Buttermilk & Molasses

Scoot (and Richmond) Go National

Over at CNN Money, which I'm sure all of you peruse with bated breath regularly, there's a fantastic piece on the hyper-energetic Chelsea Lahmers and her fast-growing Scoot Richmond scooter shop.

I don't own a scooter, but I've been an avid follower of Chelsea's business venture -- partly because it's cool, and partly because she's shown up in the oddest corners of my life (joining me and a blind date [her friend] for a beer at Ipanema [a long time ago!]; taking sculling lessons at the same time as Nikole and I did; at the farmers' market).

Fortune Magazine's Small Business team pulled together a Virginia-based panel to talk to the successful scooter vendor about ways to grow her business. It's a fantastic read, and is going to sort of make you want to buy a scooter.

In 2007 Lahmers sold 50 scooters at an average price of $3,400 (customers typically spend an additional $200 to $1,000 per scooter on accessories). Last year she sold 378 scooters, thanks largely to rising gas prices.

"We had people coming from Rhode Island to buy them," she marvels. Sales reached $1.1 million in 2008, up from $279,000 in Lahmers's first six months of business in 2007.

But she also hit some serious bumps.

For starters, Lahmers says, a former employee embezzled at least $50,000 last year (a criminal investigation is pending). In the wake of that setback, she isn't sure how best to restructure the books or track financial operations.

Understandably, she also worries about hiring. She needs help establishing a reliable interview and evaluation process that will let her spot issues that could cause trouble down the road.

In addition, Lahmers wants to expand her customer base. She currently draws a funky urban clientele. She would like to add suburbanites to the mix, but she doesn't "know who these people are or how to reach them."

Ready to confront these issues, Fortune Small Business's experts assemble at the shop before opening time on a recent Tuesday. After a tour of the retail floor and the repair facility, everyone gathers in the back room around a table surrounded by shelves stacked with cardboard boxes full of spare parts. Lahmers's mother, Jean West, who owns 5% of the company and is working to clean up the books, is also present.

Lahmers starts by telling the group she has spent the past year trying to untangle the financial mess resulting from the alleged embezzlement. The experience undermined her confidence, Lahmers says.

Delve into this great local story at CNN, or go hang out at Scoot's stylish website.

C3 and 1708 Host Stellar First Talk 20

Richmond's first Talk 20 event -- seven creatives with 20 slides and 20 seconds to talk about each slide, or scramble to catch up with their slides -- was a hit. At least the first half of it was; I had to slip out of the 1708 Gallery after the first four presenters did their thing.

The event, modeled after similar Talk 20 programs happening around the world, proved to be an excellent introduction to seven individual voices and their creative experiences, products and philosophies. Best of all, it was casual, periodically profound and clever, and delivered in good fun -- at a reasonably rapid clip.

Believe me, you'd be surprised how much you can tell in six minutes and 40 seconds.

Co-presented by the Creative Change Center (C3) and 1708 Gallery, the first of what both groups promise will be many Talk 20 events featured a dynamic lineup:

• Charles Foley of Scout Design
• Photographer Shaun Irving
• Painter and illustrator Matt Lively
• Artist Liz Kellinger
• Architect Michael Pellis
• Designer and skull aficionado Noah Scalin
• Gallery owner and tattoo artist Thea Duskin

Here are a few highlights from the first four voices in the room:

Charley Foley and his wife Angelina Robertson founded Scout Design together. As a series of projects -- booklets and websites and posters -- flipped through the screen behind him, Foley succinctly described how Scout Design sees itself.

"What bucket do I think I'm in?" he asked. "We're not advertisers and we're not designers, we're problem solvers."

Actually, they are designers, but as Foley walked through several of their projects it became clear that a passion for the work is a common theme.

Discussing the web design for photographer Gordon Stettinius, Foley encouraged the audience to check out the site's Gincrack Cinema, which he said "combines quotes that he likes with photographs in a random way with interesting results."

He also spoke of the catalog project for artist Carson Fox as an example of how they approach work. "We can get obsessive about details," he admitted; Fox's catalog is silk-screened and has a sewn binding -- done by the artists on a sewing machine in the kitchen.

As with all the subsequent presenters, Foley moved quickly through a casual discussion of their work, their clients and how they approach projects. Behind him, slides moved like clockwork. He moves steadily. Nothing feels rushed.

When he ends, it feels like just enough time.

Shawn Irving's story is a bit different. He sums up his creative endeavor in one statement: "I build giant cameras out of delivery trucks."

The truck is a giant light-free box with a lens. It makes big photos -- four feet tall and eight feed wide.

(The NYTimes' Lens blog tells Irving's story here.)

The self-trained giant truck photographer says he's self-trained, and that "it's been both a ringing success and a miserable failure." He goes on to described it as being "like a backyard science project."

One built on a tight budget.

"To get a set of custom lenses made for the truck was going to be $2,000," he said. "Plan B was to get some old military surplus ... my shutter is a cardboard box."

To develop giant prints, a simple solution -- buckets and sponges.

"The camera truck project has never been about fame... or money," he says. "Instead, it's about getting people excited about art. You can make beautiful things in simple ways."

Matt Lively's self-deprecating humor is as low-key as the artist himself appears to be during his six-minute monologue.

"I work in a big barn in the middle of nowhere and I don't talk to people very often," he begins. "Most of what I make is really horrible, but I make a lot of it."

"But I don't mean it's all horrible," he quickly adds.

Like the others, Lively describes his process in the simplest of terms: "I invent little characters and make up stories and combine the materials and stories with the materials I have."

Lively talked briefly about his painting and illustrations before going into more detail about his newer work on a children's book and a film.

He's modest about his success, as well. "I don't know how real jobs work," Lively says. "I know you get direct deposit."

The final Talk 20 presenter I saw was Liz Kellinger, whose Reveal/Conceal show last year was great to experience. The photography/painting exhibit began with a self-portrait.

"I started to wonder how other people if they were asked would present themselves," she says, as photos of those people -- ranging from the normal to the unusual (a naked man lounging in a bathtub filled with water and rose petals). In six months, she collected 500 photos; she chose seven to paint for the exhibit.

"What amazed me was the stories that came with the photos -- the epiphanies and fears," Kellinger says.

Fourth Annual Ruby's Run Set for November 8

If you were living in Richmond at the start of 2006, then you know how a significant portion of Richmond region collapsed in on itself at the news of the New Year's Day murders of Bryan, Kathryn, Stella and Ruby Harvey.

Out of tragedy, hope.

Just ten months after their deaths, a group came together to organize the first Ruby's Run -- because even at the young age of four Ruby loved to run, and she loved to laugh.

The Fourth Annual Ruby's Run will be held on Sunday, November 8, at the Carillon Grounds in Byrd Park. Kids four to 12 can run, and all proceeds go to scholarships in Ruby Harvey's memory at Second Presbyterian Child Care Center and at Theatre IV's Children's Theatre. The races begin at 2:00 (and runners can pick their packets up at 1:00).

It is celebration time once again. In just a few short weeks, we will hold the 4th annual Ruby’s Run. For the children it is an afternoon of running around, face painting, hair painting, dressing up, climbing trees, knocking around a soccer ball, and all the fun that comes with doing that with so many other people your own size – a totally child centered event.

For us, the adults, is a time to remember and celebrate the love that Ruby and her family brought to all of our lives and to the wider Richmond community...

Years seem to fly by, yet some days seem to drag on interminably – we all know that feeling. It is hard to believe that almost four years have passed until we look around us at the kids who are growing up a little bit more each day. Some of our runners from the 2006 Ruby’s Run have “aged out” of the races, and will volunteer this year. Little ones who were infants back then will race this year for the first time.

And so it goes. We see the event as a legacy of love. I hope you do too.

If you want a reminder of what it’s all about, click on the photo links below from the 2nd and 3rd years’ races, and go the website www.rubys-run.com and click on the picture link for photos from the very first year. http://www.backlightdigital.com/Ruby2008/   www.backlightdigital.com/RubysRun/index.html (2007)

Carnival of 5 Fires Lands on Halloween

Appropriately enough for one of Richmond's more spectacular collections of street-level performance art, this year's Festival of 5 Fires -- an annual production of Gallery 5 -- falls on Halloween weekend. Talk about adding fire to fire:

Gallery5’s most highly attended and extravagant event of the year, will be held this October, for the entire Halloween weekend. Featuring fire performers, burlesque, puppeteers, magicians, side-show freaks, vaudeville performers, and internationally- known visual artists, this three night event will rattle the senses and be the event to talk about for the entire year. The past three years of The Carnival of 5 Fires have received statewide press and record-breaking attendance. Audiences traveled from states away to witness the creative debauchery set forth by this jam-packed weekend of quality entertainment. This wide array of carnival-themed theatrical, dance and musical performances have been brought in from some of our East Coast cities most bizarre and innovative circles. Each evening’s line-up is full of the most provocative, whimsical, freakish, and hair-raising arts, and promises to be the masquerade of a life-time.

Go find out more about the event of the season.

Talk, Talk, Talk at Talk 20 (A C3 Joint)

The Creative Change Center (C3) is one of Richmond's quieter organizations, partly the result of losing its physical space several years ago (it's now a virtual organization) and partly because everyone and their second cousin is in on the creativity kick in Richmond these days.

Be that as it may, C3 and 1708 Gallery are partnering to bring a Talk 20 event to Richmond on October 7. Take seven creative leaders, give them 20 slides and 400 seconds. And go.

It's an event that's happened around the world, and on October 7 it'll be happening here with the following creatives and their slide shows:

• Thea Duskin, co-director of Ghostprint Gallery, multimedia and tattoo artist, ghostprintgallery.com
• Shaun Irving, ultra-large format photographer, cameratruck.net
• E.B. Kellinger,visual artist and creator of the Reveal/Conceal Project, ebkellinger.com
• Matthew Lively, visual and multimedia artist, mattlively.com
• Michael Pellis, of Baskervill, innovative and sustainable architecture and design
• Angeline Robertson and Charley Foley, of the print and interactive media firm Scout Design, stateofscout.com
• Noah Scalin, of Another Limited Rebellion Design and the now-famous Skull-A-Day blog and Skulls book, ALRDesign.com

Get the scoop and order tickets at the C3/1708 Talk 20 Eventbrite page.

Light Up Your Life with a Lantern at InLight II (the Electric Boogaloo)

Its inaugural year wasn't a washout, but there was a lot of rain creating ambiance for the first InLight Richmond street-level illumination-in-art event last year.

Organizers are hoping for a dryer canvas for their second, larger event. It's going to litter Broad Street with light during the weekend of September 25:

InLight Richmond is an exploration and celebration of contemporary art free of charge for the whole community. Facades, walls, storefronts, doorways, parking lots and other unexpected places will be transformed by 27 international (US, Australia, Canada and Germany) emerging and established artists with video projections, sculptures, installations, multi-media art works and performance arts.  Guest juror Adelina Vlas, Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, selected the artists from the 65 submissions received from all over the world. The juror also selected four proposals to be considered for a permanent art installation.

It all starts with a Community Lantern Parade, and operating under the misguided assumption that every Richmonder doesn't have an artistically crafted lantern handed down to them from one of the wars the folks at 1708 Gallery are offering a series of lantern making workshops. Taught by four different, kick-ass artists.

The workshops will be held during the last 2 weeks of August at 1708 Gallery.  Taught by four diverse Richmond artists - Sarah Hand, Matt Lively, Noah Scalin and Paul Teeples - the workshops will feature four unique lantern making methods.   No special skills or previous art experience are needed, just a willingness to explore the creative opportunities in our everyday world.

Classes will be held for kids and adults, and they are expected to fill up super-fast. Noah will be hosting workshops on recycled light. Paul's focus is on punch-tin lanterns (in case you lost the family heirloom). Sarah will be teaching participants to make glimmering orbs, and Matt will be instructing on paper house lanterns. There is a fee for the workshops -- but you get light refreshments, a kick-ass lantern and a chance to hang out with the cool kids. Register now.

Richmond's Curious Shorthand

Maybe I should have titled this post "The Curious Shorthand of Richmond.com" since there are a few abbreviations that make no sense to me. Not that I'm the end-all. Whatever. Karri Peifer landed this assignment -- an overview of Richmond's nicknames and abbreviations.

A few favorites from her piece:

Nickel Bridge: This is the Boulevard Bridge. We call it the Nickel Bridge because, once upon a time, it cost a nickel to cross. Now it costs $375 (that’s joke people, don’t freak out. It costs 35 cents.), but we want to remind the city that we remember when it was cheaper.

CCV: That’s the Country Club of Virginia. Don’t worry, you probably won’t ever go. Not unless they’re hiring.

If you wake up one morning and your car is gone, it went to Seibert’s. Get a ride, take out the $375 you’ll need to get across the Nickel Bridge and pick up your car. Once you’ve done this, you’re well on your way to being a true Richmonder.

Richmond: Welcome, Seniors. Bring Cash.

I'm not sure how I feel about the Association for the Advancement of Retired People (AARP) and their love of Richmond. But their travel writer, Peter Greenberg, maps out an East Coast road trip that sails straight through the heart of Richmond:

Go through a vivid history lesson by visiting Richmond, Va., where you can view exhibits at the Virginia Historical Society. Self-proclaimed as the "perfect blend of old and new," Richmond also boasts Agecroft Hall, a restored 15th-century English manor that offers views of the James River.  The manor's gardens encompass 23 acres. The Old Stone House (Edgar Allan Poe Museum) exhibits many of the writer's memorabilia and artifacts of his life's work. Visitors can even view films on the writer's life.

Winston-Salem to Richmond to Baltimore feels like an upward trajectory to me. Next is Pottsville, Pennsylvania, which only has a Yuengling's plant and an anthracite mine to hold it together...

Great Advice for VCU's Incoming Freshmen

As thousands of new students prepare to descend upon the several mile square patch of concrete that barely contains Richmond's monolithic public university, "What's An Azalea" weblog has some advice for those new to the ways of Richmond and life as a college student.

Alternately insightful and eye-rollingly amusing, the advice is not only reasonably on-target but reminds me how little has changed since I was a scrawny straight-edged freshman hanging out in a very different Shafer Court. A few choice bits:

• If you are a young female and any boys start hitting on you as you walk through the compass area do not have sex with them. Hold out on having sex with anyone that is straight edge, period.

• Renting a house with roommates will also be in many cases cheaper than dorms. Get out of dorms ASAP you will lead a more fulfilling life, and probably save money.

• Are you Crazy??? Go to the commons, upstairs to the counseling center and get free counselors, psychiatrists, group therapy, etc. They are high quality and professional. Then you take the prescription they offer you over to student health and get it filled for way way cheap. You will never again in your life have access to free therapy, and if you think you don’t need it then you’re crazy, which means Go!

Ah, student health.

I remember well the autumn of 1989. I was working four jobs (full-time editor of the student paper, part-time PR hack for the university, part-time City Desk intern at the Times-Dispatch, and an almost full-time dairy clerk at Ukrop's) and taking five classes. I weighed 135 pounds, drank about two gallons of coffee every day and was sleeping about three hours a night.

I found myself in the Student Health Center looking for some of the free meds mentioned above (for allergies, hello) and the nurse asked what was going on in my life. I told her. She was livid about the student load deal and immediately got on the phone. An hour later, I had my fat check.

A month later, I was eating better and drinking better beer at the Village Cafe, but I was still working four jobs. I ended that semester with an A in Dr. Messmer's historiography class and four F's.

Despite the fact that I was working like a mad man, I was broke and my student loan application had been rejected.

Another Worthy Richmond History Site Lands

What happens when you combine the knowledge and talents of two of Richmond's most passionate working urban preservationists with a long-time library archivist? That's right, you get The Shockoe Examiner, a weblog that explores the history of Richmond from some sharp perspectives.

The Shockoe Examiner's Tyler Potterfield, Ray Bonis and Catherine Easterling are the new Kepone of the Richmond blogging community.

As their latest post with its brief editorial introduction to a letter in Style Weekly about the proposed art gallery for VCU suggests, they are a no-holds-barred kinda group:

Below is a great letter about the proposed new art gallery for VCU. Let us hope that VCU does not raise enough money for this project and another building design is selected.

They recently had a great post of clippings (one seen at the top of this post) about the "high steeples of Richmond" as seen in 1900. You won't see that view anymore.

Another recent post was an excerpt from a 1858 issue of Harper's Weekly about the relocation of the remains of President James Monroe from New York to Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery.

They join Harry Kollatz of Richmond Magazine, Ed Slipek of Style Weekly and WCVE's Brooks Smith as stellar keepers of this city's history -- and future.