Good morning, RVA! It's 42 °F, and rainy. You can expect the rain to continue through the morning and maybe even into the afternoon. Temperatures are way cooler, too—like, in the mid 40s for most of the day. Put some extra layers on under that rain jacket!
Water cooler
Have you had a chance to look through the mayor's proposed Capital Improvement Plan for FY23 yet? I mean, who doesn't rush to scroll through a 167-page budget PDF in their free time?? Remember, the CIP is the City's budget for tangible things you can touch with your hands—bridges, buildings, bike lanes, that sort of stuff—and the best thing about the CIP, in my opinion, is it's just so dang readable. Each project has a single dedicated page that includes a couple paragraphs of narrative and a table showing the funding allocated (or removed) over the next couple of years. That's it! Want to know more about the plan to replace the rickety, old bridge over the train tracks on Lombardy (originally built in 1903!)? Turn to page 81, and you'll see that it'll cost about $10 million, is funded mostly by VDOT and the federal government, and has $4.1 million of funding allocated towards it this coming year. What about upgrading our city's stormwater and sewer infrastructure? Page 117 and 118 show almost $80 million allocated for both this coming fiscal year, funded by user fees (that's our utility bills) and bonds. See? Such an easy and fun PDF. Of course some of the projects are very broad and cover a ton of work (like Complete Streets, p. 96, $17 million), and you'll probably wish you knew which streets were getting completed out of that bucket in FY23. Unfortunately, that requires some more digging and isn't really the purpose of the CIP and this particular document. Anyway, it's a good read, and I encourage you to at least read the Mayor's introduction on page 33, scan through the list of completed projects on page 39, and briefly flip through the rest. You won't regret it (probably!).
The Richmond Times-Dispatch's Reed Williams reports on a disturbing confrontation between a woman and a Richmond Police officer at the Family Dollar on Westover Hills Boulevard. Tap through for a video, but, be aware it's violent and hard to watch as the officer pins the woman to the ground and tries to handcuff her as she screams in pain. RPD released the following statement: "Richmond Police Department has become aware of a video that is circulating on social media regarding an arrest made by RPD yesterday, March 7, in the 1200 block of Westover Hills Boulevard for a report of a shoplifting in progress. The Department is investigating the incident and will provide a statement at the appropriate time." Related: The Mayor has included $204,199 in his FY23 budget for the Civilian Review Board, and Council's Civilian Review Board Task Force recommended a budget of $1.2 million.
Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense has a really fascinating story about the Die Teufel club in Jackson Ward, something I knew absolutely nothing about. From the piece: "Initially known as The Devil’s Club, the social club has been a gathering place for black men and women since 1937. Willie Lucas, the club’s treasurer and a member of its board of directors, said a group of black men founded the club at a time when they weren’t allowed at other social clubs because of their race." The club moved to its current location in 1972 and has listed the building for $1.1 million.
Gas prices got you down? John Hood at NBC12 says GRTC has seen bus ridership increase alongside prices at the pump. It makes a lot of sense: Walking, biking, and bussing are all free ways to get around town. I'd love to have seen the Mayor take advantage of this moment and increase local funding to GRTC—above the required inflationary amount—and expand service in the city a bit.
This morning's longread
The Age of Houseplants
Anne Helen Petersen has a great piece on houseplants (inspired by 1993's Age of Innocence), in which she lays out two types of folks: Plant People and Plant Designers. I am definitely the former! My dream is for my entire home to look like a Victorian parlor.
Here, you can see two overarching (and occasionally overlapping) stereotypes of indoor plant design and maintenance emerge. The first is the PLANT PERSON, in which a home overflows with plants overseen by an obsessive, feminized owner (regardless of actual gender). This stereotype frames cultivation as a domestic craft, and embraces an aesthetic that’s often understood as cluttered, irrational, ostentatious, or crass. In these scenarios, plants are always in danger of becoming overgrown, or multiplying with great rapidity, or being over-watered — a symptom of the overindulgent parent. There are always cuttings propagating in slowly-browning glasses of water. There’s anthropomorphizing, and human names for individual species, and emotional attachment. It’s the Victorian attempt at domestic beauty gone horribly sour.
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