Good morning, RVA! It's 73 °F, and things have cooled down a bit. Look for highs in the low 80s and a good chance for rain scattered throughout most of the day (and the rest of the work week).
Water cooler
Katy Burnell Evans in the RTD has this story about the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority's latest idea to secure desperately needed funds: "convert the courts—Gilpin, Hillside, Mosby, Fairfield, Whitcomb, and Creighton—from the federal public housing program to the Section 8 housing choice voucher program." This would net the RRHA more dollars per unit, but I definitely do not know enough about public housing to talk about what other foreseen or unforeseen impacts this could have on residents—either in the short or long term. It does sounds like the Authority might take advantage of the Rental Assistance Demonstration program, but I could be totally off base, so tap that link with a grain of salt. New cash can't come to the RRHA soon enough, though: Evans says that each public housing unit receives $750 per year for repairs and upkeep, but the RRHA needs about $19,000 per unit to "make all necessary fixes." I'd love for someone to bring me up to speed on this stuff.
Weird comment about homeless people aside, I'm into a lot of Edwin Slipek's thoughts on how to replace the Coliseum. His idea to build a humane transfer station for GRTC in the desolate, sunken, surface parking lot north of the courts building is an interesting one. Notice how most of the exciting reasons for replacing the Coliseum have nothing to do with an arena and everything to do with rebuilding the neighborhood.
Also in Style Weekly is this Q&A with folks fishing in the James River. I loved reading this, it's like summertime distilled into an article!
A while back, a reader deeply in tune with my life's passions asked if I'd seen these Duke's Mayonnaise commercials featuring local chef Jason Alley. I hadn't gotten around to looking them up until America Day, but here they are. Few things are more American than watching mayonnaise commercials on the 4th of July.
From /r/rva, a video of all of Dogwood Dell's fireworks compressed into two minutes.
Sports!
- Squirrels broke their losing streak with a 4-3 win over the Erie SeaWolves. That series continues tonight at 6:35 PM in the Diamond—tickets are available online.
- Nats picked up an 11-4 win over the Mets and look for the sweep tonight at 7:05 PM.
This morning's longread
The plane truth: How we caught Chris Christie sunbathing on a closed beach
A neat insider look into that ultra symbolic Chris Christie photograph.
Then again, it wasn't difficult to find him. There Christie was, with family and friends, on a long and empty stretch of beach near the governor's shore residence, nobody else within a country mile. They were enjoying the beautiful summer day on a beach closed to the public by Christie because of a budget standoff. In one photo, Christie looks me dead in the eye. He has to know what's happening. Why else would a plane make two passes over his private beach party when there's no one else around? Did we know he would be sunbathing on a closed beach? No, but we took a shot and it paid off.