From RVA Clean Sweep:
A huge thank you to The Apprentice Salon, Sweet Frog, and St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church for volunteering to host the September, October and November cleanups in Oregon Hill!
Oregon Hill businesses and neighbors are making a monthly commitment to remove litter from the street and protect the James River.
Once agin the Main Library takes part in the First Friday downtown celebration tomorrow with an art opening show from 6:30 pm to 9 pm. Included in it are paintings by six artists and piano performance by Russell Wilson. The painting below is by one of the artists, Cynthia Erdahl.
From the article in Southern Living:
Chef David Shannon’s new venture L’opposum isn’t only idiosyncratic in name. For one, the restaurant is furnished with his personal art collection, which includes Star Wars collectable plates, miniature statues of David, and paintings of punk singers like Nick Cave. Oh yeah, and stuffed possums. The menu contains items with names such as A Mélange of Manikintowne Mesclun and Swashbuckling Bundt Pirate Drenched in Hot Buttered Rum. Try the Les Escargots à la Ham Biscuit i.e. snails on soft biscuits swimming in a sweet garlic beurre blanc.
Congratulations, David Shannon and the L’opossum crew!
This past month, the Richmond Times Dispatch featured some interesting editorial back and forth about Norfolk’s tax policies.
Why not also compare the water/sewer rate structure of Richmond and Norfolk?
Richmond water/sewer customers must pay $29 monthly just to be connected to the water supply, but there is no comparable service charge in Norfolk. Though their volume charge is slightly higher, the customer’s bill in Norfolk is directly correlated to the amount of water used. By contrast, Richmond water/sewer customers who conserve water are actually subsidizing those who waste water because of the high base service charge. A Richmond customer who uses 1 unit of water/sewer service monthly (748 gallons) will pay $39.05 monthly, which is over three times what a Norfolk customer pays for 1 unit of service.
Additionally, Richmond water/sewer customers are unjustly slapped with a charge in lieu of federal income tax on every unit of water, but customers in Norfolk do not pay a federal income tax surcharge on their water bills. While the Richmond utilities are authorized to charge the customers a payment in lieu of taxes that a private business would pay to the city, there is no business that pays federal income tax to the city. Altogether the city water/sewer customers are gouged around $5 million annually on their water bills in lieu of federal income tax, and this is the most regressive means of raising general funds revenue for the city. This is especially egregious, given that the City of Richmond sells water to the surrounding counties, who in turn, charge their citizens less.
Let’s learn from Norfolk’s fair water/sewer rate structure that rewards conservation and does not unjustly add a federal income tax surcharge onto the water bill. This should also be a campaign issue for our City and General Assembly political candidates.
From the Richmond Tree Stewards:
Does your yard have an empty space begging for a tree? Does you local park need some shade? Richmond Tree Stewards can help you fill that space. Our Community Roots event will offer trees free to homeowners and to community organizations (friends of parks groups, schools, etc) wishing to plant trees in the City of Richmond. The trees will be available for planting in November, the best tree planting month of the year.
The Richmond Tree Stewards, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and improving the health of the city’s urban forest, is sponsoring this event.
The program, in its second year, is an effort to improve Richmond’s tree canopy (which currently stands at only 40%) by encouraging and assisting community groups and homeowners to plant and care for trees. Thanks to a grant from the Overton and Katherine Dennis Foundation, 75-80 trees will be purchased for distribution as part of this event.Trees are beautiful. They clean the air, produce oxygen, cool the environment, improve water quality and provide food and shelter for beneficial animals and insects. If you want to make a difference in your community, there is no better way than by planting a tree!
Applications (for both home owners and community groups) must be received by September 20th!
Description from Tumblr blog The Baby Madonna:
From the muddy banks of the James River to the paved alleys in Oregon Hill, each rock desperately needs a permanent home to call it’s own!
This Wednesday is a red Wednesday, which means trash and recycling pickup.
This will be the second time for Oregon Hill to use the new, larger rolling recycling containers. Ideally, they are stored and deployed in the back alleys along with trash cans. Please make sure you pick up containers after pickup tomorrow night.
This just in: The schedule during the UCI Bicycle Race will change. Expect a much earlier garbage collection for Sept. 23.- as in 2 am! Click here for Times Dispatch article.
In order to take your recycling to the next level, read this: 10 ways to improve your recycling.
In other news, Treehugger.com has a story on a new recycling method by Reformation, a clothing company. It is
making it super easy for you to recycle your old clothes. Any U.S. customer who purchases a garment from Reformation online will receive their shipment in a box—plus a special return label addressed to a clothing recycler. You then load up the box with any gently used clothing and shoes you want to have recycled, slap on the return label and leave it out for your mail carrier.
It’s free and you don’t even have to leave your house.
Excerpts:
Terry Davis never expected a stroll across the pedestrian bridge to Belle Isle to shake her up so much. But it did on Sunday. As she and her friend crossed the walkway, she said she heard a thunderous sound.
“‘What is that noise?’ I asked. I looked up and there was this huge table laying in the center of the walk area of the pedestrian bridge,” Davis said.
She said she believed somehow a banquet table fell nearly 60 feet from a gaping space above the pedestrian walkway from the Lee Bridge.
…
Davis and others who use the pedestrian walkway often, said they’d like to see the city install some type of safety barrier.
Richmond Public Works spokesperson Sharon North said the city would send out a crew to inspect for damage. Workers were seen removing the table from a nearby area under the walkway Monday afternoon.
…
North said the city has no plan to install a safety barrier above the pedestrian walkway. The department sent out an inspector to check for damage and concluded that someone may have rolled the table out onto this pedestrian walkway and left it.
Witnesses who heard the crash said they don’t buy that theory.
Richmond BizSense has an article on Hollywood Cemetery’s new businesses:
Excerpts:
RVA Gem Car Tours recently began selling private tours of Hollywood Cemetery on six-person electric carts.
Owner Buck Ward said the venture, which launched in May, is a spin-off of his other businesses Segway of Richmond, which launched in 2008, and RVA Trolley, which got rolling in 2012.
Ward said the cemetery tour business is in keeping with his mission of letting people experience Richmond in different ways. He said the carts cater to groups too big for a Segway tour but too small to rent out a trolley.
“This is another way to see and discover Richmond,” Ward said. “It’s more geared toward private tours.”
RVA Gem Car Tours has three Polaris GEM cars in its fleet. Ward said they cost about $20,000 apiece – the price includes the cost to install solar panels on each vehicle. The cars are street legal and can go as fast as 24 miles per hour.
…
On the virtual side of things, the nonprofit Friends of Hollywood Cemetery launched an interactive website in July that lets users take virtual tours of the burial ground.
The group enlisted local ad firm Addison Clark, the agency of record for the cemetery.
Jeff Allen, managing partner at Addison Clark, said the new site caters to the two segments Hollywood Cemetery serves: tourists and plot seekers.
“Hollywood Cemetery is a very unique entity,” Allen said. “Everyone thinks of them as an outdoor museum. Not a lot of folks know that they are an open, functioning cemetery. Those that do know assume they are cost prohibitive or for old Richmond elite.”
Over the course of about six months, Addison Clark and HostRVA, formerly NimblePitch, built a digitized map of Hollywood Cemetery and overlaid it with GPS coordinates. They then focused on compiling online reference materials and integrating them with points of interest on the digital map.
The website can be used both by on-site visitors looking for interactive, self-guided tours and by remote desktop users curious about the cemetery.
Looks like this Belvidere mural is just getting underway in time for the big race.
