Bike Share Almost Here

Power infrastructure put in for new bike share station just outside Pleasants Park.

City announcement:

RVA Bike Share Ready to Roll Public invited to bike share launch

Richmond, VA — Mayor Levar M. Stoney will launch the RVA Bike Share program on Tuesday, August 29 at 9 a.m. at Kanawha Plaza and lead cyclists on a 2-mile ride from across the Manchester Bridge to the T. Tyler Potterfield Bridge, ending at Browns Island.

“Bike sharing programs are a community transportation service and desired amenity provided by forward thinking and environmentally conscious cities,” said Mayor Stoney. “I am proud Richmond is now among those leading in this regard.”

Richmond has teamed up with Canada-based Bewegen Technologies Inc., an industry bike share leader, to supply the bicycles and docking stations. The equipment will be maintained by Corps Logistics, a Baltimore-based firm owned and operated by military veterans.

The initial phase includes 220 8-speed bikes and 20 docking stations located throughout the city. A second phase is expected to be implemented in the coming months, doubling the fleet and including electric assist PedElec bikes, making it easier to ride uphill. These hi-tech bicycles will be equipped with a color screen, live GPS and can be unlocked through a mobile app.

RVA Bike Share is a public-private initiative, and Mayor Stoney has written a letter to encourage Richmond’s corporate and business leaders to engage in sponsorship opportunities necessary to ensure the long-term sustainability of the program. Click here to read the mayor’s letter. (In comments)

Plans for RVA Bike Share have been in the works since 2012. The city was awarded a $1,064,000 federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality grant in 2014 to start the program, supplementing $280,000 in capital improvement funds made available by the city.

One-way trip and daily passes will be available as well as weekly, monthly and yearly memberships. For more information about RVA Bike Share, pricing, membership and sponsorship opportunities, please visit rvabikes.com.

August 20, 1968 – Hendrix Plays The Mosque

Times Dispatch music review the next day:

He calls it the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and like it or not, that’s what it is.
Hendrix is a soft-spoken Negro. He plays his innovative style of music with two English boys, and While the sound is white, what Hendrix himself does is alternately intellectual or frenzied.
He was dressed for last night’s Mosque concert in bellbottom cerise pants. He also wore an exotically embroidered vest over a black shirt, two belts — one wide and gold — and three ornate rings. His carefully clipped hair stands high and round like a topiary tree.
Hendrix, who taught himself guitar by listening to old rhythm and blues artists, has put that style of music aside.
Instead, he has originated a music of his own, using amplifiers and electronics as a part of it.
The result is a lot of noise and harsh sound, but listen carefully and there are some startling musical effects emerging.
Such as when he uses the shrill sound of feedback as a key note in his harmony, or when the overtones that swell over and beneath his music become an intrinsic part of it.
Intricate Figures
Other than that, his musical understanding is shown in the intricate figures he weaves on the guitar, often holding the instrument tight against his chest, as if he were a human resonator. At other times he is strictly a sensational showman, as when he swings the guitar between his legs, or lifts it high and seems to chomp on it like an ear of corn. All time he keeps playing, never losing the thread holding the song together.
Between shows the 24·year-old sensation of Europe and the United States, was a warm, but shy person, tired from the hectic grind of one-night stands, on an eight-week tour, but happy to make his music and have it appreciated.
Traveling in the same musical package is a group known as The Eire Apparent, a group of terribly young and strangely dressed young men – one looked as if he had borrowed his Aunt Fanny‘s hat – who display a good deal of talent; and a three man group called The Soft Machine that features a topless drummer, a leather-jacketed organist and a guitarist, complete with Stetson hat, who looked like Cat Ballou, as he slumped over his guitar.
It was almost impossible to bear the music out front, as it was so amplified. But backstage, where the resonance wasn’t as strong, the music the two lesser—known groups made was much more palatable. Too bad they can’t give up those umbilical cords that tie them to their sound boxes, or at-least hear how they negate their own efforts with the amplification.
When the amplifiers are lowered, and the music emerges a bit more, one realizes that Hendrix is playing blues and protest songs, as much as he is fiery, possessing ones.
He dedicated “I Don‘t Live Today” to “all the self-appointed soldiers in St. Petersburg, Chicago, Vietnam and, or yes, the American Indian.” The song ends in a special effect like a catcall. His “Red House Blues” displayed his original harmonic technique around the old jazz form, but his version a squalling, wailing blues — the lament is there, but it is shriller. In fact, if the music is representative of Hendrix’ own soul, then his soul seems to be a shrieking and demanding a place in the sun.

Councilperson Agelasto’s Fifth District Meeting Thursday

Councilperson Agelasto is holding a Fifth District meeting this coming Thursday, August 24, from 6 pm to 8 pm at the Woodland Heights Baptist Church (611 W. 31st Street, Richmond, VA 23225)

From announcement:

Agenda Items

· Richmond Public Schools Update
The Honorable Patrick Sapini, Richmond Public Schools Board of Trustees, Richmond Central 5th Voter District

· Richmond City Property Assessment Update
Mr. Richie N. McKeithen, City Assessor, Richmond City Council Office of the City Assessor of Real Estate

· Richmond Master Plan Update: Richmond 300
Ms. Maritza Pechin, AECOM Consultant/Richmond Master Plan Project Manager, Richmond Department of Planning and Development Review

· Richmond Central 5th Voter District Updates

· Questions and Comments

Stop Sign Proposal Revealed

This past summer there was a lot of discussion about Oregon Hill’s traffic flow. The Idlewood roundabout is still coming, and more construction near Monroe Park added fuel to the fire, but the real sparks have been several highly visible accidents at key intersections in the neighborhood. A few neighbors have had their corner properties hit multiple times by vehicles over the years. Thankfully, somehow, there has not been any related fatalities.

The Oregon Hill Neighborhood Association originally, as of a few years ago, voted and asked for a few additional stop signs at these key intersections, namely Spring and Laurel, and Spring and Pine, in order to create what are essentially all way stops. City traffic engineers have rejected them (though other neighborhoods have been able to prevail in their requests). At one point engineers came back with a small roundabout proposal, but neighbors voted that down, in part because of concerns about parking impacts.

Over the last 6 to 8 months, the conversation changed, along with the construction scene, and more elaborate proposals have been brought forward for overall traffic flow and with what is called ‘basketweaving‘.

Jokes aside, the Oregon Hill Neighborhood Association did seriously consider options and ultimately came up its own ‘custom’ proposal.

While nothing has been decided or implemented yet, here it is:

The red circles are where existing stop signs would be changed so that they are ‘flipped’, directing traffic to stop in the opposite directions from the current situations. For example, currently, if you are going north on Pine Street on the 500 block, you do not have to stop, but people approaching on Spring Street do have to stop. In the new scenario, if you were going north on Pine Street on the 500 block, you would stop at the intersection with Spring, and people going west or east on Spring would not have to stop.