Good morning, RVA! It's 70 °F, and today’s another hot one with highs in the low 90s. I’ll tell you what, yesterday’s bike ride home was bakingly unpleasant, but the humidity should break tomorrow, which I hope will take some of the edge off. If you’ve gotta spend a bunch of time outside today, remember to stay hydrated!
Water cooler
VPM is out here doing the lord’s work and has gotten ahold of DMV’s rejected license plates from 2019, 2020, and 2021. I think I could spend 100 hours looking through these lists; people are simultaneously fascinating and unique while also so incredibly the same. Poking around these PDFs and you’ll see infinite versions on just a handful of (mostly boring) themes: Sex, violence, and drugs. Some do seem genuinely innocuous, though, and I do think whoever was denied “NORFCK” got a raw deal.
Richmond BizSense’s Jonathan Spiers reports on some exciting Southside rezoning news that I either missed or forgot about entirely. Late in July, Council introduced a resolution (RES. 2022-R048) to kick off some up-zoning of portions of three major Southside corridors: Richmond Highway, Midlothian Turnpike, and Hull Street. Rezoning is a whole entire deal, so this is just the start of a long process, but it’s exciting nonetheless! Rezoning these corridors to TOD-1 (Transit-Oriented Development) will encourage denser development which helps build the case for adding more frequent transit which, in turn, brings more development. It’s a positive, reinforcing cycle, and rezoning is an important step in that process.
Anna Bryson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that the Hanover County School Board will hold a special meeting tonight to vote on their invasive bathroom policy that requires parents of trans kids to submit a “written request to school administration asking for access to restrooms, locker rooms or changing facilities that align with the students’ gender identities.” The School Board will have the final say on these requests, which the policy suggests should be submitted with “personal documents including students’ disciplinary or criminal records or signed statements from the students’ doctors or therapists.” Horrible demoralizing stuff for the students and families of Hanover County.
For your calendar: Richard Hayes at RVA Hub says Gelati Celesti will host A Night for Natalie tomorrow, August 31st, from 3:00–9:00 PM, at their Scott’s Addition location. 20% of ice cream sales will be donated to Natalie Rainer’s medical bills, with the total matched by a generous family. Natalie was riding bikes with Jonah Holland a couple weeks back when they were hit by a driver. Jonah did not survive. If ice cream’s not your thing, you can donate directly to Natalie’s GoFundMe.
Karri Peifer at Axios Richmond reports Pumpkin Spice Lattes are back at Starbucks today. I do not accept this fall inflation—especially when it’s 95 °F out and I’m sweating through my shirts.
Welp, all did not go according to plan and NASA scrubbed yesterday Artemis I launch due to a fuel bleed issue. Huge bummer. The next possible launch window for the massive rocket is this coming Friday at 12:48 PM, but that might be a little optimistic. NASA will hold a media briefing today at 6:00 PM at which we (space nerds) will learn more.
This morning's longread
The "White People Food" Meme Is Trapping Us All
Jenny Zhang writes about how reductive “white people food” is—not just for white people’s food but for everyone else’s food, too. While this is certainly not a defense of suburban Midwest American cuisine, it might, instead, actually be (yet another) argument against social media.
In any case, what this category of food is matters not so much as what it is not. A binary has emerged in popular culture—especially online in the bowels of TikTok comment sections and viral tweets—cobbled together from half-logic and sweeping generalizations: If “white people food” is bland and unseasoned, then all food that appears to be bland and unseasoned must be “white people food.” And if that is true, then the logic follows: “Non-white people food” must therefore be well-seasoned and generously spiced, a welcome antidote to the tyranny of pale provisions. But it’s worth asking: What are we trying to prove by upholding this forced binary of taste?
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