Style Weekly

@thewranglersrva performed at @allianzamp this afternoon as part of the @riverrockrva festival.

Images from day one of @riverrockrva . The festival continues today starting at 10:00 a.m. along the James River at Historic Tredegar. Six bands will perform free shows throughout the day at the @allianzamp , starting at 1:00. Photos by Scott Elmquist.

Richmond’s @bucko.rva kicked off the @riverrockrva festival with an opening set at the @allianzamp .

Taylor Antonelli says as soon as you smell the bread, count the days — @antonellisdelirva is opening soon. The Richmond native and @superstarspizza owner grew up in this Museum District neighborhood. “I’ve always been drawn to the building,” he says. The corner lot at 3401 Patterson Ave. was once a cleaners/alteration and repair shop. Antonelli watched as the building he admired went under contract during the pandemic, “But that [sale] fell through.” He kept reaching out to the realtor until there was a breakthrough — the owner of the building was a Superstars regular and agreed to lease it to Antonelli. “We definitely got a little lucky,” he says. “And the idea just took off from there.” @antonellisdelirva will sell meats, cheeses and prepared items, plus sandwiches made fresh to order. He plans to be open seven days a week with lunch service to start and “some sort of dinner” plus aperitivo hour to come. The patio, wrapping around the corner of Patterson and Roseneath, seats 45 and overlooks local green space and tree-lined sidewalks. Antonelli hopes to get his wood-fired mobile kitchen, @fiftyone.pizza , parked next to the patio for the occasional summer pizza party. The style of the restaurant will be part Richmond luncheonette, part Italian deli-cum-New Jersey and New York City/Italian deli. Antonelli isn’t too worried about the label, though. He’s more focused on the fact that after decades of hospitality service, he finally has a place to call his own. Read more at the link in our bio.

It’s a Sensual World and we’re just living in it. True to their name, the scrappily explosive, sonically riveting band which regularly lit up underground punk stages and house show floors during its initial run, is here today by virtue of the members’ shared patience to feel out the rest. Bands — barring the occasional “psyop” industry plant — don’t come with a user’s manual. Instead, Sensual World’s four members thrive by going off a flipped script at odds with the wild and crazy world they find themselves in. Julie Karr, the band’s lead singer and guitarist, met me for coffee in our neighborhood during a recent and typical lull in the band’s years-long hiatus, to bring me up to speed before their hotly anticipated headlining show at @studiotwothree . I’d come across Karr’s sung-and-strummed appeal through her previous project, Bad Magic, and her occasional solo singer-songwriter sets. But her contributions in Sensual World struck me as lightning caught in a bottle and put to tape, with preternatural results sounding conjured from a fierce and fiery force. Read more at the link in our bio. 📸 : Michael Thorn (@razorbladesandaspirin ), Richard Edge

Teacher and musician @erex and filmmaker and musician @ralverson are holding a celebration of their compilation album, “Passages: Artists in Solidarity with Immigrants, Refugees, and Asylum Seekers” (featuring artists like @lonnieholleysuniverse , @wignifier and @marisaandersonmusic ) this Friday, May 15 at @studiotwothree . There will be live performances by local artists @nabnabnabeel , @zhtml.orggg , @strawberrymoon666 and @dennisellsworthcoles ; the night will also feature Evrim Dogu of @subrosabakery DJing and Chioke l’Anson of ICA/NPR will be the emcee. The nonprofit @sacredheartcenter_rva will be on hand to provide tutorials on how to protect neighbors. Read more at the link in our bio.

In 1948, Life magazine notably described the @jlrichmondva ’s annual Book and Author event as a “social-literary cult,” catapulting the recently created festival onto the national stage. The event was established shortly after World War II in 1945 through a visionary partnership between the Junior League of Richmond and department store Miller & Rhoads. Their shared goal was simple: to bring nationally acclaimed authors to the Richmond community as a way to celebrate reading. Looking back at the array of authors who’ve participated in the event feels like who’s who of the literary world for the last eight decades. A few years after the Life article, they hosted poet Robert Frost in 1951, ten years before Frost gave a reading at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration. The legendary dance pioneer Agnes de Mille appeared at the event in 1952. The range of authors is striking, from Civil War historian Bruce Catton in 1954 to Patrick Dennis, author of “Auntie Mame” in 1958, to UPI journalist Aline Mosby, the first American woman correspondent assigned by a major news service to the Kremlin in 1962. Mosby was also notable for having interviewed Lee Harvey Oswald four years before he assassinated President Kennedy and having broken the story of Marilyn Monroe’s nude calendar. Read more at the link in our bio.

People have an instinctive aversion to hard truths, particularly if they’re hit over the head with them. The ferociously comic and persistently wacky “WitchDuck” manages to circumvent that aversion. Like a skilled magician, the world premiere play serves up so many antic hijinks as a diversion that the hard truths sneak in past any normal defenses. Penned by Hampton Roads playwright @evadevirgilis , “WitchDuck” tells the true tale of Grace Sherwood, a midwife and widow who, in 1706, becomes the last woman convicted of being a witch in Virginia. Don’t expect a pedantic recounting of this historic miscarriage of justice here, though. A gifted comic actor herself, DeVirgilis packs the play with a smorgasbord of scenes ranging from silly to surreal (though leaning strongly toward silly). The result may end up feeling slightly scattershot but the variety of comedic strategies employed guarantees that something will tickle your funny bone along the way. The tone is set early on as Grace’s birth is celebrated by a chorus of well-wishers… until it’s announced that she is a girl. The “oh shit” response immediately telegraphs that a woman’s rights in America — and the abuse, humiliation and gaslighting endemic to her place in society — will be the principal subject of the action. Read more at the link in our bio. 📸 : Jason Collins Photography

When Richmond-based retailer Best Products renovated its showroom on Midlothian Turnpike in 1971, people thought the façade was falling off. Designed by architect James Wines and his New York-based architecture and environmental arts organization SITE, the “Peeling Building” in Southside Richmond was made to appear as though the façade was floating away from the structure. When a hurricane hit shortly after the new exterior was finished, people called local newspapers to report that the front of the building was coming off. “It really stunned visitors and got a lot of attention in the media,” says Don O’Keefe, principal architect at O’Keefe & Associates and lecturer at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. “They did a whole series of these [innovative storefronts] all the way through 1984, and built some really interesting and also quite playful designs that were very different from the typical suburban big box stores that we all know.” The Peeling Building is just one inventive way that Best Products rethought big-box retail near the end of the last century. Founded by Sydney and Frances Lewis in 1957, Best Products had more than 200 showrooms in 27 states and annual sales of $2 billion at its height. Last week, the @branchmuseumofdesign opened the exhibition “Imagining Best Products,” featuring original architectural, design, photographic and filmed work from the defunct company’s history, as well as newly commissioned architectural models. To Richmonders, the Lewises may be best known as patrons of the arts who donated hundreds of works to the @vmfamuseum and were major contributors to the creation of the museum’s 1985 West Wing. But this exhibition aims to highlight their legacy in the realms of architecture and design, lead curator O’Keefe says. Read more at the link in our bio. 📸 : Anna-Louise Cecil, Scott Elmquist, James Wines and SITE, Norman McGrath

@andjulietbway premieres at @altriatheaterva for one week only, May 12–15. Reserve your seats at the link in our bio today! 📸 : Evan Zimmerman

In this short, created in partnership with VPM and Style Weekly, Henrico Country teachers Kathryn Musk and Kefu Huang share their perspectives on the fulfillment that comes with fostering opportunities for cultural exchange and understanding through literature and language. In partnership with the Asian American Society of Central Virginia (AASoCV) and the 1882 Foundation, "Generations: Stories of Asian Americans in Richmond" shares stories of personal experience and cultural identity: how people found their way here and how they are now an integral part of our local community. "Generations" is on view at the Valentine through May 25, 2026. Come give us a visit before the end of the month!

Jane Lukas is up early. “I’ve upgraded a few of my appliances, so now I can sleep in until 3 a.m.,” she says. Sacrilege for the layman and his Oura Ring. Par for the course for a baker. And mother. Lukas popped up for the first time with her Richmond bakery concept, @janedough_rva , in March 2025. Her tagline is “unidentified female baker,” her Instagram a sleek capsule of faceless treats, from shiny croissants to closeups of a sourdough loaf’s light and tender crumb. Lukas bakes out of her converted garage. “The heat has always been an issue,” she admits. But the commute could not be better. A born and raised Pennsylvanian, Lukas and her husband moved to Richmond during the pandemic. She played volleyball in college and transitioned from a post grad sales job —“I hate, hate, hated it” — to culinary school in New York City as soon as she could. Her last day of culinary school was March 14, 2020. Bad time to be a big city gal looking for a hospitality gig. “I packed my bag and left New York and started making sourdough,” laughs Lukas. Her sourdough delivery was a “bright spot in a really scary time.” Read more at the link in our bio.