Editor’s Note: We occasionally make space for outside voices whose perspectives help us see Richmond differently. This piece was submitted by Chilean journalist and multimedia storyteller Natalia Freire.
Hidden gems. I like that expression. It’s the first thing that comes to mind when I look at these photos from Richmond, Virginia.
For the past five years, I have been traveling across the United States as a Chilean correspondent and creator of audiovisual content focused on sustainability and climate change, a journalistic work that I combine with the musical pursuits of my partner, a musician born in Brooklyn who follows his favorite bands wherever they play, inside or outside the United States.
That’s how, on one of our recent trips, we made a short visit to New York, where we tried, unsuccessfully, to experience the immersive audiovisual KID A MNESIA: Motion Picture House by Radiohead.
On our way back, we decided to stop in Richmond, Virginia. For years, the city had appeared on flight boards, and we always looked at it with curiosity. We knew about its summer and spring music festivals, where the lineups seduced us with names like Pavement, who will perform at The National on July 25th, in one of only seven dates they will play across the United States this summer. We had also read a bit about its breweries, but that was all.
Shall we go to Richmond, Virginia?
I had only 48 hours before returning to my faraway Chile.
So we boarded from LaGuardia Airport in New York and took the last American Airlines flight, which dropped us off at a friendly airport close to ten at night.
We stayed in a hotel near the airport that didn’t resemble those typical dark and cold airport hotels at all, thanks to its lush vegetation and warm atmosphere. Moreover, the distance from where the action happens was never an issue: in fifteen minutes by Uber, or Lyft, depending on the fare, and after engaging conversations with our drivers, we got our first impressions of the city.
Our first mandatory stop, due to my gothic inclinations that I have kept since my youth love for horror literature, was the house-museum where Edgar Allan Poe lived, located on Main Street. The sky was gray that day, which created the perfect setting to understand the author’s worldview. Through the memories of a childhood marked by early orphanhood, the museum clearly explained his tragic existence and complex fate.
Poe was such a significant writer that he became the first author in the United States to make a living from his writing, around 1848. I experienced all of this in a fitting atmosphere, preceded by encounters with cats and crows that looked at us sideways, as if they knew we were two strangers in that enchanting environment.
Walking through its narrow, cobblestone streets, I found myself returning once again to Edgar Allan Poe. I could see dozens of decaying “House of Usher” buildings falling apart, the way my own home sometimes does.
But those somewhat melancholic feelings fade around the corner, because Richmond greets you with a dozen lively breweries, a band celebrating that it’s finally Friday (TGIF), and hipsters launching a paper magazine, yes, paper, in a bar full of kind and colorful people.
“Record stores are always where the action is,” my partner Chris, the musician, reminds me. And so we found another hidden gem: Wax Moon Records, in the Scott’s Addition neighborhood. Its description says vinyl and video records, but it is much more than that: you can also play pinball and talk to an Alien replica… or to its charming attendant.
The people of Richmond also surprised me with how much they know about my country. I don’t know if it’s because of the growing fame of Chilean actor Pedro Pascal ( The Mandalorian; Last of Us, Narcos etc,etc) but everyone knew about my Patagonia or my desert, the driest in the world. They also knew about our good wines and seafood, things that only exist in the end-of-the-world country I come from. Such cultured and well-mannered people!
The more I think about Richmond, the more nostalgia I feel. That creative, identity-driven United States, proud of its history, its food, its music, and its traditions. It is a good place to escape the reality of Washington, D.C., and reconnect with the idealized image that Hollywood once gave us through its films and TV series around the world.
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