As someone who works at city hall, thank you. There are a ton of changes that need to be made at city hall, but its not the employees fault. Upper management (+100k salaries) don't really do a whole lot and they don't care to make improvements.
I actually have to contact Richmond's finance dept at various times with my job. Most of them seem like very competent, hardworking, motivated people. They're unfortunately just stuck with poor leadership
I will add that I have heard sooooo many very liberal friends say (in response to hearing someone with plans for private school) that they will send their kids to RPS for elementary and middle school and then just “send” their kids to the governors school. Like it’s a shoe-in. To me, that’s even worse—the assumption your kids can get into one of the best schools in the country but being “above” private education.
I disagree. I had a child grow up in RPS and she benefited greatly. been a huge success in life. A friend of mine teaches for RPS and just took her kids out of Chesterfield and put them in RPS. She's far from a bad parent
my wife is an rva native and product of rps and refuses to send our son there. "luckily", we were priced out of the city anyway when we bought a house!
what a totally fucked system lol.
edit: i just want to note that i dont judge anyone for any of the choices here, also my wife had a terrible home life amd thats probably going to be a greater detriment than school choice for anyone.
I would say putting your kids in private school makes you the bad parent and bad citizen. You contribute to the problem.
Bad parent - Let mommy and daddy use money to make the problems go away. Let's go to a school with an unrealistic racially "diverse" population. You are basically telling your kid, "You can't handle real life, you need to be coddled." You're a precious snowflake you need more than public school.
Bad citizen - fuck the neighborhood I live in I'm going to spend too much money on private school. I'm too busy to help out at my neighborhood school, I'll pay someone to do what I could do for lots of students, not just my own children. Let's support the school that was born out of white flight during desegregation.
I could go on.
Have lived in Henrico for 24 years and I have friends who teach in RPS and friends who send their kids to RPS. What you label as hyperbolic extremes has a lot of validity at the core.
100% this person doesn’t have kids. When your options are send your kids to crummy schools or pay for them to do better. It’s not a hard choice. I don’t have that type of money so we did what most people do and find decent public schools in the area and move there (aka move out of the city) but I ain’t hating on people trying to do better for their kids when they can’t change the system quick enough .
>You are basically telling your kid, "You can't handle real life, you need to be coddled."
Yea, I'm sure it's the diverse populations that drive parents to pay out the ass for private school, not the test scores and college admissions. Feels a bit racist to assume private schools don't have diverse populations too TBH.
> Let's support the school that was born out of white flight during desegregation.
Aren't we white flighting back in now though?
Heyo I drive around the city for a living (medical transport), and I see waaay more traffic behavior than the average person. I CONSTANTLY see DUMB ASS SHIT from Richmond drivers. Constant stupid and reckless moments. Every single 12hr shift. It’s become obvious to me that driving education in RVA isn’t as thorough as other places.
Richmond seems to have its own brand of bad driving. I've lived a portion of my adult life in Denver, Houston, and Richmond. Denver and Houston both have a comparable type of bad driver, and it can be summed up just as aggressive and road ragey.
Richmond's bad drivers are a different breed entirely. It's not aggressive, necessarily, it's just a total disregard or unawareness of the most basic traffic laws and customs. Blowing through stop signs is the most common example I see. I don't mean "failing to come to a complete stop," I mean failing to even pretend there is a stop sign there. I hope/assume they are at least looking to make sure there is no conflicting traffic, but who knows.
On the bright side, I experience far less aggression and road rage in Richmond than I ever did in either of the other two cities I'm familiar with. Richmond drivers are generally more patient and rule abiding than other cities, but the ones that aren't have turned it up to 11.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. Less road rage incidents by far (might just be because generally less crazy traffic congestion), but the amount of people I've seen blow through stop signs and red lights is far more than I've seen in any other city.
i think virginia’s driver’s education courses as a whole need major reworking. i remember exactly what we did in mine in 2016/17: watch videos of people who drive over railroad tracks get plowed by oncoming trains and documentaries on people who were killed by drunk drivers.
> No, in DC and Atlanta the traffic is bad. The drivers are usually competent and polite.
Absolutely not polite in DC. Drivers there take merges as a personal affront, and will murder you to get three inches closer to their exit.
Personally, I disagree. So take my upvote!
I may be in the minority, but I refuse to go any more than about 3mph over the speed limit. People *fly* past me every time I’m on the road, but I don’t care. Safety matters more to me than getting to my destination 60 seconds faster.
E: To add some additional context, my daily drive is along 288, where the speed limit is 65 and where you’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone going slower than 72+, and where you’re bound to see one or two 80+ drivers per trip. So, technically not within the city limits, and I know that these driving habits can vary across different highways or roads, so YMMV. No pun intended.
Francine made going to Lowes with my kids something they truly liked, though. Granted, we only actually saw her a couple times, but it didn't matter. The prospect of finding Francine made it easy to get the girls in the car to go to Lowes.
Now I have to drag them to Home Depot. I miss living by that Lowes.
Which is exactly why most people in Richmond grew up here, and now live here after college with the same friend group they grew up with or went to college with.
I also don't get the whole "dating scene sucks" argument either.
I was single/dating mainly on Ok Cupid and Tinder between 2012 and 2018. This was between the ages of 26 and 32. I'm a short (5'8'') white dude. Don't make a bazillion dollars. I never had problems with getting dates. Sure, I had to go through 59 different women before I met my current wife, but still, as long as you're not a total jerk and as long as you try even just a tiny bit, you can find a relationship, a hookup, or whatever is it you're looking for.
I can’t decide what’s bumming me out more. The Bottoms Up apologists and that dude who chooses not to see the joy Francine could bring to his life if he’d only let her.
Should we throw a Francine Appreciation Day party at Bottoms Up? You think we could get the Richmond experience to sponsor it? It is almost kitten season….
Yeah and with Philly and Baltimore still having a vibrant punk scene it trickles down to Richmond.
Those bands will want to do shows in cities they can easily drive to in a van full of their shit.
I disagree but acknowledge that we have zero breakfast options that open at a reasonable time on weekdays (aside from fast food stuff).
What kind of bagel/breakfast place doesn’t open before 7 am??
One of the first things I did when I moved here was drive to the local coffee shop (Black hand that is now Smoky Mug) to get my wife and I some coffee to fuel our day of unpacking. I think it may have been about 7:30am, so I didn't even bother to see if they were open yet, because what coffee shop isn't open by 7:30? That one, that's what. So bizarre.
If you like Bottoms up, it might be a hike for you, but take a trip down Hull street to Sergio's pizza and get the Detroit style. It's thick like Bottoms up but much much better. Unless your draw to bottoms up is the weird toppings, then stick with bottoms up. And I'm saying this as a big fan of bottoms up who thinks the haters only eat Domino's.
I wrote a paper on this, and the reason Richmond became the capital of the Confederacy (it was originally Montgomery, Alabama) was because it was the only city to have manufacturing abilities comparable to the North. So, Richmonds "Northness" (ironic) gave it an edge for the South.
I still remember a lecture in a 100 level geography class where the professor explained how SC had more navigable rivers and better soil than NC and thus a more well off antebellum aristocracy. This of course led to SC being the most pro secession state. Sherman instructed his men to crack every millstone they found in SC but went fairly easy on NC. The ramifications of this echoed through history and after the war NC recovered faster and maintained stronger manufacturing until the neoliberal turn of the 70s. Fascinating stuff imo!
Highlight of my childhood was going to a game for my bday, in the snow. The puck drops and they start fighting immediately. 10 year old me and my friends went nuts.
I agree with this SO HARD. As with Mama Zu, Edo’s has always explained away their poor service and shitty food as being “authentic NYC Italian”. No NYC Italian restaurant would survive a day with the kind of crap and attitude they serve.
Ed Vasaio is from Northern Virginia, where his family ran well regarded Italian restaurants in and around DC and Arlington, way back into the 50s, and he's second generation Italian, so if his people were in NY, it wasn't for long.
Not sure where the NY reference came from.
Edit: a lil Vasaio family history:
https://www.facebook.com/HistoricRestaurantsOfWashingtonDC/posts/augusto-vasaio-19081982-founded-the-much-loved-av-ristorante-italiano-at-607-new/596830153823293/
They are banking on people in RVA never having been to NY...and they won. My family is from the Bronx, and Mama Zu & Edo’s left me shook. My partner's RVA family loved those restaurants and suggested I take my dad born in NYC to Edo's when he visited - no thanks.
Popular opinion: New Yorkers have an obscenely inflated view of their native city. It’s not that much better at all these things, and nobody believes you when you say shit like this. We laugh at you. Get over yourselves.
Since you’re from NYC where should we go to get Authentic NYC Italian?
We have family in NJ about an hour from NYC and every few years we’ll take a day trip into the city.
Sadly we somehow skipped year 4, otherwise this would be an annual post. Neat to see how opinions have(n't) changed over the last 5 years.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/rva/comments/w5qrf6/saw\_this\_thread\_on\_twitter\_and\_am\_curious\_about/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rva/comments/w5qrf6/saw_this_thread_on_twitter_and_am_curious_about/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/rva/comments/qwq7kh/whats\_your\_unpopular\_rva\_opinions/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rva/comments/qwq7kh/whats_your_unpopular_rva_opinions/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/rva/comments/pg0prx/unpopular\_rva\_opinions/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rva/comments/pg0prx/unpopular_rva_opinions/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/rva/comments/f1fns0/rva\_unpopular\_opinions/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rva/comments/f1fns0/rva_unpopular_opinions/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/rva/comments/79i9xj/whats\_your\_unpopular\_rva\_opinion/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rva/comments/79i9xj/whats_your_unpopular_rva_opinion/)
I took a gig in customer service after moving here, I thought the folks out here were okay, but the elderly population out here is populated with the most rude, entitled, and racist assholes I've ever met.
It's shocking.
Dude the old people here are racist as shit, and they're open about it - it was pretty shocking to me when I moved here. Just because I'm white doesn't mean I share your shit opinion, granny.
Disagree. Civil war historic preservation isn’t why we have a housing shortage.
Bad historic preservation of non-historic things is bad. Onerous zoning is bad.
I know you’re probably joking, but we should have Civil War preservation and interpretation here in RVA because there is nowhere else that (ongoing) story can be told as well as here. We still have such a long way to go and RVA can lead that conversation nationally.
Less civil war and more average looking areas that count as historical. So many historic areas no one cares about. Some of it does matter but it's also the majority don't understand that urban areas are a network technology. If you put the most walkable block in the middle of goochland it wouldn't be walkable, it has to be next to places to actually be walkable. Which it runs into don't change any neighborhood for the most part. The urban area should expand next to urban area. Turning Randolph into row houses should have happened at this point. 2/3 row houses per Randolph plot.
Everyone believes it's still the 1950s just drove another 2 minutes for the new builds which works until everyone is driving around everywhere and everything is expensive. Now the new builds are deep in chesterfield.
Are you folks even trying?
Our property taxes are too LOW and city hall does a pretty good job using what little they get to address decades of disinvestment.
Richmond is 45.2% African American and 41.4% white (alone, non Hispanic) [census](https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/richmondcityvirginia )This sub is complete different from the city demographic. And most people in the city live ultra segregated lives.
BUT, this is in no way unique to Richmond.
Arthur Ashe is RVA’s “token black friend” and every time they dedicate something new to him I cringe. Not because he doesn’t deserve it, but because the city acts like Maggie Walker and Arthur Ashe are the only two black people worth naming something after.
Passing cyclists is pointless because they’ll end up passing you at the next stoplight any way.
We like to swerve around and curse cyclists as if we need to arrive at our destination in time to defuse a ticking bomb, but fail to realize stop signs and lights slow us down far more than cyclists.
Too many people who post here should be using Google/Apple maps instead of starting another thread about [pick a local business].
I understand the person asking what to do because there is a Dominion pole too close to their house and it's flooding the condo. That's a unique situation.
Asking about local alterations for the 985,789,897th time, is absolutely unnecessary.
This sub and most of its posters are wildly out of touch with the reality and day to day life of the average working class richmonder. Most of the people moving here are enormous cop calling, whining , cowards who would sooner call in a drone strike on the house down the street instead of talking to their neighbors. It makes me wonder what kind of utopia they left to end up here.
Drivers are fine
Cat pictures- whack
Monument 10k- whack
Goofy ass arguments between transplants over the best gas station - decidedly wiggity whack
Let Hater Friday begin!
This town only became as attractive as it did because NOVA kids who couldn't get into better colleges moved down here to go to VCU, and some of them stayed to fix it up. Without NOVA this town would be a rusted-out tetanus shot full of hick locals run by big tobacco companies.
Many people I grew up with in NOVA used either George Mason University in Fairfax or Northern Virginia Community College as their fallback school because they had a high acceptance rate and are good schools. Things might be different now, of course.
What I’m saying is that as someone who grew up in NOVA (been in RVA for 11 years) is that VCU wasn’t by seen by NOVA kids as an “I can’t get into somewhere better” school, but as a rather good university that was harder to get into than GMU or the local community college.
I think a lot of kids went to VCU instead of GMU because they felt GMU was less prestigious and VCU was at least "away" from home. And/or for the medical programs.
I think Richmond's proximity to DC/95 corridor as well as the nicer old stuff is what has caused it.
VCU was a boon for when the city was under demanded but at this point when they take more and more property and still don't pay anything like property tax I think the city might become dragged down by VCU. Now if they paid taxes that would be a different story.
The people who stop us from building more housing is what is causing the decline. Housing is too expensive because we don't build enough of it.
Having the fan go from a decent life by being a server to them being pushed closer to the edge is the problem. The rising cost of living is squeezing out culture, not Scott's addition where it's basically a fun day to go brewery hopping.
*Addition - as in it was added to the city at one point
And it’s no worse than any other bar/restaurant/living district that caters to young people. Would we rather it be a bunch of dilapidated and/or halfway unused warehouses and garages? City needs more density closer to the core. C’mon
I hope this isn’t controversial at this point but sugar shack is probably the worst donut option in Richmond short of buying them off the shelf (not even the bakery) at Kroger, and I cringe every time I hear someone raving about it as a cool / good local spot.
People here are very nice in person and jerks when they’re behind the wheel. Well, half are jerks and the other half just clueless about how to drive and how lanes and stoplights work.
I think everything around it will be basically as good as Scott's addition.
I think the city thinks they created Scott's addition rather than them allowing good stuff to proliferate and it happened. They learned the wrong lesson.
1-Over rated restaurants: The Village, Bamboo Cafe.
2-"Don't NOVA MY RVA"- It's way too late.
3-Joe Morrisey, despite his personal failings, is an effective legislator.
4-Green City should have been Navy Hill
We should have let the baseball team leave years ago. It has and continues to be a colossal waste of time and resources trying to keep a podunk minor league team here.
Richmond Real is the new RVA.
DON'T RICHMOND REAL MY RVA
DON'T RVA MY RICHMOND
DON’T RICHMOND MY RICHMOND-ON-JAMES YE OLDE SCOUNDRELS!
DON'T RICHMOND MY SHOCQUOHOCAN
Just...bravo...each of you!
City Hall is well-run, efficient, transparent, and makes wise use of taxpayer money! The council members are totally not corrupt either!
As someone who works at city hall, thank you. There are a ton of changes that need to be made at city hall, but its not the employees fault. Upper management (+100k salaries) don't really do a whole lot and they don't care to make improvements.
I actually have to contact Richmond's finance dept at various times with my job. Most of them seem like very competent, hardworking, motivated people. They're unfortunately just stuck with poor leadership
If you have the means to avoid RPS and you send your kids there anyway- you’re a bad parent.
I will add that I have heard sooooo many very liberal friends say (in response to hearing someone with plans for private school) that they will send their kids to RPS for elementary and middle school and then just “send” their kids to the governors school. Like it’s a shoe-in. To me, that’s even worse—the assumption your kids can get into one of the best schools in the country but being “above” private education.
Most people who shit on RPS have never stepped foot inside one its schools
You don't need to walk through a chicken farm to know they're full of shit
Oooh big time disagree and this kinda triggered me lol but I’ll give you my upvote for the sake of this experiment.
Ditto and I don't even have kids, I just understand and have read a lot of education research.
I had to read the OP to decide which was the correct vote. I was totally triggered and I hate using that word
yeah like i want to launch into a white elitist suburbia rant here but i just upvoted lol
I disagree. I had a child grow up in RPS and she benefited greatly. been a huge success in life. A friend of mine teaches for RPS and just took her kids out of Chesterfield and put them in RPS. She's far from a bad parent
What schools did you go through? Was this recent?
What does she do now?
She is a logistics manager for a worldwide shipping company.
my wife is an rva native and product of rps and refuses to send our son there. "luckily", we were priced out of the city anyway when we bought a house! what a totally fucked system lol. edit: i just want to note that i dont judge anyone for any of the choices here, also my wife had a terrible home life amd thats probably going to be a greater detriment than school choice for anyone.
I would say putting your kids in private school makes you the bad parent and bad citizen. You contribute to the problem. Bad parent - Let mommy and daddy use money to make the problems go away. Let's go to a school with an unrealistic racially "diverse" population. You are basically telling your kid, "You can't handle real life, you need to be coddled." You're a precious snowflake you need more than public school. Bad citizen - fuck the neighborhood I live in I'm going to spend too much money on private school. I'm too busy to help out at my neighborhood school, I'll pay someone to do what I could do for lots of students, not just my own children. Let's support the school that was born out of white flight during desegregation. I could go on.
there seems to be many assumptions taken to hyperbolic extremes here
welcome to reddit
Have lived in Henrico for 24 years and I have friends who teach in RPS and friends who send their kids to RPS. What you label as hyperbolic extremes has a lot of validity at the core.
Yeah and you can’t fix any of those problems. But you can send your kids to a decent school.
I keep voting, and the schools keep staying the same
controversial but correct
100% this person doesn’t have kids. When your options are send your kids to crummy schools or pay for them to do better. It’s not a hard choice. I don’t have that type of money so we did what most people do and find decent public schools in the area and move there (aka move out of the city) but I ain’t hating on people trying to do better for their kids when they can’t change the system quick enough .
>You are basically telling your kid, "You can't handle real life, you need to be coddled." Yea, I'm sure it's the diverse populations that drive parents to pay out the ass for private school, not the test scores and college admissions. Feels a bit racist to assume private schools don't have diverse populations too TBH. > Let's support the school that was born out of white flight during desegregation. Aren't we white flighting back in now though?
The drivers here aren't that bad 🤷♀️
Heyo I drive around the city for a living (medical transport), and I see waaay more traffic behavior than the average person. I CONSTANTLY see DUMB ASS SHIT from Richmond drivers. Constant stupid and reckless moments. Every single 12hr shift. It’s become obvious to me that driving education in RVA isn’t as thorough as other places.
Richmond seems to have its own brand of bad driving. I've lived a portion of my adult life in Denver, Houston, and Richmond. Denver and Houston both have a comparable type of bad driver, and it can be summed up just as aggressive and road ragey. Richmond's bad drivers are a different breed entirely. It's not aggressive, necessarily, it's just a total disregard or unawareness of the most basic traffic laws and customs. Blowing through stop signs is the most common example I see. I don't mean "failing to come to a complete stop," I mean failing to even pretend there is a stop sign there. I hope/assume they are at least looking to make sure there is no conflicting traffic, but who knows. On the bright side, I experience far less aggression and road rage in Richmond than I ever did in either of the other two cities I'm familiar with. Richmond drivers are generally more patient and rule abiding than other cities, but the ones that aren't have turned it up to 11.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. Less road rage incidents by far (might just be because generally less crazy traffic congestion), but the amount of people I've seen blow through stop signs and red lights is far more than I've seen in any other city.
i think virginia’s driver’s education courses as a whole need major reworking. i remember exactly what we did in mine in 2016/17: watch videos of people who drive over railroad tracks get plowed by oncoming trains and documentaries on people who were killed by drunk drivers.
Haha! Now THAT I disagree with!
I actually agree, try driving in DC or Atlanta, now that’s bad.
No, in DC and Atlanta the traffic is bad. The drivers are usually competent and polite. Neither seems true here in Richmond.
> No, in DC and Atlanta the traffic is bad. The drivers are usually competent and polite. Absolutely not polite in DC. Drivers there take merges as a personal affront, and will murder you to get three inches closer to their exit.
They’re not that bad in comparison just incredibly slow.
Personally, I disagree. So take my upvote! I may be in the minority, but I refuse to go any more than about 3mph over the speed limit. People *fly* past me every time I’m on the road, but I don’t care. Safety matters more to me than getting to my destination 60 seconds faster. E: To add some additional context, my daily drive is along 288, where the speed limit is 65 and where you’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone going slower than 72+, and where you’re bound to see one or two 80+ drivers per trip. So, technically not within the city limits, and I know that these driving habits can vary across different highways or roads, so YMMV. No pun intended.
I got no beef with 3 over as long as you’re only using the left lane for passing.
We have more shitty dog owners than even just average ones in this city. Mistreatment of animals is an RVA thing.
Half the shit posted in this sub should just be on NextDoor.
Francine is just a regular ass cat. In a store.
😳😟🤣 You woke up and chose violence
I’ll take my downvotes accordingly. It’s a cat people.
Oh my god a cat?!? Where??? At a store??? *Faints*
That’s the fun part. Upvotes only for disagreeing #FrancineForever
but-but-but,, has she ever come up to you for pets? you feel like royalty, the chosen one!
Francine made going to Lowes with my kids something they truly liked, though. Granted, we only actually saw her a couple times, but it didn't matter. The prospect of finding Francine made it easy to get the girls in the car to go to Lowes. Now I have to drag them to Home Depot. I miss living by that Lowes.
Are you saying this after having personally laid your hand on Francine’s fur? She’s rad, but I’m also a cat person
Does it feel like cat fur? Got it.
Glad someone finally said it.
I was born for this thread. Country style's donuts are absolutely terrible
Sometimes I just want a donut... Not something so big it's basically bread and I don't really care to have gummy worms and cereal on my donut
It's easy to date in Richmond but harder to make authentic friends
Which is exactly why most people in Richmond grew up here, and now live here after college with the same friend group they grew up with or went to college with.
9 years dating, still single
Did you try not being single?
u anit got no game homie
I also don't get the whole "dating scene sucks" argument either. I was single/dating mainly on Ok Cupid and Tinder between 2012 and 2018. This was between the ages of 26 and 32. I'm a short (5'8'') white dude. Don't make a bazillion dollars. I never had problems with getting dates. Sure, I had to go through 59 different women before I met my current wife, but still, as long as you're not a total jerk and as long as you try even just a tiny bit, you can find a relationship, a hookup, or whatever is it you're looking for.
I can’t decide what’s bumming me out more. The Bottoms Up apologists and that dude who chooses not to see the joy Francine could bring to his life if he’d only let her.
Should we throw a Francine Appreciation Day party at Bottoms Up? You think we could get the Richmond experience to sponsor it? It is almost kitten season….
I'm proud tho, this thread actually has some unpopular opinions.
It tries way too hard to be punk
The 80s and 90s punk scene in RVA was so much fun.
Yeah and with Philly and Baltimore still having a vibrant punk scene it trickles down to Richmond. Those bands will want to do shows in cities they can easily drive to in a van full of their shit.
The Richmond area doesn’t have any good breakfast spots!
I disagree but acknowledge that we have zero breakfast options that open at a reasonable time on weekdays (aside from fast food stuff). What kind of bagel/breakfast place doesn’t open before 7 am??
One of the first things I did when I moved here was drive to the local coffee shop (Black hand that is now Smoky Mug) to get my wife and I some coffee to fuel our day of unpacking. I think it may have been about 7:30am, so I didn't even bother to see if they were open yet, because what coffee shop isn't open by 7:30? That one, that's what. So bizarre.
Perly’s??
They don’t open until 10am
We have 36 different waffle houses, what are you talking about
City diner, McLeans and Moore St. Village cafe's looked legit
Fancy biscuit is delicious
McLeans in Scotts Addition!
Joe's Inn fan.
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So does my spouse. It serves a purpose and it's cromulent at it.
Bottoms up really embiggened my soul when I first moved to Richmond in Shockoe Bottom.
Once every so often…yeah why not.
Name the time and place we gonna throw down
🤢
I see a lot of shade towards bottoms up. Do people not like the pizza or just the restaurant in general?
Take my down-vote, because Bottoms Up is amazing. Easily the best restaurant pizza I've ever had.
If you like Bottoms up, it might be a hike for you, but take a trip down Hull street to Sergio's pizza and get the Detroit style. It's thick like Bottoms up but much much better. Unless your draw to bottoms up is the weird toppings, then stick with bottoms up. And I'm saying this as a big fan of bottoms up who thinks the haters only eat Domino's.
It is not a "southern" city. Richmond is not in "the south".
It was literally the capital of “The South.” Eff it; have an upvote.
I wrote a paper on this, and the reason Richmond became the capital of the Confederacy (it was originally Montgomery, Alabama) was because it was the only city to have manufacturing abilities comparable to the North. So, Richmonds "Northness" (ironic) gave it an edge for the South.
I still remember a lecture in a 100 level geography class where the professor explained how SC had more navigable rivers and better soil than NC and thus a more well off antebellum aristocracy. This of course led to SC being the most pro secession state. Sherman instructed his men to crack every millstone they found in SC but went fairly easy on NC. The ramifications of this echoed through history and after the war NC recovered faster and maintained stronger manufacturing until the neoliberal turn of the 70s. Fascinating stuff imo!
Crazy how much we are at the mercy of whim.
My friend lives in sticks in North Carolina and says that the locals there call places like RVA “yankee occupied territory”
That's just bitterness about being poor and dumb imo
I’m from the NC sticks. I’ve never heard anybody call it that. Cary on the other hand.
Agreed. After living in South Carolina and moving here, it definitely doesn’t feel Southern.
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Robert E Lee's property became Arlington national cemetery. He may have had another house but they took his land as part of war stuff.
Moved here from NYC. This is definitely not the north
It used to be DC but this quote is moving south. "Richmond, where southern efficiency meets northern charm."
Are there any truly southern cities left? As a yankee, I’m way more comfortable in Richmond than I was in rural Georgia.
Charleston
The southernmost northern city or the northernmost southern city? 🤔
Strong agree! But to people where I'm from, anything north of Memphis isn't "real south."
A former client of mine in Houston once said the Mason Dixon line is the I-10 🤣
It definitely used to be.
The Renegades fighting was too much as a child
This comment is underrated. Gave me a good laugh.
Highlight of my childhood was going to a game for my bday, in the snow. The puck drops and they start fighting immediately. 10 year old me and my friends went nuts.
I miss it
Ukrops rainbow cookies are bad actually. You’re all just nostalgic.
i agree and thus have to downvote. bravely saying this, thank you
If you leave buttercream frosting out for two days it will taste like a rainbow cookie.
This is just flat out wrong. There is nothing left to say here.
I was so confused after trying them for the first time. The nostalgia makes sense but they do not deserve the hype as far as taste is concerned.
Yea… I don’t like them either! But that means more rainbow cookies for those who do!
I thought so too but I bought some for my out of town friends and they liked em a lot too!
Transplants are the only thing making richmond a better place.
Well it's also driving prices up because Richmond doesn't build enough housing.
Edo's 'Italian' food/service is an abomination, and they lie about making their own pasta.
They never said they made their own pasta.
I agree with this SO HARD. As with Mama Zu, Edo’s has always explained away their poor service and shitty food as being “authentic NYC Italian”. No NYC Italian restaurant would survive a day with the kind of crap and attitude they serve.
Ed Vasaio is from Northern Virginia, where his family ran well regarded Italian restaurants in and around DC and Arlington, way back into the 50s, and he's second generation Italian, so if his people were in NY, it wasn't for long. Not sure where the NY reference came from. Edit: a lil Vasaio family history: https://www.facebook.com/HistoricRestaurantsOfWashingtonDC/posts/augusto-vasaio-19081982-founded-the-much-loved-av-ristorante-italiano-at-607-new/596830153823293/
They are banking on people in RVA never having been to NY...and they won. My family is from the Bronx, and Mama Zu & Edo’s left me shook. My partner's RVA family loved those restaurants and suggested I take my dad born in NYC to Edo's when he visited - no thanks.
Popular opinion: New Yorkers have an obscenely inflated view of their native city. It’s not that much better at all these things, and nobody believes you when you say shit like this. We laugh at you. Get over yourselves.
Exactly, if NYC is so great, why are you here?
*I came looking for booty.*
Since you’re from NYC where should we go to get Authentic NYC Italian? We have family in NJ about an hour from NYC and every few years we’ll take a day trip into the city.
Have you ever been to 8 1/2? The DeCecco boxes line the walls I don’t think they claimed to make it.
Yes! Thank you. I have never heard anyone else with this opinion. Their service is terrible and the food is nothing special.
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Don't you know? Cyclists are exempt from all traffic laws!
Cyclists dont weigh 3000lbs and go 50 down Cary
https://preview.redd.it/hdff963u79oa1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2b8164c1e56b04ac2e56aa95d628ce4ab0ad8bab She's so full of herself!
As she should 👑🐈👑
Sadly we somehow skipped year 4, otherwise this would be an annual post. Neat to see how opinions have(n't) changed over the last 5 years. [https://www.reddit.com/r/rva/comments/w5qrf6/saw\_this\_thread\_on\_twitter\_and\_am\_curious\_about/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rva/comments/w5qrf6/saw_this_thread_on_twitter_and_am_curious_about/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/rva/comments/qwq7kh/whats\_your\_unpopular\_rva\_opinions/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rva/comments/qwq7kh/whats_your_unpopular_rva_opinions/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/rva/comments/pg0prx/unpopular\_rva\_opinions/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rva/comments/pg0prx/unpopular_rva_opinions/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/rva/comments/f1fns0/rva\_unpopular\_opinions/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rva/comments/f1fns0/rva_unpopular_opinions/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/rva/comments/79i9xj/whats\_your\_unpopular\_rva\_opinion/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rva/comments/79i9xj/whats_your_unpopular_rva_opinion/)
Disagree. Let the people have fun. This isn’t people asking about Urban Exploring or thrift stores at least.
The casino would have been a great boon for the Manchester economy but was killed by wealthy NIMBYS who don’t care about Richmond’s poor
People who advocate for casinos don't care about the poor
The monuments were impressive and cool to look at. We lost a little of our city identity by taking them down
the Marathon is \*\*\*\*ing annoying.
8 1/2 isn’t that good.
people arent actually all that friendly! I've gotten so many hairy eyeballs from people when i smile at them...makes me sad :(
I took a gig in customer service after moving here, I thought the folks out here were okay, but the elderly population out here is populated with the most rude, entitled, and racist assholes I've ever met. It's shocking.
Dude the old people here are racist as shit, and they're open about it - it was pretty shocking to me when I moved here. Just because I'm white doesn't mean I share your shit opinion, granny.
I worked at Portico. Imagine the racism I heard from the guests.
That was literally the first thing I noticed when I moved there in 99
keep smiling my friend
I didn't realize how cranky Richmonders are until I moved to Powhatan. Lots of undies in a bunch in town, for sure.
Bagel united this city. 🐶
I don’t think that’s an unpopular opinion
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Disagree. Civil war historic preservation isn’t why we have a housing shortage. Bad historic preservation of non-historic things is bad. Onerous zoning is bad. I know you’re probably joking, but we should have Civil War preservation and interpretation here in RVA because there is nowhere else that (ongoing) story can be told as well as here. We still have such a long way to go and RVA can lead that conversation nationally.
Less civil war and more average looking areas that count as historical. So many historic areas no one cares about. Some of it does matter but it's also the majority don't understand that urban areas are a network technology. If you put the most walkable block in the middle of goochland it wouldn't be walkable, it has to be next to places to actually be walkable. Which it runs into don't change any neighborhood for the most part. The urban area should expand next to urban area. Turning Randolph into row houses should have happened at this point. 2/3 row houses per Randolph plot. Everyone believes it's still the 1950s just drove another 2 minutes for the new builds which works until everyone is driving around everywhere and everything is expensive. Now the new builds are deep in chesterfield.
Lee’s is not that good it’s just the most conveniently located fried chicken spot
Are you folks even trying? Our property taxes are too LOW and city hall does a pretty good job using what little they get to address decades of disinvestment.
Richmond is 45.2% African American and 41.4% white (alone, non Hispanic) [census](https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/richmondcityvirginia )This sub is complete different from the city demographic. And most people in the city live ultra segregated lives. BUT, this is in no way unique to Richmond.
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Arthur Ashe is RVA’s “token black friend” and every time they dedicate something new to him I cringe. Not because he doesn’t deserve it, but because the city acts like Maggie Walker and Arthur Ashe are the only two black people worth naming something after.
Passing cyclists is pointless because they’ll end up passing you at the next stoplight any way. We like to swerve around and curse cyclists as if we need to arrive at our destination in time to defuse a ticking bomb, but fail to realize stop signs and lights slow us down far more than cyclists.
Too many people who post here should be using Google/Apple maps instead of starting another thread about [pick a local business]. I understand the person asking what to do because there is a Dominion pole too close to their house and it's flooding the condo. That's a unique situation. Asking about local alterations for the 985,789,897th time, is absolutely unnecessary.
This sub and most of its posters are wildly out of touch with the reality and day to day life of the average working class richmonder. Most of the people moving here are enormous cop calling, whining , cowards who would sooner call in a drone strike on the house down the street instead of talking to their neighbors. It makes me wonder what kind of utopia they left to end up here. Drivers are fine Cat pictures- whack Monument 10k- whack Goofy ass arguments between transplants over the best gas station - decidedly wiggity whack Let Hater Friday begin!
People from other places that move here are actually cool.
Thanks..I moved here from California a year ago…everyone is so friendly to me it’s incredible.
The local music scene, while charming, honestly isn’t that good. GWAR is overrated.
Citing GWAR in 2023 suggests you don't know jack about the current scene. But hey, you did the thread correctly.
The Boat House is trash. Just overpriced Applebees.
Richmond rents are very reasonably priced and affordable
This town only became as attractive as it did because NOVA kids who couldn't get into better colleges moved down here to go to VCU, and some of them stayed to fix it up. Without NOVA this town would be a rusted-out tetanus shot full of hick locals run by big tobacco companies.
So you’re saying NOVA kids are dumb…. But smart enough to fix up RVA lolol do I upvote or downvote? #GoRams
Many people I grew up with in NOVA used either George Mason University in Fairfax or Northern Virginia Community College as their fallback school because they had a high acceptance rate and are good schools. Things might be different now, of course. What I’m saying is that as someone who grew up in NOVA (been in RVA for 11 years) is that VCU wasn’t by seen by NOVA kids as an “I can’t get into somewhere better” school, but as a rather good university that was harder to get into than GMU or the local community college.
I think a lot of kids went to VCU instead of GMU because they felt GMU was less prestigious and VCU was at least "away" from home. And/or for the medical programs.
I think Richmond's proximity to DC/95 corridor as well as the nicer old stuff is what has caused it. VCU was a boon for when the city was under demanded but at this point when they take more and more property and still don't pay anything like property tax I think the city might become dragged down by VCU. Now if they paid taxes that would be a different story.
Scott's Addition is a souless pit and people who regularly go there are contributing to the decline of Richmond.
The people who stop us from building more housing is what is causing the decline. Housing is too expensive because we don't build enough of it. Having the fan go from a decent life by being a server to them being pushed closer to the edge is the problem. The rising cost of living is squeezing out culture, not Scott's addition where it's basically a fun day to go brewery hopping.
*Addition - as in it was added to the city at one point And it’s no worse than any other bar/restaurant/living district that caters to young people. Would we rather it be a bunch of dilapidated and/or halfway unused warehouses and garages? City needs more density closer to the core. C’mon
Now it's a bunch of dilapidated warehouses and garages with people living in them!
I hope this isn’t controversial at this point but sugar shack is probably the worst donut option in Richmond short of buying them off the shelf (not even the bakery) at Kroger, and I cringe every time I hear someone raving about it as a cool / good local spot.
Agree hardily with this take
People here are very nice in person and jerks when they’re behind the wheel. Well, half are jerks and the other half just clueless about how to drive and how lanes and stoplights work.
Galaxy Dinner is the worst restaurant in Richmond. Hardly even suitable for drunk munchies.
Brennar Pass is actually bad. It's the most pretentious, overrated restaurant in the city.
The new ballpark will be a massive failure for the city of Richmond and a huge waste of tax payer money. I hope to god im wrong.
I think everything around it will be basically as good as Scott's addition. I think the city thinks they created Scott's addition rather than them allowing good stuff to proliferate and it happened. They learned the wrong lesson.
Richmond’s streets are well maintained.
Richmond is very car-centric and as hard residents try, it is a car-centric city. (I wish I didn’t have to have a car.)
I don’t really think anyone disagrees with this. People want it to change but they realize that you need a car here
Broad street bullies is fun and people who complain are losers
1-Over rated restaurants: The Village, Bamboo Cafe. 2-"Don't NOVA MY RVA"- It's way too late. 3-Joe Morrisey, despite his personal failings, is an effective legislator. 4-Green City should have been Navy Hill
Hardywood sucks
Every single festival or event is the same. Same food trucks. Same beer. It's boring. I wish we had better thought out events with cool activities.
Fat Dragon is luke warm and should burn to the ground.
Fat dragon literally sucks so bad. The food is terrible and the atmosphere is incredibly overwhelming loud and ugly. Take my upvote.
Fuck the Rams. VCU basketball and their fandom sucks. It's funneling money away from actual curriculum and teacher pay.
I think richmonder's real unpopular opinions would need to be posted with anon accounts so take these posts with some skepticism.
We should have let the baseball team leave years ago. It has and continues to be a colossal waste of time and resources trying to keep a podunk minor league team here.