🦫 Good morning, RVA: Urban trees, a shift in language, and robot combat

Good morning, RVA! It’s 72 °F, and today we’ve got more of the same: Highs in the 90s, sunshine, and lots of sweat. This continues, with some slightly cooler temperatures, through the weekend and into next week. Remember to hydrate yourself, your loved ones, and your plants!
 

Water cooler

This morning I woke up with two fun municipal press releases in my inbox. First, the City announced that they’ve hired Michael Webb as Richmond’s first Urban Forester. Webb will focus on building a comprehensive tree strategy (like how to equitably maintain, plant, and remove trees) with the ultimate goal of increasing the overall tree canopy in the city. Sounds like creating an Urban Forestry Master Plan (which I think we really, really need) is one of his first tasks. Second, the Department of Public Works and the Department of Public Utilities have installed “high water detection systems” at two locations prone to flooding (Magnolia Avenue on the Northside and Bainbridge Street on the Southside). From the release: “Once triggered, these advance warning stations will activate flashing beacons, message signs, and automatic road barrier gates.” Pretty neat! DPW’s Twitter account has posted some pictures of the flood conditions and the newly installed gates—which, if you squint, also function as curb extensions that narrow the road and slow drivers down. Good stuff all around.
 

Earlier this week, I wrote that reporters needed to come up with a better way to describe the Governor’s new anti-trans policies than defaulting to the Republican talking points—terminology that’s intentionally unclear and specifically designed to confuse the reader. Today, Whitney Evans and Dawnthea M. Price Lisco at VPM report on some reactions to Youngkin’s new anti-trans policies for public schools, and do a great job with this. “Parental rights” is mentioned just a single time in the entire piece, and only in this paragraph: “‘Parental rights’ is a reframing of public education that focuses on objecting to teaching cultural issues and sensitive topics—such as systemic racism, sexual orientation, climate change and gender diversity.” The reporters do not slip into the Republican trap of describing Youngkin’s offensive policies as a focus on “parental rights” and instead say the new rules “highlight the rights of ‘all’ students and the innate authority of their parents or legal guardians” (scare quotes theirs!). I’d go harder, of course, but I’m not an actual reporter. I think this shift in language—from reporting just earlier this week—is really wonderful. I’m thankful for it!
 

Sean Jones and Anna Bryson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch have a long and depressing report on the state of child care in the Richmond region. Here’s a brutal quote from one of the parents they talked to: “At a certain point it became, I just need somewhere to keep [my child] alive while I’m at work because I don’t have room to be picky anymore.” I don’t think this is something we can put a dent in at the local level or maybe even at the sate level. The best thing we can—and should!—do is reinstate Biden’s Child Tax Credit so folks can afford child care again.
 

Today, Axios Richmond’s entire email is gas station themed, and I appreciate commitment to a bit. Side note: I went to a Buc-ee’s on my way back home from vacation, and it was easily the most overwhelming, overstimulating experience I’ve had in the last several years. I used the (impressively efficient and clean) bathroom and got the heck out of there as fast as possible.
 

Did you know that Richmond has a group of robot combat enthusiasts called “Richmond Area Bot Instigated Destruction”? We do! Not only that but tomorrow, July 22nd, they will host Botsmas in July, their first open-to-spectators event where you, a fleshy human, can stop by and witness Battlebots-like mechanical destruction with your own soft and fragile eyes. The mayhem starts at 10:00 AM at 3301-D Rosedale Avenue, and, to get your gears grinding, you can check out the list of currently registered death robots (including Backslash, Deatharang, Spurned Reminder, and Ice Cream Cake).
 

Tonight, the United States Women’s National Team will face Vietnam in Group E of the Women’s World Cup. If you’re looking for a place to watch the match with likeminded folks, how about in front of a massive, 13-foot screen at City Stadium? Sounds pretty rad. Doors open at 7:00 PM with kickoff at 9:00 PM. Tickets are free, but you should tap through and register anyway.
 

This morning’s longread

Electric Bike, Stupid Love of My Life

I don’t yet have an e-bike, mostly because I’m already pretty flush with bikes, but how can you read this and not want to go out and buy one today?
 

Soaring down the coast, the ocean to one side and a strand of old pines to the other. The afternoon sun beats down but it feels cool and there’s something irrationally stirring – downright emotional – about the efficiency of this dumb machine beneath my body. The motor looks too small – just a black cylinder on the hub of the wheel. And yet it moves. It sings that song. A subtle hum. A beautiful hum. It makes me want to ride and ride, ridiculous distances, nonsensical distances. I don’t want to get to where I’m going because I want the ride to last longer. I want to linger in this space as long as possible, this space of smooth and efficient movement through the world, gliding in near total mechanical silence, just the sound of rubber on the pavement, wind in my ears, breaking waves, salt, the smell of pine. This is what electric bikes do: They drive you insane with the poetry of the world.
 

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Picture of the Day

Low tide and infrastructure.