You can smell the North Carolina wildfires up here in Richmond.  The haze is from it too.  I was wondering what I was smelling all the way from Bryan Park to WoB.

RetroRichmond.com - A new blog from a simply awesome woman who loves retro things!  This site is going to be awesome, I can just feel it!

Does anyone know a good resource for finding rent-to-own homes in Richmond?  Particularly in the Northside.  I’ve been checking Craigslist but that’s kinda hit or miss.

Robert E. Lee was caught watching women dress at the Virginia Center Commons Sears:

First Robert E. Lee lost the Southern cause, now one of his more recent rear-guard actions has him in hot water in Henrico County Circuit Court.

It seems the rears that this Lee — of the 8000 block of Creighton Parkway in Mechanicsville — tried guarding were not among his assigned duties as an assistant manager at the Virginia Center Commons Sears in March 2006.

No, the rears in question were trying on bathing suits in the ladies’ dressing room, above which Lee had taken up a scouting post. The action has already earned Lee two convictions for peeping.

Now Lee’s being sued for $2.7 million — that’s federal currency, not Confederate bonds. The facts: One of Lee’s victims, a pre-pubescent girl, happened to glance up to notice Lee watching her through the ceiling tiles and reported it to store officials.

The Consumerist picked up the story too.

The804.com has a good rundown on Richmond media and blogs and it’s hard to argue with the assessment.

Jon Baliles says Ukrops is going to be shutting down it’s store at Harrison and Grace.  Man, there goes the closest salad bar.

Richmond’s got itself a new literary journal: Makeout Creek.  The first issue features writings and art from David Berman, Tom De Haven, R. Kuszyk, Clint McCown, Sto, Allison Titus and more.  You can find copies at Chop Suey’s two locations and a place up in NYC if you find yourself up there.  Read more about it at RVANews.

Style Weekly’s Scott Bass has a little ditty this week that cherry picks from River City Rapids as an example of Jon Baliles readiness and presumed eagerness to take a job with Mayor Wilder’s press office. Because, clearly, if you support something you must be looking to get a job with that thing as well.

Where to begin…

Let’s start with the cherry picking. You grab four posts out of three and a half years of blogging and he’s begging for a job? You find four instances where Jon is supportive of the Mayor, one from Jan. 2005, the most recent from Oct. 2007, and this is supposed to be a feeler for employment?

Now, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Scott’s onto something here. I mean, I wrote an awful lot about IHOP’s Free Pancake Day. Who wouldn’t want to be the spokesman for Free Pancake Day? I could be IHOP’s Jared, only instead of losing a ton of weight by eating their food I’d be the fat guy that became large and in charge thanks to IHOP and their all you can eat pancake special!

Second, minor, but Scott Bass wrote the article and the first quoted post happens to mention, wait for it… a Scott Bass article! Dear Scott, now that I have cited you and an article you wrote, can I expect a piece to be written about me quoting the time I wrote about you? Please? Maybe I can hook you up with free pancakes. (I jest.)

Third, I think Jon’s being honest when he says the offer surprised him and he really had to think about accepting it.

While there certainly are bloggers out there who blog hoping and praying that someone will see their work and hire them on the spot to do what they’ve been doing, many bloggers simply write because they care about something. Jon cares about Richmond and at times he has found himself in agreement with Mayor Wilder on how to exactly “care about Richmond”. But I’m pretty sure there’s more to Jon than just his blog. Just as there is more to any number of bloggers who have been offered professional jobs in fields they blogged about (Conaway Haskins, John Henke, and Shaun Kenney to name a few).

Style and Scott have a right to pick on Jon a bit. That’s fine. But it’d have been nice if they provided the full URL to River City Rapids in the article and provided Style readers an opportunity to visit RCR and see for themselves how much Jon cares not for Doug Wilder but for the City of Richmond and its people.

Maybe it’s to keep him on a short leash (joking… or am I?), but Jon Baliles of River City Rapids has gone and gotten himself a job with City Hall.  Or City Hall went and got itself a blogger.  Either way, good move, especially since Jon’s already been doing a lot of shilling for the city.

Back in October West Of The Boulevard News posted about the upcoming Infuzion Ice Bar.  Couple comments here, a couple comments there, months go by and suddenly, bam, mid-January you have yourself a regular ol’ deluge of comments coming in saying Infuzion is the bestest place in the whole wide world.  Interestingly enough, the two or three cheerleaders for Infuzion have a strikingly similar writing style.  And the conversation is still going.

Now maybe this is a case of people just Googling “infuzion” and finding WOTBN’s coverage on the place.  But so much talking so far after the fact just strikes me as odd.  Especially since it’s only people coming in and screaming “OMG, INFUZION ROXORZ!” (more or less).

So are we seeing people truly enjoying Infuzion or folks at Infuzion trying to get people to come enjoy it?

CNN’s reporting that Hillary Clinton supporters are complaining to DPVA officials that there are too many Barack Obama supporters.

Jason Roop, editor of Style Weekly, has commented on Style’s withdrawing of their sponsorship of the Environmental Film Festival in light of its organizer’s past ties to the eco-terrorist group Earth Liberation Front:

I can only speak to the editorial side of Style Weekly in saying that our team is covering the festival, as we always would, whether or not the magazine is a sponsor of that event. I hope you’ll enjoy a story in today’s Arts & Culture section that features an exclusive Q&A with Ralph Nader. You also may have noticed that we’ve published a cover story profile by writer Brent Baldwin on John Wade.

It’s an interesting story that explores some of the controversial debates among those in the environmental movement, and the drastically different approaches to making change by the more mainstream as well as radical organizations. We share what inspired Mr. Wade to his cause, and how his perspectives have changed.

No, he doesn’t quite apologize for his and his friends’ actions — which include inflicting more than $200,000 in damage locally and intimidating residents. But he does discuss how he’s struggling with ways to further his cause since serving three years in federal prison. Brent Baldwin also writes about the Patriot Act and how it affected Mr. Wade’s situation, which included the government naming him as an “eco-terrorist.”

You should know that Style Weekly has served as a sponsor of these kinds of events before, including spearheading the first “Living Green” awards (did you go?) in October, corresponding with a special Green Issue of Home Style, our monthly home magazine. Unfortunately, Mr. Wade intentionally withheld significant, relevant information about himself (as he says) in securing support and sponsorship. That put the company in a poor position when it learned, last-minute, about Mr. Wade’s background. As you can imagine, this left the decision-makers wondering what else they hadn’t been told about the event, if anything. It’s too bad that Mr. Wade wasn’t up front from the beginning.

By the way, the company’s sponsorship was in the form of reduced-rate advertising. So its decision to suspend sponsorship included giving money back to Mr. Wade’s group, not taking it away. I know that Style’s publisher and Mr. Wade have spoken in the days since and have come to an understanding, and perhaps they can move forward with a more honest and open relationship on future events.

For more, read Wade’s War here and see Jason Guard’s thoughts here.

The Environmental Film Festival is this weekend at the Byrd.

The Russians aren’t coming!  From VCU:

This is a reminder that at noon tomorrow, Wednesday, Feb. 6, VCU will conduct a test of emergency sirens on its Monroe Park and MCV Campuses. Ten sirens will wail for two minutes, pause for about a minute, and then sound a one-minute “all-clear” even tone to end the test.

The full siren system will be tested along with text messages and other emergency communications channels, including digital signs, e-mails and Web site information.

This test is distinguishable from the first-Wednesday-of-the-month checks of the siren system that consist of 15-second bursts, and from other short bursts of the sirens that may occur occasionally during maintenance of the system.

In a real emergency, sirens will sound for four (4) minutes to signal that an immediate, life-threatening emergency has occurred or is imminent. The purpose of the siren is to alert people outside of campus buildings to immediately seek shelter and additional information. People in campus buildings should remain where they are and seek additional information about what is happening and how to respond. People off-campus should not come to campus but should seek additional information. Once the campus environment is determined to be safe, the “all clear” or even tone siren will be activated for two minutes.

Text messages will be VCU’s primary channel for rapid communications and information about emergencies and closings and delays for inclement weather. If you haven’t done so already, I urge you to sign up right now at www.vcu.edu/alert/notify.

Style Weekly reports that the upcoming Richmond Environmental Film Festival organizer John Wade was convicted in 2002 of conspiring to blow up a crane at Short Pump Town Center with fellow members of the Earth Liberation Front, an organization labeled by the FBI as “one of the most ‘dangerous domestic terror groups’ in the United States”:

When Wade started organizing the event, he knew he needed a big-name speaker for added oomph. But Robert Kennedy Jr. wanted $30,000 and Al Gore costs $150,000 — plus there’s a two-year waiting list for the Nobel laureate. After hearing a Baltimore speech months ago by longtime consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader, Wade waited in a book-signing line and simply asked for Nader’s help.

He agreed.

“Do you think I should have told Nader?” Wade poses to a Style reporter.

He probably should have told Style, who has pulled their sponsorship of the event.