Good morning, RVA! It's 26 °F, and you shouldn't expect temperatures to get above 40 °F today. Bundle up, stay warm, and look forward to a sunny weekend with highs back up in the upper 50s.
Water cooler
I appreciate this thread by Twitter user @SheriShannon27 about the casino proposed for Richmond's Southside. Before anyone can build any sort of casino in Richmond, they've got to jump through a couple of legal hoops. And before those hoops even get set up, the General Assembly needs to pass HB 4 / SB 36. And before I decide whether or not I think this is a good plan for Richmond's Southside, I'd like to read some more about giant casinos dropped into off-the-beaten path parts of towns because I've got a ton of questions. Do these casinos typically succeed? Do they create local jobs and tax revenue? What impact do they have on folks with lower-incomes? What impact do they have on nearby housing affordability? What does it mean that the proposed location of this specific casino is adjacent to Hillside Court? Like I said, lots of questions, and I'm sure I'll have more in the coming months. Luckily, both the House and Senate versions of the enabling legislation require Richmond to hold a referendum, so, should they pass, I'd imagine we'll start seeing some opportunities for the public to learn the answers to some of these questions.
There are now 17 RVA Bike Share stations, thanks to the new one that just opened at Main Street Train Station. This is a particularly useful spot for shareable e-bikes since it sits at the very bottom of a valley and gives folks a quick and easy way to get up either hill into Downtown or Church Hill. I still haven't renewed my membership to RVA Bike Share yet, but it is nice to see some sort of progress made toward the 40 stations we were promised years ago. With 40 stations, I think you'd have a usable system. Then, maybe we'd get the buy-in from folks needed to expand to 60 or 80, which is when things start to get interesting. Station density is super important to a successful bike share system, and we should shoot for something like four stations per square mile. To put that in context, Downtown should have about 16 stations on its own.
We're approaching the end of this year's GA session, but I'm sure a few twists, turns, and surprises still remain. For now, though, Michael Martz works through some of the details of the budgets passed by both the House and the Senate 💸. They always say your budget reflects your priorities, and for the New Democratic Majority those priorities are education, transportation, health care, minimum wage, and climate change.
Another thing Democrats care about: Immunization. I don't know how we ended up in a place where a critical part of public health is a partisan issue, but here we are. Ned Oliver at the Virginia Mercury says the State will try to update the school immunization schedule over objections from eyerolly antivaxxers. #notallrepublicans, though, because Republican Del. Adams said "flatly that the recommendations are neither arbitrary nor controversial and are 'widely, widely shared amongst every society around medicine in general around the U.S.'" So maybe its not as partisan as I thought! Related: The Richmond City Health District will provide free T-dap and HPV vaccines to middle school students this spring. Parents, keep an eye out for the permission slips.
Eileen Mellon at Richmond Magazine says we have a new pho spot, Pho 95, coming Willow Lawn and that the owner is "well known on the regional pho circuit." Yesterday would have been the perfect day for a hot bowl of noodle soup, and I'm stoked to take the bus out that way when they open in early March.
This morning's longread
Mudlarks Scour the Thames to Uncover 2,000 Years of Secrets
The matter-of-fact attitude this lady has about finding cast off items from the 16th Century blows my mind. Make sure you check out her Instagram, but block out some serious time because you're gonna want to scroll for a while. It's absolutely fascinating what treasures she regularly finds just laying on the banks of the river.
The river runs through the city west to east, bisecting London as it winds past the new skyscrapers and old docks that line its banks. But twice a day, the low tide pulls the flowing edges of the Thames back — dropping the river level by 20 feet in some areas — revealing centuries of forgotten London life in the fragments that poke out from the newly exposed land, known as the foreshore. This is when the mudlarks, like Ms. Maiklem, come out.
If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.