Spring 2011 Market Openings! | RVANews

I am VERY excited about this. Hooray for spring in Richmond!

Spring 2011 Market Openings! | RVANews.

One of my favorite things about living in smaller, more rural towns were their farmer’s markets. I felt like such a grown-up — waking up early on a Saturday and walking through town, a canvas bag in hand, ready to buy my week’s worth of fresh, local produce. I simply cannot get enough squash in the summer.

Going to the downtown market always made me feel like a part of the town, too. I’d see people I knew and think, “I know people here! And people know me!” It sounds silly, but when you’re a new resident somewhere, a friendly face can go a long way. And although I have my share of friends in Richmond, I’m eager to feel more like a part of the local community. Which is why I’m so excited that despite living in an urban part of the city, markets are plentiful.

On a balmy evening earlier this week I went for a walk in the Fan, armed with my new green sturdy canvas tote. It was around 7:30, so the cute shops in my neighborhood were closed, but the Strawberry Street Market stays open late and I bought a few apples and a falafel wrap for dinner. As I peered into darkened windows, I was most excited about returning to the area this Saturday morning when more shops would be open amid vendors at the annual Strawberry Street Festival. (In addition to markets, Richmonders LOVE their festivals.)

I just found out about this festival last week and although it’s hosted by the local elementary school (and geared toward families), I’m pumped.

(Have I mentioned I love this town?)

Question for RVA residents: which market is best? Leave it in the comments.

Watch out, RVA

A few months ago, I left Danville for the “big city” of Richmond, yet I recently found myself at Phil’s Continental Lounge, the most blue-collar bar in the west end. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear I was back in Danville.

Let me back up a bit. On New Year’s Day, I moved to Richmond for a communications job at my alma mater. After three loyal years of newspaper service in Danville and Culpeper, I decided it was time to move on.

The seductive world of politics kept me in Danville—and in journalism—for a while, but even so I began to feel that familiar itch to do something new, something different. Working at newspapers brought me immeasurable professional and life experience, but I (and my editors) always knew those posts weren’t permanent for me.

I’d wanted to move back to Richmond ever since graduation. Something about this city calls to me, although I’m not sure what exactly—the history, the architecture, the je ne sais quoi, the culture. Also: the food! The baseball! People from smaller towns might scoff at Richmond for its hazards; others from bigger cities might scoff at it for its shortcomings. But I suppose that’s not specific to this city.

For three and a half years I longed to move here. To live and work here as an adult, on my own, enjoying the city. Of course it didn’t hurt that I had friends, family and a fabulous boyfriend here, too.

I don’t mean to imply I was unhappy before; Culpeper and Danville will forever occupy prime real estate in my heart. But they were always stops on my way back to Richmond.

And now I’m here.

It took me a few weeks of settling in before I believed that I actually lived here and wasn’t just spending a long weekend visiting B and friends. “I live here!” I’d think. No more long distance dating, no more going through two tanks of gas a week, no more anxiety because someone hated a story I’d written. Of course, that also meant no more getting access to [insert politician’s name here] at a moment’s notice, no more Daily Farmer’s Market—and—no more Erma’s.

Perhaps that’s why I found myself at Phil’s, a working man’s bar, which unfortunately will be no more. Even if I’m in a big(ger) city, I still seek out those places with character. (Of course, I was also at Phil’s because it’s a UR hub and the Spiders played that night in the Sweet Sixteen for the first time in 23 years. We lost—but VCU kept Richmond humming with hoops fever through the Final Four.)

Places like Phil’s tucked into the high-end Grove and Libby neighborhood are what make Richmond stand out among other, bigger, cities. Richmond is able to (almost) seamlessly blend the new with the old—the hipster hangouts and upscale boutiques with the longstanding local institutions.

Sometimes it doesn’t work—like trying to throw in that statue of Arthur Ashe with the likes of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. But most of the time it does. And hopefully it’ll work with a twenty-something writer living in a 1940s row house* in the Fan.

Here’s to my life Richmond.

*I have absolutely no idea when this house was built.**

**Update: see comment below.

The Great Richmond Region Adventure

They should have named it Sweatfest 2009. But it was worth it.

My college roommate (known here on out as “Bingy”) is getting married in August, so her family friends threw her and her fiancee a “Stock the Bar” party on Saturday in Richmond. Since I’d be in town for that, MWM signed me up for “The Great Richmond Region Adventure,” an “Amazing Race”-style competition around downtown Richmond Saturday afternoon.

Good thing I had trained for and participated in the Ukrop’s Monument Avenue 10k last month — my first 10k ever, thank you very much — because this was no leisurely scavenger hunt. Team Macaley (me, MWM, The Artist and The Artist’s boss) pretty much booked it from stop to stop, solved the clues in what we considered to be record time and finished the race in an hour and a half. The winning team finished in 58 minutes; the time limit was three hours. So I’d say we did a fine job since this was our first time competing.

Our journey started at the Edgar Allen Poe museum, where we got our map and clues, printed on aged scroll paper. There were five stops, with five corresponding clues in poem form. The objective was to solve the clues at each stop and get a postcard. Once we had all five postcards, another riddle would direct us to the finish line. We didn’t have to go in any particular order, but we had to stay together as a team the whole time.

Hearts pumping, we headed to our first stop at the Holocaust Museum. With a little help from one of the race volunteers, we solved the riddle, which involved finding an artifact in the museum and deciphering a code from a set of numbers. Postcard in hand, we celebrated solving our first riddle and made our way to the next stop: Libby Hill Park.

Spectacular view from Libby Hill Park

It always amazes me how much of Richmond I’ve never seen, even after living there for four years in college. Well, that really shouldn’t amaze me all that much since anyone who goes to UR pretty much never sees anything except campus, the Fan and a handful of downtown bars. It’s unfortunate that we keep to our bubble, because the rest of Richmond is nothing short of fabulous.

After scaling a mountain to get to Libby Hill — ok maybe not a mountain but it was a huge hill — we retrieved our second postcard by counting the bales of hay in a painting on a sign and applying that number to yet another letters/numbers code. I don’t have many criticisms of the adventure, but one was that the answers to the riddles had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with anything. I was thinking the answers would have a theme, something related to the location of the clue. Basically, I wanted to pretend I was Nick Cage in “National Treasure.” Instead, the answers were simply a random word generated from solving a code, i.e. the answer to the Libby Hill Park puzzle was “SHAZAMBABY.”

Yeah, I have no idea. I guess they wanted to make it unrelated so that you couldn’t just guess the answer after seeing the first few letters. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. I also thought I’d be dead weight since I really know nothing specific about Richmond history, but thankfully that wasn’t an issue. It really was all about solving some crazy code while at a Richmond landmark.

On our way to solving the second clue

From there we headed to Church Hill, the Reconciliation statue and the Canal Walk. Our team worked effortlessly together, each of us providing a different way of looking at the riddles. Two water bottles each and buckets of sweat later, we happened upon the finish line at the farmer’s market. We’d gotten all five postcards, but could not figure out the last puzzle, which directed us to the end point. Ready to give in and ask for help, we walked past the farmer’s market and saw our contact. Hot damn! We asked him what the solution to the final clue was, and he gave us a funny look. “How did you find me if you couldn’t solve it?” he asked. “We just walked by and saw you here…” Whoops.

Turns out the solution wasn’t as hard as we were making it out to be, and I’m fairly certain we could have figured it out if we’d just tried out another theory or two. Oh well. It was blazing, and we were sweaty, tired and on the verge of getting a little cranky.

Celebratory drinks and documenting our adventures

So we didn’t win $1,500, but we had an awesome time tooling around downtown Richmond in 90+ degrees and pretending to be treasure hunters. The four stellar members Team Macaley will definitely compete again next year. Afterward, we lunched at Cafe Gutenberg, where we devoured burgers and downed cool, crisp celebratory beers. Except The Artist, who left her ID in the car.

The Artist and I spent the rest of the afternoon cooling off in her apartment. Although, we weren’t that cool because her AC wasn’t working. But we prepped for Bingy’s party — my gift was the ingredients for my fav drink, the G&T! — and spent the evening catching up with college pals. It was great seeing my sorority sisters, especially my little, who confessed to obsessively stalking this very blog. That’s my girl!

The weekend was perfect, except for MWM’s adorable new pup who suffered from some seizures after apparently getting into some shrooms in the yard. But he’s better now, thank goodness. Welcome back, Maury!

And to anyone interested in competing in next year’s Great Richmond Region Adventure: watch out. You’ve got some stiff competition. Wear running shoes if you want to keep up.

Team Macaley. And the only photographic proof that I even competed in this race.