Good morning, RVA! It's 52 °F, and today looks simply stunning. Get excited for highs in the upper 70s—maybe even 80s!—and more of the same both Saturday and Sunday. In fact, depending on how intensely you decide to move your body around, you might even consider Sunday "hot." Exciting!
Water cooler
VPM's Ian M. Stewart has an interesting report on the state of litter in Virginia that even has some chartsandgraphs for you to dig into. Litter is bad, and I'm always aghast when I see folks just throw trash right on the ground. However, I am pretty convinced that a large portion of urban litter doesn't end up on the ground because of The Kids These Days and their scofflaw lifestyle, but because we lack sufficient trash cans—and, importantly, we lack the capacity to empty those trash cans when they get full.
Meg Schiffres and Sara McCloskey, also at VPM, report that the Commonwealth will shut down its rent relief program on May 15th. I didn't know this part: "As of March 2022, it has distributed more than $713 million to nearly 105,000 households in Virginia." That is a ton of money and a ton of impact. That the program will, unfortunately, shut down due to a "surge in applications" really highlights that folks can't afford their housing—regardless of the pandemic.
At this point, as far as I know, someone still needs to pitch in a million bucks to make sure GRTC remains fare-free for the upcoming year. Richard Hankins, RVA Rapid Transit's Programs and Communications Coordinator, argues in the Richmond Times-Dispatch that City Council and the Mayor need to figure out how to get it included in Richmond's budget ASAP, because that process is quickly wrapping up. In Hankins's words: "Few other programs do so much good for such a small cost. With food, housing and transportation costs on the rise, this is the worst possible time to break our promise to Richmond’s bus riders and hit working-class households with a new expense." I still want to know the longer-term plan for covering this expense—especially after the state subsidy goes away.
The RTD's Colleen Curran reports that the RVA Street Art Festival is back and will paint over the murals down at the Power Plant building on the canal—the site of the first RVA Street Art Festival ten years ago. Goodbye human bullseye thing and creepy big owl! I bet people will have thoughts and feelings about this, but, honestly, it's pretty amazing those original murals are still around a decade later. Overall, I'm excited for the new paint, and if you or someone you know would like to contribute to adding new art along the canal, you can fill out the application here.
Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense has this week’s important update to Shake Shack Watch™: "The former Applebee’s building at 5400 W. Broad St. was razed this week, clearing a path for the fast-food chain’s first area location in the Willow Place shopping center." Shake lovers will probably have to wait until next year before the spot officially opens, though.
Alert! The Monument 10k takes over a section of Richmond's streets tomorrow morning, and that means road closures! Richard Hayes at RVAHub has the full list, but, basically, avoid Monument Avenue east of 195 and a bunch of streets south of Broad near VCU. But maybe don't avoid the area entirely! Part of what makes the Monument 10k great is the wonderful environment and the thousands of folks cheering on runners and walkers. If you do want to post up somewhere along the route, runners start doing their thing at 8:30 AM.
Finally, via /r/rva, great Easter-related content.
This morning's longread
Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid
I agreed with a lot of this very long piece in the Atlantic that's been floating around: Social media is a net negative, the people in charge of it won't admit that to themselves, and it has done lasting harm to the way our country works. There's also a ton in here I disagreed with, some of which is pointed out in this issue of the INDIGNITY newsletter. Unfortunately, no author, this one included, can avoid falsely balancing whatever broken thing Republicans are up to with rest of America's "exhausted majority"—it's always "Republicans do this, and yet Democrats do that." The scale of this and that, though, are just not even of the same magnitude.
Mark Zuckerberg may not have wished for any of that. But by rewiring everything in a headlong rush for growth—with a naive conception of human psychology, little understanding of the intricacy of institutions, and no concern for external costs imposed on society—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and a few other large platforms unwittingly dissolved the mortar of trust, belief in institutions, and shared stories that had held a large and diverse secular democracy together.
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