Good morning, RVA! It's 30 °F, and today and tomorrow you should expect highs in the 40s! That’s definitely what I would consider cold, but my friend in Chicago just let me know that last night they shivered through a windchill temperature of “one.” I’m not cut out for that sort of thing and will gladly take these temperatures in the 40s and 50s for as long as we can get them.
Water cooler
Who wants to take another transportation-related survey?? Obviously everyone, and this week we’ve got a good one: GRTC is in the process of developing a new 10-year Transit Strategic Plan and wants your feedback. In their own words: “Your feedback is used throughout the TSP process to guide GRTC’s plans, including where the bus should go, when each route should operate, and which recommendations should be prioritized.” This is a neat survey with actual before-and-after maps and accompanying timetables showing how the bus company hopes to change and improve (and in some cases, add to) our existing transit system. I’m stoked for most of these changes! In fact, a lot of them remind me of some of the more expensive options that the region skipped while redesigning its bus network a handful of years back. “Expensive,” I think, is the operative word here, and it’s important to remember that better, more frequent bus service will require the entire region to pony up on an annual and ongoing basis. We’ll see what happens, but, for now, I’m cautiously optimistic.
VPM’s Whittney Evans talks to a handful folks on the Southside—including outgoing Councilmember Mike Jones, former council candidate Amy Wentz, and Sheri Shannon of Southside ReLeaf—about the area’s post-Casino 2.0 future. The article ends with a pretty dark quote from Jones, who, again, will leave Council for the General Assembly next month: “And he doubts a deal like the casino will come around again in his lifetime. ‘The footprint has been set,’ Jones said. ‘They have set the Southside on a course, through zoning, redlining and everything else, that it's not going to come back. It's just designed not to.’” I think Jones is probably more optimistic about the Southside’s future than this quote implies—and I am too. Even without a big, shiny project like a Casino, the Mayor and City Council have an opportunity to show that they’re excited and invested in the Southside’s future, too. In just a couple of months they’ll begin work on this coming year’s budget, and nothing prevents them from doubling down with big investments in the area’s neighborhoods and infrastructure.
Related: WRIC’s Will Gonzalez and Rolynn Wilson report that the City of Petersburg will ask the General Assembly for permission to hold their own casino referendum in the next couple of years. These are some bleak sentences: “Despite growth taking place in the city since a near financial collapse in November of 2015, the city says revenue is still ‘insufficient to meet the demands of the city’s high-poverty population, address health challenges and improve K-12 education [and] workforce training.’ According to a 2022 study by Virginia’s Joint Legislative Audit & Review Commission, a casino would bring in about $12 million in revenue for the city.” Listen, I’m not a financeologist, but no way in heck $12 million dollars even gets close to funding schools, health care, workforce training, and other social services. What a broken time we live in when gambling is one of the only ways to fund the basic services required for a society.
Richmond BizSense’s Michael Schwartz reports that local company Annie Mae & Wes grosses over $800,000 annually selling...cheerleader bows! I love this quote from the owner: “How can you not be surprised? It’s just bows...But at the same time, I’ve never gone a year not turning down business. That’s what’s shocking to me and it weirdly stresses me out… the market is enormous.” The cheerleader bow market is enormous! OK!
It’s Giving Tuesday, and that likely means your inbox is crammed full of emails from deserving nonprofits, each looking to convince you that they’re worthy of your donation dollars. Fully consider each of them, because I’m sure they’re all great and wonderful! However, if you can’t make up your mind, consider joining RVA Rapid Transit at Three Notch’d Brewing Company at 6:00 PM for a night of Transit Trivia combined with phonebanking and fundraising. Readers of this email newsletter should have a clear advantage, so stop by, dominate in trivia, and then help RVA Rapid Transit raise some money so they can keep doing the important work of advocating for our region’s public transit system. Or, if that all sounds like a lot, you can just chip in a couple of bucks directly instead.
This morning's longread
Nom Nom Nom. What’s the Deal With Cookie Monster’s Cookies?
How do the folks on Sesame Street make Cookie Monster’s big, crumbly cookies without creating something that damages the puppet? I love great reporting on obscure but interesting questions.
The recipe, roughly: Pancake mix, puffed rice, Grape-Nuts and instant coffee, with water in the mixture. The chocolate chips are made using hot glue sticks — essentially colored gobs of glue. The cookies do not have oils, fats or sugars. Those would stain Cookie Monster. They’re edible, but barely. “Kind of like a dog treat,” MacLean said in an interview. Before MacLean reinvented the recipe in the 2000s, the creative team behind “Sesame Street” used versions of rice crackers and foams to make the cookies. The challenge was that the rice crackers would make more of a mess and get stuck in Cookie’s fur. And the foams didn’t look like cookies once they broke apart.
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Picture of the Day
Hey, who invited you?
