Good morning, RVA! It's 57 °F, and today should be a bit warmer than yesterday with highs in the mid 70s. Rain moves in tomorrow, so enjoy today!
Water cooler
Richmond Police are reporting two separate shootings that left four people dead in Gilpin Court. From the press release:
- At approximately 4:26 a.m., RPD officers were called to the 1200 block of St. Paul’s Street for a report of random gunfire. When they arrived, they were directed to an apartment where they discovered the bodies of three adults. They had all apparently been shot.
- At approximately 5:40 a.m. RPD officers at the scene of the St. Paul’s Street shooting incident heard the sound of gunfire nearby. They responded and discovered the body of an adult male lying on the ground outside an apartment building in the 100 block of Federal Street. He had apparently been shot.
Police have not developed any information to directly connect these two events.
The RTD’s Katy Burnell Evans has a piece you need to read about the City’s recent rise in gun violence—eight shooting deaths in as many days. Police Chief Durham says, “There are too many guns out here and too many people dying.”
Ned Oliver checks in on the City’s bike share system after the first couple of weeks. I feel pretty good about the system’s 1,000+ rides, especially considering the couple days of rain we had. Hidden further down in the article you’ll find a potential timeline for expanding the system. It’s not as soon as I’d like, but nothing transit-related is for me!
Tonight, City Council returns from its summer-long slumber. You can find the agenda here (PDF). Lots of administrata, but they will consider appointing Amarilis M. Hernandez, the current deputy city auditor, as the interim city auditor.
Stephanie Ganz, writing for Richmond magazine, tells us the secrets of her Dad’s Special Spaghetti. This is a heckuva good piece of writing. Prepare to feel emotions!
It’ll be real weird to finally have something in the old Village spot on the southeast corner of Grace and Harrison. J. Elias O’Neal at Richmond BizSense has the details on what will finally fill that long-empty space.
I’m on board with this RTD editorial about not giving Amazon a truckload of incentives to lure them into building their headquarters in Richmond. Also, I have no idea how they breezily checked off that Central Virginia has “access to a major airport and mass transit” while going through the list of the region’s positives. Unless you define “Central Virginia” as “Just Richmond City,” there are very, very few places you can get to via mass transit—including the airport. We’ve got a lot of work to do in that department if we want to attract major employers without showering them in golden tickets.
It’s weird to see Famous American Humans discussing Richmond neighborhoods and private schools after that Steve Bannon interview on 60 Minutes.
Sports!
- Spiders beat #25 Colgate, 20-17.
- Hokies blanked Delaware, 27-0.
- Wahoos fell to Indiana, 17-34.
- Nats went three of four against the Phillies and have the day off.
- Washington lost the first game of the regular season to the Eagles, 17-30.
This morning's longread
The Risk of Nuclear War with North Korea
My mom shared this longread with me from the New Yorker and it’s really fascinating. The excerpt is intense, but there’s also a bunch of day-in-the-life-of-a-North Korean stuff, too.
A few days after the July 4th missile test, Pak told me that I could book a flight to Pyongyang. I submitted a list of people I wanted to interview, including diplomats and Kim Jong Un himself. About the latter, Pak only laughed. (Kim has never given an interview.) After Pak stopped laughing, he said I could talk to other officials. I wanted to understand how North Koreans think about the kind of violence that their country so often threatens. Were the threats serious, or mere posturing? How did they imagine that a war would unfold? Before my arrival in North Korea, I spent time in Washington, Seoul, and Beijing; many people in those places, it turned out, are asking the same things about the United States.