Both judges agreed that Smoked Kitchen & Tap’s low and slow approach to smoking meat—with owner Justin van der Linde arriving to work at 2 or 3 every morning—yields some of the tastiest barbecue in our area. Photo by Rammelkamp Foto
Food judging is a puzzle. Into the round hole of subjectivity, it tries to place the square peg of objectivity. After all, isn’t taste a matter of, well, taste?
Take barbecue, a food especially prone to the whims of personal preference. Sure, there is science and skill to it. Application of specific methods, under specific conditions, yields specific results. But that just begs the question of what results you like. A pronounced smoke flavor? Or, delicate smoke so you can taste more of the meat? Shredded? Or pulled? Whatever style you prefer, if your tastes happen to differ from mine, I would never call yours “wrong.” And yet, barbecue may be the subject of more competitions than any other food. What gives?
To help, I called on two master certified barbecue judges: Dr. David Heilbronner, a retired orthopedic surgeon who co-founded the award-winning Bone Doctor barbecue sauces; and John Maloy, another lifelong enthusiast. Combined they have judged more than 60 competitions for the Kansas City Barbeque Society, the world’s largest barbecue organization.
Our venue was Smoked Kitchen & Tap, a beautiful new Crozet restaurant Kelley Tripp and Justin van der Linde opened in December, giving a brick-and-mortar home to van der Linde’s beloved food truck, Smoked BBQ Co. As a big fan of van der Linde’s barbecue, I was curious to see how it holds up to official scrutiny.
The judges were skeptical. Restaurant conditions, they say, can make it difficult to match the quality of competition or backyard barbecue, which are free of the challenges of smoking mass quantities or keeping cooked meat warm. Despite those challenges, I asked the judges not to hold back, but render their opinions just as they would in competition.
Judges rate barbecue on appearance, tenderness and taste, with the heaviest weight on taste. For appearance and tenderness, KCBS guidelines do offer a few objective criteria. Meat should be “moist and yet not mushy,” for example, and pork ribs should not fall off the entire bone with one bite. Taste, though, the guidelines acknowledge, is “very subjective and therefore very hard to teach.” Judges are told to assess if there is “balance of flavors by incorporating the five tastes—sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami.” Maloy and Heilbronner admit it can be hard to set aside personal preferences, but “a good judge will be able to do that,” says Heilbronner.
Maloy’s test is simply whether an entry “lights up my taste buds.”
First to face the judges was pulled pork shoulder. Appearance? “Phenomenal,” said Maloy. “If I look at it and want to stick my face in it, that’s a great sign.” Heilbronner agreed: “Excellent appearance and layer of bark.” Taste and tenderness also won huge raves. “Spot-on texture,” said Maloy.
The brisket he liked even better. “Perfect amount of rub and smoke,” Maloy said. “This is excellent,” Heilbronner echoed. “And, I love the burnt ends,” referring to the pitmaster delicacy made from charred pieces of the fattier pectoral cut.
Next came Heilbronner’s top choice: pork ribs. “Ribs are usually my favorite and these were excellent,” Heilbronner said, citing the “good glaze” and how the meaty texture avoided the mushiness of badly overcooked ribs. “The flavor is outstanding,” he said. Maloy went a step further: “The ribs are unbelievable.”
Finally, there was smoked turkey, van der Linde’s own current favorite barbecue item, which smokes for four to six hours after a 48-hour brine. Once again, the judges raved. “Really good flavor,” said Maloy. “I love it.”
The key to great barbecue, the judges said, is “low and slow”—smoke meat at a low temperature, very slowly, sometimes for more than 12 hours at a time. This is what creates the challenge for restaurants, and van der Linde meets it by arriving at 2 or 3 every morning. “It’s hard to keep up and keep it right,” he says, “and we spend about 20 hours a day trying to accomplish this goal.”
That care goes into everything on the menu, reflecting the well-trained kitchen. Van der Linde is a Johnson & Wales graduate who was a sous chef at Boar’s Head Inn, while Tripp cooked at Clifton Inn and Petit Pois. All six sides were “delicious,” the judges said, their favorite being creamed corn. “A fascinating blend of flavors,” said Heilbronner, “with the smoked jalapenos and a bit of Parmesan, which created a great taste and interesting mouth feel.” My favorite is dirty rice, with house bacon, sausage, peppers, onions, garlic and a house spice blend. Also great are non-barbecue items such as the stellar fried chicken and a burger that is an instant contender for best in the area.
After our meal, the master judges declared it the best restaurant barbecue they’ve had in the area, and even better than many competition entries they’ve tried. This pleased me. Sure, I already knew how much I enjoyed the food at Smoked, and would have continued to go to whether the judges liked it or not, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t glad that they did too.
The Sheepdog Cafe now takes up 2,000 square feet on the ground floor of the Graduate Charlottesville hotel. Courtesy of Graduate Charlottesville
The café located on the ground floor of the Graduate Charlottesville hotel on West Main Street has a new name, a new look and a new menu. Formerly Sheepdog Coffee, the 2,000- square-foot indoor/outdoor space is now Sheepdog Café and can seat up to 66 people for breakfast, lunch and dinner service, plus a full bar. Sheepdog’s chef Allen Flint—a former U.S. Army chef and member of the highly competitive Fort Carson Culinary team who’s worked as an executive chef for various major hotel brands—created the new menu with students and travelers in mind. “We wanted to offer dishes that were easy to carry out or eat in,” says Flint. Menu items include salads, pressed sandwiches, mini donuts and, Flint’s favorite, biscuits made fresh daily and paired with eggs and cheese. The café is open every day from 6am to midnight.
Wish granted
In an effort to increase community access to healthy food, the Local Food Hub applied for—and received—a $10,000 grant from The Conservation Fund and CSX Transportation. With the money, the nonprofit organization will purchase an additional cold storage unit for its 3,000-square-foot warehouse off of Morgantown Road in Ivy.
The warehouse currently features a loading dock and a staging area for preparing pick-ups and deliveries, plus two cool-temperature-zone rooms. One of those cool rooms contains a freezer for meat and a walk-in cooler for leafy greens and other vegetables.
The walk-in spaces are great, but they’re narrow, and it’s difficult to get a pallet in and out, says Local Food Hub Chief of Staff Laura Brown. Having more space for pallets means increased efficiency and organization and a greater ability to serve more customers. The organization provides food to more than 250 customers in Virginia and the Maryland/Washington, D.C., area.
Brown says they plan to use the new cold storage unit to store fresh, non-frozen meat and other foods for various Local Food Hub initiatives. “People don’t often think about people in Charlottesville needing access to healthy food,” says Brown, but the reality is that not everyone in town can afford to buy farm-fresh produce, meats and other goods.
Winning whiskey
When people think of whiskey, they don’t necessarily think of Virginia…but maybe they should. The Lovingston-based Virginia Distillery Co.’s Virginia Highland Malt Whisky won Best American Single Malt Whisky at the World Whiskies Awards presented by Whisky magazine.
This is the first time Virginia Distillery Co. has entered the competition, and it beat out three-time Best American Single Malt Whisky champ Balcones Distilling’s Balcones “1” Texas Single Malt, which won the title in 2013, 2014 and 2016.
The Virginia Highland Malt Whisky arrives at the distillery as a malt whiskey from the Scottish Highlands and is finished for nine to 18 months in port-style wine casks from local wineries such as King Family Vineyards and Veritas Vineyards.
“There are a lot of interesting things about being in Virginia that apply to making whiskey here,” says Ian Thomas, Virginia Distillery’s director. The unique climate of hot, hot summers and cold winters “affects that maturation of the whiskey in a really great way,” he says. The casks are kept in a warehouse, and, as temperatures rise, the cask and the whiskey inside expand and are influenced by the wood; as temperatures fall, the spirit and the cask come together more closely.
NONPROFIT Charlottesville City Market Saturday, April 1
City Market, with more than 100 vendors offering fresh produce, herbs, plants, crafts, baked goods and more, opens for the season. Free, 7am-noon. Water and South streets. 970-3371.
FAMILY Silhouette artist Saturday, April 1
Former Disney World portrait artist Edward Casey will be stationed at Alakazam Toys, ready to create silhouette portraits of your little ones. $25, 1:30-5:30pm. Alakazam Toys, 100 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. (770) 546-2206.
FOOD & DRINK Easter cupcakes Monday, April 3
Nicky Rose, owner of Kraken Cakes, will teach a class on how to make fondant animals to top your Easter-themed cupcakes. Each participant will decorate four cupcake bases with toppers to take home. $55, 6-8pm. The Happy Cook, Barracks Road Shopping Center. 977-2665.
HEALTH & WELLNESS Buddhist meditation talk Friday, March 31
Kate Crosby, professor of Buddhist studies at King’s College London, will give a talk on Buddhist meditation as technology and the effects of modernity. Free, noon-1:30pm. Contemplative Sciences Center, 102 Cresap Rd. 982-6057.
London’s Orlando Consort (Donald Greig, Robert Macdonald, Angus Smith, Matthew Venner and Mark Dobell) performs a live vocal score of medieval music to accompany the 1928 silent film La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc on Thursday. Publicity photo
Carl Theodor Dreyer’s silent film La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc caused quite a commotion when it was released in 1928. French nationalists were wary of a non-Catholic Danish director’s interpretation of a revered French icon; the Archbishop of Paris ordered Dreyer’s final version censored and cut. The film was banned in Britain for its unfavorable portrayal of the English soldiers who ridicule and torment the movie’s heroine. Some critics deemed it boring while others found its tight shots and decidedly unglamorous style disturbing.
Mordaunt Hall of the New York Times praised the film. In a March 31, 1929, review, Hall hailed actress Maria Falconetti’s turn as Joan of Arc “unequaled” and declared that the film “makes worthy pictures of the past look like tinsel shams. It fills one with such intense admiration that other pictures appear but trivial in comparison.”
Voices Appeared: La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc and the Orlando Consort March 30 Old Cabell Hall, UVA
Dreyer based his film, which depicts the imprisonment, trial and death of Joan of Arc, on detailed transcripts from the 1431 trial that condemned Joan to be burned at the stake as a heretic when she was 19 years old. And while Dreyer is said to have controlled many aspects of La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc—from the elaborate (and barely visible) sets to the emotional output of his actors—he never selected a definitive score for it. Which seems odd, really, given that Joan of Arc didn’t just have visions of saints—she heard their voices, too.
Film buff, musicologist and professional early music singer Don Greig decided to design a score for the film, and although he isn’t the first to do so (everyone from composers Leo Pouget and Victor Alix to instrumental rock band Nick Cave and the Dirty Three have scored the film), his stands out because it’s crafted entirely of medieval vocal music, music that Joan of Arc likely heard alongside a few pieces that (based on the documentation of the trials) she most certainly did hear.
The world-renowned Orlando Consort medieval and renaissance vocal ensemble, of which Greig is a member and co-founder, performs that score during a screening of Dreyer’s original cut March 30 at UVA’s Old Cabell Hall. It’s a remarkable feat of vocal athleticism—the five singers will perform for 100 minutes, and they’ll sing dozens of pieces in that time.
Greig says the music—mostly motets, hymns, chants and other sacred music—is “fascinating, intellectually stimulating, but very beautiful as well.” When you hear it, he says, you’re likely to think that you’ve never heard anything quite like it before (unless you were raised Catholic…then you might recognize some of it). Still, if the consort isn’t careful, Greig says the music can feel a bit dispassionate or uninvolved, so the singers have taken extra care to make sure it plays to and enhances the emotional experience of the film. “You know the film is going to deliver, and we’ve got to live up to that standard,” Greig says.
In the torture chamber scene, for instance, the camera pans through a rapid montage of shots of various torture instruments. “It’s meant to put the fear of God into you,” Greig explains—and it works. Joan isn’t physically tortured, but she’s so overwhelmed that she faints. In accompaniment, the consort sings Richard Loqueville’s “Sanctus,” a composition that was part of the Eucharistic ritual of the time. “This hymn of praise to God comes over much more as a scary, horror film moment…” Greig says.
Near the end of the film, Joan is led and bound to the stake; it’s a slow, painful, highly emotional scene full of extended close-ups of Falconetti’s face. At the moment of immolation, a single vocalist sings, in a falsetto, the plainchant hymn “Veni Creator Spiritus” (“Come Creator Spirit”). Testimonies given in the highly documented nullification trial in the 1450s—which posthumously found Joan innocent—state that when Joan led her army to battle at Orléans in 1429, a group of priests walked before them chanting “Veni Creator Spiritus.”
“You’ve got this moment where you have the strange ambiguity of Joan, who dressed as a man; you’ve got a male singer singing in a female range; you’ve got the music, which is beautiful anyway,” says Greig. “What it suggests is her moment of greatest glory, which was when she raised the siege of Orléans, contrasted with this moment of great despair.”
Greig knows that people don’t often go to see silent films these days, nor do they go out to hear medieval music—most of his colleagues hadn’t seen a silent film before singing for this one. “Just give it a try,” he says. “You’ll be surprised—surprised by the music, surprised by the movie—and moved by both.”
Courtesy Gaumont
Carl Theodor Dreyer based his silent film, La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc, on detailed transcripts from the 1431 trial that condemned Joan to be burned at the stake. The original negative was thought permanently lost in a studio fire in 1928, then miraculously in 1981 a print was discovered in a janitor’s closet at a Norwegian mental institution.
Sharon Shapiro’s painting “Above Ground” serves as the title of her show opening on Friday at the Welcome Gallery. Shapiro will give a talk at the opening and on April 17. Courtesy the artist
Artist Sharon Shapiro has a unique history with the Welcome Gallery, where her exhibition “Above Ground” opens this week. Now operated by New City Arts Initiative, the space served as her art studio from 1996—when she first moved to Charlottesville from Atlanta—until 2001. Fittingly, her exhibition is themed on nostalgia—or the disruption of it—in an examination the American dream.
“Nostalgia is such a seductive trap,” Shapiro says. “There’s something compelling about it but it’s also really dangerous. There’s a dark side to always yearning for what was, but something comforting about it, too,” she says. “Were things ever really as good as we remember?”
Shapiro, who now works out of her home studio in Louisa, grew up in the small railroad town of Bluefield, West Virginia. “My father had a clothing store my whole childhood and I would sit in his store and draw the mannequins and clothes,” she says. While studying fashion illustration at VCU, she fell in love with painting and ultimately obtained a bachelor’s of fine art from Atlanta College of Art.
“Holiday” by Sharon Shapiro. Courtesy of the artist
Most of her paintings are figurative and arise from found photos, the history of which “changes within the context of my work,” Shapiro says. The pieces in this exhibition began with a search she did on eBay for vintage photographs of swimming pools and backyards in 1970s America. “It’s odd in the first place that people are selling their family photos,” she says. “There’s something about it that’s quirky to begin with.” From this beginning she layered other scenes to create composites and juxtaposed color with black and white to play with the texture of our emotional lives and memories. This layered and distorted quality erodes the would-be sentiment and reshapes it into something edgier. Whether it is a figure out of proportion with her landscape, like the truncated woman in “Swan Lake,” or the blurred and duplicated figures in “Devils” and “Holiday,” Shapiro challenges our simplistic view of the past.
“Swan Lake” by Sharon Shapiro. Courtesy of the artist
“I’m fascinated by the idea of the American dream,” she says. “The idea of the suburbs, everything all kind of alike…There’s something off-putting about that too. It’s not real. We’re trying to make things look perfect. Things never are. Especially human relationships.” This interest in the tension between outer appearance and interior drama reminds her of something her grandmother used to say: “Don’t believe anything you hear and half of what you see.” To this end, she investigates the meaning we ascribe to objects, specifically the above-ground pool as “a class signifier.”
“How the West was Won” by Sharon Shapiro. Courtesy of the artist
In “How the West Was Won” a young girl jumping into a pool is suspended in mid-air. Her face is in color but her body is black and white, the toe of her Mary Jane shoe dripping onto a lounge chair. “Things might be unraveling,” Shapiro says. “I like that aspect in my work.” In “Cure for Pain” there is both innocence and a self-consciousness about its precariousness as two girls in pink bathing suits and swim caps look over the edge of a kiddie pool. There is something not entirely wholesome about the pool, the metal bars of which are visible beneath its canvas. And a sense of foreboding expresses itself in the exaggerated, claw-like shadows of the girls’ hands.
Interestingly, while Shapiro is preoccupied with water in these paintings, she says, “I’ve always had a fear of water. Since I was little, I’ve been simultaneously fascinated and scared.” It is this vulnerability of youth and the threat to innocence that ripples throughout the exhibition as Shapiro qualifies our romanticized view of the past.
Bob Archer says he’ll pretty much have to eat the $12,000 increase in property taxes because he can’t pass that on to his customers. Photo by John Robinson
No one likes paying taxes. And Charlottesville property owners who saw their commercial assessments go up 65 percent, 90 percent or 100 percent really don’t like it—and they’re letting the city know with a record number of appeals.
“Totally outrageous,” says Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville president Joan Fenton, who owns a “little bitty” parcel on Third Street where “there’s nothing you can do with it.” That .032-acre parcel went up 30 percent, the average commercial increase, compared with the 4 percent residential real estate bump.
A Water Street property Fenton owns went up 50 percent. “I appealed both,” she says.
Bob Archer has owned Bob’s Wheel Alignment on Market Street for 36 years, and says, “I’ve never seen a jump like this.” His assessment went up 65 percent—nearly $1 million. “That’s quite a jump,” he says. “I can’t raise my prices. I’ll have to absorb it.” Archer, too, is one of the appealers.
Keith Woodard owns a number of rental properties, including the cache of affordable housing he bought from Dogwood Properties in 2007, and says he’s submitted several appeals. “It’s upward pressure on rents for those with low incomes,” he says.
Management Services Corporation, which dominates the student housing rental market, saw staggering increases of 147 percent and 190 percent on two Corner area parcels, and its Preston Square Apartments jumped 83 percent and Cambridge Square Apartments soared 70 percent, according to vice chair Rick Jones. “Our increased tax is just under $400,000,” he says.
His point to the city: “Hey, if you have people’s assessments going up 68 percent, 90 percent, 100 percent—you’ve kind of messed up.”
Jones contends Management Services’ older rental properties are being assessed at the same capitalization rate as newer rentals like The Flats, which sold for $77.5 million in November and which doesn’t have the same maintenance expenses as the 50-year-old buildings he manages.
The cap rate is a ratio of sales price and net operating income. The city, says Jones, uses a cap rate of 6.25 percent, but for older properties, 8 percent might be more appropriate.
No one budgets for increases like that, says Jones, and with rentals, “You’re locked into a lease for a year.”
Jeff Davis is the city assessor taking the heat for the skyrocketing assessments. He worked for Albemarle County for around 30 years before moving to the city in December 2015. Davis brought in his former boss, Bruce Woodzell, former president of the International Association of Assessing Officers and a man who’s gotten his own share of flak in the county, to help with the commercial assessments and the 400 appeals.
And although Jones isn’t happy with the assessments, he is pleased to see Woodzell, a nationally known figure in the real estate valuation world, working for the city.
Davis explains the jump: “We had an overwhelming amount of sales evidence showing we were low on our assessments.”
He also says cap rates are low around Charlottesville, but says the city uses different rates for different types of properties. “We do give consideration, we do recognize older properties have greater expenses,” he says. “We do allow more for older properties.”
Says Davis, “This is not one size fits all.” At the same time, land values in Charlottesville are soaring. “It’s very expensive,” he says.
And while a lot of people are upset about the amount of the assessment increase, he says, “We have not heard people say, ‘My property is not worth that.’”
For those contesting their assessments, the first stop is Davis’ office. “If the appraiser is not able to satisfy them, they file an appeal form,” he says. His office will either affirm, reduce or, in some cases, increase the assessment, he says. If that still doesn’t placate the property owner, the next steps are the Board of Equalization and circuit court.
Management Services’ Jones sees a disturbing correlation between the spike in assessments and the city’s nearly $6 million surplus last year and $4.3 million surplus in 2015.
Not related, says Mayor Mike Signer. Last year’s surplus was 2 percent of the budget. “It was a reasonable surplus,” he says, and the city is required to spend it and close out the books for that fiscal year. “You don’t, like, stash the cash,” he says. Instead, the city put it into the capital budget, the Robert E. Lee statue fund and public safety employees’ salary increases.
Signer is aware of the sting of the increased tax bills, and he proposed lowering the property tax rate from 95 cents per $100 of value to 93 cents—a proposal that drew no support from his four fellow councilors.
“I’m principally interested in the effects of the cost of doing business for small businesses and medium-sized businesses,” he says. “The question is what you do as a policy when you have historic jumps.”
A 2-cent reduction in the tax rate would give back $1.4 million out of this year’s budget and means it would go up 5 percent rather than 6 percent, says Signer. “I think you could get that without too much pain,” he says, and give a “modest but significant amount back.”
For Jones, it’s all too much. “I wish there had been an assessor who said, ‘Wow, there’s a problem here, let’s raise rates gradually.’”
Rick Siebert, Charlottesville’s first parking manager, has experience installing smart meters in Montgomery County, Maryland, where he was in charge of its 20,000 spaces, 19 parking garages and 52 employees.
Photo John Robinson
The already difficult downtown parking landscape is about to become more challenging in the next couple of years. Major construction projects like West2nd, the Dewberry Hotel and Belmont Bridge promise to further clog streets and decimate an already dwindling parking supply.
Hardest hit will be the minions working on the Downtown Mall whose employers don’t provide parking.
Charlottesville’s new parking manager, Rick Siebert, met March 22 with the Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville, which had an organizational coup and panicked meetings last year at the threat (unfounded, as it turned out) the Water Street Parking Garage might close, to brief the group on the future of downtown parking,
Of particular concern to merchants is the trial run of meters in the immediate mall vicinity for the 157 currently free spaces. The pilot will do away with 97 two-hour free parking spaces and install either meters or kiosks for six months.
At least for now, Siebert reassured the skittish business owners, the validation program will remain unchanged, even as the management of Market Street Garage turns over from Charlottesville Parking Center to Lanier Parking Solutions.
Downtown parking has the “illusion of being free,” says Siebert, but if the spaces are full all the time, that doesn’t help if you can’t find a space.
And for those spaces most in demand—the ones closest to the restaurant or theater or shop—he asks, “Why should we give away our highest value spaces?”
Charging $2 an hour on the street could allow a reduction of rates in the parking garages, where people don’t want to park if free surface spaces are available, says Siebert. If all goes well with the meter pilot, he’d like to make the first hour of parking free in the Market Street Garage and end the validation program entirely.
At present that plan doesn’t include the Water Street Garage because of litigation between co-owners the city and Charlottesville Parking Center. Those parties will head to mediation in late May.
Parking meter bids are due April 5. “We requested equipment to be loaned to us for six months,” says Siebert. The companies likely to provide free equipment “predict the pilot will be successful and that we may expand the program. That’s what those proposers will bet on.”
He says he doesn’t know how much the metered pilot program will cost, but there will be start-up expenses to install the equipment. For the individual meters on the blocks where only one or two spaces are available, new signage won’t be needed, but the blocks that will have pay stations will need new signs to point parkers to the kiosks, he says.
Parking study recommendations suggest paid parking from 8am to 8pm Monday through Saturday.
“I think they came up with a reasonable plan to try it for six months,” says DBAC president Joan Fenton. “If it doesn’t work, it can be adjusted before the busy season begins in October.”
If the pilot is successful, escalating the rate for peak times could be an option. “We can get more sophisticated in the coming years,” says Siebert.
And the parking meter perimeter could be expanded out a couple of more blocks, which would make the streets where many downtown employees park no longer an option.
“The most difficult issue will be to find appropriate parking for people working at minimum wage,” says Siebert. “I don’t think it will be a silver bullet. We’ll try several things.”
Under discussion are park-and-ride lots. Siebert mentioned a city-owned lot on Avon Street that can get bus riders to town in 10 minutes. More problematic is the 20-minute return on a bus that currently runs every 30 minutes.
“When you look at people downtown making little more than minimum wage, to expect them to pay $2 to $3 an hour is not feasible,” says Kirby Hutto, manager of the Sprint Pavilion.
“The metered parking doesn’t bother me,” says Hutto, who says it’s “naive” to expect that spaces will remain free.
What is more worrisome, he says, is that there’s no plan to ease the pain of losing parking in the short term from construction and the uncertainty of the Water Street Garage litigation. “There’s going to be a shortage of parking,” he says. “How are we going to accommodate demand for parking during peak hours?”
The days of the city-owned meter lot on Water Street are numbered with construction of West2nd expected to begin this summer. Also on the chopping block are the 51 spaces under the Belmont Bridge, which City Councilor Bob Fenwick says he’s counted and where many Pavilion employees park.
“We’re already hearing employers say they can’t find people to work downtown because of parking,” says Hutto.
“That is a concern,” says Siebert of the upcoming construction. He’d like to phase projects like the Belmont Bridge so all parking isn’t taken out at once.
Parking is also an issue for people coming from out of town to see a show at the Pavilion. The 75 spaces in the Water Street Garage promised to John Dewberry for his eponymous hotel are “coming out of the inventory I can sell to Pavilion patrons,” says Hutto.
Pavilion-goers need to be able to park, says Hutto, and if all the new parking coming from new developments is for private use, that doesn’t help.
Charlottesville Parking Center owner Mark Brown “actually has some good ideas about how to manage the Water Street space,” says Hutto. “With active management, we should be able to know when there’s open inventory.”
Siebert promises to leave no parking possibility unexamined. He’s ready to talk to churches and the previously uninterested LexisNexis to see if they want to share their lots. He wants to contract parking enforcement. And he’ll work with transit to tailor bus routes for park-and-ride options.
And he’s working on a survey for downtown employers to give to their workers. “We need to find out what time of day they come in and where they’re coming from,” he says.
After a contentious year between the city and Charlottesville Parking Center, and the city and Albemarle County, which threatened to move its courts because of downtown parking issues, everyone seemed to take a deep breath in 2017.
The city is implementing a parking action plan based on recommendations from the four different parking consultants it’s hired since 1986.
That includes hiring a parking manager—Siebert—to report to the department of economic development. “Parking is really a tool for economic development,” he says. “I’m glad this council has acted on the advice it’s consistently received since 1986.”
Bye-bye free street parking
The six-month Downtown Mall pilot parking meter program goes into effect in August.
Area bounded by Second Street on the west, Market Street on the north, Sixth Street on the east and either South Street or the railroad tracks on the south
$2 an hour, 8am to 8pm Monday through Saturday
Parking meters or pay stations will take cash or credit
The 157 spaces in the area include loading zones and 22 handicapped spaces
Prime 109, a steakhouse bent on highlighting products from three cornerstone farms, is slated to open in May in the former Bank of America space on the Downtown Mall. Staff photo
Before Bank of America closed the doors of its 1916 building on the Downtown Mall in February, we reported that a steakhouse and at least one other bank would take its place.
Loud construction noises coming from the spot last week caused us to check on its status.
Citizen & Farmers Bank will occupy an 850-square-foot suite in the 10,400-square-foot space, according to Joe Kaut, a project manager with Cville Real Estate & Construction. The bank is aiming to open by early July.
C&F did not respond to a request for comment. It is a Virginia-based bank with 27 locations in the state, according to its website, but this will be its first in Charlottesville.
Another new tenant is likely to be Pantheon Restaurants LLC—the people behind Lampo, according to Nest Realty’s Macon Gunter. Back in December, building owner Hunter Craig said a steakhouse was going into the grand banking space. Gunter declined to confirm that, but says an announcement should be coming soon.
Other as-yet-undisclosed tenants will lease office space in the building, but Kaut says he hasn’t been assigned to those projects and doesn’t know what they will be.
And for those BofA clients looking for an ATM on the mall, well, nothing has materialized on that front. Says Bank of America spokesperson Lawrence Grayson in an e-mail, “I’ll be sure to circle back when/if we do.”
Corrected March 29 at 8:30am to reflect the correct name of the realtor.
A judge ruled last week that Chartis Property Casualty Company does not have to cover convicted murderer George Huguely in a wrongful death lawsuit against him. Huguely’s mother, Marta Murphy (above), and stepfather are insured for $6 million with that company. Staff photo
Last week a federal judge in Maryland ruled that Chartis Property Casualty Company does not have to cover convicted murderer George Huguely in a wrongful death lawsuit against him in Charlottesville. His mother and stepfather, Marta and Andrew Murphy, are insured for $6 million with that company.
In 2010, the UVA lacrosse player had a fight with Yeardley Love, a fourth-year, that left her dead.
“[Huguely], who had dated Yeardley Love ‘on and off’ for years, had been drinking alcohol heavily on May 2 and went to her house late that night,” reads the opinion filed by Judge Deborah Chasanow. “He admitted to police that he kicked a hole in her bedroom door to gain access to her room, had a physical altercation with her during an argument and left her bleeding on her bed.”
Coverage from his parents’ insurance agencies, Chartis and State Farm, has been contingent on whether Love’s death was intentional. Huguely has maintained he didn’t mean to kill her.
Though Sharon Love is suing Huguely in Charlottesville for purposely killing her daughter, she had filed a brief in the insurance battle that said it was an accident. She is seeking nearly $30 million in compensatory damages and an additional $1 million in punitive damages.
Because both insurance policies define intent differently, and Chartis’ policy explicitly says any criminal act negates coverage, it was let off the hook while State Farm is still expected to cover the convicted murderer for $300,000.
Huguely’s civil suit in Charlottesville is on track for July 2018, according to his attorney, Matt Green.
The majority of Faulkner’s lectures while a writer in residence were recorded and have now been digitally archived—more than 1,690 minutes. Courtesy Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library
Sixty years ago, on February 15, 1957, Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner arrived at the University of Virginia to assume his role as the first Balch Writer In Residence. Strolling through the Academical Village in his patent overcoat and collegiate tweed suit, the Mississippi gentleman smiled quietly at the throng of officials, cameramen and students, puffing his pipe and embracing the position that was to mark the beginning of five years spent in Charlottesville, until his death in 1962.
At the ensuing press conference, the 59-year-old author—whom, at that point, had also won a Pulitzer (1955) and two National Book Awards (1951 and 1955)—said his goal for the residence was to instruct students interested in literature and creative writing “out of my experience as a writer, and to help create an atmosphere.”
Ironically, in the lead-up to Faulkner’s selection as the university’s first writer in residence, there was considerable debate surrounding the decision, much of which had to do with fears concerning exactly the kind of “atmosphere” he might create. After a bequest from Emily Clark Balch, which her will dictated should be used to stimulate the “appreciation and creation of American literature,” the university decided to use the funds to establish the WIR position. “They knew that Faulkner’s only child, Jill, was living in Charlottesville with her husband, Paul, who was a law student at UVA, and, as the couple had just recently had their first child, Faulkner and his wife were visiting the area quite a bit,” says UVA professor of English and distinguished Faulkner scholar Stephen Railton. “So, some people in the English department—and especially the younger scholars—got tremendously excited, and began to argue, ‘He’s already here, so why don’t we ask him to do it?’”
Only, there was a problem. While some were thrilled by the prospect of a Faulkner residency, others—including then university president Colgate Darden—worried about the author’s well-known reputation as a drinker. And there was, after all, a precedent. “He’d been invited to the college in the 1930s and had basically stayed drunk the whole time,” said Railton. “He missed events and didn’t conduct himself well, and many of the older faculty members remembered that—essentially they were afraid he’d come here and not take it seriously and embarrass them.”
However, the former camp ultimately won out. “He took the post extremely seriously and went above and beyond in the performance of his duties,” said Railton. “He stood up in front of audiences and was a Southern gentleman, patiently answering question after question, saying ‘yes ma’am’ or ‘yes sir,’ and treating even the stupidest inquiries with dignity and respect. He was very polite and very sincere in his desire to make himself and his work accessible.”
William Faulkner often strode Grounds at UVA in his trademark tweed coat with a pipe in hand. Courtesy Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library
During the two years he spent in residence, Faulkner kept office hours, consulted with university scholars on the topic of contemporary American literature, wrote the better part of his novel The Mansion and visited English classes to answer questions about his books and the process of writing, and discuss philosophy, current affairs and just about anything else. In this latter capacity, between February 1957 and May 1958, he spoke at 36 different public events, gave two formal addresses, read a dozen times from eight of his works and answered more than 1,400 questions from audiences ranging from UVA students and faculty to local citizens and women’s groups. Additionally, the Nobel laureate traveled to other regional institutions—including the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington and Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg (which was, at that time, the state’s women’s college)—addressing audiences there as well.
The bulk of these sessions were captured on reel-to-reel recordings, which, working with more than 60 scholars, university staffers, alumni and media representatives, Railton compiled and digitally archived about a decade ago. Entitled “Faulkner at Virginia,” the resulting website collection contains more than 1,690 minutes—that’s 28-plus hours—worth of dialogue. “We owe the existence of these tapes to Frederick Gwynn and Joseph Blotner, the members of UVA’s English department who were most involved with Faulkner’s residency,” Railton wrote in his introduction to the ambitious project. “It was their idea to record the sessions, and after getting the author’s consent, it was almost always one or the other of them who ran the tape recorder they carried around to the events.” Augmenting the recordings are explanatory narratives courtesy of Railton, letters and historical press clippings, as well as student and faculty essays offering personal accounts of Faulkner’s time at the university.
“I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire…I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forgetit now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it.” William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
“He said he loved it here and actually published a humorous essay explaining that he loved Virginians because they were ‘snobs,’” Railton says. “He was so committed to making a good impression that, when a lady out in Albemarle County took offense to his statements and wrote him a letter demanding to know what he meant by the comments, he wrote her back explaining that it was actually meant as a kind of laudatory joke. …He was trying to be a very good citizen of the community. And I think everyone would agree the decision proved an excellent one.”
Illustrative of the usefulness of Railton’s project is our ability to experience first-hand Faulkner’s response to the snob scandal. After being questioned during a lecture about the statement, his reply was telling, especially because it was received with frequent punctuations of laughter. “A snob is someone who is so complete in himself and so satisfied with what he has that he needs nothing from anybody,” Faulkner told the audience. “That when a stranger comes up, he can accept that stranger on the stranger’s terms, provided only the stranger observe a few amenities of civilization. That’s what Virginians do. They never push at me. They want nothing of me. They will offer me their hospitality and they will accept me. All I have to do is just behave reasonably.”
Concerning “the atmosphere” Faulkner cultivated, Railton points to a personal essay composed by English major and 1959 graduate Gerald Cooper, the central premise of which described how Faulkner’s presence at the college “made students more likely to realize that there was a larger world and other ways of thinking and acting about it and in it.”
“It’s difficult for students in the 21st century to imagine what a great gulf existed between the Grounds and the larger worlds of government, commerce and especially the arts, before the advent of mass communications,” wrote Cooper in his 2010 essay. “No national media coverage originated in Charlottesville, and even Washington, D.C., offered little or no live theater, at least until the Kennedy Center opened in 1971. Thus, to have a person of international stature in the world of letters—a Nobel laureate—walking the Grounds daily over a period of months and years demonstrated that the University of Virginia had not lost sight of the world-class ambitions of its founder.”
Commemoration
Seeking to honor the diamond anniversary of Faulkner’s arrival, working with two graduate assistants and other staffers, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library curator Molly Schwartzburg put together the exhibition “Faulkner: Life and Works,” which opened in early February and will run until July 7. It features artifacts from the university’s William Faulkner Collection, which is the largest and most comprehensive of its kind in the world. The collection is massive—spanning numerous floor-to-ceiling stacks in both the library’s vault and archive—and encompasses materials donated by three major collectors and more than 50 smaller ones.
Of the contributors, Linton Massey, who was a friend of Faulkner’s and the executor of his personal manuscripts and papers, was the heaviest hitter by far. “He saw early and clearly how brilliant was the work of his fellow Southerner and how lasting his achievement would be,” wrote Joseph Blotner, describing Massey in the catalog of an earlier Faulkner exhibit. “Had it not been for this perception he could not have begun in time the labor that would make this the greatest of all Faulkner collections.”
Regarding the exhibit’s curation, Schwartzburg said it was a daunting undertaking. “It had been 40 years since we’d done a full-on Faulkner blowout and, when we were trying to figure out how to approach the material, it was intimidating, overwhelming and humbling to try and decide how to fit everything into one room,” she said, addressing an auditorium packed beyond seating capacity at the exhibit’s February 28 open house. However, the team eventually decided on a two-pronged approach.
On the one hand, lining the gallery’s walls were about a dozen glass cases harboring objects, photographs and documents that tell the story of what Schwartzburg described as Faulkner’s various personae. “We looked at the person he was when he came to this community and decided to look closely at some of the major components of his life that people might not know about,” she said. “We drew these out and isolated them so that even those who didn’t know the work—or maybe they encountered it in high school and found it to be unappealing or inaccessible…we wanted there to be something here for everyone.”
With personae ranging from the Hollywood screenwriter, British Royal Air Force airman, illustrator, hunter, to the self-proclaimed “White Southerner” and U.S. State Department spokesman, the displays provide an intimate window into Faulkner’s world and interiority. “It’s just incredible to be able to see this acclaimed Southern author positioned within the historical framework of his time,” said 30-year-old Charlottesville native and aspiring writer Joshua Humphries, commenting on the show’s “White Southerner” display. “You see this Nobel Prize winner struggling to handle racial issues and discuss segregation. …I never realized how he was sort of homeless between lands—where, on the one side, he was too integrationist for Southern tastes and, on the other [leaning toward gradual integration], too conservative in the eyes of Northerners. …I think seeing how he undertook this kind of gut-wrenching intellectual grappling profoundly humanizes the man and makes him all the more interesting.”
In addition to the personae, the gallery’s center casements hold what, for Faulkner nerds and connoisseurs, are the archives’ crown jewels: pages from original manuscripts including, yes, selections from The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying.
“It’s amazing that he liked it here so much that he bequeathed his papers and manuscripts to the university,” said Schwartzburg, who studied English literature at Harvard and earned a Ph.D. in English and American literature from Stanford. “It has allowed UVA to become the world’s premier center for Faulkner studies, with scholars traveling here from all around the world to study and access the archives. …In part, that’s what this exhibit is meant to celebrate: pulling out those treasures
Family ties
But Faulkner’s legacy in Charlottesville extends beyond the university grounds. Indeed, his daughter, Jill Faulkner Summers, continued living in the area with her husband, Paul—with whom she had three children, Paul III, Cathy and Boc—until her death at the age of 74 in early 2008. Described by her children as dignified and reticent, and by her colleagues as the exemplary Southern lady, Jill made a career of her father’s passion for fox hunting. After becoming master of hounds at Farmington Hunt Club in 1968—her father had joined and very much enjoyed the club during his tenure at UVA—she maintained the position until her death, becoming the longest-serving lady master in the history of North America.
Jill Faulkner Summers, William Faulkner’s only child,was master of hounds at Farmington Hunt Club from 1968-2008 and was the longest-serving lady master in the history of North America. Photo by Cathy Summers
“Horses were her life,” said Farmington’s current master of hounds, Pat Butterfield, who worked alongside Jill beginning in 1980. “She set the standard of what we should try to be like and how we should conduct ourselves. She wasn’t some kind of ‘lady of the manor’ or anything like that—she polished her own boots, mucked her own stalls, turned out the horses herself and was just very hands-on with everything. …She was one of very few women in her position in the country and was definitely an innovator in her field.”
Meanwhile, in 1987, Paul III and his brother founded The Blue Ridge Brewing Co. in Charlottesville. “We were the state’s first microbrewery and restaurant,” says 60-year-old Paul. “We’d actually invested in a San Francisco company first, but then, when we discovered that you could pull it off here, we decided to move the operation back home. …Unfortunately, while we went at it for 13 years, it turned out we were a little ahead of our time.”
After selling the brewery and restaurant in 1999, Paul entered the wine industry and served as the vineyard manager at Kluge Estates, cellar master at Barboursville Vineyards and estate manager at Blenheim Vineyards before planting his own vines and establishing Knight’s Gambit Vineyard on his parents’ White Hall farm in 2003. Regarding his passion for spirits, he shrugged and cited a bit of family history. “While it was well-known that my grandfather liked to drink and preferred bourbon, not a lot of people know he was a big wine aficionado,” Paul says. “He loved a good bottle and had the kind of vintages imported to Mississippi that would probably run you between $1,500 and $2,000 for a bottle of equivalent quality today.”
Of Faulkner’s influence on his life, although Paul doesn’t remember much—his grandfather, whom he knew as “Pappy,” died when he was just 6 years old—he did offer this: “People knew that we were his grandkids, and while my parents raised us to be cognizant of the luck of having such a famous and talented grandfather, they emphasized the importance of being our own people. It was always up to us to make our own way and not ride on his coattails.”
Living history
Leaving the Faulkner exhibit and strolling northeast from UVA’s Alderman Library toward Rugby Road under the cover of an umbrella on a cool and rainy night, the knowledge that the great writer once walked this very route home imbues the air with a kind of, well, Faulknerian magic. “I was once teaching a class on Faulkner in Rouss Hall and suddenly it struck me, ‘My goodness, he once stood here in this very spot addressing students on his own work,’” confides Railton. “It was a very profound feeling, to experience myself as part of a kind of lineage that, I hope, will live on well beyond my lifetime.”
Notable works
William Faulkner authored 19 novels (three of which landed on the Modern Library’s list of the 100 Best Novels), more than 100 short stories and numerous plays, screenplays and poems. Here’s a rundown of some of Faulkner’s best-known works:
The Sound and the Fury (1929): His fourth novel was Faulkner’s favorite of all his published works (and named No. 6 on the Modern Library’s list). Divided into four sections and told from four different perspectives, the book requires patience and persistence on the reader’s part as the subject matter deals with painful themes.
As I Lay Dying (1930): Faulkner said he wrote the 59 chapters that comprise this novel in four-hour bursts over the course of just six weeks. It’s ranked 35th on the Modern Library’s list.
A Rose for Emily(1930): Although Faulkner is remembered for his novels, he was also a master of the short story, and since A Rose for Emily was first published in The Forum, it has become one of the most anthologized American short stories.
Light in August (1932): Race and identity are at the heart of this novel, which comes in at No. 54 on the Modern Library’s list.
Absalom, Absalom! (1936): This novel’s claim to fame is that it contains one of the longest sentences in literary history: just under 1,300 words.
The Reivers (1962): The last of Faulkner’s novels to be published before his death, The Reivers is a coming-of-age story with a protagonist similar to Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.
