Good morning, RVA! It's 57 °F, expect highs around 70 °F and maybe a bit of clouds here and there. Tomorrow, we should begin a multiple-day streak of mostly amazing weather.
Water cooler
Mark Robinson with the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a busy schedule lately as City Council keeps scheduling new hours-long meetings for him to attend. One of which was yesterday’s budget workshop where he heard the news that Council would like to strip a couple million dollars out of City’s Percent-for-Arts Program to fund district-level infrastructure projects like roads and sidewalks. What a terrible idea. Do you like looking through the Big Huge Rings down by the T-Pot bridge? Have you enjoyed the Maggie Walker statue’s role as a gathering place for civic discourse? These are the kinds of things paid for by the Percent-for-Arts Program! Public art is so important and wonderful, and it’s a particularly low move by Council to snatch away these funds because they are unwilling to raise the new revenue needed to pay for ongoing citywide needs. Don’t get me wrong, I love sidewalks more than almost anyone, but what programs will we defund for next year’s round of sidewalks and repaving? This kind of budgeting is shortsighted, unsustainable, and doesn’t even meet the current needs—which Councilman Agelasto estimates to be $10 million per year for streets alone. Here’s Council’s contact information if you wanted to let them know your thoughts and feelings.
Switching gears, here’s a Q&A in Richmond Magazine with Councilmember Cynthia Newbille ahead of the YWCA Richmond Outstanding Women Awards. Did you know she’s a vegetarian?
I continue to be ambivalent about the Intermediate Terminal Building and Stone’s new attempts to tear it down rather than renovate it. Ned Oliver at the RTD has some updates on that whole process which I’ve now read and still feel ambivalent.
Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense says you could soon see dogs at our local breweries. Personally, and I’m a curmudgeonly old person, but I do not want dogs running around public places where I’m trying to drink a beer in peace. Lots of folks are scared of dogs—this include myself until adulthood—and your dog, no matter how chill, will still make them uncomfortable.
RVA Bike Month begins this weekend and there’s just so many possible events for you to attend that to list them all would put me far past my non-existent word limit. Take a look at the list, add some things to your calendar, and get excited for all of the bike-related infrastructure headed our way in 2018.
Also for your calendars this weekend is the RVA (All Day) Block Party. Head down to The Broadberry on Broad Street for a daylong music / everything festival. NO BS! Brass Band closes out the show at 8:15 PM.
There’s a new episode of the Sam and Ross Like Things podcast. On this episode we talk about a reference repository and a pencil sharpener. We are very interesting and not at all boring people!
Sports!
Tremaine and Terrell Edmunds, brothers from Virginia Tech, were both selected in the first round of the NFL Draft (#16 and #28 respectively)—a first in Draft history.
- Squirrels are back in town and host the Yard Goats tonight at 7:05 PM.
- Nats begin a series against Arizona tonight at 7:05 PM.
This morning's longread
‘Fox & Friends,’ stuck with Donald Trump for all eternity
Alexandra Petri is a dang good writer. If you want to watch a clip of what she’s describing you can Google for it...if you dare!
Stars spun into existence in the deep womb of the sky and burned out again, and planets rose and set, and at the end of the last age of men the great wolf Fenris rose from the deep and swallowed the Earth — and Donald Trump was still on the phone with “Fox & Friends” after calling in with a lot of opinions he wanted to share, against the best legal advice, and also probably the advice of his lawyers.
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