Good morning, RVA! It's 53 °F, and today you can expect highs right around 70 °F—with even warmer temperatures later on in the week. There is a small chance for rain tonight, but, fingers crossed, it’ll hold off until well past the end of trick-or-treat o’clock.
Water cooler
It’s actual Halloween and that means tonight the streets will flood with costumed children rushing around from house to house ignoring whatever street-safety knowledge they have, driven by an insatiable hunger for disappointingly-small candy bars. If, for some unknowable or emergency reason, you need to travel by car, please take it slow and pay double attention. You never know when some tiny Luigi or Ms. Marvel will dart out into the street, racing towards their next score.
Related: Desiree Montilla at NBC12 reports that Halloween on Hanover returns after a pandemic-related hiatus. Lost of neighborhoods have Halloween traditions, but Hanover Ave closing a couple blocks to car traffic lets the party spill out into the street in a really wonderful way. It’s an excellent idea, and, of course, what all of our neighborhoods should be doing. If you’ve never experienced the specific Halloween on Hanover chaos, it’s worth a trip just to kind of stand in the middle of the street and take it all in.
Via /r/rva, a picture of some really intense Hellraiser-based Halloween decorations on Floyd Avenue. Excellent (and terrifying) work!
VPM’s Jahd Khalil reports on how the groups impacted by the Enrichmond Foundation’s dissolution plan to move forward. Enrichmond acted as a sort of umbrella nonprofit for tons of small volunteer groups (like, say, Friends of Pump House) and handled all of those groups’ financials. After Enrichmond abruptly dissolved, all of the volunteers lost access to their money, which, I guess, assumes that money still even exists. The whole thing seems like a huge mess, and the collection of volunteers left high and dry are now looking for some pro-bono legal help to get everything sorted.
WTVR’s Tyler Layne has continued to dig at the process leading up to the resignation of RPD’s ex-Chief Gerald Smith. Last week, Layne repeatedly questioned the Mayor on whether or not he asked for the Chief’s resignation, but the Mayor said he “was not in the meeting” and that he doesn’t “get involved in the hiring and firing of police chiefs,” leaving it up to CAO Lincoln Saunders. Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams picks up that thread and points out the handful of times in the past that the Mayor has directly taken responsibility for the hirings and firings of police chiefs. Unless there’s some legal or contract stuff afoot (one of the previous police chiefs is suing Stoney), I don’t see what the big deal is about just announcing you fired the guy. As of right now at least, it seemed like exactly the right decision and one Stoney should take credit for.
This morning's longread
How an Idea Becomes a Podcast
Anne Helen Petersen has a new podcast on Crooked Media, and she sat down with her producer to talk about putting together a real-deal podcast and how that whole process works. It’s really interesting stuff if you’ve ever wondered how the audiosausage gets made.
Melody and I look at the “show map” I put together before the pilot, and she starts reaching out to potential hosts and previous-question-askers to see if they’d be willing to tape themselves reading their questions. (We also created a new, more secure Google Form that includes a legal disclaimer from Crooked; you don’t have to read your own question if you submit it, but it’s “good radio,” as they say, if you do). I want to emphasize that it’s Melody who’s doing this organizational work — we sort through incoming questions together to figure out which ones work best, and we’re in pretty much constant communication, but she’s the one wrangling emails and schedules and putting together very detailed documents ahead of time to make my job easier. I’m emphasizing that she does this work because people often think producers are just editors — and in some cases, yes, they exclusively edit the actual podcast. But in cases like this, they also make the podcast happen.
If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.
Picture of the Day
Definitely gave this bird a wide berth.
