Vinyl Conflict Adapts to Pandemic

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RVA Magazine has a story about Pine Street punk rock record store Vinyl Conflict.

Here’s an excerpt:

When the coronavirus outbreak hit, Vinyl Conflict owners Bobby Egger and Melissa Mazula were out of the country. They’d had a buying trip to the UK scheduled for March 4 through 18, and as they traveled, things began to escalate.

“When the travel ban went into effect, we were watching the news very carefully each day, trying to make a decision about how we would be returning,” said Egger. “We were quite far away from our return flight date, and on the other side of the country.”

From another country, they had to make important decisions about what would happen with Vinyl Conflict’s retail store in Oregon Hill, which specializes in new and used punk, hardcore, and metal albums — on vinyl, of course — as well as related merchandise. And when they returned, they voluntarily put themselves into quarantine.

“Me and Melissa went on self quarantine for two full weeks, and my employees continued to up our online presence in social media,” Egger said. The shop switched to a curbside-pickup model, at first allowing browsing by appointment only and then ending even that out of concerns for the safety of customers and employees. And they immediately focused on online sales, working hard to ensure that their entire inventory was accessible on the store’s website and the record-sales site Discogs.com.

VCU Libraries offers free 30-minute community Zooms starting April 30

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Neighbors: If you’re seeking diversion, conversation, connection, join in a new series of community Zooms offered by VCU Libraries. Topics range from Preservation Week to factchecking Convid-19 info, from how to enjoy the libraries’ online the libraries new website to what is everyone reading. We’ll help you hook up to Zoom if it’s new to you. A series of brief virtual events designed for the VCU Libraries community, highlighting timely subjects, celebrating achievements, practicing creativity and more.

Sessions are held Thursdays at 10:30 a.m. and last approximately a half hour to 45 minutes each. Some sessions will be good for high schoolers studying at home. The lineup: https://www.library.vcu.edu/about/events/2019-20/community-zooms.html

Trash/Recycling Pickup Tomorrow

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This Wednesday is a “Red Wednesday”, which means trash and recycling pickup. Please go over what can be recycled. Ideally, rolling recycling containers are stored and deployed in the back alleys along with trash cans. Please make sure you pick up containers after pickup tomorrow night.

If you have not done so already, don’t forget to sign up for your Recycling Perks.
In order to take your recycling to the next level, read this: 10 ways to improve your recycling.

In recycling news, the website WasteDive.com recently ran a column covering COVID-19’s evolving impact on the waste and recycling sector.

Starting in mid-March, the Waste Dive team dedicated the majority of its time to covering what the rapidly evolving COVID-19 situation ​meant for waste and recycling in the United States. Frontline workers have been affected, services have been disrupted, policies have been temporarily changed and financial effects have been significant for the public and private sector alike.

Catch up on all of our reporting here, in reverse chronological order to present the newest stories first.

Locally, the Central Virginia Waste Management Authority has created their own news page in regard to the COVID-19 pandemic. Click here to see that.

Internationally, The Intercept had a very disturbing article entitled “AFRICA’S EXPLODING PLASTIC NIGHTMARE:As Africa Drowns in Garbage, the Plastics Business Keeps Booming.”

Easter At Home

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With the pandemic at a peak here in Virginia, large Easter gatherings have been cancelled.

But neighborhood churches are still recognizing the holiday-

St. Andrews Episcopal Church is holding Easter service online. Click here for details.

And Pine Street Baptist Church has a very poignant sermon in its April monthly Beacon newsletter called “Waiting for Who Knows What”. Here’s an excerpt:

Even as we wait for Easter, even as we wonder if we will worship together on Easter, Easter still shapes us and informs us of who we are. We are an Easter people regardless of what day we find ourselves in. Easter is not a day but a way of life as a follower of Jesus. Easter is what shapes us and forms us and tells us who we are. We wait not in despair but in hope.

The Tredegar Store

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There were many residents of Oregon Hill who worked at the Tredegar Iron Works. Beside the canal, the Tredegar company store, built just after the Civil War, survives where many Oregon Hill residents doubtless shopped for many of their household needs. Some of the shelves that held the goods are still visible inside the building. According to the interpretive plaque, Tredegar did not provide script like some companies, instead workers who shopped at the store had the bill deducted from their wages.