Month: February 2013

Categories
Arts

UVA’s French department ventures out with a film festival

Natalia Verbeke stars as a maid in Les Femmes du Sixième Etage (The Women on the 6th Floor), written and directed by Philippe Le Guay. Photo credit: Vendame Productions.

This weekend, UVA’s French department will show a selection of recent French films at various locations around town. The festival is aimed at both casual filmgoers and academics, and the organizers hope to draw French-speaking and subtitle-reading viewers. Speakers from the University will present the films and offer their own perspectives on the screenings and their subjects.

The series is an outgrowth of a program from past years, which was sponsored by the French-American Cultural Exchange (FACE). “It was an annual event for five years, funded by FACE, with the provision that they wouldn’t provide any funding for three years after that,” explained Hannah Holtzman, one of the series’ organizers. “The idea was that we would go out into the community and get involved and build these other relationships so that it could be self-sustaining. So it’s really forced us to do that, which has been great. All the locations around town have been really gracious. Milli Joe is donating Belgian waffles. We also have a bunch of undergraduate volunteers, students from one of the undergraduate film courses, who made a little promo video. It’s been fun to see who’s interested. People have been getting involved in whatever way they want to get involved.”

“We began by working from a list of 50 or so films, provided by FACE, and narrowing it down from there,” Holtzman added. “The films are all recent. The oldest one is from 2009. We wanted a variety. There’s two documentaries, a couple of comedies, and a historical drama.” The list includes Ismaél Ferroukhi’s Free Men, Philippe Le Guay’s The Women on the 6th Floor, Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Henri-George Clouzot’s Inferno, and Mona Achache’s The Hedgehog. All the screenings are free and open to the public, and each will have English subtitles.

“Free Men is interesting, because it’s a World War II movie, but it’s got a different twist to it,” said Liz Groff, another of the festival’s organizers. “It’s about Jewish-Arab relations in Paris at the time of the occupation, so we have someone coming from the Middle Eastern studies department to talk about it.”

“The Women on the 6th Floor is cute, it’s a fun comedy,” Groff said. “It takes place in the ’50s, after the Spanish Revolution. It’s about Spanish and Portuguese maids. One of the speakers who’s going to come had written about this era in France, about the immigration of Spanish and Portuguese workers as maids. They had their own community, and [the film depicts] the contrast between the sixth floor where the maids live, and the aristocrats in the rest of the building. The guy who lives downstairs gets involved with one of them. He’s bridging the gap between the classes.”

Inferno is an interesting case. Though the film is from 2009, it is the result and remains of an uncompleted film from 1963, originally directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, the acclaimed director known for classic thrillers like The Wages of Fear and Diabolique. “It was actually so hot in Paris that year that they had to stop filming, and then Clouzot died,” Groff said. So it’s a documentary about the making of that film, and Clouzot’s footage is in there as well.”
“That’s one that’s not available yet,” Holtzman said. “I’m excited to have the chance to see it. Some of the other ones are streaming on Netflix and things like that.”

The Cave of Forgotten Dreams is another documentary, one with even older roots. The 2010 film by prolific and provocative German director Werner Herzog, was originally filmed in 3D and depicts a series of 34,000-year-old cave paintings, which are the earliest instances of manmade art (by a significant margin). Herzog’s film also details the process of gaining access to the cave, which is tightly restricted by the French government due to fears about preservation. Only a few dozen people have ever been inside it. The film is a fascinating and valuable document, enlivened by Herzog’s trademark wry commentary and occasional wild conjecture.

One of the most appealing aspects of the festival is the attempt to invite members of the wider community in addition to academics. Often, film and arts events are open to the public, but aren’t widely promoted outside of Grounds, or even outside of a specific department.

“The French department is large for a French department, but it’s small in the context of the University,” Holtzman said. “So one of the goals [of the festival] is to make connections within the University, with people from other departments who have similar interests. But it’s also an effort to bridge the gap between the University and the community a little bit.”

“So many people in Charlottesville are interested in French, are interested in film, or are Francophiles,” Groff said. “We wanted everyone to come. There’s a lot of these little things that go on, little film groups at the University, but nobody else ever hears about it. But everybody loves film, so we wanted to get everyone who loves film together.”

UVA’s French film festival runs from February 21-24, at City Council Chambers, the Nau Auditorium, and the Jefferson-
Madison Regional Library. A full schedule can be found at pages.shanti.virginia.edu/UVA_French_Film_Festival.

What is the best foreign film you’ve seen recently? Tell us about it at c-ville.com/arts.

Categories
Arts

Interview: Black Francis

Charles Thompson A.K.A. Black Francis and A.K.A. Frank Black plays a solo gig at The Southern. (Publicity photo)

Enigmatic Boston musician “Black Francis” played a leading role in the ’80s alternative rock scene. Art, darkness and angst defined Francis’ career with The Pixies and the solo years as Frank Black (and Frank Black and the Catholics) as did his unique, ranting howl vocals.   The seminal Doolittle album ( The Pixies)  is a time capsule-worthy work of perfection, and Kurt Cobain credited Francis’ work  as an influence. The alt-grunge forefather is back on the road under the Black Francis moniker, and will play tonight at the Southern. He answered the following questions for C-VILLE via e-mail.

C-VILLE Weekly: You’ve had plenty of years to work on this one, but how difficult have you found it to separate your identity as a solo performer from your identity as a member of The Pixies? Or do you even feel compelled to do so?
Black Francis: “I don’t feel these compelliatory-ish feelings! It’s all good. It’s all fun. I am a singer, a writer, a dude who likes to play and record and sing. I love playing in The Pixies, of course. It’s my first band. And it’s the band I am known for; I’m not in denial about that. It’s special for sure, but I don’t wear a different hat; I’m always the same guy whenever I perform.”

Do you have a favorite track (or few) to play live, whether a solo cut or a piece from The Pixies, Frank Black and The Catholics, etc.?
“Always like to play ‘When They Come to Murder Me’ from SVN FNGRS. I get obsessed with obscure covers, usually stage same song for a period of years. Lately it’s been this thing called ‘That Burnt Out Rock and Roll’.”

Your latest release was Paley & Francis. How was working with Reid Paley?
“Mr. Paley and I have officially begun working on a new record. I’m not sure when it will come out, but it will be very different than the last one. I can’t explain why, but let’s just say, ‘I Am The Walrus,’ O.K.?”

Who currently inspires you? Any recent releases or artists you’re really into?
“I’m really into a record by Baxter Dury (son of Ian) called “Happy Soup.” Love his vibe. Poetic. Gritty. Funny. Excellent production. Minimalist. Charming as hell.”

What do you think of Charlottesville? How do you like smaller venues like The Southern as opposed to larger shows?
“I love small shows. I get even more nervous for smaller venues. It’s exciting. Everyone right there looking at you, singing all the words (can’t fuck it up!). And the nightclub is where I am from. It’s the environment I relate to the most.”

Tuesday 2/19 Black Francis/The Southern Cafe and Music Hall 7pm

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: Paula Poundstone

Paula Poundstone riddles off a stream of astute cat jokes and sociopolitical sarcasm at the Paramount. Publicity photo.

Catty lady

If you can’t quite place Paula Poundstone, try imagining her with a red brick wall behind her while she dishes out a brilliantly composed cat joke. There’s also a pretty good chance you’ve heard her yucking it up as a regular panelist on NPR’s “Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me.” Poundstone holds the honor of first female comedian to win the CableACE Award for best stand-up comedy special, has hosted numerous HBO comedy features, and is currently looking forward to her second book release in which we can expect more intelligent wit about politics and pop culture.

Saturday 2/23 $29.50, 8pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 979-1333.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w3NwND6wZc

Categories
News

UVA grapples with how to reform its embattled Honor Code

On February 25, UVA students will vote on what could be the most substantial changes to the University’s much-lauded Honor Code in the 170-year history of the student-policed system. File photo.

On February 25, UVA students will vote on what could be the most substantial changes to the University’s much-lauded Honor Code in the 170-year history of the student-policed system, which demands that all Wahoos pledge not to lie, cheat, or steal, and threatens them with expulsion if they’re caught. But the storm of debate over the proposed reforms has revealed that while students are attached to the legacy of honor, when it comes to the system’s effectiveness—and their willingness to participate in it—they’re lukewarm at best. 

The Honor Committee’s own data points to the problems. In a survey conducted last year, 74 percent of students said they had very positive or somewhat positive feelings about the system, but only 24 percent said they believe it’s “very effective” in preventing honor offenses.

And when it counts, they balk. While 42 percent of students said they believed they would report an offense, about 80 percent of those who said they had seen one didn’t report it. The most common reasons given were not thinking the offense was serious enough and being worried about seeing a fellow student expelled.

Stephen Nash believes the 2012-13 Honor Committee has the cure for a faltering system. Nash, a fourth-year and the committee’s current chair, has been the chief cheerleader for a two-part reform effort approved last semester by the 27-member body, which is aided in its efforts by about 100 support officers from across the University. The first proposal would institute “informed retraction,” allowing students accused of offenses to admit guilt and leave the University for a year rather than face expulsion. The second would replace randomly selected juries of 11 students with a 5-person panel of elected representatives.

“The Honor Committee feels we need to change the system, and we believe this is the way,” he said. “It’s not perfect, but it’s certainly better than what we have right now.”

Chris Jones isn’t convinced. The fourth-year computer science major is the creator of a “Vote No on Honor” Facebook page, which has hundreds more followers than the Honor Committee’s own “Vote Yes” page.

“I haven’t met a single person who thinks the current Honor System is a good one,” said Jones. He has pushed back hard against the idea of scrapping random juries, because he feels the change will sever students’ only real tie to the system. But the root cause of the withering of the system, he said, is faltering faith in the single sanction—the one-strike-you’re-out rule.

Informed retraction is an attempt to make a multi-sanction system without calling it that, said Jones, but he thinks it still won’t fix the fact that the Draconian rule discourages honesty after the fact. The real solution is simple, Jones said. “When you have multiple levels of crime, you should have multiple levels of punishment.”

Two UVA law school faculty members agree. Professors Josh Bowers and Kim Forde-Mazrui sharply criticized the proposed changes in an article in last Friday’s Virginia Law Weekly. When a randomly selected jury doesn’t give you the results you want, the solution shouldn’t be to institute a permanent “professional” jury, the professors wrote, in part because they’re more likely to be biased in favor of their own assumptions. That’s why the prosecutor doesn’t sit in the jury box, they said. And like Jones, they think the reason there have been so many acquittals is that students are no longer comfortable with the system itself.

“In the face of a single sanction, an acquittal may convey the message that the punishment is too harsh,” they wrote. To get rid of the jury is to shoot the messenger.

But Nash said that argument glosses over a critical point: UVA’s honor system is fundamentally different than the criminal justice system. Honor juries are active participants in the trial process, and they’re not simply deciding guilt or innocence of previously defined crimes. They’re weighing many other factors and deciding if, taken on the whole, the incident was a violation of the University’s community of trust, so it’s all the more important that they fully understand the system, he said. “If less than 1 percent of the school is going to be represented in the honor system, do we prefer that 1 percent be picked by a computer?” Nash asked. “Or do want to have a say in those people who represent us?”

UVA has been here before. Thirty-three years ago, almost to the week, the student body was preparing to vote on whether to allow random juries for the first time. Op-eds in The Cavalier Daily from March 1979 show the same arguments being made now: representative juries versus educated ones; holding firm to tradition versus letting go of old ideals.

But Nash said time has shown the community made the wrong choice back then when it voted overwhelmingly to get rid of elected juries. In his mind, the experiment has failed. If the reforms don’t pass, it will be back to the drawing board, and he said he’ll be able to live with that. Maybe it will mean reexamining the single sanction, he said. Until then, he wants his fellow students to make changes now—for their sake, and each others’.

“It’s not fair to have students within the system be the forum for that conversation,” he said.

 

Categories
The Editor's Desk

Editor’s Note: Race in the post-racial America

This past Saturday at the Savannah Book Festival, I listened to Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. talk about his new book Freeman, the story of a freed slave tracking down his wife after the Civil War. During the Q&A, in an auditorium mostly filled with middle-aged white women, the conversation turned to the subject of a piece Pitts wrote to commemorate the January anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, which unpacked our country’s racial constructs:

“‘Black’ and ‘white’ are equally artificial, but black fairly quickly took on the contours of a real culture. The people to whom it was applied, after all, were required to live in close proximity to one another, sharing the same often-squalid circumstances, the same mistreatment and oppression, conditions that no degree of personal excellence or achievement could mitigate or help them escape. These pressures shaped them, drew them together. ‘White,’ on the other hand, was held together only by the single condition of being not black, being a member of the advantaged class. It has little existence apart from that.”

There are the words and then there is the context. I was not in Savannah for the book festival but to visit my father. As a writer, I can’t stand listening to writers talk about themselves in those venues. I had never heard of Pitts, even though he’s one of the most widely read black journalists in the country. I grew up in Washington, D.C. with a multiracial group of friends and learned about race from Chuck D, from being, as a 10-year-old, the only white person in the gym at Clubhouse #2 of the Metropolitan Police Boys & Girls Club on a cold Tuesday night, and from being accused of racism as an after school program director in Boston. My dad, on the other hand, grew up in Sheffield, Alabama during segregation, the son of a man who believed in the separation of races in a state where George Wallace and the Ku Klux Klan would soon hold sway.

As a city, Savannah is about 60 percent African-American, but the crowd in Telfair Square for Pitts’ presentation was 95 percent white. I would guess that most of the people in the auditorium voted for Barack Obama and nearly every one of them approved of the message. This is a long-winded way of setting up a simple point: The problem of race for my generation does not have to do with our ideas about race or the laws that enforce equality. It is cultural and it has to do with the auditorium.  If the leaders of the previous generation, black and white, used the force of ideas to stand up to violence and coercive authority, break the color barrier, and end legal segregation, the leaders of our generation, like me and like the subjects of this week’s feature, have to bring the same courage to the project of integration. We have to sit next to each other, eat food together, watch our kids play side by side, and stand up for each other. We have to own each other’s issues.

If you read this column in the newspaper, it ended there. But I had more to say. Sometimes the restriction of the print deadline and the space constraint lend a formality to the process that inspires me. Other times, those factors make it harder to say what I mean. In any case, I’m adding on this week.

While race may be a construct, unequal opportunities for a large section of the African-American population in our city are a stark reality. A recent community health survey showed that Charlottesville’s black community has a much higher infant mortality rate and a considerably shorter life expectancy than the rest of the community. School statistics show African-American students lagging behind in nearly every category. A recent Pew study with a national scope concluded that African-American males who haven’t finished high school have a better chance of going to prison than getting a job. The widely circulated Orange Dot Project report, which evaluated our city’s income gap by neighborhood using information gathered in the 2010 Census, shows that the city’s traditionally black neighborhoods are its poorest. The realities of school segregation and limited job opportunities have created an underclass in the middle of a thriving and affluent town. It’s a shame. An even greater shame is that the lack of affordable housing in our city will whitewash it in less than a decade. Is that a future you’re buying into?

Since I’ve been in Charlottesville, I’ve seen the community’s notion of exceptionalism practiced in inspiring and less inspiring ways, but I’ve always been impressed by the idea that our people don’t accept status quo solutions, whether it’s chloramines in the drinking water or a shoddily planned highway or an ugly version of the Belmont Bridge. On March 4, City Council will vote whether or not to create a permanent Human Rights Commission with enforcement authority. As a legal improvement, it may not be a game-changing step, since in the case of a commission in northern Virginia only about 1 in 600 complaints yielded a finding against an accused party. But as an opportunity for us to put our money where our mouth is with regard to racial equality, it’s a huge opportunity. It’s a chance to send a public love letter to the black community, and to all other minority groups in the city. It’s also a chance for us to put aside anger and guilt, which are personally and publicly destructive forces, and embrace innovation and faith, which are creative forces.

To finish, I’d like to thank Quinton Harrell, Corbin Hargraves, Sarad Davenport, and Wes Bellamy for their courage to step into the spotlight and take on the responsibility of providing a voice of leadership for a younger generation that’s not well-represented in local government. I’d also like to acknowledge the people who have helped develop them, some of whom are named in the story and many others who are not, including Rick Turner, Holly Edwards, and Kristin Szakos, to name a few.

If you’ve ever felt guilt about the way our city’s racial divisions separate us or anger at how you’ve been treated, show up at City Council next month. If there are 11 of us or 2,000, it will feel good and maybe someone who knows all the words to “Lift Every Voice and Sing” can lead us in a song and we can send a positive message to the rafters together. You don’t have to stay for a five hour meeting, just come for a few minutes and cut loose.

Categories
News

Longo says trails are safe, but police need to do better in wake of alleged assault on Rivanna Trail

On Tuesday, February 5, a woman was allegedly knocked unconscious and robbed by a man pushing a shopping cart on the Rivanna Trail near the Free Bridge.

The attack of a woman on the Rivanna Trail on Tuesday, February 5 didn’t draw much public attention. Days later, runners who frequent the trail said they were unaware any violence had occurred in the area, and agreed that, for the most part, the city’s recreational space is safe and quiet. But city police say incidents like this one heighten their awareness of violent and suspicious behavior on the increasingly popular trails, and place a spotlight on a well-known homeless camp near the site of the assault.

“We need to figure out how to do a better job of policing this trail,” City Police Chief Tim Longo said. “It gets entirely too much use for there not to be a more sustained, visible presence of the police there.”

According to the police report, a woman was alone on the Greenbelt between the Free Bridge and Caroline Avenue around 6pm when a tall black man with an afro approached her on foot, pushing a shopping cart that contained a yellow sleeping pad. The report says the man spoke to her as he passed before knocking her unconscious from behind. She awoke near a wooden bench, found some belongings to be missing, and ran to her car. The woman was released from the hospital later that day with a clean bill of health, and city police are actively searching for a man in the area who fits the description.

Longo said police don’t yet have enough information to warrant the arrest of a suspect but they’re currently investigating a person of interest and are making trail safety a top priority. And while trail users ought to be aware of their surroundings and take precautions like traveling in groups, he said, ultimately park and trail safety is the responsibility of the police.

Overall, the city’s trails are known to be a safe haven for runners, walkers, and cyclists, and trail users and police alike were surprised by the attack. Longo said he couldn’t recall any similar assaults in the recent past, but the system used for recording city crime makes it difficult to keep track of park statistics.

According to Longo, the trails don’t have a fixed address. Officers responding to an incident have to write up the report of an incident under whatever street address is closest, making it virtually impossible to search the database for a history of crime on the trail.

Local athlete Sophie Speidel has been running on the Rivanna Trail for 12 years, and said she always feels at ease on the trail —never uncomfortable or threatened.

“We are incredibly fortunate to have great trails in and near Charlottesville,” she said. “Being on [the] trails allows me to think, meditate, and reflect quietly, surrounded by nature.”

Speidel said she’s never seen an officer patrolling on the RT, but she hopes police will step up their presence.

Ragged Mountain Running Shop owner Mark Lorenzoni said Charlottesville has become an increasingly safer place to run in the 35 years he’s been here, and the trails are “a sanctuary of relaxation and safety,” far from the city’s noise and traffic.

“The trail system as a whole is one of the safer areas to exercise, and I can maybe count on one hand the number of incidents that have happened,” he said. “The trails have a tremendous record, and I wouldn’t want to see people get up in arms and panicked about this.”
But runners should be aware of their surroundings whether they’re Downtown or in the woods, Lorenzoni said, and he encourages athletes to travel in pairs and groups, especially at night.

“I tell people all the time that you’ve still got to pay attention,” he said. “It doesn’t matter where you are.”

Like Speidel, Lorenzoni said he’s never spotted a police officer on the RT, and employees and customers at Ragged Mountain all shook their heads when he asked if anyone had crossed paths with law enforcement out there.

“But if suddenly a bunch of attacks started happening down there, I’m sure they’d step up the patrol,” he said.

Community service officers stationed at public schools are redeployed to city parks and trails during the summer. But with limited staffing and resources available, police presence on the RT during the colder months is minimal. Longo said he’s directed the commander of the Field Operations Division to establish a “problem solving project” to develop a longterm strategy to address trail issues.

Homeless camps

Deciding how to consistently manage the numerous homeless encampments needs to be part of that plan, Longo said. There’s no way of knowing whether the assailant lives in the nearby homeless encampment until he’s been identified, but given the attack’s location and the victim’s physical description of the attacker, it’s an understandable leap to make, he said.

“The assumption that this person is probably homeless is a reasonable assumption, but it’s certainly not conclusive,” Longo said. “It could be a factor that affects the timeliness of our investigation, or our ability to readily identify a suspect.”

Living in a cluster of tents and tarps along the trail is almost always illegal, Longo said, whether the land is public or privately owned. In very rare cases, property owners can give the homeless permission to set up camp on their land, if permitted by zoning laws. But more often than not, even if their presence isn’t threatening to trail users, Longo said they simply can’t stay there.

“I think we have to make a decision that is balanced by law and public policy,” he said. “The consensus I’m getting from people who use the trail and live in that community is that the police department and the city need to get a handle on this.”

County police agree that trail safety needs to be a priority, and like the city department, they’re concerned about the homeless encampments along their own stretches of trail.

“First and foremost, we’re focusing on the safety of the people who live there,” county police spokesperson Carter Johnson said. “We’re not trying to come in and treat them like they’re breaking the law—we just want to make sure they have the resources they need.”

The Haven’s program director Stephen Hitchcock said incidents like the one near the Free Bridge are not in character with those who live in camps along the Rivanna, and he’s wary of blaming the group as a whole.

“I think it would be a pretty big leap to stigmatize the homeless population from that incident,” he said.

Usually after an episode involving someone known in the homeless community, Hitchcock said The Haven buzzes with gossip. But in this case, nobody seems to know who the mysterious man pushing the shopping cart was.

“I haven’t heard anything about it around The Haven, which is why I’m hesitant to draw any conclusions like that,” he said

Categories
Living

Brothers: How four young black men found their mission to change our city, starting now

Four top: Wes Bellamy, Sarad Davenport, Quinton Harrell, and Corbin Hargraves (from left) pull up a seat at Mel’s Diner, where Bellamy ate almost exclusively when he first moved to Charlottesville. Photo: John Robinson

The Tonsler Park Recreation Center is busy at 4:30pm on a Wednesday. The long, L-shaped main room bustles with games of pool and chess, people coming and going past the old school Ms. Pac-Man game and the foosball table. Adults watch the T.V. on the wall, or sit and talk in small groups. You get the sense many are just killing time on a cold evening in the neighborhood.

Wes Bellamy isn’t killing time, he’s chasing it. Because even though he just arrived, he has to leave again to track down a girl in his after-school program, which officially starts at 4pm but which really starts when he gets all of the kids together. After passing some instructions to one of the older kids, he heads through the crowd out to the parking lot, past his trademark Dodge Charger, getting instead into an old minivan. Bellamy moves like an athlete, which he is. But he uses his spacial awareness and vision like a politician, timing his smiles, waves, and winks to make sure everyone gets a piece of him.

Then he’s gone, driving the couple blocks from the rec center over to the Sixth Street housing project, hopping out with the van still running, and knocking on an apartment door. There’s no answer and no one outside has seen the girl, so Bellamy gets back to the van and heads back to the rec center, no sign of irritation on his face. Inside, in a small room separated from the rest of the building by a sliding plastic wall, seven young men, ranging in age from 4 to 23, are getting ready to box.

Coach Tyrone and Coach Norman, Bellamy’s volunteer helpers, wrap hands with athletic tape, pull on gloves, and point out untied shoelaces. After stretching and doing jumping jacks, the kids divide into groups to work on shadowboxing. The room is small, 10′ x 20′ at most, and the kids’ efforts soon render the windows too foggy to see through. Most nights 12 or more kids show up, but even with only half that number—plus the coaches, a UVA student who’s helping out, not to mention the body bag and two speed bags—the room is crowded to the point of absurdity.

Bellamy has organized a step dance class for girls that takes place at the same time, but they’ve been forced out of the conference room they usually use to make way for a city planning meeting. The search is on for a space to practice, but until then, the girls fight for room in the crowded main hall, while the boys jab and faint in tightly circumscribed circles in the back room.

Take our brief survey on race in Charlottesville here.

The program is called HYPE, Helping Young People Evolve, and when it began on December 7, 2011 it was just Bellamy, some boxing gloves, and a punching bag. There are now 16 boys and seven girls who meet four days a week. At 26, Bellamy is only a few years older than the oldest of the boxers, but even so, he’s more than just a coach to these kids; he’s also a driver and a disciplinarian, a teacher and a mentor, sometimes a big brother, sometimes a parent.

“I was just like these kids,” he says. “I know what it’s like to not have things. I know what it’s like to have those surrogate fathers.”

The goal of HYPE is to use boxing and step dancing to instill discipline in young people, to help them grow and learn respect for themselves and for others. It’s open to all of the city’s children, but things in this world being what they are, the kids in HYPE all come from families below the poverty line and all of them are black.

When the training session is over, equipment put away, snacks distributed, one of the younger boys in the HYPE program runs over to Bellamy, interrupting our conversation to ask a question.
“Say excuse me,” Bellamy says, before telling the boy to turn around and try again. He walks a few steps, then comes back, says excuse me, and asks his question.

“Do you know him?” Bellamy asks, pointing to me.

“No,” the boy says.

And then, following Bellamy’s instructions, he holds out his hand and introduces himself. Bellamy places a large hand on the boy’s tiny head.

“You’ve worked hard,” he says. “And I’m proud of you.”

Categories
Living

This week’s restaurant news: A trés bien wine dinner, Valley closings, and Just Curry

Photo: Giles Morris

Chef Jason Alley, owner of Comfort and Pasture restaurants, has created quite a buzz up (and especially down) the East Coast with his modern spin on Southern cuisine. Beginning with the 2002 opening of Comfort in Richmond with business partner Chris Chandler, he was ahead of the Southern food craze that is still sweeping the country. Alley went on to open Pasture (also in Richmond) in 2011, and with its great success is opening a second location in the Shops at Stonefield. The focus of the restaurant will be on locally sourced gems like fine Virginia cheeses and ham, and a stellar wine list sourced from biodynamic and high quality producers. All beers will be on draft to support a small environmental footprint. The menu will feature small plates meant to be shared by the table, tapas-style.

Last November, Alley showed off as a guest chef for the Hill & Holler Cider Week event at Albemarle Ciderworks. He’s planning to make another appearance on February 27 as a chef du jour at Glass Haus Kitchen, where he will prepare a family-style dinner for $85 per person.

Alex George’s Just Curry, which is situated on the Downtown Mall directly across from another of George’s ventures, Commonwealth Restaurant & Skybar, is scheduled to open Wednesday, February 20. This will be the second go-round for a restaurant that had a loyal following on the Corner—and good news for curry fans still lamenting the loss of its first iteration: Expect to see roti and goat curry on the menu, among other treats inspired by the southern Caribbean collision of the East and West Indies.

Don’t miss out on the winter specials the Clifton Inn is offering through the end of the month. Half price food on Mondays and Tuesdays, and no corkage fee on Wednesdays for that special bottle of wine you’ve been meaning to try.

If you’re not looking for savings and want to enjoy an incredible dining experience, join Clifton chef Tucker Yoder for the Rhône Valley Wine Dinner on March 19, featuring owner and winemaker Jean-Marc Espinasse of Domaine Rouge-Bleu Winery. Diners will enjoy five-courses of food and wine pairings. The cost is $92 per person. Call 971-1800 to make reservations.

Staunton has seen a few recent changes in its restaurant scene, beginning with the unfortunate closing of Mockingbird in January. The owners and staff had high hopes for good grass roots music and local fare, but it just didn’t pan out for the small Valley town.

AVA Restaurant & Wine Bar (formerly the Darjeeling Café) has re-opened with a new focus. Co-owners Mary Beth Harris Morgan and her husband, Sommelier Jack Morgan, are spreading their wings after winning a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence for the restaurant’s wine list. The new name is representative of the American Viticultural Area, which further demonstrates the couple’s enthusiasm about wine. Dinner is served Wednesday through Saturday, and full-service brunch on Sundays from 10:30am-2:30pm.

 

Have a scoop for Small Bites? E-mail us at bites@c-ville.com.

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: Anti-Valentine’s Day Party

LuchaDora pairs up with Black Heart Valentine Club for an evening of rock aimed at cleansing the residual sweetness of Valentine’s Day from your soul. Publicity photo

The evening after

In an age where we strive to make sure no one feels left out, it’s important to remember the cynical, love-hating, ne’er-do-wells among us and make sure they get their party as well. The Southern’s Anti-Valentine’s Day Party—an evening dedicated to countering the cloying schmaltz of lovers in love—features local masters of the anti-romance, pro-lustabilly music scene. Black Heart Valentine Club and LuchaDora promise to drown out the sappy sentiment that ruled the collective consciousness just one day previous.

Friday 2/15 $5, 8pm. The Southern Café and Music Hall, 103 S. First St. 977-5590.

Categories
Arts

Peaks and valleys: Mountains’ Koen Holtkamp discusses the duo’s dramatic songcraft

“We’re not trying to just be a ‘modular synth band,’ said Mountains’ Koen Holtkamp (left). The masters of instrument manipulation are touring in support of current release, Centralia. Image: Hisham Bharoocha

Since 2004, the Brooklyn-based duo of Koen Holtkamp and Brendon Anderegg have recorded and performed together as Mountains. Their initial efforts were gentle albums that perfectly balanced delicate acoustic instrumentation with field recordings and thick washes of electronic sound, self-released on their Apestaartje label. The more recent records, on the long-running Thrill Jockey label, are far more dense, integrating those disparate elements into a thick, droning sound that is occasionally monolithic but always pleasant and inviting.

“I think we’re interested in blurring the lines between instruments,” Holtkamp said. “So a cello will become a synth, or a guitar will sound like something else.” While early shows relied on laptops running software to process their performances, the band’s current set-up utilizes a complex array of loop pedals, into which it can add any sound, including acoustic string instruments, keyboards, and 1970’s-style modular synthesizers—screenless machines manipulated through a complex series of dials and plugs.

“We’re both playing electric guitar at the moment. We tend to sample and layer that,” Holtkamp said. “I basically have four different streams, or ‘voices.’ There’s the guitar, which I loop and layer, so that I can put it down and it’s still ‘playing.’ Then there’s the modular synth, with oscillators and filters. That’s not looped, but a lot of the sounds are continuous. And I’m also playing a synth, which is also being looped. Brendon has pretty much a similar setup.”

The duo’s albums are just as impressive as their live act; their fifth proper full-length Centralia, released in January, is perhaps their most fully-realized work. “Our live sets are sketches for the next record,” Holtkamp said. “Particularly with the new one, we thought a lot about what we’d done in the past. It started to happen this way naturally, which got us thinking about it—we wanted to include some things that were more like the earlier records, where we focused on acoustic guitar, or organ, rather that everything at once. So there’s a balance.”

The result is a success, encompassing both the cohesive fullness of recent albums with the delicate range of their earlier work. “That balance is really important to us,” he said. “With a record that, presumably, people might listen to more than once…as much as it can be drone-y, we really are interested in dynamics.”

Hearing Mountains live can be a revelation, a chance to dissect the discrete elements that make up its dense wall of sound. Though the volume can be overwhelming, there’s very little on stage movement or communication; Holtkamp and Anderegg seemingly share a psychic bond that lets them know where they’re headed next, based on careful listening and years of working together.

“We’ve been friends since middle school, although we didn’t start playing together until later,” Holtkamp said. “We met skateboarding, when we were about 13. We both went to the Art Institute of Chicago in the ’90s. I went there for film, and Brendon went there for painting, but we ended up doing sound stuff. After that I was in New York, then Brendon moved there in 2002, and we decided to start this, with more of a focus on being a live band.”

“We haven’t used laptops in a few years,” Holtkamp said. “I don’t have anything against them, we did it for a long time, but I got sick of staring at a screen. This way we’re doing something physical, rather than just moving a mouse around.”

Mountains is not the only group to pick up modular synthesizers recently; in the past half-decade, dozens of experienced electronic, experimental, and underground musicians have embraced the instruments, generating an endless stream of CD-R and tape-releases that range from brilliant compositions to pointless technical exercises. “It does seem like it’s really become much more prevalent,” Holtkamp said. “Just from going to shows and playing with people; ‘oh look, that guy’s got a modular synth, too.’”

Might this be a reaction to the popularity of laptops in live performances a decade ago? “I think it started that way for some people,” he said. “But there’s just so much possibility, it’s a very active and still-living scene. People are building new stuff every day, pushing the possibilities of what that stuff can do. That’s exciting for a lot of people, myself included.”

While some musicians have focused on the instrument almost to exclusivity, for Mountains the modular synthesizer adds to its stream of sound. “That’s an element of what we do,” Holtkamp said. “I love that stuff, and I can geek out on it for hours. It’s one of the ingredients in what we’re doing, but it’s important to us to have balance, to balance that out with other sounds and instruments.”

Mountains/Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar/February 18