When Ebony Groove posted some old photos to its Facebook page in 2009, the comments came quickly. “Can we get a reunion please?!” “OMG what memories.” “Damn, now this brings back the real good ole days, cats!” “How about a reunion concert?” “You know I will be there if there’s a reunion!!!!” The band had […]
Roland Wiggins taught his first music lesson when he was in elementary school. He was about 10 years old, and his music teacher, Helen Derrick, had written a series of notes and chord intervals on the chalkboard. As the lesson progressed, Wiggins noticed that Derrick had made a mistake. “Excuse me, Ms. Derrick. You’ve made […]
Saunter through the Floradise Orchids greenhouse, the sound of Puccini mingling with the scent of soil and vanilla in the air, and Janet Cherchuck and Steve Shifflett will happily tell you a tale. They’ve got thousands of ’em, one for every orchid in the place. There are Masdevallias, with their blooms like pointy, upside-down hearts—lipstick […]
Lorenzo Dickerson is always chasing down stories that he heard as a kid. “Stories I heard who knows when,” he says, local stories he now feels compelled to share with local audiences. His fifth documentary film, 3rd Street: Best Seats in the House, tells one such story—that of the Third Street side entrance to The […]
Let’s pretend for a minute. It’s sometime in the not-too-distant future. Charlottesville is a thriving black kingdom, free of the white gaze and white corruption, and comprised of various hamlets, including Vinegar Hill, Starr Hill, and between them, Gospel Hill, the kingdom’s seat and center of spirituality. Such is the premise of Hambone, an original, […]
Head south on Harris Street, cruise past Napa Auto Parts and Sarisand Tile. Hug the first curve in the road before The Habitat Store, and there on the left, above the roof of Intrastate Pest Control, the dusty rumble of Allied Concrete cement mixers in the near distance, you’ll see it: a mural. Spools of […]
Rayne MacPhee thought her dad was having a midlife crisis. Apropos of nothing, he’d announced to the family that he was going to start keeping bees in their Greenville, South Carolina, yard. The next weekend, there they were: A few hives and thousands of honeybees. MacPhee didn’t pay much attention to her dad’s new hobby […]
On the enclosed patio of the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, Reagan Riley reclines into a stack of jewel-toned pillows scattered on the bench behind her as grey-white wisps of fruit-flavored tobacco vapor curl through the afternoon air, dissipating into a thin haze that’s more sunshine than hookah smoke. The room’s hardworking window A/C unit hums […]
Before every rehearsal and every performance, the cast and crew stand in a circle. They hold hands, close their eyes, inhale deeply, and exhale fully. “I am light,” they say. “I am love. I am here. I am light. I am love. I am here.” They repeat it over and over, until everyone feels ready […]
Seventeen syllables. Seventeen syllables to say whatever you want, to say as much, or as little, as you’d like. Hell, you don’t even have to use all 17 syllables if you don’t need or want to, says poet and artist Raven Mack. That’s just the typical form of a Japanese haiku in the Western world: […]