Good morning, RVA: Three interesting papers, a press conference cancelled, and riding through the forest

Virginia, especially the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah Valley,
are just incredibly beautiful.

Good morning, RVA! It's 71 °F, and today looks hot, with highs in the 90s plus a chance for some severe weather. NBC12’s Andrew Freiden has declared today a First Alert Weather Day with a decent chance for wind, rain, hail, and flooding later this afternoon. Keep an eye on the sky, and make smart decisions! It’s never too late to starting making an emergency plan for you and yours.

Water cooler

City Council will get together today for their regularly scheduled meeting and has a few items on their agenda that got my brain thinking. First, ORD. 2023-180 authorizes the CAO to accept the second tranche of American Rescue Plan Act money from the federal government—that’s a $10 million deposit into the City’s bank account! I can’t help but think about what it’d be like if this sort of transformative investment in communities across the country was a regular occurrence instead of a once-in-a-generation lottery windfall. Second, ORD. 2023-177 will dedicate $80,000 to a second Gun Buy Back program, this one in conjunction with The Liberation Church. I hadn’t heard anything about this second round of Gun Buy Backs until I saw it floating around on the City’s legislative website, so I’m not sure about any date and time details. I’m for it though! My thoughts on Gun Buy Backs remain unchanged from the last go around: While maybe not the most effective gun control strategy, it’s one of the very few things the City has the authority to do on its own. Unfortunately, localities (especially in Virginia) are mostly held hostage by the inability of our state and federal legislators to pass even the most modest of gun control legislation. Third, ORD. 2023-145 will convert a two-way stop at Nottoway and Fauquier Avenues into a four-way stop. This sort of ordinance shows up pretty regularly on Council’s agendas, almost always in the non-controversial “Consent” portion. That seems like a symptom of a broken process to me—it’s wild that City Council is required to pass a law to put up two stop signs! Why is Council involved in this sort of thing at all? Shouldn’t we leave the implementation of safe transportation infrastructure in our neighborhoods to experts? Corollary: Shouldn’t we hire experts at implementing safe infrastructure in our neighborhoods?

This past Friday, the Richmond Police Department had a press briefing scheduled to update media about the mass shooting at Huguenot High School’s graduation ceremony. After talking to the Commonwealth’s Attorney, they scrubbed the update and put out this statement instead. I’m not sure how much of this is new news, but notable items for me were: one of the victims will be released from this hospital this week, police have confirmed that a second suspect was not involved in the shooting, and, in the RPD’s words, “based on what we know, this is not gang-related.”

Charlotte Matherly at Richmond BizSense reports that Carytown Burgers & Fries—the business and the buildings, both—is up for sale. I’m always interested when these long-time Richmond mainstays turnover and what ends up taking their place.

This past weekend, I spent three days riding a bicycle through the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests. I had an absolute blast! Virginia, especially the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah Valley, are just incredibly beautiful (see below). I know it’s not everyone’s idea of a good time to take enough food, water, and camping gear to survive three days in the woods and haul it up and down endless mountains and ridge lines, but! you could definitely line up a series of breezy day trips and get a lot of the same experience. That part of the state is so worth exploring if you haven’t—highly recommend! You can see my Strava activities for the three days here, if that’s your thing or if you’d like to get inspired to plan your own trip out that way.

This morning's longread
Moby Dyke

Anne Helen Petersen talks with Krista Burton, author of Moby Dyke which grew out of this 2017 NYT article and looks into the history and culture of lesbian bars in America. As you might expect, there is definitely a mention of the Babe’s volleyball court!

Another thing about lesbian bars: everyone is welcome in them. Really. For years, lesbian bars have been the catch-all spaces of the queer community, welcoming everyone falling under the queer umbrella. They also welcome allies. Basically, if you’re not going to be an asshole, you’re welcome at most lesbian bars. That is different than at most bars aimed at cis gay men. Lesbian bars have been, and are, doing the bulk of the work in the LGBTQIA+ community surrounding inclusivity in bars, and that’s one of the reasons it’s so crushing when they close. The bars aren’t just supporting lesbians; when one closes, entire subsets of the queer community lose access to possibly the only public space where they’re emphatically welcomed.

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Picture of the Day

Come on! So good!