Good Morning, RVA: Ice-cold

It’s frickin’ freezing today–which is as close as I’ll ever get to an Austin Powers joke.

November 18, 2014; 6:54 AM • by Ross Catrow

Photo by: massdistraction

Good morning, RVA! It’s 35 °F right now, and that’s all you’re gonna get. I mean, maybe you’ll get an additional five degrees standing in the sun at the peak of the afternoon, but probably not due to the dang windchill. If you ever had a coat so comically big that it has its own nickname–like, say, “Big Blue”–today’s the day to pull it out of the closet.

Water cooler

What to do with Binford Middle? Sitting in the middle of The Fan, surrounded by beautiful homes, the middle school remains woefully under-enrolled and slips toward losing accreditation. The RTD’s Zachary Reid, who I’m glad exists, reports on Superintendent Bedden’s four proposed options for the school. He asked the School Board to come to a decision by December’s meeting.

Faced with a mandate to make more money, the Virginia ABC will raise liquor prices by about 30¢ a bottle. The ABC hopes to generate $9.5 million in 2016 from the price increases. Meanwhile, Colorado took in $7.4 million in taxes, licenses, and fees from marijuana sales…in August (PDF).

Props to CBS6 for not using some quirky, joke headline to describe what is, in fact, sexual assault in this story: “Man on bike sexually assaults women running in Chesterfield.”

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon has declared a state of emergency ahead of the grand jury’s decision on whether or not to indict police office Darren Wilson. This allows him to call in the National Guard if there is “unrest” after the grand jury’s decision. That sounds ominous.

Sports!

• #15 Rams host a sneaky-good Toledo squad at 6:00 PM on ESPNU.
• Spiders head down the road a piece to take on a hopefully much-improved Old Dominion at 8:00 PM.
• #9 Wahoos will most likely dominate the South Carolina State Bulldogs tonight at 8:00 PM. Watch the bloodshed on ESPN3.
• Caps travel to Arizona to face the Coyotes at 9:00 PM.

This morning’s longread

IN MY WORDS: TOREY BURSTON

The VCU Athletic Department has a wonderful new series written by student athletes, and this one is from Torey Burston, the walkon, backup point guard. Burston, which my iPad wants to autocorrect to BURSTON, saw his first meaningful minutes last week against Tennessee when starting point guard JeQuan Lewis went down with a head injury.

Towards the end of my senior year all my former teammates and friends were making their college decisions, and my back was against the wall. I wanted to just commit somewhere smaller, but my uncle always said, “I don’t know about that, let’s hold out a little longer. God has you Torey.” I began to think, should I give up or should I keep going? I took a step back and thought about the previous adversity that I overcame growing up. I knew I had the capability to achieve this dream, so I decided to keep going.

This morning’s Instagram

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November 18, 2014 6:54 AM 0