Riverbend keeps cool as ICE backer bleats

Editor’s note: Sorry for the delay on today’s edition. I’m on the road right now, and had some technical difficulties. Thanks for your patience!—Dave.

As I type this, tens of thousands of people are packing the streets of Minneapolis and Saint Paul for the first city cities-wide general strike in a century to protest the Trump administration’s cruel and deadly assaults on themselves and their neighbors. Richmond has yet to see the type of sustained, wanton brutality the White House is perpetrating in the Twin Cities, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal shock troops have been spotted massing and raiding neighborhoods here over the past 12 months. When the masked feds began showing up, Riverbend Roastery’s owner, Alexa Schuett posted flyers in the coffee shop’s front window outlining her policy of exercising her rights as a private business-owner to prohibit ICE from entering. Another set of posters includes headshots of federal agents and words of caution in both English and Spanish.

Months passed without issue. “Once in a blue moon, somebody feels the need to negatively comment that Liberty [Public House, which Schuett also owns] has too many Pride flags, or that Riverbend doesn't need the rainbows,” she told The Lookout in a phone interview earlier this week. But nobody seemed bothered by Riverbend’s anti-ICE flyers. Until last week, that is.

This past Saturday, a Google Maps user named Rob Ramsey posted a one-star review of the shop, bemoaning what he characterized as “a lack of respect for our [sic] Law Enforcement.” The review, which is still live and currently boasts zero “likes” on the platform, reads in full:

This was Ramsey’s fourth Google review; according to his account, he previously assigned five stars to Small Town Burger in Kilmarnock, Cracker Barrel in Ashland, and Grease Monkey on Staples Mill Road. The Lookout could not identify a corresponding Rob Ramsey on Facebook or LinkedIn, and was unable to contact him.

Riverbend’s owner and staff took to its Instagram account earlier this week to mock Ramsey as a world-class chump. But for small businesses, bad reviews are no joke, even when they’re clearly bad-faith smears from a dullard. Platforms like Google Maps average all the ratings about a given business, so Ramsey’s one-star score dinged Riverbend’s overall profile. I asked Schuett whether the potential for lost business—not necessarily from back-the-blue types like Ramsey, but from rank-and-file customers who might avoid her businesses if their ratings were tanked by brigading bigots, which has happened elsewhere in Virginia—gave her pause about her stance on ICE, et al.

“It is more important to me to make sure that I'm on the right side of history than have a successful business,” she said. “I just trust that the community isn't going to be filled with hate.” Her moral clarity on, as Ramsey’s review put it, “mix[ing] business and politics” hardened during Trump’s first term, she added, and her opposition to ICE is of a piece with her opposition to conservative critics of Liberty’s flags and “Lesbian Pancake House” branding.

“If you would have asked me in 2018, I would have said there [are] certain things I just don't comment on because I don't need to ruffle feathers, but I don’t feel that way anymore,” she said. “I know for a fact that all of my businesses have people in them that don't agree with me, and I'm okay with that, because I we don't have to see eye to eye on every single thing. We just have to make sure that we're on the same page that humans are the baseline of our conversation.”

Happily, Ramsey’s one-star review hasn’t managed to put much of a dent in Riverbend’s overall Google rating, which currently stands at 4.6/5 stars. Since the shop’s Instagram posts about it, over a dozen people have left reviews of their own. Each message of support has been accompanied with five gold stars.

📜 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!

🍗 The Roosevelt’s chef earns a James Beard nod

Earlier this week, the James Beard Foundation (JBF) announced the semifinalists for its annual culinary awards, which mainstream media outlets insist on describing as “The Oscars of the food world” for reasons I have never understood. It’s annoying! Find a different point of reference! Christ!

Ahem. Sorry. Where was I? Oh, right: a James Beard award is a big deal, with the power to transform a restaurant’s business and/or a chef’s career. This past Wednesday, the organization named Chef Leah Branch of The Roosevelt to the long list for its “Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic” category, which includes Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. It’s Branch’s first nomination, and the fourth for the Church Hill restaurant: Lee Gregory, who now chefs across the neighborhood at Alewife, received three nominations while cooking under Franklin Delano’s watchful gaze. (Those nods came in 2013, 2014, and 2015.) Congratulations to Chef Branch and The Roosevelt. And to you, reader, for living in such a culinary hotbed.

Check out all this year’s nominees here, and mark your calendars for June 15th, when the JBF’s selection committee announces its top honors.

🤖 More like Danny AI-vula, amirite?!

Earlier this week, the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s ace reporter Samuel B. Parker broke the news that longtime East Ender Danny Avula had used the generative artificial-intelligence platform ChatGPT to complete official mayoral tasks during his first year in office. Parker (emphasis mine):

It is this neighborhood newsletter’s considered editorial opinion that Richmond’s mayor should not outsource functions of the office—whether administrative (coming up with interview questions to ask Odie Donald, Jr., who was later hired for the city’s $365,000-a-year chief administrative officer role), symbolic (sympathy cards to employees and residents), or otherwise—to software built on theft and controlled by billionaires. Avula, naturally, insists his use of ChatGPT in his capacity as the city’s top elected official is good and proper, telling the RTD that “there are lots of appropriate uses for AI to make the work of government more effective, which is really fascinating to me.” Okay, man.

Regardless of where you land on this matter—and by all means, smash that button above to chime in!—I believe you ought to know whether Avula’s statements to The Lookout last year were composed with the assistance of ChatGPT. A cursory review of my coverage showed two:

1. In September, Avula issued a statement affirming his support for Richmond Police Department’s use of Flock’s surveillance technology following the federal immigration enforcers’ illegitimate access to the system.

2. In December, Avula issued a statement calling for street-safety reforms following the killing of of Church Hill’s Bill Martin.

Press secretary Mira Signer told The Lookout via email Thursday evening that neither had been generated with ChatGPT.

I have yet to develop a formal editorial policy for handling statements from the mayor’s office moving forward, knowing that they have been produced or polished by a clanker. I’ll keep you posted on that. In the meantime, my policy about using generative AI to report, research, and write The Lookout is: I don’t.

📢 Happenings on The Hill

• Plan on prep-eroni: Triple Crossing Fulton is offering 10% off cases and par-baked pizzas to go tomorrow in advance of the snowstorm. More info.

• Get refreshed: The city is holding a meeting on its zoning “code refresh” process next Thursday (1/29) from 6-8pm. RSVP here.

• Stop the scofflaws: Four of the city’s long-awaited red-light cameras will be activated next week, including one at N. 25th and E. Main Sts. The Richmonder has more details.

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.