Month: June 2008

Since September, monthly ridership on the Charlottesville Transit Service (CTS) has been up on average 15 percent over the previous year. We can guess why, right? With gas prices boiling over at $4 a gallon, more and more people are leaving the car at home and hopping on the bus.

Except we’d be wrong. What the ridership data actually indicates is what we Charlottesvillians know in our heart of hearts to be true: It’s all about UVA.

Starting in July 2007, University faculty, students and staff started riding city buses for free, thanks to a $130,000 contribution from UVA. Since then, about 12 percent of CTS riders have just gotten on by flashing University ID. Ridership on Route 7, which runs from Fashion Square Mall to the Downtown Mall via the Corner, has gone up dramatically and caught up with the Free Trolley. Together, those two routes make up two-thirds of CTS riders.

“I think it’s more than just the University, but I do think the primary source of our growth has been University ridership,” says Bill Watterson, CTS manager. “We are a university town, so this is certainly what you would expect.”

Gas prices, of course, can be a blessing and curse for CTS—they get people on the bus, but also increase the costs of moving the bus. “That is the double-edged sword,” Watterson says. “We have an 18 percent increase in our fuel line item for the coming budget year, and hopefully that’s going to be sufficient.” CTS is budgeting about $740,000 for fuel in the next fiscal year, which starts in July.

More transit options may be on the way for localities. CTS is adding buses and routes in August. Amtrak has plans for a new train that would run in the mornings from Lynchburg to Washington, D.C., and vice versa in the evenings, with stops in Charlottesville—a way to get D.C. commuters off the roads and on the rails. And on June 16, City Council heard from its Street Car Task Force, which recommended that the city hire necessary consultants to study the base costs to build and operate the system.

But for public transit, the question always comes back to ridership. And a trip out to the Shell Gas station at Barracks Road yields a lot of bitching about gas prices, but few people who can or would take a ride.

“The distances I drive are so short because the town is so small it wouldn’t really matter,” says Charlie O’Brien.

Tiffany Dimmie, a Buckingham resident, wishes she could ride. “If they had [buses in Buckingham], I’d really take advantage of it,” says Dimmie, who drives a Toyota SUV. “I’m trying to sell my car right now.”

C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.

Pearls are born out of irritants, things we’d rather do without. Some meddling molecule works its way into an oyster and makes a mess of things, and so the oyster does what any respectable venue ought to: It seals the intruder off, locks it up and throws away the key.

In large part, Live Arts seems to’ve done the same with Mother Courage and Her Children following a slightly troubled production of an admittedly demanding play—packed it up and shipped it out. But it’s worth revisiting Mother Courage herself, Live Arts co-founder Francine Smith, who as an actor ingested the tension surrounding Courage and, as director, strung together a fairly brilliant production of Michele Lowe’s String of Pearls.

Lowe’s script runs a 50-year circle around a widow named Beth, a meek woman well into her 70s who is eager to pass along the namesake necklace to her engaged granddaughter, Amy. In what feels like an occasionally uneven series of creative writing exercises, Lowe starts from the pearls’ origin—a gift from Beth’s husband to commemorate the strange and reasonably demeaning sexual act that saved their marriage—and rips through a wealth of owners and half a century in less than two hours. The plot’s appeal to the writer is obvious: It’s a chance to manipulate themes of wealth, beauty and self-worth across 27 characters and a few different social climates. If the occasional vignette lacks a little lustre—a monologue from a shell-shocked Parisian tour guide gets too literal and too erratic—it’s because Lowe’s script for String of Pearls gives each character a depth that can be difficult to resolve in a few pages.

Smith doesn’t have the same luxury as a director but, charged with the none-too-simple task of culling roughly a half-dozen unique characters from each performer, develops each character onstage nearly as reliably as Lowe’s text. Equally worth the praise is the cast of four women who, not counting reliable firestorm Daria Okugawa, are far from regulars on the Live Arts stage. Newcomer Lisa Grant falters a bit in the rushed role of the Parisian but nails the gum-smacking sass of a 1970s suburbanite. Okugawa paces her physical presence to match each of her roles, from the navy-blazered campaign advisor that loses her strand of jewels in a hotel room fling to the meekly excited cleaning woman who discovers the scattered pearls in the same room later. Emily Gibson’s turn as the subdued Beth gives the play’s centerpiece a slow burn, and Karie Miller (see Curtain Calls) turns positive acrobatics as a Boston architect, a crimson-dressed sexpot and a plodding grave digger.

The set—a series of wooden shutters with endless functionality—is another great testament to the execution of Live Arts’ recent “form follows function” mentality (i.e. the there-to-be-demolished living room of The Goat), an incredibly versatile design for the cozy UpStage theater. Succeeding against a challenging, occasionally troubling script like Lowe’s in a small space with a small cast is precisely what we’ve come to demand from Live Arts, but are still so thrilled to receive.

Due to a production error, the caption in the June 10 Restaurantarama [“Foodie forum”] misidentified the person in the photograph as Jaison Burke. The photograph is of Tyler Teass. Our apologies to both Mr. Burke and Mr. Teass for the mix-up.

On a muggy but bearable Wednesday evening, the sun set sharply through the windows of The Bridge, and the music started.

After the framed photos of Nubar Alexanian’s recreated Abu Ghraib were removed from the walls, the fairly fledgling local act Myceum—consisting of Scott Ritchie, a crickity keyboard and an orchestra of pedals—flooded the room with gurgling drones. Atop his sea of pulsing sound floated a recorded recitation of the myth of Jason and the Argonauts. It slithered from a tape player that was part of Ritchie’s setup, surfacing and diving through the morphing sounds like a sonic serpent, and the small but enthusiastic crowd was picked up by the current and intertwined in the flowing sound.

Portland, Oregon’s absurdly named duo Dickhearse: A Discourse on Dick Horse began with one member writhing and trapped amid a mess of metal frames and wires like a fiendish Ebenezer Scrooge while his cohort stood over him in a sagging white jumpsuit, a cross between the Ghost of Christmas Past and the Grim Reaper. The pair soon shed their shackles but maintained the same eerie aura as they conjured frightening tones from guitar and drums via pedals and cymbals amplified with contact microphones. The rest was a mind-wrenching mess of soaring decibels, collapsed drum patterns and the guitarist’s long, stringy, flailing hair.

After those bursts waned and the lights dimmed, the Reaper assumed the moniker Yellow Crystal Star. This set shined brightest, as though it were sonically born from the singular focus of Myceum and the dynamic energy of Dickhearse. His guitar was like a sickle, cutting out sonic layers, stacking them up and finally slicing the scene to pieces in a cathartic wrestling match with his strings and frets.

The Bridge plans to host shows more frequently, and if this noisy, far-out night is any indicator, those with a taste for the eccentric and boundary-busting will find it to their liking. If the stars align, the space could combine the best aspects of deceased Charlottesville spots like the Pudhouse, Atomic Burrito and the Tokyo Rose. Attendance was small for this midweek event, but there were some young faces in the audience, a promising sign for the future. If The Bridge can build a consistent and interesting musical schedule, as with its film and art events, then we have much to look forward to. As a voice once told Kevin Costner: If you build it, they will come.

Dear Ace: Our well-known local author, Rita Mae Brown, writes about cats solving mysteries. There is another woman named Lilian Jackson Braun (note the spelling) who also writes about feline sleuths. Two women whose last names are so similar writing mysteries starring cat detectives—is this the most mind-boggling coincidence ever, or what?—M.E. Yow

M.E.: Ace hopes you don’t mind, but he just wants to share with readers this little fact before he lets the cat out of the bag: On the return address label of our inquirer’s envelope was an image of three kittens in a basket, which Ace thought was not only fitting for this week’s topic, but adorable (if he may be so bold to say so).

Now, as much as your faithful investigative reporter can understand the urge to draw conclusions from coincidental tidbits, he’s gonna have to burst your bubble on this one. After some very intense sleuthing, Ace realized the two authoresses of which you speak are, well, simply two authors, non plus.

Here’s what Ace considers the proof: One, Braun (which Ace feels he must explain is most likely pronounced “brah-n,” not “brown” as you suggest), is 95 years old and writes The Cat Who… mystery novel series. These are infinitely different from the mystery novels that Brown, 63, coauthors with her cat, Sneaky Pie Brown, about a feline detective named Mrs. Murphy. (Ace doesn’t get paid enough to be making this up.) Before Brown was even born, Braun was publishing stories and sports poetry for the Detroit News, and in 1966 published her first The Cat Who… novel—seven years before Brown’s first and best-known work, Rubyfruit Jungle, was published.

Perhaps the most telling bit of evidence, however, is the pictures Ace uncovered of both women. Not only are they scattered about the Web, but they are also printed inside some of the ladies’ novels. This would be unheard of if it were only one woman writing both series. For instance, Carolyn Keene or Franklin W. Dixon, pen names for the same group of writers who wrote the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys detective novels, never printed their picture, because they didn’t exist.

So, M.E., this is a coincidence, though not exactly mind-boggling. The cat detective novel is a widely recognized genre and Brown and Braun are simply two of its most notable authors. Ace wishes he could give you more, but that’s the whole kitten caboodle.

You can ask Ace yourself. Intrepid investigative reporter Ace Atkins has been chasing readers’ leads for 18 years. If you have a question for Ace, e-mail it to ace@c-ville.com.