In late November, after 10 days of testimony and arguments in federal court, jurors were preparing to go into deliberations in the RICO trial against four alleged members of the Westside Crew (a.k.a. Project Crud), a local gang.
Waving American flags, singing hymns in Spanish and English, and holding signs that declared “We struggle for what is right with dignity” and “I am an immigrant, not a delinquent,” about 350 local Hispanics and community members gathered outside the County Office Building on McIntire Road at 6:30pm on May 1 to tell Charlottesville loud and clear: “We\’re here, and we matter.”
The white board at the front of the room announced the outcomes from the individual precincts: Democratic candidate for City Council Dave Norris won seven of Charlottesville’s eight precincts and took home 3,835 votes; his running mate, former fire chief Julian Taliaferro, won 3,637. Republican incumbent Rob Schilling came in dead last with 2,389. Given that the Dems’ campaign made the election all about Schilling, the Dems’ victory party at the Charlottesville Ice Park was predictably raucous: booze flowed, Beyoncé blared, Norris even spilled his beer on an unsuspecting reveler.
A change can do a body good. And a refreshing change is what Hawes Spencer hopes will come to the mixed-use Jefferson Theater building, the Downtown stalwart and second-run movie palace, now that he is selling it to local megadeveloper Coran Capshaw.
On a recent sky-blue spring day Monticello hosted a gaggle of reporters atop Montalto, the mountain across from Monticello that the Thomas Jefferson Foundation snatched from the poised paws of hovering developers last year when the property came up for sale. The occasion for mountaintop sunning? On May 1, twice-daily tours of the property began, continuing whenever the weather is fine through October.
Friends can sometimes turn against each other at the slightest provocation. A 15-year-old Albemarle County student learned this cruel truth the hard way while walking near Friendship Court late Friday, April 21.
The trial of Dale Anthony Crawford, a former Manassas car salesman, was scheduled to start May 1. However, a last-minute crisis will leave Crawford awaiting trial a little longer. Crawford’s defense attorney Liz Murtagh was diagnosed with a serious illness April 26; the trial will be rescheduled next week once Murtagh knows the course of her treatment.
Getting lost sucks. Imagine how much worse it is when you\’re in your 80s, it\’s pouring rain and you\’re in the middle of the woods 220 miles away from home.
As I was looking back and reminiscing on the websites I\’ve pushed on people in the year since I began professionally pushing websites, I was shocked and appalled to realize that while I\’ve waxed poetic about some of the most random websites that the wacky World Wide Web has to offer, I\’ve neglected to praise some of the most obvious.
There’s a classic New Yorker cartoon that depicts a group of explorersâbackpacks and machetes in handâcoming across a small spring in the middle of nowhere. It’s flowing with money, a geyser of bills spouting up from the center. “By God, gentlemen,” says the lead explorer to his hapless followers, “I believe we’ve found it-he Fountain of Funding!”