When Virginia lawmakers convened at the Capitol last week to hear testimony on how to roll out a retail cannabis market, the room was filled with charts, tax models, and plenty of projections about how much money legalization might generate. Depending on the...
A former Richmond smoke shop owner breaks his silence on selective enforcement, shady distributors, and the regulatory loopholes driving Virginia’s booming gray market. In neighborhoods across Richmond, it’s hard to miss them: brightly lit vape shops glowing with LED signage, open late, their shelves lined with flavored vapes, glass pipes, and...
Return To Forever: A Profound Discovery is what happens when a lyricist stops performing survival and starts narrating resurrection. Ty Sorrell, paired with the crate-dug alchemy of Profound79, delivers an album that doesn’t chase trends so much as it chases truth. Across these tracks, the Richmond-by-way-of-Dumfries emcee doesn’t posture, he...
Tom Robbins, the celebrated author known for his whimsical storytelling and philosophical wit, passed away on February 9, 2025, at the age of 92 in La Conner, Washington. Though he became a literary icon in the Pacific Northwest, Robbins' formative years in Richmond, Virginia, played a significant role in shaping his worldview and creative...
Through inaction as much as intention, Virginia is in the midst of launching a second War on Drugs aka THE WAR ON PEOPLE. Failure to complete the process of marijuana decriminalization that we started in 2021 is empowering both police and the public to continue the same dangerous patterns that marked decades of disastrous drug policy. But with...
The case of Dawn Marie Morris, a Louisa County resident and owner of the Charlottesville-based Higher Education smoke shop chain, highlights Virginia’s complex and often contradictory stance on drug laws. While Morris clearly broke the law—particularly by selling psilocybin mushrooms, a Schedule I controlled substance—the severe penalties she...
There are certain films that aren’t just watched but absorbed, metabolized into the DNA of an entire culture. For hip-hop, Belly is one of those films. The late '90s street saga, directed by the legendary Hype Williams, wasn’t Hollywood— Hollywood didn’t know what to do with it. This was a film made for people who understood it, who...
The word "hustler" gets a lot of grief. Most of the people we associate with the word bring negativity, strife, betrayals, and nonsense. I believe the word is misread colloquially. The Merriam-Webster entry lists two meanings: a prostitute and an aggressively enterprising person. I think, in modern parlance, we tend to split the difference and...
We are entering a brand new world in America. Post-Prohibition for weed, mushrooms, and so many other herbal medicinals, has opened a lot of doors for entrepreneurs. Beyond the 80,000 vape stores that opened on my block in the last two years, Richmond has integrated a number of new possibilities for retailers and consumers alike, from the...
“If President Biden wants to truly celebrate the spirit of Juneteenth, he needs to take bolder action instead of well-intended half-measures that don’t come close to solving the problem.” Juneteenth is a day of joy when we celebrate the end of slavery in the United States, but for too many Black Americans, the harms of slavery never fully went...
