10 ways to fit in like a true Richmonder

Richmond, Virginia, is an increasingly popular city to move to, with a vibrant culinary and arts scene, but residents say it’s sometimes plagued by the assumption that it’s a stodgy place.

Sure, there are folks who appreciate Richmond's older traditions in the state capital, but they live side by side with a lot of newcomers with different perspectives, sometimes on the same block, Bill Martin, who directs the history-oriented Valentine Museum, told Homes.com.

“There’s always been this group of creative sorts that have pushed the city just a little bit,” Martin said, citing as an example 19^th-century literary star Edgar Allan Poe. The author of the macabre was born in Boston but grew up here after his father abandoned the family and his mother moved them to Richmond to support her acting career, according to the website of the Poe Museum on East Main Street.

These days, quirky characters are not hard to find at annual events such as the Conehead and tattoo festivals and the Zombie Walk. There’s even a downtown hotel called Quirk that emerged from an art gallery of the same name.

The city has seen an influx of roughly 30,000 residents in the past 15 years, according to the U.S. Census. Some of them have brought new ideas, said Rian Moses-Hedrick, who came to Richmond as a student at Virginia Commonwealth University two decades ago and now wears many hats, including as a board member of community radio station WRIR and a founder of HearRVA, an online platform that promotes local musicians.

“When I first came here, [the city] was really small and divided in its pockets,” Moses-Hedrick said. “Now things are blending a little bit, with new blood coming in, which gets people who have been here to come out and rediscover the city.”

So how can you fit in like a native-born Richmonder? Follow these 10 steps:

“It’s a very active city,” Jennifer Wakefield, executive director of the economic development booster Greater Richmond Partnership, told Homes.com. Runners, cyclists, kayakers, rafters and walkers are easy to spot on the James River and the trails that run alongside it through the city’s midsection. Big events on the annual calendar are the Ukrop’s Monument Avenue 10K race and the Dominion Energy Riverrock festival on Brown's Island, both in the spring. The latter event is known for its dog dock-jumping contest, Wakefield said. Residents of The Fan, a fashionable neighborhood west of downtown, will often set out a jug of water in front of their houses for runners, according to Chris Hollomon, the partnership’s marketing director.

The city has a lively food-and-drink scene, including an impressive number of breweries. There are certain places people count on for inspired local eats. One of them is Ukrop’s Market Hall just beyond the city limits in Henrico County, where residents can find foods they used to buy at the grocery chain of the same name. Hollomon swears by the fried chicken and their unique Rainbow Cookies and White House rolls.

Sally Bell’s Kitchen on West Broad Street, which has been around for about a century, serves what Martin described as “a heart attack in a box, but it’s delicious.” Every item has ample mayonnaise, he said, including sandwiches and “deviled eggs, cheese straws and an upside-down cupcake iced on the bottom and sides to maximize frosting.”

Moses-Hedrick likes the fried chicken sandwich at downtown’s Buttermilk and Honey.

“We are in the South, and we like our fried food,” she explained.

There are a few street and place names around the region that are good conversation-starters, but the one that stands out is Powhite Parkway, a major artery commuters take in and out of the city. According to the Richmond Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates the toll road, it’s correct to say “Pow-hite.” The name has Native American origins, the authority says on its website. Another name locals like to chat about is Nickel Bridge, an informal moniker for a road that crosses the river in the city’s western end. Officially called Boulevard Bridge, the original toll to cross the river in 1925 was actually a nickel, the authority says, but it’s now 50 cents.

Even though it’s a compact city of 234,000 souls, Richmond has numerous distinctive neighborhoods. People who live west of Arthur Ashe Boulevard are careful to point out they live in the Museum District or Carytown, while folks to the east are residents of The Fan, Hollowell said. Martin is a big fan of watching the sunsets over the city from Libby Hill Park in Church Hill, but he also likes to get over to Barton Heights for ice cream or across the river to Manchester to check out the arts scene there.

Among Richmond’s best-known landmarks is Hollywood Cemetery, the burial place of two former U.S. presidents — James Monroe and John Tyler — and Jefferson Davis, former president of the Confederacy. The wide paths that wind through the hilly expanse are popular with local dog-walkers. Another tourist destination is the Jefferson Hotel, which opened in 1895. The hotel contains a number of references to alligators, although none can be found alive on the premises.

“People used to go down to Florida on the train and bring back [young] alligators and drop them in the fountains at the hotel. It was sort of a party hotel back in the day. They never thought the alligators would get bigger,” said Hollomon.

Richmond is often associated with the Civil War, which is not entirely unreasonable given that it was the capital of the Confederacy and hosted one of the nation’s largest markets of enslaved people. However, the city’s history extends much farther back and forward in time, Martin said, from an early-1800s enslaved people’s rebellion to the development in the 20^th century of the Jackson Ward neighborhood, known for a time as the “Black Wall Street.” It was called that because of the cluster of Black-owned businesses there, including the first chartered Black-owned bank in the United States, according to the National Park Service.

Wakefield said that when she arrived here, a cousin gave her a driving tour around some of the hip urban neighborhoods like The Fan.

“I said, ‘Where do the middle-aged people like me live, because the people you’re showing me are all funky and tattooed.’ So they drove me to Short Pump.”

Short Pump is an area with a high-end mall at the very western end of the West End, some 15 miles outside the city limits. The suburbs have inched west from the city for decades, and this is the latest frontier. In fact, most of the 1 million-plus people in metropolitan Richmond don’t live in the city itself.

Some transplants to Richmond from larger cities are disappointed about this, but it’s the price of living in a smaller place, said Moses-Hedrick.

“People think since it’s the [state] capital, it must be a big city, but I like to think of Richmond as a small town with tall buildings. You can get lost if you want to, but you’re easily found,” she said.

Richmond has an abundance of artists, partly supplied by Virginia Commonwealth University, which Wakefield said has one of the best sculpture programs in the country. Some stay in the city and run creative programs such as the nonprofit Studio Two Three in Manchester, which Martin said stays open 24-7 so residents can come and make art.

If you want to be immersed in Richmond’s arts scene, go to The Camel nightclub for dinner and a drink around 6 p.m., Moses-Hedrick said.

Or you could follow her and Martin’s advice and go up on Church Hill to take in a view of the city skyline "just quietly sitting on a bench and taking in the micro-city,” Moses-Hedrick said.