Good Morning, RVA: Beer, budgets, BRT, ballots, Best, backgrounds

Brilliant sunshine, too!

May 16, 2016; 7:11 AM • by Ross Catrow

Photo by: luisvilla

Good morning, RVA! It’s 45 °F and the sun continues to come out…for now. Highs today will hover right below 70 °F. Take in that sun though, because tomorrow looks like it’ll be cloudy the entire day with a good chance of rain throughout.

Water cooler

Across the land it is American Craft Beer Week, and that probably means celebrations, tap takeovers, special releases, and more all over our beer-soaked town (if you have a favorite event, please let me know, because my calendar is way open this week). Nicole Kappatos at the RTD has pulled together a cool post about Richmond’s Home Brewing Co., a local, pre-Prohibition brewery that closed up shop in 1969. Their brewery in Jackson Ward (at Harrison and Clay) is now apartments.

Richmond City Council passed their $717 million budget on Friday night. All of the planned amendments, specifically those specifying the amounts headed towards the schools’ operating and Capital Improvement budgets, stayed right where they were before the meeting. With a budget in hand, Richmond Public Schools must start to figure out where to make cuts to balance their budget–you can prepare yourself for some more challenging public discussions. So what’s next for the Support RPS movement now that our city’s budget chats are all wrapped up for this year? We talked to Richmond Forward’s Garet Prior about this very thing a couple weeks back.

Quick BRT update! The construction team is conducting a “scope validation” right now, so you could seem them out there looking at stuff–soil, utilities, you know, the usual. Construction will begin in earnest late summer, and they’ll build six stations at once.

This is your reminder that we are about one month out from the filing deadline to get on the ballot for School Board, City Council, or Mayor. Incoming councilfolk especially will have their hands full with BRT, bus system rerouting, and–forever and always–school funding. It’s a good time to get involved, people!

RVA Mag points us to an awesome piece in Failed Architecutre from a couple years back about the wild Best Products facades of the mid-70s. It’s crazy to think that a retail store would give a hoot about its curb appeal. It’s sad that they’re mostly all gone.

Looking for a new wallpaper for one of your devices? How about a piece of this amazing ATLASGAL survey of the Milky Way? The full-size, original image is 276.9 MB!!

Sports!

• Well, they did it. The Squirrlels lost every game this weekend and now have lost 10 straight. They, mercifully, have the day off today.
• Kickers battled the New York Red Bulls II to a 1-1 draw.
• Nats split the series with the Marlins over the weekend, 2-2. They’ll start a new series with the Mets tonight at 7:10 PM.

This morning’s longread

Confessions Of A Former Former Fat Kid

When it comes to body-image issues, we are all in our own personal hells. And my hell is but a flickering Bic lighter when compared with others. But that’s the thing about hells: Comparing them does not lead you to the exit door of your own. Even as I grew older, matured, found somewhat more stable relationships, even as my weight fluctuated, my sense of self never did. Not once did I like what I saw in the mirror whenever I saw myself in it.

This morning’s Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/p/BFaezWeJXGP/

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May 16, 2016 7:11 AM 0