Good morning, RVA! It's 51 °F, and temperatures have started to creep up a bit. Not that they’ve been unpleasant lately, but, this afternoon, you can expect really pleasant highs closer to 70 °F and maybe a bit more sunshine, too. Keep an eye on the forecast for Friday and Saturday, though, because the chances for rain have steadily increased over the last couple of days.
Water cooler
The Virginia Mercury’s Meghan McIntyre reports on the ongoing process of Medicaid unwinding, which, in case you forgot: “For the past three years, anyone who was enrolled in Medicaid was allowed to keep their coverage regardless of whether or not they still met eligibility requirements like income level.” Now, in a sort of Office Space “we fixed the glitch” way, states are going through each enrollee to determine if those enrollees are still eligible. McIntyre reports that, so far, 160,000 Virginia have lost their coverage and, of those, 32% are to “procedural reasons rather than ineligibility.” 50,000 folks losing access to healthcare because of procedural paperwork sounds horrible to me, but it does sound like the State’s Department of Medical Assistance Services has some processes in place to get people reenrolled—and even provide retroactive coverage for some folks who got unnecessarily unwound. If this describes you or yours, you should get in contact with Cover VA.
Ned Oliver at Axios Richmond has some bananas reporting on the lengths the pro-casino folks are going to get folks out to the polls. Not only are they paying for potential voters’ Uber rides to early voting sites, they are handing out free lunch tickets for Hawk’s BBQ when they get there—“a pork sandwich, two pieces of fried fish or a jumbo kielbasa—all served with a drink and a side of fries or mac and cheese.” A Casino 2.0 spokesperson says, “We’re celebrating early voting...I don’t know if it’s that different than giving people water and snacks in line.” OK.
Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense reports that, with this year’s Folk Festival wrapped up, construction on the new riverfront amphitheater has started. I use “started” pretty loosely here, as all we’ve got to look at is a couple of feet of fencing. But still! It’s always exciting when a new project kicks off, especially one that has the potential to shift the city’s vibes a bit. The developers hope to open the new amphitheater in time for the “2025 outdoor concert season,” which, in old-person time, is right around the corner.
Via /r/rva, which Richmond restaurant has the best combination of truly exceptional food and a cozy, romantic date atmosphere? Both of these criteria are pretty subjective, but, for me these days, it doesn’t get any cozier or more delicious than Hot For Pizza. Tap through to the original thread, though, for some more—I guess you’d call them...classier?—recommendations.
Today at 12:00 PM, the City will host their second public meeting about the process to put together a Cultural Resource Management Plan which looks to “acknowledge the role historic preservation currently plays and will continue to play in shaping the city’s urban form and character.“ This meeting’s virtual, so, while reheating leftovers, you can all learn about the tightrope-balance the City hopes to strike between keeping important old stuff around and building a thriving place to live for future Richmonders. It’s complicated! Regardless of your free time during lunch, you should fill out the (really interesting) related survey if you have not already. It will definitely give you a few things to think about.
This morning's longread
Why furniture got so bad
I bought a couch during peak pandemic, and it was nearly impossible to find something made of actual materials and also not hand-crafted by an artisan living a solitary existence deep within an ancient redwood forest. I’d never thought about how some of yesterday’s, now-vintage furniture, was, at the time, cheap everyday goods.
Today’s cheaper materials and construction go hand-in-hand with the voyage that most new furniture takes across the ocean. The mainstreaming of container shipping in the 1970s “effectively erased distance” as a manufacturing concern, says Christopher Mims, author of “Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door.” “It’s just so mind-bogglingly efficient and cheap” to transport goods around the world. Labor is cheapest in China and Southeast Asia, so those are the places mega furniture companies tend to make their products. To drive costs down even more, they aim to cram as many of those products into as few containers as they possibly can. The result: “flat-pack” furniture that you, the lucky consumer, get to assemble at home, amid a mess of Allen wrenches and screws.
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Picture of the Day
You move, you store.
