Good morning, RVA! It's 67 °F, and warmer temperatures are on deck for today. Expect highs in the upper 80s and so much sunshine you won't know what to do with it all. Consider wearing a hat.
Water cooler
OK! Here are the (few) details for 7th District residents who want to apply for the empty School Board seat: You must submit a resume that includes your home address and telephone number to the School Board Clerk, Angela Wilson, no later than 12:00 PM on September 29th. You can email her your resume at
Carol Hazard at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has an update on the lawsuit situation with the Better Housing Coalition's attempt to convert the hotel at 3200 W. Broad Street into transit-friendly and affordable housing. I'm not smart enough to understand what's going on in this article, but it sounds like any development is on hold until even more legal stuff gets sorted out. Merits of the lawsuit aside, this bums me out. The Cleveland Pulse station sits about a block from that location and the whole area is kind of a dead, gross zone for pedestrians. Development like this, and the accompanying improvements to the street scape, could really help this stretch of Broad feel a lot less like a hellmouth.
Put a pin in this article by the RTD's Mark Robinson about the results of the tax amnesty program. The City has collected about a fifth of their total goal of back taxes, but still has a month remaining in the program. Let's check back in the middle of October and see how they did.
When you get a second, read this excerpt from Margaret Edds book, We Face the Dawn: Oliver Hill, Spottswood Robinson, and the Legal Team that Dismantled Jim Crow over on Style Weekly. It'll give you some really depressing context for monuments discussions and equally depressing insight into Jim Crow-era Richmond.
Hey! In this quick update on Petersburg, Interim Assistant City Manager and Former Mayoral Candidate Jack Berry makes an appearance!
Duuuuudes! The RVA Street Art Festival is this weekend! Beginning Friday at 5:00 PM through Sunday you can watch The Diamond transform into something less drab, gray, and intimidating right in front of your face. Put it on your calendar and stop by a couple of times so you can see the work progress.
Also for your calendar this weekend: Give a Day RVA. This Saturday is a regional day of service, and there are a bunch of volunteer opportunities for you to take advantage of and give a hand/day.
In his opening monologue, Jimmy Kimmel responds to Senator Bill Cassidy's most recent attempt to repeal Obamacare. It's worth watching to understand the proposed Graham-Cassidy bill, which will probably drop next week at some point.
Sports!
- Nats beat Atlanta, 4-2, and will try again tonight at 7:35 PM.
This morning's longread
Can't Get There From Here: The struggle with where the sidewalks won't go
Sidewalks are really, really important. While we don't have Atlanta's crumbling hexagonal pavers, we still have tons of sidewalks that are in such a state of disrepair that they force pedestrians into the road.
Beckley is 30 and married. She’s a huge sports fan. She loves her three dogs, and walks them around the neighborhood when she’s not busy with chores in her house. She’s a customer service representative for Amazon. She’s blonde and has a loud, passionate voice with a bit of a twang. She was not much different from many other women who decided to spend December 31, 2015, in downtown Atlanta. All she expected was the same experience they had. Instead, Beckley spent her night terrified and humiliated, rolling her wheelchair in the lane of traffic on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and Centennial Olympic Boulevard as her able-bodied husband walked beside her and attempted to direct traffic around her. The Beckleys were trying to get back to their car, but they couldn’t use the sidewalks or crosswalks that led directly to it. There were no curb ramps that would have allowed Beth to steer her wheelchair on or off the raised paths.