From the RTD: the proposed stadium in Shockoe Bottom may be kaput. There may, however, be a slight glimmer of hope for y’all stadium supporters: the robot factory.

The robot factory, really the old Fulton Gas Works building, sits near the bottom of Chimborazo Park. I call it the robot factory because there is some really sweet robot graffiti on one of the walls. Seems like a sketchy place for a stadium to me. But hey, I’m not a big fancy-pants developer.

Again from the RTD:

The sources said the city’s latest proposal is for a stadium at the Fulton Gas Works site, an old, unused industrial complex at the bottom of Church Hill in the eastern part of the city.

“I would say I’ve heard that same rumor,” Wilder said.

Dun Dun Duuuun.

Technorati Tags: ballpark, Richmond, Virginia, Wilder

While checking out RVAblogs, I saw that there were a couple articles about teachers over at bacon’s rebellion. I am eating lunch at my desk because I was stood up by my lunch dates, so I figured I’d talk about something I’ve thought about before: teacher salaries.

While many people argue for raising them, I’d say it’s the way you raise them that is most important. You need to raise potential salaries the most for the highest performers, measure performance intelligently, and create promotional opportunities to really see benefits from pay raises.
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XMAS cards are here…

The other day I was discussing with our leader Maxpower that I wanted to do the link warp up again. So I am going to start doing that; and what better day than Christmas eve? If any of you are like me you might have some time to kill in the next couple of days. So here are some sweet links I have found via the internet. Also, I’m not going to call it warp up, I don’t know what I’m gonna call it. Somethin’ though.

Do you like DDR? Do you like Santa? Well play this.

The internet is a great place to watch things that make you giggle. If you havent heard of Danzig, he used to sing for the Misfts. This guy thinks he is Danzig. He is amazing. Watch it.

Space is cool. Google is cool. Seeing stuff is cool. Kewl.

This was posted on the message board. But seriously. WTF!

Finally if you want to write something to someone who thinks they are an elf. This can help.

While searching for recipes, rubs, and injections for frying a turkey I stumbled on this:

If you absolutely must use a turkey fryer, here are some tips for safer use:

Now I don’t know about you, but have you ever encountered a situation where you absolutely must use a turkey fryer? I’m not sure that I have.

Also, everyone is invited to a New Year’s Day turkey fry somewhere in Church Hill. It will either be at murphdog’s or RMSzero’s. If you are interested let me know — I might need to collect like 5$ from you. It should be pretty awesome.

Also, if it is at murph’s we can probably have a bonfire (and if we get our act’s together maybe a keg?). So get stoked on that.

The latest in the ongoing wrangling over the National Slavery Museum here in Fredericksburg.

Basically the story right now is that the Slavery Museum received $1 Million from the City of Fredericksburg to do “studies” on stuff like the economic impact of the proposed museum, the traffic impact, demographic studies, all of those sorts of things.

So they did all that, spent all the money (paid for by a tax on downtown biznises), but the catch is that now they are refusing the share the results of the studies with the City. They are saying that the info is proprietary, citing the National Museum of African American History as a competitor who might benefit from the info. (They also claim that they do not compete with that museum. Yeah.)

So there is a big stink over it. The latest news is that the Museum referred the City to their own files on the site approval process way back when. Stuff like, will the site collapse into the river. And the City is like, “uhhhh, yeah we already have those. What did you do with our money?”

The interesting part of the whole mess is that the Museum is Doug Wilder’s baby. You would think that after his wrangling with the VAPAF he would feel a little empathy for public officials dealing with a secretive organization spending the taxpayer’s money on nebulous things like “telephone,” or “study,” but apparently not.

I forgot to post this earlier, but the Virginia Blog Carnival is up over at Sons Of The Republic (sweet blog name).

Gotta love this article.

CHPN has a great on going dialogue about how to do something about the crime that plagues Church Hill (for more: RichmondCrime.org).

On thing I think might be successful is The Boston Strategy — where you pool information between local police, parole officers, and clergy. Basically local faith-based community leaders feed parole and police officers information about the goings on in their neighborhoods. The increase in information allows both parole officers and cops to do their job more effectively and keep — mainly — kids off the street. Either by putting them back in jail with stiffer parole violation penalties or out keeping them out of crime all together (?).

What are some new and innovative (or perhaps time proven) ways to combat crime. One thing to keep in mind are Richmond’s tendencies towards racial schisms and distrust in neighborhoods.

Ready? Go!

Tonight the Patchwork Collective presents the Turntable Sessions v2.0, 7pm @ Ada Gallery.

It should be pretty sweet. The concept: individual musicians are paired in groups along with a DJ and together they improv for ten minutes. Sometimes it turns out crappy, but sometimes it turns out amazing. There will probably be a trombone there, and I can support that.

So come out, make sure you get there on time though because the last PC show sold out and people were turned away.