Here in Charlottesville (and surrounding counties) the music scene tends to be dominated by bluegrass, cover bands, and mainstream rock. That makes the alternative genres that manage to exist—from hip-hop to metal to punk to jazz—especially valuable. This week, photographer Zack Wajsgras presents a project he’s been working on for several years, documenting the local […]
“The plaintiffs: Who’s who in the fight to keep Confederate monuments” was a fairly straightforward feature story we published in March, about the 13 people and organizations suing the city over council’s vote to move the Lee and Jackson statues. As I wrote in an editor’s letter back then, “Much blame (not to mention death […]
At my first Virginia Film Festival, back in 2015, my husband and I had two children under age 5, one car, and one 10-ticket pass to the festival (thanks to a winning bid at our daughter’s preschool silent auction). The logistics were stressful, but being “forced” to make it to 10 movies in one weekend […]
“New York is older / And changing its skin again / It dies every ten years / And then it begins again.” I love that line (from a song by The National) because it rings so true; New York is notorious for recreating itself, and to live there or ever have lived there is to […]
A few weeks ago, while driving past West Main and McIntire Road, my 5-year-old daughter peered out the car window and asked who those people were on the statue. “That’s Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea,” I replied. No, she insisted. “There’s only two.” Lamely, I offered the party line: “Well, you can’t see Sacagawea very […]
Last week, eight plaintiffs suing the city testified to the emotional harm done to them by not being able to see the statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson for 188 days, while the monuments were shrouded in tarps following the horrifying violence of Unite the Right. The tears of Monument Fund director Jock […]
When T. Denise Johnson was growing up in Charlottesville’s Westhaven neighborhood, she was one of the few black kids in her honors classes at school. Decades later, that’s a disparity that hasn’t changed—the city’s public school system has one of the widest racial achievement gaps in the nation. In both Charlottesville and Albemarle County schools, […]
Whether you were on Fourth Street that afternoon or not, you know the car: the low-slung gray muscle car with the distinctive brake lights that James Fields used to murder Heather Heyer and injure dozens of others on August 12, 2017. From video footage and the shocking photograph that won local photographer Ryan Kelly a […]
In almost six years of living in Charlottesville, I’ve had two noteworthy encounters with the police. The first time was several years ago, when I left my wallet on the curb in Woolen Mills (don’t ask). A CPD officer not only noticed it and picked it up, he found my email address online and then […]
The real power struggle in Charlottesville, as a reporter for The New York Times astutely observed in a story about Mayor Nikuyah Walker last year, is not between left and right. It’s “between those who want Charlottesville to go back to the way it was before the rally, when a Google search brought up “happiest […]