In John Smith’s 1612 map of Virginia, at the point where the Rivanna River meets the James, he marked Rassawek, the capital of the Monacan Indians. Jump forward 400 years and the site is on another map, this one targeting it as a pump station to quench Zion Crossroads’ thirst. Louisa and Fluvanna counties joined […]
John Clark is a regular on the Downtown Mall, sitting in a beach chair with a tube-feeding machine. He has stomach cancer and says he hates to ask for money, but needs help paying for the medical supplies he needs as a result of having to get all of his nutrition through a tube. Clark’s […]
Forward together It was a full house at First Baptist Church on West Main Street on August 12, as a diverse crowd gathered for an interfaith service. “It fills my heart to see the pews filled like this,” said deacon Don Gathers. “We’ve come together not because of what happened, but in spite of it.” […]
It’s a slow Wednesday afternoon at The Brick Oven, where owner Dino Hoxhaj slides into one of his brown upholstered booths and heaves an exasperated sigh as he looks around his restaurant in the Rio Hill Shopping Center. “All the third parties suck,” he says, shaking his head. He’s talking about food-delivery services like DoorDash […]
Fifty years ago, man first walked on the moon and a music festival in Woodstock, New York, signaled a generational shift. As iconic as those events are, that’s not what Nelson County remembers about 1969, when the remnants of Hurricane Camille latched onto the mountains the evening of August 19 and dumped around three feet […]
Former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe had a rocky start to his book tour at Washington, D.C., bookstore Politics and Prose on August 1, when survivors of the August 12, 2017, Fourth Street car attack showed up to denounce his account of that weekend. But he found plaudits and praise among fans at the National Press […]
Why Charlottesville was targeted by a white supremacist rally, ostensibly to protest the removal of a Confederate statue, has led to several theories. That was the starting point for a panel sponsored by the UVA library August 12, two years after the Unite the Right rally. “Beyond the statues: The invisibility of black Charlottesville” began […]
Whether you were on Fourth Street that afternoon or not, you know the car: the low-slung gray muscle car with the distinctive brake lights that James Fields used to murder Heather Heyer and injure dozens of others on August 12, 2017. From video footage and the shocking photograph that won local photographer Ryan Kelly a […]
A common gripe in Charlottesville among residents and city officials alike is how long it takes local government to get things done. But keeping track of complaints isn’t easy: Deputy City Manager Mike Murphy says the city receives so many emails that it can take a while to review them, and sometimes officials miss them […]
Tour de force For the past couple of years, Jalane Schmidt, UVA professor and activist, and Andrea Douglas, Jefferson School African American Heritage Center director, have been conducting tours of our downtown monuments, providing new context for the Confederate statues that have long dominated Court Square and Market Street parks. Now, those who haven’t seen […]
Pittsburgh. Christchurch. Charleston. The list of communities devastated by mass murderers continues to grow, as the past weekend attests. And houses of worship have found that nothing is sacred to those determined to target people of certain religions or races. Congregation Beth Israel realized that the weekend of August 12, 2017, when neo-Nazis marched through […]
When he was 50 years old, Larry Bowles was a disgruntled car salesman who didn’t see eye to eye with his boss. After getting into a heated argument with his superior, he quit his job in a fury and whipped out of the parking lot, nearly hitting a taxi cab as he pulled onto the […]
Virginia high schools will put a new spin on the word “athlete” when they launch an eSports competitive video gaming league this fall. The Virginia High School League announced earlier this summer that it’ll be rolling out a one-year pilot program for the 2019-20 school year that includes three different video games: League of Legends, […]
Summertime and the sidewalks aren’t easy Walkability is one of Charlottesville’s small-city charms, but sometimes it’s not so easy to get around, particularly if you’re disabled. On July 27 the city listed a dozen sidewalk projects that limit access. And then there are the blockages that aren’t official closings. Pedestrian activist Kevin Cox spotted a […]
John Hart and Corban Addison Klug both make a living writing novels. Unlike writers for newspapers and magazines, which state code exempts from business license taxes, Hart and Addison received sizable tax bills from Albemarle County and Charlottesville that they say are unconstitutional. The two men filed lawsuits against the city and county July 24, […]
Carolyn Paige Rice, a former Charlottesville chief of staff and clerk of council, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor embezzlement charge Wednesday for failing to return an iPhone X and Apple Watch that were paid for by the city during her tenure. As part of the plea agreement, Rice was charged with a misdemeanor instead of […]
First glimpse of enslaved laborers memorial On July 16—just as we were sending last week’s issue to press—community members got to peek behind the construction fencing of the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at UVA, adjacent to the Rotunda and across the street from Bodo’s on the Corner. Made of stone and 80 feet in diameter, […]
Charlottesville raised its meals tax to 6 percent July 1, which, on top of the 5.3 percent state sales tax, adds more than 11 percent to your dinner tab. But a computer glitch at one local restaurant meant some customers were paying more than 16 percent. Lorena Perez, a designer at C-VILLE Weekly, had lunch […]
RaShall Brackney took the job as Charlottesville police chief a year ago, despite the notoriety the department faced following the violence of August 2017, the damning indictment of the Heaphy report, and the abrupt departure of her predecessor, Al Thomas. Although she hasn’t flinched from the public drubbing that came with the job, could anyone […]
By Kay Slaughter Each day, people cross the Drewary J. Brown Bridge on West Main Street oblivious of this memorial to Charlottesville’s history. Nothing announces the bridge over the railroad tracks as a special space. It was rebuilt in 1998 and renamed by City Council for Brown, a civil rights leader who had recently died. […]
A test to make the intersection of Rugby Avenue and Rose Hill Drive safer by installing four-way stop signs concluded this week with plastic bags coming off the old stoplights and the removal of the stop signs. When the signs went up at the end of March, neighborhood website Nextdoor was abuzz with reports of […]
Many Virginia high school students see taking the SAT or ACT as almost a basic requirement—it’s a cultural norm. But according to a recent study published by University of Virginia researchers Sarah Turner and Emily Cook, there are some who don’t even consider it, reducing the number of students who apply to college. “If you […]
History of lynching acknowledged In Court Square, Albemarle County’s seat of justice, a memorial was installed July 12 to commemorate a historic injustice—the lynching of a black man on that date in 1898. A mob of white people pulled John Henry James from a train near what is now Farmington Country Club, and hanged him […]