It’s so much easier being a hippy these days. Case in point: FloydFest, a four-day summer music festival held just off the Blue Ridge Parkway, near Floyd. Instead of Woodstock’s food shortages of 40 years ago, FloydFesters face a stupefying abundance of choices: local, grass-fed burgers, tempeh reubens, Thai coconut curry and, yes, sushi. Some […]
The controversy over the location of the Piedmont YMCA began in December 2007, when City Council voted 3-2 to grant the organization a 40-year ground lease on an approximately 5-acre tract of land in the western part of McIntire Park. Although the project has reached the critical design stages, opponents are still hopeful that they […]
The redevelopment of the Route 29 corridor has been on the books for many years.
For the better part of a decade, members of the Virginia Independent Consumer and Farmers Association (VICFA) have been bringing local attention to what they say are grave threats to small farmers—namely, excessive government regulation. Locavores may have raised their hackles last week when reading that the Obama administration released a series of new proposals […]
If there’s one thing that we love about Virginia’s odd-year election cycle, it’s that it stretches the already interminable political season into near-perpetuity,
Some bouts mean more than others. The struggle against bulldozers and development is no laughing matter. It concerns the look and temperament of a place, and if a battle is lost, hardly anyone can call for a do-over. What would that even mean? In light of major changes underway in McIntire Park, we consider the […]
On the day that I set out to walk the future route of the Meadowcreek Parkway, a friend and I spoke about the old Vinegar Hill neighborhood. The vibrant Black community was razed in the early 1960s to make way for Charlottesville’s expanding business district and a north/south road that would connect Ridge Street to […]
“Clearly, they’re waiting for a party to start,” said David Letterman before introducing Wilco for a recent performance on “The Late Show.” He gestured at the table pictured on the cover of the band’s seventh studio release, Wilco (The Album). Abracadabra! The new Wilco record is a smaller bag of tricks, but still has its […]
Mahmoud Darwish was a young Palestinian poet living in Haifa, effectively in exile, when he published these words: “I do not hate people/Nor do I encroach/But if I become hungry/The usurper’s flesh will be my food.” It was 1964 when this poem, “Identity Card,” was published, the same year that the Palestine Liberation Organization was […]
Dear Ace: Why haven’t your devoted readers asked you any questions this week?-Ace Ace, Recently Ace has become frustrated by the lack of authentic reader questions. This week he was forced to pick his brain to come up with some burning question of his own. Unfortunately Ace is too wise to have his own inquiries […]