Tuesday, August 3
Football follies, Tech style
UVA football coach Al Groh isn’t the only Virginia gridiron general struggling with off-field discipline problems. Virginia Tech quarterback Marcus Vick, who was expected to make a run at the helm this year for Tech, was suspended for the entire season. Vick, the younger brother of NFL superstar Michael Vick, today pled guilty to reckless driving and marijuana possession. In May, he was convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor for giving booze to two teenage girls. Back at UVA, Groh recently lashed out at the media for its high-profile coverage of five players who faced legal trouble in recent months, citing The Daily Progress in particular.
Wednesday, August 4
A few good men and women
With a high rate of calls in 2003 outpacing local population growth, the Charlottesville-Albemarle Rescue Squad (CARS) claims to be the busiest volunteer rescue squad in the nation. To maintain the strength of the 175 volunteer squad, 25 percent of whom are UVA students, CARS today held a recruitment open house at its location at McIntire Road and Route 250. Chief Dayton Haugh says volunteers commit to two years with a minimum of 12 hours of service per week. “It’s a lot,” Haugh says. “We’re always in search of new members.” The commitment didn’t scare off the five people who joined the squad in the first hour of the open house. CARS will hold another open house on Saturday, August 14.
Thursday, August 5
DMB vs. Jessica Simpson
Dave Matthews Band announced its participation in the unprecedented “Vote For Change” tour in support of John Kerry. DMB will join 20 artists, including Bruce Springsteen, R.E.M. and Jurassic 5, in the six-pronged tour through nine battleground states. Today’s New York Times quoted a White House spokesman who called the tour’s presenter MoveOn PAC a “hate-filled fringe group,” and claimed that President George W. Bush supporters include pop stars Kid Rock and Jessica Simpson. In a press release, Matthews said, “A vote for Bush is a vote for a divided, unstable, paranoid America.”
Friday, August 6
Streetcar love
“I think a streetcar is a strong system that could work in Charlottesville,” transit guru Roger Millar said today. Millar, a consultant from the Fairfax firm DMJM+Harris, spent the week meeting with officials from the City, County and UVA, as well as developers and business owners, to suss out a streetcar system along West Main Street. His consulting fee was paid by the local Alliance for Community Choice in Transportation (ACCT). Today Millar delivered a summary at City Hall. The 14th Street railroad bridge presents a major—but not insurmountable—physical obstacle, he said. Perhaps a larger challenge will be convincing people that a streetcar will get people out of their cars, given the trolley’s hit-or-miss service record. “A big concern is the reliability issue,” Millar said.
Saturday, August 7
Venue for anti-nuke groups
Three citizens groups have earned access to meetings over whether Dominion Virginia Power will be allowed to build a new reactor at its North Anna nuclear power station in Louisa County. Dominion, which already has two reactors at the site, is seeking a permit for a third reactor. According to the Associated Press, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has admitted the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League and two Washington, D.C.-based anti-nuke groups to the North Anna proceedings, but only based on two of the six contentions the groups had raised. The public interest groups can challenge a new reactor’s environmental impacts on Lake Anna, but will not be able to raise safety concerns surrounding the reactors or their spent nuclear fuel.
Sunday, August 8
Pot plants bring big felony
While on an unrelated search in the Mint Springs area, two Albemarle police officers discovered 11 marijuana pants, all about two to four feet tall, according to a report on WVIR Channel 29. Forbes R. Reback Jr. was charged with felony manufacturing of marijuana. If convicted of the charges, he could face the hefty sentence of five to 30 years in prison.
Monday, August 9
Virginia is for executions
Virginia has put more people to death than any other state in American history, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The D.C.-based organization has counted 1,369 executions in Virginia, beginning with Capt. George Kendall of Jamestown in 1608, and most recently, Mark Bailey on July 22, the Associated Press reports. Almost 82 percent of those executed in Virginia have been African-American.
—Written by Paul Fain from local news sources and staff reports
Space odyssey
County offices relocate to…the County
The term “COB-Fifth Street” is about to join the local lexicon, as the so-called County Office Building on Fifth Street Extended nears a partial opening next month.
The new Albemarle government digs, located about one mile south of the city, was purchased and renovated to relieve the crunch at the Albemarle County Office Building at the corner of McIntire Road and Preston Avenue. As the county has grown—Albemarle has added 20,000 new residents since 1990—so too has County government, bringing the walls ever closer at the County Office Building.
Albemarle’s Social Service Department was pushed out of the County building four years ago and rents space on Millmont Drive, just off Barracks Road. The Police Department has also struggled with space problems, with many officers being forced to share desks or to work out of their cars.
“It’s been something we’ve been looking forward to for a long time,” says Lt. Earl Newton, the Albemarle Police Department’s spokesperson, of the looming move. “For a change, some officers will have some elbow room.”
Fire Rescue, the Commission on Children and Families, Housing, and the Visitors Assistance Center will join Social Services and the Albemarle Police Department in the move to COB-Fifth Street between September and November. Other County offices will stay put.
Try as we might, C-VILLE Weekly could find few flaws with the County’s plans for the new digs. Though questions loom about transportation to and from the 100,000-square-foot building, the relocation was likely a better option than alternative solutions, which included a costly expansion of the current County building and a new public safety building.
“We’re pretty much on time and on budget,” says Lee Catlin, County spokesperson.
Albemarle bought the Fifth Street facility from Wachovia Bank in November 2002 for $7 million, figuring that historically low interest rates made the buy a steal. Renovation costs are on track for the $3.5 million estimated price tag.
“It’s a big project to move a major part of County government,” Catlin says, adding that the new offices needed “a lot of reworking.”
Kathy Ralston, Albemarle’s director of social services, says she hopes to move all 65 employees in her department by closing for only one day, a goal she accomplished in the department’s last move.
“We’re coming down to the wire in the planning and the organization of it,” Ralston says.
Though Ralston says she’s glad to be moving into the new space, and is looking forward to being located near other County departments, she acknowledges that the lack of public transportation options, particularly for lower income social service clients, is a concern. She says the department is tracking how many people use public transportation to get to her office, and “it’s actually not a huge number.” Both Ralston and Catlin say a new bus line to COB-Fifth Street will likely be discussed during Albemarle’s next budget session.
The move’s impact on transportation for County cops should be mostly positive. Lt. Newton says the force’s current location means officers must drive through Charlottesville to get to their beats in the county, a trek that brings traffic delays and sometimes requires stops to assist at accident or crime scenes in the city. Though the new location might be a longer commute for some officers, it should generally help them to more quickly travel to spots around the county’s 726 square miles.
“It looks like it will be very easy to get on the interstate,” Newton says.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for relocated County workers will be losing city-living advantages. Though employees will have more window views and parking, the lunch options will definitely be less appealing.
“We do a lot of business Downtown,” Ralston says, citing work at the courts. “It just presents other challenges.”—Paul Fain
Handicapping parking
Special interests get the spots, the rest of us get road rage
Jock Yellott is on a mission. The retired lawyer and Market Street resident complains that almost anybody— fromresidents to construction workers, funeral parlor owners to the Albemarle County Sheriff—can place signs that restrict parking, which are then enforced as law with no oversight or public comment.
One of Yellott’s biggest beefs is the way parking spaces have been doled out around Court Square. He says Albemarle Sheriff Ed Robb put up “County Sheriff Parking Only” signs around the courthouse without approval from the City’s traffic department—and without a public hearing that would have allowed businesses near the courthouse to argue that they need some parking spaces, too.
“The problem is that special interests can whisper in the ear of bureaucrats,” says Yellott, examining an Albemarle Sheriff’s van parked in a space marked with both a “County Sheriff Van Only” sign and a handicapped symbol painted in the asphalt. “They can put up a sign that has the effect of law.”
Robb declined to speak with C-VILLE, perhaps because this paper has poked fun once or twice at his claim that domestic terrorism surveillance is the Sheriff’s main duty. “I don’t do interviews with you. You can quote that,” he says.
On August 10, Yellott will present a proposed ordinance to the City Planning Commission that would require public notice and comment before permanent changes to Downtown’s parking landscape can be enacted.
Jim Tolbert, the City’s Director of Neighborhood Development Services, says that signage requests usually pass through the City’s traffic department, but at Court Square, the City engineer made parking decisions “on the fly” to keep construction running smooth on the $3.2 million tourist-targeted renovations. Such decisions don’t involve public comment, Tolbert says, because it might “override good engineering decisions.”
The dearth of Downtown parking is a common gripe, but the issue is a chimera, says Bob Stroh, general manager of the Charlottesville Parking Center.
“There’s an excess of parking Downtown,” says Stroh. “Just go to the Water Street garage. Some people are really asking for parking wherever they want it, whenever they want it, and at no cost.”
Yellott’s proposal also questions how soon-to-open Downtown attractions, like the revamped amphitheater, the Paramount Theater and a proposed nine-storey boutique hotel will affect parking. Stroh hopes the attractions will help people get used to parking in garages—over the next decade, he says the City plans to turn existing lots into mixed-use parking garages similar to those on Water and Market streets.
“Surface parking just isn’t the best use of urban land,” says Stroh. “If you want miles of asphalt, you go to the county.”
Don’t run down the do-gooders
You’re mired in traffic, 10 minutes late for the kids’ soccer game. The light changes, but the jackass on the cell phone in front of you doesn’t budge! Green means go, jerk!
The last thing you want to see at this moment is some do-gooder parading through the intersection, with a sign that says “Say No to Aggressive Driving.” But that’s part of the plan to improve pedestrian safety, according to Len Shoppa, a member of the Alliance for Community Choice in Transportation and a member of the City’s Traffic Safety Work Group.
On Monday, August 2, Shoppa told City Council that in the coming weeks pedestrian activists will appear at three City intersections—Emmet/Ivy, 9th/Market and Cherry Street near Tonsler Park. “Police will be there, writing tickets if necessary,” Shoppa said.—John Borgmeyer
Put another record on
The Black Elks throw the city’s hottest dance party. Sometimes it overwhelms the history
Walk toward Market Street from the Downtown Grille at 11:30pm on Saturday night and the windows of the slightly decrepit brick building at 115 Second St. NW rattle to the base line of Usher’s smash hit, “Yeah.” Taking a time out from the party inside, a couple mills about on the sidewalk. One of them smokes a cigarette beneath the bright light that buzzes above the white door; another talks softly into a cell phone.
Just inside the door, smartly dressed in a three-piece suit, Brother Robert Shrieves perches on his wooden stool on the other side of the metal detector. He has wide eyes and salt and pepper hair, and he inspects each partygoer’s bag as they pass through. Brother John Morris sits around the corner at a small desk manning a yellow legal pad to which each partygoer signs his or her name before handing over $10. Revelers then head upstairs to where “Hot in Herre” bounces off the whitewashed, concrete walls.
Welcome to the Improved Benevolent Protective Order of the Elks of the World, Rivanna Lodge No. 195—home to Charlottesville’s Black Elks.
The Black Elks is the largest predominately African-American non-church organization in the world. It has 500,000 members and 1,500 lodges worldwide. Founded in 1898 by B.F. Howard and Arthur J. Riggs, who was a Pullman porter and former slave, the I.B.P.O.E.W. is a fraternal organization modeled on the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks (B.P.O.E.), which back then was an all-white organization (it integrated in 1976 with a clause permitting segregation should it ever become legal again). To join the I.B.P.O.E.W. you must be at least 18 years old; you cannot have a felony record; you must believe in a “higher being”; and you must be registered to vote.
Charlottesville’s black Elks Lodge was founded on November 24, 1914, and has occupied its present site on Second Street since 1947. Isaac, or “Pete,” Carey has been the Exalted Ruler of Rivanna Lodge No. 195 for the past 22 years.
Tall and middle-aged, Carey sits back in his metal chair, long legs planted firmly apart and recalls coming to this place as a 5-year-old when his parents were members. A former musician, Carey now DJs around town (at the Elks every Friday night) under his club name, “The Real Deal.”
“It was something special at that time,” Carey remembers, “because you couldn’t go in these restaurants down here on the Mall. If black persons in the community wanted to have a gathering, they would have to come here to hold that gathering.”
Dr. Scot French, associate director of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African and African-American Affairs at UVA, confirms that institutions like the Elks were important during the post-Reconstruction, Jim Crow era.
Blacks were “pushed out of the pubic sphere [by conservative whites] and into the black public sphere where they could participate in their own democratic society,” explains French. The Charlottesville Elks Lodge was a local result.
Ask Carey about the current relationship between the local I.B.P.O.E.W. and the B.P.O.E and he bristles.
“Now, I know we don’t discriminate and I wouldn’t think that they did, but I don’t know.” Carey nods his head for emphasis. “They can’t look in my books and I can’t look in theirs… Oh yes, as we are predominately black, they are predominately white…See, we are of the world…the elks of the world,” he says.
Lately, the I.B.P.O.E.W. has had trouble recruiting new members, and Rivanna Lodge No. 195 has not escaped this international trend. Carey remembers the day when the Lodge boasted 185 “brothers” and 200 “daughters.” Today, there are only 84 brothers and 47 daughters.
“It’s hard recruiting young people. If you recruit young people and they find out it’s not an entertainment source like they thought it was, they have a tendency to stop coming to their meetings…” Carey lets the end of his thought drift off.
He is sitting in the sparsely decorated downstairs lounge of the lodge. A refrigerator behind the bar carries Heineken, Budweiser, and Smirnoff Ice. On the bar sit three large glass jars, one filled with pickles, another with pickled eggs and the last with small, pickled hot dogs. On the walls hang framed notes of appreciation from community and church members next to aging photographs of deceased Elks members.
“This is Joanne Green, who passed two years ago,” Carey points out a yellowing image of a smiling black woman. “She was the local directress of our beauty and talent department. Next to her is Wilfred Wilson.”
French says recruitment issues are common, citing Bowling Alone, a book published in 2001 about the retreat of American society in general away from organizations, neighbors and groups. Still, he does concede that, “in a post-segregation society, these [African-American] groups have different roles to play” and that identifying those roles is a challenge.
“The dances obviously are a magnet and if they are interested in recruiting, it makes sense that they would have activities to recruit young people,” says French.
Whether Carey, Virginia’s Elk of the Year, believes in PR, his Lodge’s community works are clearly his pride and joy.
“We don’t use the word ‘club’ because the definition of the word ‘club’ is entertainment, parties. That is not our objective,” he says. “We are an organization which supports the city… any service that we can give to the community we try to provide it.” Those include baby showers for teenage mothers, a computer camp, parks improvement projects, money to churches, scholarships through the beauty and talent and education departments. The list goes on.
It’s pride in this civic history that convinced Harriet Slaughter, who heads the baby shower committee, to join the Elks Lodge eight years ago. “It’s been a long time serving the black community in Charlottesville and all of Charlottesville.” She pauses. “Still does.”
Thirty-six-year-old Button Rhodes has a different perspective. “After a long week you come here to listen to the good music and just relax,” she says. She is not a member and because she already gets what she wants out of the Lodge does not think that she would consider becoming one.
Indeed, it’s the weekend dance parties that make late-night passersby look up and say, “What the…?” Back to the Saturday night in question, it’s now 12:30am and the place is heating up. A disco ball twirls from the ceiling and two blue police lights rotate atop speakers that flank the DJ. At the back of the room, men and women of all ages drink and smoke in metal folding chairs around tables covered by white plastic tablecloths.
Rick Carey, Pete’s son, stands in the doorway surveying the scene. “This crowd fluctuates,” he observes. “Depends on if a hot new place is open. They might not go here for a while, but then they come back here because it’s always happening. It’s the spot you know you can always go to. No fights here. Everybody knows each other.”
Looking around the room, it would seem he’s right. At one table a young man in his early 20s slouches in his seat, sipping on a Coke and puffing on a thin cigar. He nods his head in time to the beat and occasionally leans forward to share a joke with his friends. Behind him, a couple in their mid-30s have set up their own mini bar complete with bulk-size cranberry juice, vodka and a foot-high stack of plastic cups. All eyes are glued to the dance floor, which is a spectator sport.
Out there, a woman in an orange dress and matching high heels gets down with her partner dressed all in black. He lays down on the ground as she boogies over him. Moments later, he’s back on his feet and she’s leaning over, wagging her behind as he spanks her to the beat of the bass. History is the last thing on their minds as whistles and laughter erupt from every corner.—Nell Boeschenstein