Cover illustration by Catherine McGuigan, design by Doug Dobey

Seventeen years ago, they dug deep through the rich loam, through hardpan, and successive layers of clay, from red to yellow to chalky gray, until they reached a depth of eight feet where they waited and whiled away the days and weeks and months and years, nibbling at woody filaments from the roots of trees to sustain themselves, their glowing ruby eyes wide and glaring through that darkest of nights. 

A little over a month ago, they began to dig their way out to the sun—trillions of them—creating small turrets of gray soil that ringed tunnels which led back to their vacant lairs.  They clawed their way up trees, shed skins like Mylar body suits, and then, as their new albino bodies hardened and changed color, christened the air with untried wings and began a constant chorus, shrill as an alien invasion, and devoured bark, and engaged, for about a month, in a continuous orgy that would have made Caligula blush: For their time was so short. After laying eggs, they would fall dead and drop from the trees, exhausted and spent, and the eggs they had laid in notches on the branches of trees would hatch out and the young would fall or crawl to the earth and burrow eight feet down for another seventeen years of seemingly eternal night.   

Just as Brood X periodical cicadas—the Great Eastern Brood—began bursting forth from the ground and trilling for sexual partners up in Northern Virginia, another sort of emergence was occurring a hundred miles to the south. 

As COVID-19 restrictions were gradually lifted, thanks to an aggressive vaccination program under President Joe Biden, people began venturing out again, some for the first time in well over a year. Many restaurants opened their doors for customers to dine-in instead of just picking up their orders or having them delivered. And now, many of Richmond’s most popular music venues are again open for live entertainment. Hermitage Richmond, for instance, will be hosting a series of music events called Concert Under the Stars on June 11, July 9 and August 6. Musicians will perform on the lawn at 1600 Westwood Avenue. “This is a wonderful opportunity to enjoy great live music and share a family-friendly evening under the stars with our residents and neighbors,” says Amy Chapman, executive director of the retirement community. 

On May 15, what started as a relatively small outdoor celebration of live music in the Northside the previous October, swelled into a jubilant gathering with 24 bands performing from front porches throughout the neighborhood.  It was a remarkable day, fully six hours of live music. 

Not long after everything shut down in March of 2020, Bellevue resident Brooke Ullman happened to be walking down MacArthur Avenue one evening when she heard music from behind a barrier of boxwood and white picket fence. Gathered in the side yard, playing fiddles, were members of The Bellevue Bon Temps. Brooke recorded a little video of it and posted it on social media. Then in July, she watched her neighbors, Haze and Dacey, perform music from their front stoop, and passersby would stop and listen. That was the birth of Bellevue Porchella. Rob McAdams and others, along with the Bellevue Civic Association, have nurtured Porchella since its inception.

My son and I spent the entire day, migrating from one front yard to another, sampling music of every conceivable genre. We settled in for both sets performed by Sarah Arthur and Friends from their front porch on Claremont. The entire family is musically gifted, and Josie (JOBIE), Charles and Sarah’s daughter, recently released Simple Man, a song she wrote and performed. There’s a music video of it as well. Her talent, like her parents, seems boundless. She is soaring.

Tentatively, there is another Bellevue Porchella coming in October with the hope that this will become a semiannual event. “The hope is that Porchella can happen in the spring and fall, growing as the pandemic recedes, and bringing the community together for the powerful shared experience of connecting through live music,” says Rob McAdams.

Coming back this October, too, is Richmond’s greatest annual live music extravaganza, which was cancelled last year due to the pandemic.  Back in 2019, the three-day event drew an estimated crowd of some 200,000 people to the banks and islands of the James River. The Richmond Folk Festival returns October 8 through 10. “Now more than ever we know how important it is for us to come together safely in a shared celebration of culture and experiences,” according to a spokesman for Venture Richmond, which produces the folk festival.

Other festivals are also returning. Back on May Day, Brookland Park Boulevard offered the public a taste of this unique commercial district. Hundreds strolled up and down Brookland Park Boulevard, sampling food, drinks and ice cream, chatting, listening to music. A block-long line waited patiently in the mild weather for a scoop of bliss from Ruby Scoops Ice Cream & Sweets, which was pretty much the case outside of Ms B’s Juice Bar and half-a-dozen other eateries.

Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Colette Wallace McEachin was there enjoying the festivities while doing a little stumping for this November’s election.

“We’re on historic Brookland Park Boulevard and this has been one of the places where African-Americans were first able to prosper once they moved out from the center of the city,” she says. “I’m out here enjoying the people, the businesses, the food, and letting people see their Commonwealth’s Attorney on the street.” (Having won the Democratic Primary on June 9, Colette is poised to serve another four-year term.)

In late May as I roamed through Bellevue, I encountered a sight I hadn’t in seen in more than a year—children and their parents gathered on a front lawn that was dominated by a bouncy castle of enormous proportions.

Lauren Austin and Shannon Kluttz were celebrating their son’s birthday. “He turned five this week,” said Lauren.

Shannon nodded. “It’s a post-pandemic get together, blowout extravaganza,” she said. 

“We invited family, friends, neighbors,” Lauren said.

“All of the circle is finally coming together,” her partner said. “We’re still cautious, but I definitely feel everyone is ready to just be together again. We have it until three, but the party will end just shortly after lunch, and then hopefully our son will just sleep a little bit. After the pizza, cake and presents.”

Lauren looked up the street. “There are still five more coming,” she said. “Seventeen kids, and then all their parents. Probably about thirty people in all.”

Just up the street from the birthday party, I ran into Amanda Huegrich and her enterprising daughter, Noelle, who actually opened her own business during the pandemic. 

“It’s a pet care business,” Noelle told me. “I take care of animals, I take them on walks, feed them, give them water, do the stuff that owners want me to do. I’ve been taking care of people’s pets since I was three. I really enjoy pets so taking care of pets is really fun.”

Now, Noelle, and her close friend, Lucy, are going to put on a theatrical production (scheduled for one in the afternoon on June 12).

“Me and my friend are working on doing a play,” said Noelle. “It’s called ‘The Red Wine Glass’, and it’s kind of like Clue the movie, but we add our own things to it.”

The performance will be a sort of improv production. 

“We’re not going to write a script,” Noelle said. “I’m the narrator so I’ll start and then keep on going, and everybody’s going to bounce off each other, and there will be background people who don’t even talk.”

But Noelle will play more than the narrator. “We have several characters,” she said. “So I’m the narrator, but also the detective, and my friend Lucy is the poisoner. My mom and Lucy’s dad are going to be the security, and Lucy’s mom and aunt are going to be background players and then Lucy’s brother is going to be a dead body. All he’s going to do is start talking a little at the beginning of the play, drink fruit punch as wine, and then pass out on the floor.  Me and my friend Lucy came up with it. We do better not writing a script.”

We talked a bit about movies, and Noelle told me that her favorite filmmaker is John Hughes—writer, director, producer of such blockbusters as Home Alone, Planes, Trains and, Automobiles, Christmas Vacation and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, to name a few.

On May 21 as the sun was finally dropping behind the spires of the tree line, we settled on the asphalt, which was still warm, and waited for a tradition that had been going on in Bellevue for many years. It would be the first time since the pandemic struck that Bob Kocher would show a movie on the wall of the building that runs perpendicular to Once Upon a Vine. About a hundred, some with lawn chairs, others with blankets, filled the parking lot and waited for the feature presentation, “Soul”, to begin. My son Charles watched the entire film and was already looking forward to next week’s movie. 

I walked through the neighborhood for the next hour or so, and when I came back up MacArthur Avenue I was pleased to see it buzzing with activity. A year before it looked like a post-apocalyptic village—no cars, no people, and a deafening silence.

Mi Jalisco is full with folks dining inside, but The Mill on MacArthur is still doing only pickup and delivery. I talked with co-owner Amy Foxworthy and she explained the only reason they are not open for dine-in business is because of a lack of employees, which I will hear again and again from restaurant owners. 

“I’ve been trying to hire people since August,” Amy says. “We’re ready to go as soon as we can hire someone.”

More than anything else, they need a line cook, and a utility person—a dishwater who can pinch-hit doing prep work. “We need both, but we could get by with one or the other and open up part-time,” Amy said. “We’ve talked about doing Friday and Saturday night dine-in. We want to be opened up because people want to have the restaurant experience.”

After a pause, she added:  “Everybody’s trying. I know Jimmy’s (Tsamouris owner of Dot’s and Demi’s) trying. We’re all just short-staffed.”

Demi’s, which is owned by Jimmy and his wife, Daniella, had a good crowd, even at the bar, and, across the street to the north, Zorba’s Pizza Express had a line out to the door, and someone drove  away with a stack of pizzas for delivery. Two doors down, Dot’s Back Inn was hopping, inside and out.

At Dot’s I talked with McKenzie, Daniella and Jimmy’s daughter. “Things are great,” she said. “Everyone is starting to come out.” She scanned the tables on the front patio and inside the restaurant.

“We are super understaffed right now,” she said. “Especially in the kitchen, and we just cannot find anybody to come out and work, so we’ve had to temporarily close Mondays and Tuesdays.” But that will change in short order. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to get that opened back up within the next month.”

McKenzie smiled as she greeted a couple with two young children who took a booth in the far corner. “A lot of people are coming without masks so you can tell they’re vaccinated,” she said. “They feel comfortable coming out. We’ve got people that we haven’t seen in a year that are finally coming in for the first time. They’ve only done take out, and now they’re finally sitting down and coming in.   So it’s been really good.”

On my way out I run into John Hubbard and his son Henry, Sherwood Park residents, who are sitting at a deuce on the front patio. Like many of us Northsiders, our kids grew up in the restaurants along MacArthur and Bellevue Avenues. 

“I remember when everybody closed last year,” John told me. “This is the very first place I came back to when they opened back up and it almost brought me to tears. What I find so interesting about what happened with the pandemic is that you appreciate the simplest things so much more now. Just to be able to come here and have dinner is almost as good as a week’s vacation somewhere. You feel happy for the simplest things.”

The next day I headed over to Lakeside Farmers’ Market and visited with owners Sharon and Peter Francisco. It was late morning and the market was lively. “We are having a pretty busy day today,” Sharon said. “We have the live music here and it’s been hopping, customers look like they’re pleased with their purchases and we have a variety of age groups that come through here. This is our 14th season.”

A few days later, in the early evening, I dropped in on Tracey Thoroman at HOB NOB. Both the front and the new side patios were packed, as was the dining room.  “We are fully opened,” Tracey said. “We’ve added our bar stools back as of today June 2, and we’ve added a few seats inside since people seem to feel comfortable with more close proximity now. We now can seat 36 inside with the bar seats. On the front patio it is 14, and then we have 28 on our new covered patio.  The new patio has been extremely popular since we reopened on April 7. It’s covered from rain and everything else.”

Like other restaurateurs, Tracey is also looking for additional help. “This week we’re on a temporary pause on our lunch business just because we’re dealing with some staff shortages like everybody seems to be right now,” he said. “We need staff in both the front of the house and the back of the house.”

Despite staff shortages, business has never been better. “Our business has been as good if not better than it ever was before COVID, which has been great,” said Tracey. “Within a couple of weeks we’ll have some folks coming on who we’ve just got to get trained and ready to go.”

“It’s been really great to see a lot of old regulars, and new faces that we’ve sort of accumulated during the pandemic from our drive through service,” Tracey said. “We allow folks to come in without their masks as long as they’ve been fully vaccinated. We’ve felt like our customers have just been great and responsible and haven’t given us any pushback. We’re just excited to be back open and seeing smiling faces again. It’s been good to see people enjoying dining out again with their friends and family.”

Earlier that week, I spent the better part of a morning with Beth Monroe, director of public relations and marketing for Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden. We toured the entire garden, all fifty acres of it, and with every step we would see something spectacular that nature offered over to us. 

“We have signs throughout the garden with poetry to encourage folks to stop, take a deep breath, look around them, and think about their experience and about all of their five senses,“ Beth said. “Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden this year is all about the healing power of nature.”

The perfect antidote for a pandemic.