Now is not the time to close the doors. Now is the time to be open. If Norfolk wants to be a grown-up city, it needs to start treating its citizens like adults. Let it start here, with Waterside.

In today’s If You Read the Paper for Tuesday, March 15th.

Want a chance to ride your bike in the Grand Illumination Parade dressed like Mary Poppins, Dorothy, or a Storm Trooper? Here it is.

There are bike-friendly routes to be found in Norfolk. In fact, there’s a whole network that is passed by, unnoticed, by speeding motorists: parallel side streets and slower byways, where the speed limit doesn’t exceed 25mph, and the streets are bare of traffic-controlling yellow and white lines.

“My bucket of fries is now a bucket of loneliness.” Day One of The Old Adventures of New Jerome takes him back to Velvet, where the hip-hop and french fries haven’t changed…but maybe his heart will.