Richmond Doug, Dirt Tracks & Degenerates (Nickelodeon lore, NASCAR, Forest Hill Park, etc) — Unscripted #053

In this episode of Vera House Unscripted, we discuss a range of Richmond topics including Richmond Raceway, NASCAR history, Marshall Reservoir, Doug, Hell Block, Forest Hill Park, local infrastructure, and some of the strangest stories hidden throughout the city.

We start with a behind-the-scenes look at Richmond Raceway, racing culture, and Richmond’s long history with motorsports before shifting into conversations around bad drivers, local chaos, and some of the wildest things people have managed to do with vehicles around the city.

Later in the episode, we dive into the story of Marshall Reservoir and the surprising history connected to one small piece of Richmond land, including murder, smallpox victims, Klan rallies, and abandoned development plans. We also revisit Hell Block, Strange Matter, The Village, old VCU culture, and a version of Richmond that many longtime locals still remember.

The second half of the episode focuses on Richmond nostalgia, including the connection between Richmond and the Nickelodeon cartoon Doug, before wrapping up with discussions around city infrastructure, sidewalk clearing laws, and a bizarre incident in Forest Hill Park.

Topics include Richmond Raceway, NASCAR, Marshall Reservoir, Hell Block, Doug, Nickelodeon, VCU history, Forest Hill Park, Richmond infrastructure, Oregon Hill, Strange Matter, local racing culture, and Richmond history.

Quick interjection to invite you to Vera House Studios. If you are a local Richmond business, entrepreneur, brand owner, or service provider—and you know you need to create better content to get your products and services in front of the right people—we can help.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:01

Welcome back to the Vare House podcast. I'm Mike. He's Perry, but you probably already know that. If you listen to this podcast already, thank you for listening. If you don't, welcome. Glad you're here. We talked about some fun stuff today. We talked about NASCAR and how we had a pretty cool trip over to the racetrack. We got a tour of the facility. We got a history lesson and got a little ride around the track itself. And we'll probably be getting into some NASCARs ourselves here coming pretty soon. So that's that's really exciting. Uh we talked about Hellblock. If you don't know what Hellblock is, we'll listen to this episode for sure because we're going to get into it. But it was a historically rough around the edges block of the fan. I'll just leave it at that. But there's some cool stories around that as well. And then we talked about one of the maybe probably the very few ways that men in the modern world relieve stress and how one man decides to do that in full view of the public in the middle of the day at a very public park. What else we get into?

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Oh man. We got into some great, great stories, some funny stuff, some really interesting stuff. Uh many of you may have heard of the show Doug from when you were younger. We get into the lore and the history behind that and its relation to our city of Richmond. We also talk about the long-lost Marshall Reservoir, one of the, if not the first reservoir in Richmond. I couldn't even summarize it for you. There's a lot of really crazy stories attached to the Marshall Reservoir, a lot of very strange, mysterious lore around it. Uh, but oddly enough, it's documented pretty well. And we dive into the whole history behind it today. And then we also talk about how there's a lot of idiots behind the wheel. You know, it's a bit of a recurring theme. I'm sure as summer continues to roll out, it'll only get worse. But people just end up with their cars in the craziest places in this city. It just continues to blow our minds. And um, as Perry mentioned, uh, he introduced himself as Mike and introduced him myself as Perry. And uh, it's a good time to tell you to make sure that you're following the VeraHouse podcast on Instagram at varahouse.co. Uh and you can follow us both individually as well. So you can find Perry at PlanetPeri and you can find me at Mike Metzger. Uh thank you so much for listening to this episode. We hope that you enjoy it.

SPEAKER_03 2:41

It's been a little it's been a little while since we've chitted and chatted and talked about normal everyday exceptionally specific things that happened in Richmond. That's true. That's true. Well, it was your birthday. It was. It was my 41st birthday. Birth with a FF.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Yeah, cause for celebration and a much needed break away from the microphone. You know, these hot, sweaty days in the studio of long hard work.

SPEAKER_03 3:13

Oh, yeah. I mean, we're we're really just grinding it out over here. So it was nice to get some some PTO, you know, from the studio. Got a little rest day in. My birthday was on a Monday, so I got to hang out on Sunday, which was actually my mom's birthday.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Nice.

SPEAKER_03 3:31

So May 31st is her birthday, and June 1st is mine. Went out to the lily pad for her birthday. Oh, I saw a picture of that. Yeah. That was great. Yeah. I hadn't been out there in a while, and it was kind of like a last minute decision to go. I know she likes to be by the water and likes to be outside. So we cruised on out there, and you know, it was a little bit of a wait, but wasn't too bad. You get a couple apps, a couple little drinks, then you get seated, and it was one of those the perfect before it gets too hot summer days where it's like a little cool in the shade, zero humidity and like kind of warm in the sun. It was great.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome, man. Well, happy birthday to Mama Young and uh happy birthday to you, dude. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

Yeah. It was hot out on the track this morning.

SPEAKER_03 4:21

It was. It was. We were out at uh I was gonna call it the other the former name, Richmond International Raceway.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:29

But now I think it's just called Richmond Raceway. Yep. So we were at Richmond Raceway this morning talking to some folks at NASCAR, and we got a little tour of the facility, which I had never seen. I don't know if you'd ever seen that stuff. You know, we're both, you know, Richmond natives and been here for a long time. I've been to a race or two, I think, and I've been to the track a dozen times and like just the grounds for all kinds of stuff, you know, other races and festivals and things. But she's telling us the uh the history about the track and about NASCAR and about Richmond's role in the race industry itself, which was mind-blowing. Yeah. Yeah, and then we got to get out on the track and do a little cruise.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Yeah. Yeah, that was cool. It was cool, man. I enjoyed it. And similar to what you just mentioned, I've definitely been there before, but not quite like that. And I've never, unfortunately, I've never attended a race. That will obviously change this year. So we'll definitely be there for the races. I think there's three or four like official NASCAR races, but they have dozens of events there throughout the year. Yeah. So I've been there for the gun show. I went there for the Monument Avenue 10K Health and Fitness Expo. Gun Show. Yeah, the gun show. The gun show. Just ignore that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Erase that from your memory. Sorry, everyone. Um, yeah, but I've been there for some cool events, and obviously the place is massive. Yeah. But it was cool to like go all the way up to the top. The view of Richmond was super cool. That was pretty sweet. Because yeah, you can go to some of the rooftops around Richmond and get some cool views for sure. But to be like, and it's not that far outside of the city, but to be outside of the city and to be able to see like the whole thing like that. You know, it's like you can see the science museum, you can see the Carillon Tower, you can, I mean, you can see everything. Yeah. It's yeah, really unique, cool view because there's not that much that's that high up in the air out that way. Yeah. So I didn't quite realize that we were signing up for such a unique experience, you know.

SPEAKER_03 6:27

I didn't either.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:28

It was a very casual invitation. Hey, come on by, we'll show you the grounds, we'll give you a little history, we'll check out the pace cars, and then we'll we'll kind of take a cruise around the track. And we got the full experience, a full breakdown of the history of this the facility and the track itself, its impact and like where it stands in the greater NASCAR racing history and industry. We got specifics about the building, how the history of the building, how it used to be kind of used to be bigger, and it's been it's been reduced in size over. It used to be a dirt track. It used to be a dirt track. It used to be fully surrounded with grandstands or stadium seating, and they ripped out like half of the seats. Yeah. I don't remember if she said why, but there's still like remnants of the old stadium seating there. And yeah, just changing with the times, I think. Yeah, yeah. So it's it was really cool. And like you and I are both big motorsports fans. Yes. We don't necessarily watch or follow NASCAR that closely, but we like racing and cars and motorsports and all that stuff. So it was it was a really cool experience. Like I said, you know, just kind of on a whim. Yeah, come on down. We'll uh we'll check out the track, and we got the whole the whole deal.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

And you would never quite realize how huge that facility is. It's massive, so so big. She mentioned, so Tony Stevens, she works there and she's like the head of marketing, I believe. Yeah. She mentioned there's over a thousand bathrooms there.

SPEAKER_03 7:55

Yeah. Like, what? That's insane. Yeah. Out of all the facts that we picked up that day, that was the one that really stuck.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Over a thousand bathrooms. Yeah. That's crazy. So many both. But here's the thing, right? To put this in perspective, right? You mentioned the grandstands. That picture that we looked at, that black and white picture. Yeah, we'll put it up on the screen. Yeah, she said the capacity there was 120,000 people. To put that in perspective, the most attended live concert of all time is Kanye West at 118,000 people. Okay. That's insane. Like that's that's crazy. It's nuts, man. You know, now if you go to a Formula One race today, depending on the track, those races are attended by multiple hundreds of thousands of people. Some of the big ones, like almost 400 plus thousand people for the race weekend. Yeah. And even like the biggest sports in the world, like the, you know, the uh the World Cup, like in soccer, yeah, like those matches, like each match is attended by about that same amount, like 100, 120,000 people for each soccer match. Yeah. So it's crazy to think that in 1960, 19, you know, 68, whatever, that and I guess that's that photo is probably somewhere between like 1960 and 1980. Yeah. You know, it's kind of a wide range, but that's where that's roughly where that photo is from, I believe, because it was pavement in that photo. Yeah. And it was paved in, I think she said 1968. So the photo was taken sometime after that. So let's call it the 70s. It's just crazy to think about that time period. What a totally different time to be alive. Yeah. And now they gotta have a daycare center for like the Gen Zs having a panic attack.

SPEAKER_03 9:40

I was just gonna say that back in that time, and I'm sure some of our listeners can relate to this, you know, they were around in that time, and you went out to do uh activities and a show or events, a race to the park, to the to you know, I don't know if the drive-ins were a thing just yet, but you would go out and do things in public with lots of people all at the same time, like going to a big event and waiting in the in the line and sitting in the stands and talking to your neighbors or whatever. That's just what you did back then because there wasn't all the technology and things that are in kind of in the way of that stuff now. But she did say that during a race weekend, there'll be like 30 or 40 Gen Z aged people that have to be admitted to like the medical tent because they're having an anxiety attack because there's too many people there. Yeah, and like I we got a little chuckle out of it, but it's it's just it's kind of sad. It's just like, man, we I don't think you and I have that problem. No, we're a little older now, so do we go out to as many live events as we used to? Probably not, but that's just kind of how things go as you get older. You don't maybe don't do as much as as much of those things as you used to, but I remember having a blast, and like all I wanted to do was go to a festival, go to a race, go to the fair, go to the circus and be around lots and lots of people that like energizes me and like it's exciting, and you know, you get those endorphins and that that makes the entire experience. And you you got someone who was born in the early 2010s, and that they they can't handle being outside of the house around a few hundred thousand people for a couple hours. Yeah, yeah, just we're cooked, we're cooked, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

You know, and it reminds me of being a kid and going to like, you know, adventure parks and theme parks and stuff. It's like, yeah, you're in these big long lines, you don't know any of these people, and it wasn't something that you like thought about. Not even a little bit. Yeah, you weren't sitting there thinking, like, wow, what are all these people in line thinking about me? Or do they think my sneakers are cool? Or like, you know, you wouldn't be bored in line and just staring down at your phone because there's nothing to do. And it's yeah, it is, it's a shame. We talked about it on one of the recent episodes where we talked about like just simply saying hello to people, you know, and it is a shame, man. Not good, but Richmond Raceway has some really cool history. It was fun to take a few laps around the track. I was blown away by the grade of the track, the embankments, yeah, how steep it was. She said it was what, uh like 14 to 18 degrees.

SPEAKER_03 12:17

And I think we got out on the 14 degree turn, and she she parked the car on like the highest part of the curve and told us to get out. And like we got out on the side where you have to like push up against gravity and like almost like climb out of the car, and it was pretty sweet. Yeah, it was a cool experience to like see how that that like those high embankments just the physics of it, like, and then you know, you and I are both motors motorsports heads, so we're I'm thinking like, all right, so you gotta be kind of going at the this speed, and the tires gotta be this type of compound to handle that speed and like to stick on the corner, you have to actually be going fast, you shouldn't slow down because you need the centrifugal force because the yeah, all that stuff. It's just I love it.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

Yeah, yeah. It's cool because when we were up top looking down at the track, you don't realize how steep of an angle it's at. But very cool. So, you know, we took a ride around in basically one of the promotional cars, so it's not quite a NASCAR, but we were invited to take part in like the NASCAR driving academy. Oh, yeah. So in a future episode, you'll probably be hearing us talk about actually driving a real NASCAR around the Richmond Raceway, which will be very cool.

SPEAKER_03 13:27

I'm gonna rip it up. It's not a competition, but there will be one. Yeah. And the winner takes all.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Yeah, dude. Yeah. Well, don't uh don't buff it into the wall. Biff it. Biff it into the wall. Biff it. Yeah, yeah. Not gonna biff it into the wall. Um, so officially our signatures are on the start-finish line, the checkerboard start-finish line of the Richmond Raceway.

SPEAKER_03 13:50

Zero House and both Mike and I's signature are stamped in the pavement at the checkered finish and start line at Richmond Raceway.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

Yeah. And uh yeah, this isn't like a you know a paid promotion or anything. They they invited us out to come check it out. We had an awesome day. It's a beautiful day to be out there. Yeah. And uh yeah, so super, super grateful to them for inviting us out. And um, hopefully it does open up an opportunity to do one of the things that we've talked about. Originally it started as a joke, and uh, it might be coming together quite nicely now, which is the Richmond Parallel Parking Championships. Oh, yes. So yeah, stay tuned because we'll have some updated details. Um, and depending on you know when you're listening to this episode, there may be some information in the description of this video. But yeah, yeah, that'll be a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_03 14:40

All I can say is if you don't think you're good at parallel parking, maybe you know, brush up on the skills a little bit. Yeah. If you think you're good, bring it. Yeah, come on. And if you're really bad, come prove it. Yeah. 100% show us how bad you are. Yeah. Because like I don't, I know you can probably attest to this. I've been in cars with people who are they have like parking anxiety, yeah. You're like nervous about it, and like they don't want you to pay attention. Like, don't look at me while I park. I'm really bad at this. And uh the the cars in there like perpendicular to the other two cars, and the you know, the space is big enough for three and they still can't figure it out. You know, they're the people that if you're cruising down Main Street and you see someone trying to park, there's like five cars behind them, and they're like holding up traffic for more than five minutes. Yeah, it's those, those folks.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

Dude, you know, I come from a long bloodline of New Yorkers, so I I can't relate, dude. Can't relate.

SPEAKER_03 15:42

Uh I don't come from a long bloodline of New Yorkers, but I come from a long bloodline of people who like to drive. And they like to drive in the city, they like to drive and park their cars. Yeah. So it uh it was instilled in me at a young age, young squire age of uh two and a half years old, where I learned how to parallel park.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Young Perry, the the young hedge knight learning how to uh parallel park. That's how I got my uh I got my seals parallel parking in. Can you relate to this? Did you see this?

SPEAKER_03 16:12

Oh yeah, you this guy parallel parked in the canal.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

Yeah. And I know, man, there's there's been at the very least a little mini rant on like the past three or four episodes about crazy drivers. Yeah. And I shit you not, the next day I'm on Instagram and I'm like, say, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 16:32

Yeah. I I saw that. I think five or six people sent me that clip. And I just looked at it. It's it's to the point now where, you know, I see it in public. So I'm I'm not not that I'm looking for it, but I kind of am looking for people just being bad at driving.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

I see that and I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'm not even a little bit surprised. It's I mean, it's crazy, right? It makes you wonder like, is this the Bader Meinhof effect where like you talk about something and now you see it everywhere, and now I'm just seeing jeeps in the river and pickup trucks in the government building and like everybody's driving off the road. Yeah. Or is this just really getting out of control? I think it's getting worse, man. It has to be.

SPEAKER_03 17:12

I think it's getting worse. Just like the increase of like weird, like unnecessarily chaotic traffic issues is just skyrocketing.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

I mean, I've never, and I might get some flack for this, I've never thought about rich, I've never thought about Virginia as a place where like the drivers are really, really bad. Because you go to other places, dude, and it's like crazy. Now, one thing that people do in Virginia that is terrible is they just like sit in the left lane, and that drives me nuts. Um, but they're not like, I don't know, dude. This is kind of nuts. I know, I mean, I know exactly where this is. My guess is that this person was in the parking lot and just put it and drive at thinking they were in reverse and just floored it right out of the parking lot into the I mean, what a crazy ride that must have been.

SPEAKER_03 17:57

Look how far down that is, man. That is two, that's a almost a story. So almost the like first to second floor in a house, down a decline, then there's the platform, like the bank where the canal is, and then into the canal. I just I have so many questions when I see stuff like this. Like, how are you in so little control of your car that it makes it all the way there?

SPEAKER_00 18:23

I mean, how do you not instinctually slam on the brakes when you feel that you're going the wrong direction or something? You know, that's the things like the big the bigger one is the one that stops the car. Imagine you're just having a little slice of pizza, bottoms up, and you're having a nice dinner, and you know, you say goodbye to your granny, and you get in your Jeep, and you're like, all right, I'm headed off to you know, wind down for the night, and you just slam the gas and you drop 20 feet off the side of the canal walk into the canal.

SPEAKER_02 18:50

Um, so can you come uh pick me up? I need a ride home. So, what happened? I just saw you. Yeah, um my car is in the river, and I'm not really sure how it happened.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

It's crazy. You know, for anybody who's just listening on audio, we're looking at a Jeep sitting in the middle of the canal walk downtown in Chaco. And it it would be a good time to tell you that obviously if you're not driving, uh, you can always pull up the video version of this podcast. So we're officially on video on Apple Podcasts now. So even if you're listening on Apple, like many of our listeners do, there's an option now to where you can actually pull up the video. So if you're ever listening and we start referencing a video or something, you can easily pull it up to kind of see what we're talking about. Yeah. Um and not while you're driving. Yeah, please don't do it while you're driving. Don't listen to us talking about Richmond car accidents while you're having a car accident listening to the Bear House podcast. We can't have that. No, we can't have this like self-fulfilling prophecy to where the next 40 episodes is just us talking about our listeners driving into all the different bodies of water.

SPEAKER_03 19:50

Oh man, that would be so funny, unfortunately, but yeah, don't do that.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Yeah, don't do that. And same thing goes for Spotify and uh, of course, YouTube as well. YouTube is primarily, you know, it's video. So I don't know what's going on, man. I don't know what's going on. You know, in 200 years, they're gonna be searching the bottom of these uh canals and reservoirs and stuff, and they're just gonna find a bunch of Jeeps and Nissan Ultimas. Yeah. And they'd be like, what is good? What happened in Richmond 200 years ago? I don't know, man.

SPEAKER_03 20:17

I I'd actually I think I made this comment while we're uh we were hanging out the other day. It's like I I turned 41 and I feel like if I make these comments now, I'm becoming the the get off your lawn guy. I'm becoming the old man who's yelling at kids to get off his his yard because he's like he loves his grass. And but I can't help it, man. I'm in my car a lot. I've said this before. I take pride in being a good driver. Granted, I did get a traffic citation for not completely stopping at a red light, but I like to think that I'm a pretty good driver. Yeah, we'll brush that one onto the forget that that ever happens. Don't watch that episode. Or do and just close your eyes when you saw the car. So when I see people who are either willfully unaware or like willfully ignoring the traffic rules or the regulations or like just the flow of it, just inflicting their own will on the road and disregarding other people.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

Yeah, slamming your brakes in front of a huge tractor trailer.

SPEAKER_03 21:19

Actually, multiple tractor trailers. Yeah, like I have to make this as if I don't make this as I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna get to where I go. Yeah, and I have to get over right now, even though there's a two-ton, a four-ton truck next to me. I know I'm not supposed to slow down in front of him, but I I I can't not get this exit. I'm gonna miss what going to Chipotle, and my friends are gonna be mad. And I don't care if he wrecks and dies and kills a bunch of other people, I have to do this. Or you're just completely unaware that you're really bad at it. Yeah. Or you know you're bad at it and you drive anyway. Crazy. All of those things are not great. No, not good because I'm looking forward. I definitely see it far too often.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

Yeah. Pretty nuts, man. Yeah. Uh, how about the turnout to the Caratown?

SPEAKER_03 22:00

Run club. I want to say a personal thank you to everyone that came out to the Carrytown Run Club inauguration. That was really cool. It's the first time that you and I had ever tried to do anything like that. I think the Blackbird guys have been doing it a little bit prior. I don't have any experience with run clubs. It was my first one. Um I will be running in the next one. So any shade, you can leave that at the door. Let's go. But to see the turnout, I think we had like 30 people to come out. Dude, it was like almost 50. So there you go. Almost 50 people came out. You know, we met a few people. We did the run. We raffled off a pair of free kicks from Lucky Road. So thank you to Jeff for that. Yep. And then we went over to TBT and had brunch. And it was awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

It was great. Very cool, man. Very cool. It was nice to like see it happen. Yeah. You know, like actually happen and be successful. Everybody had great feedback. They enjoyed it. It was a hot morning. It was a little toasty. But for now, we're going to do it at the same time. And I mentioned this during the finish that we're open to suggestions. Like Perry just mentioned, you know, we just check our ego at the door. It's, you know, we're not professional runners. We're doing it primarily as a social community thing. There were some fast runners, though. We had some people come out from like the VCU track team, um, some obviously experienced runners. Literally, it was exactly what we hoped it would be, which was all kinds of different people, different experience levels, different parts of town. Everybody kind of had a different reason for being there. And everybody got together. It was social, it was fun. And going back to even talking about kind of joking about the whole like Gen Z antisocial thing, it didn't have that feeling. It was just like, cool, we don't know everybody here, and everybody doesn't know us, but like, yeah, we're just hanging out, being social, and it was it was great. It was fantastic. So, um, dude, did you know that the water pipes in Richmond used to be made of wood?

SPEAKER_03 25:00

Not even a little surprised.

SPEAKER_00 25:01

So imagine like the water pipes going through the city is just like a log with a hole drilled out through the middle of it.

SPEAKER_03 25:08

Classic uh old Virginia ingenuity. Very, very old. Yeah. I've got a riddle for you.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

Okay. I don't know if I even like riddles, but you're gonna love this one. All right. All right. Which Richmond landmark was once a public park, a water reservoir, the scene of a nationally famous murder. It's uh the home of 150 smallpox victims. It hosted a Ku Klux Klan rally, nearly became our first sports stadium, and was eventually torn apart and just scattered and hidden all across the city. I have no idea. Okay. It was called the Marshall Reservoir. Oh, okay. And where the site sits now is basically over kind of near Randolph and Hollywood Cemetery, Oregon Hill area. So there's uh like a kid's baseball field over by Clark Springs Elementary School. Um, and that is the site of where the Marshall Reservoir was. And here's the story. So beneath a school playground in Randolph sits the forgotten site of Richmond's first major reservoir, a nationally famous murder scene and one of the city's strangest lost landmarks. Most Richmonders have never heard of the Marshall Reservoir, right? Like, have you ever heard of it? I had never heard of it. I haven't, no. But for nearly 100 years, it was one of the city's most important landmarks. This is a long time ago. So back in the 1830s, Richmond's water system was very primitive. Any water that was transported was conveyed in wooden pipes made of hollowed logs. And in 1829, Richmond hired Philadelphia engineer Albert Stein to design a new water system for the city. They built a massive reservoir on a hill in what is now the Randolph neighborhood just west of Hollywood Cemetery. The reservoir was actually a public gathering place. So it was like a park. There were gardens, there were walking paths, there were a ton of trees and foliage and greenery, and people would spend afternoons there overlooking the river. It was like one of the most beautiful parts of town. But in 1885, the reservoir keeper arrived for work and spotted a body floating in the water. It was a young pregnant woman named Lillian Madison. And the Shaco examiner did a whole story on this murder. But the investigators eventually concluded that she had been murdered by her cousin, a guy named Thomas Cluvarius. He was a young Richmond lawyer who was the father of her unborn child. So he got his cousin pregnant. Whoa. And then killed her and threw her into the Marshall Reservoir. What the pretty crazy. It became like huge national news. It was in like all the newspapers all across the country, because of course there was no television. Yeah. Um, and it was one of Richmond's most notorious murder trials. So that prompted them to like clean and clear the reservoir and all this other crazy stuff. And it uncovered all this other stuff, right? Now, after that happened, it was also the site of like a smallpox um hospital and cemetery where they buried 150 smallpox victims. Okay. Those bodies, like no one knows whatever happened to them. Yeah. They're no longer there. No one knows like what the city removed or something. And no one knows what the city did with them because they were smallpox bodies. Yeah. It was never documented. It was like under the table, a little hush hush. Richmond is so sketchy, man. It's crazy. God. Well, on August 27th, 1927, Richmond Klan number one, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, held their initiatory ceremony in the drained reservoir.

SPEAKER_02 28:45

All right, buddy.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

Right next to that was where the smallpox hospital was. And so they had a dead house there for the victims that were awaiting burial, and then the cemetery uh where they were buried. One newspaper described it as one of the loneliest places in Richmond. The cemetery is mentioned in the newspaper as late as 1953. So that was the last time that like this area was really referenced to in the same way that it used to be. So after the 50s, they kind of were like, all right, let's just not talk about this anymore. Um and there's really no clue as to like what was done with the bodies of the smallpox victims or or where they are in Richmond. Now, during the 1900s, the reservoir started aging and it was leaking, and Richmond had already built the much larger reservoir, which is now Bird Park. So then the Marshall Reservoir started to become obsolete. It was drained and removed entirely from the water system in 1923. Right. There were proposals to turn the old reservoir into a stadium by using its giant walls as seating. Yeah. So that's what they were going to do with it and turn it into like Richmond's first real stadium. Yeah. That never happened. Instead, the entire structure was demolished during the Great Depression in 1934. So that's also when they stopped construction on the Carillon, like a reflection pool and all that other stuff. So there's a lot of weird construction going on during that time. So the dirt from the massive 20-foot walls of the Marshall Reservoir was hauled away and it was used all over the city. So it's like, who knows if that has the bodies of these smallpox victims in it?

SPEAKER_03 30:30

Oh, like the foundation of some of these buildings could have like little bones in it.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

Yeah, it definitely could. So this dirt was used to fill Shields Lake. Okay. Over by Maymont. Yeah. And around Bird Park. It was taken to the Riv Riverview Cemetery for grading, and the rest of it was hauled to Monroe Park by VCU. Oh, okay. And that's where the rest of it is. Spooky. And today, nobody realizes that they're standing on top of this, which is like all over the place, right? So the site of Marshall Reservoir is now the ball field. It's the little baseball field for the kids at Clark Springs Elementary School. The walls are gone, the streets were realigned, and almost every physical trace of this thing has disappeared, except for like one oak tree. It's like the last thing left. Yeah. And so like the lore is man, I wonder what that oak tree saw.

SPEAKER_03 31:21

Yeah, man, that's I say it's crazy, but I feel like at this point we've come across so many of these stories. This is just what you did back then, or what people did back then was try and cover up something by turning it into a stadium or turning it into a park or to or dismantling it and not telling anybody the entire truth or telling parts of the truth to one organization and the other part to someone else, and then doing something different than both of those things. Yeah. Sketchy, bro. Like Richmond's sketchy, man.

SPEAKER_00 31:57

It is. It's crazy. You know, but it also, I think it speaks to like it's history, dude. Yeah, it's history, and like it speaks to a different time when things were very different, you know. And it's it not to, you know, not to make an excuse for any of those things, but it's just a different world, man. It's a totally different universe than how we think about life today.

SPEAKER_03 32:16

It really is, man. Yeah, that's that reminds me of of posts I saw on Reddit. Yeah. Speaking of a different time, do you remember Hellblock?

SPEAKER_00 32:25

Oh, yeah. Yeah, of course. Do you spend any time on Hellblock? For sure, man. I used to go to like the village all the time and go to Strange Matter and uh Bobper. There's um, what is the tattoo shop that was there? I've been tattooed there. Enigma, I think it's called down there, yeah. Yeah, Enigma. And then like underneath it is the basement, which is um yeah, but dude, I've I've spent plenty of good times there, man. Riding my skateboard around, riding my little fixed gear bike. Like, I love it over there.

SPEAKER_03 32:48

Yeah, I think at the time during the Hellblocks like peak, I think I was living in the apartments just around the corner. They were like student housing apartments, so like right across from the Siegel Center. So not on Hellblock, but like just literally right there. Yep. And I didn't hang out with anybody that went or lived on that block. So I didn't really know much about it until like years later. But somebody posted on Reddit, it just says, raise your hand if you've been personally victimized by Hellblock at any point in your life. And it's just it's a picture or pictures of like a dirty mattress on top of a busted couch in front of a staircase, you know, these old Richmond apartments, just really reminiscent of that time. Just Gray Street, man. Yep, and then like like winter on in the fan, like this is Stewart Circle right there. And it's just it was a flashback, like a memory of a different time.

SPEAKER_00 33:42

I mean, looking at that picture, even just in this moment, looking at that picture, it just took me like to a totally different place in my mind. I was like, damn, dude. Same, man.

SPEAKER_03 33:49

I like I had the same reaction, and you know, this was taken in in 2016, but there are references to like the summer of 2008 in this in this post, and it just made me think like, what was going on in Richmond in 2008? What was I doing in 2008? So I actually had to look. I had to look on Facebook, yeah. And I'll show you the picture that I found of me from 2008. And you're I mean you're gonna I'm you're gonna want to do this when you go home, is just to kind of like remember. It's like what was I doing in 2008? Bro. Break dancing at Have a Nice Day Cafe. Let's go. Dude, I got kicked out of there. Oh man, yeah. I used to go to Have a Nice Day all the time. I was hanging out with my friends, I was under 21, I think, at that time. And I it was a good time, and it was a time before you know, we we kind of just kind of went down that route with this story, but even prior to that, talking about the racetrack of the history and what it was like in Richmond in another time. And Hellblock is a perfect example of a time capsule that a lot of people remember, like collective memory of this period of time. And I like did a quick search because I was curious about what else was going on in Richmond in 2008. So that was the final season of the Richmond Braves. Oh wow. It was the summer of 2008. After 43 years in Richmond, everyone everyone knew that the Richmond Braves were leaving town. It felt like the end of an era, but like the summer of 2008 was the end of the Richmond Braves.

SPEAKER_00 35:31

Dang.

SPEAKER_03 35:31

I wonder when the renegades ended. That's a good question. Because that's similar. Uh the NASCAR weekends were at its height with 100,000 fans in attendance. Indy car racing was making its way to Richmond Raceway. Obama mania hits Richmond. Everybody was losing their mind over Obama's election. I was one of those people. And so I do kind of remember where it happened, and then you would you would run into your friends in the street and say, Hey man, hey, how you doing? Did you hear the good news? Yeah. It was one of those, like just these things just kind of swept through the city. Yeah. Uh Friday Cheers was big. VCU was growing and taking over lots of that area where it is now essentially downtown, is mainly VCU. It's spread all through all parts of the downtown district. A lot of those buildings are now owned by VCU. Yeah. Uh Canal Club was like the place to be for shows. Oh, yeah. Canal Club was jumping back then.

SPEAKER_00 36:28

I mean, dude, Canal Club is still, they still put on some bangers, man. Like Canal Club is still kicking it, dude. Yeah, yeah. And I'm actually like, I'm glad that they're like the dark horse that like kept kept going.

SPEAKER_03 36:40

Kept going. Yeah. Well, I mean, speaking of other venues, like the national, I think this was the second year that the national had been open since the revitalization.

SPEAKER_00 36:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:50

And I remember going to a show, I didn't look it up, but I think MGMT played their first show at the National. Wow. In like that era, like the first or second year after the revamp and I went. It was my first show. First concert. First time at the National. First time seeing MGMT. Never even heard of them. Yeah. And this was right before they like exploded and became like mega huge. And it just goes on to say that Scott's Edition was mostly a warehouse district. Yeah. Oh, it's absolutely nothing over there. Nothing. Carrytown was still the biggest peak shopping area in the city, which is where we are now. It's our humble home. And Manchester was pretty rough around the edges. Very much so, dude. Did not go to Southside. We just called it Southside at that time.

SPEAKER_00 37:35

I lived in Southside at that time. I lived on Warwick Road, dude, over by Southside Plaza. Sketchy. That I got held up four times living over there.

SPEAKER_03 37:43

Sorry, man.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

That's a lot of crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't go to kids by the kids in the neighborhood. They were younger than me. Yeah. Like they were younger than me. And I was pretty young living there. I was 19. Me and my buddy Cash, we would walk over to the Valero and get like a six-pack of PBR. That was all we got. It's actually a pretty funny story. And I was we were walking back to the house that we were renting, and we come back to walk on our own street, and the car in the cul-de-sac turns its lights on, pulls up and parks in front of us, pull points a shotgun at us out of the window and says, like, give us all your shit. And I'm and we don't even have anything, dude. We're like 19-year-old kids. Yeah. And my buddy had his wallet and um couple and his phone. I didn't bring anything with me because we were just walking across the street. So luckily I didn't have anything except for this six pack of PBR. Yep. And um I went to hand, I was like, here. And they looked at the PBR. They were like, we don't want that nasty shit, man. And I was like, dang, they don't even, they don't even want what I've got. And they took my buddy's phone and wallet and peaced out. Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_03 38:43

That that's exactly what it was like in stuff. Different times. Yeah, different time. And it's it's kind of like you reminisce and you have these memories, even if they're like not so great, but it's still nostalgic in a good way. Yeah, oh man, I remember how bad things were and like how rough my life was, or or whatever. But it is also like, yeah, I remember like hanging out with friends and going breakdancing at the club and you know, driving for the first time, like getting my first car and going around being free and driving around town and working at Circuit City and sit like saving up all my money so I could go to the hookah bar and learn how to DJ and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, I saw those photos like oh man, flashbacks.

SPEAKER_00 39:27

You want to know there's an entire show dedicated to that feeling in Richmond. Really? Yeah, it's called Doug.

SPEAKER_03 39:36

Yeah. I loved Doug. Yeah. I watched it religiously, and I didn't know that it was a Richmond-based show. Yeah. Doug funny, dude. Patty Manet's. Yeah. What was his best friend Skeeter? Skeeter, the blue guy. The blue guy. Yeah. He was black. Yeah. But he was blue in the in the cartoon.

SPEAKER_00 39:53

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, dude, it is pretty crazy because I remember watching that show as a kid, and you would have never really known. Yeah. Because they didn't go out of their way to say, like, this is Richmond, you know? Um it's pretty cool. Like it was it was one of the original three Nick tunes. So it was Doug. And can you guess what the other two were?

SPEAKER_03 40:15

Are you afraid of the dark? No, that was that's not a cartoon.

SPEAKER_00 40:18

No, think of like the animated cartoons when we were super young. Yep. Yep. That's the that's the second one. Okay. What do you think the third one is? Ah was it Ah, Real Monsters? It wasn't that one. That's a good guess, though. My guess was Rocket Power, but it's Ren and Stimpy. Ren and Stimpy. Love that show.

SPEAKER_03 40:37

Yeah. It was so inappropriate for kids. Yeah. But your parents never knew because they weren't home when you were watching it. If if you had kids uh around elementary school age in 2008, they watched this show and you haven't seen it as an adult. Go and look up a clip. It will blow your mind. Seriously. It was the most insane animated show to ever be like released on TV. It was. It was a weird show. Yes. It was like a uh like a pig and a dog, or like whatever the like whatever Stimpy's character is. Whatever that thing is, yeah. Maybe it was just two dogs. I don't know. Uh, but they like had their own life when the parents or when the adults were gone.

SPEAKER_00 41:21

Yeah. Yeah. Those three shows are what launched Nickelodeon into the stratosphere. It was like 1991. Yeah, man. Crazy to think about, man. Um, the Nickelodeon cartoon Doug was created by Jim Jenkins, who was born and raised in Richmond. Specifically, he lived in Lakeside. Yeah. And everyone remembers Patty Mays, right? And some of the like a Skeeter and all that. Um, but she wasn't just a character, like she was a real person. So she was a crush that young Jim never got over. Oh, that that makes sense. Yes. And he wrote her into the story. And before the show premiered, he contacted like many of the real people who inspired the characters in the show to give them a heads up that like they were about to become cartoon characters on Nickelodeon. Yeah, that's so cool, though. It's pretty nuts, man. Like for millions of kids in the 90s, the fictional town of Bluffington from the show felt like a real place because it is one. It is Richmond. It was just simply filtered through the childhood memories of this guy, Jim Jenkins. And he actually worked at Nickelodeon like previous to launching the show. So he was already like an animator and worked there. And so although the fictional town of Bluffington was never like officially titled as Richmond, you know, it didn't say that in the show. They didn't call it Richmond in the show. But Jim Jenkins repeatedly said that the show was inspired by his childhood growing up in Virginia, and that much of Bluffington in the show was modeled after Richmond and also Hen Rico. And then in 2009, Style Weekly actually went on a tour of Richmond with him, where he like pointed out all the places and the experiences that he had when he was a kid that inspired the show. And the way that he described Doug was basically his alter ego. And it was kind of like an emotional reflection of himself, right?

SPEAKER_03 43:07

So that's clever. Emotional reflection and not a one-to-one, like this is me if I was a kid.

SPEAKER_00 43:12

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was his way of like writing through like a lot, you know, and I think even in the show, there was a lot of him like um, you know, journaling and writing and struggling with like overthinking. And of course, he would use his imagination for a lot of things, but he would visit like the topics of insecurities and the crushes that he had and just the like desire to fit in. You know, it all came from his own experience of being a kid in Richmond during the 50s and the 60s. And then he the push to turn it into a show came in the 1980s because he went through like a really bad breakup, he got in a really bad bicycle accident and had like no money. And those were the circumstances that made him want to finally tell the story of a place where there were no overdue bills, there were no misfortunes, and there was no financial stress. And that idea became Bluffington, which is the town in the show Doug Funny. That's pretty cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:11

Man, I think I mean, I know I could I think I related to the show, and I think a lot of kids did, right? You were watching the show, like you're either Doug or you're Skeeter, or you're with one of the other characters, you know, Doug being the main character, most people were related related to Doug in the varying like circumstances or or situations that he found himself in. You're like, oh yeah, I've been through that, or this seems like something that I'm kind of going through now, or whatever, which was really cool. Like, that's what I enjoyed about cartoons when I was watching them back in the day. It's like, look at Doug, Doug's doing the stuff that I like want to do, or he's like having the same problems that I'm having. Like, how's Doug gonna deal with this? You know, you're a kid, you don't really have anybody else to relate to. You can't relate to your parents, and your friends are your age, so they don't know what to do either. And you have somebody like Doug that's you, but not you, kind of basically showing you what he's doing, and you're like, oh ping bong, like here's a light bulb. This makes sense now. And to have it be his like emotional mirror, not a one-to-one occurrence, I feel like it's probably a an outlet for him. I can imagine. Someone who's writing a version of life that was maybe better, less stressful, less responsibilities, but you still notice that you have the same problems. Yeah. Of like emotional or uh relationship stress, you know, you're dealing with anxiety, how or how you're dealing with anxiety, relationships between people that you're interested in, your teacher, because the teacher, the class to teacher dynamic is something that I will never forget. Doug was always in class, he was a good student, but he didn't they didn't portray him listening to his teacher, they portrayed his teacher as speaking just gibberish. Yeah. Like and he's like, Oh yeah, that that doesn't make sense at all. And that's his interpretation of what his teacher sounded like. I can relate to that. Yeah. Because I'd be listening to my teacher talk. I'm like, I have no idea what she's saying. I don't understand any of this. This just doesn't make sense.

SPEAKER_00 46:17

Well, when you got kids today that have a similar experience, but they're doing it through like video games and stuff. Yeah. You know, it's like we had these shows, and you know, even like the the books when you were kidding, books like I mean, like maybe not like goosebumps, but like we just had different stuff that we related to. And yeah, even goosebumps. Like, you know, you have these stories that you relate to and you're like, oh, I feel like this person or I feel like this kid, and especially like, you know, the way that those books would start off. It starts off with just a normal story and then it gets weird and scary, right? Loved goosebumps. Oh, for sure. Me too. Big goosebumps fan. Yeah, those are you ever watched Are You Afraid of the Dark? You mentioned that just a moment ago, and I was like, I don't know if I remember that or recognize that. So that's essentially like goosebumps, but live action.

SPEAKER_03 46:57

Okay. So it was spooky stories, not so crazy that you have like nightmares, and it was on Nickelodeon. Um, I don't remember when they would come on. I think maybe they would come on like after dinner time.

SPEAKER_00 47:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:09

Um, but it was always the same intro, and it was in the series of Nickelodeon expanding the live action television aspect of their programming, but this was definitely geared towards kids, and it was just a telling of a spooky story, and it was a cult classic, yeah. Are you afraid of the dark? Yeah, I do vaguely recognize this. I I was in like completely obsessed with that that show.

SPEAKER_00 47:38

Yeah, it's almost like the OG Stranger Things. Yes, it was the OG Stranger Things. That's cool. Yeah, I didn't really have Nickelodeon like around the like prime time. Um, I didn't have cable as a kid, and then I got it like right at the end, and I remember I loved like Rocket Power, and there were some other shows that I liked too. Like Even Stevens was a good one, Malcolm in the Middle. Um, yeah, I always liked all those shows. So I missed some of the like animated stuff when I was really young. Uh, but I did catch Doug. Like I watched Doug, um, Rugrats was good. Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_03 48:18

Forgotten Times, you know. Well, speaking of Forgotten Times, there was a time where when it snowed and then it the snow froze, and you know, the streets were blocked off, that the city would just take care of it. Yeah. And the city would just make sure that the the residents were safe and that you could use the sidewalk and you weren't worried about busting your ass walking down the street, like just about everybody was during this last ice storm. Yeah. But that's gonna change soon. Okay. Richmond City Council is considering updates to the city's sidewalk cleaning rules after January's ice storm, left many sidewalks frozen and unsafe. Right now, city law requires residents to clear the snow from sidewalks near their property. But the rule doesn't clearly cover ice. Councillor Catherine Jordan's proposal would add ice to the ordinance and change the penalty for misdemeanor to a $100 civil fine. The update would also clarify who is responsible at apartment buildings for properties with three or more units, the landlord, not the individual tenants, would be the responsible party. The city's enforcement, the city says the enforcement would likely be complaint-driven, not a citywide crackdown. The proposal also allows fines to be waived during a declared state of emergency, like the one Richmond's had during the January storm.

SPEAKER_00 49:42

So these would be fines for like businesses that have sidewalks in front?

SPEAKER_03 49:46

This would be a fine that already exists. This would be the uh an amendment to a fine that already exists. So currently, it's the resident of the or the property owner that's responsible for clearing the snow off of the sidewalk. And there is specific time frames. So as it currently exists, the ordinance only covers snow, which cause some confusion this year over how it applies when the main problem is ice. If the snow stops overnight, the sidewalks must be cleared by 11 a.m. the next morning. The law doesn't appear to have been strictly enforced. It says every occupant uh of property next to a paved sidewalk has a duty to clear the snow from the sidewalk within six hours after snow stops falling. Violations are punishable by as low as a low misdemeanor with fines up to $250. Now that was the that's the current law. The change would make the fine a misdemeanor and only $100. And it would be a complaint-based, so somebody would have to complain and say my neighbor didn't clear off their sidewalk. But what I didn't know in what this is clarifying is that it wasn't the city's responsibility, it was ours. And the law states if somebody complains, you can be fined and cited with a misdemeanor. Essentially, what should have happened is that this should have been clarified, made public so that everybody knows what the deal is. We have a big snow coming in. You may not be aware of this. It is the city's law, the city law, you as a resident or you as the property owner of an apartment building is your responsibility to clear the sidewalks. Six hours after the snow stops, if it's gonna if it's gonna snow overnight, it has to be done by at least 11 a.m. the next day. Otherwise, you get a fine. But if it didn't happen, nobody knew about it, so nobody cleared the sidewalks because they thought the city was gonna do it. Yeah. Us included. We were both like, why didn't the city come and do this? Why is this such a problem still?

SPEAKER_00 51:56

Well, yeah, when you put it that way, I suppose it makes sense because snow is one thing, ice is one thing. We still have the same problem, even when it's scorching outside, because the issue is the weeds grow through the sidewalks, right? And I do understand that it's the homeowner's responsibility to keep the sidewalk unobstructed. You know, you can't park on the sidewalk, you can't, you know, you can't put a permanent installation on the sidewalk and whatever, right? But then these weeds grow through and you literally have like plants and stuff growing out of the sidewalk.

SPEAKER_03 52:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:33

So basically what we're saying is okay, whether it's ice, whether it's weeds growing through it, you have to maintain the sidewalk. If you don't, and it's a sidewalk on your property, you can be fined for that. But here's my question, right? Don't let me live to see the day where the city is closing out my support tickets on RVA 311 where I complain about this exact thing. So tell me that this same city is gonna fine me for not cleaning my sidewalk when they don't clean their sidewalks. You know, so it's like it's just like what's happening here? Yeah, dude, it drives me nuts. What's happening? It's crazy. And I don't, you know, we could go down this road so far. And I get it. Like the city's got a million things going on, but it's like that's their job, you know, and they care so much about Richmond tourism and like growing the city, which I do think they are doing a good job of. Like the renovation of Browns Island and all the stuff that we talk about on this podcast. Yeah, I think it's for the most part, 80% of it is like pretty exciting. You know, it's pretty cool. Like we talked about Carmax Park, Browns Island, like all this cool stuff. There's cool events happening, you know, there's all this cool fun community stuff. But it's like, bro, we can't like have send somebody out to like clean the weeds off the sidewalk because it looks so bad, man. It looks like trash. I hate it.

SPEAKER_03 53:48

It looks bad. It makes the it just brings down, like obviously, you know, no pun intended, but the curb appeal, it doesn't look inviting and it can be a hazard.

SPEAKER_00 53:57

Yeah. Well, so I rec I submitted this request on September 2nd of 2025. They sent somebody out on uh May 8th of 2026. So a cool like nine months later to take a look. Yeah. And uh the field engineer left a wonderful comment. It says, I inspected this location on May 7th, 2026. There's no issue with the curb or the gutter at this location. I was like, dude, tight. I I literally said I said, there's a massive amount of overgrowth, grass, and weeds that are taking over the walkways and the curbs in this entire area. And uh, and I put a side note, also, please fix your upload process. When uploading images, it force crops them into a square. In addition, the 311 instructions mention please use the alternate request links below. However, there are no links. Um just a little feedback. Yeah, you know, and it's like, you know, I'm in the world of tech and websites and software and support tickets. So, like, you know, I get it. Um, but at the same time, I'm like, dude, fix this stuff, man. Like, this is not hard to fix, you know? And it just cracks me up that we're sitting here talking about like ice and snow. I submitted this in September, which is basically the end of summer, beginning of fall, where there's weeds everywhere. And they didn't even get to the ticket until May of this year, when the weeds had actually finally grown back. So it's like, I submitted a ticket about the old weeds, you didn't even get to them until the new weeds came back. Yeah, and the whole season had changed. Like we almost made it all the way back around full circle. Yeah. Um, and now I do think the RVA 311 app is great. Anyone who lives here should download it and you should use it. But this is not the first time that I've submitted a ticket for the weeds growing through the sidewalk, yeah, specifically on city-owned property, property. Yeah. And so I absolutely refuse to receive a ticket for maintaining the sidewalk when they don't do it themselves. And the last thing is I don't even have I don't even have a sidewalk. So there's that. Come at me. Yeah. Come at me, bro. I don't even have a sidewalk. But I say that on behalf of anybody who does. I hope you don't get fined. But you should also just clean up your sidewalk.

SPEAKER_03 56:16

Yeah, do your best. We all know that not everybody has a weed whacker and has the time, but bro, that ice, that ice, what do you even do? And that's the thing. I was reading this. I'm like, okay, well. That's that Bill Gates ice, dude. You can't even get that up up. Seriously. It's like, okay, it was snowing and then it was ice. Like there was no in-between. There was no like wait and see, or wait until it stops, and then I'll come out with my my broom and dustpan and just get the snow out of the way. It was like five inches of snow, and then it all turned into ice. So what are you gonna do? You're gonna go out there with like a kitchen knife and like a you know, a screwdriver and your good intentions? Like, not everybody has the tools and the time and the skill to deal with the ice that we had.

SPEAKER_00 56:58

Yeah, a blowtorch or like a yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:01

I feel like that should have been a city problem.

SPEAKER_00 57:03

Yeah. I do actually have a flamethrower, and I tried it on that ice, but you know, we went through, you know, we went through that. We learned the other day, I don't know anything about thermodynamics or physics, you know. Yeah, so uh I'm guilty.

SPEAKER_03 57:18

Well, if you really if you really get stressed out about this, you can do what this other Richmond man decided to do. Okay. Naked man masturbating in Forest Hill Park. Yeah, that sounds like a solution, to be honest. It does for a lot of things. That'll get you right. But this is on Reddit, of course. Hands up, y'all. My wife and I were walking through the trails today, and there was a guy fully naked on a rock in the creek on his hands and knees masturbating. There were kids playing in the water just a shore walk upstream. We called it, we called it in, but didn't stick around. Black guy in his 30s or 40s, buzz cut, mid-size build question mark. I didn't look for more details. Okay, dude. On the on the on your hands and knees, though? That's that's what most of the question or most of the comments are like really zeroing in on. Is like, if I'm playing solo, I want to be comfortable, Damon.

SPEAKER_00 58:18

I mean, yeah. Whoa. Oh I mean, you gotta really have like nothing going on. Really?

SPEAKER_03 58:24

Like, how else is you're supposed to? I'm not gonna read this one. This is look, this this is for the subscription subscription listeners, which will be launching later 2026, but this is a PG show, so I'm not gonna read this comment. Uh, but uh yeah, they're just they're just cracking it up. It's like I think the kids call that solitaire these days.

SPEAKER_00 58:47

Yeah, I mean, dude, like what? What is going on? Like, you really gotta have nothing going on. I mean, you're like, oh, I'm just gonna go and I mean, you know, what what truly is probably going on is that person is not not right, not right, um, probably houseless, maybe, maybe houseless.

SPEAKER_03 59:04

I'm not gonna assume where else are you gonna do it? Creek sounds like a great place. Fully naked is is is bold. Oh, he was completely undressed. Completely undressed, hands and knees, going to town. Bro. In the creek. Jungle man status. Just like black Tarzan, just getting it done.

SPEAKER_00 59:24

That is insane. Yeah, that is crazy. I mean, you know, not that I'm advocating to go find a secret place in the woods to to, you know, handle your business or whatever.

SPEAKER_03 59:36

Maybe he's got a full house and he can't do it at home.

SPEAKER_00 59:38

Yeah, it's like, bro, you know, Forest Hill Park, like come on, dude. Like, you know, walk down to some random. I mean, don't what? What is dude? That's that's crazy, man. That is crazy. That is not good.

SPEAKER_03 59:51

What's your day like? What's your what's going on, man? You you you go to the store, or uh, you know, you grab a bottle of water, you maybe a banana, you start off, you're a Maymot, you make your way over to Forest Hill, and you're like, yeah, that seems like a good enough spot. Full nude, just going out, just getting a crank on, middle of the day. Yeah. Kids around and everything.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:11

That is insane, dude. And like, yeah, you clearly had an idea and a plan of what you were trying to accomplish. Clearly.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:18

I don't know if that's like, this seems like a good spot. I think that's like a premeditated, this is the day.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:25

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess the uh, you know, the overarching theme is that for hundreds of years, Richmond has been and will continue to be a very, very strange place.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:40

This podcast was recorded at Vera House Studios in Richmond, Virginia, and produced by Perry Young and Mike Metzger.