Good morning, RVA! It's 77 °F, and today’s highs are back up in the 90s again. But! There’s a decent chance for some cooling thunderstorms later this afternoon. Either way, tomorrow—and the rest of the weekend—looks a heckuva lot more temperate than the last couple of days.
Water cooler
I am skeptical of this editorial from the RTD Editorial Board that praises the Monument Avenue Commission’s report (PDF), celebrates the recommendation to take down the Jefferson Davis monument, but advocates for removing just his statue and leaving the rest of the colonnade and other materials behind. They argue especially for keeping the statue on top of the large central column, that “allowing Vindicatrix to remain on her perch — even as a statue of some worthy Richmonder fills the pedestal below that once elevated Davis — offers an opportunity for symbolic justice and healing.” My dudes, this statue, which has nothing to do with justice and healing, is also known as “Miss Confederacy” and is used today as a rallying image by neo Confederates. I’m not necessarily against repurposing the colonnade or even the big huge column, but if we decide to do something like that the new monument must starkly contrast with the existing one and clearly stand against white supremacy and racism. Leaving Miss Confederacy atop her column does neither.
Michael O’Connor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch continues the trickle of updates coming out of Henrico’s Brookland District: We’ve now got three official candidates and one maybe candidate to replace Courtney Lynch. Sounds like the Board of Supervisors will finalize the details for the November special election this coming Tuesday. Full disclosure: Democrat Danny Plaugher sits on the RVA Rapid Transit board, my full time employer, and is a tireless advocate for public transportation. That’s a good play on words because he’s the executive director of Virginians for High Speed Rail.
Whoa, I am a bad person for knowing almost nothing about what’s going on out at the East End Land Fill and am thankful for Daniel Berti at RVA Mag for filling me in. Environmental justice is something I could definitely stand to lean more about—it’s no coincidence where most landfills get built.
I thought the agenda for this week’s Organizational Development committee (PDF) meeting sounded interesting, so I uploaded it to the Boring Show for the three of us that like listening to City Council Committee meetings. It did not disappoint! Give it a go and hear what Council has to say about the Pulse and the new bus network, a presentation from the interim RRHA CEO, and a brief teaser about the Brandcenter’s plan to rebrand City Council.
Hey now this is interesting: a restaurant / food shop in the East End, supported by the LISC/Bon Secours SEED grant program, that’s applying to accept EBT cards. Eileen Mellon at Richmond Magazine has the details on Soul N’ Vinegar which opened this past Saturday.
Sports!
- Squirrels fell to Akron, 4-5, and pick it back up tonight at 7:05 PM. Tickets are available online.
- Nats came back from a huge deficit to beat the Marlins, 14-12. That series continues tonight at 7:05 PM.
This morning’s patron question
Patron John asks:
I’m really into “rib tips”. They are fatty, grisly, chewy and packed full of flavor. When I ordered rib tips at my favorite rib joint in Atlanta they would always ask “do you know what you’re ordering?” Some people get confused when encountering these luscious tidbits for the first time. They aren’t the finest cuts of meat.
Where can I get rib tips in Richmond? I’ve searched the web and asked various food truck vendors, and no one can point me to RVA nirvana. Can you help?
To be honest, I’d never heard of rib tips before, but I do enjoy eating cooked animal fat in various forms—I mean, who doesn’t? To answer this question, I needed help, so I turned to local food expert and wizard Robey Martin because she knows everything about food in Richmond. And lo! She quickly pointed me towards Tree’s Tacos and Tips down on 25th and E. Main Street. Sounds like an excellent excuse to take the Pulse out for a rib tip lunch trip.
This morning's patron longread
UTC is enough for everyone ...right?
From Patron Sam comes this smart, funny, and nerdy piece about time in the context of programming. Fun for programmers and civilians alike!
What time is it? At a certain point we started asking this question. This became important to know when you could finally head home after work, for example (answer: never early enough). And for a long time that was fine, but that wasn’t entirely the question we were asking. There was a hidden implicit part of the question we were never asking: What time is it here? Once we started getting planes and trains and automobiles, we had movement, we had transportation, we could be in two distant places within hours. So we started asking this question: What time is it there? This question ruined everything. Now we had to deal not just with one time (here), not two times (here and there), but a multitude of times, all interacting with each other (everywhere). This complicated everything, and made obvious the notion that writing timezone code was some of the worst things you have to do in our field.
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