Ever wonder why Virginia’s vaunted flagship university gets such paltry state funding? To the filmmakers of Starving the Beast, that’s an ideological decision. The documentary, produced by Violet Crown owner Bill Banowsky, connects the dots between a movement to cut funding in public universities that started around Ronald Reagan’s presidency. The Texas-based filmmakers—University of Texas […]
As Charlottesville continues to grapple with its Civil War history and the statue of General Robert E. Lee on his trusty steed, for a while at the Cville Pride Festival September 17 in Lee Park, Traveler sported a multicolored boa in a bit of ironic subversion. Until someone called the police. “Confederate fabulous is not […]
Virginia Film Festival director Jody Kielbasa promised today “the best program in my eight years at the festival” for this year’s November 3-6 cinemathon. The 29th festival will include screen legends Shirley MacLaine and Liv Ullman, and auteur Werner Herzog. What Kielbasa did not reveal was the opening night film, typically a made-in-Virginia effort. He gave that honor […]
Governor Terry McAuliffe popped into Mincer’s on the Corner this afternoon because he likes to visit small businesses—and he needed a new polo shirt. “Extra large,” says McAuliffe. “I’m pumped.” He was in Charlottesville to speak to UVA scholars at the Center for Politics and he’d had lunch “with Larry and Terry—” Professor Larry Sabato […]
Up the road, Culpeper County denied a permit in April to the Islamic Center of Culpeper, which wants to build a new mosque, and the Department of Justice is now taking a look at that action. Here in Charlottesville, members of the Islamic Society of Central Virginia, which cut the ribbon on its own facility […]
In the ongoing melodrama between the city and Charlottesville Parking Center owner Mark Brown, a letter from City Manager Maurice Jones says there’s no way the city will sell its Water Street Parking Garage shares to or even work with Brown, who, perhaps not coincidentally, announced plans to sell the Main Street Arena and take […]
Matt Bowen came upon a juvenile buck “in its last throes” early Sunday morning, September 4, on Canterbury Road in his Bellair neighborhood. He contacted Albemarle County Animal Control to humanely dispatch it, and the next day, found the deer at the same spot, albeit with a bullet hole in its neck. Bowen, a doctor, […]
Earlier this year, the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control suspended popular watering hole Escafé’s license to sell mixed drinks for the seemingly oxymoronic problem of selling too much booze. In Virginia, where bars are prohibited by Prohibition-era regulations, licensees have to have 45 percent of their sales in food, and if customers prefer drinking […]
Mike Sienda is a retired Army guy who now works as a federal employee at the National Ground Intelligence Center’s Rivanna Station, aka the “spy center.” Sienda is also a Donald Trump supporter, and at a recent rally he purchased two Trump/Pence signs and riveted them to the side of his box truck. His efforts […]
A federal judge issued an opinion last week that allows a lawsuit against Albemarle County and police officer Andrew Holmes to proceed on its racial profiling claim, while giving Holmes qualified immunity on claims he violated the plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment rights when he showed up at their home around midnight to look for a DMV license […]