Good morning, RVA! It's 71 °F, and dang that was quite a storm last night. I hope you’re doing OK this morning and that your home successfully kept out all of the elements. Today you can expect hot (but less hot) highs as we head into The Weekend of Relief. On Saturday we’ll see highs dip below 90 °F for the first time in a while, and then, on Sunday, some pleasant temperatures in the mid 80s. Middle of next week? Don’t even get me started about those numbers starting with sevens!
Water cooler
The City’s Department of Public Works dropped a new bike lane survey, and I’m assigning it as over-the-weekend homework. Specifically, DPW wants to know how you feel about extending the Franklin Street Bike Lane west from Belvidere to Lombardy. I feel very excited about this, DPW! Interestingly, they also want to know if you would support a “quick-build” design (which would get implemented in 2025), a more intense piece of infrastructure that would require a line item in a budget passed by Council, or both. Both, obviously! While 2025 is not the quickest of timelines, getting something in the City’s Capital Improvement Plan, which has a five-year horizon and involves the mayor and nine city councilmembers, will take even longer. So, when I filled out this survey, I ranked Option 2 (the quick-build) very high, and Option 5 (the option with the most actual concrete separating bikes from cars) also very high. Importantly, I made sure to check that I would support all the things—building something as soon as possible, getting funding out of the budget, and then building the more concretey option when that funding is eventually approved.
Homeward has released their July 2023 Point-in-Time Count of people experiencing homelessness in our region. Over the course of one night and one morning in July, they counted 486 people experiencing homelessness, up 8.7% from the previous year with about half of those folks listing Richmond as their last permanent address. 43% of people say the cost of housing, job loss, or eviction led to their homelessness. Tap through for some more data and an FAQ about how and why Homeward does this work. Also, keep this quote from Homeward’s Executive Director in mind: “It’s important to remember that these numbers represent real people, our neighbors facing the trauma of homelessness...The findings from the Summer 2023 PIT count should be a call to action to continue our region’s compassionate response to homelessness and invest in proven solutions.”
Sunday is a big day for GRTC, as they’ll retire the Temporary Transfer Plaza on 9th Street and officially move into the new, much less temporary, Downtown Transfer Station. If your favorite bus route ran through Downtown, it almost certainly now stops at the Transfer Station. I have complicated thoughts about the need for a centralized place to make transfers like this, but I will set those aside and get stoked on a way more humane space for both riders and operators. GRTC will also implement some of the other service improvements I mentioned a while back like improved frequency for the Pulse and the #5 on weekends. This set of changes feels like a definite step forward for our bus network after a couple small, mostly pandemic-driven steps backward over the last couple years. Great work, everyone!
Today and tomorrow you can stop by 834 Pepper Avenue for The Armenian Food Festival, one of my favorite Richmond food festivals. This year they celebrate their 63rd anniversary with all the regular Armenian food festival stuff: music, dancing, kebabs, this one burger that people love, and flaky pastry as far as the eye can see. If you like the Greek Festival but find it a bit overwhelming, give the Armenian Food Festival a try.
While you’re out that way, maybe head over to the University of Richmond for the 16th African Film Weekend and catch a couple of films from young African film makers. How fascinating does this sound: “this year’s session of the African Film Weekend will focus on the issues raised by this newest generation of filmmakers as its members—three are women—reflect on the ways African and African Diasporan communities depict themselves in facing the challenges generated by various internal and external social, political and economic dynamics specific to the global society.” Tickets are free(!?) and you can register over on Eventbrite.
This morning's longread
The Sterile World of Infinite Choice
Beware, some of this piece by Anne Helen Petersen will come off as very “Back In My Day!” However, I do really agree with her points about infinite choice leading to anxiety, and resonate pretty hard with this particular flavor: “Our defense against this feeling of overwhelm has been curation and optimization.” Sometimes you don’t need to optimize your downtime, Ross! It’s OK to sit quietly and, as a friend says, poke at the ground with a stick!
My friends lightly razz me for listening to the radio when I drive into town, usually jumping between Top 40 and a pretty decent Vancouver-area country station. “The commercials are so bad,” they’ll say, or “how can you deal with this much Ed Sheeran.” But so much of my life is trying to make sure I’m always up to date on podcasts and good television and the right books and articles on the internet and influencers to follow, a constant curation of entertainment for myself and then a secondary curation of myself for others’ entertainment, that having no control over the amount of Ed Sheeran feels amazing. It’s all very paradoxical: that the ability to constantly communicate has made us bad communicators, that instant access to all forms of entertainment would leave us with so few touchstones, that surveilling kids doesn’t necessarily make them safer, that the absence of limitations also often means the absence of creativity — and that the particular form of abundance we’ve fetishized can feel so sad, so unspeakably sterile.
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Picture of the Day
Same hydrangea plant, totally different mood!
