid 50s this afternoon—I think we’ll get to see the sun again today, too. Welcome to February, everyone!

Water cooler

I thought I could avoid writing about Richmond’s Gun Hole, but the situation has spiraled too far out of control to ignore.

Many, many years ago, someone in the Fan pressed a Wild West-looking pistol into wet sidewalk cement, creating what’s only recently become known as “the Richmond Gun Hole”—an unpleasant combination of words to write. First, to understand what the heck is going on here, you need to read the Chicago Rat Hole wikipedia entry. With that (unfortunate) context in hand, you can see how Richmond’s Gun Hole could easily take off in the same viral way as Chicago’s Rat Hole (I already regret writing this paragraph). After a couple days of viral notability, news cameras, and instagram lookie-loos, someone submitted a 311 ticket to get the Gun Hole filled. To quote the ticket entirely: “Vague ‘gun’ shaped impression in the sidewalk is attracting nuisance visitors and littering. Please repair.” Sort of surprisingly, DPW did repair the sidewalk—almost immediately—and filled the Gun Hole. Now, did you read the Rat Hole wiki like I suggested? Because, if so, you know exactly what happened next. Via NBC12: “The strange sidewalk impression that quickly became a neighborhood landmark is back! This comes after city crews filled the hole with cement this morning, but that decision quickly backfired. In the last few hours, someone scoped the concrete out and restored the shrine, giving the gun hole new life.” RVA Rapid Transit’s Richard Hankins puts to words what most of you are probably already thinking: “My reaction was one of surprise; the city is not necessarily known for turning around quickly, especially when it comes to sidewalk infrastructure.” High fives to Hankins for taking the opportunity to turn a Gun Hole interview into advocacy for better sidewalks on the Southside. Honestly, I’m not sure what the City expected to happen after taking such swift action; it feels petty. Instead of having Gun Hole mania die out after a couple of days, I’m here talking about our broken sidewalk infrastructure and you’re stuck reading about Gun Holes in email newsletters for at least another week. Anyway, now you know the legend of Richmond’s Gun Hole, whether you wanted to or not.

Yesterday, a House subcommittee most likely killed HB 748, the e-bike rebate bill, by voting 8-0 to—and this is a real bill status—“recommend laying on the table.” Of course, nothing is ever truly dead in the General Assembly until it is, but this is certainly not the full-throated support from the majority-Democratic subcommittee you’d hope to see. Most new and interesting initiatives take a couple of years to find their footing in the GA, so put a pin in this one for next year (or, if you’re me, add a note to your calendar one year from now).

Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense has a nice report on the progress the City has made toward cleaning up the meals tax collection mess. Sounds like local legislative changes will happen this month, some potential statewide changes later this spring (standard General Assembly caveats apply), and the CAO even said the City will work “toward the goal of refunding affected businesses.” This—not Gun Hole—is a great example of Richmond moving quickly to address a real issue impacting residents!

Over the last several years, one of my GMRVA-related email addresses has become a boring pile of almost entirely political fundraising emails. Since it’s always an election year in Virginia, these emails never stop, and it’s been interesting to see their tone, tenor, and format change over time. Right now, we’re in a phase where these emails pretend to be quick, unpolished missives directly from the elected official or candidate themselves. A couple example subject lines just from the last day or so (capitalization and punctuation verbatim): “two things we know for sure”, “read before midnight:”, and “The GOP’s plan >>>”. Mostly I archive these unopened and move on, but this morning I got one from Sen. Kaine’s camp, with the sender listed as “Tim (personal)”. I just thought that was extremely on-brand for Richmond’s Dad / the senator. It still ended up in the archive, though.

This morning's longread
Marvel World

This is a very, very long essay about the Marvel franchise which I couldn’t stop reading while internally yelling “YES!” at throughout. Also, this factoid about He-Man rocked me to my very core: “The cartoon and comic book superhero He-Man, for example, rides an armored green tiger because Mattel, the toy company that invented him, had several warehouses of unsold tiger toys to get rid of.”

Ultimately, it wasn’t action figures that made Marvel king; it was ticket sales. Four of the ten highest-grossing movies in history are Marvel Studios productions. Still, I can’t stop thinking about “toyeticism.” In a perverse way, it has made me more, not less, sympathetic to Marvel to imagine its movies being conceived in a process not unlike my boyhood Bat-reveries. I envision a group of kids in their dads’ business suits, sitting on the floor of a conference room, staring down at a pile of their favorite action figures—three Spider-Men, a Thor with no hair (somebody’s sister had cut it off), maybe an Iron Man or two—and asking themselves, “Well, why would all these guys be in the same movie? Why would they be fighting each other? Why three Spider-Men?” If someone comes up with a good enough answer—and it only has to satisfy kid logic—they get to pick up the toys and smash them into each other, over and over again.

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Picture of the Day

Self portrait.