Month: May 2012

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The Editor's Desk

Editor's Note: The daily news

5.29.12 Everyone was talking news last week. First, we learned that Warren Buffett was coming to a store near us, and then the Oracle of Omaha delivered a prophecy (in a letter to his editors and publishers) to make a newsman glow.

Later, David Carr, of the New York Times and The Night of the Gun fame, wrote an innocent little story about how the New Orleans Times-Picayune was scaling back to three days a week because its circulation had dropped to half of its pre-Katrina level. Two classic Southern newspaper chains are moving in different directions.

Advance Publications, which also runs the major daily papers in Alabama, is cutting circulation, distribution, and staff and shifting its emphasis online. Media General’s papers, as part of BH Media, are ridding themselves of their debt and doubling down the bet in their markets.

You know the story. The InterWeb set up shop next to the paperboy and started selling for free. According to a publishing audit cited in the NYT story, newspapers have dropped in circulation 20 percent over the past five years. Buffett addressed the trend in his letter, which was kind of a manifesto: “We must rethink the industry’s initial response to the Internet. The original instinct of newspapers then was to offer free in digital form what they were charging for in print. This is an unsustainable model.”

I think everybody understands that you can’t give away content, because content relies on the human beings who gather it and produce it, and you can’t get them for free. Either the reader or the advertiser has to pick up the tab, or they can split it.

Buffett’s exhortation to his own papers, though, points out the complexity of the problem facing daily newspapers: “But American papers have only failed when one or more of the following factors was present: (1) The town or city had two or more competing dailies; (2) the paper lost its position as the primary source of information important to its readers or (3) the town or city did not have a pervasive self-identity. We don’t face those problems.”

Unless that’s the royal “we” talking, I’d argue that the challenge of the Internet is that: A) anyone can be daily; B) daily newspapers have already lost their positions as primary sources of information for younger generations; and C) no town in America has a pervasive self-identity. I don’t claim to know more about this than Buffett; just a reminder that oracles traditionally delivered messages in riddles.—Giles Morris

Categories
News

Green Scene: This week's environmental news

BULLETIN BOARD

Radioactive sunshine: Governor McDonnell’s uranium work group—tasked with studying the potential ups and downs of proposed uranium mining and milling in Southside Virginia—has had its ground rules altered. Now the group is required to allow more opportunities for public input and to make summaries of its findings available throughout the process. Good, but not great, the Piedmont Environmental Council told the Richmond Times Dispatch: Transcripts would be better.

Cash crop: Farmers with old machinery sitting around in their fields can make decent money recycling it, since scrap metal prices are unusually high these days, according to the Virginia Farm Bureau. A container-load of steel and iron might fetch $1,000, and aluminum and copper are worth even more. Derelict buildings with metal roofs are another common source of scrap.

Seeds of knowledge: All Virginia state parks are holding special events for National Trails Day June 2. At Lake Anna State Park, there’s a free guided hike from 11am to 2pm on which a tree expert will lead hikers through the forest, explaining how various trees reproduce. See dcr.virginia.gov/state_parks for more info.

I was walking in the woods today, searching for a lost goat. I had with me a feed bucket, a packet of grain, and a dog leash. It was a little hot for May, and the air was heavy with rain. But the woods smelled good—almost floral, in places.

I’d never walked in these woods before, though they’re right across the road from my house. There’d never been an excuse to trespass before today. Stepping across that invisible boundary—what’s mine, what’s someone else’s—felt delicious, as the land opened its secrets to me, the folded slopes and the old stone wall above the creek and the broken-down trailers listing toward the ground. The walk filled in what had always been a blank space in my mental map. I happened to be under a beech tree’s dense canopy when the rain started, and stayed almost perfectly dry.

That said, I didn’t find our goat. Banging the bucket—a sound she associates with treats—and shouting through the quiet trees failed to make her appear.

As I prepare to hand over the editorship of this page to Graelyn Brashear—and to retire from writing this column and its sister blog on c-ville.com, Green Scene—I’m looking for a handy metaphor to sum up what I’ve learned from all this eco-writing. Here’s one try. Making a sustainable life (as an individual or—why not?—a society) is like the unsuccessful goat hunt. Lots of times, you fall short, and the larger goal feels discouragingly out of reach.

But you learn about where you’re standing. And there’s a lot of beauty along the way.—Erika Howsare

Turkeys and foxes and bears—oh my!
A natural history center has been part of the mission of Nelson County’s Rockfish Valley Foundation since it formed in 2005, and under the guidance of a board of trustees and with the help of local volunteers, the Foundation will open the Rockfish Valley Natural History Center on Saturday, June 16.

Foundation president Peter Agelasto said Nelson County’s natural resources and historic geology make it one of the “more interesting places in the state,” and the Foundation’s focus is on the education and preservation of the area’s natural history.

The board and the executive director of the Virginia Museum of Natural History, located in Martinsville, agreed to help create a pilot museum, and worked out a plan to move Martinsville exhibits to the new Rockfish Valley Natural History Center, housed in the former Wintergreen Country Store on Route 151.

“They have resources to create really interesting exhibits,” said Angelasto, adding that he hopes the center will eventually get enough momentum and support to create its own permanent exhibits. The challenge will be to continue attracting volunteers and donations, he said, because they don’t have any paid staff.

The center’s inaugural exhibit will feature a number of hands-on materials and activities for children, like animal pelts, a dugout canoe, and camouflage face-painting, as well as displays of native animals, including a giant black bear, wild turkeys, and fish. Agelasto said the first exhibit will include “lots of education about living off the land, for people who are so used to just going to the grocery store.”

Special features of the center will include a virtual classroom connecting viewers to a curator and researcher at the museum in Martinsville, and outdoor activities that go hand-in-hand with the indoor exhibits, like geocaching and other trail puzzles.

“We think we’re a very important part of the Nelson 151 Trail,” said Angelasto. The Nelson 151 Trail is home to seven wineries, three breweries, a number of bed and breakfasts, and Wintergreen Resort, and he said the Center will offer a unique, well-rounded experience for tourists who come to the area for other attractions.

“People should not come out here without enjoying the trails and exhibits at the Natural History Center,” Angelasto said.—Laura Ingles

 

The Rockfish Valley Natural History Center by C-Ville Weekly on Mixcloud

 

Growers and eaters together
Several small family farms started the Firsthand Farmers Cooperative last year. We operate a diverse CSA program in Charlottesville and Lexington. I was asked recently about my reasons for founding this alliance, and realized the present and future of farming food informed my answer.

In the global economic system, there is little future for independent small farmers. The movement of capital and gaining profit supersede the needs of those who produce and eat real food, and small farmers struggle to remain financially solvent in the face of food commodification and corporatization. In other parts of the world, particularly India, many farmers commit suicide, driven to debt and despair by global trade of food and agricultural inputs like GMO seeds and fertilizer. In the U.S., few small farmers can support a family on farm income alone.

Globally, farming and craft communities trend toward cooperative organizing because there is greater security and ability in guilds of craftspeople to reach markets and provide mutual support. (In recognition of this movement towards cooperation, the United Nations has declared 2012 the “Year of the Cooperative.”)

The Charlottesville area is an excellent place to be a farmer because many eaters are enthusiastic about good food and support our craft—one based on skilled work, blessed by serendipity, and supported by community. The value of this craft goes far beyond the monetary trade. Eaters realize the benefits of our food: excellent nutrition, better health for people and the environment, a stronger local economy, and a more cohesive community.
By developing collaborations between small farmers and happy eaters, we strengthen this good food movement. It is incumbent upon small farmers growing for local eaters to provide the finest food we can, and to set an example for the way we wish our community to organize and revolve around food. We encourage our community to become involved with its farmers and to choose food that has value beyond what is paid for it.

We develop our alliances and community-based models of interdependence, such as cooperatives and CSAs, with the intention of providing excellent experiences for farmers and eaters. We farmers and eaters are in this for a lifetime; let’s plan and work together to increase our benefits. Ask your farmer how you can become more involved, or suggest ways in which your farmer can engage your community. By innovating together, we can overcome challenges faced from those corporate entities we do not wish to emulate or support, and provide great food to a wider more connected community.—Mark Jones

Mark Jones grows mushrooms and useful plants at Sharondale Farm in Cismont, Virginia, and is a founding member of the Firsthand Farmers Cooperative.

Categories
Living

The joys of eating: Chefs’ dirty little secrets

Chefs and bakers may have an elevated palate, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a weakness for junk food and drinks—especially after a long night when gourmet is the last thing on their minds. Here are some of our finests’ dirty little secrets.

Ian Boden of Blue Light Grill: Corn chips with pump nacho cheese and Miller High Life

Brice Cunningham of Tempo: Almond Joys and a Coke

Mark Gresge of l’etoile: Funyuns Onion Flavored Rings and Steel Reserve tall boys

Justin Hershey of Zinc: Zatarain’s Jambalaya with Hickory Farms beef kielbasa and a Coke

Brian Jones of Petit Pois: Raw cookie dough and Country Time lemonade

Michael Keaveny of tavola: Ben & Jerry’s Milk & Cookies and Kelt Cognac

Tara Koenig of sweethaus: Two Double Stuf Oreos sandwiched together (thus, quadruple stuffed) and cans of Hawaiian Punch

Jeanette Peabody of Hamiltons’: Mint chip ice cream and salty dog cocktails

Jenny Peterson of Paradox Pastry: Classic Lays and fountain Diet Coke

Tomas Rahal of Mas Tapas: Blueberry spudnuts and Steaz green tea with mint

Charles Roumeliotes of Orzo: Almond M&Ms and Honest Tea

Tyler Teass of Clifton Inn: Riverside bacon cheeseburgers and Bud Light bottles

Angelo Vangelopoulos of Ivy Inn: Takis fuego-flavored corn chips from La Michoacana and Corona

Tucker Yoder of Clifton Inn: Pizza-flavored HotPockets and Pabst Blue Ribbon

What a chef wants
With everything from Afghani to Turkish already represented (and with pho and meatballs on the way), the chefs in our area eat way better than is typical for a small town, but that’s not to say that they’re completely satisfied. Here’s what they’re craving—and wishing that someone else would open.

Winner:
Neapolitan-style pizza (like 2Amys in Washington, D.C.)

Runners up:
Wine and cocktail bar with charcuterie
and cheese
Greek restaurant
Mussels with Belgian-style fries
New England-style clam shack

Chef’s day off
Orzo’s chef Bryan Szeliga and his wife moved here from Portland last summer, and while his days off are few and far between, he’s enjoyed eating and drinking his way around town. Here’s his ideal day of relaxation and consumption.

“First I’d walk to the Downtown Mall with my wife and dog to grab a caramel soy latte from Java Java. Then, we’d have brunch at l’etoile where I’d order the Virginia Ham Eggs Benedict. I’d make a brief stop at home to watch some college games. Then, my wife and I would ride bikes to Keswick Vineyard (I like their rosé) before heading back to the Mall for people-watching over Zocalo’s Black Bean and Corn Relleno. A quick swim in the pool would get my appetite going again and I’d hit Ariana for chickpeas and flatbread, then sports and a bourbon-barrel stout at Wild Wings. I’d cap off the night with vanilla and brownies at Arch’s.”

Categories
Arts

The Dictator; R, 83 minutes; Regal Downtown Mall 6

 

 

Sacha Baron Cohen goes on the offensive in The Dictator, a political farce smudged by comedy and romance.

 

The tale of how Admiral General Aladeen became President Prime Minister Admiral General Aladeen is not one for the ages. As told by The Dictator, it is basically the story of a flabby political farce about oppressive narcissism meandering uncertainly into romantic comedy.
Sacha Baron Cohen not being your go-to guy for rom-com is one reason to find it amusing. Another is the notion of rapacious world leader as portrayed by a chronic boundary overstepper. Neither is quite reason enough, but the movie does have its funny moments, and also grace enough to get itself over in less than an hour and a half.

Hailing from the fictive oil-rich North African nation of Wadiya, Aladeen lives large among gold-plated Humvees and nuclear ambitions, by day ordering capricious executions and by night adding snapshots of celebrity sexual conquests to his wall of Polaroids. (Quick, mute cameos are among the movie’s deadlier weapons.) And yet, for all his prowess, he goes woefully uncuddled.

Then he goes to New York, where he finds himself betrayed by a senior advisor (Ben Kingsley), kidnapped by an American agent (John C. Reilly), replaced by a simpleton (Baron Cohen again), reunited with a sacked scientist countryman (Jason Mantzoukas) who’s now a Mac Genius (“Mostly I clean semen out of laptops,” the disgruntled former subordinate reports), and accommodated by the peace-activist manager of Brooklyn co-op (Anna Faris), who neither shaves her armpits nor seems to mind being called “lesbian hobbit” or “little boy in a chemo wig.”

This is a lot for our dictator to take in, and many possibilities glitter before him. Democratization is afoot, at least in the sense that Baron Cohen is an equal-opportunity vulgarizer: With this brazen autocrat thus ensconced in a stronghold of the smugly progressive, the way is paved for duelling caricatures of entitled, adolescent-minded tyrants. Dully, the result is a draw —more like a knockoff of some Adam Sandler movie, with requisite tugs at heartstrings and other body parts. (Although admittedly the masturbation montage, complete with footage of Forrest Gump in physical epiphany, is inspired.)

The director is Larry Charles, who also directed Baron Cohen in Borat and Brüno before this, mostly by turning him loose like a bull in the China shop of how we live now. The Dictator, too, is situational and vaguely improvisatory, but also obviously scripted and rehearsed. It’s culture-clash ambush with the safety left on. Adding a despot to Baron Cohen’s stable of blustery imbeciles seemed nervy and necessary, but the resulting movie does not. Earlier, his way of taking aim at too-easy targets made us complicit in their exploitation, and that’s just the sort of tension this effort needs and lacks.

Although dedicated “in loving memory of Kim Jong Il,” The Dictator also recalls Charlie Chaplin, who in 1940 saw history coming and sezied a very specific opportunity with The Great Dictator. Both movies culminate in big speeches—Chaplin’s a portentous refutation of earlier silence, Baron Cohen’s, oppositely, a rally for autocracy that’s really a sly critique of debased democracy. In this toothless, talking-points satire we see how history advances: from the heart-on-sleeve to the nearly heartless.

Categories
News

The Odd Dominion: Judge not, lest you be judged

 

Republican Delegate and candidate for U.S. Senate Bob Marshall was one of the more vocal opponents to the judicial appointment of openly gay Richmond prosecutor Tracy Thorne-Begland earlier this month. (Photo credit: Marshall campaign) 

 

Look, we understand that our beloved Virginia has long been one of America’s most schizophrenic states. This is, after all, the crazy little Commonwealth that helped elect Lyndon Johnson, the driving force behind the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the exact same year voters returned Senator Harry Byrd, Sr. (a powerful Democratic ex-governor who orchestrated “massive resistance” to school integration) and Representative Howard Smith (a recalcitrant racist and longtime civil rights obstructionist) to Congress.

Still, as we look back at the recently concluded (and incredibly fractious) General Assembly session, we cannot help but marvel at the growing divide between Virginia’s national and state-level political proclivities.

Consider this: During a week in which President Obama (who currently enjoys a solid polling lead over Mitt Romney in the Old Dominion) came out firmly in support of gay marriage, Virginia’s House of Delegates blocked the judicial appointment of Tracy Thorne-Begland, a decorated Navy fighter pilot and well-respected Richmond prosecutor who just happens to be openly gay.

While Republicans in both chambers attempted to excuse their bigoted behavior by citing Thorne-Begland’s decades-old challenge to the military’s (now defunct) “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, as well as his role as a gay rights advocate, they weren’t fooling anyone. And if any doubts remained about the true source of their objections, Delegate Bob Marshall—a U.S. Senate candidate and one of the prime movers behind the homophobic smear campaign (he kicked it off by labeling Thorne-Begland “an aggressive activist for the pro-homosexual agenda”)—soon made his anti-gay bias clear.

“Sodomy is not a civil right,” he insisted to CNN’s Brooke Baldwin. Pressed as to what sort of judicial activism Thorne-Begland might engage in, Marshall came up with a ludicrous scenario in which a gay judge might let his emotions influence his decision-making while adjudicating a “barroom fight between a homosexual and heterosexual.” (You could almost envision a tearful Bob Marshall on YouTube, screaming “Leave the gay-bashers alooooone!”)

He also repeatedly invoked the man’s domestic life, claiming that “he holds himself out as being married” (Thorne-Begland lives with his longtime partner, and they are raising two children together), and that since gay marriage isn’t legal in Virginia, “his life is a contradiction to the requirement of submission to the constitution.”

If all of this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. These are the same sorts of morally indefensible arguments that were made during the Jim Crow era to deny blacks the rights and privileges accorded to whites. In fact, when Gregory Swanson, the first black man to attend UVA’s Law School, first applied for admission in 1949, the Board of Visitors denied his application with disturbingly similar language: “The applicant is a colored man. The Constitution and the laws of the State of Virginia provide that white and colored shall not be taught in the same schools.”

This is bigotry, pure and simple, and the citizens of Virginia deserve better. With any luck, the six sitting judges of Richmond’s Circuit Court will grant Thorne-Begland an interim appointment to the bench, which would lead to another confirmation vote in front of the full Assembly. Perhaps by then, the small-mindedness and cowardice that marked this shameful episode will finally be replaced by courage and common sense.

But knowing this crew, we’re certainly not counting on it.

Categories
Living

Town & Country: Big Fun, Scottsville punk, and Charlottesville in the ’90s

From left: Jessika, Peggy, Zachary, Sara, Shira, and Ray hang out on the Big Fun front porch in April 1996. (Courtesy Big Fun Glossary)

Big Fun: Zachary was heard answering the telephone “Big Fun,” and quickly that name stuck as the name for the isolated yellow house in the middle of the blowing field on Fairview Farms north of Scottsville, Virginia, wherein lived The Pegger, Sara, Jessika, Zach, and Josh.

Sometime in the late ’90s, while searching online for information on getting high via over-the-counter drugs, I stumbled across a bizarre website detailing the adventures of a bunch of punk rock kids living in a big house in the country, right outside my hometown of Charlottesville. The website was called The Big Fun Glossary, an alphabetical list of terms and definitions and tales of “impromptu punk rock concerts, Dextromethorphan chug-fests, Nomadic Festivals, nazi skinheads, and (most importantly) record alcohol consumption.” It was something I’d dreamt of finding for a long time—a perfect bohemian scene hidden right in my backyard. Only, by the time I’d found it, it was already gone. All that remained was this crazy website.

SEE FOR YOURSELF:www.asecular.com/bigfun

Have you ever had a period in your life, be it several years or a single day, when, in retrospect, everything that happened seems to have been of utmost importance? Despite the drama, the craziness and perhaps the very real harm that was done, looking back it all seems so beautiful and golden that you wish you could keep it forever, like a flower frozen in amber.

The Big Fun Glossary captures just such a moment: “state-of-the art youth hedonism” as practiced in Charlottesville in the mid-’90s. It reads like a reality show version of On The Road, a devil’s dictionary filled with gossip, social criticism, and philosophical musings, where people with names like Morgan Anarchy and Diana the Redhead live in a state of enlightened poverty and angry joie de vivre, hoisting jugs of cheap wine like weapons in a war against the straight-laced forces of oppression.

UVA: At Big Fun, UVA is seen more as something to be mocked and exploited than revered and attended. Part of that mocking was well accomplished the night that Morgan, Ray, and others thoroughly spray painted the Rotunda, the holiest of holies wherein lies a copy of (drum roll) the Declaration of Independence, signed by Thomas Jefferson on July 4th, 1776 (a fact that makes the United States of America a Cancer).

This particular moment in time began in the fall of ’95 and ended in the summer of ’96, a roughly eight-month period that Gus Mueller, the author of The Big Fun Glossary, now sees as a turning point in his life. Banned from Oberlin College for lighting his dorm room on fire, the 27-year-old was living on his parents’ farm outside of Staunton. Bored and broke, he began driving over the mountain to Charlottesville, where he met Jessika, Sara, and Peggy, three refugees from suburban Pennsylvania, aged somewhere around 19, known collectively as the Malvern Girls.

Having been kicked out of several residences in town owing to the noise, fights, and general chaos that seemed to follow them wherever they went, the Malvern Girls decided to escape to somewhere isolated, a punk rock Walden where they could pursue inspiration and intoxication without anyone bothering them. They found what they were looking for just north of Scottsville: a two-story, yellow farmhouse in the middle of a field that became known as Big Fun.

There might be a God after all: On days following the use of Tussin, the weather always seems to be warm and sunny, even though most of the winter of ’95-’96 has been horrible. For some reason, the Gus feels pleasant and content after a night of Tussin abuse, and he is given to saying such corny things as “there might be a God after all.”

Gus has always compulsively documented his life, largely through daily journals he’s kept since basically forever, but also by painting and the creation of countless websites. When the Malvern Girls and their motley crew moved to Big Fun, “[t]hings,” the glossary tells us, “gravitated increasingly towards anarchy,” an anarchy that Gus began to immediately try and capture. “I was fully immersed, of course,” he said. “I wasn’t completely remote. But it definitely felt like it was a project for me.”

The denizens of Big Fun seemed to have their own language, an ever-evolving argot with a heavy emphasis on astrology. Gus began collecting interesting words and phrases and laying them out in the form of a glossary. The fall of ’96 was warm and beautiful. Gus would arrive for the weekends loaded with provisions filched from his parents’ kitchen. There was a “disastrous” housewarming party, and trips into Scottsville to frighten the locals. The drug of choice at Big Fun was Tussin DM, an over-the-counter cough syrup containing Dextromethorphan, which in large quantities causes a dissociative, hallucinogenic high. Many days were spent under its influence wandering through the woods and exploring abandoned houses. “When you’re on Robitussin,” Gus said, “everything feels like you’re in The Wizard of Oz.”

Glossary, The: Opinions on the glossary are varied. Sara Poiron, who resents her definition, has said “I hate the glossary.” When Jessika let everyone at the C&O read an earlier version of the glossary, they all said the same thing, “That guy sure has a lot of time on his hands.” Jessika’s mother found the glossary useful because it built a linguistic bridge across an otherwise uncrossable generation gap

At first the glossary contained only 150 words. Sneaking into the UVA computer lab, Gus would print out copies and hand them to various people to read. The glossary is hilariously unfiltered. Real names, real opinions, even real e-mail addresses are used. Some complaints were registered. Aaron the SHARP (Skin Head Against Racial Prejudice) threatened to break Gus’ hands, although he never did. Most definitions were left unchanged with the complaints added in italics. “When you write something about people, nobody’s going to be happy with it,” Gus said. “I mean, I’m going to hate this thing you’re about to write.”

In May of ’96, local musician Jamie Dyer used his job at Comet.net to put the glossary on the Internet. The Web was still in its infancy then, and the first digital iteration of The Big Fun Glossary was one long page with almost no pictures. Still, it was thrilling for Gus to see his work online. “The Web,” he said, “was amazing to me in those days.”

Gus also got a job at Comet.net. Tasked with staying up all night to guard the computers against catastrophe, he was basically paid to work on the Big Fun Glossary. “They were paying me $6 an hour,” he said, “so they didn’t expect much.”

Tattoo: Everyone thinks ‘Big Fun’ would be a good tattoo, but what would it be like having that on your arm even 10 years from now? And ‘Big Fun” just invites trouble when we inevitably end up in prison.

The finished website contains 666 terms, lots of pictures and no ads. It’s a sprawling, labyrinthine entity, filled with internal links enabling the reader to navigate by whim, moving from word to word with no need for a beginning or an end.

Matt Farrell, owner of Hypocrite Press and himself part of the Big Fun scene, has turned the website into a book called Concerning Big Fun, purchasable from lulu.com. But to truly experience the glossary, you should follow the advice at the bottom of its introduction: “This is a post-modern work whose design encourages jumping around and even accidentally missing parts. Whenever one reads anything, one zones out and misses parts, so missing parts of this literature is not something to lose sleep over.”

Punk rock: Idealism has been seen as ineffective (just look at the ’60s, man!), and the only solution is to withdraw from society. For example, at Big Fun, news is completely ignored and any new weather system that comes through is a complete surprise. Should the fascists take over completely (and they almost have), no one at Big Fun will be aware of it until the tanks come rumbling down that long dirt driveway.

A host of problems contributed to the end of Big Fun, but the biggest was the record-breaking cold that winter.

“People were just kinda like wearing lots and lots of layers under blankets, with electric space heaters blaring in their rooms with the door shut,” Gus said. “Their electric bill one month was like $2,000. …So they just didn’t pay it, ’cause that’s what you do when you’re 19 and you have an electric bill you can’t pay. And so then another month came and they didn’t pay that one, and eventually the electric company turned off the power.”

“It was just unlivable. No toilets were flushing, they were shitting in the woods.” And so everyone went their separate ways, and the Big Fun moment was over.

Big fun: A state in which for the most part all the people participating in an event are not bored, angry, sad, or asleep. When big fun is obviously no longer present, it is customary for Sara Poiron to say, “big fun has left the building.”

Gus is now 44 and living in upstate New York, where he’s a database developer. His wife Gretchen is a poet and teacher at Bard College, helping local prison inmates get degrees. They do not have children (they’re “philosophically opposed to reproduction”), but they do have five cats and three dogs. When asked where he was educated, Gus is fond of answering, “At Big Fun.”

If you were alive and young in the ’90s, The Big Fun Glossary rings astonishingly true. It is, I firmly believe, a lost Gen X classic about a small but vital part of Charlottesville’s history. But even if you never had a mohawk or listened to Nirvana, there’s much to enjoy and learn swimming down its chaotic streams. The Big Fun Glossary is a field guide to joyful anarchy and a perfect portrait of a long gone, golden moment.

Categories
Living

Small Bites: This week's restaurant news

Up for swapsies
Hit up the second Cville Swaps on Sunday, June 3, bearing any homegrown, homemade, or foraged-for items and get some in return. Loot includes baked goods, jam, pickles, granola, eggs, pasta, sausages, fruit, veggies, perennials, seeds, and homebrews. You’ll find out the time and place when you RSVP to cvilleswaps@gmail.com and tell them what you’re bringing.

Cinco de Maya
Maya turns five in June and is celebrating by returning to its June 2007 prices. For the months of June and July, all food will cost what it did when the restaurant opened—like New York strip for $24 instead of $29, the fried oyster appetizer for $9 instead of $11, and all of your favorite sides for $4 instead of $5. Take that, inflation.

One tasty pit stop
The Batesville Country Store that closed last year because of zoning violations, has reopened as Plank Road Exchange under new ownership. Aris and Jessica Cuadra, who ran the Victorian Inn in Luray, opened the “café-market” last month and are making sandwiches to order, salads, and baked goods, with an ABC license, live music, and chef dinners in the works. The market sells cheeses, produce, and packaged goods, making it a handy stop on the way home.

Breakfast by the creek
Moore’s Creek on Monticello Road (next to U-Haul) has become Brenda’s Restaurant By the Creek, and is serving up Southern food and hospitality from 7am until 3pm (8pm on Thursdays and Fridays). Get breakfast all day—like scrapple, eggs poached to order, or the Country Boy’s feast (your choice of tenderloin, pork chop, country ham, ribeye, or salmon cake with two eggs, a side, and bread). Dinner options include favorites like Philly cheesesteaks, spaghetti, meatloaf, and that elusive classic—homemade pie.

Wintergreen sold to Greenbrier parent company

After years of financial hardship and a soured tax deal with the state, Wintergreen has announced it’s being acquired by James C. Justice Companies, Inc., a coal company that also owns the upscale historic Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia.

L. Allen Bennett, Jr., chairman of Wintergreen Partners, Inc., announced late last week that the Nelson county ski resort had signed a merger agreement with Justice that will give the company control over the 11,000-acre property.

Justice president and CEO James C. Justice II said in a press release that he plans to "take this property to the next level," and is looking to develop new membership programs and vacation packages.

The deal has been approved by Wintergreen’s board of directors, and goes before its Class A Equity members June 24. The resort said it expected to close the transaction before the end of June.

In April, Wintergreen settled with the state over a questionable land assessment that initially netted the resort $4.6 million in tax credits. The state claimed the land wasn’t worth nearly the $11.5 million it was assessed at, and while details of the settlement weren’t revealed to the public, Wintergreen called the outcome "favorable."

Just weeks after reaching the agreement with the state, the resort announced it was examing several "strategic options," including a partial or total sale.

According to a Forbes profile, James Justice II is a billionaire whose family made its wealth in coal mining in West Virginia. His company now runs commercial grain farms in several southern states, and still has coal mining operations in Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and bought the Greenbrier in 2009 when the resort was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Categories
Arts

Preview: Steve Martin brings his serious bluegrass to Charlottesville

Steve Martin will be pickin’ and the audience will be grinnin’ when he takes the Pavilion stage Saturday alongside the Steep Canyon Rangers. (Publicity Photo)

After years of creative success in TV, film, theater, and print, Steve Martin has found a meaningful, and somewhat unlikely, new home in the world of bluegrass music. His dedication to the banjo has resulted in two acclaimed albums since 2009, a Grammy Award, and what looks to be a long-term collaboration with one of the best young bands in the genre, the Steep Canyon Rangers. Together they will take the stage at the nTelos Wireless Pavilion on Saturday for “an evening of bluegrass and comedy.” Martin (currently rehearsing the music for Shakespeare in the Park) recently took a break to speak about his musical endeavors, and it was clear that while the comedy alone is worth the price of admission, the music is truly the main event. Martin’s star power may bring a much broader audience than the genre is accustomed to, but he earned his bluegrass credibility through hard work and a true appreciation and understanding of the tradition.

The banjo was a mainstay in Martin’s stand-up career from early on. He capitalized on the novelty of the instrument, fitting it seamlessly into his bizarre, genius tapestry of humor, while playing it incredibly well. A true student of the banjo, he forged connections in the bluegrass world, ultimately recording with the greatest icon of them all, Earl Scruggs. They collaborated on the 2001 release, Earl Scruggs and Friends, stoking Martin’s creative fire to play and write music. Several years later, a connection with banjo legend Tony Trischka led to working together on Trischka’s acclaimed Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular, released in 2007. The record features some of the biggest names in the banjo world, and Martin’s contribution is a highlight.

It wasn’t long before he was working on his own album, The Crow: New Songs for the 5-String Banjo. Released in 2009, the album took home the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album, solidifying a new path for Martin as a serious writer and player. When his agent called to say it was time to go on the road, Martin said the prospect was “terrifying, because I hated going on tour.” Traveling the stand-up circuit was solitary, often difficult, and he shied away from it despite his recent musical recognition.

Enter the Steep Canyon Rangers, a young band from western North Carolina making significant waves on the bluegrass scene. Their connection to Steve Martin (initially arranged by his wife Anne, a friend of the band) was perhaps the key ingredient in the musical transformation from studio to stage. After a few jam sessions and informal appearances with the band, the chemistry was obvious and a number of tour dates were scheduled on the heels of The Crow’s release. Touring became a completely new experience for both parties. “It’s been a gift for me to luck into a great band” he said with tangible enthusiasm. “We’ve grown together as a group. I play for audiences that know bluegrass and audiences that don’t, and they are always blown away by the Rangers.” Their sound complements Martin’s music perfectly, and the easy combination of personalities gives this project real prospects.

An Evening of Bluegrass and Comedy with Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers
8pm, Saturday, June 2
nTelos Wireless Pavilion

From the Rangers’ perspective, connecting with Steve Martin has been just as meaningful. Lead singer Woody Platt said they are feeling “like a new band,” even after 10 years of touring. “Learning from one of the greatest entertainers in the world has given us a new energy and confidence.” It’s also given them new opportunities, like being drafted as the band for Martin’s latest release, Rare Bird Alert. While The Crow is a wonderful collection of songs and musicians, the new album showcases a finely tuned band, striking a careful balance between Martin’s banjo, his songs, and the Rangers’ heavy musical prowess. “The Rangers are really coming on strong,” Martin said, representing tradition but also originality.

It’s no surprise that this mutual admiration has blossomed into a long-standing collaboration. Both the Rangers and Martin exemplify one of the defining characteristics of good bluegrass: To play the music well is to understand it well—the history, the players, the sounds, everything. It’s clear from talking to Martin that this is as meaningful to him as any of his creative pursuits, and it shows in the quality of the music, and more recently, the quality of the live show. Commenting on the current bluegrass landscape, which is reaching more ears than ever before, he expressed admiration for both ends of the spectrum. “It doesn’t matter if it’s under the umbrella of ‘bluegrass’ anymore. I get just as excited when I hear contemporary bluegrass as I do when I hear more traditional styles, and it all points back to the roots of this music.” And that is a good thing. Add Steve Martin’s legendary personality to that musical authenticity, along with the Steep Canyon Rangers, and the result is a show that’s expressive and highly entertaining.—Chris Pandolfi

Categories
Living

Nelson County’s newest brewery, Wild Wolf, quenches love for beer and nature

Mary Wolf (pictured) opened Nelson County’s Wild Wolf Brewing Company last fall with her son, Danny, after tasting his homebrews. (Photo by John Robinson)

Someone with a 3,000-bottle wine cellar isn’t a likely candidate to also own a brewery, but last fall, Mary Wolf turned from Barolos to brewskis when she opened Wild Wolf Brewing Company on Route 151. She and her husband, Doug, had been Nellysford part-timers for 14 years until Doug retired from a software business in Northern Virginia and they permanently relocated. But it was their son Danny’s passion for homebrewing (discovered well before he was legal) that inspired this gig that’s shaped their lives into something bigger and better than they ever imagined.

The 10-acre brewery, biergarten, and restaurant grew from a mini-microbrewery and homebrew supply shop just a stone’s throw down the road, where Danny brewed 10 gallons at a time, testing out recipes, which sold out every two weeks. The hunt for an ideal location took years, but Mary kept returning to the 100-year-old landmarked building that served as Nelson County’s first high school from 1910 to 1939. “This is a high maintenance property. We found things we didn’t expect, but you can’t replicate the charm,” said Mary.

And charming it is. The biergarten is pretty as a picture and keeps true to its German roots by offering outdoor seating with gorgeous views, crushed gravel underfoot, a natural canopy of 60-year-old Siberian elm trees, lights strung overhead, and a pond with irises and koi. The old schoolhouse building houses the restaurant and kitchen and was modernized with a sports bar and a brewery building that holds a dozen 15-barrel tanks.

Back outside, a covered patio that’s heated and enclosed in the winter offers more outdoor seating options, and five tobacco barns being transformed into a shopping village will sell everything from homebrewing equipment to jewelry once completed in the next year or so. There’s live music Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, trivia on Tuesdays, and food specials the other nights, including summer holiday pig pickings, compliments of the new outdoor smoker and grill. A sculpture of a howling wolf (which will get painted with a different design every month) sitting amidst a pond with a water wheel serves as the brewery’s mascot, and the grassy field’s perfect for outdoor concerts, like the Oktoberfest planned for fall. It’s a happy and happening place for tourists and craft beer-lovers alike.

And Wild Wolf’s still expanding. Four 30-barrel tanks are on the way to accommodate growing demand. “I always knew we’d expand, but didn’t expect it to be within six months of opening,” said Mary. They opened with five beers and now with their rotation of seasonal brews, Danny, who studied brewing at Chicago’s Siebel Institute of Technology, regularly makes 10. “I am blown away by how many recipes Danny comes up with, and the beers are incredible. He’s like a gifted chef,” said Mary.

Because beer doesn’t depend on a yearly harvest the way wine does, they’re always in production mode, but keep their seasonal batches small. Their fall Howling Pumpkin, for instance, required hand-roasting 800 pounds of pumpkins just for six barrels, so when it was gone, it was gone. Making enough for the brewery (where you can order flights, 2 oz. tastes, 16 oz. or 20 oz. glasses, or 64 oz. refillable growlers to-go) and restaurants like Miller’s, Beer Run, Rapture, and Brixx Pizza, which regularly pour Wild Wolf brews, keep Danny plenty busy, but retail bottles are on a distant horizon.

A hoppy Imperial Wit with pear and honey that’s on the current menu and brewed on the premises with beer from Blue Mountain and Devils Backbone (the other two breweries on the Brew Ridge Trail), suggests that the local brewing biz is a collaborative one. “I want visitors to have a good experience at all three and believe that the more people we bring down the road, the better,” said Mary, who credits Nelson County’s “perfect” water with why the area’s had such success with beer.

While Danny splits his days between brewing and selling his brand from the road, Doug (who built the restaurant’s tables and bar) keeps the acreage looking sharp with his new tractor, and Mary gives regular tours of the property. At the end of a long day, she sits down to enjoy what her family’s created, and over a glass of her favorite Blonde Hunny Ale laughs at the irony of her stymied wine cellar, “Of course, now that I can get a great price on wine, I’ve absolutely fallen in love with craft beer.”