Month: April 2006

Categories
Arts

Portico Publications

Portico Publications, Ltd. (“Portico”) is a regional media company based in Charlottesville, VA. Currently, Portico publishes these alternative newsweeklies:

C-VILLE in Charlottesville, VA
Free Times in Columbia, SC
Metro Spirit in Augusta, GA

And these web sites in Charlottesville, VA:
eatsleepvisitcharlottesville.com
cvilleweddings.com

Our mission is threefold:
1. to publish great journalism, along with the best-designed articles and advertising in the market;
2. to serve our customers (readers and advertisers) at the highest level;
3. to have fun

Portico Management Team

Bill Chapman
Chairman
434-817-2749 x 28

Frank Dubec
Vice President Development / Publisher, C-VILLE
434-817-2749 x 47

Larry Banner
Director of Digital Media and Technology / GM, C-VILLE
434-817-2749 x 37

Dustin Boggs
Controller
434-817-2749 x 51

Contact Portico:

308 E Main Street
Charlottesville, VA 22902
Tel 434-817-2749
Fax 434-817-2714

Categories
Arts

Being here

This Sunday night, the Pavilion presents Wilco, one of the most successful and adventurous alt-rock bands on the planet. In 1994, when country-meets-punk legends Uncle Tupelo called it quits, Jay Farrar retained the roots country sound with Son Volt, while Jeff Tweedy took the rest of the band and started Wilco, exploring a wide-open pop music pallette. The band’s first CD, AM, was a foray into British power pop, a la The Faces. Being There and the masterful follow-up, Summerteeth, found the band playing beautifully rendered pop, soul, and Beatley psychedelia. Summerteeth sold badly (by industry standards, anyway) and Wilco’s A&R man, Howie Klein, retired from Reprise the day before Wilco submitted their next album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The label asked for a remix to make it more accessible, but Wilco refused. In a very unusual move, the band was allowed to buy back the master recordings for a fraction of Reprise’s initial outlay. Perhaps realizing how stupid the move was, a second Warner subsidiary, Nonesuch, signed the band and released the record to critical acclaim. In retrospect, the whole affair seems to have been a positive turning point in the band’s career. In the meantime, Wilco has partnered with Billy Bragg for two well-recieved Woody Guthrie tributes, been the subject of a documentary movie and, following Jeff Tweedy’s clear musical focus, continued to turn out a dizzying variety of projects, including a recent live album and 2004’s A Ghost is Born. Despite industry and personnel turmoil, Wilco remains more popular and artistically honest than ever.
    On Saturday night, be sure and get out to The Satellite Ballroom to see Bella Morte, quite likely the second biggest band to make it out of Charlottesville. Lauren Hoffman says that when she was added to Bella Morte’s list of myspace friends, she had 400 add requests on her space the same week. Hoffman, who sang on the Morte’s last CD, Songs for the Dead, will make a guest appearance at The Satellite.
    Opening for Bella Morte will be The Sad Lives of the Hollywood Lovers, a band whose leader says that “the most interesting thing  is breaking free of genres.” Made up of songwriters Mark Shue and Hunter Christy, TSLOTHL takes its direction as much from photographers and directors as other bands. Shue says that movie-makers Anton Corbin and Michel Gondry have a visual style that the band finds very musically inspiring. The band often tries to present visual images while they are playing, and recently played The Dixie Theater in Staunton while showing an experimental film made by one of their friends. The theater sold out, and Shue says that the event was reminiscent of one of those Andy-Warhol produced Velvet Underground multimedia events.
    The Sad Lives began playing at Char-lottesville house parties over the last couple years, but the parties got so crowded that they had to take their act into clubs. The band’s sound is a mix of danceable electronic music and raw rock ‘n’ roll. Their self-produced EP, Silencer, is available at iTunes and Plan 9, and a new video is streaming on their online site. The band has just returned from a Northeast tour, during which they played The Trash Bar in Williamsburg, New York, and The Abilene in Philadelphia.
    If you are in Nellysford Saturday evening and your taste runs toward cabaret, you can catch Doug Schneider singing in the Earl Hamner, Jr. Theater. Accompanied by pianist Greg Harris, Doug will be the fourth musical act in the theater’s Music Performance series. Artists interested in playing the theater, particularly Nelson homies, should contact Boomie Pedersen at 361-1999.

Categories
News

Republicans gear up for CITY elections

Judging by the jovial mood of the six people who showed up for a Republican strategy meeting on Tuesday, April 11, the local GOP is still as small as ever, but the elephants are feeling good going into May’s election for Charlottesville City Council and School Board.

The City’s lone Republican Councilor, Rob Schilling, didn’t show up to what turned out to be a 15-minute meeting. The only order of business was the re-election of attorney Bob Hodous as party chair.

The Republicans have some reasons to feel loose. On May 2, city voters will elect School Board members for the first time in decades, fulfilling a plank of Schilling’s nascent campaign platform in 2002. Charles “Buddy” Weber, founder of the Charlottesville Taxpayers Association, says Schilling’s “excellent retail politics” make him a viable candidate for re-election, though Weber concedes says he can count the Charlottesville Republicans who are “out” on his fingers. Indeed, Schilling seems to be downplaying his Republican affiliation, advertising himself as an outsider who keeps the rest of Council honest with “common sense,” which is his campaign slogan. Everyone wants better schools and safer neighborhoods, says Weber, and “there is no Republican or Democratic way of doing that.”
While local Republicans endorse a lower City real estate tax rate, they’re skeptical about Council’s recent cuts to the rate. Hodous and Weber say that the alleged “cuts” are products of political posturing. They encourage residents to examine the supposed “tax cut” carefully: Yes, you may get a lower tax rate, but beware of the real property tax increase that results, which yields the net balance in the City’s favor, they say.—Amy Kniss

Piggy bank politics

Categories
News

Board gives go-ahead for south lawn

Earlier this month the Board of Visitors approved plans for the $105 million South Lawn project, one the most ambitious building projects in UVA’s recent history.

UVA Architect David Neuman touts the project as an extension of “the Lawn,” the grass expanse framed by Jefferson’s Rotunda and Academical Village. The South Lawn project will create a new, smaller lawn extending from New Cabell Hall across Jefferson Park Avenue on a terrace the size of a football field. What is now a parking lot will be the site of a huge fountain flanked by a glass-walled commons area and a new building that will add 100,000 square feet to the College of Arts and Sciences. UVA plans to tear down New Cabell Hall eventually.
The South Lawn design has been a source of controversy. Last fall, many UVA architecture faculty and other critics signed an open letter to the Board of Visitors criticizing its tastes in “mediocre” traditional architecture and urging more modern designs.
Neuman touts the South Lawn as “right down the middle” of the debate. He notes that the classroom building is broken into sections that make it seem less monolithic, and employs such non-Jeffersonian elements as glass walls and cast concrete. Neuman predicts construction could begin in summer 2007. Meanwhile, some architecture faculty who signed the open letter say they would like to see a symposium on the South Lawn this fall, so people can take a good look at the design and register their comments. “I don’t see any reason that couldn’t happen,” Neuman says.
Also at the board’s meeting on April 6, the Building and Grounds Committee tentatively approved Neuman’s plans for a new $14 million dormitory on Observatory Hill—but not without first discussing what type of windows Mr. Jefferson might prefer if he were alive today.

Categories
News

15-year-old sentenced to juvenile prison

The 15-year-old Albemarle High School student convicted of plotting, with three other teens, to blow up two Albemarle high schools, was sentenced to juvenile detention March 5. The case has been closed to the public and little specific information has been released about the prosecution’s case against the teens. At the 15-year-old’s sentencing hearing, however, some of the evidence finally came to light.
Particularly revealing was the cross-examination of Dr. Eileen Ryan, a psychiatrist who testified on the teen’s behalf. Her testimony showed that the crux of the prosecution’s case were statements the boy made to police. Moreover, according to the boy’s father, the kid made these statements without a lawyer or his parents present. The father also said that none of the guns that were confiscated from the family’s house when the teen was originally taken into custody in February were presented as evidence in the trial.
Prosecutor Darby Lowe, reading from the interrogation transcript, quoted the teen as saying, “We were just going to go to school and kill everyone we knew except for our friends.”
Ryan, who had earlier described the teen as “altruistic, kind and generous,” yet also conflict-avoidant and passive, testified that this inflammatory statement was a response to a hypothetical question. She also said the teen never actually planned to take part in the plot, nor did he ever think the 16-year-old who apparently masterminded it would follow through. The older kid previously pleaded guilty to related charges.
According to Ryan, the 15-year old was caught up in a destructive relationship with his 16-year-old friend, who was bullied and did not fit in at school.
While the father admits that his son made mistakes that led to this ordeal, he says: “When you have a 15-year-old who has not been read his rights, and does not have a lawyer or his parents present, a professional interrogator can have a field day with the kid.”
The boy’s sentence will be determined on May 23, after Judge Susan Whitlock reviews a report from the Department of Social Services. He faces the prospect of being behind bars until age 21.—Nell Boeschenstein

Categories
News

First quarter housing market down 17 PERCENT

Lord! The analogies people toss around when it comes to the housing market.

Forget the bubble: In the first-quarter report for 2006 Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors CEO Dave Phillips says that the current housing market “appears to have jumped out of the fire and back into the frying pan.” In other words, with 615 sales in the first three months of the year throughout the five-county area, things are slowing down. This is in contrast to this same period last year when Phillips likened the market to being “hotter than the Volcano Chicken at Thai ‘99 Restaurant.”
Phillips says 2005 was an anomaly, however. That first quarter saw the opening of the Hessian Hills condo complex off Barracks Road. Full of reasonably priced condos that sold quickly, that development alone added an extra 150 sales to last year’s first quarter, which totaled 741 sales. There was no such boon in the first quarter of 2006, which posted a 17 percent drop. The past three months have instead been “a return to normalcy.”
As for what the future holds, the market is currently slightly biased in favor of buyers, but Phillips predicts this trend won’t last beyond June. Meanwhile, Phillips says condos are the hot property right now, both for people looking for affordable housing and for Baby Boomers looking to downsize.

Categories
The Editor's Desk

Weekly letters to the Editor of C-VILLE

Driving needs

On behalf of Senior Center, Inc. I want to clarify our position on the Hillsdale Road Project [“Hillsdale Could Spur New Building,” Development News, April 11]. Senior Center, Inc. has not “long opposed the Hillsdale Extension” as stated in your article. Our position since the inception of this project is that a well-designed Hillsdale Drive extension would be beneficial to the community and to the Senior Center’s ability to provide programs for area seniors by improving access to the Center. Poorly designed, however, the Hillsdale Extension could severely limit our ability to provide for seniors and make it untenable for us to stay on Pepsi Place.
    Your article correctly states that one of our primary concerns is the need to improve neighborhood safety. Particularly, the design must accommodate pedestrians, bicyclists and mass transit, and improve sidewalks, crosswalks, etc. in our neighborhood. The design must accommodate the reality of a large proportion of seniors living, and utilizing the programs, in this neighborhood.
    Moreover, we continue to ask those who drive through this neighborhood to adhere to posted speed limits (e.g., 25 mph on Greenbrier Drive and Pespi Place), stop signs and crosswalks to ensure the safety of all of us who live in and use the services in this neighborhood.
    Your writer neglected the other primary concern we have. The road design must account for the parking needs in the Hillsdale neighborhood. We, along with the Laurels, and Rosewood Village utilize existing Pepsi Place every day for parking for access to our programs and services that our vital to a healthy community. With our senior population projected to grow by 30 percent in Albemarle by 2010, our Senior Center, a resource for the entire community, must have adequate access to our facility to meet this population growth. Existing parking on Pepsi Place must be retained in order for the Senior Center to meet our mission to involve, enrich and empower seniors in our community.
    As the Hillsdale Steering Committee designs this road project, our Senior Center will continue to work to ensure safety and parking issues are improved in our neighborhood.

Peter M. Thompson
Executive Director, Senior Center, Inc.

Flip the script

Just a short note to clarify the term “flip.” [“Craig Plans to Flip Biscuit Run,” Development News, March 14.] “Flipping” a property means reselling it immediately after purchase at a profit to the seller, without adding any value. “Developing” a property can mean a variety of things, but always requires the developer to add value to the land. This usually means articulating a plan, gathering investors to finance the project, negotiating government approvals and often constructing some or all of the community facilities.
    The owners of the Biscuit Run property have already added value by proposing a plan that implements the County-designed Neighborhood Model, investing in significant engineering, design work and studies, and initiating the public approval process. They are, in a word, developers.

Steven W. Blaine
Charlottesville, VA

The writer is an attorney who represents Hunter Craig, the Buscuit Run developer.

CORRECTIONS:

In the April 11 cover story [“The 2006 Muzzle Awards”] the name of William Paterson University was misspelled.

Categories
News

Vote for Norris and Taliaferro on May 2

How do you see Charlottesville im-proving as a city in the next four years? Is it something that you think much about? I think about it all the time. That’s my job. Charlottesville has a lot going for it, but there are many things that we can improve. One thing that would really help is if everybody would go out and vote for Dave Norris and Julian Taliaferro on May 2.
    Dave and Julian are both running for City Council for the first time, but they both have a long history of pubic service. They are men of action, who have helped individuals on a personal level, and have been leaders of institutions that have made a real impact on the quality of life in Charlottesville.
    I have always been impressed by the way that Julian Taliaferro led our fire department. Julian recently retired after 43 years of service to the city. We have one of the best-rated fire departments in the country, not only for extremely low loss of life and property, but also for its diversity program, which has been cited as a national model. The men and women of the department are professionals who not only respond quickly to an emergency, but also engage with the community proactively, with public education about fire prevention and programs such as free smoke-alarm installation for city residents.
    Over the past decade, the fire department budget has grown at a slower rate than just about any other City department, while providing excellent service. Part of the fire department’s success with delivering taxpayer value is that Julian always encouraged his staff to be entrepreneurial. When it became clear that our old radio system for emergency responders was becoming obsolete, fire department staff took the initiative to secure a $6 million federal grant for a new regional radio system. The department secures smaller grants on a regular basis, and each time it does so city taxpayers save money. When it comes to making the overall city more efficient, Julian has the experience and track record to deliver the goods.

Of course, greater governmental efficiency is not the only challenge facing the City. I believe that one of our biggest long-term financial challenges is to reduce the poverty rate in Charlottesville. That is why the City needs Dave Norris. I would be hard-pressed to think of another person who has done more in the past decade to help people out of poverty than Dave. Most recently, Dave served as director of an interfaith ministry for the homeless (PACEM). In the past two years, PACEM has had a huge impact on reducing the number of unsheltered homeless in the area, and in the last homeless census Charlottesville had zero unsheltered children for the first time.
    Before PACEM, Dave was the founding director of the Connecting People to Jobs Initiative, helping Charlottesville public-housing residents find employment. Dave was also coordinator of the Virginia Economic Development Corporation’s Micro Loan Program for low-income, minority and female entrepreneurs. He has served on the board of MAACA, JABA and many others. Because of his dedication to helping others, Dave was named one of Charlottesville’s “Distinguished Dozen” by The Daily Progress in 2005.
    Dave and Julian are two guys who really know how to get things done. They
are what people mean when they talk about self-starters. Council would really benefit from their kind of leadership. Both have an excellent track record with workforce development, and put a high priority on education, the environment, affordable housing and neighborhood protection. I encourage you to find out more about their work and their vision for
the future of Charlottesville by visiting www.yestocharlottesville.org.
    On May 2, Charlottesville voters have a choice. You can vote for a show horse. Or you can vote for two workhorses. My vote is for the workhorses, Dave Norris and Julian Taliaferro.

Kevin Lynch is a Democratic Charlottesville City Councilor.

You can vote for a
show horse. Or you
can vote for two
workhorses. My vote
is for the workhorses.

Categories
Uncategorized

Other News We Heard Last Week 4/11 – 4/17

Tuesday, April 11
Allen announces re-election bid, blames myopia on dad
Virginia’s junior U.S. Senator, George Allen, officially kicked off his re-election bid in Prince William County today, the first stop of 11 on a three-day tour. Though speculation is rampant that Allen wants to succeed Dubya as the next Republican President, Allen would not address the possibility directly today. The Associated Press reports that Allen places his short-term orientation squarely on the shoulders of his dad, former Redskins coach George H. Allen. “My father ingrained in me, and in his players, that the future is now, and I’m paying attention to the present—the now—and we’ll worry about the future when we get to the future,” Allen reportedly said.

Wednesday, April 12
Motorists spending another 49 cents per gallon this year
AAA Mid-Atlantic reports today that gas prices in Charlottesville, today averaging $2.71 per gallon, are 49 cents higher than they were one year ago and 42 cents higher than this time last month. AAA blames the steep rise on tensions between Washington and Tehran. If Americans spend $247 billion on a war against Iran too, then could we get costs at the pump under control?

Thursday, April 13
Warner needs a dental plan
Blogging today on The New York Times’ paid service, Times Select, legal scholar and political pundit Stanley Fish joins the Hillary-in-’08 chorus. His rationale? Other would-be contenders just don’t measure up, including the man the Times recently dubbed the anti-Hillary, former Virginia Governor Mark Warner. And what’s the problem with a Southern governor who’s a self-made millionaire and widely lauded for his ability to work across party lines while keeping a big budget under control? His teeth (“too many,” Fish declares). Which brings to mind a much-circulated jab at another dark horse, Camilla Parker-Bowles, namely that any (wo)man can ride a horse, but it takes a special talent to look like one.

Friday, April 14
Vanity Fair-Charlottesville lovefest continues
They like us, they really like us! O.K., maybe Vanity Fair only likes some of us, but the May issue, on newsstands today, includes a sealed-with-a-kiss appreciation of Charlottesville architect and onetime UVA A-School dean William McDonough. He is one of eight green architects and designers dubbed “The Re-inventors” in the magazine’s “green issue.” McDonough, who has designed enviro-conscious corporate campuses for companies like Nike and IBM, is planning “entire green communities in China, the U.K. and the United States,” VF notes. In its March issue, the magazine went all gooey for UVA writing prof Deborah Eisenberg, whose new collection of short stories was praised as “comic, elegant, and pitch-perfect.” Check newsstands next month for more updates on other fabulous locals.

Saturday, April 15
Nationals break losing streak, Zim helps
In our shameless pursuit of stories celebrating the first full season of the Washington Nationals’ rookie third baseman Ryan Zimmerman, a former UVA baseball standout, we note that a defensive error on Zimmerman’s sixth-inning at-bat against the Florida Marlins tonight helped push the beleagered team to a 2-1 victory. The win broke the Nationals’ six-game losing streak. Oh yes, 13 strikeouts from Nationals pitcher John Patterson also helped the effort!

Sunday, April 16
UVA TV star advised to sprout some fuzz
On the theory that male TV stars with facial hair—even a mere 5 o’clock shadow—achieve higher ratings than those without, The Washington Post today issues constructive criticism to Benjamin McKenzie, the mid-20s UVA grad who plays 18-year-old Ryan Atwood on “The O.C.” With viewership down to 5.8 million for the Fox program, compared to 19.8 million for “Grey’s Anatomy,” which stars the follicularly fertile Patrick Dempsey, the Post chides McKenzie & Co. “Frankly, we’re surprised that these clever boys of Orange County with their pop-culture smarts have fallen behind a trend. For shame.”

Monday, April 17
Two days deferred, tax time remains harsh
Thousands of last-minute filers realize today that having that extra weekend to prepare their taxes was no benefit, it only makes them feel worse about their slackness as they drive to the post office at midnight. And just to rub salt where it’s really not wanted, we point this out: According to The Washington Post, Dick and Lynne Cheney, taking advantage of special loopholes, will be getting a $1.94 million tax refund this year on an adjusted gross income of $8.82 million. That’s gross all right.

Categories
Living

Fight club

Recalling the exact moment when he was inspired to turn the hills and forests around Charlottesville into a blood-splattered battlefield, where armed horsemen, martial-arts madmen and men with laser guns hunt humans for sport, David Lee Stewart cracks a smile and chuckles, “I guess it started with a cave.”
    Rest easy, Buckingham County residents. All of the aforementioned characters are safely confined to the silver screen (Except maybe those martial-arts men. I’m pretty sure the trees around here are crawling with ninjas).
    Set to make its public debut at this year’s Blue Ridge-Southwest Virginia Vision Film Festival in Roanoke on April 20, Confinement is the latest feature length offering (following 2001’s Concealment) from Stewart, a UVA computer-support employee, amateur spelunker and budding independent filmmaker.
    “It was surreal and it was bizarre,” Stewart says of his first experience exploring the cave near the West Virginia border. “We’re crawling around with hard hats and flashlights way under the ground. [My friend] is walking around showing me all the cool things inside the cave and I’m secretly thinking, ‘How I could I use this in a movie?’”
    The location dovetailed perfectly with an idea that Stewart had been kicking around for years: a survival tale involving people being hunted in a battle arena (a la the ’30s horror classic The Most Dangerous Game). And so Confinement was born.
    Now—three years, one police encounter and countless gallons of costume blood later—Stewart finally has time to relax and reminisce, chuckling over the travails of amateur filmmaking. Shooting in his spare time, and with little or no budget, Stewart had to rely on family and friends in lieu of professional actors. This keep-it-in-the-family approach was not only cheap, but also allowed Stewart an opportunity for a little Freudian venting. “I even gave my mom a cameo,” he says with a devilish grin. “She got shot with an arrow in the head.”
    Despite budget restrictions, Stewart worked hard to achieve a high level of professionalism, meticulously choreographing the movie’s stunts and fight scenes (“We did full contact, except for face,” he says), and rendering the film’s polished special effects on his home computer. Of course, shooting on location without a permit—even in a cave—presents problems of its own. The production was interrupted several times—most memorably when local police and park rangers, sweeping the forest for weekend drunks, found Stewart and company toting realistic-looking prop rifles. The cops insisted that the “weapons” be put away, and the incident delayed shooting nearly three hours.
     But then, no one ever said that being the next Steven Spielberg (or even Roger Corman) would be easy. And Stewart certainly doesn’t plan to slow his march to splatter-film greatness any time soon: After Confinement finishes its festival rounds he’ll seek a distribution deal before moving on to his next project, Containment, which will also be shot in Charlottesville.