A small silver lining to the poor plowing in Church HIll

Perhaps you’ve noticed the neighborhood looked a little different this week. Was it tough to put your finger on what had changed? Totally get it. After considerable shoe-leather reporting and editorial analysis, The Lookout is able to exclusively share the cause of this subtle shift in Church Hill’s appearance: it fucking snowed! A lot!

A shocking revelation, I know. But it’s true. Your humble Lookout editor was on the road last week, and made it back into Richmond from points north just as flakes were starting to accumulate on the road this past Saturday evening. Ultimately, the city got less snow than the worst forecasts predicted: the metro area saw 3-5” of accumulation, per The Richmonder, a far cry less than the foot or so that earlier forecasts had warned could be on the way.

Between that stroke of meteorological luck, and the fact that City Hall put out a social-media video featuring key department heads cheerily promising they were prepared for the precipitation, you might have hoped that Richmond would be back to business (and school, transit, etc.) quickly following the storm. But alas. As I write this Friday afternoon, a full five days following the conclusion of Sunday’s snowfall, the East End is still a damn mess. Sidewalks are inaccessible behind frozen berms of half-plowed snow. Entire intersections are covered in hard-pack snow and boilerplate ice.

As it often does, the Department of Public Works (DPW) preemptively closed North 25th Street south of East Broad Street before the weather hit. But just Thursday—around 96 hours post-storm, mind you—the city issued a press release announcing that it was also closing the 2900 block of E. Franklin St. “Due to snowstorm related conditions, this closure is necessary to ensure public safety,” the release read. Not to put too fine a point on it here, but the typical progression of events after a snowstorm is that more roads get opened, not closed.

Slip-sliding through the neighborhood throughout this week, I found myself speaking with one neighbor after another who were as frustrated with scofflaws’ spotty shoveling as they were with the city’s sluggish, inconsistent, and somehow still-incomplete street clearance. On the former: I’m on the record arguing that even though sidewalks are residents’ responsibility by city ordinance, they are public infrastructure and should be managed as such. This isn’t an excuse for you not to shovel in the here and now, by the way. (Your elderly and less-mobile neighbors depend on you.) It’s a pitch for how to fix a system that’s clearly not working for the future, and I stand by it!

I’ll have some additional reporting on this next week. But goddamn! The dismal job DPW has done to clear our roads over the course of the past week sure makes that future seem far out of reach, huh? The department’s director, Bobby Vincent, told The Richmonder that the ongoing mess is owing to the fact that “plows are not effective with the ice, but the plows are effective with the slush.” It’s true that the snow turned to freezing rain on Sunday evening and complicated a standard clearance effort. It’s also true that it’s been too cold for salt to make much of a dent in the curbside skating rinks out there. But how many DPW trucks did you see plowing the snow while it was snowing, reader? On the east-west artery of E. Broad St., I saw zero.¹ I should know: I was out there shoveling throughout the day to prevent accumulation. I’m no hero, just a guy who read a weather report and figured if I didn’t clear my sidewalk before it froze, it’d be a lot harder to remove the resulting ice. Imagine that.

This is annoying, but there are also real costs here. Businesses couldn’t open. People with older or less weather-ready cars struggle to get around, as did pedestrians. Hopefully nobody broke a wrist or sprained an ankle. Trying to ride a bike on these roads? Good luck. How have you been holding up in the storm and its aftermath? Let us know in the comments, or reach out directly if you’ve got a tip about the city’s snow-removal effort thus far.

But about that silver lining I promised in the subject line. During last year’s snow storms,² I wrote about sneckdowns. Remember this? Quick refresher:

This week, with so much snow still on the streets, sneckdowns formed all over the neighborhood, showing us where we might place pocket parks or traffic-calming hardscapes while still allowing cars to pass. Did you see any? Two in particular jumped out to me:

I’m sure there were more, but these were the ones I managed to snap. The irony isn’t lost on me that we’d need DPW to complete these imagined improvements to our streets, when it was DPW’s protracted snow-removal process that revealed them in the first place. But maybe sometimes that’s just what it takes to see the neighborhood a little differently.

📜 Possum Poetry

Possum Poetry is original verse written exclusively for The Lookout by Penelope Poubelle, the Lookout’s litter critter-at-large. If you spot roadside trash you’d like her to immortalize in doggerel, email a photo to [email protected]. All submissions anonymous!

☕️ Riverbend turns pro-ICE smear into cold hard cash for legal aid

Earlier this month, Riverbend Roastery received a one-star review from some guy who was red-assed about the flyers the cafe had posted in its windows warning customers about federal immigration agents spotted in the community and asserting its rights as a private business. As The Lookout reported, owner Alexa Schuett and her staff had some real fun mocking Google user Rob Ramsey sandbagging them on the platform in retaliation for—in his words, and odd title casing—not showing proper “respect” to “our Law Enforcement.” Shortly after I filed that column, Riverbend added a brand-new item to its menu in, uh, “homage” to the dingus that dinged their score. “Inspired by our [one-]star review,” wrote the E. Broad St. shop on a poster and corresponding Instagram post, Rob’s Churro Latte includes:

• Espresso

• Brown sugar

• Vanilla

• Condensed milk

• Cinnamon

• Choice of milk

“Because no human is illegal,” the promo reads. Presumably, the beverage’s namesake will not be returning to partake, but you can—and when you do, Riverbend will donate the proceeds to the Richmond Community Legal Fund. In a text to The Lookout earlier this week, Schuett said sales of Rob’s Churro Latte have already generated ~$800 for the local legal nonprofit.

📊 Following up on City Hall’s 2025 salaries

Earlier this month—which, by the way, can you believe it’s still fucking January?—I highlighted the annual salaries of City Council President and longtime 7th District representative Cynthia Newbille ($45,000) and her staff liaison, Sam Patterson ($102,440.52.) That item was based on diligent public-records reportage by The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Samuel B. Parker, who put together a whole database showcasing the compensation of every City Hall employee last year.

Anyway, Lookout Vee Wright hit the comments section to ask what percentage of Richmond's annual budget goes towards payroll. A good question! I did some quick back of the back-of-the-napkin math on this:

I think that’s right? But by all means, check my math. While we’re on the subject, and apropos of today’s lede, Parker’s spreadsheet had DPW’s head honcho Bobby Vincent pulling down $258,125 last year.

📢 Happenings on The Hill

• Arooooo [sorrowful]: Sadly, HoundTown has canceled its planned meet-up for tomorrow due to the forecast. Scope the schedule for the rest of the spring.

• Goods for good: Kindhearted Goods is donating 10% of sales this weekend to RCLF “[i]n solidarity with Minneapolis, the nationwide strike, & people in need in our community.” More info here.

• Drop those donations: Spotty Dog, Dear Neighbor, Cobra Burger, and Kindhearted Goods are all serving as drop-off points for a donation drive for families affected by ICE this weekend. Here’s what they need.

Happenings on The Hill is a digital bulletin board for events, causes, and other items of interest to East Enders that don’t necessarily merit full editorial treatment. Got something for a future edition? Email the relevant details, links, etc. to [email protected] for consideration!

📸 A Very CHill Photo

Want to share your Very CHill Photo from the neighborhood? Email it to [email protected] with your name as you’d like it to appear for publication, and the camera you shot it on.

1  Saw a few private vehicles with plows running what appeared to be a fairly random selection of north-south side streets in Church Hill North on Sunday night, though. Maybe contractors? Hmm.

2  When we were all less worried about what DPW was up to than what DPU (the Department of Public Utilities) was. Man, that sucked, huh? Imagine just like… not having to worry about catastrophic failures of the city’s infrastructure. Sounds really nice