Good morning, RVA! It's 68 °F, and we’ve got another great day ahead of us weather-wise. I can’t speak to the particulars of your life, but at least today will be filled with sun and reasonable temperatures in the mid 80s.
Water cooler
Bon Secours announced the end of a contract to provide athletic trainers to Richmond’s public high schools. You can read Interim Superintendent Kranz’s statement here (PDF). I get that business is business, but it would have been nice for the district to have a bit more time to plan for the replacement of these trainers before the school year began. Justin Mattingly at the RTD has some more thoughts from Richmond Public Schools.
Writing for Style Weekly, Amanda Dalla Villa Adams reviews the new Native American art exhibit at the VMFA which opened earlier this month and continues through November 26th. Put this one on your calendar, it seems neat and thought provoking.
I mentioned Capitol Waffle Shop a couple months ago, and, now, Karri Peifer has the wonderful news that they’ll open up next week! How can you not love a place whose owner describes his new restaurant like this: “The concept is simple...We put a whole bunch of crazy toppings on waffles."
Also on the food tip, Brandon Fox at Style Weekly explains the concept behind whatever happens to be in 2915 W. Cary Street at the moment. Beginning tomorrow, that will be burritos—an entire restaurant of burritos! I kind of love this idea of giving a restaurant at most 11 months to live and breath and then shutting it down to move on to something else.
September’s First Friday Art Walk is tomorrow! RVA Mag has their picks of what not to miss. Also, there are bike share stations just off Broad on either end of the Arts District should you want some food and drink to soak up all that art.
J. Elias O’Neal at Richmond BizSense says that Chesterfield County has hired a new planning director from Farmers Branch, Texas. I looked it up, Farmers Branch has buses and a light rail connection to Dallas. I’m cautiously calling that a win!
Here’s a really scary map from the NYT of rescue requests in Houston over time.
Sports!
- Squirrels kicked Altoona’s can, 6-1, and will continue the series tonight at 6:35 PM. Tickets, as always, are available online.
- Nats blanked and swept the Marlins, 4-0. Their new series against the Brewers begins tonight.
This morning's longread
Lawn Guilt by Michael P. Branch
Lawns are dumb.
Riddle: considered acre-for-acre, what is the most pesticide-, herbicide-, water-, labor-, and cash-intensive crop grown in the U.S.? Right. Your lawn. In America, turf grasses, which are mostly non-native, cover 21 million acres (think the state of Maine), cost $40 billion per year (more than U.S. foreign aid), consume around 90 million pounds of fertilizer and 80 million pounds of pesticides per year (which sometimes contaminate our groundwater and surface water), and slurp up an inconceivable nine billion gallons of water per day (at least half of all residential water use in the arid West is associated with lawns and landscaping).