A colleague remarked to me how, when crossing by foot across Broad to the office, an impatient motorist trying to get out of the Pleasants parking lot whipped around another car and zoomed through the intersection with little regard for my compatriot's life or limb.
As I noted in a posting some time ago, I’m a flaneur. I observe the city from a sidewalk perspective. And one of the nasty reminders that not everybody else sees the sense in this mode of experience is how motorists act around pedestrians.
Each day I cross the Boulevard on my ambles, and if I choose the west-to-east migration pattern at Cary Street, my anxiety rises. It’s a corner long in infamy; when I rented there in the mid-1980s, we were always hearing smashes and crashes and the inevitable spray of cracked glass crunched underfoot. I don’t know why this corner is a cosmic vortex of violence, except to say that people — when behind the wheel — are often impatient jerks, as exhibited by our pal Goofy.
There are even nifty new signs that count down the time the pedestrian has to get across, along with a bright white pedestrian figure that shows anybody who can see that, yes, it’s the pedestrian’s turn.
Carytown has its offenders, too, especially for drivers coming out of Cary Court Shopping Center. Or those emerging from the McDonald’s drive-through. Some of them seem oblivious to, “Hey, I’m walkin’ here!”
Or, as they say in New York City: Don’t block the box!
I’m amazed by how careless drivers can be; I really try to practice conscientiousness about Total Pedestrian Awareness on the rare occasions when I’m behind the wheel. And that includes bicyclists, too, whom I’ve noted in greater numbers in the past few years.
So, Richmond, before you put the pedal down, look around.
First, the splashy Feb. 24 announcement in the press of mixed-used, retail and residence development planned for the former Alcoa/Reynolds factory on 6 acres between South 10th Street and Virginia Avenue along restored sections of the Haxall and Kanawha Canals.
The firms to undertake this work, beginning late this year, are The WVS Cos. and Fountainhead Development. Fountainhead has driven much of the Above Commerce Road renewal in Manchester, while WVS is the primary designer of Rocketts Landing.
The Times-Dispatch addressed how this represents the fulfillment of the 1994 partnership between the city and several businesses to facilitate development along the new canal walk and floodwall.
But the concept goes back even further, as I noted with the recent passing of city-planning official A. Howe Todd. Then, the ambitious vision was to revive the canal from the Great Turning Basin west to Maymont Park, though it runs to Tuckahoe Plantation in Goochland County and beyond. That concept resurfaces now and again.
Through Todd’s good offices, and those of Reynolds Metals execs Paul A. Murphy and Dale Wiley and Marcellus Wright & Partners, two of the Tidewater Connector locks were preserved, and the factory was built in a park setting to accommodate their presence. Five other locks were destroyed in 1974 by the ham-fisted construction of a Downtown Expressway exit ramp that swoops motorists to the entrance of the Tidewater Connector Park.
When the Faison company began constructing the James Center in 1983, canal enthusiasts urged the incorporation of the Great Turning Basin. The basin was about three blocks long, a block wide and up to 50 feet deep. From 1800 to 1880, it was a bustling terminus for river shipping, of materials and passengers.
This amazing engineering feat was designed to route river traffic around the rocky falls of the James River. It connected deep-water ships to the Great Ship Lock to the east, and the western course of the James River Kanawha Canal.
Faison slowed down construction and even assisted the excavation that relinquished from the muck several heretofore-unseen bateaux and packet boats. They altogether mapped 63 sunken boats, including two iron-hulled packets, a Civil War-era rowboat, six canal freighters and 48 batteaux. The complete story is told in a booklet, The James River Batteaux Festival Trail, by W.E. Trout III, written for the Virginia Canals and Navigations Society.
The bones of a number of sunken vessels yet await proper display.
For whatever reason, the developers of 1983-1985 didn’t understand the sheer coolness of creating a hotel and office group with a big water amenity. The what-could-have-been is memorialized in the plaza with lock stones and in art on the floors and walls of the James Center buildings.
This typified Richmond’s unfortunate perspective on urban planning. The city administration was panicked into improving the deteriorating city center, struggling to keep it from dying rather than fighting to keep it alive. Which reminds me.
This Sunday, the Times-Dispatch ran a piece about the bedraggled Richmond Coliseum.
This follows a December 2009 story about the same issue, upon which I commented at length.
The problem with demolishing the Coliseum is that, well, there’s not enough money around either to rip it down or to build another one. And a replacement probably wouldn’t get off the drawing boards for years, at least not as a regional project. As Henrico County Manager Virgil R. Hazelett was quoted as saying in Sunday's article, "There will be conversations about regional partnerships, but that's just not on the agenda right now," he said, "and it won't be for several years." This opens the way for corporate naming, and, well, that's the trend.
Then there’s at least one commenter online, with a Glen Allen address, who offers “The Solution.” This entails forming an impartial regional board to move the question forward, and a surcharge on tickets purchased for travelers departing or arriving at Richmond International airport.
This, of course, would be a “tax.”
Good luck with that.
The Washington Post’s Weekend supplement placed the Virginia Historical Society in its Escapes section today. I got a little tight in the stomach when I discovered the article, since the last time this happened, travel writer Rebecca J. Ritzel presented a dispiriting picture of the dormant blocks around CenterStage.
In that article, Ritzel was famously advised by the Hilton staff not to walk the seven blocks from the hotel to experience what I call Gallery and Restaurants Row. She was advised to take a cab. I suppose this was to protect her from panhandling or getting proseltyzed to by bullhorn
But back to our point. This time out, Washington Post writer Sue Kovach Shuman extols the VHS’ collection as “a gift of artifacts and oddities.”
As, um, I did, though not quite as eloquently, in the “Objects of Memory” portion of December’s “75 Things Every Richmonder Should Do.” I also gave it a shout out in the 2010 Sourcebook. But I digress.
Shuman gets to use the phrase “Consummate Ass” and “Bad Habit” in what is not even a story related to politics or drugs. (For the record, so did I.)
She rightly assessed that there’s too much in the VHS to see in just one visit. Her language transmitted a genuine good time, and that was encouraging to read. But Shuman also seemed inexpicably puzzled that the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is closed until May 1. Doesn't she read my blog?
And she also “tried a number of eateries, looking for authentic Virginia cuisine such as peanut soup, but no luck.” What? Not even at Bandito’s Burrito Lounge, Arianna’s or Caliente, which she dutifully listed in her “If You Go” sidebar. Hmm. Has peanut-allergy-itis struck this traditional dish from menus?
How times have changed. I think back to my days spent delivering nutritional discs out of a Pizza Hut in what is now Bandito’s (a former service station), when that part of town was known as “The Devil’s Triangle.”
Shuman ended up with some gingerbread made from a receipt by George Washington’s mother. But she might’ve wanted, just for interest, to pick up a copy of Molly Randolph’s The Virginia Housewife.
Well, that is, the newest still-under-construction section, due to open on May 1, and about which I opined in an earlier Hat.
A troupe of us got invited by the VMFA for a guided tour of the amazing James W. and Frances G. McGlothlin Wing.
It’s far more than mere exhibition space — though there's plenty of that — the new section includes restaurants and lounges, a lecture hall, a sculpture garden, and sweeping panoramas of the interior atrium and outside.
This is me in the Reynolds Lecture hall, ringed by light, waiting for my name to be called by the Academy. I'm still waiting. (The space, which is decorated with light, sure is nifty.)
Adding a huge section to a museum is a tough order. The design must be up-to-the-minute yet not look dated a half-century or more later. The McGlothlin wing, designed by London-based Rick Mather Architects in partnership with our own SMBW, is clearly for now and for much time to come.
You start to realize, though, just how noticeable the WTVR television tower is when you’re marveling at the incredible view from the massive windows. Maybe Christo can come and wrap it.
Thankfully, though, visitors who’ll come from all over to see upcoming exhibits will have a fairly splendid part of Richmond to gawk over.
If you meander down Boulevard, you’ll see the new wing and right through it, too. It’s not a place that feels standoffish; it's inviting. This spring, go in. Look at some art. Get a drink. It’s your house of culture. And you don’t even have to dust. Or do the windows. Which is good, because the place is basically one big window.
While my colleagues took dutiful notes, I ambled around, gazed and amazed, and posed for pictures. Like this one, where I’m in what’ll be the ancient gallery, featuring sculptures thousands of years old in view of contemporary visitors in a setting that stretches toward the future. Here, I don’t look ancient so much as I resemble a better-dressed Duane Hanson sculpture.
Especially impressive were the pulsating colors along the stairs going from ground level to the first floor. It’s really cool and reminded me of the original starship Enterprise’s engine room.
All in all, this trip was enough to get the adrenaline pumping in anticipation of the big day in May when the grand place will be thrown open to the multitudes.
By the way, here’s a story about the first Virginia Museum, on Capitol Square. As I related then:
“Visitors viewed an interior unobstructed from end to end. The large, high-ceilinged central room displayed more than 100 paintings. The sculpture gallery featured casts of Greco-Roman antiquity; however, according to historian Samuel Mordecai, because of the statues' nudity, 'fastidiously modest' Richmonders wouldn't venture there for fear of being seen by others. Admission was not inconsiderable: 50 cents or half that for children and, on occasion, 'people of color.' "
It was the 1815 idea of two entrepreneurial artists — entertainer-turned-painter James Warrell and Petersburg miniaturist Robert Lorton, the brother of Warrell's first wife. The two raised $10,000, drawing their own money and that of subscribers to create a museum on Capitol Square. That museum's troubles mounted, with landscaping gone awry, flooding, a limited market and lack of funds. By 1820, the partnership had broken up, and Warrell was himself broke and petitioning the General Assembly for assistance.
I think we have a better chance of it working out this go-round.
When you’re on television, wedged between sports and a parade of car commercials, you can only get so detailed. This is why there’s an Internet.
Thus, David Tolleris, the meterological mind behind wxris.com. Tolleris, with the aide of his European weather models — I think of Robert Palmer and a troupe of Patrick Nagel-inspired weather vanes — has been a better forecaster than usual.
But this morning, even Tolleris was (thankfully) hedging on what some were thinking was this winter’s closing finale.
“It is clear that the issue remains undecided,” Tolleris wrote. “Looking strictly at the model data … we are NOT looking at a major snowfall in the Richmond Metro area. On the other hand last Thursday when I start [sic] talking about this as a significant/major event most of the other TV forecasters and NWS [National Weather Service] had Tuesday and Wednesday … March 2 and 3 … as sunny and Mild with temperatures in the low to mid 50s.
"All the short range models — and we are now in the time frame when only the short range models really matter … did show a slight jog back to the west of the storm track here on late Sunday night and early Monday morning.”
Maybe something will happen, but most likely, it won’t.
My mind goes back to a Richmonder whose speculations on the weather made him a household name in these parts.
From the 1950s until his 1970 death, Louis Decimus Rubin issued weather predictions from his house on Wythe Avenue. Many Richmonders cut out the information boxes from the Richmond newspapers for reference.
To learn of the unique predictive formula of this retired appliances salesman — and active cloud minder — and how Richmonders planned their days around his divinations, see my August 2006 Flashback.
And I’m not writing about weather again until summer, when I’ll complain about the heat. Or maybe I'll write about the rains of April. There's a 50 percent chance.
