During this year’s Belmont Bash, Mary Michaud spent hours weeding her front yard on Levy Avenue. She thought that passersby kept looking at her funny, and once she’d pulled the last weed from the ground and stood up to admire her work, she saw why: She had left all of the dandelions behind. “My neighbors […]
Backstage at the American Shakespeare Center’s Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, actor Chris Johnston pulls on a red turtleneck and green velvet knickers, a green velvet smock and red-and-white-striped stockings. He ties up a pair of Converse Chuck Taylors with jingle bells on the shoelaces and dons what he calls “a perky stocking cap decorated with […]
For years, Mike Fitzgerald has arrived at the Spudnut Shop at 309 Avon St. between 1 and 1:30am to get started on the day ahead. He’ll have a cup of coffee, check on the equipment and begin to make the first batch of potato flour donuts—he’ll mix the dough and let it rise, then roll […]
When R.U.N.T.215th was growing up in Philadelphia in the mid-1980s, he routinely stayed up late and recorded Lady B’s “ Street Beat” Power 99 FM radio show, taping it on his boom box. He’d listen to the tapes over and over—the sets were packed full of Public Enemy, MC Lyte, Audio Two and Melle Mel […]
Ask a vinyl record collector about his collection and it becomes clear that listening to records is about more than the music. It’s about the ritual of placing the needle in the groove and being present for the sound; listening to The Beatles with your dad; anniversary dinners with your wife. In honor of Record […]
Before Maxx Katz plays a single note of a FLOOM set, she looks out at the audience in front of her and thinks: “We’re all going to die.” That thought in mind, she rings out one heavy chord on her silver sparkle Epiphone Les Paul and lets it tumble out of her bitchin’ amps and […]
Loosen your belts, Charlottesville. We’re getting more food, food that we didn’t even know we needed. Here’s a quick roundup of what’s open—or will be open soon—at 5th Street Station. Wegmans A chain that feels less like a grocery store and more like a marketplace, Wegmans boasts a host of specialty items: organic produce and […]
When Lulu Miller was a kid growing up in Newton, Massachusetts, in the 1980s, she’d peel away from her family to write. She’d take reams of computer paper—the kind that’s one long, continuous accordion sheet with tearaway perforations on the sides—from her dad’s printer and write for hours. It felt like sledding, she says, like […]
Star chefs In 1900, French tire moguls Ándre and Édouard Michelin found a creative way to get more people to buy their tires: a restaurant and hotel ratings guide that would get people in their cars, on the road and wearing down tire treads going from place to place. By 1926, the Michelin Guide started […]
Fred Ott, a magnificently mustachioed employee at Thomas Edison’s lab in Menlo Park, was known among his colleagues for his comedic sneezes. On January 7, 1894, Ott sneezed in Edison’s Black Maria studio in West Orange, New Jersey, in front of a camera operated by William Heise. Two days later, on January 9, film director […]