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Before Anyone Was Watching

I went to Virginia MOCA expecting to hear Andy Howell talk about skateboarding. Instead, I left thinking about community and how people find each other. Howell's installation opens Seamless, the museum's new exhibition exploring the overlap between art and design. At...

Duron Chavis is Building More Than a Farm

How two decades of community organizing grew into a vision for land ownership, education, and self-determination. The first time I met Duron Chavis, he wasn't talking about farmland. He was talking about culture. It was the early 2000s, and Happily Natural Day was...

RVA 5×5 | Leapfrogging Back to 1776, 50 Years at a Time: 1926

Editor's Note: We're sharing this essay from community content partner Jon Baliles of RVA 5x5. If you enjoy his work and want more in-depth coverage of Richmond politics and history, consider subscribing to RVA 5x5 on Substack. The views expressed are those of the...

The Light That Never Went Out 

There is a spotlight still mounted in the rafters of 528 N. 2nd Street. It has been there since 1914. It has outlasted segregation, fire, the highway that cut Jackson Ward in two, and decades of silence. On the nights when the Hippodrome Theater fills up, that light...

Virginia’s New Marijuana Law: Everything You Need to Know

After years of legislative battles, vetoes, compromise negotiations, and numerous articles, Virginia finally has a roadmap for legal recreational marijuana sales. The state budget signed into law earlier this week establishes a regulated cannabis marketplace beginning...

The Strange Afterlife of Virginia’s President Heads

Editor's Note: Reminder, the sculptures are located on private property and are not open for general visitation. Access is available only through scheduled guided tours, with Labor Day weekend currently expected to be the final tour on the calendar. Tour information...

Best Of VA Missed Connections: October 13 – October 19

Welcome to Missed Connections on a crisp fall morning that reminds us all how soon Halloweek will be upon us! If you don't have a costume, don't worry -- you might just have enough resemblance to a somewhat obscure movie star that you don't need one. As for Craigslist, it's got the usual supply of awkward comedy gold, from intentional upskirts in...

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Best Of VA Missed Connections: October 6 – October 12

Welcome to another week of Missed Connections here in the good ol' Commonwealth, where every now and then we get a pretty strong reminder that our newly cosmopolitan state still has some powerful backwoods DNA lurking just beneath the surface. When you see a pretty girl shopping at Lowes with a gun on her hip, you remember… oh yeah, this is still...

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Best Of VA Missed Connections: September 29 – October 5

If you're someone from the massive service economy that seems to be the only thing keeping America afloat these days, rest assured, someone appreciates you -- and whether you're a flight attendant, a security guard, an auto parts store employee, or a priest, you might find that appreciative person in this week's Missed Connections. Alternately,...

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Best Of VA Missed Connections: September 22 – September 28

Welcome to another week of Missed Connections, where sometimes all we need to get through the week without losing our mind is an extra slice of pizza. Reader, I do not have any pizza to share with you this week, but I do have a fine crop of fresh pickings from Craigslist with which to hopefully bring you a smile. For example, the air is cooling...

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Best Of VA Missed Connections: September 15 – September 21

Welcome to another week of Missed Connections, where… I gotta say, y'all crack me up. I mean, from people assuming casual eye contact across a busy street was imbued with deep meaning to dudes saying they didn't approach women in person because they were afraid it would seem creepy, then immediately follow that up with a request for a "discreet...

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Best Of VA Missed Connections: September 8 – September 14

Back for another round of Missed Connections, where the real ones know the deal: the week of circa-Labor Day cooler temps is over. Time for another month of sweat-soaked workout clothes and window units running 24/7. We can at least take comfort in the kind of heat Craigslist is bringing this week -- the kind that doesn't actually raise the...

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Best Of VA Missed Connections: September 1 – September 7

Labor Day has come and gone. Extended unemployment benefits have ended. The Supreme Court killed the eviction moratorium. And COVID numbers are on the rise once again. Depending on your situation, it might just be time to panic. But for now, let's escape all that and read the Missed Connections for a bit, shall we? We had to dig pretty deep this...

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Best Of VA Missed Connections: August 25 – August 31

Welcome to another week of Missed Connections, one of the last ones before the unofficial end of summer, aka Labor Day weekend. We actually had a pretty slim crop of Craigslist gems this week; perhaps it's because people wanted to take advantage of one of the last weekends of the summer, but if you ask me, there was probably a Craigslist outage...

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Best Of VA Missed Connections August 18 – August 24

Welcome to Missed Connections, where this week we find a secret underground of adults playing dirty versions of kids' games… or so it seems (there's only so much you can say in a Craigslist ad). It seems like it might be taking place at a neighborhood Wawa, which is surprising. The most outrageous thing I ever see at Wawa is a really, really long...

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