Month: August 2024

A personal trainer for more than 20 years, Cecil Hassell, it’s safe to say, knows how to help people feel confident about what they’re seeing on the outside. But he recently turned his attention to helping people—and more specifically, kids—feel confident about what’s on the inside, too. With his children’s book, The Adventures of the Bald-Headed Bear, he tells the story of (you might have guessed) a bear with no hair who takes a journey to learn more about self-love.

There were many tributes to local Ten Course Hospitality restaurateur Will Richey after he passed away in late 2023 following a car accident. But perhaps the most enduring will be Ode to a Nightingale, a black lager that brewer Mark Fulton whipped up for the menu at his and Richey’s Högwaller Brewing. A combination of a lager and a stout—two of Richey’s preferred styles—the beer takes its name from Richey’s favorite poem, and its label—a portrait of Richey himself—from local artist (and a former Ten Course employee) Wil Smith.

I scream, you scream … okay, you know where this is going. Lucky for us, we don’t have to scream very loud (or at all!) to find a frozen treat in this town. Here are 11 of our favorite hot cold spots.—SS

Ben & Jerry’s

Barracks Road Shopping Center

They had us at Cherry Garcia. 

Chaps Ice Cream

Downtown Mall and UVA Corner

A trip to the Downtown Mall isn’t complete without a scoop of coffee raspberry in a waffle cone from Brenda “Granny” Hawkins. (A second Chaps recently opened on the UVA Corner.)  

Cold Stone Creamery

1709 Emmet St. N & 5th Street Station

Just-made ice cream is thwapped on a frozen granite stone (hence, the shop’s name), where a variety of mix-ins (fruit, nuts, candy) can be added. Sounds Berry, Berry Good to us.

Dairy Queen

1777 Fortune Park Rd.

Five words: Chocolate chip cookie dough Blizzard. 

Kilwins

Downtown Mall

It’s tough to resist a cup of Blue Moon ice cream with a side of just-made sea-salt caramel fudge. 

Kohr Brothers Frozen Custard

1881 Seminole Trail

Less fat and sugar than ice cream, a light, silky texture, several twist flavors (vanilla and orange sherbert, please), and a merry-go-round.

La Flor Michoacana

601A Cherry Ave.

We once likened leaning over the shop’s store-length cooler filled with an array of brightly colored popsicles to gazing at the treasures in a jewelry store’s glass counter—but Rum and Raisins on a stick is much tastier than a diamond ring.  

Moo Thru

Dairy Market

Schlepping an hour north to the red barn on James Madison Highway became history in 2021, when more than a dozen flavors that change with the seasons (come to mama, Blackberry Merlot!) arrived on Grady Avenue. 

Splendora’s Gelato

The Shops at Stonefield

Trays of ever-changing, custom-crafted gelato flavors (check out the store’s Instagram and Facebook pages for the week’s offerings) and vegan chocolate and vanilla cupcakes. We’ll take some (okay, a lot) of each.

SugarBear Gourmet Ice Cream

1522 High St.

Emily Harpster’s made-from-scratch, locally sourced flavors (Wild Woman Whiskey, Vanilla Plum Blackberry, Mayan Hot Chocolate), once available only at specialty stores and bakeries, got a brick-and-mortar location this year. 

Timberlake’s

Downtown Mall

Step back in time at this back-of-the-drugstore soda fountain, where the dessert menu includes ice cream floats and sodas; shakes, malts, and sundaes (how’s about a Hannah Banana Split?); or a double dip in a cup or cone.

Ty Cooper defies categorization. As a marketing professional, he’s worked with all manner of companies and in myriad media. As a visual artist, he’s made his mark as an award-winning filmmaker, photographer, and designer. 

Perhaps that’s why Cooper is drawn to short films.

“If a person is interested in being a filmmaker, shorts are an easier entry,” Cooper says. “They’re less expensive, and you can be super creative and do things you can’t get away with in a feature film. You can have fun and learn to love filmmaking. It gives [filmmakers] an opportunity to experiment and get better and be as quirky as possible.”

Cooper held his inaugural Indie Short Film Festival, a three-day rumpus of screenings, table reads, and parties in March. He showed nearly 75 shorts, held panel discussions, hosted a screenplay competition, and helped select best-of-show winners—all in four locations centrally located around the Downtown Mall.

The festival was an expansion of Cooper’s long-running short film series—a way to “massage the market,” he says, and get a sense for whether he should keep the festival going annually. After the success of the first event, during which three of the 12 screening blocks were sold out and several others were at greater than 80 percent of capacity, Cooper says he’s planning a second festival for 2025.

“I quantify success not only by looking at the numbers of people coming in—the sold-out screenings—but by going to the panel discussions and seeing the Common House with only a couple seats open and seeing people engaged with the filmmakers,” Cooper says.

To select films, Cooper started his search at Sundance, which he attends every year to see movies and meet filmmakers. Nearly 25 percent of the eventual Indie Short Film Festival playlist came from the renowned Salt Lake City independent film festival. Another 25 percent of the flicks came straight from Virginia, and the rest were selected from other submissions, festival screenings, and foreign films, with at least 11 countries eventually represented. 

Cooper has eschewed a themed festival to maximize voices, but he organizes the films for screening blocks. The 2024 festival featured animated blocks, documentaries, Virginia-focused segments, and miscellaneous narrative blocks. It included films by people of color, women, and wide-ranging ethnic representatives. The panel discussions took on topics like women in film and the Black experience in American cinema. 

“Part of my goal is to put all these voices on the screen,” Cooper says. “It was a melting pot.”

Cooper, whose marketing and branding firm Lifeview Marketing and Visuals counts the Virginia Film Festival among its clients, says his 2025 event will be bigger and better than his first foray. After polling attendees about their experiences, he says he’ll implement changes large and small. “I talk to every single person I see with their lanyard swinging,” Cooper says. 

The 2025 Indie Short Film Festival will be held March 21–23 at various theaters and restaurants around the Downtown Mall.

Those of us following the “Small Town, Big Crime” podcast—a locally produced show from journalists Courteney Stuart and Rachel Ryan that investigates the 1985 Bedford County double murder of Derek and Nancy Haysom—got a bit of a surprise while browsing Netflix at the end of 2023. The co-hosts had been tapped for commentary in the streaming service’s documentary, “Till Murder Do Us Part: Soering vs. Haysom.” “The two of them were a horrible puzzle that fit together just right,” says Stuart of Elizabeth Haysom and Jens Soering, the couple at the center of the case, in the series’ lead-in. Consider us hooked.

Laura Frantz wants to write you a poem. Luckily, the Charlottesville Poem Store owner is never too far away, parking her tent (and her vintage typewriter) at the Farmers Market at Ix, The Doyle Hotel (total Algonquin Round Table vibes), and special events like the Crozet Arts & Crafts Festival and Common House’s Writers’ Happy Hour. Plus, she’s for hire. Have her stop by your event and craft an on-the-spot poem for each of your guests based on a set of agreed-upon prompts. Now that’s poetry in motion.

As your official source of all things good, better, and best in Charlottesville, it’s always a pleasure when we can introduce you to someone making a splash in the local arts scene. Enter Harold Bailey, the virtuoso pianist and composer who’s making classical cool. 

Hailing from Richmond, Bailey began his career as a self-taught musician at age 16, and went on to earn his bachelor’s and master’s in piano performance. Throughout his career he’s played at Carnegie Hall, improvised with the late Chick Corea, had his compositions choreo­graphed by Charlottesville Ballet, and now teaches piano at The Front Porch and leads workshops throughout the commonwealth.

With a focus on the classical genre, Bailey showcases the versatility and individuality of the piano, and draws on his own life experiences for original compositions. His live performances are a celebration of musical connection, and often involve collaborations from other pianists and vocalists. Find more information on Bailey’s upcoming live shows at @thebaileybard.

If you love both books and lap robes, you have likely found The Espresso Edition online. Stephanie Whitman had been blogging full-time before she moved to Charlottesville in 2021, but now her day job is social media manager, and blogging about books at theespressoedition.com is her side gig. 

Ten years ago, when Whitman was diagnosed with gastroparesis (a chronic digestive condition that keeps her bedridden a significant amount of the time), blogging was a sensible career choice. “I started in fashion, added lifestyle along the way, and then in 2021, I completely rebranded because, as a lifelong reader, talking about books feels like coming home. ‘Cozy’ is the vibe for my brand.” 

What makes for a cozy book? “Very low stakes,” she says. “I want to go into the book knowing that it won’t be filled with crazy amounts of action, emotional trauma, or anything too overwhelming. More often than not, these kinds of books take place in small towns, with a smaller cast of characters who are all familiar with one another, and frequently there are warm beverages and sweet treats involved.” Cozy covers all genres; two of Whitman’s favorites are romance (“the fluffy kind”) and science fiction/fantasy, from a childhood love of The Chronicles of Narnia. “My ideal cozy set-up is a big armchair with a soft blanket, jazz music playing in the background, a warm and spicy candle, a hot cup of coffee or tea in my hand, and a good book on a rainy afternoon.” Sounds perfect!

It took Asheville-based artist Scott Allred two weeks to return the Coca-Cola ghost mural on the side of 122 E. Main St. to its former glory, a feat that began by sealing off key portions of the 100-year-old artwork and then painting on top of it. The project was funded in part by America’s largest Coca-Cola bottling company, Coca-Cola Consolidated, as a “nod to Charlottesville and Coca-Cola’s past but also … a shared vision for a vibrant downtown for our customers and consumers,” says Wayne Tyree, Coke Consolidated’s Community Relations Manager for the Charlottesville area.

After almost four years of renovations, the University of Virginia’s main library reopened its doors to the public at the beginning of the year. But the massive windows and study courts aren’t the only changes—the building also has a new name.

Originally opened in 1938, the newly dubbed Edgar Shannon Library has been a staple on Grounds for more than 75 years. When students went home for spring break in March of 2020, however, UVA closed the library for renovations.

“I don’t think we knew what we were in for in closing those doors and what would have to happen,” says Elyse Girard, executive director of communications and user experience for the library. “We went from basic concerns about how to keep the service and space level the same, even with our main library closed, from then shifting to how to do that now during a pandemic.”

Despite the logistical challenges, the Edgar Shannon Library now touts cool new features, several restored historic spaces, and some desperately needed safety and structural updates.

Girard’s office was infested with bats when renovations began. Now, in addition to the building being bat-free, there’s the newfound brightness.

“I love seeing students sit in the windows and have their little cozy spots,” says Girard. “It’s just a better, [more] welcoming building to be in.”