Exclusive Q&A with Lonnie Liston Smith below. Today was a good day. This very magazine’s Landon Shroder invited me to interview one of Richmond’s real living legends, jazz impresario Lonnie Liston Smith. On September 13, they will be screening selections from the...
For a decade, the mural outside the Romantix adult store, formerly Taboo, on Midlothian Turnpike has been one of Richmond's most debated pieces of public art. Now it's gone, replaced by a new collaboration between tattoo artist and muralist Jesse Smith and Miami-based artist Tatiana Suarez. The original mural, painted by Smith and Peruvian artist...
She decided to finally leave. Maybe it was after years of abuse, or after one violent night too many. Maybe it was the first time she truly believed that if she stayed, she might not survive. Whatever brought her to that moment, making the call took courage. On the other end of the hotline is someone trained to listen, help create a safety...
Editor's Note: Writers Block is an occasional series featuring personal essays, reflections, and creative nonfiction from Richmond-area writers. In Seeing Richmond Through Their Eyes, Gabriella Ryan shares how a month spent showing her Italian cousins around Richmond changed the way she sees the city she calls home. The world looks different now....
In the electric and perpetually sincere terrain of Richmond’s theatre culture, there are institutions that do more than merely reside, they lead. They serve as a measure of our city's potential beyond its natural aspirations. I've witnessed Firehouse Theatre inhabit that essential niche, becoming the forge where the art takes shape. It isn't just...
For one weekend, Agecroft Hall stopped being a museum and became a kingdom. What began as a fundraiser to help launch Richmond's first Renaissance Faire has grown into a destination of its own. Warriors in Bloom, created by the folks at Virago Alley, returned with more performers, more artisans, more storytelling, and the kind of fun that...
An on-the-ground account of the strike that prompted Jesse Welles and Graham Nash to cancel their Richmond performances. Tensions escalated as Jesse Welles called off his performance at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden yesterday amid an ongoing union fight for higher wages. When I arrived, a healthy crowd had gathered outside the large iron gates. I...
Richmond has been popping up on a lot of national lists lately. For many longtime residents, that's a mixed bag. More attention brings investment, jobs and opportunities along with higher housing costs, heavier traffic and a city that seems to get a little more expensive every year. But it's hard to ignore what's happening. In just the past few...
Several campaign signs for Democratic congressional candidate Salaam Bhatti were vandalized over the weekend with professionally printed flyers telling him to "return to your homeland" in multiple languages. The flyers also featured the hashtag #Remigration, a term that has become closely associated with European far-right political movements...
This weekend, Plan 9 Music marks 45 years in Richmond with a party at Hardywood Park Craft Brewery. Over the past four and a half decades, the Richmond institution weathered some of the most turbulent periods in music history. It closed stores, sold its warehouse and dramatically shrank its footprint, surviving industry changes that forced...
