Surf to turf

On the seminal hip-hop album Enter the Wu-Tang, an interviewer asks the renowned rappers about their ultimate goal. Before Raekwon offers a dubious, circuitous response, Method Man sums it up: “Domination, baby.” Presumably that’s also the endgame for Daniel Kaufman, the Public Fish & Oyster proprietor who’s moving his empire from sea to land with […]

Truck life

When Hot Wheels Monster Trucks Live brings its Glow Party event to the John Paul Jones arena on March 25 and 26, the newest face in the cab will be Taylor Holman.  Holman, driving the Demo Derby truck on the tour, grew up around monster trucks. But she only climbed behind the wheel about eight […]

Gimme some moe.

Rob Derhak thinks of Charlottesville fondly. The bassist, vocalist, and founding member of the band moe. recalls playing here “back in the old days,” when there was “that old bar behind the railroad tracks.”  Trax? “Yeah, I think that was it,” he says, but it’s like he still doesn’t quite believe it all happened. Derhak’s […]

Drink deep

Brewing beer is about control: controlling ingredients, controlling processes, controlling product.  But it’s also about deciding when to let go. Take Three Notch’d Brewing Company. It started small, with brewmaster Dave Warwick, supported by a team of four administrators, making a few hundred barrels of craft beer per year at their Preston Avenue home. At […]

Clay day

Derek Brown’s sculpture is all about fun.  The Palmyra resident started making quirky clay figures because he wasn’t having fun at his day job. He wants people to see his pieces and think, “That’s fun.” And if he stops having fun making the tchotchkes, he’ll give it up. “Basically, I hated my job so much—being […]

In writing

John Kelly is a writer. Sometimes, he’s a songwriter. And with “Three Bright Stars,” he proves he’s a pretty damn good one. Best known for his work as the Virginia Film Festival’s PR pointman, Kelly has been writing for decades—penning reams of corporate communications along with songs.  Before moving to Charlottesville in 2001, Kelly started […]

Dueling designers

Zach Snider and Dan Zimmerman have been trading design ideas since the beginning. As co-owners of Alloy Workshop, they’ve been constant collaborators since they started out. But when the longtime colleagues launched their own home renovations last year, they took different approaches. Where Snider went the way Alloy sends its clients—fully designing the renovation before […]

Refuge eats

With culinary delicacies stretched across white linen in the comfortable outdoor space at Belmont’s Southern Crescent restaurant, giddy gastronomes arriving to the first dinner hosted by Taste of Home in 2018 may not have realized the spread was organized by college undergrads. One of the University of Virginia’s more than 1,000 student clubs and organizations, […]

Perfect pairings

Restaurateur and locally renowned musician Jay Pun is 100 percent Thai. But he still thinks a lot about authenticity. In 2016, Pun traveled to his ancestral home and visited an open-air market in northern Thailand. He was on the hunt for a native lute known as a phin. He’d owned one years before, but it […]

Proper exposure

Ryan Jones bought Pro Camera on West Main from Bill Moretz just a few months ago, but he’s been helping put the place in the national flashlight for several years. Jones, who studied media and photography at the University of Virginia, has turned himself into a go-to resource for analog camera repair. He’s been entrenched […]