Happy 15th to the best old RAG of Charlottesville. You truly reflect the town and that makes the C-VILLE the perfect complement to certain (three) local radio stations in town. May your next 15 be as disruptiveto the normalcy of our great townas your first 15.
Brad Eure
Owner, Eure Communications, Inc. (3WV, Z95 and WINA-AM)
Twenty-five years ago, friends and I put together Charlottesville’s first weekly newspaper. No one got paid but many of the friends had jobs at C&O.
Our first issues were mostly ignored. However, some real estate people greeted us with joy because of their hatred of the Left-leaning Daily Progress. Their hatred soon switched to us when they realized that, for the most part, our only neutral section was the weekly calendar of events.
For two years, we produced copy on an IBM typewriter, pasted the copy to sheets and drove those pages to Elkton where they turned into a newspaper. I remember clearlya few years after our editor, Stephen Geitline, telling me that sometime in our second year after an exhaustingweek with little sleep, he found himself while driving to Elkton weeping uncontrollably. I’ve been lucky in the staff of the weird businesses I’ve been in, yet The Times of Charlottesville was the most wonderful group I’ve ever worked with.
Coming from this background, I marvel every week at the layout, news stories and number of ads in the C-VILLE. I wish you all another wonderful 15 years.
Sandy McAdams
Co-owner, Daedalus
Used Books Aahhh, 1989. Those were the days in Charlottesville—when you asked for oil at a gas station you gotmotor oil and a dipstick. Now you get olive oil anda breadstick. I think C-VILLE Weekly had a largehand in this. Like with any other 15-year-old, I’m not sure whether to hug you or send you to your room. Happy Birthday, C-VILLE!
Amy Gardner
Owner, Scarpa
Arthur Miller once wrote, “A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.”Well, the C-VILLE Weekly represents acommunity talking to itself. The creative blend of news, politics, culture and even alittle organized gossip is what makes theC-VILLE Weekly such a remarkable institution in Charlottesville. Having been a professor and political analyst for nearly 30 years, I’ve come to know a thing or two about the press. I can say without a doubt that the C-VILLE Weekly is one of the best community papers in America, which is only fitting for an area as notable as Charlottesville. Congratulations on 15 years of keeping our community informed, and keep up the good work!
Larry J. Sabato
Director, UVA Center for Politics
The C-Ville Review founders sent the first few issues to my father, who had been their professor at Hampden-Sydney College. Those 15 years ago I was fresh out of the Marine Corps, looking for a civilian home—the tone of the paper, the wit and content, is largely what lured me then to Charlottesville, a young man going west.And I have since grown old with the city, and with the paper. If I’ve by broad opining failed to mature, neither the city nor the paper has. Each had been, in 1989-1990, somewhat thin and coltish, somewhat quaint and precious. The two developed together: the paper driving and guiding and informing the growth of the city, the city nourishing the growth of the paper. And if now the Downtown Mall and the rest have attained to a muscular adulthood—culturally, politically, socially—it is owing to the steadying companionship, the symbiotic shouldering and shoulder-to-lean-upon, of the paper. I’ve never UNDERSTOOD 15-year-olds, but I’ve always LIKED them for their boundless energy and ambition andidealisms; maybe this one is older than its years.
Matthew Farrell
Longtime reader, gadfly and impresario,and sometime cover subject
Thinking how best to commemorate C-VILLE’s 15th anniversary, an unlikely memory of my Mom surfaced: a woman who fancied she couldsing. A favorite song, which she regularly and enthusiastically mangled, was “You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me,” and in 1989 C-VILLE brought a new kind of publication to our community.
Irreverent and edgy? Yes. Marching to its own journalistic drummer? You bet. But there was then— and is now—a substantive core. Good writing, hard news, sound reporting, but dedication to the arts and eats. The paper rocks neither from a cushy cradle nor an explosive launching pad— it’s just there. A seductively entertaining and informative read, week after week. A reliable community source to keep us up on the swirling currents that put Charlottesville in the mainstream of what’s happening.
That it has managed to not only survive,but to thrive, in the face of changing timesand tastes, is just one of its triumphs. Happy Birthday, C-VILLE. Blow out the candles on many, many more.
Barbara Rich
Longtime contributor
Here’s to 15 more years of articles shafted and feathered like arrows.
Bullseye and Happy Birthday!
Rita Mae Brown
Author
It is good to know that after 15 years, the C-VILLE Weekly is still around to inform and entertain Charlottesville. As the former owner of TRAX, I canhonestly say that you were always generous with the coverage and publicity of my concerts and business. Without you and WNRN (solid, independent venuesfor promotion), my job would have been much moredifficult. Though I am no longer in Charlottesville,the C-VILLE Weekly finds its way to me via mail sothat I can keep up with the community that will always be near and dear to my heart.
Thank you for the years we shared together.
Happy Anniversary!
“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.”—Victor Hugo
Dana Murphy
Former owner, TRAX
Happy Anniversary to everyone at C-VILLE Weekly. Every week I look forward to your unusual take on unusual stories. Few things add more to a community than a vibrant press.For 15 years you have written about things that no other media outlet has dared touch. You have said things that no one else has dared to say. I commend you on being an alternative voice to the conventional media and wish you another 15 years of success.
Mitch Van Yahres
Delegate, 57th District
Fifteen!!! Those of us fortunate (?) enough to have had teenagerscan only know what it is to have a 15-year-old. But maybe, just maybe, C-VILLE was born 15 years old. Perhaps we should look at it in dog years and you are really 105!!! Certainly you have learned to write much better and more responsibly. A lot of the fun is gone now that certain people have either retired, left town, died, should be in jail or just got tiredof playing the game. But, there is much on the horizon and Charlottesville now is a city ofpossibilities instead of “you can’t do that.” Dreams do come true.
Good luck on the next 105. I hope to still be around.
Respectfully (finally),
Lee Danielson
Developer
Happy 15th birthday, C-VILLE. We’re enjoying your surly adolescence.
Katharine Birdsall
Founding member, Zen Monkey Project
1989—a jump start yearfor both C-VILLE and Live Arts. One creative force feeding another. Theatrics abound! Here’s a toast toold beginnings and thriving creative forces.
Happy Birthday, C-VILLE. I never miss an issue.
Francine Smith
Co-founder, Live Arts
Congratulations on your 15th Anniversary!
In a nutshell C-VILLE Weekly is about responding effectively with truth—sometimes hard-hitting and sometimes gently—to the people’s right to know the truth, especially about life in Charlottesville. Week after week the people of Charlottesville and beyond, like myself, wait with rapt breath for the next editionof this newspaper. It’s hard to imaginewhat Charlottesville would be like without C-VILLE Weekly. This newspaper is also about nurturing relationships throughcommunication, a calling it fulfills honorably.
Uriah J. Fields
Philosopher and social activist
The birth of C-VILLE was nothing short of the birth of cool. Hold your tongues, wolves. Before you cry nepotism, consider this: I’ve grown upliterally fed and clothed by local newspapers. When my family owned The Daily Progress, I dodged spitballs over misspelled classifieds and an AP-heavy front page. Oh, my darling Regress!
As wife of one of C-VILLE’s founders (Bill Chapman), I spend dinners poring over “The Rant,” counting ads in other indie papers and forever asking, “With all these media shouting at us, can C-VILLE Weekly matter?”
Like poetry, you could get by being just a collection of inside jokes for the literary elite but C-VILLE,you are coming of age, baby, and asking to be more than just cool. I’m looking forward to growingold together.
Shannon Worrell
Co-founder, Light House
I can remember sometime early in 1991, Dave Matthews Band was still playing TRAX on Tuesday nights and a reporter came up from a new weekly asking to interview some members of the band. The article was titled “Dave Matthews Band: The Next Big Thing.” I look back fondly because C-VILLE recognized what we had to offer long before the national stage. You have followed and supported us throughout the years and have become an integral part in creating community awareness in Charlottesville. Happy 15th anniversary, have many more.
Boyd Tinsley
Musician
Astro projection
Local astrologer, Gare Galbraith, reads C-VILLE’s horoscope
C-VILLE: You’re 15 now. That awkward age when you want to spend less time with your parents and more with your peers. When you want to be respected for your individuality, but you want to fit in and be like everybody else.
Well, young ’un, let me tell ya: Give up any ideas of conformity. You will make yourself miserable if you try to be like anybody else. You have Sun and Mars conjunct in Virgo—an odd sign—in the 11th House, which is the house that corresponds with Aquarius, the most eccentric sign.
You possess a forcefulness in social causes and group cooperation. You act first and then get bewildered when people don’t follow you immediately—especially when what you espouse is practical and logical. You can envision the big picture and the minute details needed to achieve it.
You have had to make your own luck. With Jupiter opposed by Saturn and Neptune you have had to learn (the hard way, I bet) that the rosy ideals you held could only be achieved by nose-to-the-grindstone work.
Numerologically speaking, your birth numbers are very impressive. The day, 19, adds up to 1 (1+9=10…1+0= 1). The month and day, 9/19, adds up to 1. The entire date, 9/19/1989, adds up to 1. This is quite the mark of a headstrong leader. Just make sure you are being followed before you run too far ahead of us.
On your birthday this year, you have a conjunction of Sun, Mars and Jupiter in Virgo. This means you will have luck in taking dynamic, practical action when promoting logic and common sense. Be true to yourself and you will draw fortune to you. One danger is that you could be seen as nitpicking. The other, with Jupiter, the planet of expansion in your Sun, is that you could get fat.
Happy Birthday!
Gare Galbraith
Gadare@aol.com