Sounds of silence Hiding from cars and John Ashcroft In the middle of McIntire Park, there’s a cluster of trees where you can settle into the green grass and lose yourself in the sounds of swishing leaves and chirping birds––provided you can sneak past the watchman who insists that stretch of the green space is […]
Making the green grade Local pols score on environmentalists’ report cards Call it the age of the report card. Children have to pass a standardized test to graduate from school, Top 10 lists abound for everything from all-time movies to worst hairdos of the past century, and TV shows live and die by the ratings […]
Lining up the shot Court Square Ventures brings unwatched college sports to the tube Chris Holden might have been a rock star. There’s a glimmer in his otherwise sober eyes when he remembers trying to put himself through medical school playing late-night gigs in a piano bar—the name escapes him—somewhere in downtown Richmond. “I would […]
All that separates Tina Awkard’s front lawn from a chemical graveyard is a few hundred feet and a chain link fence. Yet Awkard, who moved here with her children three months ago, wasn’t aware that the “waste and lagoon treatment center” next door is a toxic dump with a file at the Environmental Protection Agency […]
Stripped searches Supreme Court ruling will mean local library users can peek no more If your plans at the public library include reading an e-mail from samantha35@adultfun.com or glancing at www.cumshots.com, you could find your mission thwarted, thanks to the paternalistic justices on the Supreme Court. On June 23, in a 6-3 ruling, the Court […]
These are interesting questions, but earlier today, I was copying a file to disk and the computer ate it. Now the computer will neither open the file nor read the disk. How can Charlottesville expect you to write encomiums to its greatness when your computer files are being eaten? Not that you care. No one […]
License to ill City demands fees from failing business When Jeffery Spinello opened a letter from the City and read that he needed a permit to go out of business, he thought someone was pulling his leg. “In the past 15 years, I’ve opened and closed or sold 12 businesses,” says Spinello, who runs Main […]
Artists to Zion: Deliver us Will performance come to the house of God? In the year of the building’s 119th anniversary, Mt. Zion Baptist Church on Ridge Street stands vacant, and what fills it will likely stir conversation in the coming months. The Mt. Zion congregation held its final service in the building on May […]
Brad Eure Once upon a time, newspaper publishers, television producers and radio station managers actually lived in the communities they served. Now, with more media falling into the fold of corporate conglomerates, the phrase “locally owned” is practically an anachronism. Brad Eure has managed to survive the dog-eat-dog radio market by staying tuned in to […]
Deadline blues Hawkins fails to file, Mitch marches on Blair Hawkins made a last minute decision not to deliver his Republican nomination speech at the local party’s mass meeting on June 2. For one thing, he missed the filing deadline of May 27 at 7pm and couldn’t be nominated, period. For another thing, other than […]