Taylor Swift; John Paul Jones Arena; Saturday, March 20

 Andrea Swift listened to Def Leppard when she was pregnant and, 20 years later, her daughter knows a thing or two about pouring on the sugar. Taylor Swift whips her blonde mane around like Def singer Joe Elliott, and once swapped lyrics with the Lep on “Hysteria,” a song written more than two years before […]

City plays pick-up sticks

Limbs collected: Approximately 400 loads, or 12,000 cubic yards* Manpower: 12 in-house employees and 3 contract drivers Time spent so far: 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, 3 weeks total Vehicles used: 7 dump trucks, 2 knuckleboom trucks, 4 pickup trucks Additional equipment used: 2 chainsaws Time needed for project completion: 4 weeks […]

Amusement Pride

Dear Ace: What’s up with that carousel at the east end of the Downtown Mall? I’ve never seen another one like it.—Merrily-Going-Around-Charlottesville That’s because, according to New York/London appraisers Masterson-Gurr-Johns Inc., the little blue carousel on our mall is “the last known kiddy carousel in this country of its type.” The attraction, featuring seven painted […]

Casteen rebukes Attorney General's letter on gays

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli recently slapped second-year University of Virginia student Seth Kaye in the face. Not literally, but Kaye said that was how he felt when he awoke to an e-mail outlining a letter Cuccinelli sent to the state’s public colleges on March 4. READ MORE Click here to read this week’s Odd […]

God, guns and gays

Well, it looks like it’s kind of a bad news/good news situation for newly elected Governor Bob McDonnell. On the downside, his carefully cultivated campaign image—which presented him as a sensible, well-coiffed, middle-of-the-road pragmatist—is in complete tatters, destroyed by a series of mean-spirited, politically tone-deaf moves against Virginia’s lesbian and gay community. On the plus […]

Bill Hay started the local Tea Party. Now he's backing a Fifth District candidate. Is he jumping ship or setting a course?

During the Jefferson Area Tea Party’s February meeting at Timberwood Grill, Keith Drake, chairman of the Albemarle Truth in Taxation Alliance, made a few introductory remarks. “It’s a lot of fun being a Tea Party patriot these days!” said Drake, who added that he was having a ball “rabble-rousing, bringing us back to our founders’ […]