Good Morning, RVA: Historic moments, mayor moments, bike share moments, and motorist moments

What a day to be alive!

June 8, 2016; 7:17 AM • by Ross Catrow

Photo by: watsonsinelgin

Good morning, RVA! It’s 62 °F, which, technically, is colder than yesterday but seems great to me. Highs today will reach 80 °F, and the sun will shine, and you should remember to water your garden today, I think. Casting our eyes to the weekend, we should be aware that real summer temperatures–mid-90s sweat-a-thons–await us.

Water cooler

Last night, Hillary Clinton clinched the Democratic presidential nomination. This seems like a crazy and unbelievable feat! Our current president is a Black man and one of the major-party nominees is a woman. What a time to be alive. You can watch her address her supporters after securing the nom, but I don’t know, maybe you don’t want to cry this early in the morning.

(I am super disappointed that I’ve seen so many headlines choosing to frame Clinton’s historic nomination as how Bernie Sanders reacted to it. Disappointed, but unsurprised, I guess.)

That still-too-early Northside mayoral forum took place last night, and I totally forgot to remind y’all about it. Luckily, Ned Oliver never forgets anything–he’s like an elephant that way–and has the details, such as they are. Two things I am suspicious of coming from a mayoral candidate: 1) Sweeping promises to change deeply entrenched state laws, 2) Cost saving measures limited to teensy amounts of money that would have no real impact on anything. If either of these two things are the core of your entire platform, I will be over here making a skeptical face at you. I will also be over here totally willing to grab beers and hear you out, though.

Virginia has two cases that are possibly headed to the SCOTUS, and whenever that is the case, I turn to the SCOTUSblog. The first is G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board, and it involves a transgender student and going to the bathroom. When the school board finds time away from its busy schedule of telling people where to poop, it must file its appeal to the Supreme Court by August 29th. The second is related to redistricting, which seems boring but could have a far-reaching impact on a lot of our lives. Let’s turn to the RTD’s Jeff Schapiro for a grim look at what our future holds.

You guys! I have seen the designs for the bike share bikes, and they are…totally rad! I had, perhaps unfairly, low expectations for the branding of these things and am so happy to be proven wrong. I have a PDF of the designs sitting in my inbox that is technically embargoed until the mayor’s press conference at 10:30 AM today, so follow me on Twitter (@rosscatrow) for the link after said embargo lifts. And speaking of bike share, somehow Ned Oliver got his hands on this blurry map of the proposed bike share stations. Then I made this map that shows you the best way to combine BRT and bike share to drink beer in Scott’s Addition. So many Bs.

“How does one even function as a motorist on Floyd Avenue anymore?,” you may ask. Mike Mackenzie would love to tell you.

Maybe just don’t get in the river until this weekend?

Sports!

• Squirrels beat New Hampshire, 5-3, and will go for two in a row this morning at 10:35 AM.
• The Nationals 10-5 win over the White Sox is the second game in a row where they’ve scored 10 runs. Those teams tee up tonight at 8:10 PM.

This morning’s longread

The True Story Of The Fake Zombies, The Strangest Con In Rock History

What! This is crazy.

The Zombies, unaware of their stateside success — this was possible in 1969 — had already moved on to new musical projects or day jobs. This vacuum meant anyone could tour the United States pretending to be the Zombies, even a four-piece blues band from Dallas. As the Beatles and Stones went from garage and blues rock beginnings to more adventurous music, the Zombies took their early, more raucous hits (“She’s Not There,” “Tell Her No”) and refined them. But replicating a refined sound was hardly the priority.

There were in fact two different bands touring the United States in 1969 calling themselves the Zombies. Both impostor groups were managed by the same company, Delta Promotions, the owners of which insisted they’d legally acquired the songs of the Zombies and other bands. It was an operation that would be impossible to attempt today, perpetrated in an era when fans didn’t have unlimited access to artists’ whereabouts, or, in some cases, even know what they looked like.

This morning’s Instagram

https://instagram.com/p/BGWZgUpAmzA/

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June 8, 2016 7:17 AM 0