🧹 Good morning, RVA: MF BROOM, microstransit pilot, principals

Good morning, RVA! It’s 63 °F, and today’s the last unseasonably warm day for at least the foreseeable future—and maybe for the rest of the year! You can expect highs in the mid 80s and a bit of rain to show up late this evening and into the morning, bringing with it a big cold front. Tomorrow, the spookiest day of the year, will see temperatures 30 degrees cooler than today!
 

Water cooler

I have never seen MF BROOM, or MF DOOM for that matter, in person. The former—a tiny, cute street sweeper designed specifically to sweep bike lanes—launched a full year ago, and, presumably, did spend time in the City’s bike lanes cleaning out trash and debris. Maybe it did so under the cover of darkness or maybe only in places I don’t typically ride a bike, but either way I’ve haven’t seen this cool piece of equipment out merrily doing its cool and important job. VPM’s Ian M. Stewart solves the mystery of the missing sweeper, and reports that lack of trained operators has kept it off our streets for months now.. Luckily, for people who get excited about this sort of thing, Stewart also reports that MF BROOM should return to our bike lanes this spring (unlike MF DOOM, sadly), and that Richmonders can use the RVA311 app to check the sweeping schedule.
 

GRTC will shift it’s scheduled microtransit pilot launch to November 13th. Called LINK Microtransit, this on-demand transportation service allows riders to use a 3rd-party app to “call for a ride between any two places in a designated zone.” The LINK pilot replaces the #93 bus on the Northside and serves an area around Azalea Avenue and the racetrack. You can watch a charming intro video over on Instagram to learn more. Personally, I’m not a microtransit believer, but I am really interested to see if this pilot works out. Mostly I’m excited about a pilot existing at all! What a great, low-risk way to try something new and innovative—the City should take note!
 

Ben Paviour at VPM reports that the Virginia Department of Elections incorrectly purged 3,400 people from the voting rolls, 10 times more than what they initially estimated. “The group of disenfranchised voters was seemingly swept up in a December purge of more than 10,000 voters by the department of elections, which targeted voters who’d had their rights restored but gone on to be convicted of a new felony.“ I’ll tell you what, “off by an order of magnitude” does not inspire confidence. Related, Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams reminds us 1) of just how shameful Virginia’s felony disenfranchisement laws are, and 2) to listen to Mallory Noe-Payne’s new documentary on the subject.
 

Blergh, I’m tired of writing about Casino 2.0 at this point, but if you’re not tired of reading about it, you can check out the Richmond Times-Dispatch Editorial Board’s final(?) piece on the matter. They talked to folks on both sides of the issue, and end up coming down in the middle (maybe a half step into the oppositional column), concluding “Rolling the dice on a casino, in other words, remains a serious gamble.”
 

School principals! A lot of the times, they really are your pal, and, somehow, handle a thousand and one schoolwide issues all while answering personal calls and emails from families with questions about their one specific student. Honestly, I’d take a project management class from a really effective principal. If you’ve got a great and effective principal in your neighborhood—who quickly answers your calls and emails—you should nominate them for the R.E.B. Award for Distinguished Educational Leadership. This award recognizes principals in Richmond, Henrico, Chesterfield, and Hanover who “go beyond the day-to-day demands of their position to create an exceptional educational environment.” Each winner will receive a $10,000 cash grant, and their school will bank an addition $20,000 for a project chosen by the principal. Anyone in the school community can nominate a principal, you just have to do it by November 2nd. Read more about the nomination process and find a link to the nomination form over on the Community Foundation’s website.
 

This morning’s longread

The eternal allure of Engagement Chicken

Full disclosure, I made the NYT’s Marry Me Chicken a couple weeks back and my family received it with a skeptical, flat “meh.”
 

That nearly 20 years later, the New York Times is wink-wink-nudge-nudge reviving the marriage chicken trope in a time of feminist backlash, where women are experiencing a restriction in their reproductive rights and healthcare access, doesn’t seem like an accident. It comes after other sections of the paper have suggested that the answer to male loneliness is for women to just have more sex or get married. It comes after other sections of the paper have exhaustively reported that women still do more of the domestic labor. Of course, anyone can make a Marry Me Chicken. But anyone doesn’t. A 2019 Pew study reports that in heterosexual couples, women “spend 52 minutes a day on meal prep, vs. 22 minutes for men.”
 

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Picture of the Day

A tiny forest.