History, Art, and Fun
RICHMOND VIRGINIA
by Rich Rubin
I’m going to make a statement you
might find surprising. Ready? Here goes: Richmond, Virginia
is wonderful. Okay, it’s probably not the first place
you’ve dreamt of visiting. In fact, I’m not
sure it’s on your radar at all, but it’s somewhere
you should think about: cultured, with tons of history,
an active and friendly GLBT community, and a slew of great
restaurants. It’s a low-key, lovely city filled with
row houses of brick and wood, with a green, gracious air
to it. This small city (about 200,000) definitely has
a laid-back Southern atmosphere, but there’s a vibrant
contemporary scene developing against the background of
400 years of history.
I check into the Jefferson Hotel,
built in 1895. It’s really a sumptuous vision of
luxury, just off downtown’s Main Street and convenient
to just about every area of town. They have their own
town car that’s at your disposal when you need
a ride (or a pickup), and the rooms are large, with
a subdued elegance. You know you’re in for a treat
when you enter and see the domed ceilings, large statue
of Thomas Jefferson, and grand marble staircase that
many believe was the model for the one in Gone With
the Wind. This is an historical landmark as well as
a fabulous hotel, and to stay here is to experience
a piece of Richmond’s history with all the contemporary
luxury you could ask for.
Want something more intimate? Gay-owned
Maury Place B&B offers four exquisite suites
in a 1916 building overlooking Monument Avenue (the
only street in the US listed on the National Register
of Historic Places), beautifully restored by the owners
with an air of graciousness that’s quintessential
Richmond.
Linden Row Inn, a 70-room boutique
hotel fashioned from seven 1840s row houses, is more
comfy than luxurious, with a uniquely eclectic spirit
to its rooms. So choose the atmosphere you want, you
can’t go wrong at any of these three very different
lodgings.
The one thing that unites them, of course,
is history. You can’t escape it in Richmond, whose
very streets ooze 400 years’ worth. I find a unique
way to begin my explorations of the city’s history:
a Segway tour. It’s the perfect way to see the
main sights of the compact downtown area, and a hell
of a lot of fun. This is partially because these vehicles,
powered by our own body weight and surprisingly easy
to ride, are a fun way to get around, and partially
because our guide, Jeff Majer, is such a perfect combination
of hilarity and information. After a brief practice
session in a little alleyway, we take off on our stand-up,
rolling transport, gliding down the Canal Walk, to a
James River overlook, and across the State Capitol grounds.
We see nearly hidden murals that even Richmonders in
the group didn’t know existed. We hear about historic
events both centuries-old and more recent. We admire
public art, from a statue of a canal boatsman to an
installation that hangs below the highway—“the
only piece of art we know of on I-95,” says Majer,
who as a working artist himself naturally lends an artsy
bent to the tour.
We tool around the grounds of Tredegar
Ironworks, a now-abandoned factory, its long arched
brick building with stovepipe chimney is backed by the
canal below and modern buildings towering on the horizon.
I observe the former country store, remnants of a brick/stone
tunnel system, and a statue that Majer claims is the
only one of Abraham Lincoln in the South. When our two
hours end, I’m reluctant to dismount and depend
on my own two feet. It’s really a great way to
see the city, covering much more ground in two hours
than we could possibly walk, but we experience it more
firsthand than from a car or van.
Perhaps because my first tour of Richmond
is given by an artist, I explore the city’s offerings
in that area, beginning at the Visual Arts Center
of Richmond. It’s a sprawling arts complex
in a former dairy building, where they have hundreds
of art classes from woodturning to jewelry to printmaking
(some are one-off classes so visitors can get a little
arts education too). There is also an exhibition space
featuring cutting edge exhibits such as the recent one
of figures made from human hair gathered in New Orleans
barbershops damaged by Katrina. Of prime interest to
me is their annual Craft and Design Show, held the week
before Thanksgiving.
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It’s here that I meet Noah Scalin,
who moved back to his hometown from New York and found
the city not only affordable (a major plus for a young
artist) but arts-friendly. “There’s an appreciation,
an urban aesthetic, but it’s not impossible to make
it happen here. In New York, maybe I’d get a show
in some sliver of some gallery in Brooklyn. Because I’m
in Richmond, I’m not working all day and night just
to pay the rent.” Scalin hit the international radar
with his “skull a day” project, in which he
created exactly that, fashioning skulls out of materials
from ink to vegetables to street signs and posting them
on skulladay.com. An
award-winning book later, and fan letters from Australia
to a platoon in Iraq, Scalin is typical of the increasing
numbers of artists who are discovering Richmond’s
pleasures.
This town’s booming arts scene
holds not just one but two gallery districts. I start
on Broad Street, home to several galleries and
also the city’s First Fridays, a monthly event
when galleries stay open late. I admire drawings, etchings,
and weird knitted wall hangings in Ada Gallery,
paintings from tiny to humongous in 1708 Gallery,
and gorgeous examples of the eponymous art in Photographic
Arts Gallery. These are just a small selection of
the many artsy spots lining this street filled with
brick and stucco façades, the occasional arched
window, elaborate column, or building medallion lending
an appropriately artsy flair. A few minutes’ drive
away lies another must see: the Eric Schindler Gallery,
Richmond’s oldest gallery, with the walls of this
old house packed to overflowing with a wide variety
of local artists.
Then there’s the Main Street
Arts Corridor (about eight galleries now), on the
west end of Main, it’s becoming more and more of
an art lover’s destination. “There was a natural
evolution into an arts area,” says Page Bond, whose
gallery is one of the best in town. “Because VCU
(Virginia Commonwealth University) is nearby, there
are lots of restaurants and a lot of people out walking.”
Page Bond Gallery is a wonderful space with stone
floors, a large stone wall at the center, and grid ceiling.
In existence for four years, it’s the kind of airy,
chic space that cries “urban artsy,” and its
rotating exhibits of painting, sculpture, photography,
ceramics, glass, and works on paper would be the envy
of galleries in cities ten times Richmond’s size.
As I admire two lovely little beach scenes, almost abstract
but with, somehow, a great reality to them, I suddenly
realize they’re the work of Jeff Majer, who led
our Segway tour! This town’s beginning to feel
like New York, where everyone from your waiter to your
Segway leader is an artist.
In Red Door Gallery, I admire
charming paintings of “People and Animals.”
In Artemis Gallery, I chuckle over the wild kinetic
sculptures—crazy telescopes and clocks made of
gears and other machine parts. In Reynolds Gallery,
I see a fine collection ranging from nationally and
internationally acclaimed artists to Richmond products
like McArthur Genius Grant winner Tara Donovan. This
exquisite gallery, which still has the feel of the house
it used to be, paved the way for the current, growing
scene.
While on Main Street, I step into the
coffee roaster Rostov’s to large sacks of
coffee beans, impressive roasting equipment, and most
of all, the amazing aroma. There’s one table outside
to sit and sip the brew, but it’s first and foremost
a production facility, servicing some of the best restaurants
in town. My visit provides not only the much-needed
caffeine but a very Richmond moment. As I chat with
the proprietor, she startles me by asking, “How
did you like your dinner at Rowland’s last night?”
This town might have urban hipness to spare, but for
all the galleries, restaurants, and coffee roasting,
it remains very much a small town.
Caffeine addict that I am, it’s
not the only coffee house in town I try: there’s
also Lift, which has a retro feel to its brightly
colored interior, and I enjoy my java at a long counter
that almost feels like a drugstore counter from days
gone by. I sip more at Lamplighter, a GLBT-popular
and friendly spot with a tiny interior and nice outdoor
seating area that opened recently and already has a
loyal following. Café Gutenberg, down
the street from the train station, has two floors to
enjoy the laid-back atmosphere and wonderful coffee
and meals.
With all this caffeine-boosted energy,
I wander through Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden,
forty acres of verdant richness. I love the variety
of al fresco atmospheres they create, from a healing
garden and meditation garden to a very fun children’s
garden where you don’t have to be a tot to have
a blast.
Richmond is also chock-full of museums,
some that you might perhaps expect and others more surprising.
The Virginia Historical Society contains fascinating
displays of this state’s heritage, which in many
ways mirrors the history of the country itself. The
Black History Museum is devoted to preserving oral
history and illuminating the African American experience
in Virginia. The Holocaust Museum, with its creative
reconstructions, plunges the visitor into an experience
that’s at once harrowing and somehow uplifting
as it testifies to the resilience of the human spirit
under the most awful of circumstances and achieves its
lesson of “tolerance through education.”
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