When it comes to Impressionist painting, gardens are a hot subject, and Claude Monet is widely regarded as one of the movements’ premier painters. The film Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse showcases an extensive exhibition from London’s Royal Academy of Art that is centered around the beauty of the garden expressed by Impressionist, abstract, and avant-garde painters such as Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, and others.
$11-$15, 7pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. theparamount.net
Dathan Kane’s “The World of Shapes” exhibition at Visible Records is one of two shows by Kane that are on display in Charlottesville and Newport News through the month of March. Publicity photo.
Dathan Kane has just completed a month-long residency at Visible Records, an artist-run gallery and studio space that focuses on contemporary arts and empowering the community, and is located in the Belmont/Carlton neighborhood. Kane’s residency is part of a joint project with the Contemporary Arts Network of Newport News that will see two Visible Records artists headed there to produce a mural.
During his time at VR, Kane painted the walls of the 1,000 square-foot space with one of his distinctive black and white murals, which he collectively refers to as “The World of Shapes.” The result is stunning.
Born and raised in Hampton, Virginia, Kane received his B.A. in art and design from Virginia State University in 2014, with a focus on illustration, charcoal drawing, and graphic design. He didn’t start painting until his senior year, but took to it immediately. After graduation, he embarked on a career painting still lifes and portraits. But this changed dramatically following a 2015 trip to Art Basel Miami. “Seeing the work that was there and the artists I’d been studying—having access to that was inspirational,” says Kane. “It’s not like I’m coming from L.A. or New York, where you’ll see a lot more of that type of art.”
Inspired, Kane took his art in an entirely different direction, going big, going bold, and going monochrome. “I was thinking of ways to create something, to develop a visual language that felt authentic to me,” he says.
Reducing his palette to black and white wasn’t such a stretch for him, given his focus in college. But this palette choice was more profound than mere facility with a genre, “Black and white has always represented the foundation of art,” Kane says. “The absence of color draws attention. When you think of art for the most part, you think of color. When color isn’t present, you tend to be a little curious.” And color may have had a chastening effect on the scale of his forms since the combination may have been too much visually.
Looking at images of Kane’s various installations around the Hampton Roads area, Richmond, and Baltimore, you’re struck by how individual the projects look, while obviously done by the same hand. You also see black and white’s timelessness and how its undeniable chic works so well within the urban landscape.
In 2018, Kane became involved in the public art scene. He loves working outside and he likes the way public art engages with people who might not set foot in a gallery or museum space, or might not feel comfortable in those spaces. “If you’re able to engage someone passing by on their daily commute and take them out of reality for a minute, that impact is really special to me.”
In 2021, Kane was given the opportunity by Contemporary Arts Network to present his work on a grand scale and create an immersive experience. “I was a big fan of theme parks growing up,” he says. “And I had this idea to create a visual theme park.” If this sounds similar to Yayoi Kusama, it is. But Kane, motivated by entirely different forces, is achieving a similar effect using paint only. For that project, he painted six different spaces in the CAN headquarters in Newport News, including walls, floors, ceilings, and objects in the spaces. It took about four weeks to complete, working 12 hours a day.
Kane’s installation at VR includes podiums and a framed painting mounted directly on the mural. Like visual exclamation points, these features draw the eye and set up interesting spatial relationships between the large shapes on the wall and those on the other smaller objects. The arrangement of shapes themselves, what goes next to what, provides opportunities for Kane to toy with space and depth, creating the illusion of three dimensionality, overlapping planes, and forms that seem to flicker back and forth between dimensions.
Kane painted steadily for about 16 days at Visible Records, often working into the early morning hours. He finds inspiration for his rounded shapes in organic forms, and he works without a projector or grid marks. Everything is drawn freehand directly on the wall, giving his shapes a pleasing irregularity. The one exception is the perfect circles, which are made using cut-out stencils.
After priming his surface and mapping out the design in his head, Kane sketches it on the wall, moving from left to right, using a paint pen marker. When he finishes this, he adds the paint. Some projects require a preliminary drawing, but nothing stays exactly the same since the texture of the wall determines what you can do. Kane is really big on clean lines, and uses a flat-tip brush to paint everything. This brush, with which he fills up massive expanses, is just two inches long.
It’s hard not to be charmed by Kane’s chunky jumble of forms that push up against each other and seem ready to burst forth from the constraints of their two-dimensional surfaces. They’re amusing and joyful, and also incredibly stylish. They tick all the public-art boxes because what’s better than inserting a little joy, humor, and beauty into the life of someone passing by?
The American Shakespeare Center’s Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton is a deeply researched replica of the original Shakespeare theater that burned down in the 1666 Great Fire of London.
Something enchanting happens when we cross the threshold between illusion and what lies behind it. That’s a fancy way of saying that I’m a sucker for a behind-the-scenes experience. I’ve always been a huge theater fan, to the point of becoming the president of my high school’s International Thespian Society chapter. As you can imagine, I was very popular.
My cousins and I have a decade-long tradition of seeing A Christmas Carol each winter at the American Shakespeare Center’s Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton. During the worst of the pandemic, we watched via livestream. Other plays there have also been wonderful, of course. If you haven’t attended a show at the Blackfriars, I highly recommend it. This spring’s season features Julius Caesar, Pride and Prejudice, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Performances at the Blackfriars are unlike those at other theaters. As its description of the staging conditions coyly states, they “do it with the lights on.” Actors play multiple roles, and the sets and props are minimal—just enough to give the imagination a scaffold. These Shakespearean staging conditions result in an unparalleled intimate theatrical experience. For years now, I’ve wanted to do a Playhouse Tour to glimpse behind the curtain, beneath the trapdoor on that stage. Finally, that wish came to fruition.—Kristie Smeltzer
What
A tour of the Blackfriars Playhouse.
Why
Because learning more about the Bard, the re-creation of Shakespeare’s indoor theater, and the inner workings of the theater company could only enhance appreciation for the American Shakespeare Center’s performances.
How it went
Seeing the underside of the trapdoor that I’ve watched many Jacob Marleys erupt from (with chains they formed in life, link by link) warmed the cockles of my theater-loving heart.
Playhouse tours are typically offered Monday through Saturday, at 10am and 2pm. Tickets are $10 per person and must be purchased in advance. I met my guide in front of the playhouse 10 minutes ahead of the tour time. His expansive knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject matter were apparent from the start.
Inside, we began on the stage. What a truly humbling experience to walk the planks where such fine actors work, performers whose efforts have given me and mine so much enjoyment over the years. The guide shared information about the structure itself, describing the meticulous attention paid to re-creating Shakespeare’s original Blackfriars, with a few concessions to modern amenities. (Yay! No ye olde privies.) Two notable deviations from the original theater’s design exist, occurring due to a lack of information during construction. You’ll have to take the tour to find out those differences.
As the guide spoke, actors mustered for a rehearsal. I forgot how much I love the way the energy in a theater changes when populated, building exponentially as the players fill the space. We moved off the stage and peered into the backstage area, which is surprisingly compact. From there, we meandered past handmade tapestries, replications of those that would have been gifted by a patron to the original theater.
Next stop, the lobby, where the guide conveyed a wealth of knowledge about the modern company’s workings, players who graced the stage with Shakespeare himself, and the history of theater (and theaters) in England in the Bard’s time. If you know a fair amount about Shakespeare and his work, you’ll hear familiar information, but it’s still worth it to learn from a passionate guide while standing in a re-creation of where the magic happened hundreds of years ago in England.
Our last stop was the “backstage” areas below the main theater, peeking into rehearsal, dressing, and costuming spaces. Anecdotes were shared. Laughs were had. And when the guide opened the door “to hell” and invited me to step into the space where I peered up at the underside of that magnificent trap door, my heart nearly burst.
Anyone walking the Downtown Mall on March 16 might scratch their heads and wonder what’s going on when they see more than 350 teams scouring the area, decoding clues, cross-referencing coordinates, and vying for a chance at small-town glory: victory in the annual Cville Puzzle Hunt.
Part scavenger hunt, walking tour, and decryption exercise, the hunt is the third citywide event organized by Emily Patterson and Greg Ochsenschlager. Participants, armed with a map, puzzle decoders, water bottles, and walking shoes, will be on the lookout for clues hidden outside downtown businesses and landmarks (and maybe in a local publication or two). Unlike previous iterations, this year’s puzzle hunt has a theme: pirates.
“We wanted to give it a different look this year because the last few times it’s just been a general theme,” Patterson says. “So we were thinking, ‘What theme has a map?’ And we came up with the pirate map.”
It was a bit of reverse-engineering.
“This is pretty loose because we came up with the theme after we had designed a lot of the puzzle,” Ochsenschlager says.
During the event, downtown Charlottesville will be transformed into a pirate island. Teams will get their own map of the new landscape, designed by artist Emily Reifenstein, to solve clues.
The puzzle hunt is modeled after similar events like The Washington Post-sponsored Post Hunt, and Tropic Hunt in Miami, Florida. Charlottesville is a “perfect” city for a Post-like hunt, according to Patterson.
“It’s such a brainy and creative place. There’s bar trivia basically every night of the week here,” she says. “Also, it has a walkable downtown and a lot of opportunities to partner with local businesses, artists, and musicians.”
Patterson and Ochsenschlager, who participated in the Post Hunt before the event concluded in 2017, tested their idea at a holiday party in 2021. The game-themed gathering was akin to the U.K.-based game show “Taskmaster,” and served not only to showcase their puzzle aspirations, but also introduce them to WTJU General Manager Nathan Moore.
“I was super impressed, and not just because my team won,” Moore says. “So when Greg told me his dream was to do a citywide puzzle hunt, I told him that I know a guy.”
That guy was Moore himself.
“The puzzle hunt takes us out of our usual experience of downtown. And our usual experience of not really talking to strangers,” says Moore, whose radio station sponsors the hunt. “Because when you’re all trying to figure out puzzle answers, there’s a real and engaged sense of camaraderie.”
The first two puzzle hunts were held in the summer, and incorporated businesses like Chaps, Sidetracks Music, and Violet Crown. Patterson and Ochsenschlager enlisted help from their friends, including local singer-songwriter Devon Sproule, who wrote a song that required puzzle hunters to listen closely for clues in the lyrics. Another event staple is Patterson and Ochsenschlager’s 4-year-old wheaten terrier, Maisie.
In past years, puzzle hunters have deciphered a variety of clues, such as a spoof movie poster encased alongside legitimate cinema advertisements outside Violet Crown. In another search, participants had to flip through Best of C-VILLE magazine to spot a fake ghost-hunting advertisement and phone number.
This year’s puzzle hunt also incorporates the larger city puzzle community. One clue was designed by Bill Gardner, who runs Charlottesville’s Puzzled Pint, a global monthly social puzzle-solving event that’s held at breweries. For their part, Patterson and Ochsenschlager hope to keep making puzzle hunts for the community. The husband-and-wife team recently created a band-themed puzzle pub crawl for Preston Avenue breweries, including Rockfish Brewing Co., Superfly Brewing Co.., Random Row Brewing Co., and Starr Hill Downtown.
The pair hopes the 2024 hunt will improve on its predecessors. After the first hunt ended in an all-out sprint to the finish, the duo made their final puzzle in the second hunt more difficult, to avoid a race.
“I think we went overboard,” admits Ochsenschlager. The puzzle was so hard, he and Patterson had to give additional hints after teams failed to solve it.
This year, the couple is “focusing more on cool aha moments than actually making it more difficult,” Ochsenschlager says.
“We’re trying to make it so that out of the five additional puzzles, everybody should be able to solve at least two of them,” adds Patterson. “But the end game should be harder.”
The Democratic National Committee will not hold a primary election for the party’s presidential ticket, so Robert F. Kennedy Jr. decided to challenge President Joe Biden and his Republican opponent as an independent candidate. Photo by Gage Skidmore.
It was warm for February, warm enough to make me worry about the Antarctic penguins and the bills I’ll get from Dominion Energy this summer, when I met with Jason Amatucci at the Virginia headquarters of the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. presidential campaign. Amatucci, a Charlottesville native, is the campaign’s Virginia field director, and when I emailed him to ask for an interview, he replied in seven minutes: “We can do it at HQ which is the old cville weekly office lol.”
If you’ve strolled the Downtown Mall recently, maybe you’ve peeked inside the cavernous brick-lined room where the Kennedy campaign has set up shop and which generally appears empty. But when I arrived that Thursday evening, Amatucci was visible through the windows, sitting in an armchair next to a plush couch on a small area rug—a little DIY talk show set—and when I entered, I walked directly underneath the C-VILLE sign, still mounted on the building’s façade like an effigy.
The Robert F. Kennedy Jr. origin story goes like this: Born an American blue blood, he transcended a chaotic upbringing that included the assassination of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, when he was 9, the assassination of his father, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, when he was 14, multiple expulsions from various boarding schools, a cannabis possession charge, a heroin possession charge, an undergraduate degree from Harvard, and a law degree from the University of Virginia before making a name for himself as an environmental litigator who sued prominent corporate polluters (Monsanto, DuPont) and won.
Over the decades, however, Kennedy’s focus has drifted from pollutants in our environment to so-called toxins in our vaccines, and his environmentalist credentials have, for many, become overshadowed by the anti-vaccine conspiracy theories he continues to espouse. Now he’s running for president as an independent because the Democratic National Committee refused to hold a primary that would pit President Joe Biden against anyone else.
But that’s another story.
“C-VILLE Weekly?” said Amatucci as I sat down across from him. Before I could start recording our conversation, he was off, galloping through a long list of Kennedy’s campaign priorities as if he was afraid that I was going to interrupt him: “Clean water, clean air, keeping corporations in check, whether they be big ag or big pharma … reduce the poisons that are in the agriculture, in the rivers … and vaccines as well.”
“That was quick,” I thought. My pre-interview impression had been that the Kennedy campaign was trying to minimize Kennedy’s anti-vaccine rhetoric in an attempt to appeal to a wider population. It’s a strategy that could be highly effective, according to Professor T. Kenny Fountain, who teaches rhetoric and writing at UVA, and studies how the media we consume affects our beliefs. “Belief in a conspiracy theory is not an all or nothing proposition,” he says.
C-VILLE’s former office on the Downtown Mall has been transformed into the Virginia headquarters of the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. presidential campaign. Staff photo.
“Someone doesn’t necessarily go from 100 percent believing in vaccines to 100 percent not believing in them,” adds Fountain. “There’s a gradual process of having your ideas shaped and then eventually changed. You have to encounter messaging that slowly erodes your belief.”
For instance, says Fountain, it’s “very easy to hate on big pharma,” so anti-vaccine rhetoric might veil itself with critique of the pharmaceutical industry, because connecting to a larger concern can form a “bridge that gets people to move closer and closer to that belief.”
With this strategy in mind, I asked Amatucci if he felt like the campaign is intentionally trying to connect environmental pollution to vaccine additives for people. Sure enough, he immediately denied that the campaign wanted to draw that connection. But at the same time, he seemed to encourage me to make the connection for myself.
“It’s not anti-vax. It’s vaccine safety,” Amatucci said, and added an anecdote about Kennedy not being called anti-fish because he was trying to get mercury out of fish so that people could eat fish safely.
I wanted to say that while a healthy choice, eating fish cannot curb a pandemic or spare children from dying of measles, but I didn’t.
Writing about conspiracy theories requires a delicate balance of respect and respectful incredulity. In my effort to do it well and not get canceled or doxxed, I found myself reading The Debunking Handbook 2020, a resource written by a long list of academics and made publicly available online in an effort to combat the spread of misinformation.
Here’s a summary: Responsible journalists don’t repeat misinformation because it tends to stick. Even if you’re saying it so you can point out what’s wrong with it, you might end up unintentionally legitimizing it for people. If you absolutely have to acknowledge misinformation, cautious journalists can do it using a “truth sandwich,” where writers surround the misinformation with facts to debunk it before it can take root.
For example: Modern vaccines save lives and are safe for the vast majority of people. Some people find the idea of vaccines disturbing and overemphasize the dangers associated with them. While vaccines, like anything we put into our bodies, can occasionally have side effects, they are almost always mild and temporary. Vaccines are one of the most powerful tools we have to keep ourselves and our communities healthy, and their safety has been demonstrated over decades of research and use.
But while truth sandwiches can provide crucial context, they can also distance us from the reality of an encounter with misinformation.
Talking to Amatucci was a profoundly disorienting experience. He’d say a couple things that I honestly agreed with, such as, “Pharmaceutical companies don’t always tell us the truth.” Or “They’ve made tons of money from the COVID-19 vaccine.” Or “If you’re polluting a river, you need to be held responsible.” And then, just as I began to feel at ease, he’d hit me with a piece of misinformation, like an allusion to the well-disproven theory that vaccines can cause autism in children, and before I had a chance to fully register what he said, Amatucci would have pivoted away from the misinformation and back to things like how Kennedy wants to legalize psilocybin and cannabis. You know, things that young(ish) people like me want to hear. It felt like the misinformation was being packaged in such a way to allow it to sneak into the conversation as surreptitiously as possible, like Amatucci was making his own version of a truth sandwich.
Misinformation “doesn’t need to be masked, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t,” says Fountain. When masked, the message serves as a kind of gateway, an invitation to dive further down the so-called rabbit hole. Indeed, when I asked Amatucci if it would be possible for me to get a quote from Kennedy for this piece, he said no—instead, he recommended that I listen to Kennedy’s interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” which has become notorious in recent years for allegedly spreading COVID-19 conspiracy theories and misinformation.
By the end of the interview, I worried I’d fallen for something just by being there. I felt tormented by the possibility that by not screaming at Amatucci when he said he doesn’t “dismiss immediately” the idea that Jewish people are somehow more immune to COVID-19, echoing similar comments made by Kennedy, I’d somehow absorbed some of that worldview and become complicit.
This is cognitive dissonance in action, according to Matt Motyl, a data scientist and media researcher who has a Ph.D. in social psychology from UVA.
“We want to believe that the people we surround ourselves with are smart,” says Motyl, and so “when those people start doing things that don’t fit with the expectation of what smart or good is, then we have to wrestle with it.” Usually the easiest response is to accept their opinion and integrate it into your own.
Is there a middle ground? A position between accepting someone’s bigoted views and refusing to listen to anything they have to say? I honestly don’t know. It’s a bit like trying to separate the art from the artist. When I asked Alexander Szarka and Cameron Mayhew, students at the University of Virginia School of Law who organized an on-Grounds fireside chat with Kennedy in late January, if they thought it was possible to separate the misinformation from the candidate, they said it was.
“It’s not that we fully agree with [Kennedy’s] views,” Mayhew says, but that they thought it would be “cool” to hear from “UVA Law’s most high-profile alum.”
The idea that we can appreciate Kennedy’s environmental advocacy or the titillating stories he can tell about his family without absorbing his misinformation is tempting. But according to Fountain, it doesn’t really matter whether we actually believe Kennedy’s claims about vaccines—when it comes to conspiracy theories, it’s the repetition, normalization, and connection to pre-existing beliefs that’s key.
When I asked Mayhew and Szarka if they were concerned about platforming Kennedy’s anti-vaccine rhetoric, Szarka says they are studying law, not medicine. (Both are fully vaccinated, and not overly concerned about the health risks associated with vaccines.) According to Szarka, the only palpably uncomfortable moment was when Kennedy voiced his support for Israel’s continued assault on Gaza. (The Daily Progress quoted Kennedy as saying, “All this stuff about [Israel] being an apartheid state is propaganda.”)
Instead of spotlighting Kennedy’s shortcomings, Mayhew and Szarka prefer to focus on what they feel is Kennedy’s strength—his understanding of the issues that most concern a younger, more disillusioned group of voters.
“Young people are frustrated with the lack of opportunities compared to their parents’ generations,” says Szarka. Mayhew adds that they were “pleasantly surprised” by the “overwhelming positive response” from the approximately 400 attendees to Kennedy’s fireside chat.
“We, as social beings, are motivated to believe stuff that we see that supports our preferred beliefs and attitudes,” says Motyl. “For the most part, people aren’t motivated to find the truth. It’s not because people don’t want correct information. It’s because most things in life are really complicated. … Very few people can be an expert in even one area, let alone all of them.”
I want to believe that what Motyl said doesn’t apply to me, or to anyone who considers themself an advocate for truth. So when I spoke to Kirk Bowers, a long-time Charlottesville resident, environmental activist, and former chair of the 5th District Democratic party, I felt heartened at first when Bowers immediately declared “it would be a waste of a vote to vote for Kennedy.”
But he continued, “I’m concerned that his campaign could draw votes away from Biden at a critical time in our nation’s history when we need everyone on board to protect and preserve our democracy. He could be a spoiler, and that’s what I fear more than anything.”
While Bowers maintained that Kennedy has “a lot of disadvantages,” he also says there are groups in Charlottesville that support some of Kennedy’s environmental policies—and he agrees with some of those policies himself.
According to a January Economist/YouGov poll, 45 percent of American adults have a favorable or very favorable opinion of Kennedy (although only 1 percent said they’d vote for Kennedy in an election that included Biden and Donald Trump). It seems that Kennedy still has some cultural clout, regardless of whether his opinions are based in fact—although whether this clout will translate into votes is still unclear.
But my concern isn’t that Kennedy’s going to win the presidency. It’s that he’s proving in real time that for all we liberals talk about caring about the facts, we refuse to completely disregard someone who is willing to promote misinformation if they are supposedly on our team.
And this makes sense, because Americans have “less trust in government and media and pretty much all institutions now,” says Motyl. This distrust has created an environment where people are “more likely to be searching for meaning.”
“It isn’t necessarily that we excuse certain kinds of conspiracy theories, though sometimes we do,” says Fountain, because “people understand that conspiracy theories exist along a spectrum.”
“There is no easy litmus test to know when something is a conspiracy theory or actual conspiratorial politics,” Fountain adds, citing the Iran-Contra affair and Watergate as examples of things that “sound made up, but actually happened.” (Although Fountain did provide one helpful test that he will sometimes use: “If you’re blaming a powerful group of Jews, you’re probably in a conspiracy theory.”)
We are especially susceptible to believing misinformation, Motyl says, when there’s a major existential threat, such as a global pandemic, or the perceived “death of American values,” or climate change.
Here’s an uncomfortable truth: Despite being a scientist who wholeheartedly believes that science has done an immeasurable amount of good for society, I can still feel the pull of Kennedy’s skeptical rhetoric. It’s appealing because he seems to not only think things are truly awful, but he goes even further than I am willing to go—and it sucks to admit it, but there’s a comfort in that. Because even though my rational scientist brain knows that Kennedy’s claims are without evidence, often bigoted, and threaten to undermine the very field that I myself work in, my angry, sad, terrified lizard brain thinks that maybe if Kennedy really thinks things are that bad, he will actually change them.
When I admit this to Fountain, he says this feeling can be intentionally induced. While the term conspiracy theorist is generally considered stigmatizing, it can be reclaimed as a “badge of honor” when people feel like being a skeptic puts them in touch with “the kind of knowledge that the normal person doesn’t have … if they feel it connects them to maybe being a ‘seeker,’ being particularly smart, being inquisitive, or having a questioning mind.”
Call me a conspiracy theory apologist if you want, but I don’t think it makes you a bad person if you are willing to question the decisions made by the U.S. government about public health. For instance, on March 1, the CDC dropped its recommendation that people isolate themselves when they contract COVID-19. Wondering if capitalist interests played a role in that decision doesn’t make me a conspiracy theorist; it makes me angry.
But anger is fuel for power, and unacknowledged anger becomes misdirected anger. “Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being. Focused with precision it can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change,” said Audre Lorde, in her 1981 speech, The Uses of Anger. Lorde continued, “and when I speak of change, I do not mean a simple switch of positions or a temporary lessening of tensions, nor the ability to smile or feel good. I am speaking of a basic and radical alteration in those assumptions underlining our lives.”
If one person’s anger, used intentionally and well, can do that, what can our anger do when gathered like bundles of wheat by someone who sees it lying in the dirt, unharvested?
Bowers took the long way on his journey to becoming an environmental activist: After serving in the army during the Vietnam War, he had a successful career as a civil engineer working on infrastructure and development projects—not unlike the very projects that Bowers later protested with environmental conservation groups.
So what changed? “I evolved,” says Bowers, “and I saw a lot of things in my career that weren’t right.” These things energized his activism and influenced his views, and after getting laid off during the recession in the mid-2000s, he started working for the Sierra Club. He eventually co-founded Mountain Valley Watch, and used his engineering training to review the construction plans for the Mountain Valley Pipeline in an effort to mitigate its environmental impact.
“I found the plans really bad,” Bowers says, then proudly adds that he was right: The pipeline’s constructors were eventually fined $2.2 million for environmental violations, the largest fine in the state’s history.
I asked Bowers if he felt like Charlottesville is the type of place where you can feel supported to change your views, and he said he did, because the caliber of activism in Charlottesville is particularly high—lots of nice, energetic, organized people to “work with, and share ideas, and reinforce each other.”
Bowers’ decades-long evolution from infrastructure engineer to environmental watchdog sounds almost utopic; an unattainable luxury in today’s frenzied media environment. I can’t help but wonder if there’s a civil engineer out there right now who’s about to embark on a similar journey of their own, but with a very different result.
In early February, I, like many other Taylor Swift fans, did something I’d never done before: watched the Super Bowl. So when a retro-styled campaign ad with a catchy “Kennedy Kennedy Kennedy” jingle came on, I saw it live.
If I could go back and see that Super Bowl ad for the first time, knowing what I know now about how our anger and fear gets exploited, and how misinformation gets repackaged for mass consumption, I’d be able to see the ad for what it was. I’d call it an obvious attempt to not only connect Kennedy to his family’s political legacy for older voters, but to also appeal to a younger demographic that fetishizes a certain “vintage” aesthetic, nostalgic for something we never had.
We get you, the ad seemed to be trying to say. We alone understand how much you want something that seems hopelessly out of reach.
It looks silly to me now, and if I could go back, my response to the ad would be to laugh and say, look how blatantly they are trying to ensnare us. That kind of obvious pandering could never work on me.
But I didn’t know any of that at the time. So when the ad ended, I just thought “cute song,” and went back to scrolling through Twitter while waiting for Taylor to appear, my defenses just a little bit lower than they were before.
Del. Katrina Callsen (left) and state Sen. Creigh Deeds (right) are pessimistic about the future of gun legislation under Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Supplied photos.
Bill-ding blocks
Virginia’s state legislature adjourned on schedule March 9, with members saying they’d balanced the budget and passed a swath of bipartisan legislation.
The session—which ran for 60 days—was the first time Democrats held control of the legislature since the election of Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
The governor signed 64 bills into law, amended 12 bills, and vetoed eight pieces of legislation prior to the session adjourning. In a surprise move, Youngkin approved a bill ensuring protections for same-sex marriage. His vetoes and amendments otherwise fell along party lines.
“I am grateful that my colleagues worked hard to get hundreds of bills through to the governor with at least some bipartisan support,” says 54th District Del. Katrina Callsen. “I was not thrilled to see those vetoes and amendments, but was proud that 64 bills fully passed before the end of session.”
Youngkin is still considering a number of bills passed by the state House and Senate, and Charlottesville representatives are concerned about the future of several items.
“Honestly, I worry about a lot of the bills we passed,” says state Sen. Creigh Deeds. “I worry that the governor will reject a lot of those bills in large part because we didn’t agree to his arena plan.”
A Youngkin-endorsed plan for the construction of a professional sports arena in Alexandria using taxpayer dollars was blocked during bipartisan budget discussions. Some Democrats are concerned the governor will retaliate by vetoing progressive legislative priorities—including gun-control bills put forward by Callsen and Deeds.
Among the eight bills already vetoed by the governor is House Bill 46/Senate Bill 47, which sought to regulate the transfer of firearms by people prohibited from ownership.
“I don’t think that veto bodes well for our bills,” says Deeds. “I’d like to think that [Youngkin will] look at every one individually, but I’m afraid he’s just gonna look at the majority of the gun bills with one thing in mind and then use red ink and veto them.”
While lawmakers have the ability to override the governor’s decision, Democrats do not have the two-thirds majority needed to bypass a veto when they reconvene in April.
“The people of the commonwealth spoke loud and clear last November, and they would like to see sensible gun violence prevention, protection of women’s health care, improving education, and protecting voting rights,” says 55th District Del. Amy Laufer. “I hope that we will see some changes in April that more align with those values.”
New to the legislature, Callsen and Laufer say they are proud of their achievements and enthusiastic about the work to come later this spring. Both junior delegates advanced multiple items of legislation to the governor’s desk, and Callsen was named Freshman Legislator of the Year by her peers.
Another major item to monitor in April is the budget, according to Deeds. The budget approved by the legislature includes a requirement for reentry into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which will be difficult to line-item veto says the state senator.
“I think there’s a very real possibility that he vetoes the whole budget,” says Deeds. “I’m a little worried that we’ve got our work cut out for us in April.”
The Virginia state legislature reconvenes on April 17.
Gamemaker
The University of Virginia men’s basketball team starts its tournament run March 14 in the quarter-final round of the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament. In order to secure a spot in the NCAA tournament this Selection Sunday, the Hoos, who have a double-bye for the ACC tourney, need a good showing Thursday night. UVA will face off against either Boston College, the University of Miami, or Clemson, all teams the Cavs beat during the regular season.
Keyes sentenced
Tadashi Keyes was sentenced to life in prison in Charlottesville Circuit Court on March 11 for the murder of Eldridge Smith. Prior to his death, Smith was a member of local violence interruption group Brothers United to Cease the Killing. Prosecutor Nina-Alice Antony called for the maximum sentence for Keyes, who was out on early release from a previous life sentence at the time of Smith’s murder. “This is a community and a commonwealth attorney’s office that believes in second chances, and sometimes even third and fourth chances,” said Antony. “Mr. Keyes was granted early release and given a second chance. But he chose to take that second chance, and his freedom, and execute Eldridge Smith in cold blood.” Over a dozen members of Smith’s family attended the hearing, and several expressed support for the sentence.
School shuffle
The Albemarle County School Board will hold a public hearing on redistricting recommendations on March 14 at 6:30pm. Current redistricting recommendations from Superintendent Matthew Haas would move 42 students from Stone Robinson to Stony Point Elementary, 88 students from Baker-Butler to Hollymead Elementary, and 59 students from Woodbrook to Agnor-Hurt Elementary.
City Manager Sam Sanders (center) wants to raise Charlottesville’s meals, lodging, and real estate taxes to pay for the proposed FY25 budget he presented to City Council on March 6.
Photo by Eze Amos.
Charlottesville City Manager Sam Sanders presented the proposed budget to City Council on March 6, prompting discussion and debate on funding allocations and potential tax hikes.
Coming in at 350 pages and $251,526,900 in total revenues and expenditures, Charlottesville’s budget for FY25 is hefty in several ways. However, nothing is final yet. Councilors have until the city’s April 9 deadline—with a hard statewide deadline of April 15—to examine the budget, hear from constituents, and consider potential amendments.
“The city manager had to prepare a budget that balances,” says Councilor Lloyd Snook. “We will take his recommended budget and hear his justifications and make a decision by April 9.”
Highlights from the presentation included $10 million for the integration of collective bargaining, $7 million in additional funding for Charlottesville City Schools, and $8.9 million for affordable housing.
In order to fund these initiatives and other priorities, the budget would increase the city’s meals, lodging, and real estate taxes. The meals tax would be raised to 7.5 percent, lodging to 9 percent, and real estate to 98 cents per $100.
If approved, this will mark the third time Charlottesville has raised its meals tax in the last five years (it is currently 6.5 percent).
“None of the tax levers we have are without issue,” says Councilor Brian Pinkston. “Each impacts the community in particular ways. We’re trying to be sensitive to that fact.”
Though he supports many of the projects funded through increased revenue from the suggested tax increases, Councilor Michael Payne was more hesitant about raising the meals tax.
“Personally, I think the meals tax should be the last tax we seek to raise. It’s our most regressive tax, and after raising it again we’d be near the top of the state for our meals tax rate,” says Payne. “Local restaurants operate on small margins and unlike with our real estate tax, there is no tax relief program for the meals tax.”
Meals taxes stack on top of state and local sales tax, meaning area diners could see a 12.8 percent tax on their food and drink purchases if the hike is approved.
For comparison, a 7.5 percent meals tax would put Charlottesville at parity with Richmond, and just below the highest meals tax in the state—8 percent in Covington, Virginia.
Alternatives to raising the meals tax include raising the lodging and real estate taxes further, according to Payne. Otherwise, major cuts would need to be made, leaving several city priorities unfunded or underfunded.
“The primary driver of the need for new revenues is employee compensation and increased contribution to schools. … These aren’t one-time expenses, they’re permanent and become a new baseline for the city budget,” says Payne. “If these aren’t fund[ed] via tax increases, about $17 million of cuts would need to be identified in the general fund.”
A sharp drop in funding from the state government prompted CCS to request a higher appropriation from the city. The city’s appropriation is $2 million short of the school district’s requested appropriation, raising concerns among education leaders.
“The discrepancy directly affects the daily experiences of both students and teachers. Our budget outlines positions aimed at reducing class sizes and providing interventionists to address gaps in student achievement,” says CCS School Board Chair Lisa Larson-Torres. “We have been working very closely with the city team, and they have been very transparent about the current state of their budget. Nevertheless, we felt that it was still important to present our budget with the $9 million dollar increase as it meets the essential needs of our students.”
Some city councilors are hopeful that additional state funding may be coming, helping the school district fill any budget gaps.
“Part of the reason that we are in this problem right now with school funding is that the state funding for our schools got cut by $2.9 million compared to last year,” says Snook. “We—and the school system—have been scrambling ever since getting that news.”
“It’s a challenging time because their needs overlap with this necessary investment in the city organization,” says Pinkston. “I am hopeful that there will be some additional relief from the state.”
Charlottesville leadership has a jam-packed schedule during budget deliberations over the next month, with at least one meeting every week. Public hearings on the proposed budget will be held on March 18 and 21, with the first session focused on tax rates.
At press time, Councilor Natalie Oschrin, Mayor Juandiego Wade, and Sanders had not responded to a request for comment.
Super Bit General Manager Elizabeth Kadeli and owner Chris Jackson
are dedicated to preserving the experience of playing retro video games on physical media. @superbitcville on Instagram
Everywhere I travel, I look for a retro video game store. But when I moved to Charlottesville, I was shocked to find not a single one—especially because my hometown Richmond has several. Vinyl? Sure. Books? Tons. But vintage games were not available in C’ville.
That all changed when Super Bit came to town in November. Spun off from its initial location in Annandale, the new Seminole Square shop fills an important niche. People here want to play old games, and now it’s as easy as walking into a store.
“I would say the overall theme of Charlottesville, in my opinion, has just been people being nostalgic,” says owner Chris Jackson. “People like having a store like this and people want to support the store.”
Jackson and general manager Elizabeth Kadeli opened Super Bit in the perfect spot—its neighbors include other hobby shops, like The End Games, and Hello Comics. But since opening a second location in Charlottesville, Jackson and Kadeli have struck up friendships with store owners all over town, even partnering with SuperFly Brewing Co. for a one-night-only retro gaming lounge in February.
Retro game shops often play off of nostalgia, but not everyone comes into Super Bit looking for famous games like Super Mario Bros. 3 or Street Fighter II.
“You never know what people are gonna look for,” Jackson says. “You know, someone sees a random $7 game on the shelf that you never would have thought of, and they go, ‘Oh my gosh, this game was everything. My sister and I spent hundreds of hours playing this.’”
And sometimes, those $7 games are trapped on the cartridge or disc they shipped on—it’s the only legal way to play them. A staggering 87 percent of all classic games released in the U.S. are out of print, according to a 2023 study by the Video Game History Foundation and the Software Preservation Network. Stores like Super Bit help keep these works in circulation.
To that end, the shop is committed to physical media, especially since the transitory nature of digital downloads and streaming services means fewer and fewer people actually own the games, movies, music, and ebooks they buy.
“These companies don’t hesitate to tell you that you don’t own these things. You’re just borrowing them, but you paid for it,” says Kadeli. “There’s a certain majesty in having the physical copies of the games, or to actually have the systems because you don’t have to have that same fear.”
“There’s also a lot of people in the surrounding areas who don’t have internet access,” Kadeli adds, “but who can come and get a Genesis, an NES, all these things that don’t need the internet—you just need the system and the games, and you can play it. And you don’t need to worry about having to update anything, you don’t need to worry about any of that.”
Super Bit’s dedication to physical media means it also carries some vintage VHS tapes, board games, and toys. And while Jackson and Kadeli would like to expand into more mediums, games remain their focus. They’re committed enough to preserving the experience of playing retro games that they also sell CRT televisions, which many purists argue is the ideal way to play titles from the 1980s and ’90s.
“The further we get away from physical stuff, the more demand there is going to be for it,” says Jackson. “If you watch any kind of futuristic movie, there’s always people that collect, like, VHS players. … I think it’s gonna come full circle.”
The Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority might sell this Harris Street duplex because “it is not the best place for residential,” says CRHA Executive Director John Sales.
Photo by Sean Tubbs.
As Charlottesville considers an ordinance to create a land bank to generate more affordable housing, one government entity is already providing much of that function.
In addition to owning and operating hundreds of public and voucher-based units across the city, the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority has been buying more property to guarantee lower rents for tenants.
“The portfolio was developed to preserve naturally occurring affordable housing units that were at risk of being lost due to natural real estate transactions,” says John Sales, CRHA’s executive director.
Using funding that had originally been approved by City Council for rental vouchers, CRHA bought two duplexes on Coleman Street in August 2022, and a house on Montrose Street that October. Last June, it closed on the $10 million purchase of 74 units known as Dogwood Housing after council agreed to contribute half the funds.
“We then acquired 100 Harris Rd., which is a three-bedroom single-family home, on July 14, 2023,” Sales says.
According to Sales, that transaction kept a long-term tenant, who had been at risk of displacement, in the house. Overall, 68 percent of tenants have incomes less than 30 percent of the Area Median Income. Seventy percent of the units do not have a subsidy associated with them.
“We want to continue serving those families,” Sales says. “What we have been doing for this portfolio is using the voucher problems in [Albemarle County] and the city. We are also assisting families that reach out to us that are unable to get served on the public housing program and the voucher program.”
Having both public housing units, as well as the additional units, gives an economy of scale that has allowed CRHA to hire two full-time exterminators to deal with known pest-control issues.
Sales says the agency is considering selling a duplex located on Harris Street on land zoned for industrial mixed-use.
“It is not in the best place for residential,” he says. “I’ve been talking to my board and they are in support of disposing of it.”
The property has an assessment of $295,300, but Sales says the property could go for between $350,000 and $500,000, and all of that funding would go back into the organization’s portfolio.
When City Councilor Michael Payne asked if the prospective owner could be identified, Sales said CRHA has to put the property on the open market.
“But, they were going to preserve it to expand their business operations and move their headquarters to that location,” Sales says.
To make up the additional residential, CRHA purchased a property in Belmont on Meridian Street last November, which, he says, will be added to the portfolio.
A majority of City Council members say they’ll support the sale of the Harris Street property if it comes back to them for a vote.
“Harris Street ought to be a place where we are encouraging other industrial and commercial kinds of uses,” Councilor Lloyd Snook says.
There are plenty of expenses associated with maintaining so many homes, and Sales says three properties totaling 18 residential units on Ridge Street need new roofs. The CRHA is seeking grants to cover the cost of $50,000 per building, including an application through the city’s share of Community Development Block Grant funds.
Councilor Brian Pinkston told Sales he was glad the city helped make the Dogwood purchase.
“I think this just shows creativity on your part and I am very grateful for the work that you’ve done,” Pinkston said.
Pinkston and the rest of council also agreed in February to purchase 405 Avon St. from CRHA for $4 million. In addition, CRHA has closed on its $2.5 million purchase of the Milgraum building on the Downtown Mall.
Architect Rosney Co. Architects Builder Greer and Associates Interior design Jennifer Stoner Interiors Landscape architect Waterstreet Studio
As soon as I came up here and saw the view, I called my wife and said, ‘I’ve found the place,’” recalls Hugh Shytle. “I felt like I was on top of the world.”
Shytle and his wife Doreen had lived in New England and raised their children there, but when it came time to build their forever home, Hugh was drawn to central Virginia. As a remote-working partner in a Richmond-based real estate development firm, Hugh was familiar with the area, and the couple homed in on southern Albemarle County close to Charlottesville. When a colleague of Hugh’s called about a lot in Blandemar, he came to check out the site, took in the 360-degree view from the hilltop over rolling hills and the Ragged Mountains, and was hooked.
Photo: Gordon Gregory Photography
Hugh had already been networking with colleagues in the Charlottesville area for a design team. By the time the Shytles had closed on the site, they had an architect (Rosney Co.); a builder (Greer and Associates); a landscape architect (Waterstreet Studio); and an interior designer (Jennifer Stoner Interiors) lined up. “We had never built a home before,” Doreen says, “so it helped that we had a great team.”
Having the full team involved from the start “is really our preferred approach,” says Rosney Co. architect Keith Scott. And the site was a plus—not only for its “outstanding” views, but because working on the flat hilltop made construction easier (“steep sites are a budget killer,” he says). Scott says Hugh’s experience in the real estate business helped prepared the Shytles for the hundreds of decisions they had to make—and the many blips that can cause delays or changes in plans.
Photo: Gordon Gregory Photography
The couple had also given lots of thought to their forever home. Hugh, in fact, had a 10-page document listing everything the pair wanted. Top of the list: “maximizing the view with lots of windows.” Other have-to-haves: two home offices at opposite ends of the house (“Doreen doesn’t want to hear me on conference calls,” Hugh laughs); an owner’s bedroom suite on the first floor; lots of fireplaces; and a large screened porch. Doreen wanted a shingle-style house and a large open kitchen with a pantry; Hugh wanted geothermal heating, an outdoor kitchen by the pool area, and a barn. And, of course, room for their two children and family to visit.
Photo: Gordon Gregory Photography
As the design progressed and “forever” choices had to be made, the original plan for 5,000 square feet ended up at almost 7,000. The Shytles hadn’t originally asked for a full basement, for example, but “we were glad to have that [workout room] when COVID hit,” Doreen recalls. (The couple came to Charlottesville in June 2017 to oversee construction, and moved into their new house in January 2019.)
Photo: Gordon Gregory Photography
The finished home feels comfortable and human-scale, both spacious and well-organized, and the stunning views are everywhere. The main entry’s back wall is the staircase silhouetted against a two-story window. The wing to the left is the owners’ suite: a calm and private bedroom with fireplace and large windows west and south; a couple’s bathroom with separate vanities and a makeup table, heated floors, a walk-in shower, and a free-standing tub; his-and-hers dressing rooms with loads of cabinets and clothing spaces (including shelves for Hugh’s hats); a laundry room with built-in storage drawers, drying racks, and even a step on which to place the laundry basket.
To the right of the entry, past the formal dining room, is the high-ceilinged great room featuring a fieldstone fireplace and a two-story southwest-facing window. The comfortable furnishings are warm neutrals, with accents of wood, and nature-themed contemporary artwork. “Our house in New England was a colonial, with dark wood furniture,” Doreen says. “We decided to get rid of almost all of it.” (They did keep several lovely bedsteads and dressers for the upstairs guest rooms.)
Photo: Gordon Gregory Photography
Off the great room is the large open-plan kitchen with its own dining area and spacious windows running along both sides. This is Doreen’s domain: “I wanted a large but well-organized space, white but not sterile.” So the expanse of white cabinets is lightened up by opaque patterned-glass inserts, the counters are gray-streaked honed Montclair Darby marble, and the cabinet under the island is a neutral lined oak. One side of the island’s large counter is a half oval that gives people gathering on the bar stools more room. The handmade range hood of burnished nickel from Thompson Traders is set off by the chevron-patterned tiles in shades of gray on the backsplash. Tucked away off the kitchen are additional working spaces—a pantry/appliance room, and a butler’s pantry/staging area across from the dining room. And, as with any country home, there’s a good-sized mud room full of coat hooks and cubbies.
The Shytles got their other must-haves as well. Hugh’s and Doreen’s offices are on opposite ends of the second floor—with a guest bedroom suite, two bedrooms and a full bath, and a game room in between. The large screened porch, with its shingled columns, fieldstone fireplace, and large-screen television, functions as an all-season outdoor gathering space. Beyond the pool area (designed by Waterstreet and built by Pool Designs by Schultz in Lexington) is a two-acre wildflower garden with beehives from which the family harvests its own honey. And yes, Hugh got his barn.
“We had our list of what we wanted, and the team brought it to life,” says Hugh. “People ask what we would have done differently, and it’s really very little.”
Photo: Gordon Gregory Photography
Incorporating contemporary into classic
To prepare for decorating her new home, Doreen Shytle “spent hours on Pinterest,” she recalls. “I wanted a feeling of calm, light, airy.” Her research online led her to interior designer Jennifer Stoner.
“Doreen knew she wanted a Hamptons shingle-style house, but [for the interior] we started from scratch,” says Stoner. “I took them down to [the showrooms in] High Point, North Carolina, and she started gravitating toward more contemporary styles.”
Stoner keyed the design to the home’s stunning views: “I tried to bring in the greens and blues from nature, and focused on a warmer palette.” Choices like veined marble, textured glass, and patterned tiles in the kitchen, butler’s pantry, laundry room, and baths added warmth and texture (Cogswell Stone supplied all the stone in the home, and the patterned tiles came from Sarisand Tiles). In smaller spaces, like the butler’s pantry, the mudroom, and the powder room, Stoner and Doreen used tans and warm dark blues for the walls and cabinets.
Choosing light fixtures “was one of my favorite parts of the process,” says Stoner. Centered in the great room’s vaulted ceiling is a hanging fixture of interlocking gold-toned circles from Currey & Co. The dining room chandelier is a modern metal take on a classic candelabra, with matching wall scones in the adjoining entry. The stairway features large vertical wall scones and an unusual straight-line hanging fixture from Visual Comfort. Doreen admits she was hesitant at first, but has grown to love how they fit the space.—CD
