Affordable housing is a priority for Charlottesville, and to pay for that in its $188 million budget, the city proposes raising the meals tax, an idea restaurant owners traditionally hate. The 1 percent increase on the current 5 percent meals tax adds 10 cents to a $10 meal and would raise $2.4 million, according to […]
The City Yard is large, central, under-used, and under government control–so why hasn’t it been developed? By Jake Mooney To attempt a walk west from Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall, through the former site of Vinegar Hill and towards Preston Avenue, is to feel the full weight of city leaders’ historic disregard for the people and places […]
It was the same old, same old in Charlottesville Circuit Court on March 13, when attorneys involved in a lawsuit to keep the town’s Confederate monuments in place hashed out all-too-familiar arguments. It’s been two years since the Monument Fund and a dozen other plaintiffs filed suit in response to City Council’s vote to remove […]
When you think of teenage girls, what do you picture? Perhaps you think of your own fast-talking children or your experience in high school. Or maybe you default to cliques and clichés: prom queens and geeks, victims and villains. In its latest production, a Pulitzer Prize- nominated play by Sarah DeLappe called The Wolves, Live […]
Sommeliers may take offense, but canned wine is a booming business. In January, Crozet’s King Family Vineyards popped the top on this trend by rolling out its first cases of canned Crosé, its popular rosé wine. As winemaker Matthieu Finot explains, King’s been making a dry, fruit-forward rosé since 2003, and now harvests Merlot grapes […]
I had lived in Charlottesville for 10 years almost to the day before I saw the inside of City Council chambers. I’d paid my gas bill in person once or twice. I think I bought a trash sticker in 2012. But I’d never even been upstairs at City Hall before. If you’d asked me at […]
Controversy erupted recently over including a local politician and activist in a Black History Month display at Walton Middle School—and we bet you can guess who it is. City Councilor Wes Bellamy had some community members clutching their metaphorical pearls when his photo appeared alongside those of historical black figures such as Harriet Tubman, Langston […]
It was freezing cold, slick, and raining sideways the fall night that letterpress printer Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. spoke about his work at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center. It was a small crowd, maybe due to the weather, says Maggie Guggenheimer, director of external relations for Virginia Humanities, who helped bring Kennedy to […]
Rob Vaughan, founder of Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, died March 6 at age 74, after a rapid progression of Alzheimer’s disease, according to his obituary. He leaves behind the largest, best-funded, and what a colleague calls “the gold standard” of humanities organizations in the country. When then-UVA president Edgar Shannon tapped Vaughan, an English […]
Before Match.com and the like, we had matchmakers such as Dolly Gallagher-Levi, the exuberant leading lady in Hello, Dolly!. Arriving in New York City to assist Yonkers half-a-millionaire Horace Vandergelder in finding a new wife, Dolly works her way through one tricky escapade after another before discovering she is the perfect mate for him. Memorable songs […]
When Charlottesville Police Chief RaShall Brackney took her oath in June, she was sworn in to a position already highly scrutinized by citizens of a town where many are wary of the cops. Perhaps the thing locals wanted most in a new chief was transparency, and Brackney says she has spent the past nine months […]