Signs that fall is just around the corner: cool evenings, colorful leaves, and last but certainly not least, whiskey! But this is not Kentucky, so we’re not talking bourbon. Two new releases of locally distilled single-malt whiskey are available now. Spirit Lab Distilling, a little warehouse shop on Sixth Street SE, presents the fifth annual […]
It’s been two years since the “Summer of Hate,” and Charlottesville, to the larger world, is still shorthand for white supremacist violence. As we approach the second anniversary of August 11 and 12, 2017, we reached out to a wide range of community leaders and residents to talk about what, if anything, has changed since […]
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 […]
In almost six years of living in Charlottesville, I’ve had two noteworthy encounters with the police. The first time was several years ago, when I left my wallet on the curb in Woolen Mills (don’t ask). A CPD officer not only noticed it and picked it up, he found my email address online and [...]
The City of Charlottesville has set a plan in motion to reduce its carbon footprint—and it’s not messing around. On June 24, City Council unanimously approved a proposal to curtail carbon emissions by 45 percent over the next 11 years and achieve an end goal of carbon neutrality by 2050. It’s [...]
James Alex Fields Jr. sat before the judge, his thick, black hair grown just long enough to touch the collar of his black-and-white striped jumpsuit. The 22-year-old wore glasses, and spent most of Friday morning and early afternoon staring at the wall in front of him as the victims who were [...]
The reliably Democratic 57th District rarely makes for an exciting horse race. Once a delegate, always a delegate, as David Toscano and Mitch Van Yahres before him proved, each easily holding on to the seat representing Charlottesville and the Albemarle urban ring as long as he chose. Not this [...]
After nearly nine months of work, the Police Civilian Review Board is finalizing its initial bylaws. The proposed model would require the city to hire up to two full-time professional staff members to assist the board in processing and independently investigating complaints against [...]
By Bonnie Price Lofton If rainwater doesn’t seep, sponge-like, into the soil around us, it runs away somewhere. In Charlottesville, where much of the ground is covered with impermeable asphalt, it runs into stormwater drainage systems, ditches, and streams that eventually lead into the Rivanna [...]
In the words of Kermit the Frog, it’s not easy being green. Though the Muppet references the color of his amphibian skin, the famous line is a sentiment that also rings true for Charlottesville, where carbon emissions per household are more than a ton above the national average. With 10 tons of [...]
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 [...]
Sandwiched between South Street and some train tracks, the Pink Warehouse has stored various things throughout its 105 years: wholesale food for the Albemarle Grocery Co.; tools for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway; imagination. In 1983, Roulhac and Ben Toledano—an author of architectural [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
By Rusty Gates While swilling chardonnay at a party recently, I fell into conversation with a droll gentleman who had lived in Charlottesville for many years. A friend of my sister, he knew that my girlfriend and I had moved to the area within the past two years. “Where are you living?” he [...]
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 [...]
Sitting on a bench full of pillows at a large, round wooden table she made with her own hands, Bolanle Adeboye smears veggie cream cheese on both halves of a cinnamon raisin bagel. The visual artist is fighting a cold, and her housemate, cellist and songwriter Wes Swing, asks if she’d prefer a [...]
A few years ago, Molly Conger was just your average Charlottesville resident who, to be honest, didn’t pay much attention to politics. Now she’s got more than 20,000 Twitter followers hanging on her moment-by-moment reports on local government meetings, which she’s been live-tweeting since [...]
As he prepares to step down, the founder of the Southern Environmental Law Center looks back on three decades of defending the region’s natural treasures Ambitious and naive. That’s how Rick Middleton describes himself 33 years ago, when he founded the Southern Environmental Law Center, [...]
A 75th wedding anniversary is so rare that the U.S. Census Bureau keeps no statistics on it, Mary Jane Gore tells us. Estimates are that fewer than 0.1 percent of marriages make it to 70 years or more. So this Valentine’s Day week, we tell you about Bill and Shirley Stanton of Afton, who [...]
February is Black History Month, a time when schools across the country dutifully trot out lessons about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks. In 2015, a minor firestorm ensued when Orange County High School students connected the civil rights movement of the 1960s and today’s Black Lives [...]
New Year’s resolutions losing steam? (Or maybe you didn’t make any to begin with?) As we come to the end of a long, cold January, it’s not too late to make a fresh start. From ways to be brave to where to find support, here are 25 simple, mostly-local tips to help you look, feel, and […]
“If Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence,” my 7-year-old asked me the other day, “why did he have slaves himself?” The notion that “all men are created equal” was a radical and noble idea, and it still is, if you take “men” to mean “human beings.” But back then, as I struggled [...]