It was time to get coffee as I approached Petersburg, VA, where 85 splits off from 95. Google indicated that there was a non-Starbucks coffee shop with a name that seemed to hint at a degree of seriousness, so I plugged it into Google Maps as a destination and pointed my car in that direction. Turned out it was right in the heart of Petersburg's historic district, along with a hipster bakery and a brew pub and even an art gallery, if memory serves correctly. After snagging a cold brew, I was really in no hurry to get right back on the interstate, so I kept going through the historic district, the main residential street of which featured an improbably large number of well-maintained historic homes before giving way to a much larger lower wealth area.
Wikipedia attests that the town is 79% Black, is very low income, and has lost about 20% of its population since 1980. Which begs the question, where did the money for hipster stuff and nice houses come from? My guess is that a lot of it is people commuting to Richmond and sending kids to private schools.
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