The everyday Richmond horrors only locals understand
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A sneak peek into one of them. Image: Elise from @WheresFrancine
A viral social media trend has people listing their "top five horror movies," except they're actually everyday situations jokingly framed as your personal cinematic nightmares.
Why it matters: Richmond doesn't have a Freddy Krueger, but it has a Lombardy Kroger — so we had to get in on it.
Here are our top five (local edition), followed by what readers told us they'd put on their list.
🍟 1: The McDonald's in Shockoe Bottom
This location, which has an infamous nickname, has nearly 3,000 Google reviews, the most of any McDonald's in the Richmond area.
- It's been cited as among the most hated in RVA, and yet multiple reviews note going back several times.
😭 2: "Is anyone else's water pressure low?"
Texting this question or seeing it pop up on social media is the equivalent of the movie trope where a character falls to their knees and wails a skyward scream.
🐈 3: Francine going missing
When the famous Broad Street Lowe's cat vanished, the search for her became a multistate effort including Task Force Francine, a local North Carolina animal control office and a Where's Francine Instagram account.
- Richmonders were calling it the city's "biggest emergency" since the water crisis. Axios even reached out to Etsy witches for a pet locator spell.
- Luckily, Francine now wears an AirTag tracking device.
🅿️ 4: The Lombardy Kroger parking lot
The Lombardy Kroger was named one of the worst grocery stores in America in large part because of its chaotic and tight parking lot, which a Richmonder once said "is the only place I've seen a moving vehicle without a driver."
🤦🏻♀️ 5: The one-way City Hall maze
You miss a turn near City Hall and the John Marshall Courthouse and suddenly every other road is a one-way and has illegal left turns, leaving you somehow in an underground tunnel headed for the Coliseum.
Meanwhile, what readers said:
⚡️ "Dominion doesn't have an estimated restoration time." — Nathan H.
☘️ Attending Shamrock the Block. — Courtney S.
🚗 A car coming toward you on a one-way street. — Katie P.
🥶 Icemageddon, aka the ice storm that had us learning what snowcrete was. — Dane W.
🚫 Turning left on Arthur Ashe "during the no-left turn hours and practically having to go to the GD Northside to make the turn." — Marcail M.
🔄 "Richmond's love for double parking and lack of knowledge of roundabouts." — Melissa G.
☕️ The Richmond airport cold brew — Joseph P.
🕳️ The Strawberry Street sinkhole of 2024. — Mary P.
Karri Peifer contributed to this report.