Show 👏 us 👏 your pet! 👏 Show 👏 us 👏 your pet! 👏

There’s an old adage in the media business that holds while “dog bites man” is not news, “man bites dog” certainly is. Deviations from the norm merit scrutiny; the norm itself, not as much. But from its founding, The Lookout has been dedicated to publishing both news and views from Richmond’s East End, and my view is that just because something is not newsworthy does not mean it’s not worthy-worthy. Which brings us back to dogs.

Today, The Lookout launches East End Animal Friend, a new recurring feature spotlighting the many creature companions of Church Hill and its surrounds. If you have a pet (dog, cat, fish, semi-domesticated raccoon, etc.) that you’d like to introduce to the neighborhood, then you’re in luck, because I’d like that, too. Simply fill out this form, upload a nice photo of your animal, and look forward to their editorial debut in an upcoming edition of this very newsletter.²

(Alternatively, you can always bite your pet, in which case I’ll cover it as news. But I’d rather you just fill out the form.)

To demonstrate what this will look like on the page, I’m piloting this new segment with my own pet. Everybody meet Ernie, The Lookout’s inaugural East End Animal Friend.

Where and when did you get your pet?
We got Ernie at the Richmond SPCA in April 2025, just a few days after he arrived there from an SPCA branch in western Pennsylvania. We were told he was about three years old, and that he’d been in shelters his whole life. He was just under 50 pounds, very timid, and basically mute. (That would all change after we brought him home, and fast.)

What’s your pet’s favorite thing to eat?
Ernie is what dog trainers like to call “extremely food-motivated,” so there’s very little he won’t eat. Like many dogs, he’s a huge fan of peanut butter. That’s probably the out-and-out “favorite.” Right now, he’s also a big fan of bully sticks.

Does your pet have a neighborhood animal friend they like to play with?
We’re still working on socializing Ernie, so his playdates in the neighborhood are pretty limited at the moment. As our (extremely patient) neighbors put it, he has a lot of “big feelings.” But hopefully we’ll get him trained to a point where he’s able to play with some pals soon!

What is your pet's favorite thing about living in the East End?
Ernie loves sprawling on the cool cement floor of Second Bottle on a hot summer day, and running around in the Chimborazo Dog Park no matter the season. But his favorite day-to-day activity is probably any walk that takes us past Riverbend Roastery, where he knows Felicia, Han, Ariel, KJ, and the rest of the staff keep a treat jar stocked with Milk-Bones—just one more of his favorite things to eat.

You get the gist. If you see Ernie in the neighborhood, your humble Lookout editor will likely be on the other end of his leash, so come say hello. And again, please submit your pet for a future East End Animal Friend feature using this form. Show us your pet!

📜 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!

💰 Here’s how much Cynthia Newbille and her liaison made last year

Late last month, in the doldrums between Christmas and New Year’s Day, the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Samuel B. Parker published a list of salaries paid to City Hall employees in 2025. In the private sector, there’s a persistent cultural aversion to open discussions of employee pay, even—especially?—amongst employees themselves, often to theirs bosses’ benefit. But compensation in the public sector is public, or at least should be: after all, when our tax dollars are funding the city’s payroll, we ought to know how much we’re on the hook for.

The RTD’s database (which I should warn you, can be finicky to access depending on the browser you’re on; I had the best luck in the paper’s iOS app) includes salaries for ~4,000 employees of the city of Richmond, and worth sifting through in full. But assuming you’re reading The Lookout as a resident of the 7th District, two rows of the spreadsheet may be of particular interest to you. Cynthia Newbille, the current Richmond City Council President and longtime representative of this district, was salaried at the new member standard of $45,000, a reflection of the nature of the public-service role’s part-time hours.¹ As a full-time administrative employee, her council liaison, Sam Patterson, made $102,440.52.

The salary of Mayor Danny Avula, an East End resident himself, was $180,687.50, a rate he increased from just over $130,000 in his first budget. The city’s median salary landed at $74,103.99 for 2025. “Richmond’s median household income, meanwhile, is just over $63,000, according to U.S. Census Bureau data,” Parker wrote.

⚠️ Lookouts speak out about East End’s scariest streets

My column last week about the slew of pedestrians slain by motorists throughout the city over the past month elicited provoked some discussion in the comments section, social media, and my inbox. No surprise: just a day after I filed that piece, another pedestrian (Valerie Smith, 62) was killed by a driver on the Southside, keeping the deadly consequences of the city’s street designs and history of political inaction in the headlines and on folks’ minds. Anyway, this past Friday I asked which East End street you think you’ll get killed crossing. Here’s how some of you responded:

• Williamsburg Ave. and Orleans St. “I live in Fulton Bottom and cross this intersection multiple times per day — either to get to the Rockett's Landing Pulse stop, ride my bike to the Capital Trail, or stroll with my infant to the closest corner store (which is in Henrico, sadly). Williamsburg Ave. makes my neighbors and me feel incredibly unsafe while crossing. It's four lanes of mayhem, downhill, and people often go 50+ miles-per-hour. Even the City's own speeding data marks this arterial as problematic.” — Kevin Cianfarini

• Jefferson Ave., E. Marshall St., and N. 21st St.: “[This intersection] is horrendous. I was almost hit there numerous times even when I was super-cautious. Leigh is now super dangerous with all the cars parked right on the corners. People turning off Broad now that Government is closed is bad too. Also everyone drives like a maniac down to the end of Broad thinking it will get them through.” — Pete Z

• Jefferson Ave. and N. 22nd St.: “I love how they put in the effort to for traffic calming at 24th & Jefferson, and then left the other two traffic circles untouched. I've seen multiple drivers flop their cars at 22nd and Jefferson” — @skankincycle

• M St. and N. 26th St.: “Drivers speeding east like they got gravity assist coming off that roundabout at 25th.” — @‪cagraham

• Anywhere on Dock St.: “The only way motorists don't actively try to murder me on Dock St. is if I take my phone out and make it clear that I'm recording video of them speeding up to ignore the flashing crosswalk sign. A man in a lifted truck smiled at me today when he floored it to try to get by me when I was already in the crosswalk. I was on the phone, so I wasn't recording a video, but I did have to say out loud, ‘hold on, I might get murdered by someone with their truck.’” — @joewoods

• Jefferson Ave., E. Marshall St., and N. 21st St. (again): “I was almost hit there! The DOT and DPW must do something about the traffic traveling west on Jefferson street. Once motorists reach the nexus where the three streets meet, it is never clear whether motorists are going to turn left onto 21st (almost no one uses her or his left-turn signal) or proceed across the nexus to Marshall. Meanwhile, at the same time westward traffic on Jefferson has the green light, pedestrians have the white-man walk signal.” — Vee Wright

For those of you that have yet to chime in, the comments on the original column are open to all, so get in there.

📢 Happenings on The Hill

• Knuckle up: Stop by Triple Crossing Fulton Saturday (1/17) from 2pm for free finger-boarding (?) fun (???) featuring Finger Bored VA, Craft Bruise, and Finger Beers. Also actual beers. Peep the info.

• Time to CHA-CHA: The Church Hill Association’s monthly membership meeting is Tuesday (1/20) at 7pm at St. John’s parish hall. Details here.

• Veg out: Pizza Bones, Soul ‘n Vinegar, and more East End restaurants are participating in Vegan72’s Vegan Food Week, which runs next Tuesday through next Saturday (1/20-25). Full lineup here.

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  Newbille’s salary increased from $25,000 to $45,000 in July of last year. This 80% increase was the result of a 2024 vote by eight of nine councilmembers to increase their roles’ compensation, which they said would make the job financially viable for a broader pool of candidates in the future. The $25,000 salary had prevailed for the previous 26 years, and was only raised in 2024 following a change in state law. Axios reported at the time that the maximum salary Richmond’s City Council President could draw is $51,000.

2  Google Forms only allow photo uploads for Google users. If you don’t have a Google account, that’s OK! Just shoot me an email letting me know you’d like to participate, and I’ll get you set up. It’s [email protected].