Good morning, RVA! It's 65 °F, and today looks excellent. Get outside and enjoy highs in the upper 70s and no rain until late this evening or tomorrow. While Saturday does look kind of like a wash for outdoor activities, it looks great for staying inside and watching horror movies.
Water cooler
The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Gregory J. Gilligan reports that Capital One and Genworth Financial have both postponed their return to in-person work plans until at least next year. Seems like something we’ll see more and more of from large employers as we move into the winter—and maybe even beyond. I keep thinking about this excellent piece I read earlier this week by Anne Helen Petersen about the future of in-person work. Read the whole thing, but here’s the part that grabbed me: “I am not anti-office. I am anti arbitrary office. I am against sucking two hours [of commuting] out of someone’s day just to briefly make a bad manager feel good. I am against siphoning power from workers and piping it directly to leaders’ already overflowing stores of it. We have such a unique, authentically exciting moment to take stock of what ‘office’ work could look like moving forward — what parts of it need a collective space, which parts do not, and what office spaces will look like and provide. And so many organizations are straight up squandering that opportunity.”
Ian M. Stewart at VPM has an update to the Brookland Park Boulevard Bump Out Situation: “members of the Historic Brookland Park Collective and the Brookland Park Merchants Association, called for the city to investigate if the proper steps were taken before the sidewalk extensions, called bump-outs, were removed.” Also notable, as Councilmember Lambert frequently mentioned a petition with 1,000 signatures as one of the reasons she asked the City’s Department of Public Works to remove the bump outs: “A copy of the petition has not been made public...VPM has sent a FOIA request to Director of Public Works Bobby Vincent and Lambert asking for a copy of the petition.” I’m really interested to see where this goes and am glad neighbors and journalists are continuing to push the City for an explanation. For me, it’s less about the City taking two steps backwards from their transportation and Vision Zero goals (although, that’s pretty bad), but it’s more about the process. I’m particularly concerned about the process that halted the already-approved parklet. While the Director of Public Works may have the authority to rip out street infrastructure at his own discretion (does he though?), I don’t love the idea that a single Councilmember can quietly intervene and stop a project that both the Urban Design Committee and Planning Commission have approved. Those are both public bodies and both have opportunities for citizens and councilmembers alike to weigh in with concerns. My biggest question remains: How did, months after public approval, a Councilmember convince the Mayor’s Director of Public Works to squash the parklet?
Eileen Mellon at Richmond Magazine writes, “The Brenner Pass team transforms its adjacent cafe, Black Lodge, into a bar serving late-night hot dogs,” and that’s pretty much all I need to know about that.
After taking a one-year coronahiatus, Richmond’s biggest music festival returns to the riverfront today through Sunday; all hail the Richmond Folk Festival! Music from the world over kicks off tonight at 6:30 PM and does not stop until Sunday at 6:00 PM. If live music is even tangentially your thing, you’ll undoubtedly find something worth listening to by just wandering around Brown’s Island. Or, if you prefer a little more structure in your life, you can check out the full schedule here, artist profiles here, and the COVID-19 protocols here.
Logistical note! Monday is officially Indigenous Peoples Day in Virginia, and, as such, I’ll take the opportunity to sleep in a bit and spend a little extra time in the yard or on the bicycle. If you’re able, I hope you find a little time in the day to spend doing what makes you happiest.
This morning's longread
The Times Square Margaritaville Resort Is an Unlikely Balm for a Restless Mind
“Hip New Yorker experiences a New York tourist attraction and has fun despite themselves” is a well-established genre, and I always enjoy it.
The 5 o’Clock Somewhere Bar does not open until 5 o’ Clock, which puts a crimp in trying to live out the metaphor of its name. The whole point of the phrase is a justification to start drinking early, before the workday is done, because somebody, somewhere is off work. But no, for the 5 o’Clock Somewhere Bar, one of four restaurants and bars at Manhattan’s new Margaritaville Resort Times Square, you must wait until the workday is over. I am furious about this. Sure, the License to Chill Bar opens at 2, but it’s the principle of the thing. Jimmy Buffett would not wait until the boss says you can go home
If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.
