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The Week In Brief

Photo: Katie Jones

The seven remaining candidates for Richmond Mayor gathered at the VMFA last night for Mayorathon 2016, an event put on by Richmond Magazine along with Richmond Forward, the James River Association, RVA Rapid Transit, the Storefront for Community Design and Sports Backers.

Jon Baliles, Jack Berry, Bobby Junes, Joe Morrissey, Michelle Mosby, Levar Stony, and Lawrence Williams were in attendance to give their thoughts on improving public education, transportation, strengthening city neighborhoods and protecting the James River. Check out our full recap of the event with thoughts and insights from each candidate here. A live televised debate will bring the remaining candidates back together October 17th at the Altira Theater. NBC12 and WCVE have teamed up with ChamberRVA for the event.

Want to keep up with, document, or just bitch about problems in the City of Richmond? A new project from Ross Catrow and Susan Howson, instigators of the late RVANews, allows you to do just that. This Dang Wiki launched this week. “What we need is, to borrow a term from the productivity world, an external brain—a place where we can collectively document the shitty things in our neighborhoods that bother us,” Catrow says of the project. It’s a lot like SeeClickFix but independent and with a more collective, community feel to it. Whereas the former allows you only to submit problems and tickets, this wiki will serve to become a community repository of information, ideas, and hopefully lead to collective problem solving that helps move our city in the right direction. I’m stoked to see where they take this idea.

In Henrico County political news, voters are set to vote on approval of $419.8 million in bond referendums this November. We have a full breakdown of how the money, should it be approved, will be spent over five to six years, and how you can participate in the conversation before Election Day.

Elsewhere in Henrico, The Halligan Bar & Grill will be featured on a new Food Network show, Ginormous Foods. Filming took place at lunchtime on Monday and featured a $28, three-pound meat monstrosity called “The Flatliner” that you can read about here.

Garth Brooks, who hasn’t played a show in Richmond in almost 20 years, returns to the Richmond Coliseum in just over a month, and tickets sold like hotcakes when they went on sale at 10:00 AM this morning. Many visitors to the Ticketmaster page reportedly had trouble–myself included–getting seats likely due to the high volume of sales. As such, the Coliseum kept adding additional shows. There will now be four Garth shows in all. Check out the full schedule here. Tickets are still available as of this writing. The continual addition of new shows and emails from the Coliseum’s management team led WTVR’s Scott Wise to joke that Garth would be playing a show every day until Christmas–a tweet which got retweeted by the man himself!

The once struggling Carver Elementary School was announced as a Department of Education Blue Ribbon winner this morning, which means the school is a “symbol of exemplary teaching and learning.” Congrats to teachers, students, parents, and staff members on their collective work to receive this recognition.

In other school news–college news, that is–The Siegel Center’s basketball court will have a new name when the season opens this November. VCU Athletics announced this week that a 10-year naming-rights agreement was reached with Jeff and Janet Wade, owners and founders of Mechanicsville-based E.J. Wade Construction and the E.J. Wade Foundation. The 10-year, $2.75 million naming-rights agreement replaces VCU’s expired arrangement with Verizon, which had provided $165,000 annually. The Wades have committed a total of $4.05 million over the length of the contract to the school’s athletic program.

Speaking of college sports, contributor Reid Kidwell has analysis on the Hokies’ strong start under the leadership of new head coach Justin Fuente and opines on whether he thinks they can keep up their early season momentum. The Richmond Kickers are on the road this weekend and face Louisville City FC Sunday as they begin season playoff action.

Are you an aspiring artist or a professional already living your dream in the area? Applications are open for the VMFA’s fellowship funding program through November 4th. Apply here for a grant.

Strangeways Brewing will open a new production facility and taproom in Fredericksburg in mid-2017, the brewery announced yesterday. The new location will be near the Fredericksburg Fairgrounds and will create 27 new jobs. Maybe Fredericksburg isn’t all that bad after all? Maybe?

Speaking of beer, Richard Hayes has a healthy pint of beer news for you to enjoy in this week’s RVA Beer Explorer.

And yes, of course, we have the full rundown of city-wide food news for you as well! Secco Wine Bar opens this evening in the former home of Buddy’s in The Fan. Two other restaurants–Curry Craft and Omega Greek Cuisine–have shuttered. We also have details on which Martin’s stores will close in the coming months to transition to Publix stores. Earlier this week, a new Vietnamese/French concept opened in the former Dixie Donuts space in Carytown. And no, they didn’t keep the larger-than-life donut sign affixed to the front of the building.

It was a week filled with scary clown sightings. All over town, people reported clowns tapping on windows and appearing in the woods. Naturally, our own Richard Hayes took full advantage of these menacing headlines for our RVA News In Brick feature.

Two Richmond women have started a new project to make difficult conversations about illness and even death a little bit easier. The website, ifIgetsick.com, was created by Richmonders Sarah Choi and Rebecca Thomas and provides tips and guidelines to set expectations and commitments in the event that someone becomes sick. It includes icebreakers, videos, and information about why it’s important to take the time to talk about the possibility of illness and keeps a positive tone about a topic that often is cast as negative and difficult or awkward to approach. Read more about how the project got started here.

It was a soggy, wet week full of rain and thunderstorms–some of which were severe. Egg-sized hail was reported north of the city, and lightning sparked at least one fire in the Twin Hickory area earlier in the week.

Rain remains in the forecast; it might be a solid weekend to check out The Byrd Theatre’s new Big Screen Classics series, which begins tomorrow morning with The Wiz.

Weekend Roundup

Photo: Venture Richmond

As fall marches on, there’s plenty to do this weekend. The 2nd Street Festival takes place in Jackson Ward, Hogtober returns to Libby Hill, Bark In The Park comes back to Deep Run Park in the West End, and much more. Make the most of your weekend with our Weekend Event picks right here.

October rolls in tomorrow, and along with it, Halloween activities! Halloween Haunt returns to Kings Dominion tonight, and we’ve got all the scary details on rides and attractions to check out during the event, this being the park’s not-so-sweet 16th season.

It’s the last weekend to enjoy the State Fair of Virginia at The Meadow Event Park in Doswell. Check out our guide to find out where to go, what to see, and the crazy new artery-clogging foods available this time around including the guac dog and deep fried butter to name a few. We’ll show you how to make the most of your visit and save a few bucks, too.

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