We’re bigger, older and wiser. Over the past two decades, we’ve sometimes been well ahead of the curve, like when we projected DMB’s rise to the top, and sometimes we’ve been, well, wrong. We’ve captured people saying things they might regret later; we’ve championed the underdog (hello, Congressman Perriello!). Each week, as we celebrate our 20th anniversary, we’ll take you on a highly selective tour through all of it. Yeah, we might look and feel different than we did back in the day, but in two decades of reporting on Charlottesville and Albemarle, a couple of things have remained constant: C-VILLE is still free and it’s still free-thinking.
Paging through the archives
Robert Harllee, proprietor, Market Street Wineshop: Downtown’s premiere [sic] purveyor of warming beverages beats the dropping thermometer with an age-old strategy: layering. “Well, the first thing is I have my ‘ice man’ pants,” he explained. ‘Ice man’ pants? “Well, that’s what my family calls them,” he said, describing them as thick, black, and woolly. He waxed thoughtful for a moment: “People used to wear those kinds of things, but I guess they’re not cool nowadays.”
January 26, 1994
Getting covered
Our March 31, 1998 cover story came the same year the state announced the 1998 Virginia State Song Competition, following the merciful retirement a year earlier of longtime official state song, “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny.” Jump ahead more than 10 years later, and Virginia still doesn’t have a replacement. Even the push to get it done before Virginia’s 400th anniversary in 2007 didn’t work. Currently, two bills concerning the matter are in committee in the General Assembly, with two songs—“Ol Virginia” (sound familiar?) and “Cradle of Liberty”—up for consideration. Sing along with Dave Matthews Band: “Wasting time…”
