News

“I am disappointed because I thought it should have been down further,” said Belmont resident Shirley Shotwell

 On most days, the Quality Community Council (QCC), a grassroots coalition located in a small space on West Main Street, attacks tangible problems facing Charlottesville’s most troubled neighborhoods—voter education, affordable housing and crime prevention, to name a few. However, on Wednesday afternoons, QCC takes on the more abstract agenda of reconciliation, and opens its doors […]

As Albemarle resident Ellen Climo told the county’s Board of Supervisors last week during the first public hearing on the county’s proposed budget: “I don’t think there’s anyone here tonight that’s going to tell you something you don’t already know.” Maybe so, but the story is in how you tell it. In fact, the marathon […]

 Following Friday night’s performance by STREB, I walked to the edge of the stage where the eight dancers were perched and one by one squeezed their calves and biceps. With one fellow, I took a hold of his instep to admire his beautifully curved arch. In very real terms, I was trying to see what […]

 Interest in a “simpler time” is nothing new. But revived awareness of the primitive Southern mountaineer has touched a new generation of musicians and fashionistas that look to their legacy as a poignant example in protest of modern consumer culture. Indeed, their voices echo out in the backporch verse of Carter Family yodels: “Carry me […]

Winter may have slowed the day-to-day routine of locals, but it certainly didn’t freeze some residents’ opposition to what they consider the destruction of McIntire Park. 

Russell Lees’ Nixon’s Nixon is an animalistic powerplay in the manner of McClure’s The Beard and Mamet’s Oleanna; two hungry beings in a single room, both jockeying for the upper hand. Here, it’s Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, alone on the eve of Nixon’s resignation. To say the situation is timely is an understatement: A […]

During a 2008 meeting with neighborhood residents, Martha Jefferson Hospital spokesperson Steve Bowers said that a rough credit economy could potentially make for a smoother redevelopment of the hospital’s current home.  Martha Jefferson Hospital’s current 14-acre site, the subject of exclusive negotiations between the hospital and developers Crosland LLC, could make its way back onto […]

Dear Ace: Some friends of mine are passing through Charlottesville, but I don’t have enough room in my apartment to put them up for the weekend, and their shoestring budget—to say nothing of their enormous, shaggy beards—puts most local hotels, inns and bed & breakfasts out of their range. Where in this town might a […]

In November 2009, when the Albemarle County School Board sat at a table with Delegate Rob Bell and informally gave him the nod to ask the 2010 General Assembly to revise the state’s school funding formula, members knew Charlottesville officials would not be happy. Bell’s proposed amendment would subtract $2.6 million in school funding from […]