Plogging and other Earth Day events A combination of jogging while picking up trash—who wouldn’t want to go plogging? Easter Sunday, from 1 to 5pm, is your chance. “Instead of hunting for Easter eggs, we’re hunting for litter,” says organizer and self-proclaimed tree-hugger Brady Earnhart. He’s never been plogging, but was immediately intrigued when he […]
Amazon has been blamed for the demise of bookstores, but that doesn’t seem to deter people from taking up the retail cause on the Downtown Mall. New Dominion got a new owner in November 2017, and last month the former Read it Again, Sam reopened as 2nd Act Books. The name comes from both its […]
Come this fall, Walker Upper Elementary, which serves the city’s fifth and sixth graders, will drop its Spanish language requirement for a focus on math and science instruction. During a January school board meeting, Principal Adam Hastings said the change, which the school board approved in February, was prompted by “a need for students to […]
Approximately 6,000 drivers whiz past stopped school buses in Albemarle County each year, putting students getting on and off the bus in jeopardy. New legislation that allows the installation of stop-arm cameras aims to put an end to this dangerous trend. County school officials say they’ve been advocating for the technology for at least six […]
City Council introduced its pick to be the city’s top executive April 15, and Mayor Nikuyah Walker urged citizens to be open to moving past “the way things have been done.” Tarron Richardson, currently city manager of DeSoto, Texas, a Dallas suburb, was chosen out of 37 candidates in a process that’s taken almost a […]
Science can’t say for sure if marijuana saved Josh Hunt’s life. But he’s certain of it. Hunt, who co-owns and operates local restaurants Beer Run and Kardinal Hall, was diagnosed with stage 4 glioblastoma in October 2014. He’d had a seizure and was rushed to the hospital. An MRI revealed a growth on his […]
It looks like bud. It smells like high-grade reefer. Its different strains have names like Frostbite and Pink Panther. And after Darryl Rojas bought some hemp flower at Higher Education on West Main Street, he had the police at his door, just as he might if he were smoking fully loaded cannabis here in Virginia. […]
By Charlie Sallwasser It’s 1am on Tuesday, and Virginia basketball has just won the national championship. I can’t believe it. As a 10-year-old, I used to pretend to be Virginia forward Cornel Parker when I was shooting hoops in my driveway, lining up the game-winner in the national championship game. I made countless elbow threes […]
In elections, it often comes down to name recognition, and former Charlottesville police lieutenant Ronnie Roberts has it. The Albemarle native spent most of his 44-year career in law enforcement working for the city police department, where he rose through the ranks and served as a well-known spokesman. Roberts announced his candidacy for Albemarle sheriff […]
By Charlie Burns, Kyri Antholis, Susannah Birle, Connor Jackson, and Anabel Simpson Recently, a racist online comment threatening many of our peers at Charlottesville High School with an “ethnic cleansing” closed all city schools for two days. While some students brushed the threat off as a joke and went back to school on Monday without […]
By Shrey Dua Although long-time blood donor Gary Grant arrived 15 minutes early for his March 7 appointment at the Red Cross, he and other would-be donors were sent home. The facility, a chapter office on Rose Hill Drive, did not have enough equipment. “We got no notice, I drove 10 miles, and they told […]
A place for all to play. That’s the goal of Bennett’s Village, a proposed playground for children and adults of all abilities in Charlottesville, which City Council approved April 1. The parents of Bennett McClurken-Gibney, a child with spinal muscular atrophy who died in February 2018, now have permission to build a $5-million playscape at […]
For some, it came as a shock when City Councilor Wes Bellamy announced yesterday that he would not run for re-election, especially considering his public remarks the week before that made it sound otherwise. At his March 20 Virginia Festival of the Book event with former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, where the two politicians […]
Some victims of the August 12, 2017, car attack are breathing a sigh of relief that they won’t have to endure a second trial, after the white supremacist who murdered Heather Heyer pleaded guilty to 29 federal hate crimes on March 27. In a state trial in December, James Alex Fields, Jr., a 21-year-old from […]
It’s budget season. For four months every year, council and staff hold public meetings about the coming year’s priorities. For four months, I sit through what I am absolutely certain is the exact same PowerPoint at least a dozen times. Much of it remains inscrutable to me. I am growing comfortable with the idea that […]
By Shrey Dua In Charlottesville, one of the largest populations of apartment dwellers can be found in the roughly mile-wide radius immediately surrounding the University of Virginia: students. Every year, waves of UVA students abandon Grounds in favor of their own apartments, a process that quickly spirals into a mad dash to find the best, […]
While renters have it tough, managing an apartment isn’t a walk in the park either, and one local manager has truly seen it all. On the condition of anonymity, the industry professional of nearly two decades agreed to dish the details. “For what it’s worth,” he says, “I could likely fill a large novel with […]
Sylvan and Sheria Kassondwa’s 860-square foot, three-bedroom apartment would be fine, they say, if they had one or two kids. As it happens, they have five. “In my country, time is not money like here, you can spend more time with your family,” says Sylvan, who is originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo. “And […]
It can be a long road between submitting plans and breaking ground on a project in both the city and the county. Maybe your apartment complex will be sued by neighbors, as is the case for 1011 East Jefferson with its 126 apartments. Or maybe the project is so complex, like the redevelopment of Friendship […]
As thousands were celebrating literature at the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville, a less-exalted missive from the nether regions of the internet, threatening “ethnic cleansing” at Charlottesville High, closed all city schools last Thursday and Friday. It also prompted CHS’ Black Student Union to lead a walkout for racial justice on Monday. More […]
Last fall, longtime WINA morning co-host and producer Jane Foy was unceremoniously dumped by the station where she’d worked for almost 20 years. WINA’s loss became the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service’s gain when it recruited Foy to help launch a new regional survey service called BeHeardCVA. The “Morning News” show was known for […]
By Samantha Baars and Lisa Provence As thousands are celebrating literature at the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville, a less-exalted missive from the nether regions of the internet, threatening ethnic cleansing at Charlottesville High, has closed all city schools for a second day Friday. Around noon Friday, Charlottesville police announced they had arrested […]
Former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu and Charlottesville City Councilor Wes Bellamy have a lot in common. They’re both Southerners who, as elected officials, have gotten death threats for daring to say it’s time for Confederate monuments to go. And they’ve both written books on the topic, which brought them to the same Jefferson School […]