In August 2004, Derek Breen went upstairs to check his e-mail. “My bedroom was right above the hammock shop,” he remembers. At the time, just over a year into his Twin Oaks tenure, he was managing the hammocks business, the community’s biggest income source. Pier One was a longstanding and very sizable client—representing up to […]
In August 2004, Derek Breen went upstairs to check his e-mail. “My bedroom was right above the hammock shop,” he remembers. At the time, just over a year into his Twin Oaks tenure, he was managing the hammocks business, the community’s biggest income source. Pier One was a longstanding and very sizable client—representing up to […]
Devon Sproule, perennial favorite of the Charlottesville folk scene, just might be Twin Oaks’ best-known local alum. (She grew up there.) But she’s hardly the only ex-Oaker, as they call themselves, to settle in Charlottesville. With the community only 35 miles away from our relatively cosmopolitan city, perhaps it’s a natural that Oakers leaving the […]
… Plenty of outsiders come. They’ll pull off I-64 at Shannon Hill, then follow the calm roads a few miles north into Louisa County. Along the way is the usual rural mix of trailers, tiny frame houses, more prosperous-looking farms.
music Catching a band at the beginning of a tour, when they’ve got a new album and they’re debuting songs onstage, one can often sense the freshness the group brings to the material. The day before this gig, London-based guitar pop band the Clientele had released the sublime God Save the Clientele, a lush collection […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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