Sports Editor, Richmond, Va.

Most recent census numbers say so. I looked them up after visiting the law school where the tour guide could name all seven or so minorities in the law school. True story.

 

I lived in Richmond during the time the city elders were deliberating how to handle an Arthur Ashe statue or other memorial, since he had died recently. It was Ugh Lee. Some people wanted an Ashe statue right in the middle of Monument Avenue betwixt two of the Confederate hero statues. Some wanted a statue on the street, but away from the Confederate statues. Some wanted the city to do an African-American Monument Avenue on Belvidere Street or the Boulevard, the latter intersecting Monument with the biggest fucking horse you'll ever see under Stonewall Jackson in the middle of the intersection. Some wanted a statue near the Arthur Ashe Center, a godawful gym near the Richmond Braves decrepit hellpit ballpark and the Greyhound hub. Some wanted a statue near Byrd Park, whose tennis courts were off-limits to the nearby Ashe in his childhood years. Some wanted something other than a statue. And the KKK didn't want to celebrate the life of "just another nigger", if the pamplets that landed on our porch one day in its name was true.

The debate was, shall we say, contentious. And it wasn't even as simple as "blacks want option X, whites want option Y" because almost every option had blacks and whites supporting and/or opposing it, but for different reasons (whites who opposed having Ashe on Monument Ave. didn't want him sullying the Confederate heroes; blacks didn't want the Confederate heroes sullying Ashe). The decision to erect a statue west of Boulevard, about four to six blocks away from Confederate admiral and oceanographer Matthew Maury, wasn't perfect, but you know something, perfect wasn't ever an option for this issue.

The fact that Ashe's monument is copper is a misdirect of sorts; I don't think the city could contract any of the sculptors that did the other Monument Avenue statues (for the record, from west to east -- Maury, Jackson, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, J.E.B "Jeb" Stuart). The last statue was done in 1927.

Richmond is a fine town (note to MU: the suburbs are very white, but the city itself is very not white) Fairly temperate climate, decent nightlife (Shockoe Bottom), arty stuff (Carytown, the Museum District on Boulevard) and neighborhood bars in random places in the eccletic and cool Fan District, where most of your bohemians and college kids/professors live. Two decent D-I schools in VCU and Richmond, D-II basketball contender in Va. Union.

T-D, from what I've seen, covers Redskins as a travel beat and does Nats/Orioles, Wizards and Capitals via occasional columns. Lots of Virginia Tech and Virginia, as you might imagine, but since they lay claim to the title of Virginia's paper of record, they also fly the flag as significant state events outside their metro footprint. They have a NASCAR beater with a hard card who does 75 percent of the races and a backup who handles most of the rest (from what I hear, they finally hired someone to replace Nate Ryan). Lot of high schools in the area, though they've come under some heat recently for not doing any regular-season gamers in certain corners.

A big-boy job, to be sure.

 

I wouldn't call this a big-boy job. I'd call it a Big-Azz-Boy job...but hey, I was just remembering, didn't like half of Richmond burn down last year and a hurricane wipe out one of those bar districts (something slip if I recall. A girl named Mandy, a brew and that's all I remember). Aren't they having to rebuild much of the city because of those two events? Is Richmond New Orleans North?

 

Omar,

You don't know squat about Richmond, or the T-D.

In football, it almost always covers UVa and Tech, home and away, the Redskins, and all UR and W&M home games, and often VMI home games.

Basketball it covers UVA, UR, VCU and VUU on a beat basis.

Almost daily notebooks of either Tech, UVa, UR, or I-AA football, hoops and basketball.

Its NASCAR coverage is unmatched.

Daily coverage of the R-Braves.

Tons of preps, there's minor-league hockey and football, and Division III football at Randy-Mac and others, too.

Mystery Meat knows what he's taking about.

Some of the Slip was flooded, but it's being rebuilt. New AAA ballpark wil be built someplace, probably near the state-of-the art track & field complex out near Varina on the on the Boulevard.

There's lots going on and the area is growing like gangbusters, especially Chesterfield Co. and north toward Ashland.

 

Okay Mr. Micro,
For a guy who has been through Richmond 3 times, I was apparently pretty correct when I said what the RTD covers. I know there are the Richmond University beats (forgot to mention V-Tech), but I was talking about all of the high-level sports the RTD covers and why it would be so attractive to an editor. So, when you say I don't know squat, I guess I didn't know about the Confederate street, Hurricane that destroyed the slip, the fire (which was so bad that a RTD column wrote: "Nine days ago a wind-fed fireball swept across Broad Street just west of downtown, a noontime conflagration this paper called "the most devastating fire in decades" in Richmond. There was even talk of it being the worst fire in the city since the Civil War...."
So, if that's not knowing squat about a city I've never lived in, what would I have to know to know squat? Perhaps the sports editor's pin number?
Look, I was just saying that I remember reading how the city had struggled with issues of race, violence and rebuilding in recent years. I said that just to say while it is a sweet job in a nice city, there is a downside to the town - like water damage and burn marks.

 

Shockoe Slip and Shockoe Bottom are what you're thinking of, and yes, they took some serious flood damage two years ago from Tropical Storm Gordon because of less-than-great drainage and how it has the lowest elevation in the region. Nowhere close to Katrina, though the party area is just now getting back to 100 percent. The fire was on the VCU campus but it wasn't like the fire from the Civil War. It was epic looking and did damage, but it's not like driving through Hiroshima a week after the bomb or anything extreme.

 

Epodunk says the city is 10th in the nation in percentage of black residents, 57 percent:

http://www.epodunk.com/cgi-bin/genInfo.php?locIndex=25664

If you hang around downtown, it will seem more diverse than that, because the more suburban areas past the Fan District is not as diverse. It's been a long time since I really knew the city, but the Church Hill area just past Shockoe Bottom was heavily black in the 1970s. Last time I was in town a few years ago, it appeared that area was gentrifying. A lot of very old houses in that area.

Very cool town.

 

Omar,

Didn't mean to be harsh. My Southern gentility went temporarily AWOL. My apologies, sir.

This would be a demanding job at a mid-metro paper that has a ton of beats and travels like the big boys at a major, major market, while excellently covering its local preps and I-AA/small colleges.

Bill Millsaps set the bar very high, and apparently his successor has done an outstanding job as well. Whomever gets this job will be tested, and have much to live up to, I believe. Richmond's travel budget must be considerable.

BTW, the "Confederate" street is Monument Avenue, with statues of Lee, Stonewall, Jeb Stuart, Jeff Davis, Mathew Fontaine Maury and Arthur Ashe. I believe Stonewall and Stuart face south, Lee faces north, or vice-versa; Maury faces east; not sure about Jeff Davis and AA.

Monument (as well as Grove, Grace, Lombardy, Franklin and other streets that extend from downtown to form the spokes of the Fan) has many row houses that have been restored to their former glory. The further you get from downtown, the row houses disappear.

It's also rumored that Phil's Continental Lounge on Grove Avenue in the Westhampton part of town (Warren Beatty/Shirley McClain's long-ago stomping grounds) makes an excellent club sandwich, and an outstanding fish (or Sailor) sandwich.

That would be an extra treat for the successful candidate to discover.

 

I used to live a block from the Jefferson Davis statue. He faces east. Ashe either faces east or south, I want to say south. Stuart and Stonewall face north because they died in the war; Lee faces south because he survived.

 

You know, I thought those numbers looked familiar. I was thinking about the state numbers. Thanks FR. Don't want to pass on bad info.

 

Richmond is great. The paper is a cash cow. The security is there. This is a veteran's opening. Newcomers need not applyl The RTD is the state newspaperl. It is a winner.

 

Indeed, this is a big toy for a big boy.