🚲 Good morning, RVA: Schools rezoning, Bike to Work Day, and two cool festivals

Good morning, RVA! It’s 57 °F, and today we’re looking at highs in the mid 80s, a few clouds, and a potential chance for rain later this evening. Weatherwise, the rest of this weekend looks incredible, though.

Water cooler

Richmond Police are reporting that William Reed, Jr., 22, was shot and killed on the 1100 block of Floral Avenue on Wednesday morning. According to the RPD, this is the 22nd murder of 2019.

Justin Mattingly at the Richmond Times-Dispatch spoke to some school officials about rezoning 💸 and the new district demographic and capacity report from Cropper GIS (PDF). I mean, just look at the maps. There’s no getting around it: Elementary schools are almost entirely full across the city—especially on the Southside—and, while consolidating schools and rezoning will help, building new schools has gotta be part of the plan moving forward. Another thing I’d like to see, before we start hearing a bunch of rhetoric against raising the money to build more schools, is a comparison of school build capacity to school building maintenance needs. Basically: Are the buildings with the most empty seats the most likely to crumble into dust?

Also on schools and something to file away in the back corners of your brain: Hopewell Schools will move to a year-round schedule. Justin Mattingly says that students will still attend 180 days of school, just spread out across the year. I’m into it, and would love to learn more / watch what happens in Hopewell.

OK, New York Times. This is maybe the only time I will allow describing Richmond as “the former capital of the Confederacy”: Jamelle Bouie spent some time at the new American Civil War Museum and came away pretty impressed. The museum is open from 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM and is waiting for you to come away pretty impressed as well. Tickets are just $15.

A final reminder: It’s Bike to Work Day! Meet on the north end of the Manchester Bridge between 8:00 and 9:00 AM—wheels up at 9:20 AM. As a famous person once said, “Get on your bike and ride!”

There are two festivals worth your time this weekend. First, the Lebanese Food Festival kicks off this morning at 10:00 AM and runs through Sunday night. You can get a boxed “pie sampler” which includes a meat pie, spinach pie, cheese pie, feta and spinach pie, and dessert for $10. A worthy use of your Alexander Hamilton, indeed! Second, Riverrock begins this evening with a million and one different events scattered about the riverfront and continues through Sunday.

This morning’s longread

There’s No Such Thing as Breakfast Food

I cannot celebrate this longread enough! Yesterday, I started my morning with three empanadas—beef, chorizo, and cheese—because I’ve decided not to live under the tyranny of American breakfast. And guess what? It was awesome!

I wrestled with the idea while summoning the wherewithal to leave bed. Why did a breakfast chicken parm seem so louche to me when an egg sandwich—a similar combination of protein, dairy fat, grease, and carbohydrates—seemed so benign? If I marched up to the counter at my local bagel shop, which makes chicken-parm sandwiches for lunch, could I even order one at nine in the morning? If I succeeded, would it open a Pandora’s box of forbidden-food hedonism from which I could never return? Why was breakfast food even breakfast food in the first place?

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This morning’s Instagram