Photographer Kori Price’s first solo exhibition, “You can’t compromise my joy” is at Welcome Gallery though Friday. Image courtesy of the artist
By Matt Dhillon
Joy is something we must create space for, says artist Kori Price. In her first solo exhibition, “You can’t compromise my joy,” on display at the Welcome Gallery through January 28, the artist explores the relationship Black women in particular have with their own happiness amid external pressure to compromise it. As the title suggests, Price celebrates the choice to feel joy while acknowledging that it is a choice and rarely comes passively.
“For Black women, choosing joy is an act of resistance,” she says. Resistance to fear, Price points out, which can come in the form of relatively minor acts of exclusion or major acts of overt violence. But, she insists, to live with fear or to live with joy is ultimately a choice.
“There’s not a lot that we can control in our lives, but we can control how we face the world,” Price says.
Grounded in portraits of Black women in moments of personal joy, the exhibition brings in cultural references to build an atmosphere of tension in the room between two contrasting emotions. A tapestry of weaves in a variety of different hairstyles curtains the gallery’s front windows, individual pages hang in the middle of the room—pieces from the Louisville police report on the shooting of Breonna Taylor in her home in March of 2020.
“What I wanted to create was a headspace,” says Price. “When you walk through the door, you walk through the fringe, you’ve touched her hair, and you are now intimate with this headspace of a Black woman.” Inside that head, you have to navigate through the evidence of violence to reach the portraits of joy.
“I thought it was important to place [the case files] as such where it made it a little difficult to walk through the gallery, because it’s an obstacle,” she says.
Yet the focus of her work remains on the strength and resilience of her subjects. Branching out from a background in portraiture, Price’s photography retains a core theme of identity. Her 2018 series, “28 Days of Black Hair,” is also a celebration of self that lands with a similar weight of an “act of resistance.”
“I think Black hair is an entry point into having deeper discussions about class and race and identity and how all of those things intersect,” says Price. “I wasn’t natural for a long time. I permed my hair, and what I didn’t realize until I started digging into this is that we were trying to fit in, and to fit in means to look white.”
Price’s portraits often stand in resistance to that pressure. For “You can’t compromise my joy,” she asked her subjects a simple question: What are the things that bring you joy? What we see are their answers.
“I felt privileged and honored to be able to document the different ways that Black women in our community experience joy,” Price says of the process. “There’s definitely some photos where people aren’t smiling, because joy isn’t all about smiles. It’s about feeling like, okay, I’m in the right place.”
As for Price, her joy is found close to home. “I’m a very proud nerd and I love playing video games,” she admits. A picture of herself, she imagines, “would have my headsets on, nose almost to the TV, with the guys that I play with online, and we’d just be in it.”
Dance and repeat: Progressive rock band Dopapod does everything with intention. The palindrome-loving group’s members went on a planned hiatus in 2018 to center their friendships, reflect on their music, and revitalize their live performances. The result is the studio album Emit Time, a mix of new music and unreleased tracks that integrate the sounds of heavy rock, funk, jazz, bluegrass, electronic, and more. The band’s live show is a well-balanced journey through sound, with moments of wild dancing followed by periods of thoughtful contemplation.
Friday 1/28. $18-20, 8pm. The Southern Café & Music Hall, 103 First St. S. thesoutherncville.com
Three UVA or UVA Foundation properties—the Piedmont community off Fontaine Avenue, 1010 Wertland St., and portions of North Fork UVA discovery park on 29 North—are part of the university’s new affordable housing development initiative. Photo: University of Virginia
From redlining to racial covenants, Charlottesville’s long history of racism and segregation has created the affordable housing crisis the city now faces. Over the years, the city’s largest employer, the University of Virginia, has contributed to the problem. As UVA continues to grow and expand, more and more students have signed leases at apartments and houses around the university, leaving less and less affordable housing available for the city’s low-income residents.
In 2020, UVA President Jim Ryan announced that the school would take proactive measures to address the situation. Over the next decade, UVA plans to support the development of 1,000 to 1,500 units of affordable housing in Charlottesville and Albemarle County. UVA and the UVA Foundation will retain ownership of the land for the affordable housing developments, and partner with third-party developers to design, finance, build, and manage the new units.
Last month, the university announced three prospective sites—all owned by the university or the UVA Foundation—for new affordable housing units: UVA’s Piedmont community off Fontaine Avenue, portions of the North Fork UVA discovery park on Route 29, and the 1010 Wertland St. building at the corner of Wertland and 10th Street. The existing buildings, excluding a historic structure at the Piedmont site, would be replaced with new ones.
Among the key questions facing the project is just how affordable the units will be. City councilor and longtime affordable housing advocate Michael Payne hopes the dwellings will be available at a variety of rental prices—at all area median income levels. “Our biggest need, and the most difficult affordable housing to build, is having units at zero to 30 percent AMI,” he says.
Moriah Wilkins, Skadden Legal Fellow at the Legal Aid Justice Center, says the units need to be affordable specifically for local residents who make below $50,000 a year. “A lot of the low-income housing tax credit units that we have in the community right now accommodate people who have far more than $50,000, so we need to make sure we’re targeting the right demographic,” she explains.
While the units will be available to the entire community, they should be easily accessible to UVA employees, including dining hall staff, custodians, and other service workers, says Public Housing Association of Residents Executive Director Shelby Edwards.
“People who work at UVA should have the ability to live in the city if they’re going to be expected to work in the city,” says Edwards. “Low-income people, specifically Black people, over the past few years have been moving out of Charlottesville.”
According to a report published by the Charlottesville Low-Income Housing Coalition in 2020, around 25 percent of all city residents currently do not make enough money to afford to live here.
In addition to one- and two-bedroom units, the new developments should have plenty of units for larger households, as well as elderly and disabled residents, stresses Wilkins. It’s also important that the units offer opportunities for homeownership, giving Black residents a chance to build generational wealth.
Payne also encourages the university to explore adopting a community land trust model, in which a nonprofit organization owns land and leases it to homeowners, maintaining permanent affordability. “They’ll be able to reach deeper AMI levels, potentially open up wealth-building opportunities to more people, and ensure that those units aren’t just affordable for 10, 15, or 20 years, which is often the case in some affordable housing developments,” he says.
Two of the potential affordable housing sites, Piedmont and 1010 Wertland St., currently have residents. After receiving some pushback from the residents, this month the university notified those who are eligible to renew their leases that they could do so through spring 2023, and would not have to move out this spring.
“We are beginning discussions about how to assist current residents as we get a better understanding of the needs,” said Assistant Vice President for Economic Development Pace Lochte in an email.
Affordable housing advocates point to Charlottesville’s troubled history of displacing vulnerable residents. In 1964, the city razed Vinegar Hill, a historically Black neighborhood and business hub. Former residents were forced to move to the city’s first public housing development, Westhaven. In 1969, Charlottesville also expanded City Yard into Page Street, another historically Black neighborhood, but refused to assist residents with finding alternative housing.
UVA should start helping residents of Piedmont and 1010 Wertland St. find new housing now, says Wilkins. It should also give them the option to live in the new affordable units once they are built, and offer them the same rental rate they had before—or a lower one, says Edwards.
“It’s really critical to have a survey of everyone who is living in these units who is facing displacement, [and] for UVA to know what their situations are—is it mainly students, community members, how long they’ve been living in that unit, what’s their current rent,” adds Payne. “[They should] use that information to definitely be 100 percent certain that no one is displaced.”
Piedmont residents have echoed these concerns. Since announcing the proposed sites, UVA has been collecting community feedback through an online (or mail-in) survey, as well as a comment wall on the affordable housing initiative’s website.
“If dozens of families lose their homes simultaneously or within a few months, the Charlottesville housing market cannot absorb all of them. Some families might not be able to find a place that is available, affordable, or that will accept their application (because of income, credit score or legal status),” wrote one commenter.
“We just moved in this summer and our new life is just settled down totally. My kids are just get used to their school,” said another resident. “That would be great for kids to stay in same school. Hope we could live at piedmont for full 4 years.”
The 1010 Wertland St. and North Fork sites have received more positive—albeit less—feedback. Commenters would like to see access to public transportation at the affordable housing sites, as well as green infrastructure, sustainable building practices, and community services.
As the project’s team moves forward with the community engagement process, Wilkins urges UVA representatives to visit low-income neighborhoods and public housing communities in person.
“Not everybody—especially low-income folks—has access to the internet and the same resources…so we really need to go into these communities as much as we can and engage in a way that speaks to them,” she says.
Payne hopes UVA will continue to work with local nonprofits, public housing communities, and the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority to ensure that the new construction “is meeting the biggest needs in the community” and “won’t have unintended consequences [for] the people around the sites.” He also encourages the school to partner with the city on housing projects that are already in the works, like the redevelopment of South First Street.
UVA is collecting comments from the public until January 31. It plans to issue a Request for Qualifications from developers this spring.
“UVA has been around for so long, and there’s so much undoing of work that needs to happen,” says Edwards. “They started it, and they still have a long way to go.”
Former mayor Mark Signer expresses his anti-snow day views. Staff photo
Signer’s snow day dust up
Last week, after Charlottesville City Schools called off school on Tuesday due to lingering hazards from the weekend’s snowstorm, former mayor Mike Signer took to Twitter to voice his opposition. He was met with derision—who could possibly be anti-snow day? But Signer doubled down, and published an op-ed in Time last Friday, entitled “Democrats Lost Virginia By Ignoring Parents. Snow Days Show They Still Are.”
“The very idea of a ‘snow day,’ when the entire school system shutters (along with its core mission) is as antiquated and counter-productive as the agrarian-era summer break,” wrote Signer, who now works as an exec at WillowTree. “If you’re a family with two working parents, a snow day isn’t just the kids having fun outside. It’s a 10-hour expanse of time where, inside, you want your kids to have their brains stimulated, but you have to work, and you have no idea what their education should be that day—because that’s what their schools and teachers are for.”
Signer argues that Charlottesville should adopt policies similar to those in Prince William County, where students are expected to complete asynchronous work during some inclement weather closures, and that the Republican victory in the 2021 governor’s race came because Virginia Democrats didn’t pay attention to “the feelings and ideas of struggling public-school parents.” He also includes a handful of the mean tweets that people wrote about him.
Christine Esposito, a city schools teacher, was among the locals who used social media to voice their disagreement with Signer’s op-ed.
In a Facebook post, Esposito pointed out that not all Charlottesville residents have easy access to the internet, making virtual school an inequitable proposition. The same goes for teachers, many of whom have been pushed to rural areas by high urban housing costs. “Just giving kids worksheets doesn’t work either. Where are they getting the worksheets from? Are they going to be delivered by carrier pigeon?”
“One group of parents wants their kids to be kept busy, so [they] are demanding virtual school on snow days. Another group of parents will not have the ability to pull that off,” Esposito wrote. “The privilege boggles.”
COVID keeps coming
The region continues to see high numbers of new COVID cases each day. On Friday, the Blue Ridge Health District reported 227 new cases. That’s down from the all-time high of 618 new cases in a day, which was reported last Tuesday, but nonetheless indicative of a serious surge. Before December 2021, the all-time high was 245, in February of 2021. Various area health agencies are offering vaccines and COVID tests. For information on where, when, and how to get vaccinated or tested in the area, visit vdh.virginia.gov/blue-ridge/.
Blue Ridge Health District.
In brief
Majors killers sentenced
In December 2019, Charlottesville native Tessa Majors was killed in a New York City park near Barnard College, where she had just begun studying. Three teenagers, aged 13 and 14 at the time of the killing, were charged in relation to Majors’ death. On January 19, the third and final individual, Rashaun Weaver, was sentenced to 14 years to life after pleading guilty to his involvement in the murder. Weaver, who wielded the knife in the attack, and Luchiano Lewis, who was sentenced to nine years, were charged as adults despite their age when the murder occurred.
“[Weaver] is a symptom rather than a cause in a very broken system,” said Weaver’s lawyer at the trial, reports the New York Times. “Nothing absolves him for what he did, but it does explain why we’re here.”
Greene with envy?
Greene County’s school board voted 3-2 to repeal the district’s mask mandate last week, days after newly empowered Governor Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order dictating that mask wearing should be optional in schools. Both Charlottesville City Schools and Albemarle County Public Schools have elected to defy the governor’s order and keep their mask mandates in place, along with dozens of other districts across the state.
Heaphy out at UVA
New Attorney General Jason Miyares has fired 30 state employees since taking over, including UVA Counsel Tim Heaphy. In the weeks after 2017’s Unite the Right, Heaphy put together a major report on what went wrong as the rally unfolded. More recently, he’s been on leave from his post at UVA to serve as chief investigative counsel to the U.S. House committee that’s investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection.
All your favorite tacos will be on the menu when Brazos opens a full-service restaurant in the Barracks Road Shopping Center this spring. Photo: Tom McGovern
Nacho mama’s taco joint
Can’t get enough of Brazos uniquely composed tacos? (We’re looking at you chimichurri steak and potatoes taco.) The hip Austin-style spot announced that a new location is coming to the Barracks Road Shopping Center this spring. The second shop will include all Brazos’ favorites alongside a full dinner and bar menu. The full-service restaurant will expand the friendly, fast-casual Brazos’ concept into a more traditional (but no less friendly) dining experience.
Sip away
Do the recent snowstorms have you dreaming of a beach vacation? The folks at DuCard Vineyards have taken those dreams a step further: They’re opening a satellite tasting room in Nassau, Bahamas, for the winter. “It’s only the first week of January, and frankly we’re already just sick and tired of the snow and cold,” says winery president Scott Elliff.
Customers can order home delivery of wines, and visit the tropical location from their living room by using the BeamMeUp app on their phones, or tough it out locally at the Madison County tasting room with firepits, blankets, patio tent heaters, and more.
Counting the Milli-seconds
Milli Coffee Roasters has a new spot on the Downtown Mall. Milli Second Cafe & Wine Bar, located in the recently opened CODE building, is serving both sides of the work day by offering coffee during the day and morphing into a wine bar at night. The chic spot is nestled in the CODE building’s furnished lounge area, and is a great way to check out the mall’s newest digs.
Champions of the craft
In December, Charlottesville-based Champion Brewing Company and Reason Beer merged into a juggernaut of specialty craft brews. And there’s no need to worry about your Shower Beer or Hoppy Blonde—both companies will still offer their individual lines, and all staff has been retained under the Champion brand. The new venture has Champion founder Hunter Smith at the helm with Jeff Raileanu, co- founder of Reason Beer, as chief financial officer. “It’s a great opportunity for Reason to leverage the reach of Champion’s distribution, and for both brands to streamline operations under a single roof,” says Raileanu. Until now, Reason Beer has been available only in Virginia, while Champion can be found all over the East Coast. Raileanu hopes the brand that he and his team have worked so hard to build will continue to see success and growth with this new partnership.
“Both brands are community-focused and philanthropic; it will be incredible to see our joint impact,” Smith says.
Can we place an order yet?
Next on our 2022 to-do list? Line up to get into Umma’s (start camping out now people), the new Korean/Japanese-inspired restaurant from the founders of Basan food truck in collab with Mama Bird/Sussex Farm. The super popular Basan food truck launched after Charlottesville’s Kelsey Naylor and Anna Gardner spent a year learning to cook at a small bar in rural Japan. “Basan in a lot of ways is shaped by the meals we cooked in our apartment in Miyakonojo, for ourselves and for our other friends,” says Naylor. The brick-and-mortar Umma’s is scheduled to open sometime this spring in the former Moe’s BBQ space on Water Street.
Design your own succulent garden at Brigid & Bess. Supplied photo
Easy greens: Tired of the winter white? Add a little greenery to your life with a Succulent Garden Workshop. Fifth Season Gardening teaches you how to select, assemble, and care for your own succulent garden, before giving you the chance to flex your green thumb and design a perfect plot. You’ll leave with something that will turn your friends green with envy! Snacks and drinks are provided at this two-hour workshop.
Exploring our routes: During the era of Jim Crow laws, New York City mailman Victor Hugo Green created The Green Book, an annual publication that listed motels, restaurants, gas stations, and other businesses considered safe for Black travelers. In 2016, a research group began a digital project to document and map the history and status of every Green Book site across the country. UVA’s Malo Hutson and Louis Nelson join architectural historian Catherine W. Zipf and student/research assistant Olivia Pettee for Mapping the Historic Green Books, a virtual lecture that’s part of the University of Virginia’s community MLK celebration.
Shana Sugar and Jahnavi Wraight, hairdressers at La Vie en Rose, celebrate an early Bills touchdown at Champion Grill. Photo: Eze Amos
“You’re in Bills Country,” announced a blue-red-and-white banner hanging near the entrance to Champion Grill.
Geographically, I was nowhere near Bills Country. I was here in Charlottesville, more than 400 miles from the cold and snowy home of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills.
And yet, just as the banner promised, the bar was packed with Bills fans, decked out in gaudy team colors, buying beer and taking their places before the Bills’ playoff game against the Kansas City Chiefs. The Charlottesville Buffalo Bills Backers were out in force, same as every other Sunday, all season long.
“It started out because I just wanted to watch Bills games,” said group founder Patrick Webb. “I figured if I could find a few Bills fans, we’d have some camaraderie, a little bit of community.”
That was in 2007. Since then, the club has grown from just seven original members to the robust crowd in attendance at Champion. There are a handful of other out-of-town sports teams with fan clubs in Charlottesville—the Browns Backers meet at the Livery Stable, and the Charlottesville Reds watch Liverpool FC games at Random Row—but the vast majority of teams don’t have any fan club at all. Webb says he thinks the Bills Backers are the biggest crowd in town.
After all, Bills fans have a bit of a reputation. Known for braving the snow, smashing tables, and drinking copious amounts of booze, the team’s ravenous fanbase is affectionately nicknamed the Bills Mafia.
“We’ll do more harm to tables than we will other people,” Webb stressed. The Charlottesville Bills Backers is a family scene—Webb’s elementary-school-aged son is next to him, wearing a Bills jacket. This year, through game day raffles, the group has raised almost $3,000 for local charity Waterboys.
“This is a normal crowd,” said Brian Lewandowski, another of the group’s organizers, scanning the 70-plus blue-clad fans in the bar. “We’ve had [up to] 150.”
The passion of the Bills Mafia, both in Charlottesville and around the country, is even more impressive given the team’s historic struggles on the field. In the ’90s, the Bills made the Super Bowl four times in a row, and lost all four. Starting in 2000, they missed the playoffs for 17 consecutive seasons.
All that has changed in the last two years, however. Suddenly, the Bills are good. Josh Allen, a fantastic young quarterback, has become the team’s talisman. Last year, for the first time since 1993, the Bills made it to the AFC Championship Game. They lost to the same team they were set to play on Sunday—the Kansas City Chiefs.
Meet the Mafia
The Bills and Chiefs traded touchdowns in the first half. As the teams fought to a 14-14 scoreline, I made my way around the room, trying to figure out how all these Bills fans had ended up in this bar in central Virginia, so far away from their homeland in icy Buffalo.
Software engineer JP Scaduto grew up in upstate New York. Everywhere he’s lived since then, he’s found a Bills Backers group to watch games with. “Wherever you go, there’s somebody from Buffalo there,” the young techie told me. “We’ve got the best fanbase in the country.”
For Scaduto, the losing is an important ingredient in the intoxicating Bills cocktail. “If you can live through 17 years without the playoffs, you are a true fan through and through,” he said. “Our sense of community comes from our ability to have gone that long while being that mediocre.”
Richard Sargent, a security integrator wearing a Bills T-shirt under a blazer, was a little more succinct: “Misery loves company.”
As we spoke, a train horn blared over the Champion sound system. The train horn plays in the Bills’ stadium when the Bills are defending a third down, Webb explained, so the Bills Backers have hooked up a digital version for the watch parties.
I chatted with Dale Sadler, who’s been a Bills fan for as long as the team has been around—60-plus years. The retired engineer has been coming to Charlottesville Bills Backers meetings for a decade. He waxed poetic to me about the Bills greats of yore: O.J. Simpson, Jim Kelly, Doug Flutie.
Florence Sadler, a retired schoolteacher, caught Bills fever from Dale, her husband. On Sunday night she showed up to Champion in a Bills cap, Bills earrings, and a Bills facemask, with a Bills Snuggie folded across her arm. “I’m more fair-weather than he is,” she said.
As time expired in the first half, the Chiefs attempted a field goal, but the ball glanced off the right upright and missed. A lucky break—“that never happens for us!” cheered one fan.
Jahnavi Wraight also found the Bills through a loved one. Her best friend and business parter, Shana Sugar, is a longtime Bills fan, and insisted that Wraight accompany her to a game for her birthday.
“Going to this game, I was convinced no one was going to be there,” Wraight recalled. “It was freezing, it snowed the night before.” But sure enough, Buffalo showed up. The parking lot was full of tailgaters, the stands were jammed with rowdy fans, and the concessions booths ran out of alcohol before halftime.
“I like Bills fans,” said Wraight, a tattooed hairdresser. “They’re my people.”
The extreme conditions are an important part of what makes the Bills so special, said Jonathan Amato, a lifelong fan and upstate New York ex-pat who works as a government contractor. “A lot of these Rust Belt cities, football’s a big part of their life,” he said. “It’s snowy and cold. What are you going to do all winter but watch football?”
Patrick Jurewicz, a UVA athletic trainer, roots for the Giants. Even so, after a co-worker introduced him to the Bills Backers, he’s become a regular at the watch parties. “I’m new to town as of August,” he said. “So it’s good to have a good community. It’s what I’m looking for.”
Everyone wants in on the action. “See this guy over here in 27?” Webb said, pointing to a jersey-wearing member of the crowd. “He was here last week. He’d only just heard about us. And [today] he came back with like six people.”
(I did find two Chiefs fans in the crowded bar. They weren’t wearing any gear, but let out a yelp after a Kansas City touchdown. Turns out they’d wandered in by accident. “We thought we’d go out and get some dinner and watch the game,” one said. “We had no idea it would be like this.”)
As the game progressed, the Bills Backers grew more and more absorbed. A Chiefs field goal gave Kansas City a 26-21 lead with nine minutes to play. It was clear the Bills had a tight finish on their hands, but I don’t think anyone could have anticipated what happened next.
When the Bills scored a late touchdown, Brian Edison tore off his shirt in celebration. As the game’s final whistle sounded, he was left consoling his daughter, Emily. Photo: Eze Amos
An instant classic
After the Chiefs’ field goal, the Bills moved down the field confidently, chewing up time as they went. The drive stalled in Kansas City territory. All seemed doomed. Then, with just under two minutes left, on fourth and 13, Allen dropped back, scanned the field, and fired a throw to a wide open Gabriel Davis in the back of the end zone. The bar went wild.
“God I love this team,” said Webb. “But then I hate them. But then I love them.”
Kansas City, trailing 29-26, wasn’t done yet. Five plays after the Bills’ TD, Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill caught a short pass from Patrick Mahomes and zoomed into the end zone from 64 yards out.
The Bills had a minute to work with, trailing by four. Allen connected with Davis twice, then hit Emmanuel Sanders at the Kansas City 19 yard line. Seventeen seconds were left in the game. This was really the end, one way or another.
Allen took the snap, dropped back, and quickly released a laser beam, once again finding Davis in the end zone for the lead.
The bar erupted. Decades of heartbreak were released in elated, manic screams. Fans hugged, high-fived, sprinted around the room, reveled in the collective thrill unique to sports. A middle-aged father tore his shirt off and roared with joy.
But 13 seconds remained on the clock.
Unbelievably, 13 seconds was just enough time for Mahomes and the Chiefs to cover 44 yards and kick a game-tying field goal as time expired.
It got worse from there. The Chiefs won the coin toss to start the overtime period. They sliced down the field, gaining yards on every play until Mahomes found tight end Travis Kelce for a walk-off touchdown.
It was one of the greatest football games ever played. And the Bills lost.
Just minutes after the sheer ecstasy of the last Bills touchdown, the bar fell into a shell-shocked murmur. Kids started crying; adults stared blankly at the TV screens, mouths agape.
As he closed his tab at the bar, Scaduto spoke the die-hard sports fan’s simplest, most poignant refrain: “Next year.”
Fans shuffled past Webb’s table on their way out. With one arm wrapped around his crying son, Webb waved goodbye to his beloved Bills community. “See you next year,” he said. “Just follow us. We’ll be here next year.”
Near the door, Florence Sadler, with all those years of Bills fandom behind her, leaned over to me. As the cold night air poured into the bar, Sadler adjusted her Bills facemask. “If you’re gonna lose,” she said, “you gotta lose good.”
Nightmare Alley stars Cate Blanchett and Bradley Cooper. Photo: Walt Disney Studios
From start to finish, Guillermo Del Toro’s Nightmare Alley is a dreary, plodding, flashy reminder of why filmmakers should leave great movies alone. The William Gresham novel was adapted into a 1947 film noir classic, and again by Del Toro—but Del Toro’s misuse of excellent source material is the real nightmare here.
The film follows Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), a fugitive who joins a traveling carnival, and seduces Zeena (Toni Collette), a phony mentalist, to learn how to perform her alcoholic partner Pete’s (David Strathairn) sideshow tricks. Stanton gradually develops more sophisticated, lucrative con games, assisted by his younger lover, Molly (Rooney Mara). Unscrupulous psychologist Judith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) then aids him in grander, darker schemes.
Nightmare Alley has proved a box office bomb, just like the 1947 version, which tanked partly because pretty-boy lead Tyrone Power sought to shatter his nice-guy image by playing a lowlife, which only repelled audiences. It seems like 21st-century audiences are having a similar reaction to Cooper’s casting as a creep. That’s where the similarities between the two films end.
Director Edmund Goulding gave his Nightmare Alley a raw, tightly wound intensity, leaving the viewer feeling truly hellbound. Its portrayal of broken-down carny mentalist Pete remains one of the most terrifying depictions of chronic alcoholism in film history.
Del Toro, however, revels in silly excess. Hideous gore provides periodic sophomoric shocks. The film is totally humorless, and all style without substance. The camera roves needlessly, and the cast always seems to be lit with green gels. The film’s costume design and art direction are solid, but the sets become a distraction. One sequence takes place in an overwrought carny funhouse simply because Del Toro obviously thought it looked cool. Lilith’s office is an Art Deco stunner, but its visual splendor upstages Cooper and Blanchett.
As for the cast, Cooper is wrong for Stanton, and shows little of the cynical hardness that Power radiated. In interviews, Del Toro has derided superficial clichés that people generally associate with film noir style. But his film is devoid of any dark ambiance—Blanchett lays her hokey femme fatale act on as cartoonishly as Carol Burnett impersonating Barbara Stanwyck. The supporting cast is better: Mara, Ron Perlman, and Willem Dafoe are standouts.
As with all his films, Del Toro gets derivative, and here he references everything from Andrew Wyeth’s “Christina’s World” to Tales from the Crypt comics. An avowed fan of director Tod Browning, Del Toro lifts a memorable “spider girl” act from Browning’s The Show and aims to emulate Browning’s classic Freaks. Browning, however, actually drew on his own firsthand experiences working as a carny. Del Toro is merely referencing other people’s work—a kind of lame reality-twice-removed. Del Toro and co-screenwriter Kim Morgan affect authenticity by casually tossing in period slang like “blind pig” (a speakeasy), yet undo any genuine-sounding dialogue with anachronistic terms like “daddy issues.”
The seedy world of carnivals is deeply fascinating material, but here it’s just tedious. Like an actual carny, this Nightmare Alley is all a façade, as phony as a midway barker’s pitch. Although it’s not nearly as bad as Del Toro’s earlier remake of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, it’s just as unwelcome. Skip this and see the far superior original.
In November, newly appointed Charlottesville City Manager Marc Woolley quit the job—the day before he was supposed to start work. It was the low point in a three-year period that had seen five people, not counting Woolley, serve as the city government’s lead executive. In response, City Council addressed the desperate situation by hiring a management firm until it finds a permanent city manager.
This month, Charlottesville signed a contract with the Robert Bobb Group, which has decades of experience serving local and state governments across the country. Last week, council interviewed three potential candidates—all members of the Robert Bobb Group—to be the interim city manager.
After meeting for over an hour in closed session, councilors officially appointed Michael Rogers during Tuesday’s meeting.
“I look forward to engaging with the staff and becoming a part of the team and leading the team so that the citizens of Charlottesville are proud every day at the level of service that their government provides,” said Rogers. “A government that will listen, is open and transparent, that’s my style. That’s what I look for.”
Rogers has previously served as Washington, D.C.’s city administrator, and executive director of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, as well as chief operating and financial officer of Petersburg, Virginia. He has also held senior positions in the New York City government, and with the Minority Business Development Agency.
Following his appointment, Rogers said he looked forward to “hitting the ground running” and working with council to address a plethora of issues facing Charlottesville. He also shared his connection to the area—early in his career, he met Cole Hendrix, who served as Charlottesville’s city manager from 1971 and 1996.
“I can still remember the excitement and joy in [Hendrix’s] voice when he talked about his city of Charlottesville,” said Rogers. “So that impression of that city has always stuck with me.”
Mayor Lloyd Snook said he was drawn to the new manager’s passion for mentorship.
“One of the things that I remember particularly about [Rogers’] interview is that [he] enjoyed mentoring and teaching younger, deputy city managers, people who are middle managers in city government,” said the mayor. “That’s something we really need.”
“Investment in staff development and building cohesive teams has been a staple of my career,” replied Rogers. “That’s how you build succession planning.”
Vice-Mayor Juandiego Wade said he was impressed by Rogers’ previous accomplishments, especially in regard to finances. In 2016 and 2017, the Robert Bobb Group helped the City of Petersburg climb out of millions of dollars in debt.
“We’re going to need to be able to hit the ground running with the budget process,” said Wade.
Councilor Michael Payne expressed his appreciation for Rogers’ commitment to diversity and inclusion.
“How do we ensure that there’s real diversity in class and race in the rooms that we’re in, and incorporating that into every decision we’re making—I’m just really excited to have that approach, along with your breadth of local experience,” said Payne.
Rogers’ contract will last for six months, unless Charlottesville hires a permanent city manager within that time period. In the meantime, the Robert Bobb Group will help address other urgent needs, including creating the fiscal year 2023 budget.
Councilors will continue to work with the group to find a permanent city manager and police chief. They hope to hire a new person to lead the city by June.
