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Still Relevant

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011

Save Richmond is no longer a regularly-updated, functioning blog. But the problems that were discussed here for more than six years are still relevant and pressing, and the gripes expressed are as valid as ever: Yes, Richmond’s political and business leaders talk a good game when it comes to supporting and acknowledging the city’s creative community — but I think you’ll agree that actions speak much louder than words.

So feel free to peruse the Save Richmond archives and to consider and use the plethora of information contained on these pages to keep fighting the good fight.

Thanks!!

Posted in Catharsis, Richmond in the news, armchair philosophizin', come the revolution..., moments of civic brilliance, the free press, whiners with websites | No Comments »

Exit Stage Right

Sunday, August 16th, 2009

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Previously unpublished photograph of the original SAVE RICHMOND staff. From left to right: Andrew Beaujon, “Eagle Eyes” and Don Harrison. Not pictured and probably hiding: Ewa Beaujon.

Don here. I sat down to write a teary-eyed goodbye and to say how much I’m going to miss everybody and how it was the end of an era and that times are changing and the cow jumped over the moon… blah blah blah.

And then I realized that I’m not really going anywhere.

At any rate, it’s all true. Your humble narrator has accepted a position at Style Weekly — I’m the new Arts and Culture Editor. But it’s not all a kick and a gas. I have to give up posting here at Save Richmond.

That doesn’t mean SR is going away. This web address will live on. “Eagle Eyes” will continue to post here, and bring you his tenaciously-researched overview of Metro Richmond. Yes, he is a skeleton in a top hat (see photo above) but don’t let that shake you.

And, obviously, I’m not going to go away either. I have to assume that, if you read Save Richmond, you also read Style Weekly. If not, get thee to a big newsbox adorned with an S immediately! Or click on this spot right here. Save Richmond has been linking to Style’s excellent arts and news coverage, and discussing their reporting, for years. Now I get to work with these talented people. How cool is that?

A couple of weeks ago, when we celebrated our sixth anniversary, I explained that Save Richmond didn’t start out as a blog. And it would never have been one without the seminal snark of Andrew Beaujon and the early support of his wife Ewa Beaujon. Save Richmond has also been enhanced by the savvy financial forensics work of “Eagle Eyes” — that kid’s a keeper. Basically, all I’ve been trying to do here is to keep up with those folks.

Damn. Now I’m getting teary eyed.

(But I’m cheered by the news that I’m getting my Christmas present early this year. That’s a hint, by the way.)

Thanks everyone. See you at Style.

Posted in Richmond Arts Flashback, Richmond in the news, armchair philosophizin', come the revolution..., fun with bribery, holy cannoli, life is filled with sadness and disappointment, moments of civic brilliance, number-crunching, the free press, the inexplicably employed, the outside world, we get letters, whiners with websites | No Comments »

The Answers From CenterStage

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Don here. When Eagle Eyes and I submitted our “Twenty Questions” to CenterStage earlier in the summer, I thought we were being very easy on them.

We didn’t ask about an artists endowment — there isn’t one — or the rumors that ticket sales for the CenterStage grand opening weekend have been slow. And we didn’t ask why there is so little of substance announced on the initial event schedule (BTW: Bringing in The Oak Ridge Boys is actually a good idea. In the context of a full and diverse schedule of events, that is. So where’s the rest? Or is this it?)

We didn’t ask about the parking situation, although there seems to be some problems there too. And we didn’t press too hard on how the Foundation intends to respect the history (ahem!) of the historic Richmond theatres they’ve been handed the keys to, and given considerable public subsidy to oversee and to safeguard. Perhaps, in light of recent events, we should have.

[Incidentally, it's always worth reminding people that this project is, was and will be funded by public tax dollars. So anyone who tries to tell you that CenterStage, or RPAC, or VAPAF — whatever you want to call them — should be able to do with its "history" what it wants — like a private company reworking a new sales brochure — has an awfully broad and somewhat shitty view of both history and what it means to be a leader in the public trust.]

No, we didn’t press Jeff and Jay at Capital Results PR (who officially handled our inquiries about the project — thanks guys!) about such things as the lack of an artistic director — we assumed there would be one. After all, wasn’t there a guy named Joel Katz? And didn’t he run the Carpenter Center successfully for ten years with very little city subsidy? He was fired for truth-telling too.

Why does having an artistic director — a “vision” — matter? Let’s take a look at a reputable arts venue named CenterStage — Baltimore’s CenterStage — which does not take city tax dollars and is overseen by a staff that includes a seasoned artistic director. If you want a good example closer to home, take a look at the diverse international arts programs that the director of The American Theatre in Hampton, Michael Curry, brings to Tidewater each season in a former second-run movie house (click here for the 2009-10 schedule).

Gee, let’s get even closer than that. Think of Kathy Panoff and what she accomplished in building UR’s Modlin Center.

Make no mistake, folks. This stuff matters. You can’t pass your programming and your artistic direction off to a hockey arena promoter (in this case, SMG) and expect to have a “world class performing arts center.” It just doesn’t compute.

Anyway, we promised the boys at Capital Results that we would print their official answers “as is” with a very minimum of linking and editorializing. But forgive us for pointing out facts when the answers fail to do so, and please allow us the opportunity to tell you why some of these questions might just be a wee bit important, and especially to those people who say they support this thing and want it to work.

There was also one “followup” question that we are still a little unclear about.

But you’ll read all about it… as you wade through…

[Cue trumpets, or "Elvira" — your pick] …

The Answers From CenterStage.

And for those of you coming in late to the CenterStage / Virginia Performing Arts Center story, feel free to plunder our archives. And start asking your own questions. After all, you are paying for this particular “serious fun,” whether you like it or not.

Posted in Catharsis, Richmond Arts Flashback, Richmond in the news, Uncategorized, armchair philosophizin', come the revolution..., fun with bribery, holy cannoli, life is filled with sadness and disappointment, moments of civic brilliance, number-crunching, our social betters, politricks, sheer terror, shell game, something smells funny in here, techmology, the free press, the inexplicably employed, whiners with websites | No Comments »

Virginia Rocks!

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

elvisrtd020556

Elvis Presley takes Richmond’s “folk music addicts” by storm in 1956.

Don here. If there’s one thing we haven’t indulged in at Save Richmond, it is a lot of shameless self-promotion. So you haven’t heard a great deal on these pages about my travails as a paid writer and journalist, working on subjects ranging from the 1907 Jamestown Exposition to the state of America’s coastlines to a history of Virginia’s drive-ins to a profile of R&B legend Swamp Dogg (to name a few). It would be a tough shoehorn to fit any of those topics — save Swamp Dogg. More on him later — onto the pages of Save Richmond. Agreed?

Plus: In my paid work, I normally work in something called print. You youngsters don’t know anything about that. But it’s tough to link to a print magazine lying in a doctor’s office. (OK, OK, I did have to bite my lip when my Virginia Living interview with Dr. Ralph Stanley hit the stands. Ralph has played Richmond many times, after all — surely he is relevant to discussions about downtown redevelopment)

But this time I have to make a big exception. I have to point at myself and whoop it up and do a paradiddle. I’ve got to get real gone for a change.

It seems word is spreading about the Virginia Rocks! 2-CD set and museum exhibit that I helped to research and put together along with the Blue Ridge Institute and Museum at Ferrum College. The project took nearly two years and was partially funded by a grant from the Virginia Foundation For the Humanities. I, along with my fellow rockabilliologist Brent Hosier, wrote the 72-page essay of liner notes enclosed with the CD box set, and Grammy-winning sound specialist Chris King mastered the discs.

The box set was released on July 14th. And the museum exhibit is up and hooting now at the Blue Ridge Institute in Ferrum, which is near Roanoke. Get directions here.

Writing about the project, David Maurer at the Charlottesville Daily Progress flat gits it in a recent feature article”:

In the early 1950s the pounding, driving wheels of a new kind of music came highballing up out of the South like a past-due locomotive.

Called rock ’n’ roll, it had the transformative power to alter one’s musical sensibilities with a single song. But rock had an older twin with a flipped-up-collar attitude and a good-natured sneer.

This first-born rebel was called rockabilly. Its blistering, slap-back beat set primal nerve endings aquiver that most teenagers hadn’t known they possessed.

No one did more to teach and spread rockabilly throughout the land than the “Hillbilly Cat” himself, Elvis Presley. Other superstars of the genre include Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis and Virginia’s own Gene Vincent.

Orbiting this galaxy of rock’s founding fathers was a phalanx of talented singers and musicians. These satellite artists provided live music at local sock hops and maybe cut a record or two, but never ascended onto the national stage.

Rambunctious rockabilly never died per se, but by the early 1960s, when the Beatles started taking rock to another sphere, its golden era had passed. Most of the Virginia artists whose early rockabilly recordings epitomized the raw exuberance of the music slipped into obscurity.

Brent Baldwin picks it up from there in today’s Style Weekly:

Everybody’s heard that absurdly catchy “Woo-Hoo” song from Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill,” later made more popular through a national TV campaign for Vonage broadband. But did you know the original 1959 song came from an Oregon Hill-based group, the Rock-A-Teens, featuring longtime local ad man Jess Duboy?

If you did, another “woo hoo” for you.

Thanks to a double CD set, released just last week, “Virginia Rocks! The History of Rockabilly in the Commonwealth” (on British label, JSP Records) — unsung local rockabilly acts such as the Rock-A-Teens are finally getting their due. The collection, part of a larger exhibit from the Blue Ridge Institute and Museum at Ferrum College in Southwest Virginia, features the likes of “female Elvis” Janis Martin, Roy Clark, Patsy Cline, Link Wray, Wayne Newton and Norfolk legend Gene Vincent — hero to future rock gods John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison.

There have been other swell feature writeups here and here, and some nice early reviews here and here. If you can’t find it locally (always support your local record store FIRST), you can order the box set here on Amazon.

The idea to document Virginia’s early rock ‘n’ roll had been in the works for a long time, and this whole project was really the brainchild of Roddy Moore, the Blue Ridge Institute’s tireless director. He can well remember the local teen dances and sock hop shows of the late ’50’s — he was there.

Seven years ago, Moore convened a “Rockabilly Roundtable” to meet at Ferrum and discuss the possibility of getting something like an “Early Rock in Virginia” project off the ground. [Now that should be something that Richmond can really appreciate: a Rockabilly Board of Directors.] Convened were record collectors, writers, folklorists, geneologists and archivists — exactly the kind of people you’d want to advise on a project like this.

After its initial run at Ferrum College, the Virginia rockabilly exhibit will travel across the state to various museums and cultural institutions over the next few years. A warning to readers— I’ll be updating the progress of the project, and the box set, from time to time on these pages. Because, sometimes, a little shameless self-promotion (like loud rockabilly) is good for the soul.

To see photos of the Virginia Rocks exhibit, log onto the Blue Ridge Institute’s Facebook Page. And here’s the official press release.

Gene Vincent’s biographer Sue Van Hecke served on the “Rockabilly Roundtable.” You can check out her excellent blog here and find out more about the book she just co-wrote with Norfolk rocker Dean Kohler.

For more on Brent Hosier and his excellent Arcania International label — unearthing lost R&B, soul and rock from Virginia’s complicated past — click here.

For more on Elvis in Richmond, check out the great photos and period newspaper ads featured on the Scotty Moore website. And if you are one of those old-timers who still knows what print is, click here to buy the back issue of a magazine that features a piece about Elvis Presley’s Virginia connections, written by yours truly.

And for a taste of what you’ll get if you check out Virginia Rocks!, get an earful of the original version of “Woo Hoo” by the Richmond-based Rock-A-Teens via this inspired fan video:

The Rock-A-Teens - Woo Hoo (1959)

Posted in Richmond Arts Flashback, Richmond in the news, techmology, the outside world | No Comments »

CAPS Blue Ribbon

Sunday, July 26th, 2009

We’ve been blasting CAPS — forgive the pun — a lot in the last few months. But the city’s “code enforcement squad” also does good, no make that great, work that shouldn’t go unnoticed.

From a recent city news release:

Code Enforcement Wins Case Against Blight

A judge found one of the city’s largest vacant property and blighted property-owners guilty on 16 violations on Thursday, July 16. The City’s Code Enforcement squad has worked diligently in concert with the City Attorney’s Office and the Police Department on this case.
 
Here is an excerpt from the Times-Dispatch article:
“Richmond General District Judge David Eugene Cheek Sr. found Oliver Lawrence guilty and told him to correct those violations that pose safety hazards by Aug. 14, the day Lawrence is to be sentenced.
 
City officials said yesterday’s convictions stemmed in part from three properties in downtown Richmond that are so damaged that one business owner calls the area “Little Baghdad.”
 
Before yesterday, Lawrence already had been convicted of at least 152 misdemeanor property violations, fined $357,050 and sentenced to 270 days in jail, all suspended. Those charges stem from problems at more than 30 properties owned by Lawrence.
 
Code Enforcement Division also served Lawrence with 152 “show cause” documents because they contend he has not met those conditions… that hearing is scheduled for Aug. 20.

Make no mistake — Richmond’s Community Assisted Public Safety program may have come down with a serious case of “mission creep” of late, but this is the kind of stuff that really helps our city: Holding vacant landlords accountable.

Good on them.

Posted in Richmond in the news, armchair philosophizin', come the revolution..., moments of civic brilliance | No Comments »

Not On Our Block

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Bill Goodwin and “Booty” Armstrong to award-winning VCU School of the Arts:

Take your modernistic science fiction nuclear arts reactor somewhere else!

Amy Biegelsen reports in the latest Style that the original site for the school’s new art gallery was nixed recently by Goodwin and Armstrong, who just so happen to own the swanky historic Jefferson Hotel across the street from where the new VCU facility was to be built.

I guess that Bill and “Booty” can well remember the example set by the three little pigs. They’d prefer something made out of brick, thanks.

Biegelsen reports:

Originally planned for a parcel across the street from the Jefferson Hotel next to the new Brandcenter headquarters, architects are redesigning for a location at the southwest corner of Broad and Belvidere streets.

“Somebody in my office likened [the design] to a nuclear plant,” says Beverley W. “Booty” Armstrong, part-owner of the Jefferson. He and William H. Goodwin Jr. own the hotel and have donated land in the immediate neighborhood to the school, including the locations where the new engineering, business and advertising buildings are, and where the gallery would have been.

Armstrong can appreciate the design — just not at that address. As a condition of the land donations, Armstrong and Goodwin reserved the right to review the architecture of the buildings that went up there.

First of all, let’s stand and applaud Armstrong and Goodwin for donating the land to VCU in the first place. But this doesn’t seem to be what they had in mind. Modernist design akin to George Clinton’s Mothership… an edgy New York architect… an arts complex run by a nationally-ranked educational program that will have actual arts educators and administrators in charge … Yeah. I can see where something like this moving in across the street would spook a coupla old-school Republican business dudes like Goodwin and Armstrong. Might be homosexuals involved too — perhaps even NEA-funded pornography and lefty political statements. Not on our block, artsy-fartsy types.

At the very least, this episode gives us some insight into the artistic sensibilities of the business community’s self-appointed gatekeepers of the arts.

Art is just fine… in its place.

[Geez... more stories like this and I'll start to believe that this city is a censorious backwater run by tight-assed fuddys who hate modern art or something.]

No, this is really only news because Mr. Goodwin and Mr. Armstrong have been two of the main backers of a performing arts center a couple blocks away from the area in question. Since this arts center (CenterStage a.k.a “The Boondoggle”) will have no artistic director to guide its mission, one can only assume that board members and big donors like Bill and “Booty” will have a big say on what happens on stage there. If so, I’m sure that we can expect a lot of, er, challenging work in the years to come.

To my mind, this is a huge opportunity lost. Just imagine... a distinguished downtown neighborhood that visually reflects both the Richmond of the past and the Richmond of the future — our complex history on one side, the mysteries of the modern world on the other. What a signal this pairing could have sent to visitors and city residents alike. It would have shown that we can actually hold two different thoughts in our heads at the same time — on a single city block — and not be confused, frightened or intimidated.

This is Richmond, of course. Screw that noise.

But, beyond a lack of vision and inclusion, what is really happening here? I can’t help but wonder if there might be another reason why these two wily lords of commerce would rather have a new state-of-the-art VCU School of the Arts building somewhere other than near their designated snatch of downtown; after all, this distinctive facility would have been near certain publicly-funded arts venues that they control. Now it has been pushed closer to the Fan.

Hmmm… I’m thinking, I’m thinking.

Back to Style [emphasis mine]:

The current design envisions 8,000 to 9,000 square feet of space for visiting exhibits and shows from the gallery’s permanent collection and a 200-seat auditorium designed to handle things as varied as film festivals, chamber music concerts, and dance and theater performances.

Oh. Wait.

Posted in Richmond Arts Flashback, Richmond in the news, armchair philosophizin', come the revolution..., holy cannoli, our social betters, something smells funny in here | No Comments »

Door Hangings vs. Reality

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Thinking about thinking about changing. That’s Richmond.

How many years have we been talking about the Richmond school administration’s wasteful and potentially corrupt procurement division? It’s been compared to everything from a cesspool to a black hole. Now another audit, this one conducted by the school board’s own auditor, confirms (one more time) the waste and abuse by the department, and the serious lack of oversight by high-ranking school officials.

In short, if this is a “re-do,” it looks like Richmond Public Schools has failed the test again.

If you’ll recall, “Auditors were denied access to detailed procurement records” during a 2007 investigation of the schools. Despite the in-house stonewalling, the final version of this report by the City Auditor detailed a system where fund allocation was largely unsupervised (that’s your money, by the way). It also made numerous recommendations for change.

More than a year later, after much teeth-mashing, the city finally released a full audit of the Procurement and Accounts Payable division. As was predicted by many, the April 2008 report uncovered a host of irregularities and outright scandals.

First of all, the auditor was kind enough to explain why examining and closely monitoring school procurement practices is necessary:

Traditionally, procurement and accounts payable functions are targets for fraudulent activities. According to the Association of Fraud Examiners, 71.4% of the total number of instances of occupational fraud committed involved billing, expense reimbursement, check tampering and wire transfer frauds.

Looking at the school’s procurement policies and performance, the report found:

- The internal controls for following procedure and ensuring lawful practices in the procurement and accounts payable processes were “significantly weak.”

- There were “significant non-compliance with RPS policies and the Virginia Public Procurement Act provisions.”

- School officials paid $18 million for purchase orders that were not authorized.

- Richmond Public Schools buys more textbooks than it has students [this will be news to teachers in several city schools who complain about not having enough books to go around]. Moreover, RPS has higher textbook costs per student than localities with more students, such as Henrico. It also has no record of what is done with used textbooks, who sells them and for how much.

- The RPS staff may have skirted regulations for emergency and single-source purchases. Moreover, the School Board’s approvals for most of the emergency purchases were not obtained as required by the School Board bylaws.

- Looking at 52 competitively bid purchases, 96 percent did not comply with such requirements as documenting bids. The purchases were for more than $1 million.

- School officials awarded a $104,000 contract to a firm barred from doing business with the federal and state governments because of unethical business practices.

- Two RPS employees were related to contractors who provided services to RPS. One was a purchasing officer responsible for construction procurement. The Auditor’s office identified that “one of the construction firms utilized by RPS is owned by a family member of this purchasing officer. And a Plant Services employee’s immediate family member performed construction services for RPS. This is of concern since construction projects are handled by Plant Services. During the audit scope, both contractors received a combined total of approximately $357,000 from RPS.”

- “On at least two occasions, staff members were instructed to backdate contracts.”

- RPS has no little control over its vendor data input. “Staff could add, change and delete vendors without any supporting documentation.”

- There were approx. 300 vendors that had duplicate names in the RPS database. Little wonder that Dalal and his staff found duplicate payments on 59 invoices totaling $121,073.

- RPS balances its bank account haphazardly. “Basically, RPS personnel reconcile the bank balance with outstanding checks and relevant adjustments. This means that, as long as the list of outstanding checks reconciles with the bank balance, any errors in the general ledger balance will not be detected by this process.”

- There was no proper documentation concerning expenses charged to credit cards issued to RPS management and former School Board members. “The charges on two former School Board members’ credit cards included the following: $485 in gasoline purchases in the Richmond area with no receipts or explanations. The business purpose of these charges is unknown… $10 for one on-line charge to an inappropriate website…. $175 for a Western Union money order. The payee and the reason for issuing the money order are not known.”

- Two interactive, computerized classroom projection systems are missing. These cost a total of $7,000.

There’s more, a lot more. This devastating report, which came complete with detailed recommendations for improving the department, should have been enough to get the school administration cracking down on their procurement policies immediately.

But, no, Richmond schools had to wait one more year, and endure one more embarrassing procurement scandal — a $291,000 school elevator job awarded without proper bidding— before the school board began its own audit of the school’s accounts payable division.

In other words, RPS began thinking about thinking about doing something.

Now this latest study has arrived. And surprise, surprise… there are problems within RPS’ Accounts Payable and Procurement Department!

From the Times-Dispatch:

The Richmond school system’s payroll department is overstaffed but has been unable to detect overpayments, accurately track time off or collect money it is owed by employees, according to a report released yesterday by the schools’ internal auditor.

In addition, an audit of the system’s human resources department, also released yesterday, showed a department operating on the fringe, with out-of-date policies and procedures and ineffective management. Neither department has seen updated guidelines since the mid-1990s.

“We have a lot of concerns with policies and procedures,” internal auditor Debora R. Johns told the School Board’s Audit Committee.

Her review of payroll information, covering the period from July 1, 2006, to May 31 of this year found a number of problems, including:

* Overpayments to 19 employees, totaling $50,356.96. The biggest was $10,050 to an employee who was paid while on education leave. While that employee has agreed to repay the money — in $50 increments over 201 pay periods — four other employees may have gotten away with keeping $1,710.64 in overpayments, according to the report.

* Employees taking off time but not recording it, leaving time off on the books that had been used. There were also problems with the awarding, tracking and use of compensatory time off, with no single way of recording such time.

* Sloppy record-keeping. A spot review of 30 employee files became a review of 29 files when one employee’s file couldn’t be found. Of those files in place, all were missing certain forms, including copies of photo identification, Social Security cards and internal paperwork used to prove job status.

“It’s deja vu all over again,” as Yogi Berra might say.

So what is RPS’ response to this latest latest audit? Immediate adoption of the report’s recommendations? A tearful mea culpa for ignoring the last audit’s recommendations (and the one before that)? A pledge to begin a campaign of no-excuse housecleaning? A concentrated bout of unequivocal fat-trimming?

Girlfriend, please. [Emphasis mine]:

“This is the cumulative effect of long-term problems,” said Superintendent Yvonne W. Brandon. “These are bigger issues than any one person.”

The payroll department has nine employees, and the audit recommended eliminating two positions. While Brandon agreed with most of Johns’ findings, she balked at the idea of cutting two of the payroll employees.

She did, however, agree to an aggressive time frame for correcting the problems, with a September target for fixing many of the problems. “We can’t afford to wait,” she said. “Even if we don’t hit the target on all of them, we can’t wait to start.

“I welcome audits. They help us identify strategies toward improving.”

Uh-huh.

I’m happy to hear that there will be “aggressive” action taken. Problem is: RPS has “waited to start” for years. They have disregarded and thrown excuses at previous studies that either hinted at, or pointed directly to, the same kind of findings. Now, as she “welcomes” the latest findings, the superintendent of schools is appearing to resist common sense remedies that would help to improve and streamline the department.

See you in September, as they say.

Let’s not kid ourselves about the message that all of this sends. These latest revelations (and the superintendent’s less-than-definitive response to them) will resonate with area parents more than any glossy door hanging or slick advertising slogan. Yeah, it’s all well and good to initiate expensive public relations campaigns designed to convince people that everything is OK at Richmond Public Schools. But wouldn’t it have been more beneficial and honest to work on the reality first?

This latest audit of RPS is scandalous stuff, sure. But it is hardly surprising and it’s certainly not breaking news.

Posted in Richmond in the news, armchair philosophizin', holy cannoli, number-crunching, sheer terror, shell game, something smells funny in here, the free press | No Comments »

Quick Thoughts

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

Mark Holmberg at Channel 6 weighs in on the city government’s ongoing war with the grassroots music and art community. Save Richmond has had disagreements with Mark in the past, but on this one, all we can say is: “Go Slim Go!”

********

There are philanthropists who give money to things and then there are genuine community heroes. Retired real estate developer W.E. Singleton, a huge fan of Richmond’s underappreciated Parks and Recreation Department, has offered to pay for the restoration of the burned playground at George Mason Elementary all by himself. We salute you, Mr. Singleton. If we had ten more like you around here, Richmond might actually be going somewhere.

********

Councilwoman Ellen Robertson’s “standards” never cease to amaze. We’ll just leave it at that.

********

The emails are still coming in to SR H.Q. about this. We can’t explain it, except to say that it is further evidence of the impending apocalypse. For the record, “Eagle Eyes,” who wrote the cited Save Richmond post, had this to say: “I guess it is just cranks that read our site.”

********

I hope all of you who came out to Broad Appétit on Sunday had a great time stuffing your faces. I know I did. And I hope everyone enjoyed those CenterStage hand fans that were being passed out. Just to remind: Three months away from its grand “gala” — on September 11th!! — the performing arts center still doesn’t have an artistic director, or a complete calendar of events. What has been announced on the schedule are programs that would have played the Modlin Center For the Arts if there had been no Centerstage. (Think about that for a minute). So enjoy those fans, folks — they may be the only windfall that Richmonders ever get out of the city’s ongoing boondoggle.

Posted in Richmond in the news, armchair philosophizin', come the revolution..., holy cannoli, moments of civic brilliance, number-crunching, our social betters, politricks, sheer terror, shell game, something smells funny in here, techmology, the free press, the inexplicably employed | No Comments »

Gary

Sunday, May 24th, 2009

garyga12

I remember making a quick phone call after I got out of my first National Folk Festival programming committee meeting a few years ago. I rang my friend Brent Hosier — a Richmond music historian of the first rank — and pleaded with him in an exasperated tone of voice (as if some big secret had been kept from me all these years):

“Alright, tell me all about Gary Gerloff.”

Gary Gerloff, who passed away Saturday morning, made an indelible impression on me from the moment I met him. I’m told he specialized in that sort of thing. The longtime local musician — who performed a type of Americana music that he referred to as “Psychedelic Dixieland” — continued to be a distinctive and unavoidable presence at those committee meetings. With a build and a beard not unlike Jerry Garcia, Richmond’s own “Captain Trips” was kind of like the precocious class clown who kept wanting to start his own discussion groups at the expense of the lesson plan.

Ah, but who would usually be the first among the group to bring up a topic nobody wanted to discuss, or to suggest an artist/genre/aesthetic that was somewhat provocative? Who was sure to get the discussion flowing with a thought or an argument that no one else anticipated? It was Gary, who could quickly become as serious, insistent and persuasive as a prosecutor when it suited his fancy. This guy was no clown — he was as sharp as they come.

According to his pal Todd Ranson, viewing arrangements are currently being finalized and “a full Catholic funeral is planned.” Reading this fine essay on Gary over at Mike Welton’s Cool Stretch of Highway blog, I wished I had known him better… a lot better. I’m proud to have known him at all.

An excerpt:

He’s never left his hometown for more than a month. And if the former capital of the Confederacy, an aloof and well-mannered place, never will be considered a musical Mecca, it does hold special appeal for him.

“I just love the dignity of living in a once-defeated city,” he says. “A great deal of pride once carried us here. It gave us a noble cloak, and adorned us with the air of some ancient Greek city-state. Richmond is like some old whore or piece of architecture. She’s been around forever, it seems. But when you notice her in a certain light, why, there’s a real charm to behold.”

He’s talking in his basement over a 20-foot bar with three sinks. (“One to wash your hands. One to wash your face. And one to throw up in.”) Behind the bar are display cases jam-packed with the things he holds precious: bobble-head dolls of Satchel Paige, Grady Little and Keith Richards; miniature ceramic hand-painted jazz ensembles from New Orleans; an autograph from Hunter S. Thompson; a collection of Three Stooges shot glasses; an English nose whistle; two James Brown posters from concerts at The Arena; a stuffed and mounted bear’s head casually draped in a feathered Mardi Gras mask and beads; and a 1970s photograph of his late brother Peter, arm-in-arm with the family’s maid.

Behind him, on a 9-foot Brunswick regulation pool table, lie seven bamboo fly rods, an assortment of air horns, one birdhouse in the form of the Parthenon and two Halicrafter short wave radios. Behind the pool table stand 15 vintage guitars and six worn-out, antique tube amplifiers.

He says he’s tempted to call his 1960s split level, with its 1400 sq. ft. terraced deck, “a tumbled-down shack in BigFoot country,” but instead refers to it as his roost, his outpost and his thinking line of defense. He lives here on a densely wooded hill a half-mile from the James River with his wife who’s an accomplished pianist, his 11-year-old daughter who’s an aspiring writer, and his seven-year-old son, whom he tags a “yellow-haired monkey.”

All are unimpressed with his musical persona, one that plumbs the depths of American music and its attendant emotions.

Known to his fans as “Gary Garcia” because of a likeness for the late leader of the Dead, he labels himself a relic from another era – a living fossil. “I see myself as a bluesman first. Second, I am a champion of heartfelt emotions. I like awkward displays of love. I am an encourager of dreams,” he says.

Richmond musician Johnny Hott has played with Gerloff for 15 years. “His fans are about 30 years old and up. There’s this jam-band, Grateful Dead tie-in,” he says. “We were opening once for the Jerry Garcia Band after Jerry had died. There was this one guy in a tie-dyed T-shirt who was walking slowly to the stage from the back of the crowd, getting bigger and bigger, and he was chanting to Gerloff in a trance: ‘Jerry…Jerry…Jerry…” totally transfixed on him.”

Gerloff picked up his first guitar at age 12, and promptly abandoned all other ambitions; music became his life.

There will be a lot said about Gary Gerloff in the coming days. But his buddy Tim Timberlake passed along a couple of quotes from a Times-Dispatch article on Gary from 2001 (written by Jim O’Brien) that helps us to get a grip on what a special dude that he was. [Say what you want about the man — he gave great interview. Here is another revealing Q&A, from Plan 9's 9X Magazine.]

Let’s let this beloved “force of nature” — who could always speak for himself very well — speak for himself:

On new music:

“I may not understand it but I don’t fear it,” Gerloff said. “When I go by Twisters or some place and I hear sounds like the end of the world Parts 1 through 4, I encourage every bit of that. You want to know why? That’s the launching pad and kids are going to develop and their final twist after I’m done and gone will incorporate everything we’ve been through.”

On how he would like to be remembered:

“Well I’ve been described as a force of nature and I don’t know whether I like hearing that or not. But if I’m going to be viewed, I want to be viewed as somebody who cared about other people and the impact music can have. I want to be viewed as someone who made a stand for what I consider to be important music.”

And that you are, my friend. That you are.

Update: Visitation will be held Wednesday from 4PM - 6PM at St. Edward Catholic Church. There will be a mass at 7PM. Following that, there will be a reception at Positive Vibe Café. Thanks to Mike Welton and Lisa Sims for the info.

Posted in Richmond in the news, armchair philosophizin', life is filled with sadness and disappointment | No Comments »

The Whole Damn Combo Meal

Saturday, May 16th, 2009

Today, I like Paul Goldman more than ever… but I will never understand him.

L. Douglas Wilder’s former policy analyst, a perennial office seeker, is certainly unpredictable. Just when you think you’ve got Paul pegged as an opportunist/dreamer/kingmaker/crank/visionary (take your pick), he adds a new wrinkle to your impression of him.

Today, in a blog post (with a headline that is only slightly less funny than “SaveRichmond.com Editor Up In Arms Over His Chicken Alfredo”), he takes me to the woodshed over Save Richmond’s recent letter to his friend, Mayor Dwight Jones.

Say what you want about Paul — he’s a loyal dude and protective of his political friends. His formerly-estranged pal Jones was being “attacked” by some whiner with a website and Goldman instinctively rode off to the rescue. (It should be noted that Paul and I are also friendly acquaintances — and none of this is personal.)

Paul’s knee-jerk defense of Mayor Jones is admirable stuff considering that the underlying viewpoint of today’s blog post— that Richmond needs a weak mayor who simply “goes along” with city council — runs counter to just about everything that Goldman has worked and argued for since he gathered the signatures that ultimately led to Richmond’s “strong mayor” initiative getting on the ballot. It is noteworthy that 80% of Richmond voters voted yes to that particular proposition, and it is also worth a reminder that our current mayor only just managed to squeak out a victory in last November’s election.

Most folks got the point of the satirical letter we wrote to Dwight Jones, and we have to assume that Paul did as well: Richmond’s new Mayor Jones is being anything but a strong mayor. He, in fact, seems to be taking us back to the days when “going along” and political patronage and sweetheart backroom deals were the business models of choice for City Hall.

Even if we factor in Doug Wilder’s rocky and imperious rule, is there anyone out there (Paul included) who is ready to make the argument that Richmond was better off under the old system?

A 2005 article in Virginia Business described how that kind of “cooperative” system worked out for Richmond:

Between 1999 and 2004, three council members were packed off to federal prison. They include Councilman and former Mayor Leonidas B. Young, who pleaded guilty to fraud, obstruction of justice and tax evasion in 1999; Councilman Sa’ad Al-Amin, who was found guilty of several felony tax-related charges; and Councilwoman Gwen C. Hedge-peth, who was found guilty by a federal jury of three bribery charges and one count of lying to the FBI, all felonies. Moreover, federal probes into city financing uncovered graft that resulted in convictions of three other city officials. In one case, an assistant in the city manager’s office managed to steal a million dollars from the city.

Is Paul advocating a return to those good ol’ days?

If not, I have to throw Goldman’s favorite rhetorical catchphrase back at him: Where’s the beef?

Today’s Paul Goldman wonders why details matter — and asks why calling out the council and mayor on their respective budgets is so important.

But, once, there was another Paul Goldman, who said this on the campaign trail last year:


“The failure of the Wilder-led Administration and the Pantele-led Council to be straight with the people of Richmond about their failed budget and financial policies is one thing: but the failure of the local media to understand the importance of these matters as to their impact on the next Mayor is quite another.”

And


“As I have been saying for months, Wilder’s led City Hall and Pantele’s led
City Council need to stop wasting money on the most expensive City Hall and City Council in the state, and start cutting their expenses and government expenses, big time.”

And

“The more City Hall and City Council waste in spending that we can’t afford, the more in the end they will hurt the people of Richmond, especially the most vulnerable among us.”

How odd that today’s Paul Goldman suggests that it is foolish for anyone to point out such things as city council’s $91,000 appropriation for a “Council Policy Analyst” or the increased funding for a private “Party Patrol” at the expense of police and firefighting services. Today’s Paul Goldman says it is improper to condemn the hundreds of thousands that the mayor earmarked for the Sixth Street Marketplace. Save Richmond’s letter to the mayor was actually a bit too kind — it didn’t even mention things like council’s proposal to fund another expensive study of Shockoe Bottom, a piece of bloat that would come at the same time the city would cut thousands of dollars from Parks and Recreation programs.

The Paul Goldman of Yesterday was a master at pointing out such details and speaking out on why they matter. If yesterday’s Paul Goldman were looking at these 2009-2010 budget proposals, what would he say?

Something like this?


“There is not going to be any such double or near-double digit increase to pay for the bloated and expanded permanent city government they have now created. For too long, instead of making the hard decisions needed to expand our job base and thus our revenue base, and rein in the most expensive city hall, city council and city school bureaucracy in the state, city elected leaders and their fiscal teams have been authorizing spending at a rate that the people of Richmond can not afford.”

And I can only assume that today’s Paul (can we call him the “Paul Goldman of Earth Two”?) wrote his post denouncing Save Richmond’s letter before Mayor Jones gave his “State of the City” speech on Thursday. Standing before the Richmond Chamber, Jones all but confirmed the gist of Save Richmond’s concerns. He even admitted that, um, he had no idea what the state of the city was.

“It’s hard to do when you’ve been in office just 134 days.”

In lieu of hard details, Jones instead painted himself as a “Richmond’s biggest cheerleader” and gave essentially the same booster stump speech he’s been giving to 4-H Clubs since he took office. You know the one — where cooperation is mentioned way more times than leadership.

And now people know why we asked about the balls.

Jones also told the assembled Business Community throng that the Downtown Master Plan was subject to “negotiation” — nevermind that the document has already been heavily vetted and watered down by both the city planning commission and city council. If you were looking for a sign on Thursday that our new mayor was going to press the issue of Echo Harbour, and advocate strongly in favor of Planning Director Rachel Flynn and the transparent public process that gave birth to the DMP, you searched in vain. Instead, we got statements like this:

“It’s a plan. A plan is a guide, and that means there will be some negotiation along the way… I want to find a balance between preservation and economic development.”

Cooperation or capitulation?

Either way you look at it, it is a step backward for the city. I’m glad to see that other folks out there, if not Paul, can clearly see what is happening:

This is the man who had a 45 person transition team start work in November?? It is May and he still doesn’t have a handle on the state of the city?? That is amazing. Richmond got exactly what it wanted, a milquetoast wishy washy mayor who gets along with everyone and sings the city’s praises. No progress, no vision, no sense of direction, but everyone is saying nice things about each other. This is Richmond’s future.

Ouch!

Paul Goldman is a standup guy for speaking up for his friend, the Mayor. I acknowledge his loyalty and I appreciate the kind words he extended to me in passing as he expressed his displeasure with our criticisms of Dwight Jones.

But if Paul can’t see “the beef” here, it’s because he refuses to look under the bun, the tomato, the cheese and the pickles… or even to open up the styrofoam carton. The colloquial language found in our letter to Dwight Jones may have seemed frivolous and crude, but the situation couldn’t be more serious. Richmond’s future is at stake here — our plans and what kind of leaders our citizens want and deserve.

That isn’t just a slice of beef, Paul, that is the whole damn combo meal.

Posted in Richmond in the news, armchair philosophizin', holy cannoli, moments of civic brilliance, politricks, the free press, whiners with websites | No Comments »

A Letter to Mayor Dwight C. Jones

Monday, May 11th, 2009

jonessealTo: The Honorable Mayor Dwight C. Jones
City Hall, Richmond, Va.

From: Save Richmond

Dear Mayor Jones:

Congratulations once again on being elected mayor of the City of Richmond.

We trust that, four months after being sworn into office, you’ve finally finished unpacking all of your boxes and have placed all the personal photos and plaques of achievement exactly where you want them. By this time, your secretary should know exactly how you like your coffee, you should have finally figured out the city computer system, and you’re well on your way to memorizing the first names of most of the people who will be working for you in your new position. We are hopeful that, with all the Human Resources stuff out of the way, you are now completely settled in with your pencil sharpened, and that you are now ready to be Richmond’s mayor.

Getting used to a new job with added responsibilities can be a real trial. So we totally understand how it is. And we aren’t pushing or anything.

But we were wondering if you had a timeline in place for when you are finally going to grow some balls?

Beyond recent forays into killing area nightlife and scaring local non-profits — small fry stuff — you’ve been a real non-factor so far. Of course, we realize that you’ve been busy cleaning up a lot of unfinished mess. But other than making citizens aware that hizzoner has added some new material, notably “Kumbaya,” to the ol’ rhetorical repertoire, you seem to be completely missing in action from the bully pulpit.

We don’t know if you’ve been reading the papers but your planning director, Rachel Flynn, is currently under attack from members of city council, who have called for her resignation. Ms. Flynn’s crime? Speaking up for the thousands of citizens who support the Downtown Master Plan, and refusing to buckle under to one particular condo developer who has heretofore gamed the system at every turn. In their version of the budget, the city council even seeks to eliminate your proposal to purchase the land that is at the heart of this dispute with Flynn — it’s a key plank of the Downtown Master Plan, a piece of public policy that you claim to support.

It’s been a week and you’ve said nothing, done nothing, about any of this. People are starting to wonder where you are. Which is why we ask about the balls.

There are a number of different ways to enter a new job, and you have elected to start quietly, some would argue meekly, in your first months. This “dip a toe in the water” method has no doubt been a cosmetic attempt to differentiate yourself from your predecessor, who seemed to employ a highly confrontational style of governance that we’ll call the “Balls-first” approach.

City Hall has indeed been a friendlier, more inviting place of late, and we can attribute at least part of this to your outreach efforts to city council, and to the school administration, and to the governments of the surrounding counties. You wouldn’t want to show your balls too early, or for no good reason, and we respect that.

But no matter what anyone thinks about the idea of “cooperation” (it’s a two-way street), or how Doug Wilder might have defined the city’s executive powers, everyone can agree that checks and balances are key in a Democracy. At times, when forced, a leader who believes in something, and enjoys the support of the people, has to employ the full legislative and persuasive powers of his office to achieve his goals — he needs to grow a set, in other words. This is not “conflict,” this is part of the job of leadership (that’s why they call it a strong mayor).

With all due respect, your 2010 budget doesn’t always lead by example. $300,000 for Sixth Street Marketplace? Are we in a time warp? And, yes, we realize that you inherited a wicked deficit, but decreasing funds for teenage pregnancy programs in a city with a teen pregnancy rate twice that of the state average makes no sense. Still, the City Council’s alternative budget is worse. While it is heartening to see that you and our citizen legislators can agree on so much — and are discovering new and exciting ways to team up on others — there are a number of things in council’s version of reality that an unemasculated mayor would quickly challenge.

For example, our city council proposes increased funding for the Fan District Association’s “Party Patrol” — which proactively attempts to shut down parties in the Fan area. At the same time that it would fund these weekend snoopers, the council has joined you in calling for a staffing freeze for firefighters, and a decrease in the police budget.

You know where we’re going with this, Mr. Mayor. Would the city really increase the funding of a privately-run, constitutionally-challenged “patrol”… and at the same time reduce the resources of the city departments that would be forced to respond to it? That’s nuts.

If council has its way over your budget, $29,970 will go to the city attorney’s “continuing education.” Anyone who has followed his recent decisions can understand why the CA would need more schoolin’. You can even pinpoint exactly where he needs to do serious remedial work — in the areas of conflict of interest law. But why city taxpayers should have to pay for the council’s lawyer to keep up with the law is another question.

At the same time the council proposes this, it would cut (from your budget, Mr. Mayor) $274,087 in after-school programs for area schoolchildren and $10,000 from Adult Day Care services. It would take away bus discounts for seniors and it would decrease funds for both affordable housing and building conservation.

With all of these proposed cuts, you would think that city council would be ready to tighten its own belt and eat smaller portions. Right, Mr. Mayor?

You must not have met our city council. “We’ve got a lot of things we need to fund that take priority over more parkland,” Council president Kathy Graziano has said. I guess she means the $91,202 that she slotted in for a “City Council Policy Analyst,” an expenditure that all but loudly exclaims, “Boy do we have some balls!!” An unneutered mayor would halt that crap dead in its tracks.

These councilpeople do one thing very well — they reward the business community. In their budget, they propose giving $70,000 more to various business co-ops who have now bandied together as an “Economic Development Consortium.” The EDC is a varied crew of organizations — everything from Sportsbackers to Venture Richmond — many of them highly worthy, some of them with mixed records of achievement. We can tell you from personal experience that, for a coalition that is supposed to spur area commerce, this is not a group that folks at City Hall are very eager to publicize or to talk about. That’s very curious. Wouldn’t a mayor with some cajones at least ask to see results before further funding some of these groups? Wouldn’t he make sure that the public knows exactly what this “EDC” is and what groups are being funded before he allows council to throw any extra money at them?

We know that you want to be a positive guy and make your new friends on council happy — you just learned “Kumbaya” and everything. Believe it or not, there is a middle ground between the “going along” we’ve seen from City Hall in the past — indicted councilpeople, et al. — and the contentious feuding of the Wilder era.

Mayor Jones, it is up to you to find this middle ground.

But in order to do that, you will need to grow some balls. And soon.

Might we suggest sending a sharply-worded message to interested city council members that reafirms your strong support for the Downtown Master Plan? You can doodle a smiley face at the bottom of the press release if you want.

How about mounting a serious and aggressive stand against the Echo Harbor development during budget negotiations? You can do that while flashing a warm smile, can’t you?

And how about standing up for Rachel Flynn in your forthcoming State of the City address, and loudly announcing that she will remain as city planner until the end of your term? That would be a strong signal that you aren’t just some kind of grinning infomercial host — you’re the damn mayor!

No, Richmond didn’t want another L. Douglas Wilder. But we didn’t want another Rudy McCollum either.

We trust you feel comfy in your new plush office chair, and that you like the way the Key to the City feels in your hand, but it’s time for you to step up and be a leader.

For the sake of our city, it is now time for you to grow some balls.

Sincerely and respectfully yours,

The folks at S.R.

Posted in Richmond in the news, armchair philosophizin', come the revolution..., life is filled with sadness and disappointment, moments of civic brilliance, number-crunching, politricks, sheer terror, the free press | No Comments »

Richmond’s War on Nightlife (Ongoing…)

Friday, May 1st, 2009

War on Nightlife?

What war on nightlife?

Ross Catrow fills us in on the latest “bust” over at RVANews:

Rumor has it (ha!) that Rumors was shut down by nearly a dozen police and ABC officials tonight. Current word is that the boutique failed to pay income tax on the revenue generated by their off hours shows.

Update:

Firstly, Rumors is still open for business. The show was shut down, not the business.

The officials had seen “flyers” around for the show and noted 5$ admission charges. They showed up and despite the “5$ suggested donation” sign served the owner with a summons.

Amy Biegelsen and Brandon Reynolds give us a little backstory in this week’s Style Weekly music issue:

Rumors, on Harrison Street, started out two years ago as a designer clothing store, but added shows to its standard offerings almost immediately as a result of the constant demand by bands (both touring and local) for places to play.

Sounds like some real heinous lawbreakers.

I love the perceptive commentary developing over at RVANews, including:

I heard we need to tax small independent shows so that Richmond can afford the Performing Arts Hole in the Ground. Is that thing still there, or are we getting our rich person’s venue soon?

****

I one time made 120 dollars from donations while running a show there. None of it went to Rumors because when I tried to give them $20 they refused even that small amount.

****

Dear Richmond Police,
Thank you once again for keeping us safe. Thanks for wasting the tax money that it took to mobilize that many cops against a non-violent issue to secure tax funds that either don’t exist or wouldn’t be enough to pay for that one single mobilization. Thank you for never patrolling my neighborhood where there is REAL crime happening but managing to get my acoustic show at my favorite space canceled. You are so awesome.

Meanwhile, over in Chesterfield County….

Posted in Richmond in the news, come the revolution..., moments of civic brilliance, number-crunching, politricks, sheer terror, something smells funny in here | No Comments »

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