For many artists, the act of promoting their own work can feel counterintuitive, a business that necessitates turning outward to the public after so much time spent turned inward in order to create. For this reason, local author Carolyn O’Neal says with some surprise, “I’ve become, oddly, a marketing guru.” Her firsthand experience with marketing […]
Even in November, balmy weather and the Virginia Film Festival had throngs out on the Downtown Mall. But it wasn’t always that way. For years after Charlottesville bricked its main street in 1976, the place was a ghost town after 5pm. Landscape architect Lawrence Halprin’s early 1970s vision of a bustling public space took 15 […]
On a recent day, Cristine Nardi, executive director of the Center for Nonprofit Excellence, was working with four different nonprofits on a variety of challenges: a succession plan for an executive director; how to handle a potential sexual harassment issue within the organization; how to do a 360-degree evaluation for an executive leader; and coaching […]
Breweries have been popping up around Charlottesville like mushrooms after a rain. About a dozen beer producers are now located within an easy drive from town. But curiously, only four breweries are actually located within the city’s limits: Champion, South Street, Three Notch’d and—the newest addition in September—Random Row. In the middle of a regional […]
When several vacancies in the Charlottesville Fire Department opened at the same time, Fire Chief Andrew Baxter (who’s been chief for a little more than a year) decided to institute a new hiring process. The in-depth application, which included a personal history questionnaire, was meant to find candidates who were not only qualified to be […]
For Ian Glomski, 2012 was a watershed year. He turned 40 and narrowly escaped a massive wildfire while on a birthday fly-fishing trip in Wyoming. He served as a juror for the George Huguely trial and fought cancer for the first time. “All of that added up,” he says, and with mortality on the mind, […]
It’s been 11 years since Carrie Underwood became the fourth “American Idol” winner and arguably the show’s most successful contestant—she’s sold almost 15 million albums. Her best-selling track to date, “Before He Cheats,” is a catchy, bared-soul retaliation fantasy that put nine awards, including two Grammys, on Underwood’s shelf. But she might be best known […]
“I love the way an empty pie crust shell looks like an opportunity,” says local food writer and amateur baker Jenée Libby. “Are you going to make a sweet pie? A savory one?” Libby recently made a sweet pie—a sweet potato speculoos pie with a gingersnap crust, to be exact—to nab top honors at this year’s […]
Early-morning light catches a tinge of red on the edges of the maple leaves. The air is crisp after a cold fall night in early October. Chris Saunders steps onto the Blackrock Summit Trail with the confidence and speed of someone who has been there before. “I’ve hiked it five or six times,” he says. […]
The Charlottesville area has always been shaped by immigrants, and we have a long tradition of recognizing them for it. French-born Claudius Crozet, who served as an engineer in Napoleon’s army, constructed the first railroad from Charlottesville to Richmond in 1851. He then blasted a railway tunnel straight through Rockfish Gap, missing perfect alignment from […]