Good morning, RVA! It's 52 °F, and there’s a pretty good chance for rain this afternoon. Other than that, though, you can expect highs in the 70s while you’re watching the clouds roll in—and then roll right out, because the weekend looks dry, cool, and fantastic. I’ve got a bunch of garden-related tasks and bike riding to do, and I hope you’ve got similarly excellent plans.
Water cooler
ArborDayRVA, Richmond’s big celebration of trees, kicks off today and runs through next Sunday, October 29th. You’re gonna want to tap through to the aforelinked website with your calendar handy, because there are a ton of tree-related and tree-adjacent events over the next nine days. I’m particularly keen on the tree identification bike ride, the native seed harvesting workshop, the Tree Equity Score Analyzer training (?!), and, of course, any of the tree giveaway events (and there are many). It’s a lot of treevents, which certainly seems appropriate given just how much trees do for our communities.
Colleen Curran at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Maya, a Mexican restaurant at 525 E. Grace Street has closed up shop and will move out to Short Pump. Important question: Is this block of Grace Street cursed? The other day, I grabbed a couple beers at Secret Sandwich Society and had to lock my bike up way down the block. Walking down Grace, between Fifth and Sixth, and I was shocked by how it is an absolutely ghost town over there—and has been for...a decade? Or more? What’s the deal with this block and why has the majority of it remained vacant for years and years? Does it have something to do with who owns the buildings? How do we un-curse this storefront retail space?
A few weeks ago, the Charlottesville City Council had a bunch of racists show up in the virtual public comment portion of one of their meetings. From the reporting at the time, it sounded incredibly disturbing to those forced to listen to it but was maybe a constitutionally protected free speech gray area. Jason Armesto at the Daily Progress reports that now, without a good, legal way to prevent folks from endlessly spouting off about literal race wars, the Council has decided to suspend remote public comment. That’s a tough decision to make, because remote public comment makes interacting with folks’ elected representatives and participating in government way more accessible. I get it though. I wouldn’t want to sit through hours of that garbage either.
You never know what you’re going to find at the bottom of a body of water in Richmond when you drain it for maintenance. Oh wait, yes you do, scooters.
Tomorrow, RVA Rapid Transit and Partnership for Smarter Growth will host a tour of Richmond’s historic streetcar system...by bus! Meet at the old streetcar depot at Cary and Robinson, ride the #5 to the new Downtown Transfer Station, and then take in an exhibit at the Valentine. Optional lunch at PBR after the return voyage. Many of the bus routes we have today were once streetcar routes, at least before we burned down all the streetcars and tore up all the tracks in what’s sort of the plot of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Take a minute to compare and contrast this circa-1900 streetcar map with today’s GRTC system map. You’ll see the Pulse, the #5, the #1, the #7, and parts of a few other routes. This makes a ton of sense when you think about it: A lot of the places originally served by streetcars (and now by bus) were dense, urban environments even 120 years ago!
This morning's patron longread
Japan's Hometown Tax
Submitted by patron...I couldn’t find their name in my inbox (sorry!). You definitely should read about this really clever tax situation Japan’s set up: They take a portion of the revenue collected by big urban centers—like Tokyo—and send it back to the smaller, more rural towns nearly everyone living in those big cities comes from. Plus fun prizes! Smart and delightful. See, not all tax policies need to be dry and boring.
A number of cities in Japan, including my adoptive home town of Ogaki, have made this offer: for a no-cost-to-you donation of $100 or more, the city will send someone out to any grave in the city limits. That person will clean the grave, make an appropriate offering, and send you a photo. This is a beautiful thing. Most of the gifts are more prosaic. Locally produced food is very popular. If you miss the taste of home, they’ve got you covered. Cities partnered with local firms to handle the e-commerce aspect, and eventually with platforms to bundle many different items into a single donation; think of it as a shopping cart you could fill with donated money. And then someone asked a fateful question. Where is your hometown, anyway?
If you’d like to suggest a longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.
Picture of the Day
I got new notebooks.
