Good morning, RVA! It's already 80 °F, and today’s anther hot one. Count on highs near 100 °F for most of the day followed by a possible chance of rain this evening.
Water cooler
Richmond Police are reporting a double shooting on Saturday as a homicide and an aggravated assault. Early in the morning, officers arrived to the 1700 block of Carlisle Avenue and found Tevon M. Cook, 26, suffering from a fatal gunshot wound. Another adult male was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Justin Mattingly was at last night’s RPS School Board meeting and reports that they’ve decided to rename J.E.B. Stuart Elementary School to...Barack Obama Elementary School! I think that’s neat! Mattingly also reports on the progress being made with the proposals to rebuild George Mason Elementary, E.S.H. Green Elementary, and Elkhardt-Thompson Middle 💸. Companies vying to “oversee the designs of the new schools” have submitted proposals and the City will review them shortly—we should get a look at the proposals after the City awards the contract. Progress! Now we’ve just gotta find the extra couple hundred million dollars to fund the rest of the school construction and repairs.
Meanwhile, Mark Robinson sat in on yesterday’s Planning Commission meeting where they decided to delay the rezoning of the Westhampton School. The details of this are fascinating. Bon Secours has a July 1st deadline—set in a contract with the Economic Development Authority—to rezone the property, but the Planning Commission will not meet again until July 2nd. This forces Bon Secours to...I don’t know! Do something with their contract, that’s for sure. I wonder if the City could squeeze out a requirement for them preserve the old buildings on-site—which seems to be the main focus of folks’ concern. Something to keep an ear/eye on!
RTD hat-trick! Yesterday, I tried to say that if you want to make big changes in a neighborhood like Blackwell, you need to put in a lot of work with the people who already live, work, and worship in the neighborhood. Michael Paul Williams does a way better job than I did of explaining why that’s important.
I dropped by last night’s public meeting about GRTC’s planned changes to the yet-to-be-launched #50, #76, and #77. The temporary changes are already reflected in the schedules and maps linked above and have the buses turning around in front of the old Department of Workers Compensation building on DMV Drive instead of on Grace Street. As for a permanent fix, due to the temporary nature of GRTC’s agreement with the Science Museum, the buses must go...somewhere else. A couple of solutions were proposed by GRTC last night, neither of which was cost neutral, and that’s disappointing. Public comment on the permanent route redesign will stay open until July 20th, and I’d encourage interested folks to let GRTC know that we shouldn’t have to pay more to run basically the same system we have today. If we must move these routes away from this block of Grace Street, then it should either not cost us any more money or, if it does, the move should creatively provide more bus service than we have today. I’m hopeful the nerdy/influential folks in town can figure out a clever/political solution over the next couple of weeks.
Remember: Today is Juneteenth!
Sports!
- Squirrels return home for a stretch and start things off against Altoona tonight at 6:35 PM. Tickets are available online.
- Nats split yesterday’s games against the Yankees. And pick up a new series against Baltimore beginning tonight at 7:05 PM.
This morning's longread
Pretending To Be Okay
What’s it like to never lose? Really freaking stressful.
Two years ago, the Huskies blew out highly touted Ohio State in the season opener. Afterward, he walked into the locker room and wrote "Veni, Vidi, Vici" on the board and told his team they were going to be like the Roman legions: roll into town, conquer everything and go back home. Now he regrets being so businesslike. They've lost the ability to celebrate anything other than a ring. The only available emotion at the end of a year is relief. "Everyone else thinks you have a flawless team," he says, "and you're the only one who's miserable. Before you know it, the season is over and you didn't have any fun. I have to keep reminding everybody, myself included, we have to celebrate every little thing we do." He's given the Huskies three specific goals for their final three regular season games against Tulane, SMU and South Florida. 1. Play more suffocating defense 2. Run their fast break more ruthlessly 3. Get smarter at the little stuff that decides close games.
If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.