If you have a brain you know that Richmond’s biggest problem is the race/class divide left to us by four hundred years of racism. We’ve talked about it a length. It affects every aspect of our city in deep and complex ways.

This I know.

What I don’t know is why the Richmond Free Press decided to run a front page article labeling the planning process a “Sea of Whiteness.” I also don’t know why Dover (of Dover & Kohl) actually apologized for the lack of racial diversity! WTF!

The Free Press should be apologizing.

Who better than the Free Press to motivate and inform some of the black residents of Richmond. Did the Free Press run an article alerting its readership of the meeting before labeling the event a “Sea of Whiteness?” Even if they did, did they run it on the front page in huge letters?

Sigh. It makes me angry and I can’t think straight. I may post more in the comments.

Read more here and here.

Tagged by J! This was originally “eight habits or facts,” but habits are so much more interesting than facts. If I run out of habits I guess I will thrown in a few facts.

• Every night I brush my teeth and then read about fifteen verses of the Bible. Me and the wife have been doing that nightly for a couple of years now.
• I ride my bike or walk to work every day. I do get rides home occasionally.
• I always sleep on the stage left side of the bed.
• I can only sleep on my left side because onetime I read a thing on the internets about how it improves digestion.
• Every morning I wake up without an alarm clock.
• I feed the dogs each morning.
• I drink probably two liters of water each day.
• FACT: I never wore shorts ever until I found this one pair of basketball shorts that I *love* and wear every. single. day.

I don’t really know eight people but here are some that are hereafter “tagged.”

• Wife
• Justin
• Matthew

Today Catherine Keiper posted a comment on my recent post about the Department of Community Development’s charrette. It wasn’t necessarily about the charrette and I feel like it might derail interesting conversation about Richmond. So I deleted the comment and have reposted it here:

Hey Ross. I read your comments you left on my husband’s blog about Vick and what makes you smile. I just wanted to let you know that makes me sick. Animals and stats are not even in the same category. Don’t ever post a sick comment like that to any article or blog about dog fighting. I am certain that it is the idiots like yourself that will slap Vick on the wrist with a fine.

For anyone interested here is the offending post and my offending comment.

It’s weird when people that I don’t know call me an idiot in a public(ish) space. And just for the record I hope Vick goes to jail. As the husband of an ex-public school teacher I’m fully aware of the influence people like that have on kids.

This weekend was the downtown Master Plan kickoff and hands on session. Much has been said of it across the internets (particularly here and here). Instead of rehashing what people have already said I thought I would list out some of my group’s (including Joe Kohl of Dover & Kohl. Hey do you guys need a new website? Because I know some guys.) better ideas.

• Reduce the number of lanes on the Manchester Bridge (8th street). In the new space plant some trees and create a pedestrian / bike friendly pathway that overlooks the river — not in the middle of eight lanes of traffic.
• Build a light rail circulator that goes from Carytown down Cary, up to the top of Church Hill (probably by St. Johns), and back down Broad Street. I think we’d also accept a bus circulator but it somehow, either in branding or bus model, needs to be different than the GRTC to avoid “bus stigma.”
• Build something, anything, on the entire city block of parking behind the John Marshall Court building. As an added bonus it’d be great to open up whatever street that is (Clay?) and connect the biotech area to the MCV area.
• Steal / buy back all the land not owned by the city on the river front. It is ridiculous that Dominion owns that huge chunk of land right by the river. Work hard to build a connection between the city and the River (on both sides).

Anything that you’d like to see done to/in the city?

Wtf is a charrette first of all? I have no idea; my dictionary *and* spellchecker are both clueless. From what I hear, if you care about Richmond and are interested in having your input included in Richmond’s Master Plan you need to attend this “charette.”

The deets are: 6.30pm tonight (Friday the 20th) at Plant Zero.

I know I care about Richmond, probably more than you do, so I’m going to be there. It could be really sweet — or really boring.

Here is a deluge of further info.
See you there?

Since we had such a grande ol’ tyme doing the zombie epic we decided to start a new fictional project: Gifted & Talented.

In fact I set up a whole new website to hold all of our ongoing and (hopefully) future fictional projects. You can check it out at fiction.haduken.com.

Read it and weep.

There goes our last chance of having a Virginian in the White House in 2008. The esteemed Jim Gilmore has dropped out of the race. During his brief candidacy, many people wondered, “why is he even running?” Many more wondered, “who is that guy?”

In any case, it goes to show you that even if some dude sets up a “Draft [your name here]” website on the internet, it doesn’t really mean you should actually run. All it means is that a crazy dude had 10$ to spend on a domain name.

But, for those Gilmore diehards out there, don’t give up hope yet. The speculation is that the only sane reason he was running in the first place is that he wants to raise his profile for a run for Virginia Governor or for the possibly open Senate seat currently inhabited by resident badass John Warner. I’m not quite sure how far his profile has been raised here in July 2007, but hey, I guess it looks good on a resume.

Here’s my share of this weeks haul:

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