Porn and Parks, Snow and Rings

Finish what you start, my mother always said (still does).

Tonight was the last in the Valentine Richmond History Center's community conversations with tonight's topic being the Boulevard. I'd been to every one since January, so I wasn't about to miss the grand finale.

The mostly female crowd met at the VMFA for a discussion of the Boulevard and all it entails.

I slid in at the last minute accompanied by a museum employee married to a cheese monger, a couple who have a 3 1/2 year old who has already learned to negotiate.

The Valentine's erudite and dapper director, Bill Martin, kicked things off by describing the Boulevard as "a cultural and green space, residential and retail, with baseball and abortion, porn and parks."

The crowd groaned at that last part. With each of these conversations, the crowd changes and this one was clearly full of museum district residents, lots of VMFA employees and the usual coterie of community conversation regulars.

I was seated next to a guy named Dennis who'd only lived here four years after moving from California, but had great memories of the Boulevard.

When he first moved here, he sought out a Kiwanis club meeting and wound up at Battle Abbey only to find that instead of a monthly meeting, the Kiwanis were having their annual Christmas party.

"I saw more suits in one night than I'd seen in 20 years in California," he observed. Welcome to the south, sir.

When he attended a Memorial Day celebration, he was surprised to find that it was a memorial for Confederates, not U.S. soldiers in general.

One guy recalled moving here in 1980 and going out on his bike to explore and happening onto Easter on Parade. It was an eye-opener for what  Richmond offered,

A fact-filled woman informed us that the Boulevard represented the longest row of linden trees outside of Berlin. Who knew?

After establishing the demographics of the group, we moved on to the quiz portion of the evening where I learned that the Boulevard was named Clover Street until 1874. Fountain Lake was originally a gravel pit.

In 1919, there was a campaign to rename the Boulevard after Stonewall Jackson (it failed) and in 2003, one to rename it Arthur Ashe Boulevard (also failed).

Next came the knowledgeable and informative Bill Martin to show us photographs and provide commentary about the Boulevard.

Through three photographs, we saw the original Virginia Historical Society location when it was just trees and then the construction followed by the final building in 1912.

A shot of the Boulevard's line of "No Parking" signs down the center of the road had a lot of people murmuring, "I remember that." I don't.

A 1960 shot showed the first Bill's Barbeque and a 1967 shot showed flower sellers along Boulevard, with one woman recalling her family's weekly stop after church to get fresh flowers.

By far the most disturbing photos were of the construction of the downtown expressway in the '70s, with rows of big trees cut down and steep grades cut into the Byrd park neighborhood.

One shot of Parker Field also showed the Arena ("The Coliseum of its day," as Bill described it), located where the Ukrops soccer field is today.

Bill recalled the popular annual "dancing water" shows, essentially fountains, as, "It was the '50s and that was exciting." Try to make a millennial understand a night out at the Arena to see an evening of fountains spurting.

Before I left, the come-here Dennis told me about the big party he's throwing at the Hippodrome in October, complete with a jazz band and a chance to get a behind-the-scenes look at the Hippodrome. "You should come!" he enthused.

I have to appreciate a man who gives me plenty of notice.

After the conversation about the Boulevard, I had a date at Zeus Gallery Cafe.

Moments after I'd parked on Belmont, but before exiting my car, I watched as a car made an illegal u-turn and began to back into the space in front of me.

As the driver did so, suddenly she backed into my car with enough force to jar me out of my reverie listening to Real Estate's "Green Aisles" finish.

Under dormant trees
under bright lit skies
mountains of of maple leaves
standing side by side

The phone lines
the street lights
led me to you

And if you 
just sit tight
I'll be there soon

Al those wasted miles
All those aimless drives
Through green aisles
Our careless lifestyle
It was not so unwise
No

I don't know how you'd react if someone bashed your car as you were sitting in it, but I admit it, I honked at her.

She jumped out of her car and ran to me, apologizing profusely. I accepted and she kept on. She went back to her car and let a 3-year old out of the car and they both came back and apologized.

They returned to the car and the child came back with an armful. "Black, red or tan?' she asked, her arms full of canvas bags still wrapped in plastic.

Er, awkward, I didn't need a bag as a consolation prize for being hit, but the woman insisted and I eventually accepted a red bag from a child to assuage the woman's conscience.

My date was waiting for me at the bar so dimly lit that we looked fabulous, beginning with glasses of Perrin et Fils Rose and an artisan cheese plate (Stilton, goat and manchego the server pronounced "manchengo," adding in a bonus consonant) while I told him about my encounter with a purse-pushing poor parallel parker.

Our beverage of choice brought up discussion of an article we'd both seen today about the Trump Brut Rose 2011, its winemaker and recent accolades. You say Kluge, I say Trump, potato, potahto.

Returning from the bathroom, I found a couple I know from around town and they soon joined us at the bar for beets and meatloaf over a discussion of the food scene.

She was recalling their rehearsal dinner at La Grotta back in 1997 and the flawless service that came with it, a tough thing to find anymore.

From there, we took a tangent about career servers, something this city has in short supply unfortunately, unlike bigger markets.

Hearing about their rehearsal dinner got my curiosity up about how they got together in the first place and that story was divulged, too.

Seems they were in Florida in 1996 when that big snowstorm hit - I can't be the only one who still remembers it- stranding them there day after day, unable to escape.

Each day they'd go to the airport, hoping for a flight out, end up disappointed and re-rent the same rental car they'd arrived in again.

One day, they ended up at a jewelry store and an engagement happened. Funny the things that being snowed in in Florida does to a couple.

Although, if they were seeing enough of each other to make a trip to Florida, it sounds like they'd already started something pretty hot and heavy.

Which must have meant it was time to... Well, you know what my mother always says.