Month: June 2010

Categories
News

UVA receives $35,000 for Ubikes

 On June 17, the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) distributed $21.9 million in grants throughout the state as part of its Transportation Enhancement Program. Of the total, a small part—$35,000—went to a novel bicycle program called Ubikes, currently being studied at the University of Virginia by the Office of the Architect and UVA Parking and Transportation.

 

“Bike sharing is being explored as part of the University’s overall approach to sustainability,” says Rebecca White, director of Parking and Transportation, in an e-mail.

Ubikes began as a student project in 2009 in the McIntire School of Commerce. That year, it was named one of three top projects and awarded $750 as part of UVA’s Sustainability Project Competition.

“We began meeting with University administration to build institutional support,” says Peter Elbaor, a recent UVA grad who worked on the project. “They liked the project in abstract, but the question came down to dollars and cents and how it is going to be funded, how is it going to be implemented, and things like that.” 

Elbaor says that while the University temporarily shelved the program, students shopped around for grant opportunities and finally settled on the Transportation Enhancement Program as a good source of funds. 

“We developed a multi-disciplinary research program with students in the Architecture School to conduct a feasibility study,” he says. “We pushed UVA to apply for the [grant], we wrote the grant and passed it along to the Architect’s office and Parking and Transportation, which ultimately submitted the grant.” 

According to the CTB’s Transportation Enhancement allocations, Ubikes is estimated to cost $590,143. The $35,000 grant will help advance the idea of a bike-sharing program and, according to White, “will assist UVA in defining how bike-sharing on Grounds could integrate into the overall transportation network of the University.”

In essence, Ubikes is a two-wheel take on the Zipcar program—a car-sharing system offered at UVA. Other colleges and universities have already adopted programs similar to Ubikes, such as the University of Oregon’s Bike Loan Program, a long-term bike loan program coupled with educational classes. “As a resource for alternative transportation,” reads the website for UO’s program, “we will minimize our campus and community environmental impact.”

Ubikes has comparable goals. Elbaor says the goal for UVA’s program is to “promote a totally new way of thinking about transportation.” 

“The other real advantage to this is that it can stimulate a cultural shift in urban commuter behavior,” says Elbaor. “Bike sharing is not new.” 

Heather Higgins, spokesperson for Bike Charlottesville, a coalition of local bike advocates, says that while the program is “exciting,” it should devote attention to elements beyond bike sharing, such as public education and maintenance. But if the program is designed to increase ridership, “that’s what we are all about,” she says. 

In the meantime, the grant, which will also generate $8,833 in matching funds from UVA Parking and Transportation, will help the Ubikes program study “the system’s design, station locations, bicycle and pedestrian safety, coordination with transit service, coordination with streetscape improvements, and historic area context,” says White. 

The Office of the Architect will receive the Transportation Enhancement grant in November. Between now and then, White says work will be done to assess “the scope of services for the study.”

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

Categories
Arts

Please Give; R, 90 minutes; Vinegar Hill Theatre

Writer-director Nicole Holofcener seems to get better with every film, and now she’s cruising along the well-trodden path of neurotic New Yorker comedy-drama with grace and comely confidence. 

Catherine Keener and a cast of excellent women star in Nicole Holofcener’s newest low-key emotional rollercoaster, where a family awaits the death of an elderly woman whose apartment they want to expand into.

It should be pointed out that Holofcener’s previous, more strenuous efforts, Friends with Money and Lovely & Amazing, were set very specifically in Los Angeles. It should also be pointed out that Please Give’s view of New York is not the most inviting. But in a way that’s also the beauty of it—the understanding that self-absorption knows no geographical boundaries, and so unites us all. 

At the center of this nonchalant morality tale is an urban family waiting anxiously for the tenant next door, an old woman, to die so that they can expand into her apartment. Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt play the proprietors of a furniture shop whose wares—also typically acquired from families of the recently deceased—vary widely in value, because value itself is relative. 

To get at that apartment next door, the couple first must feign some kind of neighborliness with the unambiguously dour old lady (Ann Guilbert) who lives there—which means making the acquaintance of her two adult granddaughters (Amanda Peet and Rebecca Hall), whom the old woman brought up after their mother committed suicide. The two sisters differ significantly in disposition, but they each have a special stake in what develops, as does Keener and Platt’s daughter (Sarah Steele), who meanwhile has been enduring an especially awkward adolescent moment.

Unfurling as a series of loose vignettes, the film might seem too breezy under anyone else’s command, but Holofcener battens the proceedings with perceptive specificity. Here, plot matters less than empathy for blessed yet restless lives and compassionate wisdom about how even the best intentions can get messy. It’s a small miracle—of casting, of actorly intuition and directorial discretion—that these figures become more endearing even as they become less likable. As their lives get more entangled, we see their gestures of generosity beget humiliation, their pangs of conscience succumb to selfishness. We see our loved ones and ourselves. (Having once meanly quipped that the way to remember Holofcener’s name is to think, “hollow center,” I now acknowledge that the joke—that all-too-familiar ache of emptiness in the middle—is on me.)

Holofcener has a knack for the sort of life slice that can stay with you for days only then to abruptly vanish into the slipstream of emotional memory. The net effect leaves you wondering if what you’ve seen was insubstantial or utterly essential. But in retrospect that seems like exactly the right way to make a film whose business is to ask just what it now means to give of oneself, and to take. 

NEW C-VILLE COVER STORY: Don’t touch that dial

As you’ll see in this week’s cover story, UVA brass seem to believe that if WTJU were more predictable, then it would have more listeners and get fatter donations. Could be. But if a university isn’t the place to experiment with form and taste, then what place is? Read the cover story here, and don’t forget to leave comments.

Speaking of eclectic musical taste, get a load of Russ Warren’s work on our cover. He’s an Albemarle painter, not a radio DJ, but back in the day he was a musical performer. Warren is the seventh artist to create a flag cover for C-VILLE to mark July 4. Click here to read our Open Studio feature with Warren in this week’s issue.

Have a happy holiday, and while you’re at it, celebrate Charlottesville’s musical independence while it still lasts. 

Charlottesville to offer special storm debris pickup

Four days after Thursday’s severe thunderstorm, and 72 residents in the Shenandoah Valley/Western Piedmont region, which includes Charlottesville, are still without power, according to Dominion Power.

The City of Charlottesville has announced a special storm pickup beginning today for both residents and businesses. Residents should place debris on the side of the road for pickup service.

“The City will contract with additional vendors to ensure that the pickup is as efficient as possible but complete storm pickup will likely take several weeks. There is no schedule for this special service and crews will attempt to work neighborhoods several times to ensure a complete pickup,” writes Ric Barrick, city spokesperson, in an e-mail.

For large items, a request to the Public Works Department is required. Call (434) 970-3830 with questions and requests for large items.
 

What Duran Duran factoid would you drop to impress author Rob Sheffield?

In this week’s paper, I’ve written a long update on what’s popularly being referred to as the WTJU "crisis." I’ll do my best to keep you posted before changes to the station are supposed to be rolled out in August. In the meantime, there are lots of places where you read about how DJs and alumni are feeling here, here, here, here, and even right here. Other highlights from this week’s paper include is a review of Saturday’s Hz Collective show at the Bridge/PAI, and review of Nicole Holofcener’s surprisingly great new film Please Give, showing at Vinegar Hill.

But the real reason why I asked you to join me in this blog today is because I need your help. I’ve scheduled an interview this afternoon with Rob Sheffield, contributing editor at Rolling Stone and author of Love is a Mixtape, the bestseller that has lots of nice tidbits about the Charlottesville of yore. We’ll be talking about a new book that he’s written, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, which comes out next month.

Problem is, I don’t know much about Duran Duran, except that "Rio" means "river" and I usually just get hungry like a regular dude. (O.K., that was a pretty lame attempt at writing like Sheffield.) In short, readers, I need your help:

What Duran Duran factoid would you drop to impress an editor at Rolling Stone?

 

First time drying laundry outside

A little milestone this weekend at our house: We installed our retractable clothesline and dried the first load of laundry in the sun.

I’m amazed I’ve never done this before. It was incredibly pleasant, especially when I took the clothes down. Somehow, folding sun-warmed clothes and putting them in a basket that was sitting right on the grass felt like the cleanest activity in the world.

Garments and garden!

I realized I need to develop my technique with the wooden clothespins (or just get others of the spring-loaded clip variety)—it’s funny to say, but those buggers are tough to use! (Draping works OK, but probably not on a windy day.) And, of course, I realized that drying clothes in this manner will indeed be more time-consuming than tossing them in the dryer.

However, I expect the energy savings will make it worthwhile. And, like everything else, it’s all about moderation. I do have a dryer at my disposal if I don’t have time (or sun) to make the clothesline work. Every load I can dry outside is an improvement over our former laundromat dependence.

Who’s using a clothesline? What do you do when the weather’s bad?

Charlottesville director wins big at L.A. Film Fest

Another local man is making a splash in the film biz. Local native J. Clay Tweel first came on our radar when we’d heard he operated cameras and worked as an editor on the King of Kong, the documentary about a showdown between two astounding characters at a Donkey Kong arcade tournament in the town of Hollywood, Florida. Tweel’s latest, Make Believe, won best documentary at the Los Angeles Film Festival yesterday. It marks Tweel’s first full-length documentary effort as director, and it follows similarly nerdy subject matter: it’s a Spellbound-style joy ride through the land of teenage magicians battling to be Teen World Champion.

Read Variety’s coverage of the win and full review here.

Make Believe.

Teresa Sullivan joins committee on research universities

A little more than a year ago, a few members of Congress sent a letter to leaders of the national academies of Sciences and Engineering and the Institute of Medicine. The letter asks that the three organizations select a brain trust to generate 10 ideas to keep American universities competitive in the global research arena.

"The contributions of our research universities cannot be overstated," reads the letter. "But many frontiers remain to be explored, and for our children and grandchildren’s sake, we cannot let our constellation of universities dim."

Helping to lead the charge to the final frontier? Incoming UVA President Teresa Sullivan, who was named one of the 21 members of the committee. Sullivan told UVA Today that "America’s research universities have become a part of the infrastructure of the country, and their well-being is of national significance."

On a sidenote: The National Academy of Sciences investigated the research of former UVA climate scientist Michael Mann in 2006. With Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and UVA slated for an August 20 court date in connection with the AG’s civil investigative demand for documents tied to Mann’s funding, it seems reasonable to suspect that climate research may be one of the issues on Sullivan’s mind.

Charlottesville named great city to retire; new store coming to Barracks Road

Charlottesville was named one of the five great cities to retire by

Kiplinger

, along with Dothan, Alabama; Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, Florida; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and San Francisco, California.

The pros of living in Charlottesville, according to Kiplinger?  “Mild climate, proximity to golf courses, parks and wineries, active art and theater scenes, developed downtown district.”

The cons, you ask? “Above-average cost of living and moderate tax breaks, mid-sized public transit system.”

Speaking of "Developed": Wondered recently what’s going on in the former Goody’s space at the Barracks Road Shopping Center? So did we. Recently, C-VILLE learned the new storefront will be transformed into Ulta, a cosmetic and beauty shop. The back of the former Goody’s will serve as an expansion for neighboring Bed Bath & Beyond.

Construction for the new Ulta store in Barracks Road Shopping Center.

UVA Football recruiting keeps rolling adds Virginia legacy Brandon Phelps

UVA received another out of state football commitment this week as legacy Brandon Phelps chose the Hoos over offers from: Notre Dame, Virginia Tech, LSU, Ohio State, and over 30 others.

We don’t usually cover college recruiting here at C-Ville, but this one is huge! Reminder: a commitment is just that, he still needs to play his senior season, and LSU never gives up.

Phelps’ parents both attended Virginia. According to my sources, Phelps, who is about 6 feet tall and weighs 180 pounds, could be a potential star on both sides of the ball, and he was recruited as an "athlete".

Phelps went to high school at Damascus which is located in Montgomery County, Maryland. Take that Fridge…

Go Hoos. Beat Tech!