A dynasty is born

Six individual national wins. Victory in all five relays. National team champs (for the third year in a row!). It was business as usual for the University of Virginia in March at the NCAA Women’s Swimming & Diving Championship in Knoxville, Tennessee. Senior Kate Douglass won three individual national championships (200-meter individual medley, 100 butterfly, […]

Net positive

If you’d told a young Anna Williamson that one day she’d be atop a ladder at the John Paul Jones Arena, making the final snip to cut down the net after the UVA men’s basketball team won a share of the ACC regular-season title, she’d have thought you were pranking her. But that’s exactly where […]

Exquisite taste

Ask Alicia Simmons about her happiest childhood memories, and she immediately recalls the many hours spent in the kitchen with her twin sister and grandmother at the family’s farm in the Shenandoah Valley. “We made lunch for dad and grandpa every day,” says Tavola’s executive chef. “That’s how I fell in love with cooking.” Growing […]

All the pretty horses

Talk about a gift that keeps on giving: In 2006, local philanthropist Fred Scott donated an antique carousel to the Virginia Discovery Museum, which oversaw its installation on the Downtown Mall. After 15 years and millions of rotations by seven horses (the VDM estimates that more than 100,000 children ride the carousel every year!), the […]

The marrying kind

It takes a lot to surprise Sarah Fay Waller. No, she’s not a spy. Nor is she a volcanologist or a roller coaster designer or an underwater welder. She’s a wedding planner, and when she says she’s seen and heard it all (say, a bride who dreamed of synchronized swimmers performing during the cocktail hour), […]

Up on the roof

What beats tucking into a big ol’ plate of Huevos BlueMoonos? Tucking into a big ol’ plate of Huevos BlueMoonos while enjoying a rooftop view of the city. Always a stellar bet for breakfast, the Blue Moon Diner now boasts an open-air space with primary-colored tables and chairs beneath large umbrellas atop its recently renovated […]

All you need is kimchi

Jennifer Naylor, affectionately known as Mama Bird to those who frequent her Sussex Farm stall at area farmers’ markets, serves up a wide variety of Korean kimchi. It changes with the season, from cabbage or cucumber to apple or radish (to name just a few), and Naylor swears by what she grows on her farm: […]

Color her successful

“One to two to three to two to one, and now two. And I’m never going back to three.” That’s Suzannah Fischer, eyes closed, recounting the number of O’Suzannah shops she’s owned at one time since she first opened her eclectic boutique in 1996 on the Downtown Mall. Before going out on her own, Fischer […]

Music to our ears

What if you took the VIP experience of a music festival and turned it into the entire event? That’s the question Festy founder Michael Allenby asked himself last fall, when circumstances made hosting even a small-scale outdoor festival seem impossible.  Fortunately, the word “impossible” isn’t part of Allenby’s vocabulary. Which is why he relocated the […]

Schoch and awe

Former UVA pitcher and Major League Baseball player Sean Doolittle made national headlines last year when sporting events were shuttered, and he reminded us that “sports are the reward for a functioning society.”  If that’s true, the University of Virginia is functioning just fine.  Since March, UVA’s student-athletes have earned four national championships (women’s swimming […]