Were you at the two most recent Art Walks? There were about 15 fights at the most recent one, and a heavy police presence brought an intense vibe to the event. An event that has revitalized downtown Richmond now stands threatened by its own success, and by the age-old curse where we inadvertently ruin the great things that happen to us. Issues of race need to be addressed, and were clearly present at the last events.

The most recent First Fridays Art Walk holds a perfect magnifying glass over the problems we face moving forward and evolving as a city. There have been quite a few public reactions to the two most recent Art Walks.

Many responses have been racially charged, although I have seen a few public comments begging the city not to make this a race issue. Yes, we should use caution. Because we want to make sure EVERYONE feels welcome at First Fridays.

I think we would be better off addressing this issue, however uncomfortable it is, and then moving forward to fix prejudices of racism and classism. The Elephant in the Room only feeds on denial.

This is not about age, this is about race and centuries old tension in Richmond. I have seen a lot of people latching onto this growing idea that the “problems” and “skirmishes” at First Fridays are all coming from the “youth.”

When did everyone in Richmond become such an expert on age identification?

Yes, there are definitely more kids than there used to be, but in reality there are also more black people at First Fridays than there used to be.

Apparently, it is easier to say, “No, this isn’t a race issue, this is an age issue.”

Well, be warned, denial never fixes problems.

I call Bullshit. Granted, there were some underage kids there. There were also a lot of adults.

Here comes the elephant.

Several people have commented that they will not be returning to First Fridays. Several comments have been made, dramatizing the demise of First Fridays.

Many of the problems we’ve seen have only escalated over the past couple of years. We don’t need to ask how to salvage First Fridays, but rather, how to imagine where it goes in its next level of development.

It is unfortunate that cops have to break up crowds of people watching a dance exhibition (of random participants) outside of Backstage, or any other place where music is being played or made and people want to dance.

The cops have to do it because a crowd impedes the flow of traffic. They wouldn’t have to do it if Broad Street was blocked off though.

Many people have said that the event had a weird vibe to it. I was there for more 4 hours, from 7 p.m. to around midnight.

I had a great time. I did feel some stress because of all the police and because there were a lot of people just walking up and down the street. Up and down up and down up and down.

I do like that police are there breaking up fights. There were 15 fights broken up that night, a police officer said.

No guns. No arrests. One kid was beaten pretty badly, but ran off with his friends before the ambulance arrived.

People are reporting that there were fights in front of their galleries regardless of all the cops on the streets.

So the new First Fridays crowd is more intense. And this is a point that is statistically proven.

There have been threats made to police and a bunch of fights. When the crowd at First Fridays was predominantly white, there weren’t fights. The crowd of late has been predominantly black, and now there are fights.

So, why are some of these black people fighting? I implore you, will you please stop? This is ridiculous that a group of people can’t go to First Friday’s without fighting. We’ve seen it many times in the city. This is absolutely sad.

Hide a huge population in zipcodes divided from Richmond by the highways and y’all forget this is a predominantly black city; in 2000, the census reported the black population as 57.2 percent.

I would think that an event capable of pulling crowds from all races–especially the two predominant ones of our city–represents an accomplishment. Unfortunately we aren’t there yet.

Dear White People

Stop being scared of black people. I saw the looks on people’s faces that night–nervousness, shock. Stop complaining that First Fridays will fail because this new crowd isn’t buying stuff; art or food. I saw plenty of people buying food from street vendors. They are local.

No one has to come buy things. Isn’t enough that 5,000 people come to Broad Street, and countless others visit citywide venues, in the name of Art Walk? Certainly, ten years ago, no one really went to Broad Street east of Belvidere for much of anything. But people who were purchasing should not stop. It seems all the more important for people who love Art Walk to keep supporting it.

A true downtown revitalization happens when all ages, classes and races unite behind an event and celebrate its existence. Everyone needs to bring something positive to the experience.

Our police officers need to be able to protect without overprotecting. They also need to well set-up, for instance by having the Broad Street blocked off.

Heavy patrol on the streets–did it help?

We witnessed a Richmond City Police officer cruising beside a group of black people, down the 200 and 300 blocks of Broad Street, yelling “There will be no First Fridays next month or the month after,” over the intercom. Really? Are officers working overtime and just getting frustrated too easily? Or do they know something we don’t know?

In total there were 17 Richmond City Police officers, including the mounted police, said a police officer. Chief Norwood was also present, along with the assistant chief and two majors.

At least two VCU police cars also came over to help out.

For perspective, there used to be four police officers working First Fridays a year ago.

One cop told me “I used to work that assignment back when I was in (removed for anonymous purposes) because it was fun and easy.”

“Now you can’t get people to sign up for it,” he added.

So how did over 20 officers on scene play out?

It startled people. Flashing police lights, sirens and intercoms have the ability to make people feel like something bad is going to happen.

Also, perhaps that many cops will provoke rebellious behavior. I saw several instances where people antagonized police. I’m not saying that action is acceptable. I’m saying that it’s natural to be young and rebellious. A feeling amplified by frustration for being targeted, more than likely.

A group of people ran into the median and started dancing. It wasn’t malicious or menacing. It was fun and free-spirited–just dangerous.

Pro-actively policing

I would like to know why police didn’t issue any citations to juveniles who were out past curfew.

I did hear from one police officer that the sheer amount of juveniles was just so overwhelming that there was no way they could get to them all and therefore they just weren’t doing anything.

Wow, hope we don’t deal with, say, burglaries or drug problems this way.

What I did see instead were police following groups of black people, screaming over the intercom to “Go Home. It’s over. Just go home.”

Two problems with that. First, it isn’t illegal to walk the sidewalks of Broad as an adult.

So police can’t profile. They certainly were not up the street near all the white bars on Robinson following people stumbling up and down Main St.

I rode past the Main/Robinson Street bars on my way home from First Fridays. ‘Lo and Behold, outside of FW Sullivans, drunk white people blocked the sidewalk. They even spilled into the road!

Further west of that bar, gaggles of white drunks roamed the sidewalks. I didn’t see a single police officer.

When we were underage and used to come downtown to Grace St. and visit the Village (when it was on the other side), no cops harassed us.

Second, if you’re going to tell us that police should be chasing people up and down Broad Street because all those people were underage, then start issuing some curfew violation tickets!

Looking forward and lingering questions

Assuming that the Richmond Police were wrong, and First Fridays will go on next month, well, what needs to happen from here?

Maybe the Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce and all i.e.* partners could get together and launch a brainstorming session on it?

Kidding. Only sort-of.

An overwhelming consensus of Richmond seems to support the closure of Broad Street.

The director of First Fridays, Christina E. Newton, has said this is too expensive, and impossible.

Broad St. is a major evacuation route, and so it is unrealistic to imagine its closure on a busy Friday evening. The road has been closed for festivals like Broad Appetit.

And now we have arrived at a bigger issue entirely: downtown revitalization.

What about the idea to change the traffic pattern of one-way streets into two-way streets? That was brought up in the Downtown Masterplan, right?

If traffic was rerouted along Grace and Marshall Streets, the closure of Broad would not matter.

Even if that didn’t happen, what about Altria, Dominion, or MeadWestVaco sponsorship to fund street closures? If not 12 months out of the year, how about the most trafficked months?

Give sponsors a beer garden and some signage!

First Fridays is run by a very tiny organization. Christina Newton has a lot on her plate.What kind of support can be offered to her?

Why isn’t the GRCC in on this? How much money has been spent on Save Low Fares and i.e.*–and with what results? Mayor Jones, this needs immediate attention.

Art Walk is one of the most amazing events in our city. I truly felt pride in Richmond when I went to my first Art Walk.

Imagine a First Friday’s with ample room to support foot traffic. A street festival would not hurt local businesses and galleries, rather it would provide room for more people to come and safely visit. Trust me, it makes a huge difference when people have room to roam.

Not everyone is accountable for the chaos of late at Art Walks. But we are all responsible for the future development and improvement of Richmond.

Our city doesn’t move forward unless a majority of its people has a respect and tolerance for themselves and each other. What we need to Create, RVA, are real solutions, real fast.

This is strictly an opinion piece. I suggest other reporters continue to do some investigative work into the situation. I am very interested in how gallery owners feel about First Fridays.

I do not assume to have all the answers, or any of the answers. If I’ve gotten it all wrong, tell me how, in the comments.

I just have a genuine desire to work with people to improve our city. If your comments here are not productive, and are inflammatory, I will moderate them. Don’t doubt that for a second.

In Richmond’s East End, six housing projects huddle around the Peter Paul Development Center. Then, I-64 wraps around the entire area, successfully positioned as a moat, or wall, which isolates the concentrated urban poverty from the resources of greater Richmond.

In this bleak city island,  poor means an average income of $8,900, says Rev. Lynne Washington, executive director of the Peter Paul Development Center (PPDC).

Rev. Washington is our guide on the Windshield Tour, which safely carries us into areas of town many will never visit; to witness landscapes many of us would never forget were we to see them.

The Windshield Tour is about a 90 minute event. Aboard the bus, participants learn interesting and shocking facts about the neighborhoods served by the PPDC.

For example, no new schools have been built in this neighborhood–even though there are 4,000 children in Churchill–since the 1950’s, says Rev. Washington.

Or that “ Newsweek” magazine considers Armstrong High one of the nation’s worst “drop-out factories.”

For complete article, click on over to Pergula, a community news portal.

Face it Richmond. You’re surrounded. By art.

It flatters the walls of numerous galleries, ornaments our streets and buildings and also adorns the skin of many locals.

They don’t all work in downtown restaurants and bars either, although tattooed culinarians and mixologists might be seen more often. No, tattooed folk don’t all band together like a heathen zombie army.

Actually they’re everywhere, just not always visibly. They also teach children, save lives, prepare fancy pumpkin spice lattes, labor at state agencies, report the gritty city news, fashion your hair, hawk real estate, mark Richmond criminals and ink grants. Many have infiltrated well-known, Fortune 500 corporations.

Please follow the link to read the rest of this article and view a great slideshow on Richmonddotcom! Thanks!

The visions of 13 people—what you missed and how you can be involved in the city’s new transit plan.

Richmond Connects, a City of Richmond project, staged its kick-off event Tuesday night at the Byrd Theater. Participants were asked to present alternative visions of transportation in an alternative format: 20 slides, 20 seconds a slide.

This trendy and effective method known as “Pecha Kucha” is loved by the Japanese and seems to abate long-winded, awkward presentations.

The format itself was a breath of fresh air, as were many of the ideas presented.

Richmond Connects is the abbreviated moniker for The Richmond Strategic Multimodal Transportation Plan, a yearlong planning study to “update, revise and re-invent the transportation plan,” for Richmond.

The evening moved along like a well-oiled machine, hopefully one with a small carbon footprint, but whether or not the talks are just a bunch of hot-air remains to be seen.

The City of Richmond, with its recent creation of a Bicycle and Pedestrian Trail Commission, as well as proposed funding in the 2012 budget for a Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordinator, appears committed to reducing the number of vehicles on the road. Money has been pledged to develop the plan, but more than that half a million will be needed to complete any infrastructure (Portland, Oregon spent an estimated 52 million).

At the very least, Tuesday nights’ presenters made it clear that the city ought to take transportation reform very seriously.

SPOKEN QUICKLY, DRIVEN HOME

Some clambered on stage to speak their 6:40 (20×20) as concerned residents, bringing out-of-state experiences to the envisioning process.

CONTINUE READING AT RICHMOND.COM

Numerous restaurants in Richmond are violating, some without knowing, some simply disregarding, what many see as an invasive prohibition on social media promotion.

Gone are the days of Speakeasies, Prohibition-era liquor establishments, where liquor discreetly flowed for those whose tongues were agile with the correct password for entry. Even though billions of dollars now steadily pour into the coffers of alcohol manufacturers, in Virginia restaurants dare not speak easy about happy hour pricing.

Not too long ago restaurants were completely prohibited from promoting happy hour outside of the storefront. In late 2009, the ABC board approved the posting of a 17″ by 22″ sign in the window of a restaurant. This action symbolized forward movement from an organization often thought of as conservative.

When but not What

The momentous change spawned signage in windows, announcing, yes the business has a happy hour–a fact probably already known by 10 of 10 adults. In an urban setting, the sign might make a difference, but in a suburban setting, most restaurants receive specific destination traffic.

What really matters to those seeking the heaviest drinks for recession-light wallets are the prices, the choices, and the times. Times are actually allowed on the posted sign, but no specific mention of available selections, or the special prices is permitted.

“What the customer is deprived of is the information about what kind of specials are being offered,” said Thomas Lisk, an attorney at Eckert Seamans who previously served as chairman of the Industry Advisory Panel to the Virginia ABC Board during its regulatory review process.

…Finish reading the article, find out what promotions are legal and illegal, and take the poll at Richmond.com…

Back when I was a fiscally struggling undergrad (my, how things don’t change), I took a series of lab-rat gigs at VCU. The money wasn’t great, but it paid out right away and I didn’t have to donate anything other than my time, patience and a little blood. The studies were only for tobacco research and required that I be a smoker. This is a preface to the bigger story, the current one of my becoming a non-smoker.

One of the gigs required that I stay overnight, go without coffee two days prior and no cigarettes were allowed 12 hours prior to check-in at MCV hospital.

Once settled in, I was given a series of hourly tests that involved my cognitive reflexes and memory retention. I found it rather interesting that they wanted to know how my brain worked without tobacco.

I interrogated the doctors and researchers about tobacco and the brain to learn just why nicotine is so addictive. Here’s what I’ve learned and why it is so hard for many of us to just quit cold turkey.

Simple science behind addiction

There is a perception out there that tobacco is merely a physical addiction. See, the tricky thing is that your brain is a tangible, physical part of you, but there are also many complex, mysterious things happening inside it that we can’t see. Science has made huge leaps in explaining some of it. Point being, they’re connected—mind and body. Withdrawal isn’t simply about nicotine decreasing in the bloodstream (physical), it is also about the way your neurotransmitters are firing messages (mind).

A smoker is going through nicotine withdrawal the minute they put out a cigarette. Let’s be science-like and call it pain conditioning. Pain conditioning (and pleasure conditioning) involves neurotransmitters that reinforce the neural pathways which develop with newly learned behaviors.

Think of a neurotransmitter as “an automobile wearing ruts in a gravel road.”

This applies to all types of behavior and learning—from avoiding touching a hot iron to associating an “A” on a test with a reward. I could go on with the examples but, basically, that “deep neural rut” in your neural pathway is what makes a reaction become automatic.

For smokers, the reactions are provoked by times, meals, activities and emotions.

To learn more about the science of addiction and the success rate of Chantix, please jump over to Richmond.com to finish reading!

Touring the Monticello Wine Trail: Jefferson Vineyards from Alix Bryan on Vimeo.

Okay Richmond, quit whining about the cold weather. This frigid season might not be a barrel of laughs, but there are plenty of ways we can fight seasonal affective disorder and avoid hibernation. One of those sure fire ways just might be drinking, or rather, tasting. Vineyards located nearby on the Monticello Wine Trail offer the promise of an adventure blended with interesting history lessons, beautiful panoramas, and of course, award-winning wine.

Sure, Richmond boasts a list of events equal in length to our Canal Walk. But what about the open road? What about a low-cost, action-packed excursion that can easily deliver you home by the end of the day? With just enough time left over, well, to drink some of the wine you bought?

One more word of encouragement: local. Apply the popular “Buy Local” movement to your wine consumption. Here are some tips to help you become an oenophile, educated by some of the best vintners in America.

Background
We have tourists visit the state just for our wine. We are considered the “Birthplace of American Wine,” thanks to Thomas Jefferson, yet it took about 200 years for our wineries to really figure out the tricky climate and produce quality wines. We are now the 5th largest producer of wine in the United States.

Virginia wine has been applauded at the international level, proven by the 20 awards received, out of 10,983 global wines entered, at the 2010 Decanter World Wine awards.

We have a native grape, the Norton, and even a crown jewel, the Viogner (vee-on-yay). The Viogner helped put Virginia on the map, thanks to the research and brave gambles of Dennis Horton, of Horton Vineyards. This is some of the priceless stuff you get to learn about at the tastings.

Read more about exploring Virginia Wine Country at Richmond.com

Next week, on July 29, Short Pump will add another Kroger to its already abundant stock of grocers that have flocked to the West End. This new Kroger, at 91,000 square feet, will become the eighth store in the area.  Short Pump will now host just two grocery stores more than the entire Richmond metro area. The opening places Henrico county in the lead over Chesterfield, and other local counties, for access to grocery stores, despite Chesterfield county having twice the amount of square mileage as Henrico. One zip code, 23233, contains almost as many grocery stores as the city of Richmond, regardless of the vast gap in population served.  Based on census data, Short Pump has 50,000 residents, compared to Richmond’s total population of 200,000. Now, that’s just one zip code.  For every 10,000 residents in all of Henrico County, there are 1.5 grocery stores, whereas in Richmond City the availability is drastically lower, at .5 stores for every 10,000. The zip codes in Richmond that are absent of grocers peddling cheaper, nutritious food tend to be the areas where income is on average 20 percent below poverty; Highland Park, Barton Heights, Jackson Ward and Monroe Ward.