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GRTC Connects: Route 5 – Carytown To Downtown

Wyatt Gordon | February 21, 2020

Topics: bus routes, car culture, Cary Court Shopping Center, Carytown, Downtown Richmond, GRTC Connects, GRTC Route 5, Kanawha Plaza, Nate's Bagels, parking lots, public transit, RideFinders, shockoe bottom, Sugar & Twine, The Byrd Theatre, Transit app

The eleventh and penultimate installment in a monthly series in which a hometown Richmonder who has spent over a decade abroad explores the many different neighborhoods accessible by GRTC bus lines to discover the ways transit connects us all.

Carytown:

Given just one day to show a tourist around town, it’s hard to imagine any classic Richmond visit would be complete without a stroll through Carytown. This eclectic nine-block stretch of locally-owned businesses represents the city in a way few neighborhoods can. Its effortless blending of chic and quirky have become iconic for Richmond’s rebranding from the former capital of the Confederacy to a modern hipster mecca on par with Austin or Portland.

Serving as the anchor of the area, the Byrd Theatre has proudly stood watch over nearly a century of change. Built in 1928 in the French Empire style at a cost of $900,000, Richmond’s premier movie palace embodies the community spirit that has preserved and promoted Carytown’s transformation into a cultural and commercial destination.

Cary Court. Via the Valentine archive

The opening of the Cary Court strip mall in the 1930s felt like a revolution at the time. Back then the beloved corner stores that still abound in the Fan and Church Hill were the only way to shop. Cary Court’s grocery with a dedicated parking lot out front was a first for the city. Although the stores in that strip mall have continuously evolved over the years, the culture of car-centric planning that the development ushered in has held on.

As the Henrico suburbs to the city’s west proliferated during the post-World War II era of white flight, Richmond’s leadership began kowtowing to the needs of commuters from the counties rather than preserve the city’s walkable neighborhoods for those residents who remained. In 1955, Cary Street was flipped to be a one-way corridor channeling cars straight to downtown. The change proved detrimental to the area’s ambience and air quality, and the increased traffic caused homeowners to move away. Their former abodes transitioned into the shops one sees today.

This corner of the city only came to think of itself as a cohesive neighborhood with a shared identity 46 years ago. Willow Lawn — Richmond’s first mall — slowly sapped the life out of retail strips across the city, triggering this stretch of West Cary to undertake a rebrand in 1974. To fight back and generate a new buzz and energy, residents voted in favor of a new name for the area: Carytown.

The decay continued throughout the 1980s, however, until locals no longer deemed the area safe for shopping. This emptying out of Carytown created new space for up and coming businesses like gay bars and dance clubs, but after a sex shop opened its doors along the strip, local business owners quickly joined together to shutter the establishment by dramatically cutting off all electrificity to the structure. This action proved a clear signal residents and shop owners aimed to steer the neighborhood in a definitively family-friendly direction.

These days all kinds come to eat, shop, and people watch along Cary Street. For the longest time, this stretch of retail proved the only safe space for same-sex couples to hold hands in Richmond. Thanks to Carytown’s laissez faire culture of acceptance and its smattering of gay bars — of which only Babe’s and New York Deli remain — many locals estimate that the neighborhood has become the closest thing to a “gayborhood” the city offers.

The Byrd Theatre. Photo by Wyatt Gordon

Carytown’s lasting success derives from its branding as a place not just to shop, but to experience. Even as chain stores and national brands have slowly crept in to Richmond’s “Mile of Style,” most of the area’s 230-plus outlets remain in local hands. Spas, unique eateries, and charming local shops like Mongrel and World of Mirth have set the tone for the neighborhood as a friendly, welcoming place to explore all the creativity and charm of the city.

What holds Carytown back from being a world class destination is the area’s addiction to car culture. Although most people stroll its blocks from end to end, the experience of someone on foot feels far from safe. Drivers speed down Cary with abandon, crossings are inadequate, and the majority of the street is planned for cars, not people.

A braver Richmond would overcome the trauma of white flight and rework its premier shopping destination into a place that people could traverse without fear of a car plowing over the sidewalk and into a local business, as happened to the Daily Kitchen & Bar a few years back. Residents and business owners’ calls for traffic calming measures like speed humps went unanswered.

They haven’t painted the lines on Cary St in Carytown yet. Still time to stripe bus only lanes down the middle and multi use lanes on the curb 👀👀👀👀

— Doug Allen (@DFRSH757) November 28, 2019

New York City recently tackled its notoriously awful 14th Street by converting it into a busway with wider sidewalks and lanes for bikes and scooters. It’s not hard to imagine something similar working in Carytown.  Gone would be the curbside car storage, and in its place, a grand pedestrian promenade. GRTC’s Route 5 bus would still pass through, but Cary would be a far quieter, more enjoyable, and safer street for all to travel.

The Ride:

With a scone in my belly and a coffee in hand, I departed Sugar & Twine with a smile on my face. The people-watching in Carytown can be hit or miss on a Saturday morning, depending on whether you show up before or during the time when the brunch crowd reigns supreme. After a leisurely stroll on an abnormally warm and sunny winter day, I opened the Transit App to catch the 5 downtown.

By sheer luck, the next bus was just two minutes away. The 15-minute frequency of the 5 feels like such a carefree luxury compared to the hourly routes that serve as the only lifeline to communities on Southside and in Henrico. There’s no need to plan ahead for your departure when your average wait time is just seven and a half minutes.

Boarding the bus I got a friendly hello from a stylish driver with golden horn-rimmed glasses. I quickly scanned my monthly pass from my phone and took a seat over the wheel well, a perfect perch from which to survey my fellow riders. The bus was full; its cast of characters seemed split between heading home after a late night and getting an early start to their day.

We cruised down Cary Street, never going more than five miles per hour over the speed limit as cars whizzed past on our left. The transformation of Cary and Main from neighborhood streets into mini crosstown highways proves most visible around Allen Street. Bagel lovers marching to Nate’s as part of their weekend ritual too frequently get caught in a game of Frogger, dodging speeding vehicles to reach their everything with cream cheese and lox.

Alighting the 5 next to the Pocahontas Building, which houses the General Assembly until its new abode is complete, it’s easy to forget that the ease of this 18-minute trip is not standard across the capital of the Commonwealth. This route is just one of five in GRTC’s entire system which achieve such frequency.

In many ways Route 5 is a vision of the transit service every neighborhood in the region deserves. Its 15-minute frequencies — at least Monday through Saturday till 7pm — from end to end are also a rarity. More buses generally translate into more riders. More heavily traveled routes like the 1, the 2, and the 3 only achieve that distinction when you add up all their alphabetical variations.

Studies have shown people are first willing to give up their car for transit only when a bus comes at least once every fifteen minutes. Gaps any longer than that start to add up when your bus doesn’t come, or you just miss it, especially if you have to time a transfer perfectly. The frequency of the 5 means freedom for the communities along its path. 

My friend Amber, who lives in Carytown, told me she couldn’t imagine moving to a place off of this route. Compared to her $60 a month bus pass, the expenses of owning, repairing, parking, and fueling a car feel daunting. Thousands of people just like her in the Fan, the Museum District, Randolph, Oregon Hill, Downtown, and the East End rely upon this bus for their mobility, not because they have to but because it’s a more affordable, social, and comfortable way to travel. 

Frequent service like that of the 5 shouldn’t just be a perk of living along its path; its 15-minute intervals should be a baseline expectation for bus service citywide to foster a more equitable and sustainable capital city.

Virginia’s Capitol building. Photo by Wyatt Gordon

Downtown:

Long before English colonists claimed the banks of the James in present-day Richmond, the area around our downtown already served as an important settlement of the Powhatan Confederacy. Located perfectly along the boundary between Virginia’s Tidewater and Piedmont regions, geography preordained Richmond to become a key economic and political center.

Following the Revolutionary War, the newly independent state shifted its capital from Williamsburg further inland to Richmond to protect its government and commercial capital from sea-faring attackers. Just two decades after this designation, the increasing concentration of political and economic power in Richmond triggered a building boom.  

Powered by Shockoe Bottom — the largest and most famous slave trade market in the nation — Richmond rapidly exploded into one of the fledgling country’s biggest and wealthiest cities. With the South’s traitorous declaration of secession from the Union, the city descended to the status of a military town. Soldiers, spies, and ad hoc military hospitals abounded until the Confederacy’s cowardly retreat, in which they engaged in a literal scorched-earth campaign to burn Richmond to the ground before it fell to Union forces. Northern troops fought back the blaze, but 80 percent of the city already lay in ashes.

During the prosperous and unusually democratic Reconstruction era that followed, Richmond once again flourished. Finance, retail, and banking took the place of the slave trade, filling downtown blocks with ornamented homes and businesses of brick. The 1920s ushered in a proliferation of Art Deco skyscrapers like the 19-story First National Bank Building.

Richmond City Hall. Photo by Wyatt Gordon

Suburbanization and the rise of car culture struck here too, marked by the gradual closure of the area’s many high end department stores, like Thalhimers, Sears, and Miller & Rhoads. Hundreds of structures were demolished over the course of the 1960s to 1980s to make way for 600-plus new buildings and their associated parking garages and surface lots. Most notable among these are City Hall, the aluminum-covered Federal Reserve Bank, and the hideous James Monroe Building, whose second tower never materialized when the boom of the early 80s turned to a bust.

Kanawha Plaza — the neighborhood’s most central green space — is a perfect allegory for the downtown writ large: it looks stately and bustling during the day, yet it becomes eerily empty after five o’clock. The downtown’s reliance upon and catering to commuters for decades has created a dead space at the heart of the city. New apartments and amenities have begun to slowly trickle back to the area, but the hollowing out of what was once Richmond’s most vibrant neighborhood will not be overcome until housing takes priority over parking.

One study of Downtown’s parking offerings commissioned by the City of Richmond revealed a glut of 24,017 spaces available to drivers. Peak demand for parking in the area is just 17,000, however. That means every day, over 7,000 parking spots sit empty, wastefully consuming space that could be new offices, apartments, and businesses.  

RideFinders’ public parking map, via richmondgov.com

RideFinders’ map of public parking lots Downtown shows an overwhelming amount of Richmond’s surface area is dedicated to the storage of private vehicles — used, on average, just five percent of the day. This map tells nothing of the hundreds of private parking lots across the neighborhood, nor of the blocks covered in street parking. Americans’ addiction to their cars is so extreme that in some U.S. cities, there are over ten times as many parking spots as people.

As our region’s affordable housing crisis intensifies, we need to begin rethinking how we allocate the very limited 60 square miles of Richmond’s land. Removing our parking minimums and letting the market decide how many spaces are needed for new apartments would prove a great first step. No matter how Navy Hill is ultimately redeveloped, the plans for its future should prioritize people, not vehicles.

Carytown and the Downtown are both great neighborhoods as they are today, but they could be so much greater. Former curbside parking could evolve into bike lanes, parklets, and sidewalk seating. Surface lots and towering garages could transform into new housing, shops, and greenspace. Much as Americans rave about the walkability of European capitals, future visitors to Virginia’s capital could tell tales of our city’s world class quality of life, if only we place the needs of Richmond residents over those of commuters from the counties.

Top Photo by Wyatt Gordon

Six Films You Should See At This Year’s RVA Environmental Film Festival

Chris Cassingham | February 6, 2020

Topics: Bird Of Prey, events in richmond va, events near me this weekend, events richmond va, film festivals in Virginia, richmond events, richmond va, RVA, RVA Environmental Film Festival, Silent Forests, sustainable, The Biggest Little Farm, The Butterfly Trees, The Byrd Theatre, The Human Element, things to do in richmond va, things to do richmond va, VCU Student Commons Theatre, Virginia Union University

The Richmond Environmental Film Festival kicks off its 2020 edition on Friday, February 7 and runs for an entire week. In anticipation of a new year of fantastic films, here are six to look out for.

Bird of Prey

Cinematographer Neil Ritter is on a mission to document, and hopefully protect, the near-extinct Philippine Eagle. In Bird of Prey, lush, colorful photography tracks the lives of these wild birds as well as the efforts of the local and international activists trying to protect them.

Bird of Prey will be shown at The Byrd Theatre on Saturday, February 8 at 11:50 AM.

The Human Element

Photographer James Balog has always been captivated by the beauty of nature. In his experience, though, he has become hyper-aware of the intersections of nature and human activity. In this documentary he sets out on a journey to explore the balances and imbalances between all the elements of the earth, and hopefully encourage the human element, the one with the power to change, to do something.

The Human Element will be shown at The Byrd Theatre on Saturday, February 8 at 2:45 PM.

Biggest Little Farm

Easily the most notable and recognizable title in the festival, The Biggest Little Farm is the story of a California couple who leave the city behind for a peaceful and enriching life on a sustainable farm they build themselves. The failures, triumphs, and obstacles they encounter along the way help them to confront the changing world, as well as ask tough questions about the way we produce the food we eat every day.

The Biggest Little Farm will be shown at The Byrd Theatre on Saturday, February 8 at 5:05 PM.

The Butterfly Trees

Described by director Kay Milman as part science, part love story, part armchair adventure, The Butterfly Trees documents the migration of the Eastern Monarch Butterfly. Ten years in the making, this film was, in part, a response to the year 2013, during which the Monarch Butterfly population reached its lowest number in recorded history.  

The Butterfly Trees will be shown at The Byrd Theatre on Sunday, February 9 at 5:05 PM.

Sustainable

A story about reconnecting to our food supply, Sustainable sheds light on the issues of food sustainability, environmental degradation, and human health. It challenges our engagement with the food we eat and the ways we can turn things around. 

Sustainable will be shown in the VCU Student Commons Theatre on Tuesday, February 11 at 4:30 PM.

Silent Forests

A collage of human stories, Silent Forests documents the efforts of the activists fighting to protect the lives of elephants living in the Congo Basin, as well as bring illegal poachers to justice.

Silent Forests will be shown at the Virginia Union University Living and Learning Center on Wednesday, February 12 at 6:30 PM.

These and many more films will be screening in a variety of places around town during the RVA Environmental Film Festival, which runs from Friday February 7 to Friday, February 14. Tickets to every film in the festival are free and open to the public. More information can be found on the official RVA Environmental Film Festival website, as well as the Byrd Theatre’s website.

Blaze Foley: The Folk Legend of Country Music

Christopher Brown | October 25, 2019

Topics: Blaze, blaze foley, country, country music, ethan hawke, film, movies, music, sybil rosen, The Byrd Theatre, Todd Schall-Vess, townes van zandt, willie nelson

Before Ethan Hawke’s Blaze film was released, the name Blaze Foley was largely unknown. Hawke hopes to change that.

On Sunday, October 6, Ethan Hawke made a personal appearance at a movie screening at the Byrd Theatre. Hawke is famous for his decades-long career as an actor, and is currently in the Richmond area filming the upcoming Showtime limited series The Good Lord Bird. However, Hawke didn’t come to the Byrd to discuss any of that. Instead, he came to talk about Blaze Foley.

In 2017, Rolling Stone published an article titled “100 Greatest Country Artists of All Time.” On that list, artists ranged from all-time legends like Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Dolly Parton to more recent game-changers like Taylor Swift, Shania Twain, and Garth Brooks. 

However, Blaze Foley’s name did not appear on that list. Despite his impact on several of the groundbreaking artists listed, Foley’s is a name lost to time. Born Michael David Fuller, Foley only released one album during his lifetime, though his songs were later recorded by Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, John Prine, and other well-known country artists.

Foley endured trials throughout his life. While pursuing his goal of becoming a famous musician, Foley faced polio, alcoholism and drug use, physical abuse, and a failed marriage. Ultimately, the success that Foley did obtain was short-lived. While trying to protect his friend, Concho January, Foley was shot and killed on January 31, 1989. He was 39 years old.

Photo by Christopher Brown III

After his death, Foley’s legacy was initially told through those who knew him, including his wife, Sybil Rosen, and country artist Townes Van Zandt. Rosen would eventually write a memoir about the time she spent with Foley, Living in the Woods in a Tree: Remembering Blaze Foley. In the memoir, Rosen recounts the history of how the couple met, and the events leading up to their short-lived marriage.

During that time, Rosen became Foley’s muse for his songwriting, showcasing the good and bad of their relationship. Songs like the widely covered “If I Could Only Fly” and the hidden gem “I Should Have Been Home” detailed Foley’s struggle with alcoholism, drug use, and staying faithful while trying to become a successful musician. 

When Rosen published her book in 2008, she couldn’t have foreseen that a decade later, her work would become the basis for a full-length feature film. Hawke, an Austin native, took an interest in Foley’s story, writing and directing a biopic based on the events described in Rosen’s book. It was that 2018 film, Blaze, that Hawke presented and discussed with the Byrd Theatre crowd earlier this month.

“It is about Blaze Foley, but it’s also about the intangibility of the unknown,” said Todd Schall-Vess, general manager of the Byrd Theatre, describing Hawke’s film. “The ‘Blaze here is not just Blaze Foley, it’s the ‘Blaze’ of fame, the ‘Blaze’ of the agony of not being recognized, the ‘Blaze’ of wanting so much for it to be just out of your reach.” 

Blaze premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. The film stars Hawke’s friend and musician Ben Dickey as Foley, Arrested Development actress Alia Shawkat as Rosen, and musician Charlie Sexton as Townes Van Zandt. The movie also features cameos from Rosen, who played her own mother, Ethan Hawke as a radio host and country legend, and Kris Kristofferson as Foley’s father, Edwin Fuller. For Dickey, it was his first major acting role. 

“The magic was Ben finding Blaze Foley,” Hawke said. “For his first [acting] job, he won ‘Best Actor’ at the Sundance Film Festival.”

As the director of Blaze, Hawke uses Foley’s music to tell his story. Right before his death, Foley had recorded a performance at the Austin Outhouse — later released as Live At The Austin Outhouse — which Hawke uses as a basis to begin the tale. There are also radio segments featuring Van Zandt, and one of Foley’s closest friends, Zee (Josh Hamilton), telling Foley’s story through their point of view. 

While his life was cut short, Foley’s music and his legacy lived on. Merle Haggard covered “If I Could Only Fly” twice, first Willie Nelson on their 1987 collaborative album Seashores of Old Mexico, then again on his 2000 solo album, which was named after the song. Van Zandt wrote a song in Foley’s honor called “Blaze’s Blues” in 1990. Country artist Lucinda Williams even wrote a tribute song for Foley, titled “Drunken Angel,” for her 1998 album, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.

With Blaze, Hawke hopes to bring Foley to mainstream consciousness, taking him beyond the inner circle of country music legends who’ve kept his songs alive since he was killed 30 years ago. And the film is a great step in that direction, showing that Foley’s life embodied the true spirit of country music. Beyond today’s surface-level Nashville pop country, which focuses more on trucks and parties than any of the struggles that were traditionally found at the heart of the genre, Blaze depicts Foley in moments of sadness, anger, and frustration — the emotions that inspire some of the best country songs.

Hawke’s film does justice to Foley’s life and music, and helps to give this unknown country music legend some of the well-deserved recognition he never achieved during his lifetime.

If you missed the Blaze screening at The Byrd Theatre, the film is currently available on iTunes and Showtime’s streaming service.

Top Image via IFC Films

Alienation, Feminist Rage, and Vampires: A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night Comes to The Byrd

Chris Cassingham | October 17, 2019

Topics: A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Ana Lili Amirpour, Aresh Marandi, Iranian films, Sheila Vand, The Byrd Theatre, vampire movies

Delving into the alienation of modern life, groundbreaking Iranian film A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night is so much more than just another vampire picture. It comes to The Byrd next week.

A melancholy romance draped in the atmosphere of 1950s noirs and 1960s spaghetti westerns, Ana Lili Amirpour’s 2014 directorial debut announced her as a powerful cinematic voice. From the moment Kiosk’s “Charkhesh E Pooch” starts playing, you’ll know that A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night isn’t going to unfold like anything else you will see during the Byrd Theatre’s Halloween-themed October lineup of programming. The third installment in their “Vampires” series, A Girl Walks Home is an engrossing tale of loneliness, revenge, and freedom.

A Girl Walks Home is a story about rage, framed by the extraction of oil, the struggles of the lower class, and the irresponsibility of government. Amirpour deftly distills these cumbersome issues to the small-scale exploits and excesses of men driven by their economic conditions and carnal desires. In the fictional Iranian locale of Bad City, people walk the streets, deal drugs, and get high under the silent, watchful eye of a lonely vampire, known only as The Girl. She rages against advantage, entitlement towards women, and, as evidenced by her encounter with a young boy she sees begging on the street, the promise that things will be this way forever. To The Girl (played by Sheila Vand), everyone in Bad City is out for themselves.

That is, until she meets Arash (Arash Marandi), a hardworking man who is also caring for his father Hossein (Marshall Manesh), who is addicted to heroin. The Girl first encounters Arash outside the home of Saeed (Dominic Rains), a drug dealer who’s previously stolen Arash’s car to in lieu of money Hossein owes him. When Arash first encounters the Girl, she has just finished feasting on Saeed’s blood. Their prolonged gaze betrays a mutual loneliness that only draws them closer together throughout the film.

When they find themselves together again, Arash is spiraling out of control like his junkie father before him, desperate for an escape from the never-ending cycle of drugs and addiction that plague Bad City. It’s a desperation reminiscent of James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause, though Arash’s emotional restraint while dealing with his father’s drug-deprived vitriol underlines a responsibility with which Jim Stark never had to contend.

The Girl also senses his desperation, which is why she invites him back to her home. Under the light of a disco ball and accompanied by the pulsating freedom of “Death” by The White Lies, their loneliness morphs into a silent but mutual understanding. This scene feels like something out of a summertime teen romance. You can imagine in any other film, Arash and The Girl would be holding hands, running down the street in slow motion as they look behind them at a life they will soon leave behind. In The Girl’s room, the music fills every corner, yet their embrace is intimate, tense, and cathartic; shaped by Amirpour’s gentle, genre-bending touch, it feels revolutionary.

A Girl Walks Home conjures comparisons to a range of films from the vampire genre, from Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive to Karyn Kusama’s cult classic Jennifer’s Body. It combines the former’s sense of longing in an unforgiving world and the bonds that hold its lonely people together, while sprinkling in the latter’s catharsis of female revenge. Even with these cues, though, Amirpour manages to create something wholly original. So many of the most important emotional beats are accomplished with longing stares, and the story is moved along not just by meditative shots and crisp black and white photography, but also through a soundtrack so eclectic and alive it stands as its own piece of art.

The Girl acts as a transgressive femme fatale, whose interactions with most men bring about their downfall. She is also a steely-eyed law-woman on the lookout for malefactors taking advantage of the little guy. Bad City is a lawless land, and it’s thanks to the diligence of The Girl that the filth lining its streets is swept away. But her chance encounter with Arash, and their subsequent time together, makes her realize that she can also escape the loneliness of Bad City. She doesn’t have to take on the heavy responsibility of ridding the world of evil men; it shouldn’t solely be hers to bear in the first place.

Films driven more by their style and atmosphere are hard to sink your teeth into, and characters that merely exist in a stylized world without a propulsive narrative pushing them forward are hard to relate to. That is why, even though A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night feels long, it doesn’t drag; it doesn’t do any of the work for you. Its greatest strength is that it is completely unencumbered by the so-called boundaries of its genre. It not only works well as a horror film, but also reaches beyond that category.

The very first frame of this film tells you it isn’t going to conform to your expectations. The experience of watching it is rewarding because, just like The Girl and Arash, it finds freedom outside the confines of its prescribed limits and revels in every second of it.

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night is playing at The Byrd Theatre on Monday, October 21 at 7:15 PM. Tickets are $6 and can be purchased in advance at The Byrd’s website.

Mongays Week Five: Pariah

Wyatt Gordon | July 1, 2019

Topics: Black Pride Month, Black Pride RVA, LGBTQ women of color, MonGays, Pariah, The Byrd Theatre

Every Monday throughout June, The Byrd Theatre celebrated Pride Month with #MonGays, a series spotlighting the LGBTQ community. This week, Black Pride RVA launches Black Pride Month with their selection of Pariah.

What do you do when your family doesn’t understand part of who you are?  Even worse, what do you do if they disapprove? This is the challenge facing Alike, the young protagonist of Pariah, but these questions may have also been running through the minds of the founders of Black Pride RVA two years ago.

From the erasure of the black trans women that threw the first bricks at Stonewall to the alarmingly high rates of HIV infection among minority LGBTQ Americans, the existence of racism in the queer world is well documented. Black Pride RVA was founded as a protest, not against any group or organization in the Richmond scene (as some rumors have it), but rather as a positive protest, to celebrate the dual identities of queer people of color.

When Virginia Pride reached out to Black Pride RVA about sponsoring a week of MonGays — a special grand finale week in July: Black Pride Month — their leadership knew they “wanted to participate to increase our visibility and highlight the broader diversity of the LGBTQ community in Richmond.”

That same desire to shine a spotlight on the diversity of the queer community also led them to choose Pariah, a film that focuses on the struggle of a butch black girl to come to terms with her sexuality amidst her conservative family. “Our team was drawn by the story of a masculine-leaning female lead and her journey to acceptance,” Black Pride’s leadership stated. “We wanted a film that showcases LGBTQ women of color since their stories are not often told on the big screen, despite the fact women are more likely to identify as LGBTQ in the US.”  

That lack of visibility makes it harder for others in the same situation as Alike to come out. A dearth of positive role models and stories is one of many theories mooted as to why queer people of color face higher levels of depression. The leaders of Black Pride RVA know the struggle all too well.  

“Representation is important,” they stated. “Showing Pariah on the big screen helps to lift up the stories of queer women of color who make up the fabric of the Black LGBTQ community. We hope the audience will see the struggle to be yourself is difficult, and in the face of difficulty there is black joy, resilience, and acceptance.”

Black Pride RVA celebrated its inaugural festivities last year to help queer people of all colors in Richmond to overcome that struggle and move collectively towards the positive side of being LGBTQ. “Our work is all about lifting the unique voices and lived experiences of Black LGBTQ persons in the greater Richmond area,” they stated. “This is why we created Black Pride RVA weekend.”

Tonight’s screening of Pariah at the Byrd Theatre will offer the audience the chance to join Black Pride RVA in their celebration of our Commonwealth’s queer people of color. “Pariah highlights the power of voice, resilience, and acceptance. This is a movie Richmond needs to see.”

Pariah marks the fifth and final week of MonGays — a queer film series celebrating the LGBTQ+ community every Monday during Pride Month and the first week of Black Pride Month — tonight at 7pm at the Byrd Theatre. The 2nd annual Black Pride RVA weekend is July 18-21. Check out www.blackpriderva.com for details.

MonGays: Paris Is Burning

Wyatt Gordon | June 24, 2019

Topics: ball culture, health brigade, HIV/AIDS, Jennie Livingston, MonGays, Paris Is Burning, Pose, The Byrd Theatre, Vogue

Every Monday throughout June, The Byrd Theatre will celebrate Pride Month with #MonGays, a series spotlighting the LGBTQ community. This week, a film that should need no introduction: Paris Is Burning.

Do you wish Blanca Evangelista were your mother? Has Lil Papi become your latest crush? Is Pray Tell the person you aspire to be? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you’re certainly a fan of Pose. But how much do you know about the award-winning documentary that inspired it: Paris Is Burning?

This season of Pose, house mother Blanca becomes convinced that New York City’s underground Ballroom scene is about to go mainstream, thanks to Madonna’s hit single, “Vogue.” What she doesn’t know in the show is that it will take another three decades before ball culture truly approaches the realm of common knowledge and begins to accept the scene’s black, brown, and trans roots.

When Virginia Pride first approached Health Brigade about sponsoring week 4 of MonGays at the Byrd, Heather Turbyne-Pollard, the free clinic’s Director of Resources & Philanthropy, immediately knew which to choose. “NYC ball culture has been recently reintroduced to younger audiences in a major way, with Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s TV series, Pose,” Turbyne-Pollard stated. “This series has been groundbreaking for its inclusion of the largest transgender cast ever for a scripted series, and that’s pretty magical. Knowing this, we wanted to provide some exposure of where ball culture began, with Jennie Livingston’s cult classic documentary film, Paris Is Burning.”

The erasure of the black and brown individuals that created ballroom culture began as soon as the scene’s popular resonance began. Madonna’s hit song — inspired by the 1980s invention of voguing by queer people of color — ignores the dance’s actual creators, choosing instead to pay homage to white celebrities unrelated to ball culture, such as Gene Kelly and Ginger Rogers. Although director Jennie Livingston failed to pay her documentary’s participants as promised, her film at least re-centered the phenomenon on its actual progenitors.

Jamie Burch, Health Brigade’s Resource & Development Associate, sees tonight’s screening of Paris Is Burning as a chance to celebrate their organization’s long history of serving the LGBTQ community in Central Virginia. “The houses and families celebrated in Paris Is Burning remind us of the folks we’ve been serving in Richmond for almost 50 years,” said Burch.

Watching this season of Pose begin to grapple with the devastation HIV/AIDS wrought upon the queer community, and especially its people of color, has not been the revelation for Health Brigade’s staff that it has been for mainstream society. Back when it was the Fan Free Clinic, their staff knew the level of death and despair all too well.

“One of Health Brigade’s proudest moments in the 80s was our response to the AIDS pandemic, sending out care teams to support those living — and dying — with AIDS,” Burch explained. “Our volunteers warmly embraced those who had been abandoned by family, friends, the community and society. In the 90s, as HIV/AIDS became a manageable, chronic disease, we shifted our focus to HIV/AIDS education, prevention, testing and support services. We became known as ‘the’ place where you could obtain services and support if you were infected or affected by HIV/AIDS.”

Health Brigade hopes that by elevating Paris Is Burning to the big screen at the Byrd, they can help to memorialize that dark era and the struggles of those who lived through it, while also providing a night of hope and joy centered on the stories of queer people of color. “We love Paris Is Burning because, although many of the individuals featured in the film were navigating the complexities of AIDS, racism, poverty, violence, and homophobia, they managed to somehow band together to form an amazing outlet for celebrating their identities and supporting one another,” said Burch. “We think that’s something worth reminding folks of, especially today.”

“We love the idea of adding some extra celebration of Pride during June,” Burch continued. “MonGays is made from a few of our favorite things: our beloved LGBTQ+ community, neighboring nonprofits, and a local institution of Richmond culture: the Byrd Theatre.” Health Brigade hopes some of tonight’s attendees will turn out in their ball finest, whatever their chosen category may be.

Paris Is Burning marks the fourth and penultimate week of MonGays — a queer film series celebrating the LGBTQ community every Monday during Pride Month — tonight at 7pm at the Byrd Theatre.

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