Author: c-ville-weekly-writers

Feels like the last time
After a bad season of foul weather and Foreigner, CDF could be ready to bow out of Fridays

Charlottesville needs less than two inches of precipitation in the remaining weeks of 2003 to break a 66-year-old record for annual rainfall. That’s quite a reversal of fortune from last year’s drought, a change that climatology experts, quoted in The Daily Progress, attribute to shifts in the jet stream.

But some of the credit––or blame—for the rain must fall on the coifed heads of Foreigner, the ’70s arena rockers whose Fridays After 5 concert was rained out three times last summer. Apparently offended by Foreigner, the gods of rock thrice sent a series of storms, including Hurricane Isabel, to rain out the hot-blooded band. The Charlottesville Downtown Foundation, which runs Fridays After 5, finally held the Foreigner show at the Downtown Amphitheater on Sunday, September 28.

The anti-Foreigner showers also ended up playing head games with Fridays After 5—it now seems the bad weather may have shut down Fridays for good.

“It’s not clear to me at this time that they [the CDF] would be prepared to take on that event next year,” said Aubrey Watts, the City’s director of economic development, in a report to City Council on Monday, December 1.

Charlottesville is planning to start building a federally funded transit center near City Hall in 2004. The construction will include improvements to the amphitheater, home to the Fridays concerts, and Watts predicts the work will interrupt shows during the summer of either 2004 or 2005. Watts told Council the City is negotiating with CDF to hold the concerts somewhere else––perhaps the parking lot at the old Save-A-Lot grocery store near the Omni Hotel––during construction.

But in his report to Council, Watts hinted that the CDF might not be able to put on the shows next year.

“This year with the rain and everything, they had to end up canceling some shows,” Watts said to C-VILLE later. “They are having some issues they’re trying to work through.”

Asked if the City would consider picking up the tab for Fridays After 5, Watts said “I have not seen any desire on the part of the City to do that, but that could change.”

Last year the CDF began charging admission fees to Fridays After 5 to boost the group’s flagging finances, but the organization still seems shaky. President Patricia Goodloe says the CDF would certainly look for a new location for the concerts if necessary, but she wouldn’t comment on whether financial difficulties will mean the end of the concerts. She said she is negotiating with the City on the future of Fridays.

“I don’t want to mess up those negotiations by making any formal statements,” says Goodloe.

Regardless of the CDF’s financial outlook, free or cheap concerts Downtown could come to an end, anyway. On December 1 the Council considered leasing the Downtown Amphitheater to the Charlottesville Industrial Development Authority, which would sublease the site to a private concert promoter. The leading candidate is Dave Matthews Band manager and über-developer Coran Capshaw.

Under the current plan, the City would loan the CIDA $2.5 million, and that agency in turn would loan the money to Capshaw at “a below-commercial bank rate,” according to City documents. The developer would use the money to improve the amphitheater and its sound system, and pay back the City over several decades.

Council will vote on the proposal at its next meeting on December 15. According to City documents, the City wants Capshaw to provide for a minimum of 20 public events, such as Municipal Band concerts and First Night Virginia, and provide a Fridays After 5-type event during the summer “so long as it is economically feasible.”

Councilor Kevin Lynch took issue with that clause, saying he wanted some assurance that Capshaw would hold “free or reasonably priced” concerts. Mayor Maurice Cox countered that such a commitment would be unrealistic.

“It’s unreasonable to for us to say events will be free, even if it’s not economically feasible,” says Cox. “[This deal] is going to bring a level of experience in managing entertainment that we have no precedent for here in Charlottesville.”

Watts, who negotiated a similar lease arrangement with SNL Financial when that company moved from its Mall building to the former National Ground Intelligence Center, is negotiating the exact terms of the lease with Capshaw. His management of the amphitheater will likely mean more expensive shows, as his will be a profit-making venture. But if Capshaw’s Starr Hill Music Hall is any indication, those shows will be culled from a 21st-century roster of artists. Maybe that will keep the rock gods happy.––John Borgmeyer
 

Man of few words
Crozetians want to hear about the new Supe’s pro-growth agenda, but Wyant’s not talking

Now that David Wyant has won the White Hall seat on Albemarle’s Board of Supervisors, his new constituents would like to know more about him. So far, that hasn’t proven easy.

Speaking at candidate forums held in Crozet during the race, Wyant disparaged the major planning project affecting his district, the Crozet Master Plan. Wyant’s campaign literature, for example, said the much-publicized plan (which drew an average of 125 citizens to each of 10 community meetings) was the unrealistic product of “a very small group of people with the backing of special interests.”

Laura Juel, for one, would like to get past Wyant’s public remarks to better understand how he plans to manage Crozet’s impending dramatic growth. A town of 3,000, Crozet, under current zoning, could quadruple by 2020. Like many people in Wyant’s district, Juel awaits the new arrivals as she would a hurricane––hoping for light rains while boarding up the windows.

“I know the growth is coming,” she says. “What are we going to do about it?” That’s the big question in Wyant’s district, but it’s hard to get him to address it.

“I know his family has lived here for more than 200 years. He’s said that several times,” Juel says. “But I don’t know anything about his vision.”

Of 4,017 votes cast in Crozet, Free Union, Earlysville, Brownsville and Yellow Mountain, the Republican Wyant took 54 percent by employing the tried-and-true strategy of bashing an opponent while making as few public commitments as possible. The closest race within the district was in Crozet, where Wyant topped his opponent, Democrat Eric Strucko, by a slender 41 votes.

On the issue of growth, candidate Wyant would only say, “I am not in favor of taking away peoples’ property rights,” which some might recognize as a sly wink to developers.

While Wyant said little about growth, Strucko perhaps said too much. Strucko sat on the County’s Development Initiative Steering Committee (DISC), where he spent time working on the Crozet Master Plan. Starting in January 2002, the County sent architects and planners to meet with Crozetians in a series of community work sessions that were advertised in media outlets, stores, libraries and gas stations. Details of the plan were hung in the Crozet post office.

The resulting Crozet Master Plan aims to coordinate the development of subdivisions, roads, shopping centers and schools in a pedestrian-friendly scale, with the hope that Route 250W won’t follow the example set in the County’s other growth areas along Route 29N and Pantops.

“Growth management doesn’t lend itself to sound bites, where the message is conveyed in 10 seconds,” Strucko says. “It has a lot of moving parts and requires contemplation. I think I laid out too much of a plan.”

Strucko credits the Wyant campaign for playing on people’s fear of growth by spinning the Crozet Master Plan as “my opponent’s plan to urbanize Crozet.” That’s the way Wyant described it in a statement conveyed via his campaign manager to C-VILLE in October.

“The whole thing is really screwed up,” says Brian Cohen, who publishes the Crozet-centric newspaper The Whistle. In his November “Soapbox” column, Cohen claimed “Wyant lied and misled the citizenry” by portraying Strucko as a tool of special interests who wanted to bring growth, raise taxes and curtail property rights.

“[Wyant] is accurate in that Strucko’s approach takes a lot of regulation,” says Vito Cetta, whose company, Weather Hill Homes, is building about 80 houses in Crozet. “That’s because we live in a beautiful place, and we want to keep it beautiful. Buildings are so visible, and this stuff will be around indefinitely.

“Albemarle is getting 800 new homes a year whether we like it or not,” says Cetta. “We have to have sensible planning, or this place will look like a big subdivision. Anybody, in general, who would object to planning I think they got blinders on.”

Cetta says he thinks White Hall’s Supervisor-elect “means well” and hopes Wyant will change his mind once he learns more about the plan. Wyant himself has acknowledged in forums that he didn’t attend any of the Crozet Master Plan development sessions, and Wyant hasn’t spoken to any of the plan’s major players––County planner Susan Thomas, Planning Committee Chair Will Reiley and architects Warren Byrd and Kenneth Schwartz, for instance––for details about Crozet’s future.

“I’d be interested to hear his alternatives,” says Cetta.

So would many others, but Wyant isn’t talking. He didn’t return numerous calls over several weeks from C-VILLE, and Cohen says he was only able to interview Wyant for a voter’s guide through his campaign manager, Peter Maillet. Juel, who is president of the 350-member Crozet Community Association, says she couldn’t get calls returned to have Wyant speak at candidate forums.

“When I’ve spoken with him at candidate forums, he didn’t really answer the questions. He just changed the subject,” says Juel, who describes Wyant as “real flippant.”

“I asked him how I could get in touch with him,” says Juel. “He said he’d have somebody get back with me. I said, ‘No, if I elect you, I want to talk to you.’ He said he had a lot of things going on.”

The County’s Planning Commission is currently reviewing the Crozet Master Plan. The Board of Supervisors––including Wyant––will vote on the plan in late January.––John Borgmeyer

Unchained melody
The Washington, D.C., DJ duo Blowoff, a.k.a. Richard Morel and Bob Mould, inaugurated new local dance club R2 on November 14. With enthusiasm for Charlottesville and what they saw of its club scene, Blowoff will return to R2 on December 12 and January 16. Blowoff is one of several projects for each of the musicians. Mould, who has fronted rock bands like Hüsker Dü and Sugar and worked as a solo artist during the past 20 years, also had a stint as a scriptwriter for professional wrestling. More recently, he has branched out to record electronic-style music under his own name as well as the pseudonym LoudBomb. Morel fronts an electronica-guitar rock band called Morel, which last year released the sublime CD Queen of the Highway. As Pink Noise, he is also a much-sought-after remix master, who has worked with Mariah Carey, Beth Orton and Charlottesville’s own Clare Quilty. Both profess a deep appreciation of pop music: Morel likes the Pink/William Orbit single from the Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle soundtrack and new music by Mark Ronson; Mould likes the new Sarah McLachlan record, calling the single “heartbreaking.” He also characterized the latest TV commercial for Little Debbie Snack Cakes as “trippy” and “really well done.” Cathy Harding talked to Blowoff about working the crowd at R2 and wearing so many musical hats.

Cathy Harding: What were your impressions of R2?

Richard Morel: For both of us it was really exciting to go to Charlottesville. We thought the crowd was so cool and so hip to what we were doing. We had no expectations going in. We left on a total high because the night was so great.

Bob Mould: We have a weekly gig at the Backbar at 9:30 Club in Washington and it’s a much more intimate space. I was pretty blown away by the amount of immediate feedback at R2. Not only people dancing but people looking up to the booth and giving the big thumbs up to certain songs, which was great.

Your set lists have a really wide mix of club music, pop music and everything in between. With your motto, “Let the music set you free,” are you speaking as much to yourselves as you are to the crowd?

RM: Absolutely. One of the things that is central to both of us is we play music that we truly love and dig. We play records that we get off on. As far as the style, it’s less important than the vibe we get off them.

BM: I’ve been making music and listening to music and obsessed with music my whole life. It’s an interesting time in the sense that when I started in music professionally 25 years ago, there were only five or six stylistic differentiations in music. As information has traded quicker and technology has made it much more affordable for everyone to make music, it has become so much more splintered that it would be pointless to be so micro-genre-specific. As Rich said, a good song is a good song. The challenge is how to string them all together across the course of an evening as legendary DJs used to do to try to tell a story through the night.

Is there a learning curve to going from guitar, bass and drums to the DJ gear?

BM: For me, the past five or six years has been learning by trial and error, learning by looking at the manuals, and learning by listening to music I like and emulating it, which is pretty much how I learned to play guitar many years ago.

On the first night at R2, I kept thinking about the DJ as a director of a ’60s-style Happening: It’s great, when it’s working, to set the direction for an ephemeral event, and really difficult, I bet, when it’s not.

RM: When I got back into the dance and rave scene seven or eight years ago, I immediately thought it was like a Grateful Dead concert. That was the closest reference I had to club culture and what was going on at that point. Besides the obvious drug reference, there was a large group of people responding to music. It had a real hippie vibe.

What’s the status of the Blowoff record?

BM: We’re about 10 songs in. I would feel good if we got four to six more songs recorded in the next couple of months. It’s a pretty wide variety of styles.

RM: It’s kind of a good mixing of where Bob is coming from and where I’m coming from. At one point, Bob was talking about how it has a ’60s pop sensibility with two male vocals a lot of times singing together. The production is not like that, but in terms of the classic two male vocals

…Are we talking Everly Brothers here?

RM: In a way. Or Righteous Brothers or The Association. Of course, the lyrics are a little different, but the themes are the same.

Relationships, looking down the road, wondering about your identity?

BM: Pretty much. It tends to be on the darker side. The music is pretty uplifting. Personally that’s a combination that has always intrigued me—the darker lyric with the brighter music. There’s a lot of guitar on it, there’s a lot of beats on it, there’s a lot of vocals on it, there’s a lot of trading off lyrical ideas on it.

What about the individual projects, like Bob’s Body of Song?

BM: I’ve been talking to a number of labels about releasing that. In the next couple of weeks I’ll know when that record will be up and available. For my older fans, it’s more in the Workbook vein.

RM: We’re just completing the new Morel record, which will come out, hopefully on Yoshitoshi, the end of next year. On the Pink Noise front, I’ve done a remix of Luke Wan, which is coming out in the next month, called “The Wish.”

Is it challenging to have so many different music identities?

BM: My personal frustration is my birth name and the work that I do under that has been so prominent for so long that people who write about music are hesitant to go with me on the other things.

Feels like the last time
After a bad season of foul weather and Foreigner, CDF could be ready to bow out of Fridays

Charlottesville needs less than two inches of precipitation in the remaining weeks of 2003 to break a 66-year-old record for annual rainfall. That’s quite a reversal of fortune from last year’s drought, a change that climatology experts, quoted in The Daily Progress, attribute to shifts in the jet stream.

But some of the credit––or blame—for the rain must fall on the coifed heads of Foreigner, the ’70s arena rockers whose Fridays After 5 concert was rained out three times last summer. Apparently offended by Foreigner, the gods of rock thrice sent a series of storms, including Hurricane Isabel, to rain out the hot-blooded band. The Charlottesville Downtown Foundation, which runs Fridays After 5, finally held the Foreigner show at the Downtown Amphitheater on Sunday, September 28.

The anti-Foreigner showers also ended up playing head games with Fridays After 5—it now seems the bad weather may have shut down Fridays for good.

“It’s not clear to me at this time that they [the CDF] would be prepared to take on that event next year,” said Aubrey Watts, the City’s director of economic development, in a report to City Council on Monday, December 1.

Charlottesville is planning to start building a federally funded transit center near City Hall in 2004. The construction will include improvements to the amphitheater, home to the Fridays concerts, and Watts predicts the work will interrupt shows during the summer of either 2004 or 2005. Watts told Council the City is negotiating with CDF to hold the concerts somewhere else––perhaps the parking lot at the old Save-A-Lot grocery store near the Omni Hotel––during construction.

But in his report to Council, Watts hinted that the CDF might not be able to put on the shows next year.

“This year with the rain and everything, they had to end up canceling some shows,” Watts said to C-VILLE later. “They are having some issues they’re trying to work through.”

Asked if the City would consider picking up the tab for Fridays After 5, Watts said “I have not seen any desire on the part of the City to do that, but that could change.”

Last year the CDF began charging admission fees to Fridays After 5 to boost the group’s flagging finances, but the organization still seems shaky. President Patricia Goodloe says the CDF would certainly look for a new location for the concerts if necessary, but she wouldn’t comment on whether financial difficulties will mean the end of the concerts. She said she is negotiating with the City on the future of Fridays.

“I don’t want to mess up those negotiations by making any formal statements,” says Goodloe.

Regardless of the CDF’s financial outlook, free or cheap concerts Downtown could come to an end, anyway. On December 1 the Council considered leasing the Downtown Amphitheater to the Charlottesville Industrial Development Authority, which would sublease the site to a private concert promoter. The leading candidate is Dave Matthews Band manager and über-developer Coran Capshaw.

Under the current plan, the City would loan the CIDA $2.5 million, and that agency in turn would loan the money to Capshaw at “a below-commercial bank rate,” according to City documents. The developer would use the money to improve the amphitheater and its sound system, and pay back the City over several decades.

Council will vote on the proposal at its next meeting on December 15. According to City documents, the City wants Capshaw to provide for a minimum of 20 public events, such as Municipal Band concerts and First Night Virginia, and provide a Fridays After 5-type event during the summer “so long as it is economically feasible.”

Councilor Kevin Lynch took issue with that clause, saying he wanted some assurance that Capshaw would hold “free or reasonably priced” concerts. Mayor Maurice Cox countered that such a commitment would be unrealistic.

“It’s unreasonable to for us to say events will be free, even if it’s not economically feasible,” says Cox. “[This deal] is going to bring a level of experience in managing entertainment that we have no precedent for here in Charlottesville.”

Watts, who negotiated a similar lease arrangement with SNL Financial when that company moved from its Mall building to the former National Ground Intelligence Center, is negotiating the exact terms of the lease with Capshaw. His management of the amphitheater will likely mean more expensive shows, as his will be a profit-making venture. But if Capshaw’s Starr Hill Music Hall is any indication, those shows will be culled from a 21st-century roster of artists. Maybe that will keep the rock gods happy.––John Borgmeyer
 

Man of few words
Crozetians want to hear about the new Supe’s pro-growth agenda, but Wyant’s not talking

Now that David Wyant has won the White Hall seat on Albemarle’s Board of Supervisors, his new constituents would like to know more about him. So far, that hasn’t proven easy.

Speaking at candidate forums held in Crozet during the race, Wyant disparaged the major planning project affecting his district, the Crozet Master Plan. Wyant’s campaign literature, for example, said the much-publicized plan (which drew an average of 125 citizens to each of 10 community meetings) was the unrealistic product of “a very small group of people with the backing of special interests.”

Laura Juel, for one, would like to get past Wyant’s public remarks to better understand how he plans to manage Crozet’s impending dramatic growth. A town of 3,000, Crozet, under current zoning, could quadruple by 2020. Like many people in Wyant’s district, Juel awaits the new arrivals as she would a hurricane––hoping for light rains while boarding up the windows.

“I know the growth is coming,” she says. “What are we going to do about it?” That’s the big question in Wyant’s district, but it’s hard to get him to address it.

“I know his family has lived here for more than 200 years. He’s said that several times,” Juel says. “But I don’t know anything about his vision.”

Of 4,017 votes cast in Crozet, Free Union, Earlysville, Brownsville and Yellow Mountain, the Republican Wyant took 54 percent by employing the tried-and-true strategy of bashing an opponent while making as few public commitments as possible. The closest race within the district was in Crozet, where Wyant topped his opponent, Democrat Eric Strucko, by a slender 41 votes.

On the issue of growth, candidate Wyant would only say, “I am not in favor of taking away peoples’ property rights,” which some might recognize as a sly wink to developers.

While Wyant said little about growth, Strucko perhaps said too much. Strucko sat on the County’s Development Initiative Steering Committee (DISC), where he spent time working on the Crozet Master Plan. Starting in January 2002, the County sent architects and planners to meet with Crozetians in a series of community work sessions that were advertised in media outlets, stores, libraries and gas stations. Details of the plan were hung in the Crozet post office.

The resulting Crozet Master Plan aims to coordinate the development of subdivisions, roads, shopping centers and schools in a pedestrian-friendly scale, with the hope that Route 250W won’t follow the example set in the County’s other growth areas along Route 29N and Pantops.

“Growth management doesn’t lend itself to sound bites, where the message is conveyed in 10 seconds,” Strucko says. “It has a lot of moving parts and requires contemplation. I think I laid out too much of a plan.”

Strucko credits the Wyant campaign for playing on people’s fear of growth by spinning the Crozet Master Plan as “my opponent’s plan to urbanize Crozet.” That’s the way Wyant described it in a statement conveyed via his campaign manager to C-VILLE in October.

“The whole thing is really screwed up,” says Brian Cohen, who publishes the Crozet-centric newspaper The Whistle. In his November “Soapbox” column, Cohen claimed “Wyant lied and misled the citizenry” by portraying Strucko as a tool of special interests who wanted to bring growth, raise taxes and curtail property rights.

“[Wyant] is accurate in that Strucko’s approach takes a lot of regulation,” says Vito Cetta, whose company, Weather Hill Homes, is building about 80 houses in Crozet. “That’s because we live in a beautiful place, and we want to keep it beautiful. Buildings are so visible, and this stuff will be around indefinitely.

“Albemarle is getting 800 new homes a year whether we like it or not,” says Cetta. “We have to have sensible planning, or this place will look like a big subdivision. Anybody, in general, who would object to planning I think they got blinders on.”

Cetta says he thinks White Hall’s Supervisor-elect “means well” and hopes Wyant will change his mind once he learns more about the plan. Wyant himself has acknowledged in forums that he didn’t attend any of the Crozet Master Plan development sessions, and Wyant hasn’t spoken to any of the plan’s major players––County planner Susan Thomas, Planning Committee Chair Will Reiley and architects Warren Byrd and Kenneth Schwartz, for instance––for details about Crozet’s future.

“I’d be interested to hear his alternatives,” says Cetta.

So would many others, but Wyant isn’t talking. He didn’t return numerous calls over several weeks from C-VILLE, and Cohen says he was only able to interview Wyant for a voter’s guide through his campaign manager, Peter Maillet. Juel, who is president of the 350-member Crozet Community Association, says she couldn’t get calls returned to have Wyant speak at candidate forums.

“When I’ve spoken with him at candidate forums, he didn’t really answer the questions. He just changed the subject,” says Juel, who describes Wyant as “real flippant.”

“I asked him how I could get in touch with him,” says Juel. “He said he’d have somebody get back with me. I said, ‘No, if I elect you, I want to talk to you.’ He said he had a lot of things going on.”

The County’s Planning Commission is currently reviewing the Crozet Master Plan. The Board of Supervisors––including Wyant––will vote on the plan in late January.––John Borgmeyer

Unchained melody
The Washington, D.C., DJ duo Blowoff, a.k.a. Richard Morel and Bob Mould, inaugurated new local dance club R2 on November 14. With enthusiasm for Charlottesville and what they saw of its club scene, Blowoff will return to R2 on December 12 and January 16. Blowoff is one of several projects for each of the musicians. Mould, who has fronted rock bands like Hüsker Dü and Sugar and worked as a solo artist during the past 20 years, also had a stint as a scriptwriter for professional wrestling. More recently, he has branched out to record electronic-style music under his own name as well as the pseudonym LoudBomb. Morel fronts an electronica-guitar rock band called Morel, which last year released the sublime CD Queen of the Highway. As Pink Noise, he is also a much-sought-after remix master, who has worked with Mariah Carey, Beth Orton and Charlottesville’s own Clare Quilty. Both profess a deep appreciation of pop music: Morel likes the Pink/William Orbit single from the Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle soundtrack and new music by Mark Ronson; Mould likes the new Sarah McLachlan record, calling the single “heartbreaking.” He also characterized the latest TV commercial for Little Debbie Snack Cakes as “trippy” and “really well done.” Cathy Harding talked to Blowoff about working the crowd at R2 and wearing so many musical hats.

Cathy Harding: What were your impressions of R2?

Richard Morel: For both of us it was really exciting to go to Charlottesville. We thought the crowd was so cool and so hip to what we were doing. We had no expectations going in. We left on a total high because the night was so great.

Bob Mould: We have a weekly gig at the Backbar at 9:30 Club in Washington and it’s a much more intimate space. I was pretty blown away by the amount of immediate feedback at R2. Not only people dancing but people looking up to the booth and giving the big thumbs up to certain songs, which was great.

Your set lists have a really wide mix of club music, pop music and everything in between. With your motto, “Let the music set you free,” are you speaking as much to yourselves as you are to the crowd?

RM: Absolutely. One of the things that is central to both of us is we play music that we truly love and dig. We play records that we get off on. As far as the style, it’s less important than the vibe we get off them.

BM: I’ve been making music and listening to music and obsessed with music my whole life. It’s an interesting time in the sense that when I started in music professionally 25 years ago, there were only five or six stylistic differentiations in music. As information has traded quicker and technology has made it much more affordable for everyone to make music, it has become so much more splintered that it would be pointless to be so micro-genre-specific. As Rich said, a good song is a good song. The challenge is how to string them all together across the course of an evening as legendary DJs used to do to try to tell a story through the night.

Is there a learning curve to going from guitar, bass and drums to the DJ gear?

BM: For me, the past five or six years has been learning by trial and error, learning by looking at the manuals, and learning by listening to music I like and emulating it, which is pretty much how I learned to play guitar many years ago.

On the first night at R2, I kept thinking about the DJ as a director of a ’60s-style Happening: It’s great, when it’s working, to set the direction for an ephemeral event, and really difficult, I bet, when it’s not.

RM: When I got back into the dance and rave scene seven or eight years ago, I immediately thought it was like a Grateful Dead concert. That was the closest reference I had to club culture and what was going on at that point. Besides the obvious drug reference, there was a large group of people responding to music. It had a real hippie vibe.

What’s the status of the Blowoff record?

BM: We’re about 10 songs in. I would feel good if we got four to six more songs recorded in the next couple of months. It’s a pretty wide variety of styles.

RM: It’s kind of a good mixing of where Bob is coming from and where I’m coming from. At one point, Bob was talking about how it has a ’60s pop sensibility with two male vocals a lot of times singing together. The production is not like that, but in terms of the classic two male vocals

…Are we talking Everly Brothers here?

RM: In a way. Or Righteous Brothers or The Association. Of course, the lyrics are a little different, but the themes are the same.

Relationships, looking down the road, wondering about your identity?

BM: Pretty much. It tends to be on the darker side. The music is pretty uplifting. Personally that’s a combination that has always intrigued me—the darker lyric with the brighter music. There’s a lot of guitar on it, there’s a lot of beats on it, there’s a lot of vocals on it, there’s a lot of trading off lyrical ideas on it.

What about the individual projects, like Bob’s Body of Song?

BM: I’ve been talking to a number of labels about releasing that. In the next couple of weeks I’ll know when that record will be up and available. For my older fans, it’s more in the Workbook vein.

RM: We’re just completing the new Morel record, which will come out, hopefully on Yoshitoshi, the end of next year. On the Pink Noise front, I’ve done a remix of Luke Wan, which is coming out in the next month, called “The Wish.”

Is it challenging to have so many different music identities?

BM: My personal frustration is my birth name and the work that I do under that has been so prominent for so long that people who write about music are hesitant to go with me on the other things.

Black market birth control

As the General Assembly targets contraception, Planned Parenthood looks to Charlottesville

During last year’s General Assembly session, Delegate Richard Black (R-Louden) sent all 40 State senators a letter promising that Virginia “will lead the way in restoring the sanctity of human life.”

It’s a laudable goal for the Commonwealth, which executes more prisoners per year than any state besides Texas. Black supports the death penalty, yet he paired his letter to his Senate colleagues with a pink plastic fetus and graphic descriptions of abortion procedures. “Would you kill this child?” Black wrote.

Last year, a crop of conservative delegates introduced a litany of bills designed to limit women’s access to abortion. As the 2004 session approaches, pro-choice advocates expect Black and his cohorts will extend the hostility beyond abortion, trying to curtail access to contraception, too.

“Last year there were more anti-choice bills passed by the General Assembly than ever before,” says Ben Greenberg, who lobbies the General Assembly on behalf of Planned Parenthood of the Blue Ridge. “The same players are back this year. Given their successes last year, we expect them to be even more aggressive.”

In 2003, the General Assembly passed a “partial birth infanticide” bill banning late-term abortions, similar to what President Bush signed into law in November. Both the Federal law and the Virginia law are currently being challenged in court, largely because neither law provides an exemption when the life or safety of the mother is endangered.

“We’d be shocked if the courts did not find this legislation unconstitutional,” Greenberg says.

Earlier this year Gov. Mark Warner vetoed another 2003 law permitting “Choose Life” vanity license plates.

Right-wing delegates last year also passed a series of bills known as Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) legislation that would gratuitously require all medical clinics providing abortions to conform to hospital-style building and design standards. The TRAP bills passed the House of Delegates but died in the Senate Education and Health Committee by one vote. The close call prompted Planned Parenthood to begin building a new clinic in Charlottesville that will conform to the TRAP requirements, should they eventually get signed into law [see below].

Looking ahead to the upcoming legislative session, which begins January 14, local Delegate Mitch Van Yahres (D-Charlottesville) says he expects “a lot of sex and silliness.

“It’s a smokescreen over more serious issues, like the budget.”

He expects Republicans to introduce a bill that would ban universities from distributing emergency contraception pills, which prevent pregnancy by stopping eggs from attaching to the uterine wall. Last year, Delegate Bob Marshall (R-Manassas) sent letters to James Madison University and UVA, suggesting that in prescribing the pills the schools would be violating the law by providing “early abortion to unwitting co-eds.” Marshall’s science may be wrong, but he’s a successful intimidator: JMU dropped emergency contraception. To date, UVA Student Health still offers emergency contraception.

Abortion-rights advocates also anticipate bills restricting access to contraception and establishing legal recognition of the belief that life begins at the point when an egg is fertilized. For example, Greenberg expects a bill that would create a new criminal penalty for killing a pregnant woman, even though Virginia already has three special laws penalizing actions that result in the collateral termination of a pregnancy.

“The far right is ignoring these laws, because their agenda is to establish the personhood of the fetus,” says Greenberg.

He also expects Delegate Kathy Byron (R-Lynchburg) to re-introduce a 2003 bill that would give pharmacists a “conscience clause,” so they could refuse to provide contraception if they believe it constitutes abortion.

“We’re talking about birth control pills, IUDs, Depo-Provera, emergency contraception,” says Greenberg.

“This is probably just the tip of the iceberg,” he says. “We have a lot to worry about.”

A new clinic in Charlottesville  

Planned Parenthood can’t count on support from Richmond anytime soon, so the agency has turned to well-heeled Charlottesvillians. This year, the agency raised $1.3 million from individual donors between April and July. Also in April, the group purchased land in Charlottesville for a clinic that will provide sex education, pre-natal care and a range of health services for women, including abortions.

The clinic will be designed to hospital standards in response to last year’s TRAP legislation [see above], says Planned Parenthood of the Blue Ridge Director David Nova.

Nova predicts the TRAP bills will become law if a conservative succeeds Governor Mark Warner, who is pro-choice. If that happens, the new Charlottesville clinic would be one of only two in the Commonwealth to meet hospital standards.

“TRAP could become law in 2006,” says Nova. “Our concern is that the great majority of clinics in Virginia will close. We can’t wait until then to act on this. This new building would provide some security for the whole state.”

Nova says Planned Parenthood’s presence has grown in Charlottesville, where the agency enjoys a sympathetic and affluent donor base. The new clinic will open this spring near Planned Parenthood’s current location on Arlington Boulevard.

The clinic will be named the Herbert C. Jones Reproductive Health and Education Center, to honor the local physician and abortion provider who, when he retired this year due to illness, left a vacancy yet to be filled in Charlottesville.

“No one could give enough money to offset what Herbert Jones has done in this community for over half a century,” says Nova.––John Borgmeyer

Against the grain

BAR chair and Downtown business owner Joan Fenton
attempts to regulate her competitors

When Joan Fenton appeared before City Council last week wearing a black pullover sweater and black pants, with her glasses and shock of dark hair, she looked more like an elementary school teacher rushing in after a yoga class than Charlottesville’s official arbiter of taste.

That is her role, however, as chair of the City’s Board of Architectural Review. Fenton also owns two Mall businesses, April’s Corner and Quilts Unlimited. On Monday, November 17, she appeared before Council arguing that the City should regulate some of her direct competitors, the Mall vendors and the merchants at York Place.

“The Mall is starting to look like a flea market,” Fenton complained to Council. “If the vendors look better, we all do better.”

Fenton was there to urge Council to adopt a list of guidelines, crafted mostly by BAR members, which would impose new regulations on Mall vendors. Many of the rules are picayune––black skirts (not dark green) around tables, umbrellas no higher than 8′ with a maximum of one dark color. The proposals that really bothered vendors, several of whom turned out for the Council meeting, however, were the prohibition of racks for hanging clothes, the $400 license fee (up from $125) and a rental fee of $2 for each square foot of red bricks they occupy.

The City says the fees would generate about $20,000 annually to cover the cost of administrating and enforcing the new rules.

James Muhammad, a 10-year vending veteran known as Cupcake, said that except for the fee hikes and the prohibition of clothes racks, the new rules aren’t that different from the current ordinance, which the City admits isn’t effectively enforced. Council will revisit the vendor question at an upcoming meeting.

“I don’t think all the other vendors should pay the penalty for that,” Muhammad said. “It would be a hardship for a lot of vendors to pay that kind of money.

“I don’t understand the problem with clothes racks,” Muhammad continued. “I don’t see how you can sell clothes without one.” He reminded Council that in the early 1990s he and other vendors pioneered Downtown at a time when the desolate Mall looked like a failed experiment.

Now the Mall mostly rocks, although as some businesses flourish others, like Sandy Ruseau’s gallery of watercolors in York Place, are, in Ruseau’s words, “just fighting to survive.”

In September, York Place owner Chuck Lewis wanted to put new signs on his building. According to Neighborhood Planner Mary Joy Scala, City development director Jim Tolbert said the signs, which protruded from the York Place façade, were probably O.K., and so the signs went up. Additionally, Scala referred the York Place signs to the nine-member BAR, which on September 16 unanimously deemed them inappropriate. According to the minutes of that meeting, Fenton said the signs were “loud and noisy with too much coloran obstacleand a precedent she did not want to start.” Fenton’s own Quilts Unlimited sign, next door to York Place, is a blue rectangle with red graphics and white letters; at April’s Corner, the sign comprises bronze-colored wooden letters. Both signs lie flat against their building fronts.

After the BAR ruling, the York Place signs came down, and on October 21 the BAR approved a plan that included signs that would sit flat against the façade. The flat signs went up, but the tenants and Lewis appealed to City Council.

On November 17, Lewis and his tenants swayed Council by presenting evidence that their business had spiked with the protruding signs in place, and showed photos of existing protruding signs on the Mall. Council seemed especially influenced by Lewis, who said, “If I had to do York Place again, I wouldn’t do it. It’s hard to get people in the building.”

After Council voted unanimously to overturn the BAR, Lewis declared, “This is so cool. We were outvoted, but we rallied.”

The current economic climate, say the shopkeepers, makes for increased competition. With businesses fighting harder to survive, Downtown business owner Fenton seems faced with a conflict of interest.

When pressed on the question by a reporter, Fenton first exclaimed, “I think Jim Tolbert had a bigger conflict of interest than me. He lives in York Place.”

Later, Fenton said she “could see how someone might think that. I’ve tried very hard to be fair. I have probably bent over backwards not to do anything that benefits me.”

Then, Fenton admitted, she plans to take advantage of Council’s ruling by installing protruding signs, just like those she opposed on York Place, on her Quilts Unlimited store. Within days of the Council meeting, a new freestanding sign appeared outside the store—a blue wooden square lettered in white and resting on an ornate black tripod.

Mayor Cox – one more term?

Democratic Party chair Lloyd Snook says Mayor Maurice Cox won’t seek a third City Council term next spring. “Eight years is enough. His family would like to see him again,” Snook confidently declares.

But Snook “may have spoken much too soon,” says the Mayor. Cox says he won’t resign from Council until he finds a protégé who “is passionate about the same things I’m passionate about.”

Cox says he has met with a half-dozen potential candidates, five of whom are women, both black and white. He says he wants to find a candidate who would bring not only gender and ethnic diversity to Council, but who would also carry on Cox’s vision for Charlottesville.

“I’m talking about the urban development of Charlottesville,” says Cox, “This notion of pedestrian-oriented infill development anchored by a state-of-the-art transit system.”

Karen Waters, director of the City’s Quality Community Council, says she’s “kicking around” the idea of a Council bid. “I’ve met with a lot of people,” says Waters, but she would not say whether that includes the Mayor. Waters is currently enrolled in UVA’s Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership, which has turned out many a local politician, including Republican upstart Councilor Rob Schilling.

Cox says his search for a successor has so far proven “inconclusive.” He says he is weighing his obligations to his family and career, and that he expects to announce a decision after the New Year.

Meanwhile, other candidates are all but throwing their hats in the ring.

“I’m certainly very seriously considering running for Council,” says David Brown, a chiropractor and former City Democratic Chair. But he adds, “To get into this too soon is a distraction for Council.”

Snook says Dems will meet on December 7 to discuss candidates’ plans, and there will be a nominating convention on February 21. “We won’t run an all-white ticket,” he promises. The City election is scheduled for May 4.

On the Republican side, party chair Bob Hodus says he “has no news to announce,” but maybe he should get on the phone to Spectacle Shop owner Jon Bright, who says he’s “thinking about it daily, trying to make a decision.”

Bright, who ran in 2000, says that if his busy schedule prevents him from running this time around, he will run in two years. Another Republican, neighborhood activist Kenneth Jackson, says he will run “if the local party will endorse me as their candidate.” Republicans will likely meet in February to select candidates for the election, held in early May.

Councilor and Vice-Mayor Meredith Richards said two weeks ago she would seek a third term and is doubtlessly eager to assume the Mayorship. Councilor Kevin Lynch, meanwhile, remains uncommitted. “I’m not ready to announce yet. I’ll make a decision as soon as possible,” he says.

Money, principles and the Meadowcreek Parkway

The impending election is bringing a controversy over the Meadowcreek Parkway to the forefront.

Although the Virginia Department of Transportation doesn’t plan to build the Parkway until 2008, three pro-Parkway Councilors want to turn over about nine acres of McIntire Park to VDOT before the May elections that could threaten their majority. The efforts of Parkway supporters Meredith Richards, Blake Caravati and Rob Schilling will force Parkway opponents Kevin Lynch and Mayor Maurice Cox to make a tough choice.

According to State law, Council needs a four-fifths majority to sell public parkland. However, on the instruction of the pro-Parkway majority, City Attorney Craig Brown discovered that Council could grant VDOT an easement for the land with a simple three-fifths majority.

“At this point, those who are opposed to the road need to realize this is going to happen,” says Caravati (who ran as being against the Meadowcreek Parkway in 1998 and later changed his vote).

This puts Lynch and Cox in a bind. The pro-Parkway majority seems poised to ease the land to VDOT, tantamount to giving away some of the City’s most valuable real estate. VDOT has set aside more than $1 million to purchase the right-of-way, and Cox believes the City could get three times that––but only if he or Lynch agrees to sacrifice their principles and support the sale.

“It’s an open question,” says Lynch. Before he makes a decision, he says, he wants to see an appraisal for the McIntire land. He also wants to know whether VDOT would pay for replacement parkland if it gets an easement.

Cox says he’ll “think about” selling the nine acres in McIntire if VDOT offers around $3 million, a sum Cox says will allow the City to purchase replacement parkland, possibly from the nearby Wetsel farm on Rio Road.

If not, will Cox really let the City give away its last patch of countryside? When asked, Cox shifts the burden back to the pro-Parkway majority.

“Let it be their legacy,” says Cox. “That’s my attitude. I don’t want that legacy.”

Cox on “60 Minutes”

Mayor Maurice Cox will be interviewed on the November 30 episode of “60 Minutes.” The venerable television news program examines the Bayview Community on the Eastern Shore. Cox’s architecture firm, RBGC, helped design a “rural village” for Bayview. The mostly poor, black residents of Bayview defeated a State plan to build a prison near their town, then formed a nonprofit group that raised money to rebuild their town.––John Borgmeyer

Swimming with sharks

Little big shot racks up with local billiards association

Derrick “Buster” Fox moves around the table so quickly that one might think he’s being judged on his speed. Every shot seems to be determined ahead of time, before the cue ball has even come to a stop. It’s a balmy Tuesday night at Miller’s on the Downtown Mall, and Buster is running the table.

Tuesday is league night for the Charlottesville Billiards Association, a weekly ritual for the 60-some pool sharks who gather—most armed with their own cues—to compete in the City’s only local league, which holds three 15-week tournaments every year.

At 14, Fox is by far the youngest player in the league, shooting for his seven-person team “The Shot Callers” in a warm-up game against Yvette, a 22-year-old real estate broker shooting for “XLR8.” But Fox doesn’t let his age stand in his way—he is regarded by his competitors as remarkably skilled for his years, and easily defeats Yvette in only two turns before they both move on to play their designated opponents for the evening.

“I’ve been playing since I could see over the table,” Fox explains to justify his prowess. The remarkably well-mannered Monticello High School freshman grew up playing at Mutts, the restaurant/bar owned by his mother, “Mutt” Fox, who sponsors his team.

Similar dramas are being played out around town at Mutts, Rapture, Firehouse Bar & Grill and Chi-Chi’s, all of which, along with Miller’s, sponsor the league’s nine teams and provide free table space for the weekly showdowns. “I can’t say enough about these places,” says Mark Foran, who founded the local league three years ago and plays on “Ballbusters.” “We wouldn’t be able to do this without their help.”

League play isn’t just a game—a first-place team wins more than $2,000 for its $90-per-person entry fee. Because of laws that prevent awarding prize money to juveniles, Foran has only allowed two minors to play in the league so far (if his team wins, Fox will have to settle for something akin to a weekend amusement-park getaway). Since this is Fox’s first tournament with this league, he is also eligible for rookie of the year, league MVP, and a spot on one of the all-star teams that play a mid-season mini-tournament.

But Fox’s talent is a liability as much as an asset. To keep any one team from dominating the league, players are handicapped according to their level of skill and all teams must include a range of abilities. The better you are, the more games you have to win against your opponent—Yvette’s challenger will need to win six games tonight to be declared the victor, while Yvette only needs to win two.

Yvette started playing pool six months before she joined the league, and is still somewhat of a novice. Tonight she hits the occasional pretty shot, but she’s no match for her more experienced opponent, and goes down 0-6. Fox doesn’t fare much better, losing his games 1-6 despite his precise aim. But it is early in the season, and both players will have many more chances—fortunately, Tuesday comes every week.—Chris Smith

Steal this article

The Cavalier Daily retracts eight plagiarism cases

Kirk Honeycutt isn’t mad at former Cavalier Daily arts and entertainment reporter Tonya Dawson––just perplexed.

“I’ve never heard of someone plagiarizing movie reviews,” says Honeycutt, a film critic for The Hollywood Reporter. “I just find it so bizarre.”

On September 2, The Cavalier Daily announced that “significant portions” of seven film and record reviews published in the student-run newspaper between October 2002 and August 29, 2003, were “taken without permission from multiple sources,” including Honeycutt’s review of Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.

Then, on October 29, the Cavalier Daily ran another retraction claiming that an October 27 column about low-rider jeans titled “Fashion’s Practical Joke: Mooning and the Low-Rise Obsession” by Demetra Karamanos was plagiarized from slate.com. The original article, “Hello, Moon: Has America’s Low-Rise Obsession Gone too Far?” by Amanda Fortini, circulated widely on the Internet and appeared on numerous websites.

Dawson and Karamanos––both undergraduates––copied ideas, phrases, sentences and even whole paragraphs from other writers. Dawson was fired in September, Karamanos was fired last month. Karamanos declined to comment, and Dawson could not be reached.

On November 5, The Cavalier Daily published a 650-word mea culpa acknowledging the impossibility of checking every article for plagiarism. Still, the editorial claimed, the paper’s staff met to reaffirm that plagiarism is bad. Further, the paper will change its bylaws to include a more extensive section on plagiarism.

Cavalier Daily editor-in-chief Justin Bernick won’t say who uncovered the deception.

“There’s no evidence this is a widespread problem at The Cavalier Daily by any means,” he says. He declined further comment, referring to the November 5 editorial as the paper’s last word on the subject.

The incidents come as two notorious fakers, Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass, reap fame and fortune for their journalistic sins. The new film Shattered Glass dramatizes Glass’ rise and fall as a hotshot staff writer for The New Republic. In September, the 27-year-old Blair landed a contract––reportedly in the mid-six figures––for his memoir Burning Down My Master’s House: My Life at the New York Times, due out this spring.

Instead of kudos, however, Dawson and Karamanos could face expulsion from UVA. The University’s honor code prohibits any student from lying, cheating or stealing while inside the boundaries of Charlottesville or Albemarle County, and the code also applies to people representing themselves as UVA students, no matter where they might be.

Carey Mignerey, chair of UVA’s honor committee, wouldn’t say whether either writer had been referred to that body. He says academic plagiarism is “certainly a common honor case,” but says he can’t recall anyone facing honor charges for plagiarism at The Cavalier Daily.

Hollywood Reporter’s Honeycutt says he’ll let UVA decide how to punish the copycats, and he’s not calling for blood. He says he just can’t figure out why journalists would ruin their reputations for pieces on low-rider jeans or bad action flicks.

“A movie review seems like a pathetic place for plagiarism, unless one is afraid of one’s own opinion,” Honeycutt says. “In the case of Charlie’s Angels, I can see how someone wouldn’t want to subject themselves to this movie. But all you have to do is sit through the movie, then go get a thesaurus and look up every invective you can find. It’s not brain surgery.”

Kit Bowen, a Hollywood.com writer whose review of the film The Hunted was plagiarized by Dawson, says the Internet’s boundless horizons give would-be imposters the feeling they can steal without getting caught.

“There’s just so much stuff out there. How could you monitor it?” Bowen says. “I’ve never had this happen to me before,” she says. “It’s bad journalism, obviously, but actually I’m sort of flattered.”––John Borgmeyer

Checks and balances

Budget surplus could force spend-or-save decision

A projected $3 million surplus in Albemarle County’s 2003-04 budget has officials asking, If Albemarle had a few extra million dollars, what would it do with the money? The County Board of Supervisors is thinking about giving some of the money back to taxpayers by cutting the County’s real estate tax rate. Not surprisingly, several representatives from local social service organizations and schools have their own ideas about what to do with the unexpected cash.

“I don’t think it’s prudent to cut taxes, particularly when we have a continuing unmet need in this community—that’s been documented,” says Gordon Walker, a member of the Albemarle County Public Schools’ Board and CEO of the Jefferson Area Board for Aging.

County Supervisor Dennis Rooker disagrees, saying it would be “fair and wise to look at the potential of cutting the [real estate] tax rate by two cents.” The Board of Supervisors took a step in this direction by passing on November 5 a motion from Rooker that required the first draft of the 2004-05 budget be developed with a 74-cent real estate tax rate in mind. That’s a two-cent reduction from the current rate of 76 cents per $100 of assessed real estate value.

When the current fiscal year wraps up on June 30, the County’s bean counters should be sitting on a surplus of about $1.4 million from these real estate taxes, according to Melvin Breeden, the director of Albemarle’s Office of Management and Budget. The boost is mostly due to a binge in construction. Breeden says personal property and other taxes round out the rest of the $3 million surplus.

Real estate in the County skyrocketed by more than 18 percent in assessed value between 2001 and 2003, and Breeden forecasts another 15 percent increase in the 2004 assessment. But what’s good for the County’s economy isn’t necessarily good for taxpayers, particularly those who live on fixed incomes. For some residents, the real estate tax on their property has increased by as much as 30 percent in just two years. For example, a property that increased in assessed value to $150,000 from $115,000 (slightly over 30 percent) would have a tax rate jump to $1,140 from $874, an increase of $266.

Still, a two-cent cut won’t go too far in helping people cope with real estate taxes. The owner of that $150,000 property would see only a $30 savings on her tax bill at the proposed 74-cent rate. By contrast, if the tax cut were to be passed next year, it would have a big impact on the budget surplus, knocking about $1 million off of the $3 million projected for this fiscal year.

John Baldino, a former teacher and school administrator who serves as a local representative to the Virginia Education Association, thinks that cool million would be better spent on teachers’ salaries and books, buses and buildings for County schools.

“Albemarle needs a lot of things,” Baldino says. “We’re talking about a basic need to improve education.”

Rooker insists that the tax issue will be revisited if significant County programs lack cash when the new budget is drawn up. Also, the Supes have yet to vote on the actual tax cut. If passed, the earliest a cut could go into effect would be next June.

Albemarle School Board Chair Diantha McKeel would like to see more discussion before the decision is made. The schools usually get about 60 percent of County funds, and McKeel wants assurance that unexpected needs (such as those arising from higher gas prices for buses, for instance) are factored into budget discussions. McKeel adds that the schools already have existing areas that could benefit from new dollars, such as improvements in class size and in teacher salaries. “Oh absolutely, we could use that million,” McKeel says.

The Monticello Area Community Action Agency, which administers health and youth programs such as Head Start, could also find a good home for some of Albemarle’s surplus, says Executive Director Noah Schwartz. However, Schwartz says that Albemarle’s funding for his organization is “consistent with” funding from Charlottesville, and he understands why Albemarle might look to cut the real estate tax. “I think it’s great that the Board of Supervisors is being so fiscally responsible,” Schwartz says.

Several other officials from social service agencies and from County schools say it’s too early to talk about spending a surplus that has yet to be reaped, or to discuss the wisdom of a tax cut that won’t be voted on for months. But most acknowledge that tough choices between unmet needs and tax relief are inevitable.

“I think that Albemarle County has an increasing gap between high-income and lower-income residents,” says Saphira Baker, director of the Charlottesville/ Albemarle Commission on Children and Families, which advices local governments in the funding of social service organizations. “It does pose a challenge in terms of determining tax rates.”

The fickle nature of economic indicators doesn’t make the job any easier. Though Albemarle is currently making budget projections 20 months into the future, they are only estimates. When asked if solid revenue trends will continue, County budget guru Breeden says: “Your guess is as good as mine.”—Paul Fain

Flooded with money

Scottsville’s close ties with transportation leaders pay off

For most of its 258-year history, the town of Scottsville has endured an uneasy marriage to the James River. The waterway made Scottsville a vital commercial crossroads in the pre-railroad era, but every few decades the placid James would send muddy floods raging through downtown.

A towering brick and slate monument in Scottsville’s newest park, Canal Basin Square, marks water levels from significant floods––the normally 4′ high James River hit 34′ during Hurricane Agnes in 1972. Most recently, the James topped 26′ in 1987. The most dramatic flood happened in 1771, when water levels crested at an estimated 40-45′, about 10′ above the monument.

After Hurricane Agnes, some downtown businesses relocated to higher ground just northward, the Village Square Shopping Center. In 1989, the Army Corps of Engineers built Scottsville’s A. Raymond Thacker Levee, named after the former mayor who secured Federal money for the levee to protect downtown Scottsville from floods once and for all.

Dedicated in September, Canal Basin Square is a monument to a different kind of flood––the torrent of State transportation dollars the Scottsville Town Council is using to remake downtown.

“The levee made this a safe place to live and do business,” says Town Councilor Jim Hogan. “That was Mayor Thacker’s deal. This is a new deal. This will make Scottsville a nicer place to live.”

Since December 2000, Scottsville has received more than $1.8 million in Federal TEA-21 grants, which are distributed through the State’s Commonwealth Transportation Board. The money is being used for two parks, a parking lot, a trail along the levee and a streetscape project that will build crosswalks and old-time streetlights, as well as bury power lines along Valley Street, Scottsville’s main drag. Hogan says the aim is to put the “historic” stamp on Scottsville.

“This is what everybody wants, the small-town way of life,” Hogan says. “As you develop the town, the shopping experience becomes richer. We’re not going highbrow, we just want to protect our historic feel.”

The most recent grant, a $224,000 allocation the CTB approved for Scottsville earlier this month, is the largest single award for 2003, and it represents nearly 25 percent of the total funds distributed in the CTB’s Culpeper district, which includes Culpeper, Warrenton and Charlottesville, as well as Albemarle and Louisa counties. The TEA grants require a 20 percent match, which Scottsville has easily raised, thanks to a massive private fundraising effort—the city secured $500,000 in private funds for the projects during the past three years.

In these times of tight State budgets, how did a leafy hamlet that is home to 550 people end up with such a fat wad of cash? It turns out this small town has some big friends.

Hogan cozied up to Carter Meyers, former CTB representative for the Culpeper district. Meyers, who owns Colonial Auto Center in Charlottesville, is tight with State Republicans and most famous locally as a vocal champion of the now-defunct Western Bypass project.

“Scottsville suffered so many years with the floods,” says Meyers. “This was an opportunity to help a town that never really had a chance to fix itself up. You could tell the people were behind it, and I think it will be another tourist attraction for Charlottesville.” In 2002, Governor Mark Warner appointed Butch Davies to succeed Meyers as Culpeper representative, yet Meyers has remained instrumental in keeping Scottsville’s funding stream flowing.

Scottsville has still not conquered the water, however. Engineers overseeing the streetscape project say the town sits right atop the water table. This could make the cost of burying power lines––which already runs between $300,000 and $500,000 per mile––even more expensive.

“We can’t just go flopping around in the water,” says Jack Hodge, vice president of Volkert and Associates, the Mobile, Alabama, firm directing the streetscape project. “You have to pump the water out. That could run the cost up considerably, or it may not affect it that much.” Hodge says engineers will conduct tests in the coming weeks to figure out how much undergrounding Scottsville can afford.––John Borgmeyer

Holier than thou

Ear plugs are turning heads in Charlottesville

When Ben, a 28-year-old body piercer for Capital Tattoo on Ivy Road, arrived in Charlottesville two years ago, he says his earrings were a big attention-grabber.

“People looked at me like I stepped off the mothership,” Ben says.

The reaction from Ben’s new neighbors may not have been borne of provinciality, as Ben’s earrings are rather big. In fact, he has stretched earlobes containing plugs that are 1 1/2" in diameter.

But though Ben and other piercing aficionados around town say the large ear plugs (also called flesh tunnels if they include a hollow center) have a tribal history that stretches back thousands of years, apparently Charlottesville has been a little slow to catch on.

The piercing pro at Big Dawg Tattoo on Preston Avenue, who goes by the name Pirate Dee, moved to Charlottesville from Las Vegas a few months ago and says of the ear plugs, “every other kid has ‘em out there.”

Pirate Dee, who wears half-inch plugs he says are made of dinosaur bone, observes the ear plug itch has yet to hit Charlottesville in full force. But he says his shop does stretch the earlobes of two or three customers a month. “It’s definitely starting to take off,” Dee says of the trend.

So what’s the attraction with plugs and stretched lobes?

Matteus Frankovich, the owner of the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, says large ear adornments have an origin in the Massai culture of Africa and are a response “to an insuppressible tribal urge.” Frankovich, who wears small discs made of ox bones, says he increases the gauge, or size of his ear plugs, every time he enters a new phase of life, such as becoming a homeowner. “American youth have an urge to display some sort of physical symbol for metaphysical changes going on inside,” he says.

A different motivation inspired Dave Munn, the lead singer of the hip-hop rock band Frontbutt, to stretch his earlobes: boredom.

“I’m not trying to get all mystical,” Munn says. “I guess it goes along with the rock ‘n roll lifestyle. It’s my bling-bling.”

Ear plugs come with a price, however, both physical and fiscal. Though Dee says that earlobe stretching is “a good pain,” none of the popular methods are pain-free. According to Tribalectic Magazine, the self-proclaimed “definitive source for everything pierced,” the popular methods for extending the chasm in an earlobe include inserting wet sponges or frozen wood in a lobe, and hanging weights from an earring.

Dee had his lobes altered with a scalpel, but says his preferred method for stretching is the periodic insertion of a metal stake called a taper bar, a service for which Dee charges $40. Dee displays a taper bar that resembles a rifle bullet, and says that lobes can be stretched every four to six weeks.

The plugs for sale on Tribalectic’s website, including some made of amber (with insects inside) and those with inlaid bullets, run in the $25-50 range per pair.

When asked why he gravitated to ear plugs, Pirate Dee smiles and changes the subject. Asked again, he reluctantly admits, “the smaller earrings looked kind of pussy to me.” (A reporter in his shop was wearing a small earring.)

Dee also cites benefits of wearing ear plugs that extend beyond the aesthetic. Unlike a regular earring, which can be torn from a lobe, an ear plug will pop out easily when under duress in an environment such as a mosh pit, he says.—Paul Fain, with additional reporting by Ben Sellers

Stat man

Virginia’s Michael Colley is a walking football almanac

The statistics swim in Michael Colley’s head. There are numbers and names and dates, several lifetimes of UVA football lore. Colley keeps it all up there, fishing out facts as he needs them. And he even gets paid for it.

Colley, an assistant director of media relations for UVA Athletics, compiles the team’s gridiron figures each week. At home contests, Colley is the game’s official statistician, responsible for determining who ran, how many yards he gained and what the new line of scrimmage is. When the TV announcers proclaim that kicker Connor Hughes just became the first Cavalier to kick two 50-yard field goals in a season, it’s because Colley, sitting nearby in the press box, just told them so.

Football is a game of inches, and Colley’s is a world of minutia. The job is enviable, if Wahoo trivia is your thing, and perhaps pitiable when the Cavaliers lose.

“What some people use as diversion,” Colley says, “I now use as a career.”

Data dredging is only part of his weekly routine, however. When Colley is not nosing through a record book, he must do the grunt work of big-time college sports—publicity. On Mondays, for instance, Colley helps arrange head coach Al Groh’s press conference, and media interviews with the players. On Tuesdays, Colley meets with television announcers, to prep them for Saturday’s game.

Colley handles calls from professional football teams seeking information about quarterback Matt Schaub and helped produce postcards touting Schaub’s achievements. He also tries to update the virginiasports.com website faster than fans call in to complain about dated information.

“People have no idea the demanding hours his position requires and the tightrope he has to walk between the coaches and the media,” says Mac McDonald, WINA-AM radio announcer and “the voice of the Cavaliers,” one of several local reporters who speak highly of Colley.

“Love him or hate him, you always know where he’s coming from,” says Jed Williams, the station’s sports director. “With everyone digging for the scoop or the banner headline, his honesty ensures that everyone enjoys equal opportunity to get their job done.”

Colley, 41, grew up in Charlottesville and graduated from Albemarle High School. He attended UVA’s McIntire School of Commerce, earning his bachelor’s degree in 1985. After college, Colley sold computers for a firm in Virginia Beach, but he soon soured on the corporate world.

In 1989, just as Virginia football was winning its way to respectability, Colley moved home and started volunteering for the athletic department’s media relations office, writing press releases, compiling stats—whatever was needed. He got a full-time job there in 1991. Suddenly, the ferocious fan had access to all of Cavdom.

He has since learned to temper his emotions during games. Losses once kept him up all night “pissing and moaning,” he says. Now he has attained a rare state of sports-fan Zen.

“Not that anybody likes to lose, but you’ll go insane if you let the losses get to you too much,” Colley says. “Now I can go to a game that I have no interest in, or a game that I am dying to know who’s going to win, and they’re almost the same as far as I’m concerned.”

Football isn’t Colley’s only forte. He also keeps numbers up to date for men’s lacrosse and serves as the official statistician for home men’s and women’s basketball games. In each game, his goals are accuracy and objectivity.

“It’s not a statistician’s job to say what would have happened,” Colley says, “just to interpret what did happen.”

Still, Colley’s love for the Hoos burns as bright as the orange socks he often wears on game days. Jerry Ratcliffe, the Daily Progress sports editor, says Colley “is as passionate about the Cavaliers as anyone I’ve ever run across.”

As he will be on the job at Saturday’s Georgia Tech game, though, Colley must root vicariously.

“Since I can’t,” he tells this reporter, “cheer loudly for me.”— Eric Hoover

Dude, where’s my bike?

Yellow bike program returns—with a fee

Last year’s ill-fated “yellow bike” program has been resurrected in the form of a community bike library that’s trying to share refurbished two-wheelers without getting robbed.

Last year, the City of Charlottesville and Dave Matthews Band funded a project to fix up old bikes, paint them yellow and distribute them around town. Within days all the bikes disappeared. This time, the new bike library, which opened October 1 at 860 W. Main St., isn’t just giving away rides.

“Anyone who wants a bike is asked to put their name on a volunteer registration form,” says coordinator Alexis Zeigler. “They are then asked to help repair the bikes for at least an hour, and to put down a deposit of $10 to $20, depending on the quality of the bike.”

The deposit will be returned when patrons return the bike. “If you don’t know how to repair bikes, that’s fine,” says Zeigler. “The volunteers at the shop will help you learn.”

For now the shop, tucked behind the Hampton Inn in a warehouse owned by DMB manager and über-philanthropist Coran Capshaw, is open on Saturdays from 2pm to 5pm. Zeigler says there’s “a couple hundred” bikes on hand, and “a few” have been checked out so far. The hours of operation will expand, says Zeigler, as the volunteer base grows.

Preston Plaza, Part 2

Last winter, Preston Avenue business owners got all worked up when the City announced plans to redevelop the intersection of Preston and Grady avenues, near the Monticello Dairy building. The project, known as Preston Plaza, went on the shelf a few months later, however, because nobody wanted to build it.

Now City Council is reviving Preston Plaza, citing new interest from developers. This time the Mayor is cranking up the City’s public relations machine, trying to head off another round of controversy.

On October 30, Mayor Maurice Cox called a meeting at the New Covenant Pentecostal Church on the corner of 10th Street and Grady to tell owners of such businesses as Integral Yoga, the Firehouse Bar and Grill, Central Battery and Crystalphonic Recording that Preston Plaza was back on deck.

“We’ve set aside the development plans from a year ago, and we’re starting fresh,” said Cox.

The original plan called for a mixed-use project––50,000 square feet of housing, 2,800 square feet of office space and a partially underground parking deck for 70 cars. Cox says developers were initially skittish about the amount of housing, and expensive ideas like underground parking. The outcry from business owners also turned off some developers, Cox says.

The Mayor wouldn’t name names, only revealing that “a critical mass” of developers showed renewed interest when the City agreed to rethink project specifications. When the City first announced the proposed development, local businesses said they were blindsided by the news. At the meeting, the business owners didn’t seem any less opposed to the plan, even with all the advance word on it.

Cox, however, claimed the City and the local Chamber of Commerce would do all it could to ensure that businesses were not hurt by construction, which Cox said could start in two years. Referencing the new shopping centers going up in Albemarle County’s urban ring, Cox said City Council has to push for infill development to help Charlottesville compete.

“We have to leverage every single square inch of this city,” said Cox. “We have to inspire developers to a higher and better use of this property.”

Rising Starr

In a sign of evolution––or, some would say, gentrification––the Starr Hill neighborhood has been removed from the City’s list of funding sites eligible for Federal low-income assistance. Starr Hill is no longer a candidate for Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), which pay for improvements to poor areas.

The Starr Hill neighborhood, which lies north of W. Main Street, bounded by Ridge/McIntire, Preston Avenue and the railroad tracks, has been on the City’s list of CDBG sites since Charlottesville started receiving the grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1974.

Charlottesville gets about $700,000 a year in CDBG grants, and it has wide flexibility in how that money is used, says Claudette Grant, a City neighborhood planner. Some grants can go directly to low-income individuals for things like home improvements, or they can be spent on projects like sidewalks or parks for the City’s target neighborhoods––Belmont, Fifeville, 10th and Page, Ridge Street and Rose Hill.

Households can qualify for CDBG funds if total household income for a family of four is below $50,880, which is equal to 80 percent of the City’s median income of $63,600, a figure determined by HUD.

Starr Hill was removed after 2000 Census data revealed that 47.3 percent of that neighborhood’s population is considered “low or moderate income.” According to HUD regulations, a neighborhood must be more than 51 percent low or moderate income to qualify.

In the mid- to late-1990s, Starr Hill was targeted by the Piedmont Housing Alliance (PHA), which built subsidized houses to sell to low-income residents. Ironically, this effort to help low-income residents is putting Starr Hill housing out of reach for the poor.

“The big project that changed Starr Hill was the PHA,” says Missy Creasy, a City neighborhood planner. “The houses sold at low levels to the original owners, but they’ve turned over since then and sold for significantly more.”

In 1998, for example, the City and PHA repaired a dilapidated house at 210 Sixth St. NW and sold it to a first-time homebuyer for $82,500. Four years later, the same house sold for $225,000.––John Borgmeyer

Industrial strength

New concert promoters have a ga-Gillian ideas for bringing new acts to town

Even before they met in high school in Williamsburg, where they played in rock bands and penned such originals as “(What in the) Sam Hill?” Hank Wells and Michael Allenby had identified music as “a big pursuit.” It was just a question of finding the best outlet for their passion. A dozen years later, the bass guitar and drums have taken a back seat to booking the music for everything from weddings and fraternity bashes to festivals and corporate affairs through Sam Hill Entertainment, the agency they started eight years ago. November 19 marks their first venture as concert promoters, when Sam Hill Presents brings Gillian Welch to the Charlottesville Performing Arts Center (CPAC) for a sold-out show.

In focusing on all aspects of the Charlottesville market, Allenby and Wells see themselves augmenting the work of talent buyers who book one room, such as Starr Hill Music Hall, and local promoters who concentrate on one type of music, such as acoustic or reggae.

Writer Phoebe Frosch caught up with the dynamic entrepreneurs in their Water Street offices recently to discuss their vision for bringing diverse musical acts to Charlottesville.

C-VILLE: Which Charlottesville stages would you especially like to book?

Hank Wells: In addition to CPAC, the Jefferson Theater—a great room sitting there waiting for shows to happen—the Paramount when it’s finished, and Old Cabell Hall.

Michael Allenby: Outerspace is a cool space in a fantastic location [attached to Plan 9 on the UVA Corner], that’s about the size of Trax. It probably holds 600-800 people. It’s mostly an unused room—they’ve had some in-store parties and WNRN’s Station Break release party there but not much else.

Name some artists you’d like to bring to town.

Allenby: They range from someone who’s up and coming, like Ben Kweller, to Wilco or Ben Folds, all the way to legendary acts like Willie Nelson.

Wells: Emmylou Harris would be great at the Paramount. Charlottesville has these beautiful theaters that could entice big names to come here.

Ideally, where would you put Willie Nelson?

Allenby: Ideally, the Jefferson Theater, but the tickets might have to be $500! But if Willie Nelson decides to do a small theater tour, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t play Charlottesville. A promoter just has to be poised to do it, and have a reputation in the industry as someone who can pull it off.

If you could add one new room for music to this town, what would it be?

Wells: An authentic, no-frills rock club.

Allenby: Absolutely. A place where people want to hang out, even before they know who’s playing there that night.

As promoters, do you see any gaping holes in the local music scene?

Wells: World music doesn’t get represented enough here. Jazz is under-serviced, too. You can hear first-rate jazz up the street on Thursday nights, but Miller’s holds 50 people. Branford Marsalis or Chick Corea could play here, artists you ordinarily have to go to D.C. to hear.

Allenby: When we see musicians who should be coming to town but aren’t, in our little world, that’s a tragedy. Even though Charlottesville is small compared to Richmond or D.C., it’s home to a lot of forward-thinking people, which makes it fertile ground for music. The fan base exists to bring in a high-caliber and level of talent. If people buy tickets, we can build something.

Head of the class

After a botched job last time, the City School Board starts a new super search

At the end of this school year, departing seniors won’t be the only ones graduating from the Charlottesville City Schools. Superintendent Ron Hutchinson, after 30 years of work in the Charlottesville system, including two years as superintendent, will retire at the end of June.

“Life looks good,” Hutchinson says of his post-superintendent plans. But the future is far murkier for the Charlottesville School Board as it begins the search for a new superintendent.

Prior to the retirement of previous super William Symons, Jr. in July 2002, the board had lined up three candidates for the job. In fairly rapid succession, all three nixed the gig.

The rejections (the three top candidates took superintendent jobs in Martha’s Vineyard, Charlotte and Stafford, Virginia) were particularly embarrassing because the school board had conducted an open search and vetting of candidates. Though Linda Bowen, chairperson of the school board, says she was pleased with the public input during the last search, she says that the school board will make changes to avoid another visible jilting. Most notably, Bowen says the board will ask candidates the question: “If you are offered this job, will you come to Charlottesville?”

The salary range for the position, though not finalized, will be $90,000 to $130,000, which Bowen says should be competitive with the national average.

Bekah Saxon, a teacher at Buford Middle School and president of the Charlottesville Education Association, expects the board will be more cautious during this search. “The board learned some real lessons about what to say and what not to say,” she says.

However, Saxon isn’t worried that the board kibosh will be too severe. “We’ve all been assured that teachers and parents will be involved from the get go,” she says.

In typical bureaucratic fashion, the hunt for Hutchinson’s successor has been kicked off with a search for a search firm. A subcommittee comprising two school board members and two City government officials will settle on the headhunter, and Bowen wants to have the firm on the job on or near December 1. The board had 31 applicants for the job last time, and Bowen hopes the search firm will bring in more applicants this time around—the best of whom will have experience with diverse school populations.

This year alone, the Charlottesville superintendent oversees 4,422 students in nine schools and a budget of more than $51 million, making Bowen liken the job to that of City Manager.

“The problem anymore is that it’s hard to find superintendents. It’s a thankless job if you stop to think about it,” Bowen says. “You’re under so much criticism.”

One notable critic of the school board itself is Republican City Councilor Rob Schilling, who says that an elected rather than an appointed board would be more accountable for its actions, including its failed search for a boss last year. Albemarle County, which does have an elected school board, voted in three new members on November 4.

“I think that certainly, we could have had some different results last time around,” Schilling says, adding, however, that he trusts the board is doing a good job in the early phases of its new hunt for a super.

After the search firm narrows its sights on a few top candidates, Bowen says, the board will likely want to step in and begin interviews. In addition to finding a person who will accept Charlottesville’s offer to the big dance, Bowen says, the board is looking for someone who can handle the highly politicized job, without alienating members of the City government or the general public. Bowen’s target date for locking in the new superintendent is March 1, 2004.

What if the board fails to fill the position by that deadline? “It could be a problem,” Bowen acknowledges.—Paul Fain

Hipsters unite

It’s a small, cool world after all on Friendster.com

Last week graduate student Peach Friedman was waiting to buy a cup of coffee when musician Lauren Hoffman appeared in line behind her. “Hey, I saw you on Friendster,” Hoffman said.

“Friendster” has recently entered the local lexicon to define a member of the online network Friendster.com, where buddies are collected and swapped like baseball cards. The site’s “friend of a friend” concept is similar to John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation, which itself spawned the Kevin Bacon game and which posits that everyone is connected by six or fewer intermediary relationships.

Friedman, for example, joined Friendster in the spring––just weeks after the site’s March debut––on the invitation of her brother, who lives in Boston. After joining, typing a personality profile and uploading a photo, she “linked” to the other Friendsters in her brother’s network. Friedman has invited others into her Internet circle, and through her 31 Friendsters she is currently connected to 264,311 other people, including other Charlottesvillians like Hoffman.

“All my Boston friends were on Friendster,” says Friedman. “They were all writing ridiculous testimonials about each other, and I wanted to join the fun. I love to talk about myselfI mean, who doesn’t?”

Friendster’s format of pictures, profiles and prominent declarations of status (single, in a relationship, married, etc.) has prompted comparisons to the dating website Match.com, which has about 200 male and 200 female users in the Charlottesville area. Friendster’s home page claims the site helps people find love, as well as new friends and activity partners. The site is currently in a free trial period.

According to Friendster’s “search” function, there are 692 Friendsters living within 10 miles of Charlottesville. Of the 351 women, 81 want to meet people for “dating” or a “serious relationship.” And of the men, 132 of 341 are looking for love. In contrast to Match.com’s sincere solicitations, however, many Friendsters seem less interested in meeting new people than simply declaring their existence to the wide world, and making it laugh.

Indeed, many local Friendsters do not take their profiles too seriously. Local web designer Darren Hoyt, for example, claims his occupation is herding incontinent, flying sheep. Other profiles are completely fabricated––the City of Charlottesville, the Belmont neighborhood, Axl Rose and Rubick’s Cube are all on Friendster. The site’s apparently humorless founder and CEO, Jonathan Abrams, however, has denounced “fakesters” as ruining Friendster, and has begun deleting phony accounts.

The site’s levity, however, is appealing to many local Friendsters. Robin Stevens says she’s not interested in using Friendster for anything other than fleeting entertainment.

“I’m not on it in hopes someone is going to read my profile and say ‘I gotta meet this woman,’” says Stevens. “They will more than likely say, ‘What a weirdo.’ I think it’s just another platform to say ‘Here I am! I’m neat and cool! Look at me! I’m different!’ It was fun setting up the profile and reading everyone else’s ramblings about themselves, but after that I was over it.”

Browsing the site reveals a Friendster archetype that holds true among Charlottesville’s members––mostly white, cool-looking, 20-something urban hipsters effusing irony, a declared love for hip-hop, indie pop and “The Simpsons.”

The symmetry doesn’t surprise UVA anthropologist Richard Handler, who explains Friendster’s appeal by referencing 19th century scholar Alexis de Tocqueville:

“Tocqueville pointed out that a fundamental problem of mass, individualistic societies is that the very independence and equality that gives every person his or her dignity also means that every person is no different than anyone else––what I call the ‘drop in the bucket’ feeling,” says Handler. “He showed how American individualism led to American conformity. That’s exactly what you are finding on Friendster.com, where everyone expresses his or her individuality, but in exactly the same way.”

Some find Friendster’s conformity a turn-off. “I’ve managed to avoid the Friendster pull so far,” says 23-year-old C-VILLE intern Nell Boeschenstein. “It seems like just another one of those things that defines you by a list of your consumptions.”

It’s all in fun for Friedman, though, a habitual people-watcher who enjoys Friendster’s personality parade––especially when she meets her Internet acquaintances face-to-face.

“It’s just another medium to play with, a place to see and be seen,” she says, “like the person who comes up and says ‘I saw you on Friendster.’”––John Borgmeyer

A church divided

The consecration of an openly gay bishop spurs local debate

After a summer when “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” ruled the ratings and the Supreme Court ruled anti-sodomy laws unconstitutional, it’s easy to forget that homosexuality still inspires debate. But reminders don’t come much clearer than the international controversy surrounding the Episcopal Church’s confirmation of the Rev. Canon V. Gene Robinson as the first openly gay bishop in the worldwide Anglican Communion.

The story broke in June when Robinson, 56—a former married man with two daughters—was elected to lead the Diocese of New Hampshire. Debate flared up again when the election was ratified at the American Anglican Council’s national convention on August 5. On Sunday, November 2, Robinson was consecrated as a bishop at the University of New Hampshire in front of nearly 4,000 people, most of them supporters. Only three objected during the public comment period—one of whom read an explicit list of gay sex acts—although other dissenting members left the church afterward to join a protesting prayer service nearby.

But his official overall acceptance by the 2.3 million-member American Anglican Church has caused a deep divide among Episcopalians worldwide, with rumors of a split between the liberal and conservative sides of the membership. Local congregants also have strong opinions on the matter, and C-VILLE asked a few churchgoers whether a person’s sexual preference makes a difference within the religious community.

Jessica Nash, on her way out of a morning service at Christ Church on High Street, candidly said, “I’m very against the decision…part of being a Christian is the belief that Christ can transform you.” Her companions nodded in agreement, supporting the written statement from the conservative congregation’s vicar, the Rev. Jeffrey Fishwick: “I, and I suspect most of the parishioners of Christ Church, are deeply grieved over the decision.”

By telephone, Dave Johnson, rector at Church of Our Savior on E. Rio Road, offered a less emotional reaction. On September 24, Church of Our Savior hosted a two-hour forum on the topic where parishioners and priests expressed vastly differing opinions. He seemed less concerned with controversy than on focusing on the purpose of practicing religion. “I don’t agree with the decisions that were made,” he admits, adding, however, that the issue is “an unfortunate distraction from the message of the gospel.”

Robert Williams, a local Episcopalian, said that “Being a Christian means belonging to a community that goes back thousands of years. When someone challenges a moral-based history, there’s going to be a split. Moral conviction should stay timeless.” His sister, Anne Williams, agreed. “Where in the Bible does it say you can have a homosexual as a priest?”

“Acceptance of a leader who happens to be gay is a better reflection of true Christianity,” argued Eleanor Takseraas, outside of St. Paul’s Episcopal Campus Ministry on University Avenue, “in the sense that you’re not turning your back on someone who’s not like you.”

The Rev. Jonathan Voorhees describes St. Paul’s as “a progressive church” and doesn’t consider this issue political—“it’s a human issue,” he said. Voorhees regards the existence of homosexuals, within the church or otherwise, as neither evil nor uncommon.

Other Episcopalians are ambivalent, like Cary Wood, who regularly attends evening service. He just wants the situation resolved. “I have no reason to be against [homosexuals],” he said. “It’s a shame such a big deal is being made out of it.”—Athena Schindelheim  

Everyday people

Scottsville’s ordinary folks live on through recorded memories

A plain-faced woman in a billowing black gown is reunited, in a sense, with her husband, a bearded Scottsville Gray in full military regalia. Steps away in the 157-year-old Scottsville Museum building, their life-sized images co-mingle with photos of a silver-haired Yankee educator and a curious 4-year-old girl in black boots and a white ruffled dress. They are there only in pictures, yet through the efforts of “Capturing our Heritage,” Scottsville Museum’s oral history project, their stories live on through the voices of their friends and family.

Funded in part by a $2,500 grant from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities (the people who bring you the annual Virginia Festival of the Book), the program directly feeds the museum’s “Whispers from the Past” exhibit, which currently tells the story of nine Scottsville citizens from the pre-Civil War era to the Depression. The exhibit, located at 290 Main St., continues into a second year with a new series of profiles to be mounted in April.

“Scottsville is a unique town. It seems to have a kind of continuous history,” says Charles Fry, director of the oral history initiative, which actually got underway about four years ago and now has the memories of nearly 50 people to its credit. “I think that we need to tap into that and get a handle on memories of people who are, I’m sorry, dying.” For Fry, a former psychologist, the main motivation for spearheading the project was to explore the extraordinary in the average Scottsville resident. “A number of people had tried to interview a variety of well known older people such as the mayor,” Fry says. “But one of the things that seemed to be important to try was to get some historical understanding of the everyday person, not just the ‘celebrities.’”

Outfitted with a microphone and a digital audio recorder, project volunteers gather those histories. Yet it’s the photos, especially those by William Burgess, which give the museum exhibit its inimitable texture.

From 1890 to 1935 Burgess was to Scottsville what Rufus Holsinger was to Charlottesville, a photo historian. Through a “gentleman’s agreement,” their paths never crossed as they worked their separate parts of Albemarle County. The museum project has accumulated about 3,700 of Burgess’ archival quality images, although he took thousands more.

Along with the photos and other artifacts, the oral histories are arranged around six audio pods, giving visitors a mixed-media glimpse into the little town’s rich yet sometimes troubled past. Listening to the “voices from the beyond” on the decidedly low-tech audio tapes, viewing the still-vivid photos, standing on the sturdy floorboards of the Museum (a former Disciples of Christ Church founded in 1846), and smelling the musty aroma of artifacts like a 1920s diary and a yellowed quilt effectively transports a viewer briefly back in time.

Here the anguished histories of Civil War soldier David Patteson and his wife, Mollie—both born in the 1830s—are told through the voices of two of their living grandchildren, who read the letters and poetry the couple exchanged while David, a Confederate, was away at war until his death in March 1865. Then there’s Ruth Roberts, born in 1904, who was a former World War II War Department employee, and later a retiree who traveled the world but always returned home to Scottsville. Or William Day Smith, who was principal of Scottsville School for 30 years until 1937 and whose story is told through the voice of his niece, Katherine Ellis.

“This is an oral history of you and me, the run of the mill,” Fry says. “I think this is a side of history that you don’t tend to get. You usually get Thomas Jefferson’s history or other well-known people. But this is just an oral history of people.”—Jennifer Pullinger

No scrubs
A nursing shortage prompts Martha Jeff to pass the hat

In a direct-mail fundraising letter dated April 2003, Martha Jefferson Hospital asked the good people of Charlottesville and Albemarle to make a donation to its Nursing Care Fund, one among dozens of charitable funds at the Downtown hospital. Following the request it stated, “There is a nationwide shortage of nurses. Please give as generously as you can and help Martha Jefferson Hospital continue to offer outstanding nurses services and excellent, patient-centered medical care.”
    Missing from the letter was a clear explanation of why Martha Jeff, grossing $210 million in revenues annually, wants the community to foot the bill.
    “We like to think of it more as inviting the public to support this particular fund,” Ray Mishler, vice president of Martha Jefferson’s Hospital Foundation, told C-VILLE. “People wouldn’t respond so well to us just asking for, say, a new boiler.”
    Indeed, the fund (not the boiler), just one in a long menu of pressing priorities at the local non-profit hospital, wasn’t randomly chosen to move local philanthropists to action. The Nursing Care Fund, established in 1999, is a necessary proactive measure to develop the profession before time runs out, say hospital administrators. It seems likely too that nurses, whom these days have more contact with patients than doctors do, would be a relatively sympathetic cause.
    But the nursing profession is in trouble nationwide and Charlottesville is no exception. Recent studies have estimated that by the year 2010, there will be a half-million vacant nursing positions across the country. Thanks to the physical and emotional demands of the job, along with stressful hours (many nurses work XX-hour shifts), the average nurse leaves the profession at 50. Factor in the aging Baby Boomer population, and nothing short of a crisis is soon to follow. By helping nurses to develop additional expertise and opening the door for some nurses to less hands-on work, the hospital rather optimistically hopes to stem that trend of attrition.
    “You have to remember, we are also bleeding our own nurses away,” says Susan Winslow, Martha Jefferson’s director of nursing education and community services. “They are highly adaptive to stress and therefore quite adaptive to other professions.”
    The Nursing Care Fund, which has already amassed $1.5 million in donations, will support projects such as consolidating nursing educators into a comprehensive education department within the hospital and creating the region’s first skills/simulation lab. In the lab, nurses-in-training could work extensively with mannequins and equipment before they get involved in direct patient care. Some of the fund will also be used to recruit retired nurses back into the field.
    “Nursing is back-breaking work, sometimes literally,” says Winslow. “We can bring inactive nurses back for less direct patient care with part-time positions in admissions, discharge and teaching.”
    Given that at Martha Jefferson, a hospital that boasts of its continuous-learning culture and reimburses its nurses for continuing ed classes, only 15 percent of 350 practicing RNs and LPNs currently are enrolled in some form of continuing professional education, it’s unclear if more money and equipment will drive nurses into the classroom. The campaign’s goal is to raise $3.5 million and hoist to 40 percent the share of Martha Jeff nurses undertaking additional training. —Kathryn E. Goodson

New ACC structure means ’Hoos could suck even worse

Recently, Boston College, University of Miami and Syracuse University accepted the NCAA’s invitation to join the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), of which UVA is also a member. The NCAA had considered extending an invitation to Virginia Tech, but decided against it.
The three new schools boast strong sports programs, and the TV networks that already fawn over the ACC will undoubtedly give the conference even more coverage. For publicity-hungry UVA, this news could be really good—or really bad. So this week we examine UVA’s conference record in various men’s sports during 2002-03 to see how the Cavaliers might stand up to the new competition.

Baseball
UVA: 28 wins, 23 losses (6th of 9 teams in ACC)
Boston: 33-21
Miami: 37-13
Syracuse: no team
Verdict: Maybe UVA and Syracuse can enjoy a fun game of Wiffle ball.

Football
UVA: 9-5 (2nd in ACC)
Boston: 9-4
Miami: 12-1 (2nd in the nation)
Syracuse: 4-8
Verdict: If Miami doesn’t kill UVA, the competition will make the Cavs’ strong team even stronger. It’s too bad the Athletic Department canned the Pep Band, since Miami’s thugs and Syracuse’s ineptitude would make for some great jokes.

Basketball
UVA: 16-16 (6th in ACC)
Boston: 19-12
Miami: 11-16
Syracuse: 30-5 (national champions)
Verdict: Despite its record, Miami has a better team than UVA. Looks like the Cavs’ butt will get three new bruises.

Soccer
UVA: 15-7 (4th in ACC)
Boston: 18-5
Miami: no team
Syracuse: 8-8-2
Verdict: The Cavs could give The University an ego boost by beating up on them d’urn Yankees.

Conclusion: Perhaps it’s a good thing Virginia Tech won’t be in the ACC. As UVA pours ever more dollars into sports instead of academics, the Cavaliers seem poised to stand alone as the school with a great football team, mediocre sports program and the butt of redneck jokes.

Research by the C-VILLE staff


Chemical reactions
Council gets gaseous in water discussion

Perhaps inspired by the evening’s main topics––gas and water––City Council turned their regular meeting on Monday, May 19, into a lesson on scientific principles.
    First, Council proved the law that says a gas (or a meeting) will always expand to the shape of its container. There were only four items on Monday’s agenda and the Councilors seemed to expect the meeting would move quickly. Yet Council managed to draw the evening out to its usual length, comparable to a leisurely Major League Baseball game.
    Most of the expansive dialogue covered the subject of the City’s utility rates. The agenda included a public hearing on rate hikes for gas, water and wastewater, proposed by City Finance Director Rita Scott.
    Gas prices, she says, increased sharply throughout the nation last winter, and the higher gas rates in the City reflected that trend. The City purchases gas from private suppliers.
    Charlottesville and Albemarle buy clean water from the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority (RWSA), which also handles wastewater treatment. As Council discussed whether to approve the proposed rate hikes, it illustrated a second scientific principle––objects (or politicians) at rest tend to stay at rest, until acted on by some kind of force.
    In this case, Councilors Kevin Lynch, Meredith Richards and Rob Schilling displayed a severe resistance to new fees. Each questioned how the rates were structured or exactly how the RWSA planned to spend the new money. Schilling, in particular, read a list of queries that ran on so long Mayor Maurice Cox had to bust out Council’s official guidelines and read “Please note, Councilors can make up to three points in discussion. Otherwise, have questions answered before the meeting.” (For those keeping score at home, that would be the mayoral version of “Shut up now.”)
RWSA Director Larry Tropea said that during last summer’s drought he heard from numerous citizens––especially those with business and real-estate interests––demanding the Authority increase the regional water supply. During the 1980s the Authority tried to build a new reservoir at Buck Mountain Creek, but Federal regulations and the endangered James River spineymussel consipired to thwart those efforts.
    So the RWSA now plans several other projects to increase supply. These include expanding the South Fork Rivanna reservoir by raising the dam and dredging sediment off the bottom. The Authority also will rebuild an old station on the Mechums River to pump water in case of emergency. The Authority also needs to repair dilapidated infrastructure, some of which is 100 years old, Tropea says.
    To pay for the projects, the RWSA is borrowing more than $24 million from the State, and on May 19 Scott said that more than half of the RWSA’s 2004 budget would be devoted to paying down that debt. The RWSA’s only source of revenue is the City and County, so this isn’t likely to be the last proposed rate hike, said Scott.
    But when Councilor Blake Caravati made a motion to approve the rate hikes, no one offered a second. Cox said he would not second the motion because he wanted to see if fellow Councilors really had the willpower to vote down the ordinance. Scott told Council that money would automatically come out of the City’s general fund to pay its water bill.
    Cox nearly pressured Richards to support the fees if the City agreed to study her question, but Schilling moved to revisit the matter on June 2 (which is destined to be another marathon meeting). Council agreed.
    “People were playing games, and now we’re in a pickle,” Caravati said. “Rivanna could turn off the taps if we don’t pay our bill.” ––John Borgmeyer

Return of the red glare
Local businesses return the spark to July 4

One week after finding out that Charlottesville’s July 4 fireworks were in jeopardy—again—the show is definitely back on. On Wednesday, May 21, nearly 30 people attended the inaugural meeting of the new Save the Fireworks committee, formed to ensure that the area still has stuff exploding in the sky come Independence Day.
    The move was needed after the Charlottesville Downtown Foundation, party poopers du jour, backed out of handling the festivities, which it had done during the previous two years. But Save the Fireworks member organizers assured meeting attendees that “no one’s mad” at CDF, as it already has “enough events set up to lose money.” In fact, he thanked the group and specifically Director Gail Weakley, who offered CDF’s contacts and expertise (but not, it should be noted, financial acumen) to the cause.
    Save the Fireworks will need the help. While the group has made impressive strides on the fundraising front—from local businesses (including C-VILLE Weekly) they’ve already netted enough to devote $15,000 solely to fireworks, and that was before a May 23 WINA radio pledge drive—their biggest task will be to organize a self-sustaining event that had been passed from group to group for years.
    But they’re determined to make this “the biggest show Charlottesville’s ever had, by a lot,” Caddell said. Contracts have been signed with Zambelli Fireworks International, one of the biggest pyrotechnics companies in the world and the people responsible for last year’s show. Those disappointed by the 2002 display needn’t worry, though. Caddell said Zambelli was displeased with its own performance (apparently, the fireworks were launched at the wrong time) and have pledged an extra 10 percent worth of product for this year.
“So that’s an additional $1,500 worth of firecrackers right there,” said Caddell.
    Save the Fireworks is also working with City Manager Gary O’Connell and others to hash out the various permit, parking and clean-up issues. CDF cited the high costs of shuttle buses and security as one of the reasons it dropped the event. But Save the Fireworks is considering corporate sponsorships to provide transportation alternatives to the McIntire Park/Charlottesville High School car crunch.
    As to whether Save the Fireworks had considered making money for the event by taking a cue from CDF’s new Fridays After 5 admission charge, Caddell answered with an emphatic no.
“My position is that mom and dad and kids shouldn’t have to pay to see this. It should be a taxpayer-funded event,” as it is in many municipalities, he said. “The County and City should participate equally and the surrounding localities ought to have some little thing they throw in, too.”
    For those looking to add their help to Save the Fireworks, another meeting will be held Wednesday, May 28, and there are still plenty of big jobs for any comers, said Caddell: “We’ll find a committee for them to be on. We still need people to handle the Port-a-Potties.” —Eric Rezsnyak