Giant bureaucracies aren’t known for responding to the complaints of the little guys. But enough locals applied pressure, and the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) (www.virginiadot.org) yielded to concerns expressed by hundreds of residents in northwestern Albemarle County: The Free Union VDOT facility will remain open. Responsible for day-to-day maintenance like snow plow-ing and pothole […]
Giant bureaucracies aren’t known for responding to the complaints of the little guys. But enough locals applied pressure, and the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) (www.virginiadot.org) yielded to concerns expressed by hundreds of residents in northwestern Albemarle County: The Free Union VDOT facility will remain open. Responsible for day-to-day maintenance like snow plow-ing and pothole […]
What does every center of the universe need? A cool logo, of course. Recognizing the higher profile of our fair city on the world stage, the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau (CACVB) (www.charlottesvilletourism.org) hired hospitality market research firm North Star Destination Strategies and Gotham Graphix of Charlottesville to spend 22 months coming up with […]
Firefighters helped cordon off the area around a gas leak in front of the Charlottesville Circuit Court on High Street. Workers installing a sprinkler system for the building inadvertently cut through a main city gas line around 9:30am on Tuesday, December 12, making the area highly flammable—responders weren’t supposed to so much as touch each […]
By Will Goldsmith, Cathy Harding and Meg McEvoy GOVERNMENT Due to the alcohol-related death of Albemarle High School student Nolan Jenkins in a car accident in May, the Albemarle School Board examined off-campus partying and schools’ alcohol policies. Meanwhile, Virginia closed a loophole that allowed parents to serve alcohol to underage guests. In a campaign […]
By Will Goldsmith, Cathy Harding and Meg McEvoyObjects of his affection Lawsuits breathing down his neck, scandals tailing him from South Africa and the U.K., Jeremy Harvey did what only Jeremy Harvey could do: The 62-year-old local investment banker tied the knot for the second time with 81-year-old newspaper heiress Betty Scripps in Las Vegas […]
Oh-six was a year of contradictions and confounded assumptions. The Republican incumbent who was supposed to be unbeatable for the Senate enacted his own Chernobyl-like meltdown; “affordable housing,” the presumed cause du jour, turned into a dictionary game …
Stage A good storyteller makes you feel like you’re the only person in the audience. A good actor makes you feel like there is no audience. One-man shows—especially adaptations from personal stories—stand on a tricky, razor-thin line between the two. Such is the case in Staunton with the American Shakespeare Center’s production of The Santaland […]
Stage “Jazz,” said Bix Beiderbecke, “is musical humor”: a definition seemingly rejected by the oh-so-earnest jazzmen of bop and other postwar schools. But it was never forgotten by Bix’s contemporary Thomas “Fats” Waller, and is well reflected in Live Arts’ energetic revival of Ain’t Misbehavin’, the Tony Award-winning revue devoted to Fats’ music. Of course, […]
Dear Ace: The mumps outbreak, year-end Y2K flashbacks and too manyepisodes of “Jericho” have me thinking about emergency preparedness. Where doI go for info in case of a catastrophe?—Calamity Jane Dear Calamity: Zombie outbreaks, alien invasions, roving gangs of bitter George Allen campaigners…there are a lot of things that could go wrong in Charlottesville, and […]
The Albemarle County Planning Commission meeting on December 5 was a testament to the power of the individual—or at least a persuasive argument for citizen vigilance. On the docket for a work session were two matters concerning additions to the Hollymead Town Center, which includes Target off Route 29 in northern Albemarle. The commission was […]