Good Morning, RVA: Let the beer flow like wine

Local government was sure busy last night!

March 3, 2015; 7:01 AM • by Ross Catrow

Photo by: Wil Wheaton

Good morning, RVA! It’s 27 °F, and today’s a regular Gloomy Gus. Expect a cloudy sky, temperatures below 40 °F, and a chance of rain starting this afternoon. Keep an eye on the rest of this week’s forecast–there’s the potential for yet another snow event beginning Thursday morning.

Water cooler

It’s like they just wanted to screw with us! Last night City Council unanimously approved the land deal that gives Stone Brewing Co. the full, 100% go-ahead. We could have Stone beer, made in Richmond, as early as the end of this year.

Tonight, we learn if RPS superintendent Dana Bedden will leave Richmond for snow-oppressed Boston. That bitterly winterized city’s school committee will offer the job to one of the candidates tonight.

Speaking of RPS, the School Board met last night and voted on new start times for the district beginning next year. They also failed to vote on a new budget so they’ll be meeting again later this week. Note that the budget is proposed by the superintendent, who may or may not have accepted a new job by the time the Board gets around to voting on his budget.

My people! Tomorrow we will host our second RVANews Live event, entitled “Your Favorite Things.” If you’re unfamiliar with the event, we invite three panels of brilliant Richmonders to talk about one thought provoking topic each. This go-around, our three topics are: music, movies, and food–the three things that sustain my very existence! So go forth, check out the list of brains we’ll have in the room (it’s impressive), and get your ticket.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address a joint session of Congress today at 10:45 AM. He’ll speak against the US-Iran negotiations over the latter’s nuclear program. Why this is a big deal is way more complicated and layered than the previous sentence, but Vox can give you the quick rundown before you watch the speech live over on C-SPAN.

Sports!

• #2 Wahoos beat Syracuse, 59-47, despite scoring only two points in the first 13 minutes of play.
• Hokies fell to Boston College, 66-59.
• Caps take on the Blue Jackets tonight, in Ohio, at 7:00 PM.

This morning’s longread

Wokking the Suburbs

Suburbs as surprising focal points for excellent food–quick someone tell me every single place in Richmond that’s like this!

The food we found in these suburbs was not only more Chinese than “Chinese” food of the take-out sort–it was more Chinese than Chinatown food. We rarely drove to San Francisco’s Chinatown anymore; the things my parents craved couldn’t be found there. The urban Chinatown–with its tourists and souvenir lipstick holders and monochromatic chow mein–was no more familiar to my parents than the lazy sprawl of California’s suburbs. But the latter, where you could run into classmates from Taiwan or dorm mates from Illinois, afforded them more space to think about things–was this “home” now? What more could you want? For my father, years before, the reminder of his childhood in Taiwan had come in the form of an occasional youtiao. Now my parents could eat better than anyone back in Taiwan could, and they could finally try dishes they had only heard about as children. As they got further away from their origins, their sense of identity grew hazy. Food was their mooring.

This morning’s Instagram

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March 3, 2015 7:01 AM 0