Good morning, RVA! It’s 60 °F, and we’ve got another beautiful day ahead of us. Expect highs in the low 80s and a continued break in the humidity. I hope everyone can find some time to sit quietly outside, enjoy the weather, and watch the world go by for at least a minute or two.
Water cooler
All you gotta do is ask! The person behind the Richmond Department of Transformation (assuming it’s not just an incredibly advanced AI), put together a mostly-accurate-but-totally-serviceable map of the existing and proposed bike lanes across the city). Here’s what I want you to do: Turn off the bike share station layer, zoom out a bit, and then toggle the “Public Survey 2022” layer on and off. You should see how these new, proposed bike lanes aren’t just isolated islands but connect and infill the existing bike network. You should also see that we’ve got massive gaps in that existing bike network that we need to address. Still though, the progress made over the last couple of years is really impressive. P.S. The Department of Public Works still wants your feedback on those six proposed bike lanes—it only takes a couple of minutes and gives you the opportunity to ask for more physical protection on each of these designs.
City Council’s Finance and Economic Development committee meets today at 1:00 PM and will consider, among other things, the resolution to approve RVA Diamond Partners LLC as the developer of the Diamond District (RES. 2022-R055). At this point, Councmembers Newbille, Robertson, Lambert, Addison, Jordan, Lynch, and Jones have all signed on as patrons—which means, barring something completely unexpected, this is gonna zoom through committee today and easily pass Council at their next meeting in a couple weeks.
Also Council-related, Jahd Khalil at VPM reports on some of the tweaks made to the new Civilian Review Board ordinance. Khalil talks to Eli Coston, who chaired Council’s CRB taskforce, and they point out that an eight-member Board—with votes failing on a 4–4 tie—could make the Board less effective. I wonder how much appetite Council and the Mayor have for more revisions at this point, because getting the details right with this thing is going to be so important.
Quick reminder: The Richmond Police Department continues their Community Conversations With the Chief series tonight at First Baptist Church (2709 Monument Avenue) at 6:30 PM. NBC12’s Tyler Layne has a recap of yesterday’s Conversation on the Southside, and, while it did come up, it doesn’t sound like folks were focused on the Alleged 4th of July Plot. Tap through to get a feel for the tone of the Chief’s responses and for an unexpected guest appearance by former City Councilmember Kim Gray.
Here’s a picture of goats doing what they do best—eating invasive kudzu vines—down by the Manchester Climbing Wall, via Twitter user Ray Woodruff. The combination of a massively overgrown landscape, a herd of goats, and some aging urban infrastructure feels very post-apocalyptic to me. Honestly, there are probably worse jobs in Richmond’s post-apocalypse than goat farmer.
This morning’s longread
Vulnerability Is the Hardest, Bravest Place to Go
This interview with Melissa Febos is just packed with great writing advice. Even if you don’t plan on writing a book—even if all you ever write are emails!—read through this piece and think about how you can apply some of these lesson to your own writing (especially the advice below!).
…one of the things I find disheartening is something I’ve seen increasingly in students, where they are bringing the imagined criticisms of a bad faith reader to the desk with them when they’re doing the first draft. Basically, they’re already thinking, “What is that person on Twitter going to say about this when I publish it?” It is a preoccupation with others’ perceptions. I try to encourage them as much as possible: be conscientious in your work. Be conscientious of your reader, of your potential readers, of all of your past selves, but do not write for the bad faith reader. You have to write for the reader of best faith, the reader who most needs your work, and you need to do your absolute best work for that reader. Exile the thoughts of the person who is looking to invalidate the art that you’re making; you can’t make art that way. Or it will be a brittle, sad version of what you would’ve done if you had imagined the loving reader who is grateful and interested in what it is that you actually are trying to communicate.
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Picture of the Day
One of my favorite urban jungles / metal bar patios.
