Sister cities, brotherly love
Little more than 40 years ago, former Charlottesville mayor Nancy O’Brien received an unexpected letter. Sent from Poggio a Caiano, a tiny, two-square-mile municipality in the Italian province of Prato, the epistle recounted the tale of a very special—and very old—friendship. “We were preparing
Power players: the ones making the biggest impact
It’s the time of year C-VILLE editorial staffers dread most: landing on the final names for our Power Issue, followed by the inevitable complaints that the list contains a bunch of white men. Sure, there are powerful women and people of color in Charlottesville. But when it comes down to it,
The Brooks Family YMCA is an exercise in community building
For the better part of 25 years, Kurt Krueger has harbored a vision. “I remember learning to swim as a kid at a YMCA in St. Louis,” says Krueger, a UVA School of Law graduate and downtown attorney, and a long-time supporter of the local Y’s satellite youth sports programs. “I knew that a
Grave concern: Local group preserves historic black cemetery
A single pink rose lies at a diagonal across the quartz headstone that has become two-toned with age in the last 125 years. The rose covers part of the inscription on Carrie Brown’s headstone, which is different from others from that time period. The Buckner family’s clustering of graves, which
Outdoors Issue: Let’s take this outside!
Inside this year’s Outdoors Issue, you’ll learn about eight different jobs that celebrate being outside—and all the tricks of the trade that a few local workers employ. From geometry calculations to determine where to cut a tree limb to avoid hitting a window or power line to how best to move
Cobbling together a living gives many an opportunity to follow their passions
Ethan Lipscomb tore the shirt from his thin frame and tossed it through the artificial fog and colored lights off the stage in the basement of the Jefferson Theater. The crowd erupted and the drummer punctuated the landing of the shirt with the hit of a cymbal. Lipscomb launched into the next
Anne-Marie Slaughter likes to be in the middle of things
A Charlottesville native whose keen intellect and deep foreign policy knowledge led her to become the first female director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Anne-Marie Slaughter has never forgotten her roots. She is one of this year’s
ARTS Pick: Middlemarch in Spring
Thursday 3/23 & Friday 3/24 George Eliot’s novel arrives on stage as Middlemarch in Spring, a chamber opera that premiered in 2015. The musical treatment (part of the Virginia Festival of the Book) offers humor, passion and political upheaval, while serving to commemorate Ash Lawn Opera’s
Taking a stand: Steve Rubin’s fight for civil rights
The first thing Steve Rubin heard was not the wailing sirens of a fire truck, but the shouts of his house guest, actor Bob Costley, alerting Rubin his car was on fire. Rubin had expected this—he routinely checked underneath his car for a bomb before going to his teaching job at Louisiana State
Paper perfect: Why wallpaper is your new best friend
Love it or hate it, there’s an undeniable appeal to a papered wall. Unlike paint, wallpaper adds detail and dimension that a solid painted wall can’t achieve. And, says Kenny Ball Antiques designer Chloe Ball, it gets an unnecessarily bad rap. “If walls are primed properly, it’s not harmful and
New program guides homeless in starting their own businesses
Becky Blanton became invisible 10 years ago. She shared her story—how she went from working as a newspaper editor to living out of her van and eventually identifying as homeless—with her fellow entrepreneurs in a Community Investment Collaborative program in the fall of 2015. CIC runs a 16-week
C-VILLE’s most-read stories of 2016
In honor of saying good-bye to 2016, here’s a rundown of the 16 most-read stories published on our website in the last year. Sole mates: Anthony Gill will rock Jordans for the big day Heroin overdose: Friends grieve 25-year-old’s death Sunny Ortiz of Widespread Panic on what’s
2016: the wild ride is almost over
So here’s the thing: There’s always going to be a worse year. 1347, when the bubonic plague erupted across Europe, beginning a pandemic that would eventually eliminate at least a third of the existent human population, is right up there. 1862, when the devastating charnel house of the American
Brookville Restaurant to serve last meal this weekend
Brookville Restaurant will serve its final meal—a brunch—this Sunday, December 18, from 10am to 2pm. “Every restaurant has a lifetime and Brookville has come to the end of its,” chef Harrison Keevil wrote in an e-mail shortly after making the announcement. He and his wife, Jennifer Keevil,
Cottage character: Lots to love at an Ivy country place
“The most interesting faces generally oscillate between charm and crookedness,” writes Alain de Botton in his Essays in Love. Replace “crookedness” with “quirkiness,” and you’ll have a fair description of why we’re drawn to this listing in Ivy: It it isn’t intimidatingly perfect. It’s lovely
Self-published and small-press authors connect for book signing event
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
Downtown Mall at 40: Is innovation still around?
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
Local nonprofits employ creative collaborations
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
Fired up: The training days and nights of CFD’s newest recruits
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
Vitae Spirits opens for sales and tastings
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