Author: c-ville-weekly-writers

“All I want to do is fall asleep,”says Matt (not his real name), a new Charlottesville resident. Since moving to town, Matt describes his sleep pattern as “very intermittent. I can’t seem to fall into a deep, sustained sleep.” After a restless night, when morning comes he says he feels tired and “resigned that I have to wake up because it’s time to go to work.” The long nights are starting to take a toll. “On a scale of 1 to 10, this is around a 7,” he says.

 Matt’s in good (bad) company. According to the National Sleep Foundation, nearly two-thirds of Americans get fewer than the recommended eight hours of sleep per night, and nearly one-third get less than seven hours. Throw in the popularity of “power naps,” the skyrocketing sales of caffeinated energy drinks, and the increased use of over-the-counter and prescription sleep aids, and a troubling picture of America’s sleep habits emerges. Why are we a stressed-out, puffy-eyed nation staring at the ceiling at 3am, desperate for some sweet dreams?

 Thankfully for Matt and other budding insomniacs, Charlottesville is drawing sleep medicine experts to the area with the recent opening of Martha Jefferson Hospital’s Sleep Center and a Sleep Disorders Center at UVA that doubled its patient-care capacity just more than a year ago. Both enterprises reflect how the study of sleep has become one of the hottest new fields in the medical profession, a testament to both an over-worked, sleep-deprived population and recent advances in our understanding of why sleep is essential to good health.

The impossible dream

Sleep has become such a precious commodity that in Manhattan, weary workaholics can purchase a 20-minute nap for $14 in one of MetroNap’s private “pods”—individual space-age reclining chairs complete with sleep-inducing music piped in through headphones.

 Charlottesville doesn’t currently boast any fancy pods, and ultimately it doesn’t matter. While a nap may help you get through a long workday, it’s no substitute for a full night of rest. Skimping on sleep can carry serious health consequences, as medical research shows that lack of sleep factors into weight loss, heart disease and can incapacitate drivers much like alcohol when behind the wheel.

 And then there’s the mental fatigue. Studies have shown that sleep-deprived people have a harder time staying focused and productive at work. In one study, conducted at the University of California, in San Diego, neurologists examining the brain’s ability to handle various problems found that overtired patients fared worse on most questions, including simple arithmetic, than when tested after a good night’s rest.

 How can you tell if you’re getting enough sleep? If you wake feeling refreshed and your sleep is of good quality, then you’re getting the right amount of shut-eye. While most experts recommend eight hours a night, the amount of sleep you need depends on your natural sleep rhythm, or circadian clock, which signals your body when it’s time to sleep and wake up. Everyone has his or her own clock, set to their individual schedule.

 “You can’t fool that clock,” explains Dr. Will Hammond, a local pulmonary and sleep medicine specialist affiliated with Martha Jefferson Hospital. “That’s why people experience jet lag and why some people have trouble working the night shift.”

 Hammond says most people’s “clock” dips between 4pm and 6pm, which helps explain the tradition of afternoon siestas (or as the case may be here in Charlottesville, the daily run to the coffee bar for a shot of caffeine). A similar drop happens between 4am and 6am, when most people are in deep sleep.

 Many teenagers have a “delayed” clock, a cycle that explains their tendency, if allowed, to sleep until noon. “Teenagers will go to bed at 2am, but they’re up at noon. Elderly people may go to sleep at 7pm and be up at 4am,” Hammond says. Elderly people have an “advanced” clock that allows them to be up at sunrise, fully rested and refreshed.

 If you’re sleepless several nights in a row—traveling, taking care of a child, or partying, whatever the case may be—you’ll begin to build up adenosine in your brain, a chemical that signals your body that it’s finally time to sleep. Caffeine is a miracle pick-me-up because it works by blocking the receptors for adenosine, temporarily putting off the urge to sleep. But that double Americano won’t keep you up forever.

 The good news for the seriously sleep-deprived is, “You can make up a sleep debt,” Hammond says. “If you stay up three days in a row, instead of sleeping eight hours, you might sleep 11 hours for two nights. You can make it up within days.”

 When you can’t make it up, when prolonged sleeplessness occurs, it’s time to see the professionals. Dr. Chris Winter, an energetic young neurologist, presides over the Martha Jefferson Sleep Lab. His interest in sleep medicine first developed as an undergraduate at the UVA, where he studied with renowned sleep medicine expert, and founder of the American Sleep Apnea Association, Dr. Paul Suratt.

 “There’s just such a demand in this community,” says Winter, who sees patients with irregular sleeping patterns, sleep apnea, restless legs and insomnia. In response, Martha Jefferson Sleep Center will soon be opening more of their overnight rooms to reduce the current two- to three-month wait time for an appointment. Even though Winter just began working at the Sleep Center, “expansion,” he says, “is the first order of business.”

 Martha Jefferson’s new Sleep Center is located in a renovated historic home on quiet, tree-lined Lexington Avenue behind the hospital. The hospital located the Sleep Center in the old home because it is “more comfortable for the patients, and more representative of a normal night’s sleep,” says Terri Bream, manager of Sleep Medicine Services, who has been working to make the Sleep Center a reality since the idea was first conceived in 2000.

 Bream has gone to great lengths to make the Sleep Center welcoming, including planting tulips bulbs outside, ordering a porch swing and adding faux finish to the walls. The result is a remarkably different approach to studying sleep disorders that may make patients feel more like they’re spending the night at a bed and breakfast than a medical facility.

The ABCs of gettings ZZZs

Many people experience temporary insomnia during their lifetime, but prolonged insomnia is rare, and as Winter notes, “Insomnia is a symptom, it’s not a diagnosis.” The causes of insomnia vary, but are often directly related to our emotional or psychological well-being. “Depression is a big cause of insomnia,” explains Winter, “A lot of times people have an event, they lose a spouse or a job.”

 Sleep aids like Sonata or Ambien are often prescribed in extreme cases of insomnia, but doctors like Winter say prescription sleep aids “are not a solution on a long-term basis.” Hammond agrees, saying he will only use sleep aids in “the lowest dose, for the least amount of time, while searching for a cause.”

 Sometimes simple changes to your sleep environment can be the difference between tossing and turning and pleasant dreams. “Don’t make your bedroom into an office,” advises Hammond. Take out all beeping, blinking and buzzing electronics, which can distract would-be snoozers. The same holds true for pets, whose “clocks” are often not matched well with their owner.

 “Going to bed at 11, but not falling asleep until 2—that’s a sign of anxiety,” explains Winter. People who have trouble falling asleep are often worrying or doing what Winter calls “running the list,” fretting over all the things they need to do the next day, instead of relaxing to drift into sleep naturally. To clear your mind, Winter suggests writing down a to-do list at least an hour before bed. [See sidebar on page 17 for more tips on getting a good night’s sleep.]

 Contrary to popular belief, falling asleep at the movies or during your lunch hour doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re a “good sleeper.” In fact, it could signal a much more serious problem. “People should be able to go to bed, get enough sleep, wake up refreshed and not have to take a nap,” says Hammond.

 If you have daytime drowsiness and suspect that a poor night’s sleep is to blame, you may end up in the capable hands of Ruth Guchu, the chief technologist at UVA’s Sleep Disorders Center. Nearly 20 years ago, when Guchu became a board-certified sleep technician, she was one of only 153 board-certified sleep technicians in the country. Today, there are thousands of certified polysomnographic technicians, trained to “read” patients sleep behavior.

 One of Guchu’s biggest areas of concentration is sleep apnea, a common sleep disorder that more than 12 million people suffer from. Simply put, sleep apnea is your airway collapsing while you sleep. Your body wakes itself in an attempt to breathe, and this can happen repeatedly, in some cases hundreds of times a night, leaving the person tired the next day from constantly interrupted sleep.

 Sleep apnea sufferers may not even know they can’t breathe, because they fall back asleep quickly after regaining their breath, and are only left with a few telltale signs of apnea—daytime sleepiness, a dry mouth from snoring all night or morning headaches. Often, it’s the bed partner of someone with sleep apnea who first notices the loud snoring and disrupted breathing of their mate. The only surefire way to tell whether you have a case of harmless snoring, or a more serious case of sleep apnea, is to spend the night at one of Charlottesville’s sleep centers.

Night owls

The eight overnight rooms in the UVA Sleep Disorders Center are sparsely decorated yet comfortable, with a television and private half bathroom. An infrared camera in the ceiling of each room, as unobtrusive as a smoke alarm, gives sleep technicians a way to monitor both the equipment and the patient from a nearby computer station. In one room, a sleep technician tapes wires onto a large teddy bear, to demonstrate to a patient how multicolored wires and sensors will allow technicians to read a 22-channel recording, in real time, of a patient’s heart rate, brain waves, muscle tone and other sleep indicators.

 “We aim to get between six to eight hours of recording,” Guchu explains. Most patients arrive for an overnight stay around 8pm, lights are out between 10 and 11:30pm, and patients can leave as early as 7am the next morning.

 Guchu shows me the chart of a sleep study patient. Though the name has been taken off the file to protect the person’s identity, we can still see, in lines that jump across the screen like a needle on a lie-detector’s polygraph, where the patient stopped breathing momentarily. Normal breathing looks like a regular, rhythmic pattern of deep drops and rises, but when sleep apnea occurs, the lines at once become jagged, compressed and alarmingly shallow. Guchu points to the screen, “Here, they are using 20 percent or less of their normal breath,” she says, describing an episode of sleep apnea.

 The most commonly recommended treatment for sleep disordered breathing, or sleep apnea, is a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) mask worn during the night that provides a “mild stream of air that prompts your airway open to breathe while asleep,” explains Guchu. Although the mask is a desirable option when compared to surgery, “it is a learned process,” says Guchu, and people often need time to get used to it. “When I first came here, it was a really hard sell, but now it is getting to be common knowledge, or people know someone who is using a CPAP mask, and that has really helped us.”

 You don’t have to be stuck channel-surfing, counting sheep or putting up with a snoring, kicking bed partner; sleep problems are definitely worthy of treatment. For example, the snoring associated with sleep apnea is often viewed as an “annoyance,” Winter says, “but we now know that sleep apnea has very far reaching effects on health.”

 Doctors now say that a good night’s sleep is essential to good health, as important as maintaining good dental hygiene or regular exercise. Although the mysteries of sleep’s restorative powers are still unraveling, Hammond reminds us, “Sleep is an active process,” a process we should do our best to not interfere with.

Dreamweavers
How to book an appointment with local sleep docs

If you think you might have a sleep disorder, talk to your primary care physician about your predicament before booking an appointment at one of Charlottesville’s medical sleep centers. After seeing your doctor, “then they would refer you to a sleep physician,” explains Terri Bream, manager of sleep medicine services at Martha Jefferson Sleep Center.

 A sleep physician can rule out any other causes of your sleep problem and, if necessary, book you an overnight appointment at a sleep center.

 The cost of an overnight stay at one of Charlottesville’s sleep centers can range from $1,800 to $2,400, although “Generally, it costs about $2,000 per study,” says Bream.

 The good news is that most health insurance companies will pay for a sleep study. The bad news is that many insurance companies require pre-authorization, warns Bream. So to avoid getting stuck footing the bill, be sure to follow the rules of your health insurance provider.

 Even if you think you can self-diagnose your problem, having your primary care physician make a referral is “the simplest and most general way,” to get an appointment at the Sleep Center, says Ruth Guchu, chief technologist at the University of Virginia Sleep Center.

 Once you’ve survived the complicated process of getting referrals and have secured an appointment, the rest is easy. “For most patients, they can be studied and treated in one night,” says Bream.—K.W.

Assume the position
On your back? On your belly? The best body bet for a good rest

“I recommend side or back,” says Paul Stangil, a local chiropractor and nutrition consultant, on how to lie for the best night’s sleep.

 “Side is a semi-fetal position, and you can put a pillow between your legs to keep legs parallel, “ he says. “If your legs aren’t parallel, one leg folds over, and that twists the spine.”

 Sleeping on your stomach may be comfortable, but this position can put unnecessary pressure on your neck and back. Due to the number of nerves coming out of your neck, “turning your head to the side and sleeping on your stomach can affect the alignment of your spine,” Stangil says.

 Having a good mattress that keeps your body properly supported can help, although Stangil warns, “It’s a misconception that you need the stiffest mattress out there. The bed is supposed to dip a little bit; your body is not flat.” He recommends a “medium to firm mattress.”

 If you have an extra $12,000 to spend, you can follow in the footsteps of Oprah Winfrey, the British royal family, Luciano Pavarotti and Russian President Vladimir Putin and purchase the Hypnos mattress, a 2,000-coil temple to sleep, made of cashmere, silk and lamb’s wool. We bet any position would somehow be comfy on that bed.—K.W.

Enter, Sandman
Ten easy tips for getting a good night’s sleep

Cut out caffeine

No Big Gulps before bedtime. Instead, try caffeine-free, low-sugar drinks, or herbal tea. Leave at least five to six hours between your last cup of coffee and bedtime.

No napping

If you’re napping during the day, but having trouble sleeping at night, you should forego the nap to get a full night’s worth of deep, restorative sleep.

Exercise early

A workout can get your body revved up, and although you may feel relaxed, even tired, post-workout, you should leave plenty of time—three to four hours—between exercise and bedtime for your body temperature to drop and for your muscles to unwind.

Make a list

If you’re lying in bed worrying about all the things you need to do the next day, try writing down a to-do list before bed. Getting in the habit of writing down your list before sleeping should help clear your mind and allow you to drift off to a night of worry-free sleep.

Stick to happy hour

Drinking into the wee hours of the morning can disrupt your sleep. Call it quits a few hours before retiring since alcohol can disturb your normal sleep pattern and cause you to wake more frequently during the night.

Don’t pig out

Light snacking is O.K., but big meals before bedtime are not. Digesting a late-night dinner is not relaxing for your body, so keep your snacks healthy, and to a minimum.

Clear the clutter

If your bedroom resembles an office or a Radio Shack, now is the time to change. Take anything that could be distracting out of the room, including electronics, work-related papers and pets.

Make it dark

Too much light can keep your body up, so invest in some proper window shades or change the lighting in your bedroom to help you sleep soundly.

Have sex

Ever notice how tired you are after orgasm? The rush of endorphins during orgasm can leave both men and women feeling relaxed and sleepy.

Spruce up

Treat yourself to soft, high thread-count sheets, supportive pillows, or even a new mattress if you need to. Going to bed each night should be something you look forward to.—K.W.

It’s a steamy Friday afternoon in July, and the gates are opening on one of Southside Virginia’s biggest summertime bashes, the Cantaloupe Festival, near South Boston. Cars park on the grass outside of the Halifax County Fairgrounds, just 10 miles from the North Carolina border. 

The entrance road to the fairgrounds is decorated like a landing strip, with more than 100 white signs lining the road, each one emblazoned with the word “Goode.”

 It’s a good time to be the incumbent, alright, as several people hand out fans, buttons, stickers and cups supporting Republican U.S. Congressman Virgil Goode at the front gate. Nobody seems confused by the full-court press of Goode love, nor wonders if perhaps they’ve stumbled upon a political revival rather than a party celebrating melon and Miller Lite.

 That’s because, as the popular buttons read, this is “Virgil Goode Country,” and, in these parts, almost everybody knows “Virgil.”

 But there is at least one nonbeliever at the festival. Al Weed, the Democratic challenger for Goode’s spot in the U.S. House of Representatives, makes an early appearance to talk to a few folks and sample the fresh melon. Though several people politely chat with Weed, who wears a big-lettered hat that reads “Vietnam Veteran,” and a small “Al Weed for Congress” sticker, the 62–year-old challenger doesn’t attract much attention.

 At around 6pm, the Cantaloupe Festival really starts to heat up, with hundreds of people arriving to sample the food and beer included in the $25 admission price. Weed has already left the party, heading down Highway 58 to attend a spaghetti dinner in Martinsville, 60 miles away.

 While the grounds get more crowded, two clusters of partygoers form around a stand serving scoops of vanilla ice cream in half-cantaloupes—the challenge being to finish the sweet combination before the sweltering sun melts all the ice cream—and the keg booth, where beer drinkers can ask tap tenders to fill one of the blue Virgil Goode cups stacked on the table.

 A few feet from a table of cantaloupe pieces stands a slender middle-aged man smiling between bites of sweet corn. Wearing a Goode sticker on a shirt remarkably free of sweat, the Congressman seems to be savoring the atmosphere.

 Also enjoying the food is Virginia Lewis, 56, of Danville, who is seated at the picnic table where Weed had earlier chatted her up. Asked if Weed won her over during the discussion, she says it’s a good thing he left a campaign brochure with her when he left, because “I never realized that he was up for election.”

 Lewis, herself an Army veteran, is impressed with Weed’s military record. She says another plus for Weed is his stated concern for Southside jobs. Unemployment is a sky-high 12.3 percent in Danville, and Lewis worries about her daughter’s job at the Dan River Inc. textile plant, which laid-off 300 people last month.

 “I will vote for him,” Lewis says of Weed. However, she says that the nice man she just met might not make it to Washington, D.C. unless he starts advertising on television.

 “I sure didn’t know who he was,”Lewis says.

 

Virgil has his mountain

Does Al Weed stand a chance? Ask anyone who knows anything about Virginia politics, and the near-universal answer is a variation on the assessment of Clyde Purdue, a Franklin County attorney whose offices adjoin Goode’s law offices in Rocky Mount. “Mista Weed’s chances,” Purdue says in a slow Vuh-ginia drawl, “are less than slim.”

 There’s good reason to believe Goode—a former Democrat who became a Republican in 2002—has a lock on the Fifth District. His family name is widely known in the Southside, and at a time when many Americans can’t identify their elected officials, everyone in the Southside, it seems, knows Virgil.

 But despite Goode’s clout, the race for the Fifth District presents an important question, one with a certain national significance. Can Weed—a Democrat, Yale grad and Vietnam vet—convince rural voters to oust a charming Republican who seems to share their personal beliefs?

 Howard Dean’s political action committee, Democracy for America, likes Weed’s chances, and has selected him as one of its priority campaigns. Weed, a winemaker who lives in Lovingston, which is about 35 miles south of Charlottesville on U.S. 29, has considerable support among local progressives.

 “There’s an outside chance that the Democrats could take Virginia at the presidential level,” says Bill Wood, director of UVA’s Sorensen Institute for Politics. “That could help Weed, but we’re talking long shots here.

 “The Fifth is one of the most conservative districts in Virginia,” says Wood. “Virgil and his father are so well regarded, and Charlottesville is so out of step with the rest of the district.”

 At first glance, the contrasting viewpoints alive in Virginia’s Fifth District seem irreconcilable. For starters, the Fifth, which is roughly the size of New Jersey, stretches 140 miles from the northern tip of Greene County to the North Carolina border and is about 150 miles wide at its southern base.

 John Fisher, a columnist for the Danville Register Bee, says many Southsiders think of “those people up in Charlottesville” as “effete intellectual snobs, who won’t build a bypass.” When Charlottesville talks about the Southside—which is almost never—it’s usually as a boondocks.

 “The fallacy of this district is that it represents people that have nothing in common with each other,” Fisher says. “What do I have in common with someone that lives 120 miles away?”

 Unemployment levels are the most obvious difference. Martinsville, on the southwest edge of the Fifth, suffers the Commonwealth’s highest unemployment rate of 16.1 percent. Henry County and Danville are right behind Martinsville on the list, with most of the Southside experiencing at least twice the statewide unemployment level of 3.8 percent. Many Southside jobseekers were formerly employed by textile mills or in other manufacturing jobs that were sacked for cheaper labor outside the United States.

 In Charlottesville, however, the unemployment rate is 3 percent, and the city’s largest employer, UVA, isn’t dashing off to Mexico anytime soon.

 Yet Southsiders bristle when Upstaters stereotype them as out-of-work bumpkins. Besides, Charlottesville and the Southside have a few things in common—the presence of poverty, for one, and the soaring municipal costs associated with too many poor people. About 25 percent of Charlottesville residents live under the poverty line, more than double the poverty rate in Virginia. Many other communities in the Fifth District also have higher-than-average poverty rates, including Halifax, Henry and Mecklenburg counties.

 Despite the shared problems, the political gap will be difficult to bridge. In 2002, then-Charlottesville City Councilor Meredith Richards challenged Goode; she won Charlottesville by a two-to-one margin, but she lost the election as Goode took home a whopping 63 percent of the votes in the Fifth District overall. In Franklin and Pittsylvania counties, Goode took nearly 75 percent of the vote.

 “People see Virgil as their friend,” says Weed. “It’s hard to convince people to fire their friend.”

 It’s a tough sell, but Weed has some enticing pitches. He likens Goode to a member of Bush’s “bank robbers,” raking in corporate contributions while ignoring the growing number of people lacking health care, a decent wage or any job at all.

 Weed says he has a plan to help struggling Southsiders, and to sell it to them he’s racking up at least 1,000 miles a week, traveling in a volunteer’s Toyota Prius to the Southside’s summer festivals and Democratic shindigs. On many trips, he exits Interstate 81 near Roanoke, and drives south on Highway 220.

 Just beyond the strip malls of suburban Roanoke, 220 rolls past kudzu-covered hillsides and myriad churches. The road is named the “Virgil H. Goode Highway,” after the Congressman’s father, a former Commonwealth’s Attorney in Franklin County; it passes the Virgil Goode Building in Rocky Mount, also named for Virgil the elder, where the front hall is decorated with a framed poem, which begins with this stanza:

“VIRGIL HAD HIS MOUNTAIN AND HE FAITHFULLY CLIMBED IT HE HAD A LOVE FOR EVERYONE AND HE ALWAYS SHOWED IT”

 “Well,” says Weed, “if I had $10 for everyone who says Virgil can’t be beat, I’d have enough money to beat him.”

 

Not much going on here

“As you can see, there’s not much going on here,” says a teenage waitress at Pino’s Pizza in downtown Lawrenceville. “What you see is what you get.”

 The big moneymakers in Lawrenceville and surrounding Brunswick County, which are both mostly African-American, are two large prisons and a landfill that imports out-of-state trash. The county has two different youth sports leagues—one for whites and one for blacks—not by law, but by tradition.

 In the basement of the Brunswick County office building, Al Weed and his 25-year-old “field director” Trevor Cox have set up about 30 folding chairs and a spread of fried chicken, meatballs and melon squares. It’s supposed to be a party to watch the third night of the Democratic National Convention; as Weed begins his stump speech, some of the black audience members cast sidelong glances at the television, catching a muted, fuzzy Al Sharpton wagging his finger.

 Weed is wearing a blue shirt, sleeves rolled up, a navy blue tie with green and white stripes, khaki pants and loafers. There’s a cell phone in a holster clipped to his belt. The banner behind him reads “Soldier Farmer Statesman.”

 “Virgil Goode is not a player in the Republican Party,” says Weed. “He’s like the kid who hangs out with bank robbers. They let him drive the car.”

 He’s trying to explain how Goode, however harmless he may appear, has aided and abetted the Bush Administration’s heist—tax cuts for the rich, dismantled environmental safeguards, slashed budgets for schools and social services. “If y’all aren’t voting,” Weed says, “If y’all aren’t out there kicking butt, they’re going to dump it on you.”

 The line gets a few approving murmurs, but the party’s no barnburner. It’s just another stop on the campaign slog for the would-be Congressman, the frustrating life of an unknown longshot.

 Weed, however, knew what he was in for. After Vietnam and Yale, he worked with the World Bank and an international investment company before moving his family to Nelson County in 1973, with dreams of owning a farm and running for office.

 “I wanted to build a place where I had roots,” says Weed, who grew up fathered by a hard-drinking ex-Marine in a New York City housing project for GIs. “I thought if I could win office, I would get some visibility and get appointed to a position where I could really make a difference.”

 Weed’s had some tough opponents, though. In 1975 he lost a bid for Nelson’s Board of Supervisors. In 1995 he lost a State Senate primary to Emily Couric; when she died in 2000, her supporters tapped Creigh Deeds to run for her seat.

 “I learned that the process doesn’t matter in politics as much as political junkies think it should,” says Weed. “People don’t pay attention to politics. They have lives. You say you’re running for Congress, and people just look at you blank.”

 He’s getting a few of those looks tonight. “I kept thinking about how tired he looks,” Lillie Fournier says after the speech. The retired New York City police officer says she didn’t know anything about Weed, but attended the meeting to get out of the house. “He gave me the impression of the man you talk to over the fence,” Fournier says.

 Weed figures he can win Brunswick, a Democratic stronghold, and he’s pleading for a high voter turnout to help compensate for the advantage Goode enjoys in other counties. Recent Brunswick transplant Anne Williams says black voters there feel energized by the Board of Supervisors elections last November. Voters elected three new black supervisors, giving African-Americans a 4-to-1 presence on the board.

 “It’s the first time in history,” Williams says at the party, after Weed has finished his stump speech. “It gives people hope for change. They don’t want to vote for the good ol’ boys, the same old, same old.”

 Weed’s only chance, it seems, is to rouse that spirit for change in Virgil’s backyard.

 Anne Price, a Lawrenceville resident and retired teacher, says skepticism about Goode runs high in Brunswick County, which Richards actually carried in 2002. In other counties, Goode can deflect criticism with down-home politics—as Price says, Goode “knows how to wang his twang.”

 Al Weed’s done his homework. He knows the issues in the Southside—jobs, tobacco, education—and he’s touting some good ideas. Weed supports the construction of a new research university to provide stable jobs, and more education spending to lure urban expatriate families searching for affordable homes, small town life and good schools.

 Goode’s popularity in Southside Virginia, however, stems mostly from the twin pillars of the region’s beleaguered economy: tobacco’s decline and the outsourcing of textile and manufacturing jobs to Mexico and Asia. Goode is a wizard at tapping into resentment over both catastrophes.

 Foreign competition is “where you’ll see Virgil Goode come in with guns smoking,” says Danville scribe Fisher.  During the last weeks of the 2002 campaign against Richards, Goode ran TV ads in Danville featuring Goode standing beside a shuttered factory, shaking his fist at the sky and decrying the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Goode has proposed amending the U.S. Constitution to make English the country’s official language, and to eliminate the clause that grants citizenship to any child born in the United States.

 Tapping into fear and hatred of Mexico has proved successful for Goode. Fisher, who is an independent and says he’s received Christmas cards from both the Democratic and the Republican Goode, says the anti-NAFTA TV ads were the final nail in the coffin for Richards’ campaign.

 Goode has also been an outspoken proponent of a buyout for tobacco farmers, an extremely popular cause along Highway 58, which used to be called Tobacco Road.

 “I think he represents the people, and he doesn’t mind stepping up for them,” says James T. Rickman III, while sipping a beer at the Cantaloupe Festival.

 Rickman, who grew up on a Halifax County tobacco farm, cites a recent example in which Goode did indeed stand up to the big chief himself, President George W. Bush. This May, Bush announced his opposition to the tobacco buyout during a campaign swing. Goode fired back loudly, landing a prominent quote in The Washington Post in which he said: “I’ve heard from any number of good Republicans who said they’ll either stay home or vote Democrat in the fall if the White House doesn’t change its position.”

 People also believe Goode has a grip on Capitol Hill’s purse strings. Can the Fifth District afford to lose Goode and his seat on the all-important House Appropriations Committee?

 When federal funds come to the Southside, “people think he’s ridden in on this white steed and he’s given us this money,” says Rev. Cecil Bridgeforth of Shiloh Baptist Church in Danville.

 

Battling the legend

Franklin County resident Joe Stanley runs The Goode Report, a website that scrutinizes Goode’s efforts in Washington, D.C. The website takes Goode to task for alleged broken promises, his personal wealth (it’s between $1.2 million and $3.3 million, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch) and his campaign contributors, claiming, “Goode has opened his door to greedy corporate donors and well-heeled lobbyists.”

 Stanley has strong words for Goode’s rants against NAFTA and illegal immigrants. “He’s fallen victim to the most hateful legislation,” says Stanley, drawing uncomfortable glances from patrons of the Dairy Queen near Rocky Mount. But even Stanley has a soft spot for Virgil.

 “He knows me as Joey,” Stanley says, mentioning that Goode attended theatrical performances in which Stanley performed at the local Ferrum College. He and Goode both collect political buttons, and have even traded wares in the past.

 “I don’t think Virgil is a bad person. I sort of feel sorry for him… He’s trying to keep his job,” Stanley says.

 Trying to shed light on Goode’s personal popularity around Franklin County, Stanley says: “Ask people what Virgil’s actually done for them, and the first thing they say is, ‘Well, his daddy was a great man.’”

 Virgil H. Goode, Sr. was a Commonwealth’s Attorney in Franklin County for decades, and a formidable politician.

 The Sorensen Institute’s Bill Wood says he has a tape of the elder Goode giving an address at the Hampton Coliseum. “It’s one of the most incredible speeches I’ve ever heard,” says Wood.

 Goode, Jr. ran for the House of Delegates in 1973, when he was a 27-year-old fresh out of UVA law school. His father took him across the Southside, introducing him to all the right people. When Goode moved into his office in Richmond, legend has it that the State had purchased new furniture, and Goode moved it out into the hallway as a common-man gesture of contempt for finery.

 It’s all part of what people call “the Goode mystique.” It includes his law office in Rocky Mount, which looks like it might blow over in a stiff breeze. There’s the story about how Goode works from a desk made out of a tree stump, or how he buys each tire for his car at a different Southside dealership, or how he gives away pencils at church pancake breakfasts.

 “It’s all part of what he does to create a myth around himself, the eccentric everyman,” says Laura Bland, who worked as a reporter for the Danville Register Bee for 13 years and is currently spokesperson for the State Democratic Party. “Every year someone from The Washington Post would come down to do a story about Virgil,” Bland says. “So he gives away pencils…big deal.”

 Meredith Richards knows well how loyal the Southside is to Virgil, and how good he is at retaining that support.

 “I remember someone saying he’d love to support me, but it sure would be hard to look Virgil in the face when he came over with the Christmas ham,” says Richards.

 Despite the myth, there’s plenty of partisan bitterness over Goode’s switch from Democrat to Republican in 2002, after two years of working as an independent. The Southside has long been a stronghold for conservative Democrats, Strom Thurmond-type throwbacks with Republican leanings who nevertheless resent Goode’s leap tothe GOP.

 “People haven’t forgotten that. They won’t forget it,” says Page A. Matherly, a Franklin County supervisor who oversees Goode’s home district from an office in the Virgil H. Goode building. Matherly says he stopped backing Goode after the Congressman supported a right-to-work bill.

 “I can’t support him, but I can’t say anything against him. I’d get assassinated,” says Matherly. “People think he’s Jesus Christ.”

 

The home stretch

Virgil Goode has eight times more campaign cash than does Al Weed, reporting $586,000 in late June while Weed had $70,000. And as columnist Fisher says, Southside Republicans are “well-financed, organized and motivated.”

 In contrast, Fisher says, “I don’t see the Democrats here as a well-organized, cohesive unit. They have a track record of not producing.” And Weed can’t count on help from State Democrats, who seem to be pouring everything they have into John Kerry’s campaign. Money for Weed, says Dem spokesperson Bland, is “an issue that remains to be seen. We don’t just give away the store.”

 Yet many Southside observers think this election poses some new twists.

 Rev. Bridgeforth has been signing up voters as president of the Danville Voters League for a decade. Sitting in a pew in his small church, about a mile up Industrial Avenue from the Goodyear Tire plant, Bridgeforth says voters are angry about the war in Iraq and about a local economy that’s gone from bad to worse.

 “There’s an unrest against government, period,” Bridgeforth says. If Weed can tap into the class rage boiling throughout the Southside, he could improve his chances against Goode.

 Josh Guill, a 69-year-old Halifax resident who attended a Weed rally sporting a “Veterans for Kerry” button, says he used to vote Republican, and has voted for Goode, but he believes conservatives have abandoned the middle class.

 “This county has been run for so many years by such a few people, and the majority have been shortchanged,” says Guill, citing the Halifax Board of Supervisors’ decision to help build a speedway instead of putting the money into more reliable economic development. “When you lose the middle class, you’ve lost most of the power in this country,” says Guill.

 But without a massive grassroots effort and extensive TV advertising, many voters will have the same “who’s that?” reaction to Weed’s name on the ballot as they did to Charlottesville reporters’ questions about him.

 In the 11 weeks until the Tuesday, November 2, election, Weed will continue to make tracks all around the Southside, shaking hands and kissing babies, sweating it out at the Southside’s summer festivals. Rev. Bridgeforth and other volunteers will be out there with him, chipping away at the Goode mystique.

 “An upset’s gotta come sometime,” Bridgeforth says.

 

Hard times in Martinsville: Goode to the rescue

Job creation, and preservation, is a huge issue in the economically depressed Southside. Hardest hit in recent years has been the Martinsville area, where, since 1999, more than 9,000 workers have lost their jobs due to layoffs and plant closings, according to the Virginia Employment Commission. Major layoffs include:

• 1,000 by DuPont in 1999

• 800 by Pluma, a textile company, in 1999

• 1,000 by Tultex, a textile company,

 in 1999

• 1,000 by Basset Furniture, Hooker Furniture and American Furniture between 2000 and 2002

• 3,000 by V.F. Imagewear in 2002

• 350 by Active Wear in 2003 and 2004

 Martinsville, a city of 15,000, has an unemployment rate of 16 percent, the highest rate in Virginia. Surrounding Henry County follows closely with an unemployment rate of 14 percent.

 But rare good news came to the hard luck town last November, when both a textile company and defense contractor MZM announced that they would bring in a combined 300 new jobs. Rep. Virgil Goode was instrumental in arranging MZM’s plan to move to a vacated building in Martinsville, says Kim Adkins, president of the Martinsville-Henry County Chamber of Commerce.

 “He’s been very engaged,” Adkins says of Goode’s work to “secure more money for this region.” She cites Goode’s help in landing Department of Labor grants and money for local Patrick Henry Community College.

 Goode’s leverage with MZM, however, is mutual. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, MZM, a Washington, D.C.-based defense and intelligence firm, is Goode’s biggest campaign contributor, kicking in $48,551 during this election cycle.

 In an interview with the Martinsville Bulletin, Goode said campaign funds weren’t involved in his efforts to bring MZM to Martinsville, claiming that he received the money before he knew the firm was interested in the move.—P.F.

 

Farmer Soldier Statesman
Al Weed serves up his military history on the campaign trail

 Like John Kerry, Al Weed is making the war in Iraq and his military service during the Vietnam War a major focus of his campaign.

 “Look who’s fighting that war,” Weed said in a recent stump speech, referring to Iraq. “It’s not the children of the wealthy. It’s the children of ours.”

 Few could pull off this argument with more authority than Weed. As a Green Beret who rose to Command Sergeant Major, the highest enlisted rank in the Army, Weed claims he’d be one of only 25 combat vets in Congress. And Weed’s son actually may go to Iraq as an Army surgeon, with a deployment looming before the end of the year.

 “It’s the first time we’ve ever fought a war and cut taxes,” Weed says.

 Weed went to Yale in 1960 on an ROTC scholarship, and later served as a medical sergeant in the Army’s Special Forces in Vietnam, finishing his yearlong tour in July 1966. He stayed in the Army for 42 years, finally retiring in 2002.

 Asked by Dan Smith of the Blue Ridge Business Journal why he stuck with the Army for so long, Weed said he likes to jump out of airplanes.—P.F.

 

Rock out for Weed
Benefit concert promoter hopes voters get hip to Al

John Kerry has the Dave Matthews Band jamming across the Rust Belt to help drum up support for his campaign. Al Weed’s got local hip hoppers extraordinaire The Beetnix.

 On Saturday, August 28, The Beetnix will play with Man Mountain Jr., Small Town Workers and the Songlines in a “voter awareness raiser” at the Satellite Ballroom, says Kris Keesling, the event’s organizer.

 Keesling, 27, says she came up with the idea for a Weed bash after attending a local John Kerry event that “was like wall to wall white people.” Keesling hopes the event at the Ballroom (located underneath Michael’s Bistro in what was formerly known as the Plan 9 Outer Space) will bring a more diverse crowd who will leave with more motivation to vote for Weed.

 The event will be sponsored by the Weed campaign, with the $7 ticket price going to recoup expenses. Though Weed will speak, Keesling says concertgoers need not fret about having to endure longwinded speechifying during the show.

 “Mostly it’s going to be focused on the bands,” Keesling says, adding that she plans to “let the music speak for itself.”—P.F.

For more information, e-mail krisk820@hotmail.com

In the late 1960s, when Turner Communications was a business of billboards and radio stations and I was spending much of my energy ocean racing, a UHF-TV station came up for sale in Atlanta. It was losing $50,000 a month and its programs were viewed by fewer than 5 percent of the market.

 I acquired it.

 When I moved to buy a second station in Charlotte—this one worse than the first—my accountant quit in protest, and the company’s board vetoed the deal. So I mortgaged my house and bought it myself. The Atlanta purchase turned into the Superstation; the Charlotte purchase—when I sold it 10 years later—gave me the capital to launch CNN.

 Both purchases played a role in revolutionizing television. Both required a streak of independence and a taste for risk. And neither could happen today. In the current climate of consolidation, independent broadcasters simply don’t survive for long. That’s why we haven’t seen a new generation of people like me or even Rupert Murdoch—independent television upstarts who challenge the big boys and force the whole industry to compete and change.

 It’s not that there aren’t entrepreneurs eager to make their names and fortunes in broadcasting if given the chance. If nothing else, the 1990s dot-com boom showed that the spirit of entrepreneurship is alive and well in America, with plenty of investors willing to put real money into new media ventures. The difference is that Washington has changed the rules of the game. When I was getting into the television business, lawmakers and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took seriously the commission’s mandate to promote diversity, localism and competition in the media marketplace. They wanted to make sure that the big, established networks—CBS, ABC, NBC—wouldn’t forever dominate what the American public could watch on TV. They wanted independent producers to thrive. They wanted more people to be able to own TV stations. They believed in the value of competition.

 So when the FCC received a glut of applications for new television stations after World War II, the agency set aside dozens of channels on the new UHF spectrum so independents could get a foothold in television. That helped me get my start 35 years ago. Congress also passed a law in 1962 requiring that TVs be equipped to receive both UHF and VHF channels. That’s how I was able to compete as a UHF station, although it was never easy. (I used to tell potential advertisers that our UHF viewers were smarter than the rest, because you had to be a genius just to figure out how to tune us in.) And in 1972, the FCC ruled that cable TV operators could import distant signals. That’s how we were able to beam our Atlanta station to homes throughout the South. Five years later, with the help of an RCA satellite, we were sending our signal across the nation, and the Superstation was born.

 That was then.

 Today, media companies are more concentrated than at any time over the past 40 years, thanks to a continual loosening of ownership rules by Washington. The media giants now own not only broadcast networks and local stations; they also own the cable companies that pipe in the signals of their competitors and the studios that produce most of the programming. To get a flavor of how consolidated the industry has become, consider this: In 1990, the major broadcast networks—ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox—fully or partially owned just 12.5 percent of the new series they aired. By 2000, it was 56.3 percent. Just two years later, it had surged to 77.5 percent.

 In this environment, most independent media firms either get gobbled up by one of the big companies or driven out of business altogether. Yet instead of balancing the rules to give independent broadcasters a fair chance in the market, Washington continues to tilt the playing field to favor the biggest players. Last summer, the FCC passed another round of sweeping pro-consolidation rules that, among other things, further raised the cap on the number of TV stations a company can own.

 In the media, as in any industry, big corporations play a vital role, but so do small, emerging ones. When you lose small businesses, you lose big ideas. People who own their own businesses are their own bosses. They are independent thinkers. They know they can’t compete by imitating the big guys—they have to innovate, so they’re less obsessed with earnings than they are with ideas. They are quicker to seize on new technologies and new product ideas. They steal market share from the big companies, spurring them to adopt new approaches. This process promotes competition, which leads to higher product and service quality, more jobs, and greater wealth. It’s called capitalism.

 But without the proper rules, healthy capitalist markets turn into sluggish oligopolies, and that is what’s happening in media today. Large corporations are more profit-focused and risk-averse. They often kill local programming because it’s expensive, and they push national programming because it’s cheap—even if their decisions run counter to local interests and community values. Their managers are more averse to innovation because they’re afraid of being fired for an idea that fails. They prefer to sit on the sidelines, waiting to buy the businesses of the risk-takers who succeed.

 Unless we have a climate that will allow more independent media companies to survive, a dangerously high percentage of what we see—and what we don’t see—will be shaped by the profit motives and political interests of large, publicly traded conglomerates. The economy will suffer, and so will the quality of our public life. Let me be clear: As a business proposition, consolidation makes sense. The moguls behind the mergers are acting in their corporate interests and playing by the rules. We just shouldn’t have those rules. They make sense for a corporation. But for a society, it’s like over-fishing the oceans. When the independent businesses are gone, where will the new ideas come from? We have to do more than keep media giants from growing larger; they’re already too big. We need a new set of rules that will break these huge companies to pieces.

 

The big squeeze

In the 1970s, I became convinced that a 24-hour all-news network could make money, and perhaps even change the world. But when I invited two large media corporations to invest in the launch of CNN, they turned me down. I couldn’t believe it. Together we could have launched the network for a fraction of what it would have taken me alone; they had all the infrastructure, contacts, experience, knowledge. When no one would go in with me, I risked my personal wealth to start CNN. Soon after our launch in 1980, our expenses were twice what we had expected and revenues half what we had projected. Our losses were so high that our loans were called in. I refinanced at 18 percent interest, up from 9, and stayed just a step ahead of the bankers. Eventually, we not only became profitable, but also changed the nature of news—from watching something that happened to watching it as it happened.

 But even as CNN was getting its start, the climate for independent broadcasting was turning hostile. This trend began in 1984, when the FCC raised the number of stations a single entity could own from seven—where it had been capped since the 1950s—to 12. A year later, it revised its rule again, adding a national audience-reach cap of 25 percent to the 12 station limit, meaning media companies were prohibited from owning TV stations that together reached more than 25 percent of the national audience. In 1996, the FCC did away with numerical caps altogether and raised the audience-reach cap to 35 percent. This wasn’t necessarily bad for Turner Broadcasting; we had already achieved scale. But seeing these rules changed was like watching someone knock down the ladder I had already climbed.

 Meanwhile, the forces of consolidation focused their attention on another rule, one that restricted ownership of content. Throughout the 1980s, network lobbyists worked to overturn the so-called Financial Interest and Syndication Rules, or fin-syn, which had been put in place in 1970, after federal officials became alarmed at the networks’ growing control over programming. As the FCC wrote in the fin-syn decision: “The power to determine form and content rests only in the three networks and is exercised extensively and exclusively by them, hourly and daily.” In 1957, the commission pointed out, independent companies had produced a third of all network shows; by 1968, that number had dropped to 4 percent. The rules essentially forbade networks from profiting from reselling programs that they had already aired.

 This had the result of forcing networks to sell off their syndication arms, as CBS did with Viacom in 1973. Once networks no longer produced their own content, new competition was launched, creating fresh opportunities for independents.

 For a time, Hollywood and its production studios were politically strong enough to keep the fin-syn rules in place. But by the early 1990s, the networks began arguing that their dominance had been undercut by the rise of independent broadcasters, cable networks and even videocassettes, which they claimed gave viewers enough choice to make fin-syn unnecessary. The FCC ultimately agreed—and suddenly the broadcast networks could tell independent production studios, “We won’t air it unless we own it.” The networks then bought up the weakened studios or were bought out by their own syndication arms, the way Viacom turned the tables on CBS, buying the network in 2000. This silenced the major political opponents of consolidation.

 Even before the repeal of fin-syn, I could see that the trend toward consolidation spelled trouble for independents like me. In a climate of consolidation, there would be only one sure way to win: bring a broadcast network, production studios, and cable and satellite systems under one roof. If you didn’t have it inside, you’d have to get it outside—and that meant, increasingly, from a large corporation that was competing with you. It’s difficult to survive when your suppliers are owned by your competitors. I had tried and failed to buy a major broadcast network, but the repeal of fin-syn turned up the pressure. Since I couldn’t buy a network, I bought MGM to bring more content in-house, and I kept looking for other ways to gain scale. In the end, I found the only way to stay competitive was to merge with Time Warner and relinquish control of my companies.

 Today, the only way for media companies to survive is to own everything up and down the media chain—from broadcast and cable networks to the sitcoms, movies and news broadcasts you see on those stations; to the production studios that make them; to the cable, satellite and broadcast systems that bring the programs to your television set; to the websites you visit to read about those programs; to the way you log on to the Internet to view those pages. Big media today wants to own the faucet, pipeline, water and the reservoir. The rain clouds come next.

 

Supersizing networks

Throughout the 1990s, media mergers were celebrated in the press and otherwise seemingly ignored by the American public. So, it was easy to assume that media consolidation was neither controversial nor problematic. But then a funny thing happened.

 In the summer of 2003, the FCC raised the national audience-reach cap from 35 percent to 45 percent. The FCC also allowed corporations to own a newspaper and a TV station in the same market and permitted corporations to own three TV stations in the largest markets, up from two, and two stations in medium-sized markets, up from one. Unexpectedly, the public rebelled. Hundreds of thousands of citizens complained to the FCC. Groups from the National Organization for Women to the National Rifle Association demanded that Congress reverse the ruling. And like-minded lawmakers, including many long-time opponents of media consolidation, took action, pushing the cap back down to 35, until—under strong White House pressure—it was revised back up to 39 percent. This June, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit threw out the rules that would have allowed corporations to own more television and radio stations in a single market, let stand the higher 39 percent cap and also upheld the rule permitting a corporation to own a TV station and a newspaper in the same market; then, it sent the issues back to the same FCC that had pushed through the pro-consolidation rules in the first place.

 In reaching its 2003 decision, the FCC did not argue that its policies would advance its core objectives of diversity, competition and localism. Instead, it justified its decision by saying that there was already a lot of diversity, competition and localism in the media—so it wouldn’t hurt if the rules were changed to allow more consolidation. Their decision reads: “Our current rules inadequately account for the competitive presence of cable, ignore the diversity-enhancing value of the Internet, and lack any sound bases for a national audience reach cap.” Let’s pick that assertion apart.

 First, the “competitive presence of cable” is a mirage. Broadcast networks have for years pointed to their loss of prime-time viewers to cable networks—but they are losing viewers to cable networks that they themselves own. Ninety percent of the top 50 cable TV stations are owned by the same parent companies that own the broadcast networks. Yes, Disney’s ABC network has lost viewers to cable networks. But it’s losing viewers to cable networks like Disney’s ESPN, Disney’s ESPN2, and Disney’s Disney Channel. The media giants are getting a deal from Congress and the FCC because their broadcast networks are losing share to their own cable networks. It’s a scam.

 Second, the decision cites the “diversity-enhancing value of the Internet.” The FCC is confusing diversity with variety. The top 20 Internet news sites are owned by the same media conglomerates that control the broadcast and cable networks. Sure, a 100-person choir gives you a choice of voices, but they’re all singing the same song.

 The FCC says that we have more media choices than ever before. But only a few corporations decide what we can choose. That is not choice. That’s like a dictator deciding what candidates are allowed to stand for parliamentary elections, and then claiming that the people choose their leaders. Different voices do not mean different viewpoints, and these huge corporations all have the same viewpoint—they want to shape government policy in a way that helps them maximize profits, drive out competition and keep getting bigger.

 Because the new technologies have not fundamentally changed the market, it’s wrong for the FCC to say that there are no “sound bases for a national audience-reach cap.” The rationale for such a cap is the same as it has always been. If there is a limit to the number of TV stations a corporation can own, then the chance exists that after all the corporations have reached this limit, there may still be some stations left over to be bought and run by independents. A lower limit would encourage the entry of independents and promote competition. A higher limit does the opposite.

 

Triple threat

The loss of independent operators hurts both the media business and its citizen-customers. When the ownership of these firms passes to people under pressure to show quick financial results in order to justify the purchase, the corporate emphasis instantly shifts from taking risks to taking profits. When that happens, quality suffers, localism suffers and democracy itself suffers.

 The Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans exerts a negative influence on society, because it discourages people who want to climb up the list from giving more money to charity. The Nielsen ratings are dangerous in a similar way—because they scare companies away from good shows that don’t produce immediate blockbuster ratings. The producer Norman Lear once asked, “You know what ruined television?” His answer: when The New York Times began publishing the Nielsen ratings. “That list every week became all anyone cared about.”

 When all companies are quarterly earnings-obsessed, the market starts punishing companies that aren’t yielding an instant return. This not only creates a big incentive for bogus accounting, but also it inhibits the kind of investment that builds economic value. America used to know this. We used to be a nation of farmers. You can’t plant something today and harvest tomorrow. Had Turner Communications been required to show earnings growth every quarter, we never would have purchased those first two TV stations.

 When CNN reported to me, if we needed more money for Kosovo or Baghdad, we’d find it. If we had to bust the budget, we busted the budget. We put journalism first, and that’s how we built CNN into something the world wanted to watch. I had the power to make these budget decisions because they were my companies. I was an independent entrepreneur who controlled the majority of the votes and could run my company for the long term. Top managers in these huge media conglomerates run their companies for the short term. After we sold Turner Broadcasting to Time Warner, we came under such earnings pressure that we had to cut our promotion budget every year at CNN to make our numbers. Media mega-mergers inevitably lead to an overemphasis on short-term earnings.

 You can see this overemphasis in the spread of reality television. Shows like NBC’s “Fear Factor” cost little to produce—there are no actors to pay and no sets to maintain—and they get big ratings. Thus, American television has moved away from expensive sitcoms and on to cheap thrills. We’ve gone from “Father Knows Best” to “Who Wants to Marry My Dad?”, and from “My Three Sons” to “My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé.”

 The story of Grant Tinker and Mary Tyler Moore’s production studio, MTM, helps illustrate the point. When the company was founded in 1969, Tinker and Moore hired the best writers they could find and then left them alone—and were rewarded with some of the best shows of the 1970s. But eventually, MTM was bought by a company that imposed budget ceilings and laid off employees. That company was later purchased by Rev. Pat Robertson; then, he was bought out by Fox. Exit “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Enter “The Littlest Groom.”

 

Loss of localism

Consolidation has also meant a decline in the local focus of both news and programming. After analyzing 23,000 stories on 172 news programs over five years, the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that big media news organizations relied more on syndicated feeds and were more likely to air national stories with no local connection.

 That’s not surprising. Local coverage is expensive, and thus will tend to be a casualty in the quest for short-term earnings. In 2002, Fox Television bought Chicago’s Channel 50 and eliminated all of the station’s locally produced shows. One of the cancelled programs (which targeted pre-teens) had scored a perfect rating for educational content in a 1999 University of Pennsylvania study, according to the Chicago Tribune. That accolade wasn’t enough to save the program. Once the station’s ownership changed, so did its mission and programming.

 Loss of localism also undercuts the public-service mission of the media, and this can have dangerous consequences. In early 2002, when a freight train derailed near Minot, North Dakota, releasing a cloud of anhydrous ammonia over the town, police tried to call local radio stations, six of which are owned by radio mammoth Clear Channel Communications. According to news reports, it took them over an hour to reach anyone—no one was answering the Clear Channel phone. By the next day, 300 people had been hospitalized, many partially blinded by the ammonia. Pets and livestock died. And Clear Channel continued beaming its signal from headquarters in San Antonio, Texas—some 1,600 miles away.

 When media companies dominate their markets, it undercuts our democracy. Justice Hugo Black, in a landmark media-ownership case in 1945, wrote: “The First Amendment rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public.”

 These big companies are not antagonistic; they do billions of dollars in business with each other. They don’t compete; they cooperate to inhibit competition. You and I have both felt the impact. I felt it in 1981, when CBS, NBC and ABC all came together to try to keep CNN from covering the White House. You’ve felt the impact over the past two years, as you saw little news from ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Fox, or CNN on the FCC’s actions. In early 2003, the Pew Research Center found that 72 percent of Americans had heard “nothing at all” about the proposed FCC rule changes. Why? One never knows for sure, but it must have been clear to news directors that the more they covered this issue, the harder it would be for their corporate bosses to get the policy result they wanted.

 A few media conglomerates now exercise a near-monopoly over television news. There is always a risk that news organizations can emphasize or ignore stories to serve their corporate purpose. But the risk is far greater when there are no independent competitors to air the side of the story the corporation wants to ignore. More consolidation has often meant more news-sharing. But closing bureaus and downsizing staff have more than economic consequences. A smaller press is less capable of holding our leaders accountable. When Viacom merged two news stations it owned in Los Angeles, reports the American Journalism Review, “field reporters began carrying microphones labeled KCBS on one side and KCAL on the other.” This was no accident. As the Viacom executive in charge told the Los Angeles Business Journal: “In this duopoly, we should be able to control the news in the marketplace.”

 This ability to control the news is especially worrisome when a large media organization is itself the subject of a news story. Disney’s boss, after buying ABC in 1995, was quoted in LA Weekly as saying, “I would prefer ABC not cover Disney.” A few days later, ABC killed a “20/20” story critical of the parent company.

 But networks have also been compromised when it comes to non-news programs that involve their corporate parent’s business interests. General Electric subsidiary NBC Sports raised eyebrows by apologizing to the Chinese government for Bob Costas’ reference to China’s “problems with human rights” during a telecast of the Atlanta Olympic Games. China, of course, is a huge market for GE products.

 Consolidation has given big media companies new power over what is said not just on the air, but off it as well. Cumulus Media banned the Dixie Chicks on its 42 country music stations for 30 days after lead singer Natalie Maines criticized President Bush for the war in Iraq. It’s hard to imagine Cumulus would have been so bold if its listeners had more of a choice in country music stations. And Disney recently provoked an uproar when it prevented its subsidiary Miramax from distributing Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11. As a senior Disney executive told The New York Times: “It’s not in the interest of any major corporation to be dragged into a highly charged partisan political battle.” Follow the logic, and you can see what lies ahead: If the only media companies are major corporations, controversial and dissenting views may not be aired at all.

 Naturally, corporations say they would never suppress speech. But it’s not their intentions that matter; it’s their capabilities. Consolidation gives them more power to tilt the news and cut important ideas out of the public debate. And it’s precisely that power that the rules should prevent.

 

Independents’ day

This is a fight about freedom—the freedom of independent entrepreneurs to start and run a media business, and the freedom of citizens to get news, information and entertainment from a wide variety of sources, at least some of which are truly independent and not run by people facing the pressure of quarterly earnings reports. No one should underestimate the danger. Big media companies want to eliminate all ownership limits. With the removal of these limits, immense media power will pass into the hands of a very few corporations and individuals.

 What will programming be like when it’s produced for no other purpose than profit? What will news be like when there are no independent news organizations to go after stories the big corporations avoid? Who really wants to find out? Safeguarding the welfare of the public cannot be the first concern of a large publicly traded media company. Its job is to seek profits. But if the government writes the rules in a way that encourages the entry into the market of entrepreneurs—men and women with big dreams, new ideas and a willingness to take long-term risks—the economy will be stronger, and the country will be better off.

 I freely admit: When I was in the media business, especially after the federal government changed the rules to favor large companies, I tried to sweep the board, and I came within one move of owning every link up and down the media chain. Yet I felt then, as I do now, that the government was not doing its job. The role of the government ought to be like the role of a referee in boxing, keeping the big guys from killing the little guys. If the little guy gets knocked down, the referee should send the big guy to his corner, count the little guy out, and then help him back up. But today the government has cast down its duty, and media competition is less like boxing and more like professional wrestling: The wrestler and the referee are both kicking the guy on the canvas.

 At this late stage, media companies have grown so large and powerful, and their dominance has become so detrimental to the survival of small, emerging companies, that there remains only one alternative: Bust up the big conglomerates. We’ve done this before: to the railroad trusts in the first part of the 20th century, to Ma Bell more recently. Indeed, big media itself was cut down to size in the 1970s, and a period of staggering innovation and growth followed. Breaking up the reconstituted media conglomerates may seem like an impossible task when their grip on the policy-making process in Washington seems so sure. But the public’s broad and bipartisan rebellion against the FCC’s pro-consolidation decisions suggests something different. Politically, big media may again be on the wrong side of history—and up against a country unwilling to lose its independents.

RESTAURANT

Bizou

There is something pretty special about a restaurant that can defeat not one, but two upscale French cuisineries (C&O and OXO) in a close race, only to have our unpaid intern stand up and declare, “That’s where I’m going for lunch!” Bizou is the bread-and-butter for restaurateurs Tim Burgess and Vincent Derquenne. The Downtown demi-diner is a place to hash out simple, affordable standby recipes with just enough nouveau influence to keep it interesting.

 

NEW RESTAURANT

Zocalo

A swinging nightlife (head bartender Ted Norris recently graced the “C-VILLE 20” list of influential locals), classy setting, generous portions and a central location spell out the right formula for success for the eight-month-old, Latin-inspired Zocalo—for the record, it’s pronounced Zo-ca–lo. The only problem is finding a table, which at least one voter suggested by writing in “No-va-co.”

 

BREAKFAST

The Tavern

A ballot-stuffing initiative for “KFC” couldn’t keep The Tavern, “where students, tourists, & townpeople” have been meeting together for the past half-century, from its rightful glory.

 

BRUNCH

Blue Bird Café

We were a little astonished last year when the Blue Bird received “Best Sunday Morning Eggs Benedict” laurels from our voters, though its Eggs Benito bore only a passing resemblance to the delicacy. Confusion cleared, the since-redecorated café is still easy like Sunday morning when choosing where to go for brunch.

 

LUNCH

Bodo’s Bagel Bakery

Though surprisingly few voters could decide, Bodo’s won in the end by a large margin. Now for an update on the opening of its highly anticipated Corner location: …Aw, forget it.

 

DESSERT

Arch’s Frozen Yogurt

Among many tantalizing choices for the best sweets-serving establishment, Arch’s has it. And for whoever wrote in “cheesecake”: We like it too.

 

LATE-NIGHT MENU

Littlejohn’s Delicatessen

Where else can you go to get your Wild Turkey sub at 4am? The 24-hour Corner mainstay offers basically its full menu all the time for those willing to wait in line.

 

BUFFET

Wood Grill Buffet

Its sneeze-guard is also unsurpassed.

 

BAKERY

Albemarle Baking Company

Main Street’s “ABC” takes the proverbial cake, narrowly edging out the cross-town competition at Chandler’s Bakery.

 

GOURMET TAKE-OUT

Hotcakes

When our voters go for gourmet take-out, they want somewhere that caters to their every need, from the stinkiest French cheese to the perfect Virginia wine. The tally included two shops in the Main Street Market, two grocery stores and one very nice gas station. But it was Barracks Road’s Hotcakes, with specialties like the Torta Rustica (smoked turkey, grilled summer squash, roasted red peppers, Gruyere and Parmesan cheeses in a puffed pastry) that won.

 

PLACE TO TAKE THE KIDS

C’ville Coffee

Inexplicably, many of you threw your support to the Virginia Discovery Museum (not a place to eat—though be sure to check out the “Outback and Down Under: G’day from Australia” exhibit through the summer). In the food industry, C’ville Coffee climbed over pizzerias and ice-cream palaces to the top, with one nod from a nursing mother going to Atomic Burrito.

 

CUP OF COFFEE

Mudhouse

Last year’s winner for “Best Barista” can now replace the plaque at its Downtown, central branch, with a shiny new one. Even though we counted all the votes for nearby rival “Higher Grounds,” “Kaffe Bistro” and “Café Cubano” as one, the House of Mud still had the lead in the end.

 

PATIO

Bang!

It’s not uncommon for pedestrians to see co-owner Tim Burgess shirtlessly pruning, landscaping and tending garden around the brick building on the corner of South Street and Second Street SW. Looks like all the extra care paid off as the Asian tapas haven trumped Downtown and Corner locales for the best place to drink and dine al fresco. The hot waitresses probably didn’t hurt either.

 

FRIENDLIEST SERVICE

Bizou and Rapture

While it’s best to stay clear of the paths of these wait staffs as they make their way from restaurant to patio carrying a tray full of drinks on a busy night, the two Mall eateries didn’t falter to receive the votes.

 

ASIAN

Thai ’99

You’ve gotta love a place that asks you if you want your food mild, medium, hot or “Native Thai.” Patronizing? Yes. Damn good? Oh yeah. Give us our Gang Som (sour curry with fish, shrimp and vegetables) and spice it up to a 50—we’re American, after all.

 

MEXICAN

Guadalajara

Though Amigos owner Rudy Padilla may have declared himself “el rey del taco,” our voters thought differently, leaving him trailing in second place to The Guad’s three locations on Market Street, Fontaine Avenue and Greenbrier Drive.

 

ITALIAN

Vivace

The secret is out. Tucked away on Ivy Road, Vivace’s off-the-beaten-path location makes for a primo romantic, candlelit dinner.

 

SEAFOOD

Blue Light Grill

If Blue Light backer Coran Capshaw ever felt like stirring things up, he might consider opening a Red Lobster franchise, which came in a solid third place (after Tiffany’s). For now, Blue Light remains one of the few local restaurants specializing in seafood that doesn’t look suspiciously like it was dredged from the Rivanna River.

 

BURGER

Riverside Lunch

For another year running, thumbs up go to the High Street grease pit known for putting its digitally imprinted seal of approval on every burger.

 

HOT DOG

Jak ’N Jil

Quite “frank”ly, we were disappointed by the lack of crude and funny responses on this one. Against its main competitor, Downtown cart vendor Mark Deaton, Jak ’N Jil’s foot-long dogs measured up.

 

WINGS

Wild Wing Café

While plenty of loyal supporters turned out for Barracks Road’s Buffalo Wild Wings, our readers decisively answered the burning question on everyone’s mind by declaring Main Street’s Wild Wing Café the best wings in town.

 

BBQ

Big Jim’s Bar-B-Que

Survey says: Bigger is better, as Big Jim’s easily smoked Jinx’s Pit’s Top and Wolfie’s.

 

PIZZA

Christian’s Pizza

No surprises here. In other news, Mellow Mushroom came in second.

 

SPORTS BAR

Buffalo Wild Wings

What wings? With multiple huge-screen, wall-mounted TVs and plenty of smaller ones to go around, B-Dubs is the place to guzzle beer while satisfying any and all of your playoff-watching needs.

 

BOTTLED BEER SELECTION

Court Square Tavern

Offering 130 bottled brews (plus or minus) from all over the world, the numbers stacked up in favor of the pub located across the street from the General District Court and frequented by municipal bigwigs.

DRAFT BEER SELECTION

Mellow Mushroom

Quality vs. quantity need not be an issue at the psychedelic pizzeria with 39 beers of all tastes and colors on tap. Local breweries South Street and Starr Hill came in second and third, respectively.

 

WINE LIST

C&O Restaurant

In fine dining, people don’t throw words like “sommelier” (meaning wine steward) around lightly. With specialist Elaine Futhey at the helm, ready to pull you a $35 bottle of South African Thelema Sauvignon Blanc or a $50 Napa Valley Swanson Merlot from the cellar, you can rest easy knowing that your wine will perfectly complement the French country fare in front of you.

 

MARTINI

Bang!

One of the simplest drinks to make is one of the simplest to botch, too. But Bang’s staff has the right formula and technique whether you like yours dry or dirty. The restaurant offers concoctions from a full martini list, in practically fishbowl-sized martini glasses…and did we mention the hot martini waitresses?

 

MARGARITA

Continental Divide

A selection of about 50 top-shelf tequilas and freshly squeezed lime juice are the not-so-secret ingredients for Continental’s margarita.

 

YOGA STUDIO

Studio 206

Bikram Yoga Charlottesville’s opening in January, practicing the popular, patented techniques of Los Angeles guru Bikram Choudhury, didn’t make Studio 206 sweat much. Last year’s winner for “Best place to realign your chakras,” the 5-year-old fitness center, which offers everything from meditation to martial arts, held its position again this year.

 

PLACE TO WORK OUT

Atlantic Coast Athletic Club

Some of us, working hard to perfect that bulging beer gut, can empathize with the person who chose local Anheuser-Busch wholesaler J.W. Sieg as the best place to get buffed. For those who actually enjoy sweating, lifting and healthy living, ACAC cleared the bar. UVA’s Aquatics and Fitness Center, which has the added benefit of being free for students of the school, came in second.

 

SPA

Oasis Day Spa And Body Shop

Facials, body wraps, massages—those are only the beginning at Oasis, your one-stop feel-good shop that also offers waxing, manicures and many fancy lines of skin-care products, just a block from the Mall.

 

SALON

Moxie

By a vote of almost 3 to 1, the Garrett Street business staged a successful coup against former winner Bristles. Will next year’s contest get nasty? Only your hairdresser knows for sure.

 

BARBER

Staples Barber Shop

We were only looking for the shop, though several of you put your actual barbers’ names. The shop name that came up the most was Staples Barber Shop, the 80-year-old establishment headed by Ken Staples in Barracks Road Shopping Center.

 

TATTOO AND PIERCING PARLOR

Acme Tattoo

Nearby shops like Mincer’s, Eljo’s and Dixie Divas all have nice gifts for the family—but a Thomas Jefferson tat from Acme is the perfect college memory for the diehard UVA fan in you.

 

JEWELER

Angelo

In a close race, Lee Angelo Marraccini’s Downtown business, offering custom designed rings, made the cut over Fashion Square’s Glassner Jewelers.

BOUTIQUE

Eloise

Mother-daughter team Cyd McClelland and Amy Kolbrener’s fancy wears in a renovated building on Water Street may be the nicest things you’ve ever bought out of an old garage.

 

PLACE TO BUY A MAN’S SUIT

The Young Men’s Shop

Once a Downtown tradition, The Young Men’s Shop, boasting one of the largest inventories in Virginia (with labels like Hart, Schaffner & Marx and Burberry) for males of all ages, since 1997 has occupied a spot in Seminole Square Shopping Center.

 

SHOE STORE

Scarpa

People seem to get a little crazy around the time of a Scarpa sale—with 60 brands of fancy footwear like the kicky, flower-inspired fashions of Kate Spade, Australian Ugg boots and luxurious Donald J Pliner sandals, who could blame them? Look for Scarpa to go up against itself in next year’s “Best of” contest, as the store opens a second store, Great State Of, also in the North Wing of Barracks Road.

 

VINTAGE CLOTHING

Bittersweet

If you’re looking for a corduroy jacket that might have been found on the set of the original “Starsky and Hutch” TV series or a pair of hip-hugger jeans that might have turned eyes at Studio 54, head to Bittersweet, where you’re guaranteed to find authentic vintage getups at a price any hipster can afford.

 

ATHLETIC OUTFITTER

Blue Ridge Mountain Sports

In a close four-way race with Downtown Athletic, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Ragged Mountain Running Shop, the rugged hiking-and-camping specialists Blue Ridge Mountain Sports emerged victorious.

 

LAUNDROMAT

Suds Unlimited

A good laundromat isn’t just somewhere to clean your dirty delicates—you might meet your future husband, as one voter claims to have done at the Maury Avenue Suds Unlimited.

 

DRY CLEANERS

Brown’s Dry Cleaners

C-VILLE’s crack team of ballot counters began to wane here, with what was unofficially declared “Worst Category Ever.” Voters, however, responded with more interest, giving the “Best Dry Cleaner” distinction to Brown’s, whose five locations keep the town spotless and starched.

 

HARDWARE STORE

Martin Hardware Co.

We were happy to see Preston Avenue’s Martin defeat chain superstore Lowe’s in the neck-to-neck race.

 

WINE STORE

Market Street Wineshop & Grocery

The atmosphere, expertise and selection offered by owner Robert Harllee at the flagship Market Street store and a second location in Shoppers World Court (near Whole Foods) triumphed over the corporate grocery-store goliath.

 

FLORIST

University Florist

When you need a dozen “I’m sorry” red roses, a wedding bouquet of freesias or some “Here’s to you” lisianthus, University has the colorful, aromatic solution. Three central locations and almost 70 years in the business make them a familiar name for local romantics.

 

HEALTH FOOD STORE

Whole Foods

Even though Whole Foods is a national chain, based in Austin, Texas, it still feels like it’s a locally based business. A lot of that has to do with its huge organic selection. The farm-raised fish, mountain-spring soda pop and free-range blueberries taste the same, but offer that guilt-free sense that you probably benefited the environment some way or another by your purchase.

 

GROCERY STORE

Whole Foods

Two words: sample central.

 

TOY STORE

Shenanigans

Toys apparently meant different things to different people, as scientific knick-knack store Copernicus and sex shop Ultimate Bliss each garnered votes. The real race, though, was between Toys R Us’ warehouse atmosphere and the more homespun Shenanigans, in the North Wing of Barracks Road. With educational toys like LEGOs, Corolle dolls, collectible Brio train sets and a large selection of books, Shenanigans gave the right good-parenting vibe to our voters.

 

CD STORE

Plan 9 Records

Evidently Plan 9 is what a record store should be: The Richmond-based company’s two local branches offer the best of a neighborhood shop—allowing you to sell used CDs and listen before you buy—as well as a diversity of choices to flip through.

 

FURNITURE STORE

Under the Roof

While the $100 gift certificate that goes to one lucky voter may only buy a Florence wall mirror or retro end table at the Main Street store, Under The Roof’s open showroom of modern styles can help her plan how to redecorate, for the next time she decides to go “Trading Spaces” on her bedroom.

 

ANTIQUE STORE

Circa

The Allied Street store, where “Naugahyde” and “Formica” aren’t dirty words, features a constantly changing, wall-to-wall array of antiques and more modern items.

 

BIKE SHOP

Performance Bicycle Shop

We’re a city that loves (and in some cases loves to hate) our bikers. The votes were divided among five specialty bike shops, with an additional outside-the-box vote going to Preston Avenue’s Vespa dealership. But it was Seminole Square’s branch of the Chapel Hill-based Performance that took the yellow jersey.

 

USED BOOKSTORE

Daedalus Bookshop

Let’s hope no Minotaurs are lurking at Sandy McAdams’ labyrinth of about 100,000 books in the three-floor shop on Fourth Street. If you don’t find a copy at Daedalus, it’s probably not worth reading.

 

GARDEN STORE/NURSERY

Ivy Nursery

Clare and George Carter’s seemingly endless greenhouse array of shrubberies, from orchids to orange trees, has been in business since 1975.

 

PLACE TO RENT MOVIES

Sneak Reviews

When you feel the urge to watch the 1984 made-for-TV version of Sam Shepard’s True West or Panos Karkanevatos’ 1999 shepherdy romance Homa ke nero, Sneak Reviews is the only place to turn, specializing in foreign, independent and documentary films.

 

PLACE TO BROWSE

Barnes & Noble Booksellers

Electronics mecca Best Buy, in its first year, had a notably small showing, with only one vote. Many threw their support to the Downtown Mall, or else to campy Downtown trinket shop Cha Chas. But it was last year’s winner, Barnes & Noble that you returned to again and again even when you weren’t looking to buy.

 

DOWNTOWN STORE

Cha Chas

The wire pink flamingo welcoming you into this Central Place shop pretty much says it all. Jewelry, shot glasses, librarian action figures and books about Getting in Touch with Your Inner Bitch are only a few of the assorted items at last year’s “Best place to buy birthday presents.”

 

BARRACKS ROAD STORE

Barnes & Noble Booksellers

Book-ended by two big grocery stores, Barnes & Noble manages to bind together the many boutiques at the center of Barracks Road. It’s impossible to resist stopping there during your weekend shopping spree, to thumb through the magazine rack or sit down for a latte.

 

CORNER STORE

Mincer’s UVA Imprinted Sportswear

Fledgling businesses might take a lesson from Mincer’s. Originally called Mincer’s Humidor, the tobacco shop established in 1948 eventually came to realize that the things shoppers wanted on the Corner are sweatshirts, bumper stickers and bootie shorts emblazoned with the UVA logo. Following a few ACC championships from UVA teams, the Mincer’s stop is now more essential to some visitors than anything the Rotunda has to offer.

 

29N STORE

Wal-Mart

Runners up included Pier 1 Imports, T J Maxx, Marshall’s and, with two votes, locally owned car stereo mega-store Crutchfield.

 

OUTDOOR VENDOR

City Market

A confession: We didn’t know what sort of responses to expect from this category. Even as outdoor vendors add immensely to the energy and appeal of the Downtown Mall, they do so under a veil of anonymity. The hot dog guy (Mark Deaton), the Reeject Bush guy (Mac Schrader), the “Tibetan dudes” and the Java Hut each received votes, but couldn’t beat the collective of outdoor vendors at the City Market, which takes over the Water Street Parking Lot every Saturday from April through October.

 

CAR WASH

Express Car Wash

For more than 20 years, Express has led the fight against dirty cars through tough times (the city’s 2002 drought) and good—well, sorta—during the pollen boom this past April.

 

CAR DEALER

Brown Automotive Group

Maybe it’s the jingle. You loved the service at the Pantops dealership, which locally sells Hondas, Saabs, Toyotas, Dodges, Chryslers, Mercedes and Subarus.

 

MECHANIC

Charlottesville Imported Parts and Cole’s Import Specialist

Trustworthy mechanics are notoriously hard to find. But, according to your votes, there are plenty of them in Charlottesville— though apparently not so many for American-made vehicles.

 

ART GALLERY

McGuffey Art Center

Though a letter-writing campaign in last spring’s City Council election criticized a lack of artistic support from City officials for the more than 40-member art center, McGuffey’s supporters came through, crowning it “Best Art Gallery,” followed by former McGuffey tenant Second Street Gallery in second place.

 

MOVIE HOUSE

Vinegar Hill Theatre

If Charlottesville residents are spending their 29N time at Wal-Mart, at least they’re making up for it by absorbing some culture at Vinegar Hill. The single-screen theater emphasizes small-release artsy cinema, but still manages to pull an impressive share of box-office heavy-hitters, most recently gaining the rights to screen Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11.

 

PLACE TO DANCE

R2

Country line-dancing, salsa, swing and Irish ceili are all regular options for those with hot feet. The floors you favored, though, were the ones at members-only, gay-friendly dance club Club 216 and the DJ-spinning scene at Rapture’s R2, which led the pack. A big Martha-and-The-Vandellas hurrah goes to whoever wrote: “the street.”

 

LIVE MUSIC VENUE

Starr Hill Music Hall

In spite of a noble showing from beleaguered folk-music institutions The Prism and the Gravity Lounge, Coran Capshaw’s Starr Hill swept away the competition.

 

FOLK MUSICIAN/BAND

Terri Allard Band

While we didn’t include best bluegrass on the ballot, we probably should have, as twangy pickers The Hackensaw Boys, The Hogwaller Ramblers and King Wilkie all scored high marks. Allard, who plays a select few shows locally each year, topped the list with her rootsy country-folk.

 

ROCK MUSICIAN/BAND

Monticello Road

Go ahead, keep looking, but you’re not gonna find You Know Who on here. Space was running low in our closet due to the unclaimed plaques from your reigning favorite musician, so we threw the race. Making their first appearance in the “Best of” winner’s circle, this year we welcome eclectic college-pop rockers Monticello Road. Rounding out the top five were Sierra, Small Town Workers, Travis Elliott and Vevlo Eel.

 

CLASSICAL MUSICIAN/BAND

Charlottesville Municipal Band

Though the town is brimming with accomplished classical musicians, and opportunities abound, courtesy of the Tuesday Evening Concert Series and Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival, to see world-renowned performers, this category received few responses. Not exactly within the genre, the Municipal Band’s free concerts nonetheless racked up points. As for the person who wrote: “Beatevean,” you can be expecting a visit soon from C-VILLE’s classical music reviewer, Martin Picker.

 

GOTH MUSICIAN/BAND

Bella Morte

The band that helped get the struggling Goth scene off the ground eight years ago and continues to nurture it, Bella Morte won soundly, followed by In Tenebris. Take special note of third-place runner This Means You, which has been doing more than making the eardrums bleed of local hard-rock fans recently.

 

JAZZ MUSICIAN/BAND

John D’earth

We expected a decisive win from Miller’s Thursday-night trumpeter and weren’t let down. Percussionist Robert Jospé, who shares the stage with D’earth in UVA’s jazz super group the Free Bridge Quintet, came in second.

 

WORLD BEAT MUSICIAN/ BAND

Darrell Rose

Does the man ever sleep? You can find Darrell Rose seemingly every night of the week lending his African drumming talents to a broad range of musicians. Rose’s frequent collaborator Corey Harris also made the top five, along with Rose’s former project the Afrikan DrumFest, Richmond salsa group Bio Ritmo and, in second place, Baaba Seth (who, sources say, may perform another reunion show two years from now).

 

DJ

Quarter Roy

C-VILLE’s Paul Fain recently reported on a dispute that occurred between “allegedly inept DJ” Quarter Roy (a.k.a. Patrick Jordan) and Rhode Island native DJ Dingus (Jeremy Kilmartin) at Atomic Burrito. Voters rallied in support of Jordan, who can be heard regularly at Atomic and at Belmont’s Mas, spinning classic ’80s music, among other things. DJ Stroud’s milkshake also brought the boys to the yard, earning him second place.

 

ARTIST

Robin Braun

C-VILLE happily doesn’t even have to mail an announcement to this year’s best artist—she’s on our staff. McGuffey member Robin Braun’s oil paintings take the top slot, with honorable mentions going to fellow McGuffey artists Ros Casey, Rose Csorba and Lee Alter, and Cilli Original Design Gallery’s Monty Montgomery.

 

AUTHOR

John Grisham

A project close to heart and home, Grisham’s baseball flick Mickey, finally made it into theaters earlier this year. Christmas with the Kranks, a film based on his comic holiday tale Skipping Christmas, is slated for release around Thanksgiving. And his most recent novel Bleachers relives the glory days of high school football. Could “Hollywood John” finally be breaking away from his highly successful legal thrillers? We’ll ask him when he comes to pick up his plaque.

 

THEATRICAL PERFORMANCE

Angels in America

Part I: Millennium Approaches

Washington D.C.’s Music Association has its “Wammies”—now we’re pleased to present our very own Charlottesville “Chascar” for Best Theatrical Performance to Live Arts’ production of Angels in America Part I. The prestigious award joins a growing list of honors for Tony Kushner’s play, including the Pulitzer Prize and 21 Emmy nominations for the recent HBO miniseries. Be sure to catch Live Arts’ Angels in America Part II: Perestroika in September.

 

KIDS ENTERTAINMENT

Virginia Discovery Museum

Unless the person who wrote “TV” was referring to the red-bummed baboons on The Discovery Channel, there isn’t anything on the tube nearly as cool, fun and educational as the (unaffiliated) Virginia Discovery Museum. The Downtown museum offers rotating exhibits and regular hands-on programs for kids to explore for a mere $4 admission. Runners-up included Water Street’s Old Michie Theatre, and Jen Hoffman and Peter Jones’ storytelling “Tell Us a Tale” programs.

 

UVA ATHLETE

Matt Schaub

After an amazing 2002 season, UVA quarterback Matt Schaub was named ACC Player of the Year and was widely touted as a Heisman Trophy contender, until a shoulder injury benched him early in 2003. Schaub nonetheless closed his Scott Stadium career last November with a gratifying win over Virginia Tech, and was a third-round draft pick by the Atlanta Falcons. The glimmer of hope he gave to the mediocre football program overshadowed even outstanding recent performances by UVA’s baseball and championship women’s lacrosse teams.

 

OUTDOOR RECREATION SITE

Walnut Creek

For only a nominal fee during the summer, the park, located off Route 29S, offers something for everyone: 15 miles of well- maintained hiking trails, a new 18-hole disc golf course, freshwater fishing and a sandy beachfront where you can scout for potential off-duty Bang! waitresses.

 

SWIMMING POOL

Fry’s Spring Beach Club

A social club dating back to the 1920s, Fry’s Spring recently renovated its facilities: a seven-lane, 50-meter lap pool and two smaller pools for the kiddies to play in. Runners-up included Washington Pool, off Preston Avenue, and ACAC.

 

OUTDOOR EVENT OR FESTIVAL

Fridays After 5

Aw shucks. The 17-year-old event boasts on its website to be “a perennial winnerof many local ‘Best of’ awards”—and we didn’t forget it this year. We’ll watch with interest what happens next year as the Downtown Amphitheater’s free concert series falls under the supervision of local real estate mogul and rock-star manager Coran Capshaw.

 

TOURIST DESTINATION

Monticello

Some of the more interesting responses included Downtown bar Miller’s and Staunton’s Blackfriars Playhouse. But the house that Jefferson built, from its lofty height, looks down on all the rest.

 

TV PERSONALITY

Norm Sprouse

For once, UVA political pundit Larry Sabato (who recently teamed with Montel Williams for Showtime’s upcoming “American Candidate” series) couldn’t forcast the election. The news team at NBC 29 stormed the ballot, led by weatherman Norm Sprouse. The channel currently enjoys a competitive edge as the only local network affiliate—not so for next year’s contest when CBS and ABC stations join the fray.

 

RADIO PERSONALITY

WWWV’s Big Greasy Breakfast

Hoowah! That’s what I’m talkin ’bout. The delightful banter of 3WV’s Rick Daniels and the surnameless Max “In the Morning” sizzles up your morning commute like a heaping pile of sausages for the ears.

 

PRINT JOURNALIST

Bob Gibson

We see how it is: Week after week of selflessly serving the reader, only to be slapped in the face by The Daily Progress’ 18-year veteran reporter Bob Gibson (who, incidentally, made the “C-VILLE 20” list earlier this year). Of 109 votes cast, Gibson received 18, followed by our very own John Borgmeyer (12), DP columnist Bryan McKenzie (11), sports writer Jerry Ratcliffe (7) and several writers tying for fifth. The DP also led the overall tally with 56 votes to C-VILLE’s 33.

 

PUBLIC SERVANT

Maurice Cox

Slighted again! Most voters thought of Charlottesville’s City Council and police department come polling time, with our dutiful paper receiving only a single vote. The winner, former mayor and UVA professor Maurice Cox, might agree, however, with the two votes cast for some of the hardest-working folks in the community: the UVA janitors.

 

PHILANTHROPIST

Dave Matthews Band

What? You’ve heard of them before? DMB’s gifts to the Charlottesville area through the Bama Works Foundation amount to more than $2 million since 1998. Their most recent round of grants in June included $10,000 to Children, Youth & Family Services for its Play Partners pre-literacy program, and $5,000 each to United Way and the Community Mediation Center of Charlottesville.

 

PHYSICIAN

Dr. Gregory Gelburd

Dr. Gregory Gelburd of Downtown Family Health Care isn’t like the UVA Hospital hotshots constantly making national Top 100 lists. But a great bedside manner no doubt led voters to choose the osteopathic physician from a broad and diverse pool of doctors. Gelburd spent time in Ohio and New Jersey before making his way to Charlottesville 15 years ago. On his approach to medicine, Gelburd says he’s always ready to try a new approach when something isn’t working: “I don’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”

 

TEACHER

Tricia Lopez

Lopez, 25, a graduate of West Virginia’s Fairmont State College, was as surprised as we were that she received the “Best Teacher” nod, after only two years of teaching in the Albemarle school system. A language arts and science teacher for regular and special education students at Sutherland Middle School, Lopez has enthusiasm, dedication and discipline, however, which more than compensate for her pedagogical freshness. “She’s continually striving to improve who she is as a teacher,” says Sutherland principal Kathryn Baylor.

 

ACTIVIST

Stratton Salidis

The utter profusion of change-minded individuals in such a city as Charlottesville, teeming with noble causes and more than a few that are farther afield, made voting for Charlottesville’s best activist a daunting task apparently. With so many to choose from, it was Salidis, a teacher and musician in his spare time, whose outspoken opposition to the Meadowcreek Parkway paved the way to “Best of” victory.

 

POLITICIAN

Maurice Cox and Al Weed

Out with the old, in with the new? That appears to be the theme in voters’ toasting the two Democrats, former mayor Maurice Cox and Congressional candidate Al Weed. However, we remain mildly skeptical about Weed’s chance of dethroning good ol’ boy incumbent Virgil Goode in November, just as we do that Cox really bowed out of city affairs at the end of his term in June.

 

BIG SHOT

Coran Capshaw

So maybe, contrary to an April 27 caricature illustration on C-VILLE’s cover, the Dave Matthews Band manager doesn’t really drive around town with a license plate that reads “It’s All Me.” The man still has plenty of moolah and isn’t afraid to show it. Since Capshaw confirmed with the paper in April his almost $50 million in local property interests, he’s gone on to reveal himself as the financial muscle behind a planned redesign of the Downtown Amphitheater, wrangle with the City on the commercial development of a property off Fifth Street, and break ground for the mixed-use renovation project in the former Ivy Industries complex. Cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-CHING.

 

LOCAL HERO

Dave Matthews Band

Being a local hero can mean many things: someone whom we all admire, who leads by example, turns good fortune back to the community, makes the best of a bad situation or who routinely rescues puppies from burning buildings. Officially, it was Dave Matthews Band who won. (Voters may have taken a cue from the band’s recent “C-VILLE 20” write-up, in which they were referred to as none other than “The Local Heroes” for their Bama Works philanthropy.) Coming in second place was civic activist Tom Powell, whose good deeds include helping save the Fourth of July fireworks display and founding the annual Kids Lift holiday toy drive.

 

POWER COUPLE

Todd Toms and Mike Herzog

The owners of Garrett Street’s Moxie (voted Best Hair Salon), Toms and Herzog certainly succeeded in getting out the vote. Other dynamic duos included Tim and Susie Burgess, declared by USA Today in September to be “the most energetic couple in America,” political players John Conover and Virginia Daugherty, high rollers Patricia Kluge and Bill Moses, and Bert and Ernie.

 

VOLUNTEER ORGANIZATION

Computers4Kids

More than just a close race, the vote for this one was completely split between paper and online ballots. Among those who mailed in their responses, it was the Charlottesville-Albemarle Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals that ran the vote. But the online survey showed differently, giving the award to C4K, an organization dedicated to bringing technology and training to underprivileged local youth. Hmmm. We guess that means it must be working.

 

PLACE TO LIVE

Belmont

Last year’s “Best of” issue declared Belmont “the new neighborhood.” With the chic slightly worn, the old new neighborhood is once again old, but no less the neighborhood. In spite of skyrocketing real estate prices, it continues to be a local arts district, our equivalent of New York’s SoHo—though SoCSX doesn’t have quite the same ring for the area bordered to the north by the railroad tracks, Morse Creek to the east and south, and Sixth Street to the west.

 

DEVELOPER

Gabe Silverman

Wherever there is a part of Charlottesville with untapped potential, Gabe Silverman is there to give it a new face. With his business partner Allan Cadgene, the developer has proven his commitment to adaptive reuse—renovating existing structures rather than razing them—on properties like Market Street’s Michie Building, Main Street’s Union Station and several locations on the Downtown Mall. The looming question is how he and his fellow developers will tackle the 300,000-plus square-foot Frank Ix Building, a currently gutted structure off Monticello Avenue that promises to play a major role in revitalizing the area south of Downtown.