Fill 'er up

While refueling your car seems to get more expensive by the day, refueling your body at a local gas station is easy on the wallet and tasty, too. Here’s the what and where on great Charlottesville gas station food: Peach and blackberry fillings ooze from under the flaky crust of the daily cobblers at Brown’s […]

September 2011: Green Scene

 Shake it up Don’t forget to toast the autumn equinox on September 23. The season changes and finally the planet tilts to our advantage after a relatively brutal summer, though compared to our fellows in Texas who are enduring historic drought, we really can’t complain. Cooling temperatures, and perhaps rain from Atlantic storms, give us […]

September 2011: Top of the Heap

Props to you Seems to us that a bit more couch time might be in order now that summer’s winding down. We’ll take a cold drink, please. And, um, some reading material. And where are we supposed to put this clicker/rest our feet/show off our art books? On one of these locally sourced coffee tables, […]

September 2011: Your Kitchen

When in Romas The humble Roma tomato is easy to overlook at summertime markets. Let’s face facts—you’ve bypassed them a million times in the supermarket, so red and cheerful (even in the dark night of winter) that they seem to be imitating wax fruit. Amid the motley, knobbly heirloom tomatoes (Mr. Stripey! Cherokee Purple!) and […]

September 2011: Your Kids

Despite the massive construction site not 50 yards from their Fry’s Spring front porch, Rob and Adrienne Dent maintain a joyfully serene home. Just inside the front door, the family’s shoes are neatly tucked into old wooden post office mailboxes. Their children, Laurel (7) and Alden (6), drag out a painted vintage suitcase and happily […]

September 2011: Pushing the Envelope

“This is a statement about the future,” says builder Bill Jobes, sitting in the dining area of the house on Lankford Avenue that his company just finished. Behind him, large windows wrap around the house’s southeast corner. A close look reveals that their sills are unusually deep, due to extra-thick walls. That thickness—plus a pervasive quiet […]

September 2011: Get Real

By now, saying that this real estate market is difficult has a certain broken-record quality. But even getting a refinance loan is “tougher than it used to be,” says Phillip Mahone, co-owner of Mahone Mortgage, LLC in Charlottesville. “The biggest issue right now is the decline in property values.”  In fact, according to Zillow Inc., […]

September 2011: Rental Rescue

I’m always fascinated by the people on those house hunting shows on television. I watch couple after couple immediately give up on some beautiful, affordable homes due to a few cosmetic imperfections. They wish the family room wasn’t carpeted, the kitchen had lighter cabinetry, and the dining room wasn’t adorned with sheep and maidens frolicking […]

All hands on deck

It all began with a party. Two summers ago, two of PK Ross’ roommates were celebrating August birthdays and one enlisted her help to decorate for the party. They hung strings of lights under the eaves, then draped window shears overhead to create a relaxing canopy. Since then, they’ve added a few side tables, flowering […]

Back to (film) school

Earlier this year, I received an e-mail from the lead mentor at Light House Studio, the film mentoring program to which students show up never having held a camera, and sometimes leave with an acceptance letter from a prestigious film school. Jason Robinson, the mentor, said the studio was running a program for advanced students wherein the kids would create music videos over the course of a week for songs by local musicians, and would I be willing to let the kids make a video for one of my songs?