The question comes from a cherubic young face, blue eyes framed with neat blonde hair, a boy wearing a basketball jersey four sizes too big for his preteen frame. “Can you ball on me?” replies White Chocolate, a.k.a. 26-year-old Randy Gill, slouching behind a folding table set up near Santa in Fashion Square Mall, outside […]

Fans of “The Simpsons” might remember that classic fourth-season episode, “Marge versus the Monorail,” in which a smooth-talking stranger convinces the animated folks of Springfield to build an electric monorail. The cartoon huckster absconds with the town’s money moments before the shoddy contraption goes haywire, to hilarious results.  I thought of the episode when I […]

For nearly three years, the tenacious Jan Cornell has been the backbone of the Staff Union at UVA (SUUVA). Taking on the region’s largest employer as the only full-time member of SUUVA is taking its toll on her, though. As alarmed workers look to Cornell to explain the school’s quest for charter status, will she […]

Ask most Americans about the periodic table and you’re likely to get vague descriptions of rarely used furniture or perhaps faint memories from a high school classroom. Even here in Charlottesville, science is a murky mystery, the domainof white coat-wearing magicians. Yet over on the west side of town sits one of the most active, […]

Happy 15th to the best old RAG of Charlottesville. You truly reflect the town and that makes the C-VILLE the perfect complement to certain (three) local radio stations in town. May your next 15 be as disruptiveto the normalcy of our great townas your first 15. Brad Eure Owner, Eure Communications, Inc. (3WV, Z95 and […]

Earl Smith thinks big. Straining to hit the highest notes of a Judas Priest anthem, tossing cheerleaders in the air or standing up to the mayor, Smith lives to the tune of a rock and roll chorus. Too loud for you? Too bad.  “I thought he was the most obnoxious man I ever met,” says […]

Game on  “Oh no!” Twelve-year-old Reid stares at the television in dismay. An Atlanta Braves batter has jacked a pitch deep into the left-center power alley. Reid holds his breath, watching the white dot arc toward the stands…then he sighs, relieved, when the ball plops into the mitt of a Boston Red Sox outfielder.  “Reid, […]

In 2002, during the height of the drought, people all over Central Virginia ate off paper plates and drove around in dirty cars. Meanwhile, elected officials crossed their fingers that existing water supplies would hold out, and they wouldn’t have to truck in emergency provisions of bottled water.  That summer, the Rivanna Water and Sewer […]

Wes Kessenich doesn’t look crazy. Not at all. His sandy brown hair, slightly receding, is parted neatly on the left. He’s wearing a white dress shirt, a conservative blue and silver tie, dark slacks and black wingtip shoes. He’s about 5′ 8", 150 pounds. Watching him stroll across the lobby of Martha Jefferson Hospital, where […]

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. —The First Amendment to the United States Constitution Censorship is […]