Good morning, RVA! It's 80 °F, and the oppressive heat continues! Highs today approach 100 °F, which, joking aside, can be pretty dangerous. Wear sunscreen, stay hydrated, and stay cool 😎.
Water cooler
Jackie Kruszewski at Style writes about the "pale and male" nature of companies funded by local venture capital firm New Richmond Ventures. I'm glad folks like Kruszewski are out there thinking and writing about how we can help people other than white men establish and grow wealth! Liz Doerr, NRV's director of engagement (and 1st District School Board rep), says that 21% of the investors who contributed to the most recent fundraising pot of $33 million are female or minorities—which she says is double the national average. Approaching this problem by actively seeking out a more diverse group of investors does make a lot of sense to me, but it's certainly not the only way for NRV to shake up their investment portfolio. With a handful of companies still to be funded out of this current round, there's still time for NRV to make some bold and diverse funding choices!
Carol Hazard has a neat piece about the completion of Eggleston Plaza in Jackson Ward. This project hits a lot of my buttons: density, affordable housing, proximity to transit, and thoughtful consideration of an area's history. Let's build more of this sort of thing!
Here's Ned Oliver's recap of the Lumpkin's Jail community meeting last night. As expected, the conversation continues to focus on the scope of the project rather than specific details. To me, it sounds like any hope of expanding the project beyond the jail site is pretty much off the table at this point.
I fell down a little bit of a hole reading this piece in the Free Press about the new John Jasper Way street sign in Jackson Ward. I walk/bus/bike past the building pictured in that article and just now learned that it is the Tucker Cottage! Edwin Slipek has a bit about the cottage—which was built in 1798, is the oldest house in Jackson Ward, and has been moved twice—in this 2012 Style Weekly article. Here you can see the cottage in its previous location on 3rd Street. I also learned that Tucker Cottage is on Airbnb?
Sports!
- Squirrels return home to face the Harrisburg Senators. Tickets are available online.
This morning's longread
The Story of the Mission Burrito, Piled High and Rolled Tight
I was just in San Francisco and ate the burrito mentioned in the intro, and, dang, y'all. It is a good burrito.
But in a city where the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in 2016 spiked above $3,600, these burritos face an existential challenge. San Francisco is shedding blue-collar workers and Latinos at a rate that has affordable housing advocates freaking out. Last year the city released a report showing that the Mission’s Latino population fell from 60 percent in 2000 to about 48 percent. The same data projects Latinos could make up just 31 percent of the historically Latino district by 2025. Yet the Mission remains a place you cannot understand—or even enjoy—without the burrito, even as the streets where it was born become disturbingly high-end. So how does a cheap, working-class food endure in a place that’s suddenly neither?