We are regular readers of C-VILLE and part-time residents of Charlottesville. We have owned a condo in Walker Square for two years.
The caption with the photograph of Walker Square in your “Fifeville’s future” article [May 6, 2008] is very misleading. The caption said that “Many Walker Square residents, however, seem to eschew the neighborhood as much as possible, taking a path across the train tracks rather than walking through the eclectic streets on the southern side.” You seem to be implying that we Walker Square residents are snooty and don’t want to be neighborly to others in Fifeville. However, the usual destinations for residents (Downtown and the Corner at the University) require walking across the tracks. There are no shopping, arts, dining, or activities destinations within walking distance that would take us through the southern side of Fifeville.
We do take exercise walks through the southern side of the neighborhood, visiting with neighbors along the way. As Walker Square residents, we are proud to be part of historic Fifeville.
Hunter and Mary Margaret Hollar
Charlottesville
Making radio waves
The article on Fifeville [“Fifeville’s future,” May 6, 2008] was fair and very well written and researched. Kudos. I have lived in Fifeville since 2002. I raise some issues not covered:
1. Why on earth is there a Charlottesville City Community Police Command Station in Walker Square? I attest that the police there have never set one foot outside those castle walls. This is a scandal. That police station must be moved to Tonsler Park.
2. That antennae and those satellite dishes behind the big purple condos. Whose are they? What are they doing there, besides frying local residents with radio waves, and uglyfying Main Street? We need the city and the congressperson to support their removal for constituents’ health.
3. Helicopters. I submit that UVA is taking property from us, and creating a public nuisance by rattling our houses with flyovers. Every landing seems to fly over us instead of the state’s own space.
Hope to see future coverage of these issues. Thanks.
Mark Gruber
Charlottesville
Block that metaphor
I applaud the Rutherford Institute’s support of the free speech rights of students at Charlottesville and Albemarle high schools to wear “Virginity Rocks” t-shirts [“‘Virginity Rocks” t-shirts’ spark Albemarle High controversy, News From This Just In, May 13, 2008]. I also believe that the best way to engage with speech with which one takes issue is to challenge it critically, not to suppress it.
In the present instance, I draw attention to the popular culture origin of positive associations with something that “rocks”: musicians, publicists and fans all rallied around the metaphor of rocking and rolling because it successfully evoked characteristic motions of coitus.
Far from being stifled, a “Virginity Rocks” t-shirt wearer should be informed that she or he advertises a solecism. Even when virgins excel in any of the many kinetic sodomitical practices (which, notwithstanding their illegal status in Virginia, may be what the t-shirt’s designer has in mind), the characteristic condition of virginity is stasis.
David Steinberg
Albemarle County