🌳 Good morning, RVA: 927 • 29; more on the shameful police violence; and a big, leafy deal

Good morning, RVA! It’s 75 °F, and today you should expect super hot highs in the 90s—we’ve even got a heat advisory in effect until 8:00 PM. The heat index could reach as high as 109 °F, and that means you probably should stay inside if at all possible.

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 927↗️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 29↗️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 138↗️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 40, Henrico: 68, and Richmond: 30). Since this pandemic began, 326 people have died in the Richmond region. Just yesterday, the seven-day average of new cases in Virginia hit 1,012—the first time it’s been over 1,000 since August 13th. Percent positivity has also started to trend upward in the Commonwealth, and, at 7.7%, is now at its highest level since around June 8th. Statewide numbers are whatever, and it’s maybe more helpful to look at percent positive in the Central Region—which is bigger than just Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield, but still smaller than the entire state. Turns out percent positivity for the Central Region is…7.8% and that’s the highest it’s been since August 9th. What does this all mean? Keep working from home if possible, keep your mask on, and keep your distance from other people—that’s for sure.

Ali Rockett at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has more on Tuesday’s shameful display of violence by the Richmond Police Department. Here, again, is the hard-to-watch video of a police officer tackling a person off of their bike, smashing their head onto a sidewalk. And here is how the RPD’s Deputy Chief Sydney Collier describes the incident: “Force is met with force…He’s eluding. He’s trying to avoid capture. As long as he’s trying to elude, the officer used the only option he had to stop him while he was on the bicycle.” Force is met with force?? What kind of force, exactly, does an unarmed kid standing in front of a tow truck with a bicycle need to be met with? Watch that video again and tell me that was the only option available to over a dozen police officers to “capture” this one person on a bike. The police continue to gaslight us by responding to actual, literal video of their horrible behavior as if it doesn’t exist at all. I honesty feel like I’m losing my grip on reality when I read quotes like this. Who are these people? Why do they behave this way? Why will none of our elected leaders do anything about it??

This seems like a big, leafy deal: The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation announced a $227,467 grant to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation that “will plant more than 650 new trees in neighborhoods suffering from extreme heat linked to racially-motivated housing discrimination in the past.” That’s awesome, but even awesomer, this grant will focus on Southside neighborhoods and build on the work that folks like Southside ReLeaf and Groundwork RVA are already doing in that part of the city.

A million years ago in 2017, Richmond adopted the Pulse Corridor Plan which recommend a bunch of rezonings to make the neighborhoods surrounding our best transit denser, more walkable, and more transit-friendly. As part of that plan, the Planning Commission will consider rezoning the area around the Science Museum, Allison Street, and VCU & VUU Pulse stations next week. If you can’t wait to talk zoning/rezoning, tonight you can attend a virtual public forum from 6:00–7:30 PM to hear the Department of Planning and Review talk through this proposed rezoning and why it’s important. You’ll probably hear from lots and lots of neighborhood folks angry about the standard set of anti-density stuff: tall buildings, sewer and school overload, parking, and traffic. It’s frustrating to have to argue about these same exact things each and every time we want to build more homes so more people can live in our city, but, that’s the bad timeline we live in. Until we have a decidedly urbanist City Council and Mayor we’ll need to do whatever we can to drag Richmond forward in these tiny and frustratingly incremental steps.

Whoa, the Virginia ABC reports a $117 million increase in revenue compared to last year. I’d love to see those numbers by month, because I bet a huge portion of that increase came during the coronaspring. Of note, over the course of last year, Virginians spent $52.3 million on Tito’s Handmade vodka, the top-selling booze in the Commonwealth. That’s a lot of vodka!

Daniel Heffner at NBC12 says that “roofers working on Bellevue Elementary School in Church Hill uncovered a decades-old beehive while repairing a section of the roof.” The beepeople brought in to save/remove the bees estimated the hive to be 40 years old and contain 60,000 bees! The pictures alone are worth your tap.

The Henrico and Richmond City Health Districts will host a free community testing event today at Tuckahoe Middle School (9000 Three Chopt Road) from 9:00–11:00 AM. Walk-ups welcome! If you’re sitting at home worrying about your coronastatus, get out there and get a free test this morning. These are your local health districts! They’re here to serve you.

This morning’s patron longread

Welcome to Leeside, the US’s first climate haven

Submitted by Patron Susan. I love this genre of thing, where the creator fabricates bits of an alternative historical record to tell their story (my favorite example of this at the moment is the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park Tumblr). This piece in QZ tells the future history of Leeside, a (fake) Midwest town that decide to open its Rust Belt arms to climate refugees, and now, years later, the town is booming.

It’s 2057 and no life has been untouched by the realities of a warming globe. But mere decades ago, at the dawn of the 21st century, Americans were only just waking to this truth. Rising seas, powerful storms, and raging fires were destroying their cities, rendering homes uninhabitable, and dismantling livelihoods. Residents affected by such loss began to ask, “Where will we go?” In an increasingly isolationist world, many responded, “Not here.” But Leeside opened its doors. And after years of implementing innovative policies benefiting both the environment and the city’s residents, the United Nations inaugurated Leeside as the United States’ first Green Haven in 2035. Now, the city is recognized as a model of successful adaptation—physical, economic, and social—to a world in which cities and their communities are transformed by the millions seeking shelter from the storm.

If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

This morning’s Instagram