Good morning, RVA! It's 51 °F, and the pouring rain has moved out to sea, leaving today pleasant and unseasonably warm. You can expect highs around 60 °F, sunny skies, and maybe a few clouds this afternoon. Weather over the next week is kind of a mixed bag, with a chance of more rain this coming Wednesday.
Water cooler
I really enjoyed this column in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, by Delegate Richard Sullivan, taking apart Governor Youngkin’s energy plan. I liked this bit about renewables: “The governor insists that his plan is ‘not reducing an emphasis on renewables.’ But of course it is. He not only wants to slow the effort down, but he abandons the imperative of carefully reducing and eventually ending the use of fossil fuels to generate electricity in Virginia. He gives up, just as we are taking off”. And this bit about the Governor’s proposal to give up on solar and wind and to instead focus on small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs): “Solar and wind projects abound, while commercialized SMRs don’t exist anywhere in the world, because we don’t know how to build or operate them in cost-effective, safe and reliable ways.” If you want, you can find the Governor’s full energy plan here, but we’ll have to wait and see what the General Assembly gets up to this coming session. Then we’ll find out if Youngkin can move forward any of his plans to backtrack on Virginia’s climate progress.
Jack Jacobs at Richmond BizSense reports on local food delivery app ChopChop and its acquisition by FoodUp, another local takeout service. I’m not sure, even with their powers combined, that this new local service will have what it takes to compete against national apps like GrubHub and DoorDash. Local is great, though, so, fingers crossed!
Jonathan Spiers, also at Richmond BizSense, reports that The Park, which, somehow, I 100% missed until this very moment, will open this coming Wednesday. There’s a lot going on at The Park, so I’ll just quote Spiers: “Marketed as ‘an indoor wonderland,’ the venue consists of a mix of entertainment options, including an 18-lane duckpin bowling alley, an 18-hole mini golf course, three virtual golf bays, three bars, a food hall with six restaurant concepts, a beer garden-style area with 30 self-pour taps, a 200-person banquet hall and a 200-seat auditorium for live music, comedy acts and corporate functions.” It’s like you took all of Scott’s Addition and crammed it into a single building. Quick aside from Old Man Crosswalk: Since The Park and Hardywood are just blocks apart, we are guaranteed to see many, many people crossing Overbrook on foot, possibly after a few too many and often in the dark. The City and adjacent developers need to improve the lighting, safety, and pedestrian access between those two spots ASAP.
OK OK OK, we have for real and officially entered into The High Holiday Season, which means an onslaught of holiday-themed events. Karri Peifer at Axios Richmond has a good run down of the holiday happenings, many of which take place this weekend.
What the heck, who steals a goat? Especially a community goat from a public park?? I hope Mary, the stolen goat, finds her way home safely.
Here’s a charming thread via /r/rva: Bars, restaurants, and cafes that are nicely decorated for Christmas. You’ve got your heavy hitters like the Jefferson and the Jasper, but also a couple unexpected names made the list, too.
This morning's longread
The Fraudulent King
I can’t stop reading about Twitter and Elon Musk. I know, in some ways, it only makes him more powerful than we can possibly imagine, but, like, it’s such a fascinating train wreck. You can (and probably should) move your public thoughts off of Twitter and over to a place not run by a mad billionaire—I use micro.blog, but there are many, many other options.
The Twitter debacle has become an incredibly dramatic enumeration of Musk’s sins - his disloyalty, callousness, arrogance, pride, and his endless need for validation. Since the onset of this catastrophic deal, he has made the worst possible choice, both for himself and the website he unfortunately purchased. He clearly had no plan, but believed that his raw talent and managerial skills would quickly fix something that wasn’t really broken, and yet he has publicly and gruesomely proven that “Elon Musk” is a myth. Musk is not a great businessman, or a great manager, or a great technical mind. Musk is not Tony Stark, or King Midas, or Steve Jobs, or even Mark Zuckerberg. He is a churlish, desperate oaf that has clearly accidentally happened upon success rather than actively acquiring it himself.
If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.
Picture of the Day
An unacceptable and inaccessible sidewalk at Broad and Lombardy—but with dramatic lighting.
