There are two sides to every story, but a lot of the time, the first narrative is the one that sticks.

Case in point: last week, an altercation broke out during one of the weekly neighborhood rides organized by the Broad Street Bullies. The ride has happened every Thursday for years and has become a flashpoint between supporters who see a community ride bringing together people of all ages, including families and children, and critics who see it as a nuisance that holds up traffic, takes over city streets and causes dangerous situations for both riders and drivers.

So when news hit that a confrontation between a driver and the cyclists ended with the driver allegedly being strangled, sides were quickly taken. And with the portion of the video shown on the news, along with the fact that one of the cyclists was being sought for questioning, the initial coverage tilted the narrative heavily in one direction.

But there was another side of the story that hadn’t been heard.

According to the group, the driver had been provoking riders for several blocks before the video shown on the news began. He was nudging riders at the back of the ride and eventually made contact with a BSB field marshal with his vehicle, who responded by calling out the driver. A field marshal is there to help move the ride along and, if needed, protect the riders. When the driver decided to get out of his car and confront the female field marshal, things got physical.

By the end of it, several riders had gotten involved after the driver punched the female field marshal, sending her to the hospital with a broken orbital bone and leaving the driver in a headlock.

So what actually happened?

We spoke with Salad, who founded the Broad Street Bullies to hear their side of what happened and why he believes the initial coverage got the story wrong.

“We ride every Thursday. It’s been going on for years. We do the same route,” Salad said. “At the beginning of the ride, we let everyone know what’s going on and tell everyone to be safe. We have bike marshals who look out for the less advanced riders and the kids. We just go for a ride. It’s an hour. We’re all from the community, so we’re all trying to look out for the community.”

That Thursday started like most others, but according to Salad, there were signs of trouble before the confrontation captured on video. “He was behind us,” Salad said. “This is probably like 8:30 on Cary Street. We get to Harrison [and Franklin Street], where we stop for the light every time, probably for like two cycles. So we weren’t blocking the street like the news said we were. We were just waiting for the red light.”

Salad’s account that the confrontation had been building for several blocks is supported by at least one apparent eyewitness who commented on the news coverage. The woman said she was having dinner at Brazen when she noticed the truck following the cyclists. “The driver was tailing behind that cyclist the entire time and almost hit the cyclist twice from what I saw,” she wrote.

“Traffic was stopped and he deliberately stopped as close to the cyclist as possible and tried to keep inching closer while honking at them,” she wrote. “I had a weird gut feeling something was going to happen.”

She emphasized that what she witnessed happened before the portion captured in the video that circulated afterward. “I personally witnessed the driver deliberately tailing the cyclist and repeatedly honking from blocks up the road, well before where this video takes place,” she wrote. “The truck driver was already driving aggressively and intentionally escalating the situation before this video even started.”

By the time the group reached the light, Salad says words were exchanged between the driver and cyclists. “Everyone on the ride was just like, dude, go left,” he said. “The car in front of him went left on the video of the news report. He could have done that. He didn’t want to do that.”

Instead, the driver got out of his vehicle.

“Words were exchanged, and he decided to hop out and charge one of our marshals, who’s a woman,” Salad said. “She defended herself by pushing him away. And then what did he do after that? He punched her in the eye and broke her eye socket.”

Other cyclists then intervened.

“People that don’t even know her were like, hey, we’re all together. We’re gonna defend this girl,” Salad said. “They’re just trying to get this guy off of her. It turned into a tussle, and it looks like we just decided to beat up some kid, or just six on one. But no, he was putting up a fight, and people just did what they had to do to get him off.”

Salad doesn’t dispute that the driver was eventually put into a headlock. What he disputes is the way that was characterized in the initial reports. “I mean, strangled? He got put in a headlock, yeah, because he was just raging and wouldn’t leave,” Salad said. “I don’t know what else anyone would do. Let’s say you’re on the ride and you have your kid next to you, and some dude is trying to run you guys over, then he gets out and starts trying to fight people. You’re gonna have to subdue this guy.”

Salad says what he saw wasn’t riders trying to seriously hurt the driver. “No one that I saw was really trying to hurt him. They were just trying to get him to stop and leave,” he said. “There were some pretty big guys riding with us that clearly could have hurt that guy. I wouldn’t know what else to do. Put him in a headlock.”

And that’s where Salad takes issue with one word in particular.

“Strangled is a crazy word.”

Meanwhile, he says, the female marshal was the one headed to the hospital. “Now our friend has a broken eye socket and needs to go to the hospital,” Salad said. “She gets there, and the guy had already pressed charges. They didn’t arrest her like the news said, they just wrote her a summons. But she’s in the hospital, concussed, and they’re trying to interview her.”

RVA Magazine reached out to the injured marshal about the incident, but she declined to speak with any media while she waits to consult with her attorney.

For Salad, that’s part of why the initial narrative bothered him so much. “It’s painted out like we’re just terrorizing our community just because some cars have to wait for a second,” he said. “That’s not what we’re about.”

According to the initial account of the incident, someone spit on the driver or his vehicle before the physical confrontation. “I’m not sure about that,” Salad said.

Salad says the confrontation ended pretty quickly after that. “From the video I saw, he was put in the headlock. I guess he got up, and then people just started to leave,” Salad said. “He got pushed away, and I guess he got back in his truck or something. But we had already left. I didn’t really find out what was going on until like 15 minutes later because I was at the front.”

Police were eventually called, but Salad says the ride had already moved on by then. What bothered him was how quickly the story became, in his view, one of a group of cyclists attacking a driver. “I think they just try to paint it as like, some kid, first week of school back, angry mob beats him up,” Salad said. “No, that’s not what happened.”

From his perspective, the entire confrontation could have been avoided. “This kid went out of his way to cause this,” he said. “It was just completely unnecessary.”

Then there’s the cyclist whose face subsequently appeared in news reports as someone police wanted to identify.

Salad questions why that particular rider was singled out. “There were other people in the video, but for some reason they only went after this guy. I wonder why,” Salad said. “The kid was white that got out of his truck, and that guy is brown. He’s Hispanic. It’s kind of crazy.”

“I think he was the closest to her when the guy punched her,” he said. “She immediately started bleeding. This dude is just not backing up, so he just got him off of her, like anyone else would.”

“Now he’s just got his face plastered all over the news just for defending a woman,” Salad said.

UPDATE: About 20 minutes before publication, VCU Police released an image of a second person of interest they are seeking in connection with the incident. Police say the investigation remains ongoing.

And again, Salad comes back to his belief that none of this needed to happen. “He could have just not gotten out of his car, or he could have just turned left,” Salad said. “Completely avoidable.”

As for the marshal, Salad says she was doing what she was there to do. “She’s gonna say something because she’s protecting the ride,” he said. “She’s not gonna try to pull you out of your car or hit you or anything like that. She’s just like, look, there’s kids in front of me. I’m just making sure you don’t run them over.”

All of this will ultimately have to work its way through the legal system but the reaction to the incident says something about the place the Broad Street Bullies occupy in Richmond. People have strong opinions about them, and Salad knows it.

“The wheelies, that’s just a fraction of it,” he said. “I think they really get heated because they don’t know how to ride bikes. They are angry, impatient people.”

Salad says he’s watched people show up to a Thursday ride with one idea about the Bullies and leave with another. “I’ve seen it happen. People that were scared to ride with us, they came out for one ride and they come up to me after the ride like, ‘Hey Sal, let me just tell you, I had this completely twisted notion of how you guys were.’”

Sometimes, he says, what they find has very little to do with bikes. “It was life changing for me to come out and ride because I saw my high school friend who I haven’t seen in 20 years, or I got a job offer from some guy, or whatever it is,” Salad said, describing what riders have told him. “They really appreciate it.”

It’s also why he gets frustrated with some of the criticism he sees online. “It’s easy for people to be what we call keyboard warriors, like Reddit and whatever, Nextdoor,” he said.

And Salad points out that large groups of people riding bikes through Richmond streets aren’t exactly something the Broad Street Bullies invented. “If you’ve ever been to Richmond, like Slaughterama, Best Friends Day, all that, people have been riding bikes in big groups for years, like 20-plus years,” he said. “It’s not like it’s just a bunch of kids doing this,” Salad said. “We do stuff in the community. We do a lot of community events, toy drives, whatever. There’s adults, there’s people’s grandmas, and even little kids, like under 10.”

When I asked Salad what the Broad Street Bullies are actually about, his answer was pretty simple. “Just about community. Riding bikes and art and music and anything else that we come together and do,” he said. “We’ve done a lot over the years. Giving bikes away, we’ve gotten bikes back for people that got stolen, throwing shows. We’re just trying to help people out, maybe just change some lives. We have a spotlight on us, so it’s cool to shine that spotlight on other people that deserve it or wouldn’t really have the chance to get that.”

That community is also why Salad says organizers try to police their own rides. Random people show up on mopeds, dirt bikes and bicycles, and not everybody necessarily represents what BSB is trying to do. “We always make them either go to the back or leave,” Salad said. “If you’re on a bike and you’re clearly not representing what we’re doing, we’re gonna make you leave. We’ve kicked a lot of people out of the ride. We keep it a safe space,” he continued. “We want everyone to be welcome. As long as you’re a good person, it doesn’t matter what you look like. Everyone’s welcome as long as you’re there on the ride to have the best time.”

For Salad, though, there’s another reason these large rides matter. Riding a bicycle through Richmond traffic alone can still be intimidating.

“I grew up outside of the city, and I was never really allowed to come downtown,” he said. “I could only imagine how it would be growing up right now and being able to bike around the street with a big group of people.”

Even with his experience on a bike, Salad says riding Richmond streets alone requires constantly watching what’s happening around him. “Even if I try to do that by myself, I have to look over my shoulder every two seconds,” he said. “I’m very advanced on my bike, but other people are not. Drivers are terrible around here, and we’ve had our friends killed or seriously injured by cars.”

That’s where the size of the Thursday ride becomes the point rather than the problem. “That’s why we want to give people the chance to just ride around the city, even if it’s just for an hour,” Salad said. “They know that we’re looking out for people. You should be able to bike around any street in the Richmond metro area without feeling like you’re gonna get killed by some car.”

After everything that happened last week, Salad admits he briefly wondered whether the Thursday rides needed to stop. “It’s crazy because I thought about it. I was like, ‘Is this the end? Do we have to chill?’”

Then he started seeing the response from people outside his immediate circle. “Seeing the community support was very shocking to me,” Salad said. “Even though I knew my friends supported it, just seeing random people that are like, ‘I don’t even ride bikes, but there’s nothing wrong with this.’”

So the Broad Street Bullies aren’t stopping.

“We’re gonna keep riding, just keep doing our thing,” Salad said. “Just try to stay safer. Try to let people know, just watch out more for each other and just have cooler heads. We don’t want people getting angry at the minor car honk or something. Just let it go.”

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What is Ellwood Thompson’s now? That feels like a fair question most people should be asking right now after this week’s news that the company that owns one of Richmond’s most recognizable stores is being taken over by another company whose primary business is data centers and AI infrastructure.

“Good for the community, and good for the planet” is listed as a core principle on Ellwood Thompson’s website. How can an environmentally conscious and sustainability-focused company align itself with an industry facing so much criticism for its impact on those very things?

This feels like the end.

For longtime residents, Ellwood Thompson’s is a local hub for the health-conscious and locally focused, and people have supported it for that

For decades, it was part of the local grocery ecosystem. You had Ukrop’s, the homegrown institution that felt like an oversized corner market where you went for not only groceries but prepared foods, fried chicken, and those little Rainbow Cookies.

Across the street, Ellwood Thompson’s was, and still is, the counterpoint. It’s the healthier, fancier and crunchier hippie alternative. Before every major grocery store had an organic section or used “buy local” in its marketing, Ellwood was making it a core part of its business. It was a leader in teaching city residents what that meant and why supporting them mattered.

As much as Ukrop’s became foundational to a certain segment of the city for what it did, Ellwood was right there educating residents on what a more modern version of food and healthy living in Richmond could look like.

Started back in 1989 as City Market at Patterson and Libbie before moving to its current location in 1993. Founder Rick Hood eventually became sole owner and built the 20,000-square-foot market into what Richmond Magazine described as the largest independent organic and natural food store in Virginia.

And it survived as the grocery business around it changed dramatically.

Today, Ellwood sits in what has to be one of the most competitive grocery clusters anywhere in Richmond. Ukrop’s disappeared as a supermarket chain. Anyone remember Martin’s? That came and went. Then Kroger, Publix and The Fresh Market opened practically on the same block, each competing for some version of the same customer.

Ellwood survived because it wasn’t any of them.

Then things changed. In 2023, Hood sold the business after nearly 35 years to Healthier Choices Management Corp., a publicly traded company based in Florida that owned a collection of food- and wellness-based businesses along with vape retail operations and vaporizer-related intellectual property. They said that the Ellwood Thompson’s brand, staff, culture and products would remain the same.

In 2024, Healthier Choices spun off its grocery and wellness businesses, including Ellwood Thompson’s, into a separate publicly traded company called Healthy Choice Wellness Corp.

A few years later, Healthy Choice Wellness is now combining with Host Digital Infrastructure, a company focused on developing and operating data centers.

On paper, this isn’t an equal partnership. If the deal closes, Host Digital will control roughly 96 percent of the combined company, Host Digital CEO Harmol Samra will take over as CEO, and Healthy Choice Wellness will change its name. The existing grocery operations will continue as a division of the new company, but in practical terms, control of Ellwood is shifting to Host Digital.

How do those two identities coexist?

There are deep concerns across the Richmond region about the environmental impact of data centers, from water consumption and electricity demand to land use, noise, transmission infrastructure and costs associated with supporting them.

These are the kinds of issues you would think a typical Ellwood Thompson’s shopper would be concerned about, yet the store’s parent company is now tied directly to the industry at the center of that debate. The company says it plans to streamline operations with the use of AI. If you’ve seen the growing local distrust online over its potential to displace workers while driving up demand for basic utilities, that message isn’t going to sit well with a lot of people here.

Ellwood still promotes almost the exact opposite message. Where does your food come from? Support local farmers and local jobs. Reduce waste. Consider the environmental consequences of what you consume. Essentially, do good for yourself and everything around you. Look out for Mother Earth.

But Ellwood’s biggest problem may be that while it still presents itself as a homegrown Richmond store, it no longer is one.

Its greatest competitive advantage was never price or convenience. You knew you were going to pay more there, but the employees seemed happy to be there and locals wanted to support the store as much as they wanted the products on the shelves. And you knew that by shopping there, you were also supporting local farmers and producers throughout the region.

And what exactly is Ellwood Thompson’s now?

It is still a grocery store staffed by good people who sell local produce and organic food. These people have nothing to do with any corporate transaction happening above them. But Ellwood is also something of an experiment now. Will Richmonders continue spending their money there knowing all of this? Maybe none of this matters to most people, and maybe none of it ultimately changes what happens inside the store.

For me, it adds another layer to the decision of where I spend my money that wasn’t there before.

Maybe Ellwood survives all of this. I hope it does.

But we’re also getting a glimpse of what our growing city is becoming, and I’m not sure I’m a fan.

Support RVA Magazine. Support Independent Media in Richmond.

RVA Magazine has remained one of Richmond’s few independent voices. Since 2005, we have provided grassroots coverage of our artists, musicians, and communities, marginalized or otherwise, documenting the city’s culture that lies right under the surface and beyond the headlines.

But we can’t do this without you. A small donation, even as little as $2, one-time or recurring, helps us continue to produce honest, local coverage free from outside interference. Every dollar makes a difference. Your support helps keep us going and keeps the local creative spirit alive. Thank you for standing with independent media, and thank you for reading.

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We’ve got merch HERE
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On Monday night, close to 300 to people packed into Studio Two Three in Richmond for a town hall about data centers, moderated by Gray Montrose and co-hosted by Henrico Civic Action and Data Center Defiance.

I went to get a better sense of where Richmonders are from the activist side, and to better understand the issue myself. Virginia has spent years building the largest concentration of data centers in the world and the decisions being made now will affect all of us for decades to come.

Speakers came from the Sierra Club Virginia Chapter, Friends of Hanover and Stop Hanover Data Centers, Data Center Defiance, The Brockovich Report and The Balm in Gilead.

This wasn’t a room full of people complaining about data centers as almost everyone there seemed aware of the issue at this point. This was more of a community conversation about how to get organized and, ultimately, how to stop these projects, or at least force more public input.

“We keep hearing we’re not mad enough,” moderator Gray Montrose told the crowd near the beginning of the night. “I think everybody in this room is pretty mad, but we’re learning a lot more details about why.”

YOU CAN’T FIGHT WHAT YOU CAN’T SEE

Tim Cywinski, who works on data center resistance efforts with the Sierra Club Virginia Chapter, started with where we are now and has been working on the issue for about five years. During that time the conversation around data centers has changed as more people became aware of the industry’s impact statewide.

“Five years ago, it was these things make the internet work. How could this be hurting us?” Cywinski said. “So let’s move from the conspiratorial back then to sounding the alarm to the holding point that we’re at right now.”

Cywinski admitted he never expected to become an expert on the subject. “I did not go to college to be a data center expert, and here I am,” he said. “Because once we looked under the hood of it, it was kind of like, this is actually really bad.”

“We know it’s at least 500-plus,” he said, but even getting an accurate count is difficult. His presentation was put together a few months ago and, he admitted, were probably already outdated. This gave everyone in the room a sense of just how quickly the industry is moving.

That fed into his larger point that Virginia has made itself attractive to the industry, helping fuel a massive boom without establishing adequate statewide rules governing where these facilities can go or what resources they can consume.

“They come to Virginia because we make it easy for them,” Cywinski said.

And part of the problem, he argued, is that data center development often arrives in what he called a “black box” created by non-disclosure agreements. “It’s not just your local leaders that sign the NDA,” Cywinski said. “Sometimes it’s just one person at the Economic Development Authority, and then the rest of the county has to adhere to it, so they say.”

For Cywinski, that lack of information puts residents at a disadvantage before a fight over a project even begins. “We’re already on our back leg. You can’t fight what you can’t see.”

“There’s no universal safeguards. Not at the federal level, not at the state level, and most of the time, more times than not, at the local level,” he said. “How much water can be used? No standard. How close can it be built to people’s homes? No standard.”

Cywinski argued that the enormous demand on both water and electricity from the largest hyperscale data centers was driving the need for new substations, transmission lines and power generation, with some of those costs ultimately being paid by us.

He did acknowledge recent moves by Gov. Abigail Spanberger to require data centers to shoulder more of the infrastructure costs directly tied to their facilities.

“Step in the right direction,” Cywinski said. “We need more.”

Then the conversation moved to what has been learned in fighting them.

GROW TOMATOES, NOT DATA CENTERS

Then Jennifer Corpus, a founding member of Friends of Hanover and Stop Hanover Data Centers, told the story of what has happened in Hanover over the last nine months and how it started, as many good things do, with a couple of people talking in a library.

Corpus had been talking with another organizer involved in fighting a proposed quarry when the subject of data centers came up.

“Maybe when we’re done fighting the quarry, maybe then we could fight data centers,” she recalled.

Then came a community meeting over the proposed Hunting Hawk data center, and the Hanover Facebook groups exploded.

“Everyone is just so worried about the water, about the impacts it’s going to have, and just the fact that it’s a precedent,” she said. “We’re like, if we let this one in, how many more will follow?”

“I don’t think we can wait,” she remembered telling another organizer after the Hunting Hawk community meeting. “Everyone is mad. This is the time. We got to organize people. Like, the time is now.”

At that point, she said, nearly 4,000 acres in Hanover were either already approved or proposed for industrial development, including several data center projects. The group started small and without much time to figure out exactly what they were doing.

“When you’re thrust into something as crisis mode, you’re fighting something actively in crisis. You just jump in headfirst,” she said. “We didn’t necessarily have time to train a whole bunch of people and form teams or build anything else. We were just like, okay, we need to be able to make quick, nimble decisions on the ground. We’re fighting this now.”

From the beginning, Friends of Hanover also made a conscious decision not to let the fight become partisan.

“We knew that this was not a partisan issue,” she said. “From the get-go, we were like, okay, this is not political. We can’t let it get political. We just are all in this because we love the land, we love the water. I mean, we need to survive. We love wildlife, and these are all common things that humans love and benefit from protecting.”

After residents organized against Hunting Hawk, the developer withdrew the proposal. It was a win, but organizing was taking its toll. She described their small group as “eating, breathing and drinking data centers.”

They quickly realized they needed to organize better if they were going to keep fighting these projects, and began turning a small group responding to one proposal at a time into something that could grow and continue.

THIS IS HOW WE WIN

Friends of Hanover stopped operating as a handful of angry residents and started dividing the work.

They created a government relations team to meet individually with supervisors.

“These are your diplomats,” Corpus explained. “They’re not going to the meetings and yelling at people. They’re not angry. They’re going in and they’re doing what the developers do, which is, you know, you sit down, you grab a coffee with your board member, and you take a fact sheet and you explain to them. You talk to them rationally and calmly, and, you know, like they’re a human, which sometimes we forget that they are.”

Then there were researchers.

“Then we had our researchers. These are our technical folks,” she said. “They were going in, they were looking at the site plans, they were analyzing the traffic impact analysis, and then they were translating it into, like, normal people speak for the people who don’t have technical minds.”

Then there were the communications people, who took what the researchers found and turned it into something the broader community could understand.

“Those comms people were using social media to get the message out to the public,” she said. “They’re making it in a digestible format, so that people can say, ‘Oh, I understand what’s going on. I understand why it should be stopped. I know where things are at in the process, and I’m going to show up to these meetings.’”

The outreach team took that information directly into the community.

“They table at events and they went canvassing so that, like, suburban neighborhoods near these projects actually know that there’s a data center going up across the street,” she said. “They did flyering, and they just put a lot of work into getting the message out there.”

Finally, the group relied on what Jennifer called its “strategic allies,” including organizations such as the Sierra Club and other groups whose work aligned with theirs.

“So many of these folks whose groups align with ours have been able to show up and support us when we need extra support,” she said.

And she acknowledged that the structure is still a work in progress but every time the organization joined another local fight, Jennifer said, some of the residents they helped stayed around.

“People were like, ‘Wow, you saved our home. Now we’re going to help you save someone else’s.’”

Then came Mountain Road.

“The cards were stacked against us, honestly,” Jennifer said. “It was written into the small area plan. It was written into the county’s comprehensive plan. It said data centers are a permissible use for this area, and there were a lot of people who said, ‘This is a done deal.’”

“Honestly, it really felt like it was a done deal,” she continued. “The Planning Commission approved it six to one. They recommended it for approval. That was a huge blow to the group’s morale because we’d been working on this for months and months and months.”

By the night of the final vote, even Jennifer was preparing for the possibility that they had lost.

“We were like, ‘Well, at least we did the best we could,’” she said. “We did a darn good job making this a less bad project. Obviously, we don’t want it, but realistically, if it’s going to go in, we want it to be less bad.”

After hours of public comment, she stood in the back of the room listening to supervisors discuss the project.

“We’re standing in the back, listening to the Board of Supervisors all say why the project was great,” she said. A neighbor who lived near the proposed project finally told her he couldn’t watch anymore and left.

Then the final supervisor began speaking.

“He was talking about all the positives, the data center work in the county, and then he paused and started talking about the negatives,” she said. “And we were like, ‘Is he gonna vote?’ And we all just kind of paused, and the whole room paused.”

The vote was 4-3 against the project.

“This was really a testament to what happens when neighbors band together and they stop fighting each other and they start fighting for each other,” Jennifer said. “This really was a countywide effort.”

“It’s hard to point to any one thing and say this is the thing that worked, but we tried everything, and because of that, that data center got voted down,” she said.

“This is not really a story about us. This is a story about how we can win, and Hanover shows that even the most powerful companies in the world aren’t all powerful. They are still susceptible to the power of the people.”

And that, she said, is something that can be learned.

“I really believe that it’s something that all Virginians can learn from, and that people can take home some information to their counties,” Corpus said. “Hopefully we can also use some of these lessons in a statewide play against data centers.”

“There are a lot of organizers in the crowd right now who just don’t know that they’re organizers yet,” Jennifer said. “It is going to take all of us. This is going to need to come from the grassroots up. It’s going to be a statewide push against these data centers.

FROM HANOVER TO RICHMOND

That local organizing model is now beginning to connect with something larger.

University of Richmond professor Mary Finley-Brook introduced the audience to Data Center Defiance, a regional coalition formed only about four months ago.

“Our mission is straightforward: to protect from harms of data center development,” Finley-Brook said. “Some of the most important words in our mission statement are collaboration and communities.”

The coalition has four working groups and an advisory council, but Finley-Brook emphasized that it is still very much a new organization.

“Data Center Defiance is only four months old, so our story should be short. Yet our roots run deep,” she said. “For some, this is their first environmental activism, but for many, DCD is an offshoot of the many vibrant social and environmental movements that have fought extractivist mega-projects and systems of inequality across our Commonwealth for more than a century.”

Finley-Brook pointed to previous fights over coal pollution, coal ash, the Mountain Valley Pipeline and other energy projects, arguing that many of the same communities are now confronting data centers, power plants and transmission lines.

“My most important point tonight is that we need to stand together and not let this industry divide us, either by geography or other differences,” she said.

Data Center Defiance is organized into four working groups: one supports community gatherings, another focuses on education and outreach, a third works to influence government and the private sector, and a fourth focuses on research.

“We are learning to work together, building climate resiliency, weaving together our social fabric, becoming stronger and more flexible,” Finley-Brook said. “Data Center Defiance is about collective and transformative organizing.”

The coalition was formed out of a shared concern about the scale of what is now being proposed around Richmond.

“We are motivated by understanding that the cumulative impacts of more than 100 hyperscale data centers proposed in the Greater Richmond area, if they were to be built, would be devastating,” she said. “Our whole region would become a sacrifice zone.”

For Finley-Brook, the scale of what is being proposed is why the response needs to extend beyond individual neighborhoods or projects.

“The key point is that this is our shared water, our shared air, so we need to work collectively,” she said. “We are stronger together.”

Her presentation then moved into a moratorium on additional data center development.

“A moratorium is a temporary pause,” Finley-Brook said. “It gives us the time to come up with conditions that would need to be met in order to lift the moratorium.”

The list she put on the screen was extensive. It included eliminating financial subsidies for data centers; prohibiting energy, water and infrastructure costs from being shifted onto residential customers; prohibiting non-disclosure agreements between data centers, developers, utilities and local government officials; establishing a statewide data center planning authority; creating a land and community recovery fund; and establishing enforcement mechanisms and penalties specific to the industry.

Finley-Brook also called for mandatory public reporting of water and electricity use and safeguards addressing air, water and noise pollution.

“We need mandatory public reporting of water and electricity usage. There needs to be transparency,” she said.

Other potential conditions went further, including requiring data centers to have access to 100 percent renewable energy and requiring construction contractors to pay prevailing or collectively bargained wages.

Then Finley-Brook raised the issue of requiring a local referendum before a data center could be approved.

“Should voters in municipalities where a data center is proposed to be sited vote before any approval?” she asked.

For Finley-Brook, the larger point was that the current pace of development doesn’t have to simply be accepted.

“Data centers are not inevitable,” she told the room.

Then she asked everyone to say it with her.

“Data centers are not inevitable,” the crowd repeated.

“One more time,” Finley-Brook said. “Say it like you mean it.”

“Data centers are not inevitable!”

“WHY SO MUCH SEEMS TO HAPPEN BEFORE PEOPLE HAVE A CHANCE TO WEIGH IN”

Suzanne Boothby, an author and journalist who works with environmental advocate Erin Brockovich on The Brockovich Report, brought the discussion back to what residents actually know about the projects being built around them.

“Communities are trying to figure out what’s being built around them, what it means for their water, power, health, bills and land,” Boothby said.

“They want to know who knew what, who signed what, and why so much seems to happen before people in the community have a chance to weigh in.”

Boothby focused much of her presentation on water and the scale of development already coming to Henrico.

“In July, the DEQ released a report on the aquifer under the eastern half of the state, the one right under us,” Boothby said. “It came out six months late, well after our legislative session ended, and after we could have made meaningful changes to our laws. Here’s what it found: groundwater east of I-95 is constrained and is declining, not stabilizing.”

According to Boothby, the report found that there is nowhere left within the aquifer system where a new large groundwater withdrawal could pass the technical evaluation required for a permit.

“Nowhere,” she said. “But switching to surface water instead of groundwater doesn’t mean switching problems. It means competing for a different one.”

That brought her to the James River and Henrico’s existing water system.

“Henrico’s water plant, along with the water that Henrico buys from Richmond, delivers 38 million gallons a day, sourced from the James River,” Boothby said. “That’s for our faucets, our schools, our hospitals.”

She said Henrico’s plant can produce up to 80 million gallons per day, citing the county’s 2025 water quality report.

“That’s the cushion left in the county for everyone, for decades of growth,” she said. “So where does the water to cool these data centers come from?”

For Boothby, that is the larger concern as Henrico considers more data center development.

“The aquifer is tapped out, and every gallon of surface water a data center takes from that 80 million gallon ceiling is a gallon that isn’t going to go to the next school, the next neighborhood, the next family that moves to Henrico,” she said. “We’re being asked to grow this industry on the same finite river we’re going to use to grow everything else.”

“You would never get any of this from the press releases that the data centers like to put out,” she said. “I take my calling as a storyteller very seriously. I believe stories can educate us, inspire us. I love fact-finding and sharing what I find through my writing, but stories can be tall tales, propaganda, a way to push an agenda through.”

Having covered data center fights elsewhere in the country and closer to home in Henrico, Boothby said she keeps encountering a similar sales pitch.

“Everywhere I see people pushing back against the same pitch that a data center can only be good for a community,” she said. “It’s great for tax revenue, jobs, economic benefit.”

She also played a promotional video from QTS Data Centers emphasizing its relationship with the communities where it operates.

“We see communities as partners, people as neighbors, and connecting our world not as our job but a privilege,” the QTS video said. “That’s the way we’ve always done it, and that isn’t changing.”

When it ended, Boothby turned back to the audience and contrasted QTS’s message with the scale of its White Oak Technology Park proposed expansion in Henrico.

“So we see a lot of happy people in that video, but here’s what it doesn’t show you the two campuses, 17 buildings, 1,100 acres, nearly 8 million more square feet of servers on top of the 3 million already built coming to Henrico,” she said. “That’s larger than Central Park and, closer to home, it’s roughly the size of the entire Richmond Raceway complex: the track, the fairgrounds, the amphitheater, all of it.”

“And we haven’t built the enormous part yet,” she said. “The 8 million square feet, the 1,100 acres. So we actually don’t know the full impact. The unanswered questions are still out there.”

She pointed to more than 300 proposed backup generators, 11 cooling towers and questions about the power grid, then recalled what a resident said at a community meeting she attended back in May.

“‘Those decisions impact our water. They impact our health. They impact my child. We want you to stop it. So what are you doing to stop it?’” Boothby recalled the resident saying.

“And that question, ‘What are you doing to stop it?’ is the one that I keep coming back to,” she said. “That video that we just watched did not address any of those concerns.”

Boothby then widened the lens beyond Henrico. She and environmental advocate Erin Brockovich write about these issues in The Brockovich Report, and Brockovich launched a self-reported map in April tracking major hyperscale data centers alongside concerns submitted by residents around the country.

“We’ve received more than 16,000 submissions,” Boothby said.

She said the same language keeps appearing in those submissions.

“Community members use words like silenced, ignored, secretive, and not heard,” she said. “They write about backdoor deals and NDAs. They describe showing up to planning meetings only to find out decisions have already been made.”

“When you hear about these issues in one community here or there, it looks bad,” Boothby continued. “But when you line these communities up side by side, you see the larger picture.”

Then she put the question directly to the room:

“If AI data centers are so great for communities, why are so many of them being built without meaningful community input?”

FILL THE ROOMS

By the end of the night, the message was pretty clear: show up.

Boothby encouraged people to participate in public comment, attend upcoming hearings, contact Gov. Spanberger and their state legislators, get onto organizers’ mailing lists and pay attention to the next permit, meeting and comment deadline.

“We got to keep the rooms full,” she said.

Pamela Price, deputy director of Richmond-based nonprofit The Balm In Gilead, brought a public health perspective to the conversation by asking what the rapid growth of data centers could mean for public health, then she pushed the room toward action.

“Email your legislators and email Governor Spanberger,” Price said. “I take it one step further. Go see them.”

Price said much of her work involves bringing stories from communities directly to elected officials so they understand what their decisions look like on the ground.

“I want to challenge each of us to think about who you’re connected to,” she said. “Who is not here in this room with you today that should know they should be here? They should be hearing this information.”

Also, reminding our public officials who they answer to.

“It really does matter when we let them know it is our vote that often keeps any of them in office,” Price said. “I think sometimes we forget that, to say, ‘Look, you’re here because we put you here because we really wanted you to do some really positive, great things for us. But this is not it.’”

For Price, that means demanding a place at the table before a project is already moving forward.

“How do you work with us to make sure that we’re at the table before a data center goes up?” she asked. “That you listen and present us with factual information, and if you don’t have it, then we can bring that factual information to them.”

Price also argued that communities need to look beyond the immediate tax revenue promised by data center development and calculate what she called their own “community return on investment.”

“This may be a tax incentive for you, but here’s where this is going to cost in the long run to our communities,” she said.

She ended with a challenge: take what people had learned that night and tell five more people.

“I want you to think about your why,” Price said. “Why is this important to you, to your family, to your community, to maybe the organization that you work with or work for?”

For Price, that “why” comes back to public health and household finances.

“I do this work because I grew up with grandparents who couldn’t afford their medication,” she said. “I’m imagining people now sitting around the table saying, ‘Do I pay Dominion this extra $100, $200, $1,100 this month, or can I actually go and afford my diabetes medication?’”

“All of these things are connected,” Price continued. “I think that’s how we make sure that we don’t feel like this is not our fight, like this is not my problem. They don’t put it in my backyard. It is. It’s all of us.”

People are organizing and comparing notes across counties. They’re learning how planning commissions work, reading site plans and permits, meeting with supervisors and tracking votes. They are pushing for moratoriums to give themselves space to understand the long-term effects in their neighborhoods and showing other communities how to stop projects.

For an industry that grew without friction for a decade while much of the public wasn’t paying close attention, nights like Monday are happening across Virginia, cutting across partisan politics and industry propaganda.

People are paying attention now.

And that should put the industry on notice.

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For a decade, the mural outside the Romantix adult store, formerly Taboo, on Midlothian Turnpike has been one of Richmond’s most debated pieces of public art. Now it’s gone, replaced by a new collaboration between tattoo artist and muralist Jesse Smith and Miami-based artist Tatiana Suarez.

The original mural, painted by Smith and Peruvian artist Miguel de Cuadro in 2015, became one of Richmond’s most talked about public artworks. As news outlets covered the project, Smith said the conversation took on a life of its own.

“We didn’t think anything of it, and then all of a sudden the news started showing up because they were getting complaints,” Smith said. “People thought the girl was too young. Other people thought the apple represented sin. People were just kind of pushing their own ideas onto what the mural meant.”

Smith said none of those interpretations reflected the artists’ intentions. “Miguel paints women all the time, I do critters, and we just put it all together. Then all of a sudden people are talking about the age of the woman on the wall and pedophilia and all this weird stuff. It’s crazy.”

Looking back, Smith believes the reaction had less to do with the artwork itself than where it was painted. “I think the real problem is they just don’t want a sex shop. They don’t want attention brought to it. If it was on the side of an ice cream store or something, I don’t think people would have been upset.”

When the building’s new owners decided it was time for a new mural, they initially approached Smith about painting a more traditional Richmond scene featuring the James River and Main Street Station. Smith declined, saying it wasn’t really his style. Instead, he pitched another whimsical concept built around his signature creatures and invited Suarez to collaborate after Miguel de Cuadro couldn’t make the trip.

Suarez said she immediately understood the assignment after Smith sent her articles about the controversy surrounding the original mural. “The owners wanted to paint over it, but Jesse proposed switching it up a bit,” she said. “He sent me all the news stories about the previous one, and I thought it was pretty funny.”

Rather than erase the old mural’s playful innuendo, the pair decided to lean into it. “People that were upset are like, ‘Oh, they’re finally painting over it.’ But we’re kind of painting the same joke,” Suarez said. “Instead of a girl feeding a beaver, now it’s a woman playing with her pink cat.”

She said the new mural even playfully responds to one of the biggest criticisms of the original. “People were arguing that she looked too young,” Suarez said. “So we made her look older. The joke is that she’s 69 years old. We’re really leaning into it.”

As for whether this one will spark another round of debate, Smith isn’t too concerned. “I’ve never really tried to offend anyone with my art,” he said. “It’s just me having fun and doing cartoons. Every once in a while, people get upset about it.”

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She decided to finally leave.

Maybe it was after years of abuse, or after one violent night too many. Maybe it was the first time she truly believed that if she stayed, she might not survive. Whatever brought her to that moment, making the call took courage.

On the other end of the hotline is someone trained to listen, help create a safety plan, and find shelter. They want to help, but there isn’t a shelter bed available, the counseling program has a waiting list, and the organization has reached its limits.

What happens now?

For some survivors, advocates say, there is nowhere else to go. They return to the person they were trying to escape, not because they want to, but because the safety net they were counting on isn’t there.

It’s a reality Mary Maupai, executive director of Safe Harbor, says her staff confronts every day in the Richmond region. “Our shelters are full,” Maupai said. Safe Harbor operates two emergency shelters and two transitional homes, two serving survivors of domestic and sexual violence and two dedicated to survivors of human trafficking. All four are at capacity.

When someone calls the hotline needing emergency shelter, Safe Harbor first tries to place them in a local hotel while waiting for space to open but that’s only a temporary solution. “We can’t put people up in a hotel forever and ever,” Maupai said. “We assist them as long as we can, but if there’s no room in the shelter, it’s kind of like there’s no room in the inn.”

The strain doesn’t end there. Safe Harbor’s counseling program currently has a waiting list of between 75 and 100 people, and Maupai said the organization needs at least two additional counselors but doesn’t have the funding to hire them.

A new report from the Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Action Alliance, a statewide nonprofit that supports Virginia’s network of victim service agencies, suggests Safe Harbor’s experience is part of a much broader trend. Since 2020, federal funding for victim services has fallen by more than half, while organizations across Virginia continue to face staffing shortages, full shelters, and growing demand for services. The report found fewer survivors are being served today than five years ago, not because fewer people need help, advocates say, but because many organizations have reached the limits of what they can provide.

Read the report HERE

IMPOSSIBLE DECISIONS

For Maupai, the funding crisis isn’t measured in budgets. It’s measured in impossible decisions.

She said the consequences extend far beyond waiting lists and staffing shortages. “If they don’t have shelter and they want to leave, they oftentimes will have to go back to their abuser,” Maupai said. “It means people who are looking to heal and move on and hopefully thrive at some point in their life… their recovery, their journey of healing, is being delayed or stunted.”

The pressure has been building for years. Maupai said Safe Harbor has lost roughly $200,000 a year in government funding over the past five years. The organization hasn’t been able to hire the counselors it needs, while its hotel budget has repeatedly gone over budget because so many survivors require emergency housing when the shelters are full.

Even so, the organization continues trying to fill critical positions when funding allows. A day before this story was published, Safe Harbor posted an opening for a full-time human trafficking case manager.

Those realities weigh heavily on the people answering the hotline. “The direct service people, their whole heart, their whole mission is to help people. That’s what drives them,” she said. “When they see a waiting list of 50 people, or they constantly have to turn down people for shelter or for services, it eats at their soul.”

As executive director, she said she feels that weight as well. “It’s really hard,” Maupai said. “I’m supposed to tell them, ‘I need you to do more,’ while also telling them to take care of themselves and make sure they don’t burn out.”

Jonathan Yglesias, director of mission advancement for the Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Action Alliance, said the statewide numbers can be misleading if viewed without context.

Demand for services has remained consistently high since the pandemic and, in some cases, continues to grow, he said. What has changed is the capacity of organizations to respond. As staffing has declined, fewer advocates are available to answer calls, provide counseling and accompany survivors through the legal system.

At the same time, he said, advocates are spending significantly more time with each survivor because the needs have become more complex. “Five or six years ago, your typical sexual assault counselor or domestic violence counselor might have spent five to eight hours per client,” he said. “Now it’s looking more like 10 to 15. In some places, it’s doubled or tripled.”

“Survivors are showing up with more complex needs,” he said. “People are staying in shelter longer. People are needing child advocacy services or sexual assault crisis response. That’s just more complicated, and there are fewer services in the community to meet that need.”

A PUBLIC SAFETY SYSTEM OUT OF BALANCE

Maupai believes Virginia’s funding priorities have unintentionally left one part of the public safety system behind. Over the past several years, the state has invested heavily in training law enforcement, medical providers and multidisciplinary teams to better identify victims of human trafficking and domestic violence.

“The awareness and identification of victims has been fabulous,” she said. “The problem is that there has been less direct funding for direct services.”

She compares the system to a three-legged stool. “You’ve got three legs to that stool. Two of those legs are very sturdy. The other one is most definitely wobbly, and that’s the direct service piece.”

Yglesias agreed, arguing that public safety depends on both systems being adequately funded. “I think both of them need to be well resourced,” he said. Community-based advocacy organizations provide confidential, voluntary services that don’t require survivors to file a police report or enter the criminal justice system.

“That’s what our agencies do,” Yglesias said. “They’re one of those resources that is completely voluntary and that is confidential and that is free to the public.”

Both advocates described direct services as the bridge between crisis and recovery. Law enforcement may be the first point of contact, but without shelter, counseling and long-term advocacy, survivors can find themselves back in the same dangerous situations that prompted the initial intervention. In that sense, they argue, direct services don’t replace law enforcement. They help prevent repeated crises that require law enforcement to respond again.

“When someone is ready to leave, they’ve taken a huge risk,” Maupai said. “Law enforcement picks up the phone, tries to get services for them, and finds out the shelters are full or there’s a waiting list. They now have to go back and tell that person, ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.’”

For both advocates, the issue isn’t choosing between policing and victim services. It’s recognizing that they depend on one another.

Maupai said Richmond’s location at the intersection of Interstates 95 and 64 has long made the region vulnerable to human trafficking, but she believes many people still misunderstand who is affected. “People think it’s something that happens somewhere else,” she said. “What we have seen in our program since we formalized our work with these individuals in 2016 is it’s happening right here in our own backyard. It’s happening to Americans, and it’s happening to people in our own community.”

She said trafficking isn’t limited to the stereotypes often portrayed in movies or television. “It’s not necessarily the woman who’s walking down Jefferson Davis Highway in stiletto heels and a miniskirt,” Maupai said. “It’s happening to school kids who go to school and then come home to an environment where they are trafficked.”

Maupai said those fears have become more pronounced among some immigrant survivors. She has seen people hesitate to report abuse or seek protective orders because they worry about encounters with immigration authorities, creating yet another barrier to getting help. “This isn’t a red or blue issue,” she said. “This is a human rights issue. Nobody should experience violence or trauma in their interpersonal relationships and within their home.”

At the same time, she said, immigrants are only one part of the story. “We have individuals that have come to our programs who have been human trafficked by their own families,” Maupai said. “They’ve been human trafficked by local churches. They’ve been trafficked by aunts, uncle. It’s more pervasive than people think.”

That’s why, she said, direct services matter so much. Survivors often take enormous risks to leave, trusting that someone will be there to help them. “You have a very finite amount of time to work with that individual and to build that trust,” Maupai said. “Once you build it, and if it gets broken, it is extremely hard to build it again.”

WHAT’S NEXT?

Looking ahead, Maupai said uncertainty has become almost as difficult as the funding cuts themselves. Safe Harbor continues to build support through individual donors, foundations and corporate partners, but replacing large government grants takes years.

“We’ve been doing a good job,” she said. “The problem is, it takes time.”

Even after the organization’s fiscal year began, she was still waiting to learn whether roughly $400,000 in expected state funding would arrive. Safe Harbor has the reserves to withstand that uncertainty for now, she said. Many smaller organizations in rural communities do not. That means a funding cut hundreds of miles away doesn’t stay there. It shifts survivors toward larger regional organizations already struggling to meet demand.

“When those organizations close down,” she said, “it puts more stress on those of us that are remaining.”

When rural providers disappear, survivors don’t disappear with them. They begin turning to larger regional organizations like Safe Harbor, placing even greater strain on an already overburdened system.

Asked what he would tell Virginia lawmakers before the next budget cycle, Yglesias said he hopes they understand that victim advocates are just as essential to their communities as any other emergency responder. “The people doing this helping work and the people who are these kind of essential crisis responders in their community are just like law enforcement,” he said. “They’re overburdened and underpaid, and required to respond to things that are beyond our control in the community.”

“We are one element of a victim response ecosystem that is strained,” Yglesias said. “If we disappear, then I think there are other dominoes that fall as well.”

As the interview came to a close, Maupai reflected on why these conversations matter.

“I sometimes feel like these issues don’t really hit home until they become personal and show up on our own doorstep,” she said. “When they do, you want to make sure that individual that you love and care for can get the help that they need immediately when they need it.”

If you would like to help or donate to Safe Harbor, more information HERE.

NEED HELP? LOCAL RESOURCES

If you or someone you know needs help, support is available through organizations across the Richmond region, including:

Safe Harbor
24-Hour Helpline: (Call or Text): (804) 500-2755

YWCA Richmond
24-Hour Helpline: (Call or Text): (804) 612-6126

Latinos in Virginia Empowerment Center
24-Hour Helpline: (Call or Text): (888) 969-1825

Virginia Statewide Sexual & Domestic Violence Hotline
Available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Call: 800-838-8238 (interpretation available in 200+ languages)
Text: 804-793-9999
Chat: Available online through the Virginia Statewide Sexual & Domestic Violence Hotline website.

Main photo by Diego San

Support RVA Magazine. Support Independent Media in Richmond.

At a time when media ownership is increasingly concentrated among corporations and the wealthy, RVA Magazine has remained one of Richmond’s few independent voices. Since 2005, the magazine has provided grassroots coverage of the city’s artists, musicians, and communities, documenting the culture that defines Richmond beyond the headlines.

But we can’t do this without you. A small donation, even as little as $2, one-time or recurring, helps us continue to produce honest, local coverage free from outside interference. Every dollar makes a difference. Your support keeps us going and keeps RVA’s creative spirit alive. Thank you for standing with independent media. SUPPORT HERE.

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In the electric and perpetually sincere terrain of Richmond’s theatre culture, there are institutions that do more than merely reside, they lead. They serve as a measure of our city’s potential beyond its natural aspirations.

I’ve witnessed Firehouse Theatre inhabit that essential niche, becoming the forge where the art takes shape. It isn’t just a stage for viewing. It’s the delivery room where stories are conceived, deconstructed, and hammered into something that truly echoes.

I recently caught up with the duo currently tending to that creative fire: Nathaniel Shaw, now settled into his seat as executive director, and Katrinah Carol Lewis, who has just taken the helm as artistic director. If you have your finger on the pulse of Richmond theatre, these figures are already familiar. They’ve made indelible marks on many local and regional stages, in the wings, and in the heavy lifting of building a legacy.

Our talk, however, moved past the surface level of new titles or the excitement of a fresh chapter. We dug into a foundational evolution of how a theatre in a town like ours can function, expand, and nourish an entire community of creators alongside its audience.

Christian Detres: When exactly did this change over happen? And what was the kind of mood around that?

Nathaniel Shaw: Katrina’s official start date was July.

CD: This is very new. What’s the new title?

Katrinah Carol Lewis: Artistic director!

CD: Have you had that title elsewhere? Is this a new thing for you?

KCL: No, it’s not a new thing. I was the artistic director at Colonial Williamsburg for about 7 years. I was the associate director at Theatre Lab for a couple of years…

CD: So this is old hat.

KCL: You know, working at Colonial Williamsburg was a very specific kind of theatre. Being an artistic director is a challenging space to be in. It’s also a really exciting space to be in. To be the vision holder, the culture creator, is something that I really enjoy doing. And I’m not doing it alone. I get to do it with my beloved partner, Nathaniel!

I’ve been the associate artistic director for Nathaniel for two years going into this. I’m not new to the organization, and it’s not like I’m coming in asserting a brand new vision for Firehouse. I’m taking the existing vision that I’ve come to love and investing myself in it. I’m putting my own flavour on it while continuing to collaborate with this amazing team.

So is it challenging and scary? Yeah, it’s a little challenging and a little scary, but I feel very prepared to step into leadership. The love, care, and commitment that I have to this community inspires me to look at the challenges and put fear to the side. It’s a path that I didn’t quite choose. The theatre chose me.

To be a leader in theatre is not the same as being an actor, or even a director.

CD: Nathaniel, so you are now the Emperor of Firehouse, right?

NS: (laughs) Yes, that is the title. Actually, executive director.

KCL: Yeah, and I am the Empress. I like that title!

CD: New business cards tomorrow! How does stepping into that role change your day-to-day life? What are you taking on with that role that you hadn’t been responsible for in the past?

NS: Katrina will say all I ever wanted to do was sing songs and be in plays. For 25 years now, all I’ve said I wanted to be was an artistic director, and I’ve gotten to do that.

We’ve now grown Firehouse with me in that position to a place I didn’t anticipate being in. I inherited a $375,000-a-year revenue organization. We just closed the last fiscal year north of $825,000 in receipts.

With that growth and expansion, both the artistic side and the executive side need full attention. I’ve been what’s known as the producing artistic director, which means I have the sole executive responsibility for fundraising and administration, as well as the primary artistic oversight. I was overinvested in the artistic side for a period of time, so the executive functions of the fundraising side were going to suffer. This new focus will really allow me to prioritize the growth of the organization.

It needed two people taking the artistic and executive roles separately. It’s a very natural progression in that way.

Katrina probably grows weary of me saying this, but she really has been, for the entire time that I’ve been here, kind of the heartbeat and the pulse of Richmond theatre. Having her on as the artistic director just makes sense. She’s one of the most beloved theatre makers, initially as an actor on stage, but increasingly as a director, and now an institutional leader.

CD: When you move on from stage-level artistic decisions, whether blocking a moment, coaxing a performance out of an actor, or simply being one, and move on to representing the theatre at a cocktail party full of potential donors, the role changes. But you’re still playing a role. In some ways, it’s more acting than being on stage.

But the beauty of the role is that you get to be the one who lights the fuse on the art firecracker and lets it go. The play and performance may be the glory of its explosion, but you’re the only one with the lighter that makes it go boom.

KCL: I’ve been thinking about it a lot as I’m the heart and he’s the brain. The heart and the brain have to communicate to make the body work. That’s a conversation we have been having since I’ve been at Firehouse.

Now I have more agency, more space. We have really robust artistic conversations. We can talk about the big-picture stuff, and we can get really granular.

CD: What particular stories are you guys both into? What do you enjoy plotting and planning around?

NS: This upcoming season happened because of what’s in the air. What we’re both reacting to as human beings living in America in 2026. We curated a response to America’s and Virginia’s 250th. Our entire lineup is reflective of what it is to be American, and how our systems have supported us or failed us.

We provide different looks into the American dream and what it is like to pursue it. The tragedy for many is finding that an empty pursuit. The artistic response is absolutely working in lockstep with that strategic idea.

Looking a season ahead, we have a core commitment to synergistic collaborations. It’s easy to put some buzzy words together, but it does have meaning.

KCL: One of my great joys about Firehouse is that we develop and produce new work. I think that’s a wonderful contribution to Richmond’s playwrights and other playwrights who come and work with us. It’s a way of giving back to this industry that has fed us. It’s a way to ensure that at least some stories that we are wrestling with here in 2026 are being told and become part of a canon that you have in the future.

But one of the heartbreaks is when we develop a really beautiful piece of work and it’s one and done. It has its world premiere in Richmond, and it doesn’t go on to have a life in the theatre. Unfortunately, that’s going to happen sometimes. It happens everywhere, but I think it’s important that we are making our best efforts to build bridges for these new works. Create systems that give these native plays a chance to reach outside of Richmond during the developmental process, through the world premiere, and after.

CD: I’ve actually had this conversation with other people about Firehouse. It stands out from the other theatres in town. When you go to Virginia Rep, it’s soaring stagecraft, beautiful sets, 30 people in the cast, glorious stuff. It’s Broadway on Broad St. I sit there and I love that it’s happening. The spectacle is wonderful.

Firehouse is bringing Broad St. off Broadway. You literally represent Richmond-borne theatre. Your partnership with Cadence in the New Works program is one of the most exciting collaborations in Richmond arts altogether. I think that’s incredibly special.

Every decent arts-forward city should have classic productions and an incubator of local work. Some to tell the stories from away, and others to make our own to send afar. I think it’s a litmus test for whether you’re actually a cosmopolitan destination.

The strength of your theatre scene is as important as your music scene, your art scene, nightlife, museums, and historical architecture. These things only blossom where there’s passion and perspective in a community.

How does that fit in with the ability of Richmond theatre to project itself outside of its own borders?

NS: That’s what we’re working on. It’s what our next season has going for itself, and it’s starting to materialize. We’re building relationships with theatres outside of Richmond so these plays have a chance to extend their audience beyond the city. The majority of our mainstage productions in the 2027/28 season already have agreements for co-productions. Our specific intention of being an incubator for new plays creates an opportunity for Firehouse to be that catalyst in the community.

Part of the value of having a new play process is having an audience along for the ride. Theatre does not happen until the audience is there. And when you’re developing new work, you don’t know what you have until you do it.

A new work might discover something with an audience that you had no idea was going to connect. The play can evolve too. How exciting that is, to embrace the mess a little bit. It’s not about the production at this point. You want it to be good. Your home audience is what helps you hone the work to move on to bigger and farther stages.

We have people who come to every single pop-up premiere, and they’re starting to recognize their role as audience members. Also, let me give a shout out to our resident dramaturg, Claire Whitman. She really helped us curate a post-show discussion process to support the playwright. It helps them know what works, what lags, and where focus should be placed on perfecting the work.

We’re here to invite you into the process. You’re not just there to watch. You’re here to witness, invest, and be a part of the development.

What’s going on right now with Firehouse is quite unusual in the national theatre ecosystem. It’s rare that a theatre says to an artist, “We want to meet you at or very near inception, and we’re going to surround you with compensated artists who are going to walk the journey with you. Through the reading process, through the workshop process. We’re also going to try to build bridges for you to other theatres beyond that world.”

When this job was presented to me, I made it incredibly clear to the board that if they were not interested in pursuing growth in an aggressive way, then I’m not the right person for the job, and that’s perfectly fine. You can continue to have Firehouse as is. It serves a purpose in the community. But if we’re not interested in growing the organization into a first-class incubator of new work, one that builds bridges to Richmond for its artists, then I’m not, you know, I’m not interested.

The board of directors absolutely embraced that growth mentality, and we’ve grown the board. The board boasts a group with diverse professional backgrounds and skills. We’re also growing the physical footprint by purchasing our neighboring building at 1617 W. Broad St. for new office space and much-needed expanded rehearsal space.

CD: That’s a lot to take in and I have nothing but high expectations for you all in this new phase of growth at Firehouse.

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At a time when media ownership is increasingly concentrated among corporations and the wealthy, RVA Magazine has remained one of Richmond’s few independent voices. Since 2005, the magazine has provided grassroots coverage of the city’s artists, musicians, and communities, documenting the culture that defines Richmond beyond the headlines.

But we can’t do this without you. A small donation, even as little as $2, one-time or recurring, helps us continue to produce honest, local coverage free from outside interference. Every dollar makes a difference. Your support keeps us going and keeps RVA’s creative spirit alive. Thank you for standing with independent media. SUPPORT HERE.

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This weekend, Plan 9 Music marks 45 years in Richmond with a party at Hardywood Park Craft Brewery.

Over the past four and a half decades, the Richmond institution weathered some of the most turbulent periods in music history. It closed stores, sold its warehouse and dramatically shrank its footprint, surviving industry changes that forced thousands of independent record shops across the country out of business.

But for owner Jim Bland the anniversary isn’t about looking back as much as it is recognizing the people who helped Plan 9 get here.

“That’s kind of why we’re doing this,” Bland said. “To say thank you to our extended community and the bands that play around here.”

For generations of Richmond musicians and music fans, Plan 9 has been much more than a place to buy records. It’s where people discovered new bands, bought tickets to local shows, met touring artists and, in many cases, found their place within Richmond’s music scene.

When Bland opened Plan 9 in 1981, he wasn’t thinking about anniversaries. “When we opened, I just hoped to be able to survive and make a living at it,” he said. “I’d been working for other people for years and finally had a chance, with a partner at the time, to step out on our own.”

At the time, Bland was working at an independent record store in Petersburg.

“My former employer was very helpful with me making that transition,” Bland said. “I worked for him for almost a year before I actually was able to quit completely and work just for me and my partner. So he covered the daytime. I came in the nights and worked on the weekends while I was doing the other job and training other people to take over.”

Richmond’s music scene was beginning to take shape. “Tom and Marty (Tom Campagnoli and Marty McCavitt of The Tom & Marty Band) played our first anniversary in the front room of our little store,” Bland recalled. “Around that time, I’d see the Orthotonics, the Good Guys, Panorama, all these bands. The punk scene was really getting going.”

Plan 9 quickly became more than a record store. It sold tickets, helped local promoters cover guarantees and even co-promoted shows, giving Richmond’s growing music scene another place to organize.

“We participated in that a good bit in those early years by helping the bands, helping some of the guys that wanted to do a show, just put down the guarantee, and we sold the tickets, so we were kind of co-promoters,” Bland said. “Some of the stuff I really did promote ourselves, but others I just helped them make it happen. We got our money back, sold the tickets and helped out the shows.”

Back then, Carytown looked nothing like it does today.

“It was a lot sketchier,” Bland said. “There were only a handful of retailers. Rostov’s had just opened a little before us. There was Elman’s, the hardware store and a dancewear shop. There was a small amount of retail, and it wasn’t down this whole nine blocks. A lot of the buildings were just painted over or blacked out. They weren’t really storefronts. They were used for storage.”

Plan 9 arrived before Carytown became one of Richmond’s best-known shopping districts. The neighborhood was still finding its identity and as new businesses slowly opened and more people discovered the district, the record store grew alongside it, becoming one of the constants in a neighborhood that would eventually transform around it.

As the music business evolved through vinyl, cassettes and CDs, Plan 9 evolved with it, eventually expanding into multiple stores across Virginia.

For Bland, those early format changes weren’t a threat but were simply part of running a record store. “The transitions from vinyl to CD were easy enough because you still had formats and you still had customers buying physical goods,” he said. “At one time we had all three.”

“You ordered CDs, LPs and cassettes, and that was a pain in the ass just because you had multiple formats for one release,” Bland said. “You’d think, ‘Okay, how many Dave Matthews do we bring in? How many Springsteen?’ It was just having to make the right call.”

For years, that balancing act worked, then the internet changed everything.

Bland had navigated every format change the music industry could throw at him, but digital piracy and streaming were different. Customers weren’t switching from one physical format to another, many just stopped buying music altogether.

“The first wave was Napster and people pulling stuff down for free, and that hurt businesses across the board,” Bland said. As streaming took hold, the impact became impossible to ignore.

“Probably the worst time was when we had expanded into multiple stores and streaming hit,” he said. “Our stores were college-focused, young-person focused. We started closing stores and going through all of that. That was the most difficult time we ever had.”

“Both the economy and streaming was the perfect storm to kill off record stores,” Bland said. “I knew a lot of people across the board that either closed all their stores or lost one or two of their stores and had to downsize.”

Plan 9 wasn’t spared as stores in Williamsburg, Harrisonburg and other markets closed as Bland retrenched. The company shut down its warehouse operation and eventually sold the building to Hardywood Park Craft Brewery as the young brewery was beginning its own expansion. The larger Carytown store also became too expensive to justify.

The warehouse sale gave Plan 9 breathing room. Bland found a smaller warehouse, waited until new tenants took over the oversized Carytown location, and in December 2012 moved the flagship store across the street into the space it occupies today.

“They bought the building, so that got me out of there and gave us a little time to sort ourselves out, find another small place to use for storage… We were fortunate enough to find this place right across the street.”

“There was a time there I thought we might just end up being a used record and CD market,” Bland said. “I didn’t know what our future held, but we were still holding on.”

Then something unexpected happened, vinyl came back.

“Absolutely not,” Bland said when asked if he ever imagined records would become popular again. “No clue. I don’t know any one of my friends in the music business who really thought that would happen.”

The comeback didn’t happen overnight. Independent artists kept pressing records long after most of the industry had moved on, and the launch of Record Store Day in 2008helped bring new attention to independent record stores. But about a decade ago, the revival reached a tipping point as younger listeners embraced vinyl not as nostalgia, but as a different way to experience music.

“We were sort of fearful of, ‘Hey, where are we headed now?’” Bland said. “There were hardly any records being pressed except for some real indies and some who just felt like they still wanted to do it. Then the youth of the time caught on, and of course it’s been growing now for 15 years.”

“I think they got back to, ‘Okay, I need something analog.’ They got into watches and old cameras, but most especially got into having records again. You missed having great images on the covers, the liner notes that you could read easily. All of that stuff that was great about records. Just taking it out that first time, putting the needle down and listening to something was really special. That really seemed to catch on. It made us successful again when we were just about on the verge of going out of business,” Bland said.

Today’s Plan 9 reflects that revival. Listening parties for new albums regularly fill the store before records officially hit streaming services. Fans gather to hear new releases together, browse the bins, swap stories and share an experience that can’t be replicated by an algorithm.

Bland believes that’s part of why people continue coming back and he has watched listening parties become destinations in their own right. “They’re all there together listening to something they love, and that is a social thing as well,” Bland said. “It’s a different version of going to a live concert. They can have the experience with a group instead of just streaming something by yourself on your headphones.”

That sense of community has always been central to Plan 9’s identity. “I think to be a good business, you give back to your community that supports you,” Bland said. “We do that by doing sales and special events for our customers, but the other thing is giving our local bands a shot at making it better and surviving when they play. We’ve always carried the records, we’ve always put up your posters… it’s just an extension of being supportive of the people who support us.”

Over the decades, that philosophy has produced countless memorable moments.

One of the most famous came in 1992, when No Doubt squeezed into Plan 9’s Carytown store for an in-store performance. “We had that on the docket, and then they were just blowing up,” Bland said. “We didn’t expect that, but they honored that commitment, and they came.”

The crowd packed the store while local radio stations broadcast live from both the front and back of the building. “We had one of the local radio stations parked out front with their live thing, and we had another one in the back of the store,” Bland recalled. “They were all trying to cover it as well, which was great for us.”

Plan 9 has hosted signings with the Ramones and countless in-store performances over the years. For its 20th anniversary, the store turned its parking lot into a daylong celebration featuring Richmond favorites Sparklehorse, Denali, the Mommies and a solo performance by Dave Lowery of Cracker, with music spread across stages inside and outside the store.

“That was probably the most memorable for me,” Bland said.

Looking back, if you ask Bland why he’s stayed with it for 45 years, the answer has very little to do with business. “I’m fortunate to be able to be involved in what I like,” he said. “To be able to make a reasonable living and be doing exactly what you loved, that was great. I never got tired of it.”

“I still take way too much home,” Bland laughed. “I’m like, ‘I have to have this. I should have this.’” Lately, he’s become especially interested in collecting Richmond records, preserving the music made in his own backyard alongside the store that has championed it for decades.

One day, he’d like to share that collection with everyone else. “I just want to have a display of all these records,” he said. “Come see if you can find a record you were on… back in your day.”

In the end, Plan 9 wasn’t built by someone chasing the music business. It was built by someone who simply loved music enough to spend a lifetime surrounded by it, sharing that love with anyone willing to walk through the front door.

Forty-five years later, Jim Bland is still doing exactly that.

Main image: Jim Bland, photo by R. Anthony Harris

PLAN 9 45TH ANNIVERSARY BENEFIT SHOW

Plan 9 Music will celebrate its 45th anniversary with a benefit show for WRIR 97.3FM on Saturday, July 25, from 3 to 10 p.m.at Hardywood Park Craft Brewery (2410 Ownby Lane). Featuring Beex + L’Amour, The Good Guys, Janet Martin & Elizabeth Wise, The Sky Chiefs, The Tom & Marty Band, Orthotonics, Brandon Wayne and His Lonesome Drifters, Ant the Symbol, and Rodney Stith and the Soul Foundation.

Admission is $9 or pay what you can, with proceeds benefiting WRIR 97.3 FM. Plan 9 is also inviting former employees to attend as part of the anniversary festivities.

Support RVA Magazine. Support Independent Media in Richmond.

At a time when media ownership is increasingly concentrated among corporations and the wealthy, RVA Magazine has remained one of Richmond’s few independent voices. Since 2005, the magazine has provided grassroots coverage of the city’s artists, musicians, and communities, documenting the culture that defines Richmond beyond the headlines.

But we can’t do this without you. A small donation, even as little as $2, one-time or recurring, helps us continue to produce honest, local coverage free from outside interference. Every dollar makes a difference. Your support keeps us going and keeps RVA’s creative spirit alive. Thank you for standing with independent media. SUPPORT HERE.

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“Richmond has your back… maybe.”

That about sums it up, doesn’t it?

It’s the slogan behind KCPFC, a new football-inspired project from Kwame Hayford, the guy behind Kwam’s Chicken Project, and Richmond designer Ignatius Friend. The collection blends soccer culture with fried chicken, which wasn’t something I expected to write about this week.

But I’ve always thought Kwam’s Chicken Project was about more than fried chicken.

Spend five minutes scrolling through the project’s Instagram and you’ll see what I mean. Sure, there are plenty of photos of crispy chicken. But mixed in are bike rides, vinyl nights, brewery pop-ups, funny Richmond posters, collaborations with local artists and now soccer jerseys. Somewhere along the way, it stopped feeling like a food page and started feeling like a snapshot of Richmond’s creative community.

Sure, the chicken is what gets people to show up. I’m certainly down. The food is really good. But if you’ve been around Richmond lately, you’ve probably seen Kwam everywhere. Brewery pop-ups. Backyard parties. Community events. Different crowds, different neighborhoods, same guy.

Now he’s teamed up with Friend on KCPFC, a football-inspired collection of jerseys, T-shirts, posters and stickers that taps into Richmond’s growing soccer culture. The timing couldn’t be better. Between packed World Cup watch parties this summer and Richmond somehow becoming one of the country’s biggest television markets for the tournament, it feels like the city is finally embracing the sport in a whole new way.

The project started when Hayford wanted some merch for Kwam’s Chicken Project and told Friend he could take the idea wherever he wanted.

Friend didn’t just design a T-shirt. He built an entire football club identity around Kwam’s Chicken Project, complete with a crest featuring the project’s signature rooster, home and away jerseys, and the line, “Richmond Has Your Back… Maybe.”

I had to ask about the “maybe.”

“I’m from Richmond, born and raised,” Friend said. “It’s a mid-sized city. I wouldn’t say it’s as tough as New York, but it has its own unique bristle to it. Sometimes it is tough, sometimes it’s easy. Maybe Richmond has your back. We’ll see what happens.”

I told him I couldn’t help but read it as a little bit of everything: sometimes the city government has your back, sometimes it doesn’t, and the same goes for your neighbors.

“It’s all included,” he said. “The side streets. The potholes.”

As it turns out, soccer wasn’t part of the original plan. Friend had already been sketching ideas when the World Cup started taking over Richmond. That’s when everything clicked.

“He said I could do anything I wanted,” Friend said. “I wanted to make something that was really personal to him. With the World Cup going on, I thought, ‘This is a great opportunity.’”

I asked the two of them why soccer feels like it’s having such a moment in Richmond right now. Friend doesn’t think it’s just soccer. “We just support our local sports in general,” he said. “Whether it’s the Kickers, the Ivy or the Squirrels, people are showing up. You’ll see people you haven’t seen in years standing in line for a beer at City Stadium. It’s really just a community.”

I asked if younger Richmonders were driving that energy. “Oh, for sure,” Friend said.

He pointed to the World Cup watch parties that have been popping up across the city. He found himself at Memi’s for Egypt’s first World Cup win, surrounded by fans celebrating together, then packed into Cochiloco for a Mexico match where, as he described it, the crowd was “a sea of green and red.”

“It was really cool just seeing different cultures and different people bringing that energy,” he said.

I couldn’t help but think about that whole “RVA > NYC” thing that’s been making the rounds on TikTok and Instagram. Whether people mean it literally or not almost doesn’t matter. It feels like younger Richmonders are looking at the city differently. Instead of waiting for a thing to happen somewhere else, they’re creating it here, then inviting everyone else to join in.

“I have a lot of friends in New York,” Kwam said. “I love going to New York, but I want some of them to come to me. We’ve got some cool shit here.”

The more we talked, the less this felt like a merch drop and more like an excuse to build something. They seemed a lot more excited talking about pickup soccer, Richmond’s futsal courts and figuring out another excuse to get people together. The shirts just happens to be how the conversation starts.

And that’s kind of how Kwam’s Chicken Project has always worked.

Hayford told me he never really started the pop-up to build a business. During the uncertainty of 2020, he just wanted something to do while working from home. The more people showed up, the more he kept doing it. Even now, he still talks about it more like a hobby than a brand. And istead of talking about himself, Hayford spent the next few minutes hyping up Friend and making sure he got the credit. “Iggy did a lot of this, and by a lot, I mean most of it,” Hayford said. “This man is a demon. He is him. He works hard.”

Hayford said he gave Friend a loose idea and let him run with it. “I said, ‘Do whatever you want. I just want some merch. That’d be cool,’” he said. “This guy gave me a whole portfolio. If you’re in Richmond and need somebody to design your stuff, hire this man. Real talk.”

For Hayford, that was part of the point. “If I can get my friends to do something cool that they like to do, and it helps them push their own boundaries, I’m down,” he said. “Let’s support everybody. Get everybody involved.”

That felt pretty telling on what kind of person Kwam is. For Hayford, the fun seems to come from giving people a reason to make something together.

Sometimes it’s fried chicken. This time it’s soccer.

Whatever comes next, I have a feeling it won’t be long before Kwam finds another excuse to bring people together.

If you’re curious what this looks like in real life, you’ll get a chance this weekend. KCPFC is hosting a World Cup Final watch party on this Sunday, July 19, at Väsen Brewing Co. (3331 W. Moore St.). Doors open at 1 pm with kickoff at 3 pm.

Follow along at KCPFC
All photos courtesy of KCPFC

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At a time when media ownership is increasingly concentrated among corporations and the wealthy, RVA Magazine has remained one of Richmond’s few independent voices. Since 2005, the magazine has provided grassroots coverage of the city’s artists, musicians, and communities, documenting the culture that defines Richmond beyond the headlines.

But we can’t do this without you. A small donation, even as little as $2, one-time or recurring, helps us continue to produce honest, local coverage free from outside interference. Every dollar makes a difference. Your support keeps us going and keeps RVA’s creative spirit alive. Thank you for standing with independent media. SUPPORT HERE.

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I went to Virginia MOCA expecting to hear Andy Howell talk about skateboarding.

Instead, I left thinking about community and how people find each other.

Howell’s installation opens Seamless, the museum’s new exhibition exploring the overlap between art and design. At first glance, it feels almost chaotic. A skateboard hangs in front of a wall layered with graffiti, hand lettering, sketches, and fragments that somehow resolve into a single visual language. It feels less like an exhibition piece than an invitation inside Howell’s sketchbook.

Before social media, before brands were scouting Instagram, before every trend was instantly copied, community was geographic. It was whoever showed up.

Long before the city built the famous vert ramp at Mount Trashmore in the mid-1980s, skateboarding was, as Howell put it, “basically illegal.” With few places to ride, kids built ramps out of “borrowed” wood in backyards and vacant lots and, in the process, built a community. They hung out at all-ages punk shows at Connection Hall, made photocopied zines to document the scene, and waited each month for Thrasheror the newly launched Transworld Skateboarding to arrive in the mail.

“The horrible thing about that was that the entire industry was in California, and we could not access it,” Howell said. “The great thing about that was that the industry was in California, so we had to create our own scene completely from scratch.”

That’s the part of Virginia Beach’s story that often gets overlooked. By the time the city built one of the country’s first municipally funded skate ramps at Mount Trashmore, the scene was already thriving.

Howell eventually left Virginia Beach for art school in Atlanta, where he found another creative community that was just beginning to define itself. Southern hip hop hadn’t yet become the cultural force it would eventually become, but the city’s skateboarding, graffiti, music, and art scenes were already overlapping in much the same way they had back home.

When Howell co-founded New Deal Skateboards in 1990 with Paul Schmitt and Steve Douglas, he brought all of those influences with him. It became one of the most influential skateboard companies in the country.

“We just felt like we needed to do something that was just by skaters for skaters in that moment,” he said.

Fresh out of art school and traveling the world as a professional skateboarder, Howell became New Deal’s creative director almost by default, designing the company’s logo the night it was founded. At night he painted graffiti on the streets of Atlanta. The next morning those ideas became skateboard graphics, stickers, T-shirts, and advertisements.

“I feel like I have somehow been magnetically drawn to the places where things were happening right before they happened over the course of my life,” he said. “It was amazing to be in Atlanta during that time. We were a small graffiti scene, a small hip hop scene. Everybody knew each other. The skaters really influenced a lot of stuff down there.”

That spirit carried into New Deal. “It wasn’t contrived,” Howell said. “As fast as we could make things, we were turning them into stickers and T-shirts and skateboards and selling them. There was no filter. We were not planning for seasons. We were just making whatever we felt like at that moment.”

As we talked, one idea kept resurfacing. It wasn’t really about skateboarding, graffiti, or even hip hop. It was about community.

For Howell scenes emerge when different worlds collide, when surfers start skating, graffiti writers design skateboard graphics, musicians become friends with artists, and suddenly everyone is showing up at the same places.

“The scenes kind of overlap,” he said. “Then you put those people in the same room, or at the same events, or at the same places, and they connect. It really starts to cross-pollinate, and I think it becomes really powerful.”

Today we tend to remember movements by the people who became famous but what Howell describes is years of obscurity, a small group of kids making things for one another because nobody else was going to. That mindset still shapes the way he works today.

“I consider myself an artist,” Howell said. “All the different things that I’ve done or do in my life, I consider to be kind of different paint brushes in the box that I carry around.”

Later in our conversation, I mentioned that we’re roughly the same age and probably among the first generation raised almost entirely on television. Our creative vocabulary wasn’t built from a single medium. It came from Saturday morning cartoons, sitcoms, skate videos, album covers, punk flyers, graffiti, and whatever else happened to catch our attention.

“Everything is a response to just being programmed, to being sat in front of a TV,” he said. “What younger generations may not immediately understand is that there were only three TV stations back then, so we only watched for a half hour or an hour at a time, and only when a show you wanted to see was actually on. There was a lot of downtime away from the screen, which meant there was a lot of time to be bored and use your imagination. I daydreamed a lot, fished, skated, and figured out ways to put my art on T-shirts and stickers and make zines. There was time to be inspired and sit with a concept long enough for my ideas to become my own.

“I feel like that necessary pause, with time for reflection and space to actually allow ideas to manifest, is, at best, heavily diluted by our devices. At worst, it’s nonexistent. Even art, our most valuable form of cultural reflection, has been reduced by social media to formulaic blips of ‘content’ that mimic whatever got the most hits the day before. It’s disposable, valued only for the hour it’s posted or if it happens to go viral that day. Ideas get flushed away before they’re fully baked, so that reflection and development time is lost.

“I have mixed feelings about social media. It feels a lot like when I was addicted to the video game arcade as a kid. I was generally anxious, unsettled, and never satisfied. When I’m on my device for a long time, especially social media, I feel that way. I’m just saying, use a few of those hours every day to be still, think, sketch, and write. New ideas will emerge on their own.”

“You’ve got to be bored to make art,” he said. “You have to have a void to allow the universe to pour in whatever those next things are that are going to inspire you.”

That way of thinking has never really changed. As a teenager, it meant making zines to connect what Howell described as a “disparate community” of skateboarders scattered across the East Coast.

Today, it means creating companies, events, products, and exhibitions that give people a reason to gather.

“We were just always looking for ways to kind of proliferate the culture and build a community,” he said.

That philosophy also explains Ghost/Ship Supply Company, which Howell now operates from North Carolina’s Outer Banks. More than an action sports brand, it brings together skateboarding, surfing, fishing, and art under the same banner, another expression of the overlapping communities that first shaped him in Virginia Beach. Check out the site HERE.

We spend a lot of time celebrating the people who make it, but not nearly enough time thinking about the communities that made them possible. They emerged from ecosystems where different scenes overlapped and creative people kept finding one another long before the rest of the country was paying attention.

Looking back at Seamless, Howell’s installation reads differently. What first appears to be chaos is really a map of the influences that shaped him. Skateboarding, surfing, punk, hip hop, graffiti, and design all flow into one another until they become impossible to separate.

Maybe that’s the lesson. Culture begins when people find each other.

Everything else comes later.

Support RVA Magazine. Support Independent Media in Richmond.

At a time when media ownership is increasingly concentrated among corporations and the wealthy, RVA Magazine has remained one of Richmond’s few independent voices. Since 2005, the magazine has provided grassroots coverage of the city’s artists, musicians, and communities, documenting the culture that defines Richmond beyond the headlines.

But we can’t do this without you. A small donation, even as little as $2, one-time or recurring, helps us continue to produce honest, local coverage free from outside interference. Every dollar makes a difference. Your support keeps us going and keeps RVA’s creative spirit alive. Thank you for standing with independent media. SUPPORT HERE.

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How two decades of community organizing grew into a vision for land ownership, education, and self-determination.

The first time I met Duron Chavis, he wasn’t talking about farmland. He was talking about culture.

It was the early 2000s, and Happily Natural Day was still in its infancy. Founded in 2003 at Richmond’s Black History Museum & Cultural Center of Virginia, the festival focused on natural hair, holistic health, African heritage, and community. Inspired by Black self-determination movements, it asked a simple question: What does it mean for a community to take ownership of its own health, culture, and future?

Few could have guessed that twenty years later Duron would be standing in an open field in eastern Henrico holding the deed to more than sixty acres of protected farmland.

Looking back, though, it makes perfect sense. The idea never changed, only the scale.

I’ve interviewed plenty of people with ideas but few put words into action and kept building.

Community gardens became orchards.
Orchards became urban farms.
Urban farms became training programs.

Now those training programs have somewhere permanent to grow.

Earlier this year, the Capital Region Land Conservancy transferred sixty-one acres of farmland along New Market Road to the Central Virginia Agrarian Community Land Trust, the nonprofit Chavis chairs. Protected by a conservation easement, the property will remain farmland while providing space to train new farmers, preserve open space, and eventually interpret the history of the United States Colored Troops who fought nearby during the Civil War.

When I asked Chavis what the moment meant, he didn’t hesitate. “It is a new chapter,” he said. “When we first started, we were doing community gardens on city land… to go from less than a quarter acre to now having about 150 acres that we own is amazing.”

Twenty years ago, Duron was asking the city for permission to plant gardens on vacant lots. Today he’s training new farmers on land that belongs to the community. And for years, Chavis and his organization have taught people how to grow food through the Urban Farm Fellowship.

The challenge wasn’t finding students. It was giving them somewhere to go afterward. “We’ve been training folks for a while now,” he said. “Once people finish with the training, them having the space to actually implement what they’ve learned is a big deal.”

That became obvious when I visited the property.

Beatrice Plaza didn’t come to the fellowship because she dreamed of becoming a commercial farmer. She came because she wanted to become, in her words, “a steward of the land.”

An educator by profession, Plaza had long been interested in food justice and the relationship between agriculture and community. The fellowship gave her the opportunity to study Virginia’s agricultural history alongside the practical work of rebuilding soil and growing crops.

Today she’s growing what she calls “storytelling crops.”

Peanuts.
Cotton.
Tobacco.

She spent time researching Virginia’s historic export crops at the Library of Virginia and hopes to work with historians to tell the stories behind them. “I would really like to create opportunities for school-aged kids to come out and learn,” she said. “To really connect that lesson we had on George Washington Carver to what peanuts look like, how they grow, how they enrich the soil through nitrogen production.”

Standing just a few miles from Shirley Plantation, one of the oldest plantations in North America, Plaza sees the surrounding landscape as a living classroom. “There’s history here,” she said. “I’m really hoping to connect schools and people and anyone interested, regardless of age, to knowing and seeing and touching these plants and hearing the stories behind it.”

Then she paused. “There’s a lot of healing and growth that can happen in education through nature.”

Another fellow, Odulja, isn’t growing much of anything yet, and that’s intentional. Before planting a single crop, she is rebuilding soil that had been depleted over time. “Right now I’m not growing anything,” she told me. “I’m focusing on building up the soil… I want to make sure everything is in alignment before I start putting stuff in.”

Later she will plant herbs and annuals while experimenting with cardboard and burlap as natural weed barriers.

Asked what they enjoyed most about having a plot of land, she didn’t talk about yields. “It’s freedom of expression,” she said. “If you look at it from like a drone view, you can see the different rows going inwards to make it into a heart. So I like to do a lot of art stuff, and it just gives me like a place to put all of my passions into one.”

Neither conversation revolved around profit. Both revolved around stewardship.

Parker Agelasto has watched Chavis’s work evolve almost as long as I have.

Long before becoming executive director of the Capital Region Land Conservancy, Agelasto knew Chavis from Richmond’s earliest community garden efforts. He watched those gardens become Sankofa Community Orchard, then urban farming, then farmer training.

What struck him wasn’t simply Duron’s persistence but that each step revealed the next problem to solve. “The big picture is that farmers in the United States, for the most part, don’t own their land,” Agelasto told me. “About a third of all farms are owner-operated. Most are tenants.”

He compared it to the housing insecurity many Richmond residents know all too well. Farmers invest years improving soil, installing irrigation, building hoop houses, and creating businesses, only to lose access to the land beneath them. “What we’re seeing right now is a huge real estate turnover,” he said. “More and more farmland is being converted, whether it’s for housing, solar fields, or data centers.”

For Agelasto, conserving farmland isn’t simply about preserving open space but making sure working farmers still have somewhere to work.

That’s why the relationship between the Capital Region Land Conservancy and Chavis made sense. The two had spent years talking about the same problem: how to preserve farmland while making it accessible to the people willing to farm it. When this property became available, Agelasto said, both organizations immediately recognized the opportunity.

Later, I asked Chavis about something a skeptical friend had said when I mentioned the project. “So… are you actually going to own the land,” I asked, “or is this basically sharecropping all over again?”

He laughed. “We own it,” he said. “Deed and title is in the Central Virginia Agrarian Community Land Trust.”

Watching Duron Chavis over the last twenty years has reminded me that meaningful change rarely happens all at once.

It starts with an idea then someone keeps showing up.

Day after day.
Year after year.
Decade after decade.

Eventually, if the work survives long enough, the idea becomes something larger than the person who started it. Standing in that field, watching new farmers prepare soil they’ll actually have the chance to keep working, it felt like I wasn’t looking at the end of Duron Chavis’s journey.

It felt like I was watching the foundation being laid for someone else’s.

Photos by R. Anthony Harris

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Editor’s Note: Reminder, the sculptures are located on private property and are not open for general visitation. Access is available only through scheduled guided tours, with Labor Day weekend currently expected to be the final tour on the calendar. Tour information is available HERE.

On an industrial property outside Williamsburg, forty-two American presidents have spent the last fifteen years waiting.

George Washington’s face is streaked black from rain. The back of Abraham Lincoln’s head has split open, exposing the steel skeleton beneath the concrete. Thomas Jefferson’s cheeks are fractured. Grass grows around their bases while puddles collect between them after every storm. They wait in the mud.

Each sculpture stands roughly 20 feet tall and weighs several tons. They appear to be carved from solid stone but beneath the surface a framework of steel rebar supports layers of metal mesh, plaster, styrofoam, and thick concrete that give each president both its enormous scale and surprising fragility.

Fifteen years of rain, freezing winters, and relentless Virginia summers have peeled away the concrete skin, revealing how they were built. Every fracture exposes another layer, making the sculptures feel less like monuments and more like men, worn down by time.

When these monumental sculptures debuted at Presidents Park in 2004, they were pristine. They were built to celebrate the office of the presidency and offer visitors a walk through American history.

But few people came.

Part of that was the Great Recession, part of it was poor management. By 2010, Presidents Park had closed and the sculptures were slated for destruction. Howard Hankins, who had helped build the original attraction years earlier, was hired to crush the massive concrete heads after the property changed hands but he couldn’t do it.

Hankins spent weeks relocating all forty-two sculptures to his nearby industrial property. He wasn’t trying to create a museum or tourist attraction. He simply couldn’t bring himself to destroy them and his hope was simple: maybe one day someone would want them.

So for years, the presidents stood quietly behind the gates of Hankins’ business, weathering Virginia’s seasons as the world largely forgot they were there.

Photographer John Plashal discovered them almost by accident.

A medical device salesman by profession, photography became his excuse to wander Virginia’s back roads searching for forgotten places. What began as a hobby grew into a photography book, speaking engagements across the Commonwealth, and eventually a proposal to Hankins.

“I said, ‘Listen, I think this is an interesting place. I think people would enjoy it. If you want to make your money back on what you spent moving them here, and then some, let’s collaborate.’”

What started as an experiment has grown into one of Virginia’s most unusual cultural experiences. Thousands of people have visited over the years, and nearly 800 toured the site this past weekend alone, all drawn to a place that was never intended to become a destination.

Ironically, it was only after the attraction failed that the sculptures found an audience.

“I ask people all the time, ‘What’s the allure?’” Plashal says. “It’s the decay. It’s the juxtaposition of these 42 men of significant power that deserve more, falling apart and stuck in a mud pit.”

Some visitors arrive because they remember Presidents Park and wish they had seen the sculptures when they were new. Others come because the future of the heads is once again uncertain, hoping to see them where they’ve stood for more than a decade before they move on to whatever comes next.

Then there are those who simply want to learn. During the tours, Plashal shares the history of the sculptures, presidential trivia, and even some of the odd stories behind them.

Photos by Mike Avey

The sculptures were created by renowned Texas artist David Adickes, whose larger-than-life public works can be found across the country. He originally envisioned installing the project in Washington, D.C., but eventually turned to Williamsburg, believing the Historic Triangle offered the next best setting for a walk through presidential history. The Williamsburg collection became the first of three complete presidential sets he created.

Each presidential bust cost roughly $30,000 to produce in the early 2000s, making the project a multi-million-dollar artistic undertaking. Before a single full-scale sculpture was cast, Adickes sculpted every president as a smaller clay model, studying paintings and historic photographs to create what he described as “the best likeness” of each man to hold the office.

“I just wanted to do the best likeness of each guy that was president.”

Politics, he later said, had little to do with the work.

A second collection was later installed in South Dakota, where that Presidents Park also eventually closed, while a third remains at Adickes’ Houston studio.

Adickes, who died earlier this year in his late 90s, lived long enough to learn that his sculptures had found an audience he never expected.

During a conversation with Plashal recorded in 2022, the photographer asked whether he realized just how internationally popular the weathered heads had become, attracting visitors from across the United States and around the world.

“I didn’t even know they were that popular,” Adickes replied. “Are they known abroad?”

When Plashal told him they had become an international destination, the artist paused.

“That’s news to me,” he said. “I’m glad to hear it.”

Now, the future of the heads may be changing once again. A proposal before James City County would preserve the sculptures as part of a mixed-use development, relocating them to an open-air museum elsewhere on the property. County leaders recently delayed a decision until October, leaving the sculptures, once again, in a familiar state of limbo.

Perhaps that’s fitting. David Adickes sculpted the presidents. Howard Hankins refused to destroy them. John Plashal shared their story. Time gave them meaning.

For now, they continue to wait.

Photos by Mike Avey

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I recently bought my first bicycle in more than a decade. Like most people, I started my search online, comparing models, reading reviews, and trying to figure out what kind of rider I actually wanted to be. Eventually I visited several local bike shops before settling on a new Fairdale.

A few weeks later, I received an email from Joel Alford announcing the opening of his new venture, Field Trip Bikes in Church Hill. Joel and I had never met. He had no idea I had recently become a customer at Richmond ReCycles, the shop he has owned since 2017. But his email got me thinking about how Richmond’s bike culture evolved over the last twenty years, from Slaughterama and the city’s DIY scene to the 2015 UCI Road World Championships and beyond.

In the early 2000s, there were BMX riders building dirt jumps, bike messengers weaving through downtown traffic, mountain bikers disappearing into the woods along the James, and road cyclists logging miles through the surrounding counties. Shops like Agee’s, Bunnyhop, and ReCycles served as gathering places, but cycling still existed largely as a subculture sustained by riders, mechanics, advocates, and true believers.

What I remember most is Slaughterama.

The annual gathering organized by the Cutthroats Bicycle Club brought riders from around the country to Richmond throughout much of the 2000s. Equal parts competition, festival, and organized chaos, it became one of the city’s defining underground traditions. If you spent time around Richmond’s DIY scenes, from Slaughterama to Best Friends Day, chances are you knew someone involved.

Richmond had a bike culture, and from where I stood it seemed connected to everything. The people starting bands, organizing shows, making art, building skate ramps, and documenting the city often moved through the same circles. The communities often overlapped.

Long before tourism officials began pitching Richmond as a cycling destination, people were already coming here because of bikes. The rest of the city just hadn’t fully realized it yet.

That began to change in September 2011 when Richmond was selected to host the 2015 UCI Road World Championships.

At the time, the announcement was met with a mixture of excitement, confusion, and skepticism. Plenty of Richmonders looked at the news and wondered why an international cycling championship was coming here in the first place. Others focused on the road closures and logistical headaches that would soon follow.

But a core group of cyclists, advocates, and business owners saw something different.

For the first time, bicycles were being discussed not simply as recreation or transportation, but as economic development. Organizers projected more than 500,000 visitors over the ten-day event and estimated more than $150 million in statewide economic impact. Suddenly cycling wasn’t just a niche interest. It was something the city could invest in, support, and build around.

The race itself lasted a week but the shift in perception lasted much longer.

Over the following decade Richmond expanded bike infrastructure, completed the Virginia Capital Trail, supported advocacy efforts, and gradually embraced cycling as part of the city’s identity. What had once felt like different pockets of subculture increasingly became part of everyday life.

One of the people paying attention was Joel Alford.

Alford joined ReCycles Bike Shop in 2008 and purchased the business in 2017. Over nearly two decades in Richmond’s bicycle industry, he has witnessed firsthand how the city’s relationship with cycling has changed.

“I think the bicycle as a legitimate form of transportation has gotten more accepted in Richmond,” Alford says. “There’s definitely a lot more positive momentum in terms of infrastructure and bike advocacy groups getting those bike lanes and getting that awareness out that people are riding bikes, using them to get to work, using them to get to school.”

For Alford, one of the biggest changes is how Richmonders think about bicycles themselves. “It’s not just seen as a toy anymore, or something somebody does because they can’t afford a car. There’s certainly a lot more people riding bikes for fun too, whether they’re commuting to work and enjoying that, going on weekend adventures on the Capital Trail, riding BMX bikes, or joining some of the group rides around town. There’s more people riding bikes with their kids, and more people from all walks of life using a bike as a primary choice.”

The pandemic accelerated many of those trends. “When COVID hit, the demand for bikes went crazy through the roof,” Alford says. “A lot of people wanted a bike as a way of getting out of their house.”

Like shops across the country, ReCycles quickly found itself struggling to keep inventory in stock. With people working from home, looking for ways to exercise, and searching for safe ways to spend time outdoors, bicycles suddenly became one of the hottest commodities around.

“If anybody in the bike industry could have predicted what was going to happen and stocked up accordingly, they’d be set for life,” Alford says with a laugh. “But nobody really did. We ran out of pretty much everything.”

As manufacturers rushed to increase production, shortages gave way to surpluses before eventually settling back into something closer to normal. But for Alford, the most memorable part of the pandemic wasn’t the sales boom. “What was cool about being at ReCycles is that we really felt like we played an important part in a lot of people’s lives,” he says. “Maybe we sold them a bike, maybe we helped repair a bike that had been sitting in a garage for years, but we were helping people get back out there.”

Alford worked through the entire pandemic without taking a day off. While he is quick to note that bike shops weren’t facing the same challenges as healthcare workers and other frontline professions, he remembers feeling that ReCycles was providing something people genuinely needed.

“It felt good to be helping people out in some way,” he says.

For many Richmonders, bicycles became more than transportation or recreation during those years. They became a way to maintain a sense of freedom, routine, and connection at a time when much of everyday life had come to a standstill.

Now he is bringing that experience to Church Hill.

Field Trip Bikes, located in Church Hill, offers bicycle sales, repairs, accessories, apparel, and gear. More importantly, Alford hopes it becomes a neighborhood gathering place. The shop plans to host community rides and create an environment that welcomes both experienced cyclists and people who may not have ridden a bike since childhood.

“Sometimes a bike shop can have the same feeling as a tattoo shop or a record store,” Alford says. “You’re a little nervous to go in if you’re not an expert. My whole thing is that everybody who walks in, we’re stoked that you’re here. We want to meet people where they’re at and ask them questions rather than dump a bunch of information on them or tell them what they should be doing.”

For Alford, the goal is not to create a shop for cycling insiders. It’s to help people figure out what they enjoy about riding in the first place.

“It’s more about, what do you like?” he says. “What do you want to get out of it?”

The story of Richmond’s cycling culture has been written by countless Richmonders who chose two wheels over four. Field Trip Bikes, along with the other great shops that serve Richmond riders, exists because that culture endured.

A generation ago, Richmond’s cycling community might have been fighting to be noticed. Today, it is strong enough to support yet another neighborhood bike shop For a city that once viewed cycling as something on the margins, that feels like progress.

Main photo by R. Anthony Harris

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At a time when media ownership is increasingly concentrated among corporations and the wealthy, RVA Magazine has remained one of Richmond’s few independent voices. Since 2005, the magazine has provided grassroots coverage of the city’s artists, musicians, and communities, documenting the culture that defines Richmond beyond the headlines.

But we can’t do this without you. A small contribution, even as little as $2, one-time or recurring, helps us continue to produce honest, local coverage free from outside interference. Every dollar makes a difference. Your support keeps us going and keeps RVA’s creative spirit alive. Thank you for standing with independent media. SUPPORT HERE.

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Imagine pulling into a suburban shopping center to buy a toaster and finding a department store that appeared to be falling apart with corners breaking away, walls peeling open like a giant cardboard box, or facades seemingly collapsing under their own weight.

For thousands of shoppers in the 1970s and 1980s, it was simply a trip to Best Products. It was where you went to buy a microwave, a television, a piece of jewelry, or sure, a toaster.

What they didn’t realize was that they were walking through one of the most ambitious experiments in contemporary art and architecture ever undertaken by an American retailer. The project began in Richmond, where Sydney and Frances Lewis transformed their growing catalog showroom business into an unlikely platform for some of the most influential architects and designers of the twentieth century.

The result was what may have been the most important contemporary art project in Richmond history, built not in a museum, but in a parking lot.

Now, as Imagining Best Products enters its final weekend at the Branch Museum of Design, the exhibition offers a chance to revisit one of Richmond’s most unique cultural stories and the people who made it possible.

The exhibition itself grew out of conversations between Don O’Keefe and the late Richmond architecture critic Ed Slipek, who worked for Best Products during the company’s heyday and spent decades documenting Richmond’s built environment.

“Best is a Richmond story, but it connects to much bigger currents in the history of art and design,” said O’Keefe, the exhibition’s curator and co-founder of Architecture Richmond. “These buildings are studied in schools and museums around the world, and it all started here with Sydney and Frances Lewis. This exhibition brings that story home and makes the whole narrative visible in a new way.”

For O’Keefe, the significance of the buildings extends far beyond Richmond. As an architect himself, he said the Best stores were already part of the landscape of architectural education by the time he encountered them. “I feel like I’ve known about them for so long that I’m not sure I remember when I first heard about them,” he said. “They emerge very early in architectural education.”

Even after many of the buildings were demolished, their influence endured. O’Keefe points to architecture schools, design history books, exhibitions, podcasts, and online publications as evidence of their unusually long afterlife. “They’re kind of in the ether in a way that a lot of other buildings from that era are not,” he said.

At a time when most department stores were little more than anonymous brick boxes, Sydney and Frances Lewis saw an opportunity to bring contemporary art and design into everyday life. They commissioned some of the most influential architects and designers of the twentieth century, including James Wines and SITE, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Malcolm Holzman, and graphic designer Tom Geismar, and gave them permission to rethink what a retail building could be.

In a suburban landscape increasingly defined by uniformity, Best stores stood out as strange, playful, and disorienting landmarks. “They made a huge splash as soon as they were completed,” O’Keefe said. “When the first one was completed in Southside Richmond on Midlothian Turnpike, no one had ever really seen a store that looked like that before. The idea of inviting an experimental artist slash architect to redesign an innocuous brick box retail building was not something that had really occurred to anyone else.”

O’Keefe credits Sydney and Frances Lewis for taking that risk. “Once the first one was completed, it was kind of like the cat was out of the bag,” he said. “They decided to do more in a series, and it really picked up a lot of media attention, not only in design publications, but in general interest magazines and newspapers. They became a kind of media sensation all throughout the 1970s.”

The designs were controversial, with some architects dismissing them as gimmicks or sculptures masquerading as buildings. Others saw them as groundbreaking examples of postmodern architecture challenging the rigid conventions of modernism.

“That’s partly what got them so much attention,” O’Keefe said. “It wasn’t just controversy from the general public. Some of the old guard architectural establishment thought, ‘This isn’t really architecture. This isn’t really what we do.’ There was a lot of pushback from certain corners of the design world. I think that kind of paradoxically drove the buildings to become more and more well known, and more and more well remembered in historical terms as well.”

And the public simply couldn’t stop talking about them. Soon the buildings were appearing in magazines, newspapers, exhibitions, and architecture schools around the world. In 1979, the Museum of Modern Art presented Buildings for Best Products, cementing the project’s place in design history.

Back then, retail architecture had largely become an exercise in efficiency. National chains prioritized consistency, speed, and cost control. The idea that a major retailer would commission experimental architects to create buildings that intentionally challenged customers’ expectations seemed almost impossible to imagine.

Yet that willingness to take risks is precisely what made the Lewis family’s influence so important. The strange department stores were only one expression of a much larger idea that contemporary art should be accessible to ordinary people willing to walk through the front door.

“They were willing to put contemporary art into everyday life,” O’Keefe said. “They were asking why a shopping center couldn’t also be a place for experimentation.”

The timing wasn’t accidental. The Best buildings emerged during a period when Richmond was beginning to develop many of the cultural institutions that would eventually define the city.

While the Lewises were commissioning experimental architecture for suburban department stores, they were also building a contemporary art collection that would help transform the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Across town, VCU’s art program was growing into what would eventually become one of the most respected art schools in the country.

None of these developments happened in isolation. Together they created an ecosystem in the city where contemporary art wasn’t treated as a niche interest but as something worthy of investment, discussion, and public engagement. The Best buildings embodied that philosophy by placing contemporary design directly in the path of everyday people.

Today, Richmond regularly attracts major exhibitions and has become a destination for arts and artists. The foundations for much of that growth were laid by people willing to champion contemporary art before there was a broad audience for it.

One of the goals of Imagining Best Products is to bring that history back into focus. The exhibition combines architectural models, original drawings, photographs, films, graphics, and archival materials to tell the story of a company that believed commerce and creativity could coexist. It also highlights the people behind the project, from internationally recognized architects to local contractors and craftsmen who transformed seemingly impossible concepts into reality.

O’Keefe said one of the most surprising aspects of the exhibition has been seeing who has come through the doors. “We’ve had architects come out of the woodwork and people come down from other cities and states but more than that, a lot of the people attending have some connection to Best Products. It could just be a memory of shopping there, or a friend or relative who worked there. There are a lot of people in Greater Richmond that were touched in some direct way by Best Products. Some of them even worked on the buildings. Everyone was kind of pleased to be part of the Best Products story somehow.”

For visitors who remember shopping at Best, the exhibition offers a wave of nostalgia. For younger audiences, it presents a reminder that Richmond once sat at the center of an international conversation about art, architecture, and design.

And more importantly, it asks visitors to reconsider how that happened in the first place.

Long before Richmond became the arts destination it is today, Sydney and Frances Lewis were already imagining it.

Imagining Best Products remains on view at the Branch Museum of Design through June 21. A closing-day program will feature Jay Barrows, longtime advisor and curator to the Lewis family, discussing their relationships with artists and their lasting impact on American art collecting.

BEST PRODUCTS: A BRIEF TIMELINE

1950s The Swiss Style of graphic design emerges, helping shape the modern visual language that would later influence corporate identities across America.

1964 Designer Tom Geismar helps create Mobil Oil’s iconic corporate identity, establishing the approach to branding that would later influence Best Products.

1970 James Wines and the interdisciplinary design group SITE are founded in New York, combining art, architecture, and public space.

1972 SITE’s first Peeling Building for Best Products opens on Midlothian Turnpike in Richmond, transforming a department store into a work of architecture.

1980 Best Products opens its award-winning headquarters in Henrico County, designed by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates.

1985 The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts opens its West Wing, housing the collections of Sydney and Frances Lewis. The architects are Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, the same firm behind Best’s headquarters.

1987 Andrew Lewis resigns from Best Products, marking the first time the company is no longer under Lewis family leadership.

1998 Best Products closes after years of financial struggles. Most of its landmark showroom buildings are eventually demolished.

1999-2026 Sidney Lewis dies in 1999. Frances Lewis continues her philanthropic work until her death in 2026 at age 103.

Legacy The Lewis collection helps establish the VMFA as a leading museum for modern and contemporary art, while the Best buildings remain some of the most influential examples of postmodern commercial architecture ever constructed.

Support RVA Magazine. Support Independent Media in Richmond.

At a time when media ownership is increasingly concentrated among corporations and the wealthy, RVA Magazine has remained one of Richmond’s few independent voices. Since 2005, the magazine has provided grassroots coverage of the city’s artists, musicians, and communities, documenting the culture that defines Richmond beyond the headlines.

But we can’t do this without you. A small donation, even as little as $2, one-time or recurring, helps us continue to produce honest, local coverage free from outside interference. Every dollar makes a difference. Your support keeps us going and keeps RVA’s creative spirit alive. Thank you for standing with independent media. DONATE HERE.

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A recent report by Radio IQ suggests Virginia lawmakers are once again inching toward a legal recreational marijuana market, this time through the state budget process.

Following Governor Abigail Spanberger’s veto, Senate Democrats have threatened to fold retail cannabis legislation into the state budget itself, raising the stakes ahead of next month’s budget negotiations.

At first glance, that sounds like another story about whether Virginia should legalize weed, but most of the major players appear to agree that recreational marijuana sales are eventually coming. The next phase of this now years long debate has shifted to the details of who gets to sell it. More importantly, what is each faction willing to compromise to secure a piece of the market, if they can secure one at all?

At this stage, nobody is likely to get everything they want. Any budget deal will require enough powerful interests to walk away believing they secured a meaningful victory. What each stakeholder stands to gain, what they may have to sacrifice, and what compromises will ultimately be necessary to get a deal across the finish line will determine who gets a seat at the table when Virginia’s cannabis market finally arrives.

Team Abigail: Regulation and Political Cover
Governor Abigail Spanberger inherited a cannabis debate she did not create, but she now owns the political consequences. While the governor has stated she supports a regulated legal cannabis market, her proposed amendments revealed a significant philosophical divide between her office and many legalization advocates.

Spanberger’s amended bill would have reduced the number of retail licenses, delayed implementation, increased taxes, and added several new criminal penalties. Among the most controversial changes were replacing the existing $25 civil penalty for public consumption with a Class 4 misdemeanor and ccreating a Class 2 felony for transporting 50 pounds or more of cannabis into Virginia for sale or distribution.

Supporters argued the changes would create a more orderly, regulated, and enforceable marketplace. Critics viewed them as a step backward, arguing that some provisions reintroduced criminal penalties that ran counter to the goals of legalization.

What Team Abigail Wants:
– A tightly regulated market.
– Strong testing and tracking requirements.
– Youth protections.
– Impaired driving enforcement.
– Greater law enforcement authority.
– Clear regulatory oversight.

What They May Give Up:
– Some proposed criminal penalties.
– Restrictions on market access.
– A slower rollout schedule.
– Certain law-enforcement priorities opposed by legalization advocates.

The likely compromise is not whether marijuana becomes legal. It is how much enforcement language survives the final negotiations. The battle between Team Abigail and legalization advocates may ultimately come down to a single question: where does regulation end and recriminalization begin?

Team Louise: Big Cannabis Wants Its Payday
If Team Abigail is focused on regulation, Team Louise is focused on building a functioning cannabis industry.

Virginia Senator Louise Lucas has been one of the most influential voices behind marijuana legalization in Virginia. She has also publicly acknowledged an ownership interest in a cannabis retail business, giving her a direct financial stake in how the state’s cannabis market ultimately develops.

For Lucas and many of the state’s existing cannabis operators, legalization without retail sales has created an awkward limbo. Virginia legalized possession years ago, yet the legal marketplace remains incomplete. Meanwhile, hemp retailers, smoke shops, and other businesses have stepped into the vacuum.

The medical cannabis industry has spent years investing in licenses, facilities, compliance systems, security requirements, testing standards, and regulatory oversight. Existing operators argue they followed the rules, made substantial investments, and should be rewarded for taking the early risks associated with a heavily regulated industry.

What Team Louise Wants:
– A functioning adult-use cannabis market.
– Early access for existing operators.
– License conversion pathways.
– Regulatory certainty.
– Protection from a flood of new competition.
– A marketplace that favors businesses already operating within Virginia’s cannabis system.

What They May Give Up:
– Complete control of the marketplace.
– Exclusive access to adult-use sales.
– Some licensing opportunities reserved for new entrants.
– Certain regulatory concessions demanded by Team Abigail.

The likely compromise is that existing cannabis operators receive significant advantages when recreational sales begin. The question is how significant those advantages become. Critics argue this risks creating an industry dominated by a handful of well-positioned businesses while limiting opportunities for independent entrepreneurs and future competitors. Supporters counter that the companies already operating in Virginia followed the state’s rules, invested millions of dollars, and deserve a head start.

If there is one faction most likely to emerge from a legalization deal with a stronger market position than it has today, it is the existing medical cannabis industry. The challenge for lawmakers will be deciding how much of that advantage is enough.

The Virginia Legislature: Delivering a Win
Many legislators simply want to end the strange situation Virginia created several years ago. Adults can legally possess marijuana but have very limited legal options for purchasing it.

What The Legislature Wants:
– A market they can point to as functional.
– Tax revenue.
– Political closure on a years-long debate.
– A deal that survives the governor’s review.

What They May Give Up:
– Some lawmakers will disappoint hemp advocates.
– Some lawmakers will disappoint cannabis advocates.
– Some lawmakers will disappoint local governments.

Their goal is not perfection, it is passing something.

Small Business Hemp: Waiting for a Seat at the Table
No group appears more nervous right now than Virginia’s hemp industry. For years hemp-derived THC products have filled the gap created by the absence of a legal recreational marijuana market. Thousands of entrepreneurs invested in stores, brands, suppliers, distribution networks, and customer bases while operating under Virginia’s hemp laws.

Publicly, many hemp operators argue they simply want to preserve their ability to continue selling hemp-derived products. Privately, however, many entered the industry with the expectation that Virginia would eventually create a legal adult-use cannabis market, and in many ways, hemp became the waiting room for legalization. The problem is that the businesses that spent years preparing for that future may not automatically receive a place in it.

Current proposals envision a limited number of cannabis licenses. With more than a thousand hemp operators potentially competing for only a few hundred available licenses, many businesses fear they could spend years building cannabis-adjacent companies only to watch existing operators receive preferential access when the real market finally arrives.

What Small Business Hemp Wants:
– Continued ability to sell hemp-derived THC products.
– A clear pathway from hemp to cannabis licensing.
– Recognition of the investments already made by hemp businesses.
– Access to adult-use licenses.
– Protection from being shut out of the market entirely.

What They May Give Up:
– Hemp-derived THC beverages sold through traditional retail outlets.
– Certain intoxicating hemp products.
– Sales through convenience stores, smoke shops, and other non-cannabis retailers.
– Parts of the current hemp marketplace.

The hemp industry’s biggest fear is not necessarily regulation. It is exclusion. Many operators accepted the uncertainty of the hemp market because they believed it was positioning them for eventual cannabis legalization. If the final legislation favors existing medical operators while forcing hemp businesses into a crowded licensing lottery, some entrepreneurs may find themselves on the outside looking in at the very market they spent years preparing to enter.

Big Alcohol: Control the Distribution
The alcohol industry may not be the loudest voice in Virginia’s cannabis debate, but it could become one of the most influential. THC-infused beverages are among the fastest-growing segments of the cannabis industry. For consumers, they offer an alternative to beer, wine, and spirits. For the alcohol industry, they represent competition.

What makes THC beverages particularly interesting is that they blur the line between two heavily regulated industries. Are they cannabis products? Beverage products? Both?

The answer determines who gets to manufacture them, distribute them, stock them, and profit from them. The modern alcohol industry operates through a highly structured system dominated by a relatively small number of large producers, distributors, and retail networks. That system has been built over decades and controls the movement of billions of dollars worth of products every year. THC beverages threaten to create a parallel market outside that structure.

What Big Alcohol Wants:
– Distribution rights for THC beverages.
– Regulatory rules similar to alcohol.
– A level playing field with cannabis companies.
– Market access to a growing consumer category.
– Protection from unregulated competitors.

What They May Give Up:
– Exclusive control over intoxicating beverages.
– The assumption that alcohol is the default recreational product.
– Market share among younger consumers increasingly interested in cannabis alternatives.

The real fight may not be whether THC beverages are legal. It may be whether they are treated like cannabis products or alcohol products. If they are regulated through cannabis channels, licensed dispensaries and cannabis operators stand to benefit. If they are allowed to move through existing alcohol distribution networks, some of the largest players in the beverage industry could quickly establish a dominant position.

There is also a third possibility and that is acquisition. Large beverage companies have a long history of buying emerging competitors rather than fighting them. If THC beverages continue to grow, some of today’s small cannabis beverage brands could become tomorrow’s acquisition targets.

For Big Alcohol, the goal is not necessarily stopping THC drinks. The goal is making sure they do not grow into a major industry without big alcohol’s participation and controls.

Vape Shops: The Accidental Villain
If there is one group that may have the least leverage in the current negotiations, it is Virginia’s vape shops. Over the last several years many vape retailers expanded aggressively into hemp-derived THC products, becoming one of the primary outlets for intoxicating cannabinoids throughout the state. For some stores, these products evolved from a side business into a major source of revenue.

But in the process, vape shops have become the industry’s easiest political target.

Many of the concerns now being cited by lawmakers and regulators stem from products commonly found in smoke shops and vape stores: inconsistent testing standards, confusing labeling, synthetic cannabinoids, youth access concerns, and intoxicating products being sold outside Virginia’s medical cannabis system. Not every retailer engaged in those practices and most operators followed the law as it existed. But a handful of bad actors helped create a public perception problem for the entire industry. In many ways, vape shops became the face of a marketplace lawmakers increasingly felt they were not controlling.

What Vape Shops Want:
– Continued access to hemp-derived THC products.
– Minimal new licensing requirements.
– The ability to continue selling intoxicating cannabinoids.
– Protection from being excluded from the adult-use market.

What They May Give Up:
– Intoxicating hemp beverages.
– Significant portions of current revenue.
– Access to the cannabis market altogether.

The uncomfortable reality for many vape retailers is that they may have spent years building a business model around a regulatory loophole that lawmakers now appear determined to close.

Unlike hemp operators who view themselves as future cannabis businesses, vape shops may find themselves without a clear path into the adult-use market. If legislators decide intoxicating cannabis products should only be sold through licensed cannabis channels, vape shops could emerge as one of the largest losers in the final compromise.

Ironically, the industry’s rapid growth may have contributed to its own problems. The more visible vape shops became as sellers of intoxicating cannabis products, the easier they became for regulators to identify as a target for reform.

Big Tobacco: Waiting for the Shakeout
Unlike many of the other players in Virginia’s cannabis debate, Big Tobacco does not need to win the first round. It may not even need a seat at the table. Large tobacco companies possess something that many future cannabis operators do not and that is capital. They can afford to wait while lawmakers create a market, entrepreneurs fight for licenses, businesses compete for customers, and weaker operators fail.

Because in many states that have legalized cannabis, the most valuable asset eventually becomes the license itself. That is particularly true in systems that prioritize social equity applicants, formerly incarcerated individuals, or other groups that may successfully obtain licenses but lack the capital necessary to launch, operate, and scale a cannabis business. Winning a license and building a successful company are often two very different things.

As a result, many early license holders eventually seek outside investors, operating partners, or acquisition opportunities. That is where large corporations traditionally enter the picture.

What Big Tobacco Wants:
– A stable regulatory framework.
– Predictable licensing rules.
– Opportunities for investment and acquisition.
– Market consolidation.
– Time.

What They May Give Up:
– First-mover advantages.
– Early market share.
– Participation in the initial licensing process.

Unlike hemp operators, medical cannabis companies, and retailers, Big Tobacco does not need to worry about getting one of the first licenses. Its strategy may be much simpler: let the market form, let entrepreneurs spend the money, let operators compete, let failures occur, then buy the winners.

When Virginia eventually creates a recreational market, the first battle will be over who receives licenses. The second battle will be over who survives. The third battle may be over who gets acquired. History suggests large corporations are often more interested in the third battle than the first two. The irony is that some of today’s most passionate arguments about who deserves a license may ultimately matter less than who possesses enough capital to remain standing five years later.

So What Happens Next?
The answers will determine far more than whether Virginians can legally purchase marijuana. They will determine who controls the industry’s licenses, distribution networks, retail shelves, and future profits.

For the people negotiating behind closed doors, those stakes are enormous.

For the average Virginian, the calculation may be much simpler. The funny part is that after years of legislation, lobbying, and political maneuvering, legalization may have very little impact on where a lot of people actually buy their weed.

They already have their guy’s number.

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Tucked into the alley behind 2512 West Main Street, a fever dream of the cosmos has taken shape across a brick wall. The mural is the collaborative work of four Latino artists working in and around Richmond: Visibly Hidden, Monolith, Mars, and Zel.

A distant Earth floats above a mountain range and stars scatter across a deep purple sky. A Mayan shaman rises from the center of the wall, a beam blast from his third eye glowing. Graffiti lettering erupts across the brick in oranges, yellows, and pinks. At the center of it all is Mexican researcher Jacobo Grinberg, whose mysterious disappearance in 1994 has made him a figure of fascination among those interested in consciousness studies, indigenous knowledge, and the unexplained.

The mural feels part science fiction, part spiritual journey, and part graffiti jam. Viewed as a whole, it becomes a meditation on identity, belonging, and the many ways people search for meaning. Grinberg serves as a guide through the piece, an entry point into a vision of the cosmos filtered through Latino perspectives, histories, and traditions. Taken together you have a meeting place.

“This is almost like a hey, we’re here,” said Visibly Hidden, who organized the project. “This is what we bring to the table.”

The heart of Richmond is divided in ways people know instinctively.

The lines are cultural, economic, and social. They run between neighborhoods, communities, and even art scenes that can exist only a few miles apart while rarely crossing paths.

Greater Richmond has a vibrant Latino community. Drive down Midlothian Turnpike and you’ll find some of the region’s most dynamic cultural spaces. Restaurants, bakeries, grocery stores, murals, music, and small businesses have transformed parts of the corridor into one of the most visible expressions of Latino culture in Central Virginia. For many Richmonders, that’s where they encounter Latino culture most directly and where most of them live their lives.

But cities have a habit of sorting themselves into districts. People become familiar with places without necessarily becoming familiar with the people who live there. A bit like being a tourist in your own city.

Culturally, food has often been the ambassador. Most Richmonders can name a favorite taco spot before they can name a Latino artist. There is nothing wrong with that, but it does reveal something about how cultural exchange has often taken place. What has been less visible is Latino representation within Richmond’s public art conversation, particularly in the neighborhoods most associated with the city’s creative identity.

In talking with Visibly Hidden, Monolith, and Mars, two words kept coming up: local and Latino.

The artists weren’t brought in from New York, Miami, or Los Angeles. They already live here, buy supplies here (shoutout: Supply), and paint here. Over the years they had crossed paths on walls throughout the city, at paint jams, and collaborative projects like Richmond Art Park.

This wasn’t about importing anything but recognizing what already existed.

The conversation started late last year. Visibly Hidden had access to a large blank wall behind 2512 West Main Street and an idea. After participating on collaborative walls in South Florida, where Latino artists were a natural part of the local scene, he began wondering what a similar project might look like in Richmond.

So he started making calls and a group chat formed. The artists met, prepped the wall, discussed themes, and slowly began building what would become the next collaborative Latino art project in the city.

Off the jump, the appeal was immediate for Monolith. “It was just like a convergence of people kind of having the same mentality of like let’s connect,” he said. “We already all make art independently and have different things that we like to focus on with our art, but it’d be cool being an artist, mural artist, graffiti artist in Richmond to have some representation as Latinos.”

“Richmond is so cool because it has so many murals, and that’s what kind of brought us together on different projects. But yeah, let’s do something as Latinos. Whatever it ends up being, as Latino artists, it’s a representation.”

“It’s kind of a small group of Latino muralists that are working in town. Representing them. Just seeing who’s doing it and connecting on that tip, trying to come together and create some representation through murals.”

Mars saw the project through a similar lens. “I feel like Richmond has a lot of Latinos here, but I just feel like we’re not stepping out of our shell,” he said. “I feel like there’s a lot of hidden talent within the Latino community. Recently, I’ve been seeing a lot more things happening within our community. There’s projects like this, there’s pop-up shows, there’s even run clubs now. I think it’s all happening as a collective.”

The imagery that emerged from those conversations reflects the different perspectives each artist brought to the wall.

Visibly Hidden’s section traces the influences that shaped him, from Brooklyn to Richmond, blending his Dominican heritage with the visual language of street art and graffiti.

Monolith drew inspiration from indigenous knowledge systems, Latin American mysticism, and Mexican intellectual traditions.

His contribution centers around Mexican researcher Jacobo Grinberg, a neurophysiologist whose work explored consciousness, indigenous healing traditions, and shamanic practices before his mysterious disappearance in 1994.

Through a podcast from Tijuana called Psicoactivo Podcast, Monolith became fascinated with Grinberg’s attempts to bridge scientific inquiry with indigenous knowledge systems.

“A lot of his work was rooted in studying the history and culture of shamanism in Mexico,” Monolith said. “He became less of a skeptic and more of a believer just from actually spending time and doing research and witnessing and writing. There’s that connection between indigenous cultures from North and South America. The understanding that we are connected to everything, to nature and to the cosmos.”

“I thought it’d be interesting to bring attention to this person,” he said. “Different ways of connecting us to indigenous understanding of things that we might not have been as critical of before our countries were colonized.”

“There’s some wordplay there, alien, illegal alien,” Visibly Hidden said. “A lot of us have similar stories that feel kind of distant. Where do we belong here? Where do we fit here?”

Even his chosen moniker, Visibly Hidden, speaks to that tension. The community has always been here, helping shape the city in ways both visible and invisible. Yet despite the cultural specificity of the project, the artists repeatedly returned to the same idea: connection.

“I’m trying to create a bridge,” Visibly Hidden said. “Like in New York we have Dominican parades and Puerto Rican Day parades. Those are days where we celebrate our culture, but it’s not like we’re trying to separate ourselves.”

Mars put it simply. “I hope it inspires others,” he said. “I wanted to inspire other people. When people see this wall, I hope it inspires others to make moves, to not be afraid to do what it is that they want to do, and not be afraid to represent their culture.”

“Not only Latinos. Everybody.”

Main photo by Take One Aerial

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There are certain people who become part of a neighborhood so slowly that nobody notices it happening until one day they realize the place would feel strange without them.

If you’ve spent enough time around The Fan late at night, then you probably know Sunny Mart. It sits right around the corner on Cary Street past Carytown around the corner from Bamboo glowing under fluorescent lights like a tiny embassy for cigarettes, beer, chips, and lottery tickets. People spill out of the bars and wander over there every night looking for snacks, nicotine, or whatever item they suddenly become convinced will improve their evening at one in the morning.

And somewhere in that orbit is usually Junior, the quiet sentinel who watches over the corner.

Whenever I walk by, we wave, and if I’m close enough, we usually exchange a few words. We’ve had a running conversation that’s somehow stretched across more than a decade. We talk about sneakers, music, shows, and whatever else happens to be floating through the air that day. He’ll tell me he likes my checkered Vans in the spring or my Chelsea boots in the winter. I always ask how he’s doing and check in on his ever-growing shoe collection.

The details change, but the conversation never really ends. It just picks up where we left off the last time we crossed paths.

Everything else has changed over the years. We get a little older and a few more gray hairs start showing up. Friends move away. New faces arrive. Businesses open, close, and get replaced by something entirely different. Yet Sunny Mart somehow remains Sunny Mart. Talking with Junior feels a bit like watching a real-life time-lapse. The neighborhood keeps moving, the years keep stacking up, and somehow that little corner keeps holding its place, reminding you that not everything in Richmond has to change at once.

That’s how I think about Junior. Not as an employee at Sunny Mart, but as part of the corner itself. If you’ve lived in Richmond long enough, you know people like this. The bartender who’s somehow worked the same shift for fifteen years. The guy at the deli who knows your order before you say it.

He stocks shelves. Talks to regulars and rides his bike to work. Plays old school R&B through a speaker that sort of follows him around like his personal soundtrack. He stands outside the store watching the neighborhood move past him like he’s been assigned the night shift for Richmond itself.

Junior has worked for Sunny, the Korean owner of the market, for at least a decade now. Maybe longer. Time gets slippery and the years stack on top of each other until everybody loses count and starts measuring life by which bars used to be where, who moved away, and which restaurants survived another rent increase.

When I asked Junior how he ended up working there, he shrugged it off like it wasn’t worth building a mythology around.

“I just came to him one day,” he told me.

That was the entire origin story. Just a man showing up one day and slowly becoming part of the corner.

Over the years, Junior has built a running social map of the neighborhood in his head. He knows the regulars, remembers the faces, and hands out nicknames along the way. One regular recently told me, with no small amount of pride, that Junior knows him simply as “The President,” which fits perfectly if you’ve ever run into this guy on the corner.

Talking with Junior is a little like listening to someone shuffle a deck of cards while telling a story. The conversation moves up, down, and sideways. One minute he’s talking about Virginia being home, then Massachusetts, Florida, New York, and Qatar enter the discussion before disappearing again just as quickly. There’s no neat narrative arc to follow. Human beings are messy creatures.

But while Junior may drift through subjects, he pays close attention to people.

And people pay attention to him too, even if they don’t fully realize it.

The actual soul of a city usually lives in smaller places like corner stores or neighborhood bars, in old conversations repeated a hundred times. In the guy outside the market playing Al Green through a bike speaker while greeting half the block by nicknames nobody else understands.

That kind of thing doesn’t show up in tourism campaigns. If you know, you know, as they say.

Sunny Mart has survived because it became more than a convenience store a long time ago. It gives me the same feeling as Lombardy Market down the street. These places become part of the rhythm of a neighborhood, a checkpoint between home and the bar, or between work and home. They sit somewhere between loneliness and conversation. People stop in for five minutes and accidentally stay for twenty, standing outside talking about everything, or absolutely nothing at all.

And through all of it, there’s Junior, standing there with the music playing, keeping watch over the corner.

One of these days I’ll remember to ask if he has a nickname for me.

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There’s now a $1.8 billion federal fund for people who believe they were harmed by the “weaponization” of government over the last few years. According to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, there are “no limitations on the claims,” and the program isn’t just for Republicans or January 6 defendants.

Anybody can apply, and I’m starting to think maybe we should all file something. Whether you voted for Trump, voted against him, stopped watching the news entirely every American has been dragged through the psychological mud pit that the January 6 United States Capitol attack and 2020 election aftermath turned this country into.

No, we are obviously not the same as the people who stormed the Capitol but all of us have had to live inside the fallout ever since.

The pointless lawsuits, the press conferences in parking lots, the endless fundraising emails, the Facebook investigations conducted by people hiding behind anonymous profile pictures, the families split apart by conspiracy theories, and the friendships wrecked over politics.

And now, after all of that, the federal government may be opening up a taxpayer-funded compensation program tied to the whole mess.

There’s something almost perfectly American about it. We spent years arguing over whether the country was being torn apart by lies surrounding the election, and somehow the conclusion appears to be: fine, let’s all pay for it now.

That’s really the part that feels corrupt.

The country absorbed years of distrust and chaos over claims that never held up in court. Judges rejected them, audits rejected them, and election officials rejected them, but the story never really ended because somewhere along the way the story itself became more useful than the truth.

It fueled campaigns, built media empires and podcasts, launched political careers for people who probably have no business leading anybody, and created an entire economy of outrage where half the internet now seems financially dependent either on spreading these lies or screaming about them nonstop in response.

And now, somehow, it may evolve into an actual taxpayer-funded compensation structure with, according to Blanche himself, “no limitations on the claims,” which is probably a sentence that should concern people a lot more than it seems to.

Because once political grievance becomes something the government compensates financially, where exactly does it stop? Almost everybody in America thinks they’ve been screwed by politics over the last decade.

I’d like compensation for having to hear the phrase “civil war” recycled every six weeks by right wing propagandists who seemed determined to keep the country permanently terrified and angry. I’d like reimbursement for every march and protest people felt forced to attend because the Trump administration was doing something outrageous, cruel, or deliberately inflammatory yet again.

And I’d definitely like a small monthly stipend for surviving the stretch of American history where every Alex Jones wannabe with an internet connection suddenly became convinced they were uncovering a global conspiracy bigger than Watergate. Remember Pizzagate? Somehow that was only a few years ago.

At some point this cycle of lies, outrage, paranoia, and political theater has to end. But if the federal government is now handing out compensation for the emotional and institutional damage caused by the last six years, then maybe the rest of us should at least get something for living through it too.

Because January 6 didn’t just happen at the Capitol. It settled into the national psyche and worked its way into everyday American life, turning neighbors against each other, making people suspicious of elections, the media, public institutions, and eventually even one another.

The damage spread far beyond the people who broke windows and fought police officers that day because the story never really ended. It kept being fed to us, over and over, because outrage became politically useful and keeping people angry has become the business model.

Which is why this new compensation fund feels so stupid. It treats the aftermath of January 6 like a financial dispute to be settled instead of a national trauma the country still hasn’t fully processed because MAGA refuses to let it go. They need the anger and the grievance. They need the audience constantly afraid, exhausted, suspicious of one another, and emotionally trapped in the same argument year after year.

And now taxpayers may end up footing the bill for the emotional and political consequences of one of the most destructive lies in modern American history.

So yeah, in a dark and twisted way, maybe we really are all J6ers now. Not because we stormed the Capitol, but because every one of us got stuck living in the aftermath.

And if we’re all expected to keep carrying this thing around, maybe pay me too. Apparently that’s how America works now, which is a pretty depressing realization.

Oh, and buried underneath all this patriotic talk about “weaponization” and emotional trauma is the small detail that the agreement reportedly blocks future I.R.S. audits and claims involving Trump, parts of his family, and the Trump Organization after he leaves office.

Funny how these things always seem to circle back to protecting the people already holding the money.

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Around 8 pm on Tuesday, May 11th, the Richmond City Council voted unanimously to approve the 2026-2027 budget, which included at least $1.2 million to be invested into maintaining RPD contracts. One such contract is for the ninety-nine Flock cameras installed throughout the city. During the bulk of the meeting up to that point, the council entertained (and heard, and saw, they assured) citizen comments regarding the budget.

During public comment, speaker after speaker criticized the surveillance system. No one spoke in support of it.

Council President Cynthia Newbille demanded decorum when some members of the Richmond chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America in attendance shouted “shame!” as they exited the council chamber.

Flock Group Inc. operating as Flock Safety, provides automatic license plate reader (ALPR) systems and related surveillance technology used by law enforcement agencies across the country. The company’s products include camera networks, cloud-based data systems, and gunshot detection technology in some jurisdictions. Civil liberties groups and privacy advocates have raised concerns over the systems’ effectiveness, cybersecurity vulnerabilities, data-sharing practices, and their potential use in immigration enforcement investigations. Reporting in 2025 also revealed that Flock data had been accessed through pilot programs involving federal agencies including DHS.

Legal concerns surrounding automatic license plate reader systems have also begun surfacing in Virginia courts. In 2024, a Norfolk Circuit Court judge ruled that the warrantless use of historical Flock camera data constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment, comparing prolonged location tracking through ALPR systems to unconstitutional GPS surveillance addressed in United States v. Jones. The decision added to growing legal scrutiny surrounding how long police agencies can track and store vehicle movement data without a warrant.

The stated goal of Flock’s presence is a safer Richmond. RPD Chief Rick Edwards is quoted on rva.gov as saying, “Automatic License Plate Readers have proven instrumental in helping investigators quickly identify and apprehend violent offenders.”

In fact, according to internal texts published by Richmond Times-Dispatch from Mayor Avula’s staff, Avula’s administration was plotting to “saturate the public narrative” with positive stories about the role that Flock cameras played in changing the outcome of crime investigations.

But the public isn’t buying it.

As the DSA members and advocates for the wider Block Flock movement pointed out at the May 11 hearing, the cameras can only provide punitive solutions, not preventative ones. After 13 pedestrian fatalities were recorded in Richmond in 2025, citizens asked the council to invest in fixing poorly kept sidewalks and providing pedestrian islands for safer street crossings instead of the cameras.

Privacy and cybersecurity concerns surrounding Flock systems have also fueled criticism. YouTuber and technologist Benn Jordan working alongside security researchers, has published investigations documenting vulnerabilities in some Flock-related camera systems, including exposed live feeds and archived footage accessible through improperly secured devices. Jordan has argued that such systems could be vulnerable to stalking, harassment, or other forms of abuse if compromised or poorly configured.

“Anyone in the country can watch anyone in Richmond,” one speaker at the budget hearing warned. “Anyone can watch your spouse drive to work or watch you drop your children off at school.”

You’ve seen them before. Black, pear-shaped devices shaded by a small solar panel. What do they know about your routine? What do they know about your loved ones’ routines?

Who is “they?”

The “they” that we do know about is frightening enough. A 2025 investigation by the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO found that Virginia Flock camera systems were queried thousands of times by outside law enforcement agencies across the country in searches connected to immigration enforcement. The reporting focused on audit data from Bridgewater and Mecklenburg County, where local systems connected to Flock’s wider network were accessed by agencies far beyond Virginia.

Virginia’s revised Automatic License Plate Reader law, which took effect in 2025, placed tighter restrictions on how ALPR data can be shared and used. But the investigation raised broader questions about how much oversight localities truly have once surveillance systems become part of a national network.

Victoria McCullough is a co-chair of the Migrant Solidarity Working Group, within Richmond DSA, said she worries surveillance systems like Flock expand not only through police departments, but through private institutions and community organizations operating under the language of safety.

“In some cases churches have been approached by Flock to consider Flock for their faith communities,” she said after the hearing. “My theory is that it happened the same way that the city got Flock, which is: somebody approached the city and said, ‘Have you considered Flock? I’d like to sell you a package.’ That can also happen with a private entity or in a faith space.”

McCullough noted that some churches in Richmond function as sanctuary spaces for undocumented residents and immigrant families concerned about deportation.

“In Richmond, a lot of that conversation looks like sanctuary churches and cathedrals for people who are undocumented,” she said.

She argued that once surveillance infrastructure becomes normalized inside public and private spaces alike, removing it becomes increasingly difficult.

“Every time we give surveillance the next step, we cannot roll it back,” McCullough said. “We’ve not seen at any point in history that once we give that away, we get it back.”

The final stretch of the budget hearing focused on another issue entirely: preserving funding for Richmond Virtual Academy, the online learning program launched by Richmond Public Schools in 2021. Students, parents, and teachers spoke passionately about the program, describing it as a safer and more effective learning environment for many students who struggle in traditional classrooms.

Richmond Virtual Academy reportedly requires roughly $3.2 million to continue operating.

The $1.2 million approved for Flock and related contracts would not fully fund Richmond Virtual Academy on its own. Still, the contrast lingered throughout the night: residents asking for investments in education, infrastructure, and prevention while the city continued expanding its surveillance capabilities.

Richmond officials describe systems like Flock as investments in safety. But for many residents at the hearing, safety looked less like cameras and data collection and more like functioning sidewalks, stable schools, and communities that feel supported before police intervention becomes necessary.

Reporting by Q Rice, R. Anthony Harris contributing
Photo by Julian Focareta

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Britain is trying something. They’ve approved a plan where, if you were born in 2009 or later, you’d never be allowed to legally buy cigarettes. The age just keeps moving up every year, and at some point there’s a whole group of adults who were never let in.

It still needs a sign-off from King Charles III, but it’s basically on its way. They’re calling it a “smoke-free generation.”

“This generation will be protected from a lifetime of addiction and harm,” said Wes Streeting, the British health secretary. “Prevention is better than cure.”

I keep circling back to what that would feel like in Richmond. Not the policy so much as the workaround, the cigarette dealer. The person who always seems to know where to find things. Not a big deal, just part of how stuff moves in the background.

Then again, maybe that says more about how my generation is used to things working.

Do people even want cigarettes like that anymore? The smell, the hassle, everything that comes with it. It feels like a lot of younger folks have already stepped away from it, or never really stepped in. Hooked up to vapes instead, or not at all. Watching older generations deal with the health consequences probably leaves an impression.

Maybe that matters more than any law but you can almost hear the arguments lining up anyway.

Choice, freedom, the nanny state and those arguments keep landing right where big tobacco needs them. Which makes you wonder, why do we trust those companies to have our best interests in mind? That kind of sums up America. We lean on corporations to defend our freedom to stay hooked on what they’re selling. Same pattern with soft drinks, processed meats, social media, gambling, plastics. What a strange kind of pretzel logic we’ve gotten used to.

Until about a decade ago in Richmond, smoking was just part of being out, and it still is for some. Late nights, bars, shows, standing around talking, add a whiskey, a beer, and that was the scene. Not even a decision, just something that was there. Now it feels like it’s fading. Maybe people are aging out of it. Maybe younger folks are just more aware. Either way, it’s mostly mixed in with vaping now, or gone entirely depending on who you’re with.

But when something like this comes along, it doesn’t just feel like a policy shift, its a different way of thinking about the whole thing, instead of managing it, you just let it fade out over time.

And then you start wondering what happens next, because this isn’t entirely new.

New Zealand tried something similar not that long ago. A generational smoking ban in 2022, same idea. Public health officials praised it while retailers and the tobacco industry pushed back then a new government rolled it back the following year. The Maldives has a version in place now, so Britain isn’t alone, but it’s not settled ground either.

And you start thinking about how that would play out somewhere like Virginia, a place built on tobacco in the first place. Hard to picture the industry just sitting that one out.

I would guess in Richmond, we’d take it down to the last drag.

Main photo by Brendan Stephens

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