In 2017, John Murden stepped away from the keyboard after over a decade of publishing the Church Hill People’s News, a prolific and beloved area blog that has since gone dormant. (Mostly.) A year later, he was posting again. He just didn’t really tell anyone.

“After stepping away from CHPN I wanted to become less public but still had the twitch to do ‘the thing,’” Murden told The Lookout in a text exchange earlier this week. “The thing” was useful.bike, a low-key tumblr—remember tumblr?!—of velo-centric photos and musings from the East Ender-turned-Southsider, who got his start in Richmond’s cycling scene back in 2004 riding his old red Trek to and from a teaching job at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School.

“Back in the day I had like a six-block commute,” he recalled. “I'd stash my bike in my classroom.”

For the first few years, Murden noodled away on useful.bike without fanfare. But eventually, the veteran blogger found himself slowly nudging his new passion project into the limelight. He launched an Instagram page in 2020 called @rva.cargo.bike, and by 2021 had begun posting to it regularly. The account, coupled with the blog, offered outlets for his own brief bike-related photos and musings, and vectors to connect with other riders across the city.

Murden’s entries during this period were concise, but offbeat; the idle chatter of a guy not “really trying to find an audience,” as he told me. “I am a very small school bus,” reads the caption of a September 2021 @rva.cargo.bike photo showing a Larry vs. Harry Bullitt cargo bike parked near a Richmond plaground. A May 2022 post on useful.bike offers “Pics from the CARGO BIKE MEET-UP & RODEO at Byrd Park.”

Eventually, though, Murden decided to get back in the blogging saddle (ahem) in earnest. He dabbled in a CHPN-esque publication focused on his new neighborhood south of the river called South Richmond News, but the project didn’t grab him, so he wound it down in April 2025. But useful.bike and @rva.cargo.bike kept rolling, and in August 2026 he decided to consolidate the latter under the former’s banner, rebranding the Instagram and introducing his nearly decade-long tumblr to the broader social web.

“Not sure what clicked per se at that time but launching projects has always been a gut feeling,” he said.

In Silicon Valley, this sort of deliberately delayed debut is known as launching a project out of “stealth mode,” a tried-and-true gambit to build hype for a fundraising round. But Murden isn’t looking to attract venture-capital investment in useful.bike. He’s just trying to sate his local cycling-specific curiosities. “I've stumbled across a new set of questions that I'm compelled to find info about,” he told The Lookout. “I want to know what new bike [infrastructure] we’re getting so that I can have something to look forward to. It spins out from there.”

To that end, the current iteration of useful.bike features more posts about upcoming bike-lane projects across the city (”My white whale is the Jahnke Road Improvements Project… This has been in the works since 2008!”) along with with Murden’s local “bike parking reviews” (Circle Thrift, B: “Tons of capacity including one of the city’s new bike corrals. Go treat yourself to a random cassette”) and photos of his and others Richmonders’ rides. “A mix of ‘reporting,’ pics, history, whatever,” as the editor puts it. “Part of this is scooping up and amplifying what other folks are doing—like the Ice Cream Rides or the Spooky Southside Ride,” he explained. “I'm intentionally working also to keep it personal around the edges—pics of bikes that I've restored or just from the experience of biking around Richmond.”

As for what Murden is riding these days… well, he’s keeping that local, too. “My main bike is an Endpoint Hunter Gatherer,” he said. “They’re a Richmond brand, made in the US.” Using a cargo trailer, he often runs supplies between the restaurants he and his wife own—Garnett’s Cafe, Laura Lee’s, and The Roosevelt here in Church Hill.

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!

Earlier this week, The Richmonder published a feature spotlighting the state of Richmond Public Schools’ parent-teacher associations across the city. “Perhaps unsurprisingly, PTA involvement correlates directly with income levels across the city, with majority-Black schools the ones often left behind,” wrote Victoria Ifatusin, the outlet’s education reporter. The trend holds here in the East End, where active PTAs or similar orgs operate at just four of RPS’ eight schools.

The Church Hill Association is working to help pick up the slack. “Supporting PTAs, [parent-teacher organizations], and [parent-teacher-student associations] has been a focus of the CHA Youth & Education Committee for the past three years,” Mary Lorino, its current chair, told The Lookout by email earlier this week. “We believe these groups can be a real help to schools, but starting one from scratch—or keeping one going with just a few people - can be overwhelming.” To lighten the load, the committee relays needs highlighted by area schools (clean-up kits for accidents, belts for children in need, Halloween costumes…), and has developed a grant program to distribute funds raised by its members to schools on a project basis.

“We’re working toward awarding each school we serve a grant before making repeat awards, so this round is open to schools that haven’t received one yet,” says Lorino. “We’d love to see a school use a grant to help get a PTA, PTO, or PTSA started or to support an existing group.”

Longtime readers know The Lookout is fully in the tank for shutting down East Broad Street for Halloween to keep motor vehicles away from trick-or-treaters on the year’s most dangerous night for pedestrians. Following my September 2026 column resurfacing the idea, a handful of readers who are serious about street safety reached out to volunteer their time to try to make the concept a reality. Ever since, this grassroots group (of which your humble Lookout editor is proudly a part) has been working with relevant officials at City Hall and the Richmond Police Department and fundraising to cover the unfortunately considerable costs of closing the corridor from N. 29th to N. 32st Sts. for a first-ever holiday tradition: BooFest on Broad.

In mid-October, the project surpassed its $3,000 fundraising target on GoFundMe thanks to ~65 individual donors (now 70+), and in part to social-media boosts from Grisette and the East End’s own state delegate, Rae Cousins. And earlier this week, BooFest crossed another crucial milestone, receiving a green light (road joke!) from RPD to close the designated three-block stretch on Halloween night. Organizers have a lot of work still to do behind the scenes between now and October 31st. But the upshot is that car-free trick-or-treating is coming to Church Hill next week. Tell your family, friends, and neighbors: BooFest on Broad 2026 is a go.

This an all-volunteer effort, so if you’d like to get involved as a crossing guard or set-up/tear-down worker, there’s a form for that. And if you’d just like more information for now, be sure to sign up for the organizing group’s (infrequent) email updates, follow BooFest on Facebook and Instagram, and hit the FAQ section of the GoFundMe page.

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!

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