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creator, publisher @rvamag / design / video #richmondmuralproject #rva #whartonmajor
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Recent posts
Snow Law, Beer Runs, and a Market That Never Closed
In my twenties, snow days in Richmond were not a crisis. They were a gift.
You walked to the local market, and back then there were only a handful, stocked up on whatever counted as “supplies,” and then wandered off under the sacred banner of “snow law.” That meant drinks, porch hangs, maybe snowball fights, and eventually migrating as a group to whichever spot still had power for last call. Living in The Fan made it all pretty easy. Things were cheaper, people walked more, and half the night was spent randomly bumping into people you knew.
Fast forward to now, with major snow and ice in the forecast this weekend, the rush is on.
That is why, when I stopped by Lombardy Market for a snack yesterday, I decided to ask co-owner John Watkinson what snow days actually look like from his side of the counter.
Lombardy has been holding it down near VCU since 1981, when John’s father, R.E. Watkinson, opened the place just before John was born. John is 43 now. The math checks out. The market has been here longer than most of you reading this.
When snow hits, Lombardy does not close. Ever.
Read more, see more. Link in bio.
Featured: @lombardymkt
✏️📸: @majormajor____
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#richmond #rva #rvamag
22 Jan 2026
Rama Duwaji: From VCU Arts to New York’s First Lady
This week, Zohran Mamdani won the race to become the next mayor of New York City in one of the nation’s most closely watched elections. A Democratic socialist who campaigned alongside Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mamdani defeated former Governor Andrew Cuomo in both the primary and the general election.
But beyond the political headlines, there’s a Richmond connection worth celebrating. Mamdani is married to Rama Duwaji, who will now serve as New York’s First Lady, and, as it turns out, is also one of our own.
Duwaji is a recent graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Communication Arts and Design program, where she studied illustration and animation. She first attended VCU’s School of the Arts in Qatar before transferring to the Richmond campus, where she held her first public exhibition.
As a fellow VCU alum from the same program, it feels right to celebrate one of ours stepping onto one of the biggest stages in the country, and to take a closer look at her art.
See more. Read more. Link in bio.
Featured: @ramaduwaji @zohrankmamdani @vcuarts @vcu
✏️: @majormajor____
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06 Nov 2025
Earlier: An estimated 14,000 people attended No Kings II today in Richmond, VA.
Featured: @50501movement @50501virginia
🎥: @majormajor____
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18 Oct 2025
Photos | All The Saints Halloween Parade Packs Oregon Hill
Last night, thousands of Richmonders crammed into Oregon Hill for the 21st annual Halloween Parade from All The Saints Theater Company, the DIY puppet troupe behind it all
This year’s theme was “Dada Ur Data: A Funeral March for Intelligence,” a requiem for surveillance culture and the cult of AI. The procession launched from Monroe Park and wound into one of Richmond’s oldest neighborhoods.
Porches on both sides of the street were packed, and the weather was perfect. Toddlers on shoulders, grown-ups in clown makeup, strangers passing each other beers. Richmond has never fully grown up, and that seemed fine to everyone who showed up last night.
Read more, see more. Link in bio.
Featured: @allthesaintstheater @nobsbrass @oregonhill
✏️: @majormajor____
📸: @michael_simon
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01 Nov 2026
Halloweek 2026! Our Guide to Richmond’s Halloween Madness ☠️
Halloween is Richmond to its core, and it all starts this weekend. We don’t have to sell you on it. Go have fun, get weird, and let’s all meet up for the All The Saint’s Halloween Parade in Oregon Hill.
Just be safe, don’t drink and drive.
Welcome to Halloweek 2026.
Read more, see more. Link in bio.
✏️: @majormajor____
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23 Oct 2026
Richmond is One of America’s Most Intellectual Cities. Who Knew?
Here’s something a bit unexpected. Take it with a grain of salt and maybe as a conversation starter this weekend. We’d put Richmond near the top of a list for having opinions, but intellectualism?
But here we go. Richmond has landed at No. 9 on a new list of America’s most intellectual cities, according to a study by Maxwell Social, a New York-based private members’ club.
Read more, see more. Link in bio.
Featured: @maxwellsocial
✏️: @majormajor____
📸: Papaioannou Kostas
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15 Oct 2026
Richmond is Dropping Flock, But the Technology Could Remain
On October 10, Avula announced that Richmond would not renew its contract with Flock Safety, following a similar decision by Henrico County, whose contract expires in November.
Richmond’s agreement runs through June 30, 2027.
Mayor Avula raised the possibility of a Virginia-only network during a press conference earlier this week.
“If there were a company that was not a big national company, if there was a closed network for the state of Virginia, where we could build our own guidelines and manage our own data, would that change things for members of our public?” Avula said according to VPM. “It certainly would for me.”
The city has not selected a replacement for Flock but Avula acknowledged that license plate readers can help police solve crimes and the city needs to balance those benefits against residents’ privacy concerns.
Read more, see more. Link in bio.
✏️: @majormajor____
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15 Oct 2026
Secret Walls Brings Its ‘Fight Club of the Art World’ to Richmond
There are art shows, and then there are art fights.
Richmond gets its art fight later this month when Secret Walls rolls into the Richmond Tattoo & Arts Convention October 23rd and 24th, putting tattoo artists and fine artists head-to-head in front of a crowd with a clock running.
Eight artists will compete across two nights, with two-on-two battles scheduled for Friday and Saturday at 11:30 p.m.
We got on a call with Secret Walls’ Kevin Collins.
“You almost think of it like UFC, like weight classes a little bit, the different disciplines that we bring onto these stages,” Collins told us. “We’ve got tattoo artists, we’ve got cartoonists, illustrators, graffiti writers, contemporary artists, muralists, all sorts of different disciplines that show up on these stages.
“And even if you have the same artist on a stage battling two years later, it’s going to be brand new because of whatever they’re working through in their head or what they want to get out of their head and onto a canvas that they’ve not been able to scratch the itch of. That’s kind of the beauty of these. It’s a fight club of the art world, so we’re gonna bring it, and we’ll see what happens when tattoo takes on fine art.”
Read more, see more. Link in bio.
Featured: @secretwalls @terrymonorex @richmondtattooconvention
✏️: @majormajor____
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07 Oct 2026
Old Grace Street is Richmond History. Let’s Recognize It.
As reported by The Richmonder last week, “The Cultural Heritage Stewardship Plan, which sailed through City Council with a unanimous vote Sept. 28, is intended to set Richmond’s key priorities for identifying and conserving notable features of the city.”
We have markers all over the city telling us about our history. Maybe before they’re gone, we should talk about 929 West Grace Street, The Village Cafe, Edo’s Squid and what this small stretch of Richmond meant to the culture we now celebrate, and sell, as part of the city’s brand.
For decades, that stretch of Grace Street around VCU was one of Richmond’s cultural pressure cookers. It was cheap and weird, sometimes sketchy and violent, but somewhere in there Grace Street became a meeting point for three things that now define Richmond: food, music and creativity.
The city should recognize these places for what they mean to Richmond’s identity, and VCU should recognize what they did for the university by helping establish the character of the neighborhood that attracted generations of students to the school.
Read more, see more. Link in bio.
Featured: @villagecaferva @edossquid @vcu
📸✏️: @majormajor____
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06 Oct 2026
Studio Two Three Is Beefing With Bots. Among Other Things
Studio Two Three has been around long enough to forget how likely it was to fail.
Sixteen years ago, a small group of friends wanted to keep making art in Richmond. They pooled money from working in local restaurants to pay rent, borrowed equipment and built an organization one piece at a time.
Today, Studio Two Three has 150 artist members, a 24-hour workspace and a community space that is home to film screenings, art shows, live music, union organizing, political conversations and, sometimes, square dancing.
Somewhere along the way, Studio Two Three also became more comfortable saying what needs to be said. Navigating that is an ongoing process.
I sat down with Studio Two Three co-founder and Executive Director Ashley Hawkins and Director of Community Partnerships and Development Kate Fowler and started with a basic question.
Read more, see more. Link in bio.
Featured: @studiotwothree @smashley_hawkins @kate.elizabethfowler
✏️📸: @majormajor____
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29 Sep 2026
Richmonders Don’t Know How Many ICE Flights Are Happening
Protestors gathered on Saturday morning outside the Richmond International Airport to oppose and call attention to the airport’s role in ICE detainee transfers and deportation flights. Immigration enforcement flights out of Richmond have increased sharply over the last two years and organizers are concerned that most people are not aware they are happening.
According to ICE Flight Monitor, a project of Human Rights First that tracks immigration enforcement flights using publicly available aviation data and other sources, 132 enforcement flights departed Richmond through the end of August 2026 compared to 128 flights recorded during all of 2025.
Before that, Richmond’s numbers have been 55 flights in 2020, 54 in 2021, 48 in 2022 and 46 in 2023.
The increase isn’t unique to Richmond.
In the report linked HERE, there were 1,363 domestic transfer, or “shuffle,” flights, nationwide in July, the highest monthly total since independent tracking began in 2020 and a 75 percent increase over July 2025. These flights move people in ICE custody between detention centers and deportation staging facilities within the United States, rather than directly deporting them to another country.
By July, Richmond had become a regular part of that network. ICE Flight Monitor reported flights through Richmond three to four times per week.
Organized by RVA Indivisible, RVA ICE-Scream, Indivisible Central Virginia and First Unitarian Universalist Church, the demonstration called attention to RIC’s role in the federal immigration detention system.
Read more, see more. Link in bio.
Featured: @humanrightsfirst @rva_indivisible @rvaicescream @indivisible.virginia @firstuuchurchrva
✏️📸: @majormajor____
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23 Sep 2026
Photos | Jack White & LCD Soundsystem Headline Iron Blossom 2026
Last weekend lived up to the hype.
Luckily, the weather held out, and Iron Blossom 2026 turned into a damn good weekend of music.
Now in its fourth year, the festival has settled into being a Richmond staple and this year didn’t disappoint with a lineup that jumped all over the musical map and two legendary acts closing out the nights at Midtown Green.
Read more, see more. Link in bio.
Featured: @ironblossomrva @imgoingevents
✏️: @majormajor____
📸: @v1nny__cand3la
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22 Sep 2026
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