A Streetcar Named Desire

stage Let me start with a confession. No matter how often I read or see it, I can’t find much depth in this 60-year-old classic of the American stage. Its conflict between the wayward-but-vulnerable Southern belle Blanche DuBois and her meat-slinging, wife-beating caveman of a brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, strikes me as a collision of gothic […]

Dr. Dog

music Like many a band’s first “official” album, Dr. Dog’s 2005 release Easy Beat was a furious and arresting microcosm of everything they had to say. Or at the least, listening to We All Belong, their 2007 follow-up, I got that sense. Where Easy Beat had a sense of urgency, a need to stomp their […]

Questing Through Chaos

cd Only a year old and Kate Starr’s three-piece band has already reached the finals of Lollapalooza’s Last Band Standing contest, opened for acclaimed shoegazers Asobi Seksu and played New York City nearly as many times as they’ve played Charlottesville.  Starr has an impressive array of artsy publicity photos, and she’s built a distinct image […]

Over 80,000 historic county acres

A huge swath of southern Albemarle County has been nominated for inclusion in two historical area lists. The 83,627 acres proposed—which lie between the Rivanna and James rivers—would be the largest historic district in Virginia, and the third largest east of the Mississippi. This swath of 83,627 acres in southern Albemarle is under consideration to […]

Crozet dreams of improved downtown

Many Crozetians like to have their world apart from Charlottesville. They have their own monthly newspaper, their own July 4 fireworks display and their own pizza. At their town-hall style meeting May 10, residents at the Crozet Community Association said they wanted their own recycling center—“not like the one in Charlottesville.” The Community Planning and […]

County bridge out indefinitely

The Advance Mills bridge on Route 743 in northern Albemarle County is closed indefinitely after an April inspection revealed several areas of deterioration in the ancient structure’s

Debate over parking lot-design guidelines

How open should an “open ideas” competition be? That’s the question at the center of a debate among city planners and members of a steering committee tasked with drawing up guidelines for the Water Street parking lots design competition. The City Market’s days on the Water Street parking lot may be numbered—but draft guidelines for […]

Albemarle Teens appear in court

Two teens, accused of making and planting fake bombs at Henley Middle and Brownsville Elementary schools in Albemarle County, appeared in court Wednesday, May 9. But the judge closed the proceedings, and prosecutors have shared very little about what will happen next to the 13-year-old teens. On March 27, three cylindrical packages were discovered around […]

Marshals nab suspect in rural homicide

“Can I say he was definitely 100 percent part of the Bloods, no I cannot say that.” Those are the words of U.S. Marshal David Thomas in reference to Ryan Martez Turner, an 18-year-old Charlottesville man who was wanted on one count of capital murder and was apprehended by marshals in Wilmington, Delaware, on Friday, […]