Good Morning, RVA: It’s here!

Today welcomes the 2014 college football season with wonderful weather.

August 28, 2014; 7:06 AM • by Ross Catrow

Good morning, RVA! It’s 74 °F, and highs could again crack 90 °F this evening. With any luck, clouds will roll in and provide some relief just as the mercury reaches its apex.

Water cooler

Yesterday, the Virginia Department of Education released SOL scores for schools across the Commonwealth. RPS had some big gains over last year and also some unacceptable results. SOLs are controversial, imperfect, and, as my pal Sam said, “if the assessment is poor, the data is meaningless.” Some nerds call that garbage in, garbage out.

Lee Graves, writing for the RTD as The Beer Guy, perfectly captures why the sale of Commercial Taphouse to Mekong’s An Bui kind of bums me out. I know, I know. If there was one person who could take one of Richmond’s beer institutions and not screw it up, it’d be An. But I’m a Richmonder; I fear/hate change!

Speaking of fearing change, downtown staple Perly’s has teased their new menu. Now owned by Kevin Roberts, who also owns the incredible Black Sheep, Perly’s will reopen as a Jewish delicatessen…sometime super soon. I’m guess early next week, but who knows. Dude likes to be mysterious.

The Midlothian High School football team has named their new starting kicker: senior Ashley Hancock. Hancock will handle both field goal duties and kickoffs, and her range is 45 yards.

An Air National Guard fighter jet crashed in Augusta County yesterday. The status of the pilot is still unknown. He was flying an F-15C on a maintenance mission to New Orleans.

Sports!

• Squirrels augh’d by Altoona again, 7-8. Whatever, we’re playoff bound, and they’re sitting 17 games back. Squirrels try again tonight at 7:00 PM.
• Nats fouled by the Phillies for the third time in a row. They’ll take a day to regroup and head out to face the Mariners tomorrow.
• College football begins in earnest tonight! If you’ve got the SEC Network, #9 South Carolina takes on #21Texas A&M at 6:00 PM. Otherwise it’s Boise State vs. #18 Ole Miss on ESPN at 8:00 PM.

This morning’s longread

Trolls drive Anita Sarkeesian out of her house to prove misogyny doesn’t exist

Since the project launched on Kickstarter way back in 2012, the gaming community has been treated to an incessant, deeply paranoid campaign against Tropes vs. Women generally and Sarkeesian personally. This includes a flood of violent comments and emails, videos documenting ways in which she’s not a “real gamer,” a game in which you can punch her in the face, and a proposed documentary devoted to exposing the “lies” and “campaign of misinformation” from what is, again, a collection of opinions about video games. Also, now, she’s apparently spent the night with friends after contacting law enforcement about “some very scary threats” against her and her family.

This morning’s Instagram

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August 28, 2014 7:06 AM 0