The hidden life of UVA

Danny Oberski Year: Junior Age: 22 Major: Economics and psychology Hometown: Ashland, Virginia What’s in your backpack? Detroit Tigers baseball hat, Richard Thaler’s The Winner’s Curse: Paradoxes and Anomalies of Economic Life, Andrei Shleifer’s Noise Trader Risk, eight-day old copy of The Cav Daily, three notebooks, 2008 day planner with only two entries, empty pack […]

Gang member sentenced to four years

Carmello “Pee Wee” Martinez walked into Charlottesville Circuit Court in the customary striped prison garb. Martinez, an avowed member of the “Bloods”—of Crips and Bloods gang war renown—was arrested this summer in connection with a shooting. On February 13, he was sentenced to four years in prison for the events that occurred last March when […]

Lawsuit of the week

Plaintiff: Kathleen E. Burg Defendant: CVS of Virginia, Inc. What’s at issue: Whether the drugstore on Long Street is responsible for Burg falling and injuring herself. According to her complaint, she went to CVS to pick up some photos and, when she turned to leave, caught her foot on “something protruding from under the counter.” […]

Change does him good

The House of the General Assembly—the oldest legislative body in the western hemisphere—basically operates like a middle school classroom, with the speaker of the House playing the role of jaded, brusque teacher and the other 99 members acting like petulant, unruly students. More feature articles: Bell’s bills 200813 pieces of legislation that Rob Bell carried […]

Rob Bell’s reading list

In case you got the impression Rob Bell is all business all the time, several colleagues wanted to make sure we know another side of Bell, the quick-witted guy who quotes Caddyshack and “Bad to the Bone” rocker George Thorogood. Del. Bill Janis, who sits beside Bell during House sessions, notes that Bell likes Thai […]

Bell’s bills 2008

More feature articles: Change does him goodWhy Rob Bell is one of the General Assembly’s most effective politicians Rob Bell’s reading listAnd other humanizing stuff Rob Bell carried 22 bills this year, a drop off from the 35 he patroned last year due in large part to the demands of chairing the mental health subcommittee. […]

Stagnating retail project gets new owner

A little more than a year ago, representatives from the still-conceptual Albemarle Place gathered with the city, county and Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority (RWSA) to discuss the Meadow Creek interceptor, the main hub for sewage all along Route 29N.

Council likes scaled back Mall renovation

On an unseasonably warm day on Friday, February 15, Twobears Burgos and Matt Williams tackled the never-ending business of repairing the surface of the Downtown Mall. City Parks & Rec maintenance employees, they work a patch between Second and Third streets where some unknown force—tree roots? constant jostling? poor drainage?—had turned the bricks into a […]

Projects in the works

The skinny: The Board of Supervisors approved special-use permits to allow for two Verizon Wireless towers, one on Carter Mountain, and the other off I-64 and Dick Woods Road near Ivy. The county Planning Commission looked at a third tower, destined for 29N, at their February 12 meeting.Next step: Build the durn things. The third […]