Month: February 2021

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Arts Culture

PICK: UNSUNG

Publicity Photo

Phoning in the overture: When Victory Hall Opera’s production of Verdi’s La Traviata was canceled, the cast turned to their iPhones—but not for pandemic-induced doom scrolling. Instead, they collaborated on filming UNSUNG, the first feature film made by and about opera singers. In it, the cast navigates the challenges of life during a pandemic, and searches for ways to remain connected to the music they love. The result is a testament to artistic courage in the face of unprecedented obstacles. “It is crucial that these stories be heard; the stories of singers whose calling and life’s work has been banned in the time of COVID, with singing suddenly feared as a virus-spreading danger,” says VHO’s Miriam Gordon-Stewart. The film premieres on-demand, with a live recording of a chamber version of the opera soundtrack available through iTunes.

Saturday 2/27, $10 to stream. victoryhallopera.org.

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Arts Culture

PICK: Muscle Shoals

Publicity photo

Take you there: Founded in 1969 by four Alabama session musicians, the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio became legendary for soul music after producing hits for Wilson Pickett (“Mustang Sally”), Aretha Franklin (“I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)”), and the Staple Singers (“I’ll Take You There”), among others. The magical environment and signature sound of the humble space (a former coffin showroom) attracted rock royalty, including The Rolling Stones, Traffic, Bob Seger, Elton John, Paul Simon, and Bob Dylan. Greg “Freddy” Camalier’s Muscle Shoals documents stories of studio staff and insights from big-name recording artists.

Friday 2/26, $5-8, 3 and 7pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 979-1333.

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Arts Culture

PICK: Kenn Kaufman

Blank vertical book cover template with pages in front side standing on white surface Perspective view. Vector illustration.

Winging it: Kenn Kaufman is an extreme birder who’s been at it since the ‘60s, when he dropped out of high school and hit the road in pursuit of feathered creatures. The author, artist, naturalist, and conservationist’s career really took flight when he won 1973’s Big Year birding competition and set the record for most North American bird species spotted in a year. He will virtually discuss his latest book, A Season on the Wind: Inside the World of Spring Migration, with birding photographer and author Pete Myers as part of the Virginia Festival of the Book’s Shelf Life series.

Thursday 2/25, Free, noon. Zoom required. vabook.org.

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Arts Culture

In the trenches

Tom Holland stars as an Ohio native who falls into a life of drugs and crime after losing love and going to war. Photo from Apple tv+

Sprawling cinematic stories of drug abuse and crime sprees are nothing new. Martin Scorsese has honed this sub­genre of brittle masculinity and confessional narration throughout his long career, and many others have tried to ascend to his platform for storytelling. Cherry never quite climbs to that rank, but it is an empathetic look at one man’s seemingly inescapable demise.

Directors Anthony and Joe Russo chose to return to their hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, with Cherry, though they arguably never left. Their previous films, Avengers and Captain America, used the Ohio location as a stand-in for larger, more expensive cities on screen. Heck, even Fate of the Furious was filmed there, so it is very likely you have been watching Cleveland for years without realizing it. This time, the Russos forego dressing up the city, and instead take a long, hard look at what it was in the early 2000s. Cleveland is tough and can be unforgiving, but it is not unworthy of its own moment in the spotlight.

Tom Holland, with a wavering American accent, stars as Cherry, a young man who has fallen into a life of crime—when we first meet him, he is holding up a bank while explaining to us, via voiceover, how he goes about doing the job. No man starts out in life with a bandana around his face and a gun in his hand, and he takes us through the years that lead him to that moment.

If you haven’t already guessed, Cherry is a nickname, and the explanation of this moniker comes to us as we see him sink into his cozy criminality. Going back to his university days, he dabbles in drugs, and, in the midst of a most excellent ecstasy trip, Cherry meets Emily (Ciara Bravo).

Emily is a fellow student whose beauty is only matched by her fear of emotional vulnerability and commitment. During a wild overreaction to Cherry confessing his feelings for her, she says she’s moving away. His equally disproportionate response is to join the army and run from the woman who broke him, and the city that reminds him of her.

These different stages in Cherry’s life are divided by title cards, which let us know that Cherry is entering a new chapter. Not only do the Russos establish the mile markers along the way to call attention to the stages in the story, the film’s camera style, score, and even aspect ratio change from segment to segment. In college, the score is quaint, with almost cartoonish classical movements; basic training has more rock and roll; and Van Morrison takes the reins to steer us into Cherry’s life at war and away from home.

The film is brutally honest about the effects of war, and selectively dips into gore to prove its point. Considering how drastically this experience changes Cherry for the worse, it makes sense to show some of what will haunt him for the rest of his life.

Cherry never makes the argument that the main character’s descent into drug dependency or crime is inevitable, but it does make it feel inescapable. Each circumstance leads to the next, and before long, the next best choice for Cherry is to start robbing banks. He is not hopeless or flailing through his own hell, he is just trudging forward on an increasingly dark path. Cherry also stops short of ever feeling like a sermon or public service announcement. We see how awful war and chemical dependency is, but as with Cherry and Emily, those are lessons to be learned by experience and not instruction.

Accent aside, Holland brings this evolving character to life. Bravo adds some charm, but ultimately is given little to do besides stare adoringly, and it seems a disservice to try to measure her beyond that. The film does maintain a certain affection for Cherry’s love for Emily, connecting the dots to his swan dive into crime, but Cherry never excuses Cherry for what he has done.

Categories
Culture Food & Drink Living

Students grab healthier options, and the Downtown Mall faces French paradox

Smoke in our eyes

A new Q joint started smoking last Friday. Vision Barbecue is pioneered by co-owners Mike Blevins and Gabi Barghachie, who came up with their “vision” for the restaurant while working together at Maya. These barbecue boys are on a mission to add their own take on authentic smoked meats and sides to the downtown restaurant scene. “We are using local wood and a match,” Barghachie says. “No chemical starters, no gas, no electric. Everything done the way it’s supposed to be done.” The menu offers meats by the pound, traditional sides with a spicy variation on pimento cheese, and Little Pig- and Big Hen-sized sandwiches for all appetites. Be sure to grab the wet naps when you pick up VB’s signature sammie, The Hot Mess, loaded with 10 ounces of brisket, pork, and chicken, and topped with pickled onions and jalapeño plus housemade cheese and pepper sauces. Vision Barbecue is located next to The Shebeen at 249 Ridge McIntire Rd., and is open Thursday through Monday.

Crammin’ the good stuff

While we can’t imagine students completely ditching Gusburgers, donuts, and Chinese food delivery, it’s exciting to see UVA’s commitment to healthy, sustainable eating through a new partner­ship with Harvest Table. A subsidiary of Aramark, Harvest Table specializes in bringing locally sourced, high-quality food to institutional dining. Throughout the fall semester, the company tested its “immersive culinary movement” with pop-ups inside Runk dining hall, before fully integrating to bring Hoos a fresh, eco-friendly alternative.

All Runk food now comes from within a 150-mile radius of Charlottesville and is prepared entirely in-house—no premade hamburger patties, no packaged desserts. Through the initiative, students can choose non-GMO, antibiotic-free, and grass-fed as well as plant-based proteins, and there are options for those with food allergies and sensitivities.

Peter Bizon, executive chef for Harvest Table at Runk, says that university dining halls provide an excellent opportunity to bring local businesses together. He’s teamed up with Shenandoah Joe’s for coffee and Blue Ridge Bucha for on-tap kombucha.

“Some farms have the necessary licensing to do business with us and some don’t,” says Bizon. “We specialize in connecting the ones who don’t with the ones who do in order to foster cooperation among local producers. It means a lot when you can work with local farmers. You can get others involved and create a strong community.”

Harvest Table is also partnering with Babylon Micro-Farms, an organization founded by UVA alumni that helps restaurants grow produce in-house with systems that are remotely climate controlled and can support a wide
variety of plants, from lettuces to herbs, and even some edible flowers.

The university hopes to extend Harvest Table’s services to its other two dining halls in the future.

Frites on hold

While many local restos have pivoted creatively to stay open safely, using igloos, outdoor heaters, blankets, and stepped-up takeout offerings, Brasserie Saison has opted to close temporarily for the winter. The official statement from the popular Euro-pub says, “The health and safety of our restaurant family and community come first and we feel that the risk is too great for indoor dining during these winter months.” Owners say they plan to reopen in the spring, after the majority of the restaurant staff is able to receive vaccines. Then we can finally get back to enjoying the moules frites.

Frites on the go

Meanwhile, just up the mall, there’s another new restaurant from Ten Course Hospitality (the group behind Brasserie Saison, Revolutionary Soup, The Alley Light, The Pie Chest, The Bebedero, and most recently The Milkman’s Bar at Dairy Market): Café Frank, with an original menu from Chef Jose De Brito, whose resume includes Fleurie, The Alley Light, and The Inn at Little Washington. The new café is located in the former home of Splendora’s Gelato (we miss you!), and promises casual, French dining on the Downtown Mall (plus a robust daily to-go menu). The café’s bar program is by Mike Stewart, and Will Richey will curate the bistro-style wine list. We are excited to try the Royal Paella-for-Two with lobster, mussels, shrimp, and chorizo, but the hidden gem of this new foodie magnet might be the 4pm aperitif hour, when De Brito creates unique bites to pair with a prosecco bar-style sparkling wine list and cocktails. Café Frank is accepting takeout orders, and will be open for in-house dining Monday through Saturday beginning in March. —Will Ham

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Arts Culture

Milk, but no honey

Locally produced zine Mala Leche offers a forum for underrepresented voices. “Saint Lucy Eyes” by Sam Gray accompanies a handwritten explainer of Lucia of Syracuse’s persecution. Photo courtesy of the artist

On the cover of Mala Leche’s inaugural issue, the name of the zine is tiny, hardly visible. The focus is much more on the “bad milk” itself—a cut-out image of a baby bottle, emblazoned with a black skull and crossbones and resting in an equally inky puddle.

It’s an eye-catching design, one intended to draw passersby to its distribution boxes at the Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative. But the cover is just the start, as anyone who picks up a copy will discover upon reading the letter from the editors, Sri Kodakalla and Ramona Martinez, Mala Leche’s co-creators. The zine, they write, “reflects the voices and interests of womxn, non-binary, and genderqueer artists & thinkers.” Kodakalla and Martinez also assert that their zine plays a part in the “death and rebirth of society.”

The first issue’s 16 pieces of art, contributed by 13 creatives in the central Virginia area, serve as proof of a community that is as diverse as it is underappreciated. The works vary widely in subject matter, but have similar levels of intensity and urgency: an anonymous essay about a ride-along with a Charlottesville cop, a handwritten consideration of St. Lucy, stark black-and-white depictions of some of C’ville’s still-standing monuments.

Kodakalla considers Mala Leche’s diversity one of the publication’s most important features. “The thing about Mala Leche is that it creates this space for all those different viewpoints to exist in one zine,” she says. The goal, both she and Martinez agree, is to create a product that’s “relevant to every person.”

Along with co-editing Mala Leche, Kodakalla and Martinez are also the acting co-directors of the Feminist Union of Charlottes­ville Creatives. FUCC got its start as a Facebook group in 2017, Martinez says, and has only been an “official” organization since it recently received fiscal sponsorship from the Bridge PAI.

One tradition that has been around since the start is FUCC’s annual art show. “It’s really powerful to have a show of all women, non-binary, and genderqueer artists,” Martinez says. “You have to wonder how many genderqueer, non-binary artists have work hanging in the museums of New York right now.”

Mala Leche was created largely to give a different platform to those same artists. Martinez says she had been talking about her dream of such a zine for months before Kodakalla suggested they start it through FUCC. “It just made so much sense because it’s tapping into a network of artists and writers who already have a lot to share.”

Martinez says about half the work in Mala Leche’s first issue was submitted by artists already involved with FUCC, while the other 50 percent came from outside contributors, such as Meesha Goldberg, a painter and writer whose poem “Casualties of the Anthropocene” is one of the issue’s most memorable pieces. “The Earth is made of food / We are one another’s harvest,” Goldberg writes, invoking images of a “shroud of vultures” and deer “strewn & supine” on the highway.

Kodakalla and Martinez had interacted with Goldberg in other capacities—Kodakalla oversaw a 96-foot mural recently completed by Goldberg for the McGuffey Art Center, while Martinez enlisted Goldberg’s help to relocate a stray rooster that had wandered onto her property (the rooster now resides on Goldberg’s farm somewhere “in a secluded valley”). Both were so impressed by the variety and power of Goldberg’s work that they invited her to guest edit Mala Leche’s second issue.

Titled “Fever Dreams of Mother Earth,” its themes hew closely to Goldberg’s poetry and visual work. The issue, which is accepting submissions through February 26, will tackle the “delirium of [Mother Earth’s] dark nights…Mala Leche is conjuring the medicine of Art that we may one morning sweat out our fever and wake from this collective nightmare. Let us lucid dream again!”

Goldberg says she was drawn to the zine for its “strong, perverse tension” and the ways it’s positioned to highlight “sickness in society.” And nothing is sicker in society right now, she argues, than Mother Earth. “So many of our social problems come from cultural disconnection with the land.”

An important aspect of Mala Leche that its creators want to emphasize is that the zine is in black-and-white, so those interested in submitting should plan their artwork accordingly. It imposes a limit when printing visual content—Goldberg herself boasts many vivid, hyperrealistic paintings in her body of work, and to reprint them on such a scale wouldn’t do them justice—but Kodakalla and Martinez maintain that the very existence of Mala Leche is cause for celebration: In addition to giving deserving artists a platform, it pays them too, thanks to the Bridge PAI’s fiscal sponsorship.

The editors are excited about the radical and sometimes revolutionary submissions received by Mala Leche. They’re never sure what to expect, and both agree that the unknown is part of the appeal.
“We’re not really looking for any one particular vision,” Kodakalla says.

“Right now is the time to dream the new world up,” Martinez agrees. “There isn’t one answer as to what that world should look like.”

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News

Legalize it right

Nationwide, Black and white people use marijuana at similar rates. In Virginia, Black people make up about 20 percent of the population—but 52 percent of citations for marijuana possession in the last year were given to Black people, says Chelsea Higgs Wise, executive director of Marijuana Justice, a Richmond-based group fighting for the enactment of equitable legalization policies. 

This month, both houses of the Virginia legislature passed bills that will allow legal, adult-only, recreational marijuana purchase and use beginning in 2024. In the next few days, a small conference of legislators from both houses will meet to reconcile the two bills. Governor Ralph Northam is expected to sign the final version into law, making Virginia the first Southern state to legalize the drug.

Decades of racial discrimination in enforcement means marijuana legalization is a consequential criminal justice issue. And for many supporters of legalization, Virginia’s proposed bills fail to provide adequate redress for the harms caused by the decades-long war on drugs, specifically within Black and brown communities.

“As of right now, I’m terrified,” says Higgs Wise. “The bills now are really bad. I would not want them to pass as they are right now.”

In response to the proposed legislation, Marijuana Justice—joined by RISE for Youth, ACLU of Virginia, and 21 other advocacy groups—sent a letter to Northam and the General Assembly, urging them to meet specific criteria that center on racial equity.

A central  point of contention is the legalization timeline. While the state Senate bill would permit simple possession of marijuana for adults as early as July 1, 2021, the House version would not do so until 2024, when the sale of marijuana is also legal.

Many activists also do not think it’s necessary to wait until 2024 to permit the sale or possession of the drug, pointing to the marijuana-friendly states Virginia could look to for guidance. 

“It’s going to take time to establish a new agency and go through a new licensing process, but does it need to take that long? Probably not,” says Jenn Michelle Pedini, executive director of Virginia NORML. “Such a delayed implementation really only serves the illicit market.”

Pedini suggests that legal access be quickly expanded through existing medical marijuana providers, as many other states have done.

Another key criminal justice component of legalization is the expungement of marijuana-related offenses from criminal records. Both bills would automatically expunge misdemeanors and allow those convicted of felonies to petition for expungement. Certain expungements may also require people to pay off court fees.

Automatic expungement of misdemeanors is crucial, but not a conclusive step. “Prior to 2020, anything over half an ounce was a felony,” explains Higgs Wise. “The people who have been most impacted by these unfair laws are the people with the felonies,” which impact career, housing, and education opportunities.

For those currently incarcerated, the new laws aren’t a get-out-of-jail-free card. People who are currently in jail or prison for marijuana-related offenses would be resentenced, but it remains unclear which offenses would be eligible for reevaluation, and when the resentencing process would begin.

The legislation would also make it illegal to have marijuana inside a vehicle, even if it’s not being used. Activists fear this will only worsen traffic stops—a huge driver of marijuana cases.

“Last year, we fought really hard and got the odor of marijuana to no longer be a reason to search or seize in your car,” says Higgs Wise. “In order to continue to criminalize us in the car, now all a cop has to do is say they see a green leafy substance in your car anywhere, and they have a reason to search.”

If a container of marijuana that’s been opened is found inside the car, the driver could be charged with driving under the influence.

Meanwhile, minors caught with marijuana would continue to face harsh penalties under the proposed laws, including fines, drug tests, probation, school expulsion, and the denial of a driver’s license. 

Such punitive measures have proven to have a disproportionate impact on Black youth. While Black and white youth are arrested at similar rates, Black youth are significantly more likely to be incarcerated instead of put into diversion programs.

“There’s actually data that shows us that there’s no increase in youth use because of marijuana legalization,” says Higgs Wise. “Why in the world create more penalties for young people, when we know which young people are going to be the most impacted?”

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News

Seeing green

What would you do with $300 million in drug money? 

That’s the question now facing the Virginia General Assembly.

Both the Virginia House and Senate have passed bills promising to legalize marijuana for adult use by 2024. In the coming days, legislators from the two chambers will meet to reconcile the two bills before sending a final version to the governor, which he’s expected to sign.

Over the first five years of marijuana legalization, the commonwealth could bring in anywhere from $184-$308 million, according to a 2020 report from the assembly’s nonpartisan research commission. The state government won’t be the only entity profiting when weed is legal, either. With cultivation and retail industries poised to flourish, questions about who makes money from marijuana are at the front of legislators’ minds. 

The state plans to levy a 21 percent tax on pot sales, in addition to the existing 6 percent sales tax. (For reference, liquor is taxed at 20 percent in Virginia, the third-highest rate in the nation.)

Both the state Senate and House bills propose the same spending plan for that new marijuana tax income: 40 percent will be devoted to pre-K education for at-risk youth, 30 percent to the Cannabis Equity Reinvestment Fund, 25 percent to substance abuse treatment and prevention, and 5 percent to public health initiatives. 

That might sound reasonable enough, but some activists have concerns. Marijuana Justice’s Chelsea Higgs Wise wants to see 70 percent devoted to the equity fund, which would seek to make up for past discrimination by providing things like tutoring and mentoring programs and free transportation in cities like Richmond. 

“Three- to 4-year-old pre-K is something that’s very dear to our heart, but we understand that those 3- to 4-year-olds would be better served if they are housed with rent relief funds, or if they’re fed with different feeding programs,” says Higgs Wise. She warns against “giving this reinvestment money back to institutions that have not invested it intentionally for our community.” 

Under the current proposal, the Charlottesville and Albemarle local governments stand to make money from legalization, too—the bills give localities the option to add a 3 percent tax of their own on top of the state’s fees. Massachusetts adopted an identical local option system when it allowed retail sales to begin in late 2018. In the second full year of legalization, 46 Massachusetts localities combined to bring in $14 million from marijuana sales, according to Mass Live. 

Matt Simon, senior policy analyst at the Marijuana Policy Project, says high tax rates won’t prevent people from buying legally.

“People may experience sticker shock when the stores first open, and say ‘I can get this cheaper from my guy I went to high school with,’” Simon says. “But both Colorado and Washington have higher taxes than are in this bill, and over time they’ve captured the vast majority of the market…The prices are much lower in the stores than from illicit sources.” 

Legislators must also consider who runs those stores. Exactly how many licenses will be passed out remains to be seen—Simon says the current plan could be “in the realm of 400 retailers.” That’s a departure from Virginia’s two-year-old medical cannabis industry, in which only five large corporations have licenses.

The bills currently prioritize giving cultivation and retail licenses to those whose communities have been subjected to racist enforcement of marijuana laws in the past. The state can’t directly offer Black people a head start, but it can decide that businesses owned by those with marijuana convictions, or businesses that employ 10 or more people with past convictions, will be given a six-month head start in the license application process.

Higgs Wise says those provisions might not be enough, however. For example, she’s concerned that allowing 10 formerly arrested low-wage employees to qualify a business for equity priority won’t meet the intended goal of giving Black and brown people access to lucrative business management positions. 

Ross Efaw owns the area’s Greener Things CBD Dispensary, which sells a variety of low-THC hemp-derived products. He also hopes that marijuana licenses are accessible to the little guy.

“Small, locally owned businesses like us want to participate in legal cannabis sales. We’re well positioned to. We have the experience. It’s just a matter of if the state will allow for accessible permits for small businesses,” Efaw says. “We hope there’s opportunity for everyone.”

Efaw says Charlottesville could quickly become a hub for marijuana sales in the state. “I think Charlottesville’s a great market and it’ll really catch on here. No doubt in my mind. Our clientele ask us all the time, ‘When are you going to have THC products available?’” 

While lots of questions remain about the future of marijuana in Virginia, one thing is for sure, says Efaw: “The demand is high.”

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News

Put it in park

Aerial view of downtown Charlottesville
Decision time approaches on a long-discussed and controversial proposed parking garage. PC: Skyclad Aerial

By Sean Tubbs

The fate of a proposed 300-space city-owned parking garage at Seventh and Market streets—in the space currently occupied by Lucky 7 and Guadalajara—hangs in the balance. Charlottesville City Council has to decide whether or not to include $8 million in next year’s capital budget plan for the project. The proposed garage has drawn opposition from some community members in the years since it was announced, and one city councilor who previously supported the structure has recently changed his position. 

“It would be a mistake to go ahead build the parking garage at this time,” said City Councilor Lloyd Snook at council’s February 16 meeting. 

Snook’s reversal is consequential—in the past, he was part of a 3-2 majority of councilors to voice informal support for the project.

A December 2018 agreement between the city and Albemarle County to locate a joint general district court downtown calls for the structure to be built. The county had explored moving its courts out of the city in part because of a perceived lack of parking.

The proposed garage would have 90 spots reserved for county court employees and visitors during regular court hours. The rest of the garage will be open to the public. The agreement doesn’t specify whether the public spots will be free or paid but says details would be worked out during the design process.

The agreement also required Albemarle to convey to the city its share of a jointly-owned surface lot between Seventh and Eighth Street NE that the two localities jointly purchased in 2005. That occurred last April and cleared the way for the city to proceed with a plan for a structure that would use both the surface lot and an adjoining property the city purchased in January 2017 for $2.85 million.

The agreement states construction of the garage must begin by May 1, 2022, and must be available for county use by November 30, 2023. If this does not occur, the county would have the temporary alternative of being guaranteed 100 spaces in the existing Market Street garage. The start date deadline is approaching fast.

If the city fails to construct the new garage, Albemarle has two options. It can either have those 100 spaces permanently dedicated to the county’s use when courts are open, or have the right to repurchase its share of the surface lot for exclusive use. 

Albemarle is aware of the city’s ongoing discussion. 

“The courts agreement signed by the city and county in December 2018 included several alternatives to meet the county’s articulated need for convenient parking for courts users,” says Emily Kilroy, the county’s communications director. “The agreement will be satisfied through any of those alternatives, at the option of the county.”

I think it’s absolutely worth trying to evaluate if COVID has changed the parking situation more permanently


City Councilor Michael Payne

Soon after taking over as city manager, Chip Boyles met with county officials on the subject.

“The bottom line is that they did say that they’re just looking for those 90 to 100 spaces that are identified in the agreement,” Boyles says, adding the courts project is on schedule. “We know we have to accommodate that.” 

Opponents of the project have urged council to abandon the project or at least delay capital funding for one year, given concerns about the city’s ability to afford taking on more debt.  

Council did not make a final decision about the garage on February 16. The current fiscal year budget includes $2 million for the project, and city staff are currently sifting through responses to a request for firms to demonstrate their qualifications to design and build the structure.

“If we are going to continue this process, we will need the additional programmed $8 million in fiscal year 22 approved by council,” says city Parking Manager Rick Siebert says. “If council doesn’t approve those funds, we are going to be unable to proceed with a contract for a design-build entity.”  

Siebert says if the county chooses the guaranteed spaces in the Market Street Parking Garage, the city would lose the use of the ground floor and most of the first level. 

“As a parking professional, I am unaware of any way to allow the public to use the remainder of the garage and yet effectively prohibit them from parking in the first 100 spaces of the garage that they would have to drive through to get to the remaining 377 spaces,” Siebert says. 

Siebert says one remedy would possibly be to halt hourly parking by the general public during the day. Later in the day, Boyles told council another could be to delay or reduce the $8 million while further study is conducted.

Councilor Michael Payne says he would like to see the city abandon the garage but still find a way to provide the county with the spaces allotted in the agreement. 

“I think it’s absolutely worth trying to evaluate if COVID has changed the parking situation more permanently, how many of these office spaces that have come online will now remain unutilized,” Payne says. 

“There are a number of other parking spaces within the downtown area that are going away because of construction projects,” Boyles says. “The other thing we would want to take a look at are what kinds of transit possibilities may help fulfill some of those needs as well.”

The public hearing for the city’s budget, including the capital improvement program, is March 15. The budget will be presented to council next Monday. Council will approve the budget by April 15.

Updated 2/25. The 90 required parking spots would be for county court visitors too, not only employees.

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News

‘Mistakes were made’

A map showing where UVA’s COVID-19 cases live.
The map above, shared by UVA last week, shows where those with new COVID-19 cases live. PC: UVA

By Amelia Delphos

Last Monday, the University of Virginia reached a record-breaking 118 positive student COVID-19 cases in a single day. The next day, 229 students tested positive for coronavirus, making up 10 percent of Virginia’s total new positives that day. Cases continued to climb until the student positivity rate reached 4.2 percent on Friday.

Tuesday night, around 5:30pm, an email sent out to the university community declared that the school would enter a complete lockdown. 

UVA banned all in-person student gatherings and shut down libraries and recreation centers. In-person classes and research would continue under the new guidelines, and dining halls would remain open but in-person seating would be restricted to two people at one table.

The spike in cases occurred just after UVA’s annual fraternity and sorority rush events. In a normal year, rush sees hundreds of students cycle through old, cramped Greek-life houses, showing off their personalities (and beer pong skills) in hopes of winning admission to this or that social house. 

This year, the student-led Inter Sorority Council limited its member organizations to a virtual rush process with an option for an in-person bid day, while the Inter Fraternity Council ruled frats were allowed to conduct some in-person rush events and an in-person bid day, so long as they adhered to a six-person gathering limit and wore masks indoors and out.

But on Sunday, February 14, the rush process concluded in its traditional way, with groups of students socializing on Rugby Road, posing for pictures at Mad Bowl, and gathering in groups obviously larger than six to celebrate in-person “bid day” after the conclusion of the week-long rush process.

There’s no doubt that rush contributed to this.

UVA President Jim Ryan

Following the Tuesday night lockdown, students immediately took to social media to blame frats and sororities for the spike in cases. Rumors of late-night parties, dumping maskless rushees in predominantly Black neighborhoods, and mysterious venue reservations made the rounds on Twitter and Reddit. 

Despite all of this circumstantial evidence, the university released a statement on Thursday that reminded the community that Greek organizations had been subject to the same gathering rules as everyone else. The email also stated that noncompliance with the rules and transmission of the virus were widespread, and there was no evidence the recent spike was linked to rush.

Some students felt the school was too quick to shift the blame away from Greek organizations. “UVA keeps gaslighting all of us,” says one third-year, “saying it’s all of our faults that there’s a massive spike, when it’s so glaringly obvious to the whole student body that the IFC simply didn’t follow the rules laid out for rush.”

Last Friday, the UVA administration’s bigwigs held a virtual town hall to discuss the outbreak and the new restrictions. 

According to Dr. Mitch Rosner, chairman of the department of medicine, there was no single “superspreader” event that led to the outbreak. A slide during his presentation at the town hall read, “Contact tracing and our analysis of case distribution does not identify a single or even a few dominant sources of transmission. Instead, widespread issues with adherence to public health measures appears to be the major issue.” Rosner pointed out that cases are also widespread, and approximately 75 percent of them are off Grounds.

At the town hall, UVA President Jim Ryan addressed rush’s role in the outbreak head-on. “There’s no doubt that rush contributed to this, in part because it brought groups of people together,” he said. “There’s also no doubt that mistakes were made, as were willful violations in the context of rush.”

“In hindsight, perhaps we should have tried harder to discourage all in-person rush events,” Ryan said. “As leaders of the university, I wish we had been able to prevent this spike, and I’m sorry we weren’t.”