Dazzling sleights of hand

City adopts new motto, Don’t Look Up, upon completing Second Street beautification What do you do if you’re the City of Charlottesville and there’s a hulking, haunting, skeletal symbol of economic doom smack in the center of your pride and joy (and tourist engine), the Downtown Mall? You put in some planters. Planters make things […]

The best of Ken Cuccinelli

 Well, look who’s in the news again. Never one to let a week go by without controversy, last week our indomitable Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli went for a bit of a two-fer. First, his office issued an opinion stating that Virginia’s police and conservation officers “may, like Arizona police officers, inquire into the immigration status […]

Council to consider more stringent panhandling rules

 City Council will revisit and vote on proposed changes to the panhandling regulations on the Downtown Mall at it August 16 meeting. The proposed amendments to the current ordinance would include changing the term “panhandling” to “soliciting.” The ordinance would prohibit solicitation “from and to any person who is conducting business at any vendor table […]

Kendall Singleton expands UVA garden, composting

 A few weeks ago, Kendall Singleton returned home from an unplanned trip to Earlysville’s Panorama Farms to find she was down to the last of her weekly community supported agriculture (CSA) produce—onions, basil and garlic from Nelson County, but no centerpiece. A quick shopping trip later, and she had a bit of Twin Oaks tofu […]

Warrant, lawsuits await Jim Baldi's return

 More than two months after Bel Rio owner Jim Baldi asked local artist Chris Butler to display his paintings and pen-and-ink work inside Baldi’s Belmont club, Butler returned to take his work from the walls. By then, Bel Rio had been closed for nearly two weeks, and its owner—the subject of a $300,000 fraud lawsuit […]