Editor’s note: As a reminder, The Lookout is experimenting with shifting its weekly publication to Saturdays, from Friday evenings. Like it? Hate it? Let me know in the comments!—Dave.

Historical archives can be a font of inspiration. For Emily Routman, a font was the inspiration: specifically, the swoopy, whimsical one she found on a masthead of an old Church Hill Association newsletter.

“I was totally drawn to it,” she told The Lookout in a phone interview earlier this week. So when it came time to design the poster for the CHA’s fourth-annual Spring Fest to-do, which goes down 12-5pm next Saturday (5/9) in Libby Hill Park, she made it her mission to replicate the typeset for a contemporary audience.

It was quite a journey, and one that Routman—a Church Hill resident, CHA assistant secretary, and a co-lead of this year’s Spring Fest—couldn’t even have embarked on had she CHA secretary Lisa Zulawski not tipped her off to a trove of the organization’s old periodicals in the archives of Richmond Hill.

“They said, ‘you can borrow these if you want to scan them,’” Routman said. “They were they were made in what's called Letraset, which is how things were published back then.” (Way back then, in fact: the now-defunct typesetting brand was founded in England in 1959.) The spidery lettering that fronted the issues fascinated the urban planner as much as the four-decade-old accounts of neighborhood goings-on. She tracked down a digitized Letraset fontbook on the Internet Archive’s indispensible Wayback Machine and made a visual match with a font called “Ringlet.” From there, Routman imported the font to Adobe Illustrator and began tweaking.

“I kind of edited some of the glyphs to make it a little more legible, because there are a lot of curlies in there,” she said. The resulting wordmark now sits atop the 2026 Spring Fest poster over an original watercolor of Libby Hill Park by Church Hill artist Andy Hudson, copies of which will be for sale at the vernal gala.

For Routman, a native Texan who has already stuck her fingers in a remarkable number of local pies since moving to the neighborhood two years ago, sourcing archival lettering was just another way to make Spring Fest sing. “We owe it to these awesome nonprofits and East End businesses and vendors that we’re highlighting to make it really special, make it really well done,” she said “Not just another ‘whatever’ market.”

No matter how fancy the font, though, it takes manpower to make Spring Fest properly special. In addition to her design work, Routman is wrangling volunteers from the neighborhood to help make the event—an important fundraiser for the 501(c)3 association, albeit less so than the Irish Festival and holiday-season programming—a success. “We're mostly good at this point,” she said when we spoke Thursday, adding that she’d even texted her mahjong groupchat soliciting helping hands. “But we have a few spots left!”

Alas: the volunteer sign-up form is not written in Ringlet. Maybe next year.

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!

On Monday, The Richmonder caught the Department of Public Utilities running a public service announcement made with generative artificial intelligence (AI) without being disclosed as such. This was an apparent violation of the city’s own policy: “transparency” is one of the five “ethical principles” longtime East Ender Mayor Danny Avula established in June 2025 to regulate official uses of the broadly unpopular technology. After founding editor Michael Phillips queried administration officials, they appended a disclosure to the uncanny video, which is getting hammered by anti-AI comments on YouTube. But the city would not tell him who it had paid $2,250 to produce the slop—a plausible violation of Avula’s stated “accountability” mandate for departmental AI use.

We already know Avula is an unabashed “slopper.” In January 2026, the Richmond Times-Dispatch revealed he’d used ChatGPT to draft everything from condolences to city employees mourning lost loved ones, to interview questions for the city’s highest-paid official, Odie “$1,000 A Day” Donald II. (Not these statements to The Lookout, though.) “I freaking love ChatGPT,” Avula declared during an Ask Me Anything session on Reddit’s lively r/rva board in February; at publication, his exuberant AI boosterism has 48 downvotes. In the case of the DPU PSA(I), Hizzoner’s passion for computer-produced sludge has yielded what appears to be a trick-mirror simulacrum of Church Hill’s own North 27th Street. The rendering does a real disservice to the beautiful real-life block between E. Marshall and E. Clay Sts.—not to mention all the creatives across Richmond and right here in Church Hill who produce actual video for a living. Do you freaking love it?

Spring has sprung and Church Hill’s parks are bursting with lush new life. In Triangle Park, the wedge of urban greenspace catty-cornered across Jefferson Ave. from Union Market, flowers aren’t the only thing springing up from the ground.

“On Sunday we installed the free library and pantry at Triangle Park,” Friends of Triangle Park head honcho Harry Herskowitz told The Lookout in a text exchange earlier this week. “Obviously it had to be a triangle.”

Buddy, it is. Local woodworker Davis Boshears built the unit—basically an A-framed outdoor cupboard with compartments for take-and-leave books and pantry items—over the winter, using proceeds from the fundraiser Herskowitz and his horticultural confreres held last year to purchase materials. At the angular item’s installation this past Sunday, volunteers also cleaned up the garden beds of the pocket park to make more room for new growth. “So many of the native plants are blooming right now,” Herskowitz said.

Triangle Park is a treat for everyone in the neighborhood, but it’s a bit of a calling for Herskowitz. He began tending to it almost three years ago in memory of his late sister, Hillary, who passed away in 2023. “Sunday was her birthday,” he said. “It felt great to get it all done.”

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!

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.