Author: c-ville-weekly-writers

Since Andrew Holden went to jail last month for staging a sit-in at a local hotel, he’s often been asked, “Was it worth it?” Despite suffering from what he calls “the worst medical treatment” he’s ever encountered, Holden says he actually found incarceration liberating. He admits most people won’t understand that feeling, but, he says, paradox is the essence of jail.

In September, Holden and two others were arrested for a sit-in at the Courtyard by Marriott on West Main Street, protesting the hotel industry’s low wages. Holden’s arrest violated the probation he received one year earlier for chaining himself to the elevators in the Omni Charlottesville Hotel. So on November 18, Holden began serving the 30-day suspended sentence he received for the Omni protest. As is standard for misdemeanor convicts, Holden served about half his time and was released on Tuesday, December 3.

On his first day of incarceration, Holden says, he became painfully aware of jailhouse contradictions. The Charlottesville-Albemarle Joint Security Complex recently added a new wing, complete with high-tech medical facilities, which happens to be a source of pride for jail administrators. Holden suffers from diabetes insipidus, which he says requires him to take 12 pills a day; when he got to jail, however, it took him 48 hours to get his medication.

“I was really sick,” he says. Holden says a medical ward employee told him that “I lost my right to medication. Those were her words. She said I should have thought about it before I got arrested.”

Unlike many inmates, however, Holden had friends and family calling the jail daily to make sure he got his medication. Holden’s father says his son’s life was at risk.

“Apparently somebody at the jail just blew him off,” says John Holden. But he telephoned the jail and secured the help of administrator Major Peggy Duncan. “It took her intervention to get Andrew’s medicine. I don’t know what would have happened otherwise.”

The jail’s medical director, Linda Ray, says she was unaware of the conflict.

Jail is an angry place, Holden says. Good behavior can earn inmates early release, however, so a shallow veneer of civility masks the hostility––barely, he says.

It’s not just inmates who are on edge. Holden says prisoners know their lives are often subject to the whims of the guards. Minor misbehavior will go unpunished some days, or earn an inmate a trip to solitary confinement other days.

“It’s a big deal what kind of mood a guard is in,” he says.

Holden and his father say people respond to prison life in one of two ways––they either help or compete.

Ironically, most jailmates are not there for committing violent acts. According to jail officials, the vast majority of inmates (who are mostly poor) are in for possession or distribution of illegal drugs.

“You see firsthand how unfair the Drug War is,” says Holden. “All kinds of people use illegal drugs, but only poor people end up in jail. And most of the inmates believe blacks get longer sentences than whites.”

If people aren’t violent before they’re locked up, they might end up that way, he adds.

“When you first get there, you have to look out for yourself,” says Holden. “You have to watch out for who you might have to fight, or who might take your stuff. It takes some time to relax after you get out.” Some older inmates, however, take pride in looking after new arrivals, he says.

A similar dichotomy holds true for jail employees, says John Holden, who identified two kinds of guards. “There are people who really care about others, and there are people who almost thrive on their power trip,” he says.

Jail time has done nothing to deter Andrew Holden from protesting in the name of a living wage.

“It’s a cliché that ‘four walls do not a prison make,’” he says. “Yet I’m more free than people who are afraid to confront the systems that hurt them. Confronting problems may not solve them right away, but when you lose fear, you can’t be controlled.”–– John Borgmeyer

---

Conservatives come out

Council told toback off—again

In casual conversation, people often call Charlottesville a “liberal” town, pointing to a City Council that is almost exclusively Democrat. But when residents appear before City Council, they usually come with a conservative agenda.

In other cities, people might hassle officials for not doing enough. Charlottesville seems to have the opposite problem—its government apparently does too much. The majority of speakers to Council are conservative; that is, they come begging the City to scale back a grand vision, slow down on a project and generally cease all its meddling. It seems most politically active residents of this so-called “liberal” town like the status quo just fine.

The latest planned changes to startle residents are a set of new zoning codes and a new building on Preston Avenue.

During City Council’s regular meeting on Monday, December 2, Ellen Catalano spoke on behalf of the presidents and vice-presidents of six neighborhood associations, who Catalano said agree that the new zoning codes threaten neighborhoods by favoring economic development over stability.

The revised zoning is part of Council’s vision of Charlottesville as the region’s urban center; the new rules will allow taller mixed-use buildings. Some of the most vehement opposition has come from residents who live near Jefferson Park Avenue as portions of those neighborhoods are designated “University Precincts,” into which Council hopes to funnel UVA’s expanding enrollment.

New zoning in the precinct will allow residential buildings up to seven stories tall with shops at street level. Planning director Jim Tolbert says this will permit students to live and shop within walking distance from UVA, thus reducing their dependence on cars. Dream on, say neighborhood activists.

Council has also caught much grief lately for its plans to redevelop the intersection of 10th Street and Preston Avenue. On December 2, several business owners in the former Monticello Dairy building on Preston Avenue said the project would hurt their businesses, and accused City Hall of developing the project in what Central Battery proprietor John Coleman called “a cloak of secrecy.”

Amy Spence, who owns a recording studio in the Monticello Dairy building, also spoke against the development at the meeting. She read a letter from Christopher McRae, manager of Integral Yoga, predicting the natural food store’s business could fall off by 50 percent during construction.

A recent presentation by Mayor Maurice Cox explaining Council’s long-range plans to nearby business owners helped soothe tensions, says Coleman. But he’s still irked at City Hall’s lackluster communication skills. “Potential opponents are always the last to know,” Coleman says.–– John Borgmeyer

---

Place your bets

Supes ready Albemarle Place for public hearing

In a lengthy work session on Wednesday, December 4, the Albemarle Board of County Supervisors prepared for the official public hearing on Albemarle Place, set for December 11.

Representatives of development firm Cox Planning, including lead planner Frank Cox, were on hand to request a change in zoning designations for the 62 acres of land between Hydraulic Road and the Comdial plant off Route 29N. With the site originally designated Light Industrial, the planners need a zoning change to Planned Unit Development before they can commence long-awaited work on the County’s largest mixed-use development.

Described by Supes Chairman Sally Thomas as the “biggest agenda project we’ve had to walk through in a long time,” Albemarle Place, which will include retail spaces, a movie theater, a hotel, restaurants, office buildings and 715 residential units, hasn’t been without its critics.

On the one hand, said Thomas, “I was pleased at how the planners and staff opened my eyes to how this would all fit into our community.” But on the other hand, “how will this fit into our capital improvements fund?”

The Board’s budget will require a big boost to support sidewalks and sewer and storm water facilities for the project. “A lot of the things that used to be funded in other ways,” said Supervisor Dennis Rooker, who represents the Jack Jouett district in which the development would be located, “must be funded by us.” Since the State used to cover such improvements, due to budgetary cutbacks, the County must now pay up.

Traffic and cars are other concerns. Although the Cox team has been tackling the issue since they first proposed the project in March 2001, some worry about automotive access to the development.

Not to mention parking. As Cox and his team discussed fancy ideas like “relegating parking,” which means hiding parking spaces under “green roofs” that support vegetation, questions turned to open space.

The green space closest to the site is Whitewood Park, and Rooker wondered how the new residents will recreate, literally . “It is not exactly an easy walk from the park to this new community,” he said. Among proposed solutions is the addition of an “urban gym,” although some worry that won’t be enough. “I’d also love to see something like a library in the area,” said Rooker.

Perhaps the most pressing concern about Albemarle Place, however, is its presumed market. “Short Pump has a complex like this,” said Rooker referring to a retail complex west of Richmond, “so what makes you think that it wouldn’t just be easier for the people living on the east end of Charlottesville to just go to Short Pump instead?” —Kathryn E. Goodson

Before long, family vacations may take you to the “redeemed” site of a former toxic dump. The unnatural history of such a park won’t necessarily be posted along the trail, either. More likely, the truth will be trapped beneath “cap and cover” vegetation and other peek-a-boo devices. Landscape architect Julie Bargmann refers to that process as “putting lipstick on a pig.”

Bargmann’s Charlottesville studio, Design Investigations Reclaiming Terrain (D.I.R.T.), offers a provocative counter to conventional makeovers of polluted sites. In her work, re-thinking degraded terrain isn’t a process of burial and disguise.

“I feel committed to giving the landscape a voice,” she explains. That voice may whisper of abuse, but it also speaks of the people who spent their lives in the factories, mines and industries that have shaped the country. Sometimes, too, a butterfly emerges from an acid mine.

For instance, in the former coal town of Vintondale, Pennsylvania, Bargmann—in collaboration with environmental artist Stacy Levy and others—converted a toxic property into a surreal, 35-acre public park. The ongoing project converts acid-mine drainage, a heavy-metal stew swept via rain from the mine into streams, destroying aquatic life and degrading water quality. At this park, visitors don’t stand before pristine falls but instead witness the psychedelic flow of a sulfuric acid stream downgrading its poisons, beautifully. As the water moves through limestone cleansing channels, it changes like a sunset from fiery orange to green, then blue.

In addition to helping create works like the Vintondale project, the 43-year-old Bargmann is an associate professor of landscape architecture at UVA, and conducts research there as well. In 1999 she taught a class at the controversial Ivy Landfill, where students proposed options for the site’s future, such as a park for extreme sports. Often, says Bargmann, she’s a student too, always prepared to try out a new technology. Tools like bioremediation and phytoremediation—using microbes and plants to detoxify an area—are her brushes, while dirty sites are the canvas.

There’s no end to the canvas, either—the country’s growing supply of long-lived toxic materials has become more and more a part of everyday life. In the United States alone there are more than 600,000 brownfields (industrial waste sites), ranging in size from a quarter of an acre to 1,300 acres.

Restoring these sites is expensive. Often the responsible party is long gone and the issue mired in politics—something Bargmann, who doesn’t consider herself a message-bearing eco-activist, has never embraced. “It’s healthier for me,” she says, laughing, “to focus on the landscape itself.” In the case of Vintondale, Bargmann and crew worked largely pro bono.

Rejuvenating toxic sites wasn’t always her goal. Bargmann began her career with a degree in sculpture. When studio work began feeling “too precious” she turned to landscape architecture, with an eye toward industrial ruins. Now she works more with forces than form, and rarely does so alone. Drawings help with visualization, but the interdisciplinary nature of her work involves engineers, scientists, artists and others.

While the collaborative effort and its lofty goals attract much favorable media attention, there’s also controversy surrounding Bargmann’s work. Not every company—or community—cares to unveil certain aspects of its history. After all, her job involves letting existing materials show through, even as a site undergoes metamorphosis. In Front Royal, for example, it was slow-going for the Avtex Fibers Plant when it tried to get the community’s approval to remediate the site. Not everyone felt that the place should be preserved.

Currently, Bargmann is working with the local think tank E Squared, as well as on Superfund sites (while the Bush administration has nixed the Superfund, an Environmental Protection Agency grant has allowed UVA to create the Center of Expertise for Superfund Site Recycling, with which she’s involved). She also has a book coming out in 2002, titled Toxic Beauty.

A serial rapist is on the loose in Charlottesville––police suspect the same man is responsible for at least five sexual assaults in the past six years, including a November 11 attack in the Willoughby subdivision. The violent nature of the attacks has attracted local media, but City and UVA rape counselors say rape, in all its varieties, is an almost everyday occurrence in Charlottesville.

Recently, C-VILLE uncovered the disparity between sexual assaults reported to police and those reported to Charlottesville’s Sexual Assault Resource Agency [EXTRA!, October 29], citing SARA data. The agency received 250 new calls for service in 2001, mostly for rape or attempted rape. That year, Charlottesville police received 21 rape reports.

Counselors at SARA and the UVA Women’s Center say the vast majority of rapes are perpetrated by men known to the victim. For women, reporting such rapes can be difficult because they and their attackers may have friends or family in common. Prosecuting so-called date rape is challenging, say lawyers, because there usually is no break-in, no knife to the throat, no witness and usually no proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Given the frequency of sexual assaults and the relative paucity of media reports on the subject, SARA client services coordinator Kristine Hall wonders whether local press such as The Daily Progress is interested in the City’s rape problem, or just the gory details of violent crime.

“When we hear there’s a serial rapist in the community, the perception is that it’s something uncommon,” says Hall. “The reality is that these things are happening every day. SARA’s daily activities center around the fact that sexual assaults are fairly frequent in our community, and that most sex offenders are serial,” says Hall.

Using DNA evidence, Charlottesville police have linked five unsolved sexual assaults between February 1997 and November 11. The attacks occurred on Jefferson Park Avenue, 13th Street NW, Emmet Street and Willoughby, as well as one attack in Waynesboro. Two victims were UVA students.

The announcement from law enforcement officials linking these and possibly other rapes has created no visible stir at UVA, says Claire Kaplan, sexual assault coordinator at UVA’s Women’s Center. “I bet when students come back from vacation, if there’s another incident, we’ll see an escalation in worry,” Kaplan says.

Like Hall, she says heightened attention on the attacks of a single rapist obscures the ubiquitous reality of sexual assault.

“There are people doing this kind of thing all the time that we don’t hear about,” she says. “The only difference is this guy is attacking people he doesn’t know.” When women are raped by acquaintances, Kaplan says, “they’re silenced by that.”

More ominously, the police report actually can lure women into a false sense of security, Kaplan says. “They can reassure themselves by saying, ‘I don’t fit the victim profile,’ or ‘I lock my doors,’” she says.

Hall says that in America a sexual assault occurs every two minutes; every nine minutes, an agency like SARA gets another call for service. But only the most disturbing crimes garner wider attention.

“The community rallies around those incidents because they feed our worst fears,” she says. “But fear is generally based on myth and misconception. All sexual assault is violent, and most of the cases we see involve pre-existing relationships.”–– John Borgmeyer

Chelsea south

Artsy galleries flood Water Street

Earlier this year some Downtown property owners floated an idea to officially turn the Mall into a tourist district. Some critics reckoned it would herald the Disney-fication of Charlottesville, polluting the Mall’s charm with middlebrow consumerism while bringing big bucks into the district. Meanwhile, one block south, a shopping and entertainment scene is shaping up on Water Street, spicing up the Mall with highbrow consumerism while bringing big bucks into the district. It’s being modeled after a neighborhood far to the north.

Lyn Bolen Rushton, owner of Les Yeux du Monde gallery, likens what is shaping up as the City’s new art corridor to “Charlottesville’s own little Chelsea.” Leah Stoddard, director of Second Street Gallery, which soon will relocate to Water Street, also invokes the Manhattan district when she describes SSG’s future home in the City Center for Contemporary Arts.

“The way it looks will be more akin to a gallery in Chelsea,” Stoddard says. “The floor will be polished cement, and the ceiling will be 14’ high.”

With Second Street Gallery set to share new digs with Live Arts and Lighthouse at the C3A, as it’s being dubbed, and Les Yeux du Monde settled already for two months in its new home one block away at the corner of Water and First streets, not to mention new money coming into even the guerilla art spaces, Water Street is getting pretty slick in parts. Swanky art spaces, upscale home-furnishing shops and restaurants are folded around a City bus stop and a couple of drab office fronts.

If Water Street is our Chelsea, then Nature Gallery, a decidedly more underground gallery run by John Lancaster and located at the back of the Jefferson Theater directly next door to the C3A, is the bohemian hideout that crouched there before the area got trendy. Lancaster says in three years it’s been a long, dirty process to turn the space—which features an 80-foot ceiling—into a presentable gallery.

“We had to build walls and clean out decades’ worth of trash,” he says. “The space has been used for lots of different purposes since 1915, so there was lots of interesting stuff back there.”

By contrast, the Les Yeux du Monde gallery is brand new, and so will be Second Street’s space. As has been previously reported, Second Street Gallery, with two exhibition rooms, will be better able to show films and projections, run children’s programming and otherwise expand its offerings, possibly putting the gallery on the road to a national reputation.

Rushton’s gallery has followed a salon-to-spectacle trajectory, starting out first in her home and now joining in a marquee space with E. G. Designs in the venture they call Dot2Dot. It occupies the corner retail space of the new chic Terrace and sells artwork and late-Modern furniture. Rushton’s vision is decidedly upscale and destination-cozy. “We’re going to have films and poetry readings, sell books and make it a more comfortable space to hang out,” she says. “We consider everything in the gallery to be art.”

Nature Gallery is setting its sights higher, too. Nature’s Lancaster recently went into partnership with the Consortium for Advancement of the Arts. Thus, his gallery has more funding and a new name—the Downtown Gallery at Nature (Predictably, people will persist in calling it Nature just as we say “Monticello” instead of the more cumbersome name of its benefactor, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation). Lancaster promises no compromise on his edgy programming, however. “We’re on the same page as far as what we’re looking to show,” he says, “highly original new art that’s thought-provoking.”

It’s a small world, after all.— Erika Howsare

 

Let it begin with me

Locust Grove group goes global; others follow

Heartened by recent news that the people of Charlottesville’s Locust Grove community declared the prospect of a U.S.-sponsored war on Iraq to be a threat to their neighborhood, on November 26 the United Chechen Front issued a statement requesting that other neighborhood associations in Central Virginia take a similar stand on international relations.

“It is our sincere hope that the good people of Johnson Village will recognize the link between the Chechen people’s struggle for liberation from the chokehold of that Czarist swine Putin and their own neighborhood security,” said Ilyas Bagayev from his hidden headquarters in Grozny. “That is, if they have resolved the issue of the rotting playground at their nearby elementary school.”

While there was no immediate comment from Johnson Village representatives, rumors soon circulated that members of the Belmont Neighborhood Association, newly cognizant of their international duties, were poring over a map of Asia to locate the hot spot most in need of support from the residents of Altavista Avenue. North Korea was mentioned. At press time, no resolution had been passed.

In its November 14 statement, the Locust Grove Neighborhood Association had cited the example of late Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone as their spur to action. In the days since that announcement, and no doubt inspired by the courageous stance of the Locust Grovians, residents of Ednam Forest have declared their political allegiances, too.

“With Jesse Helms as our guide, we resolve to let the people of Zimbabwe work out their own disputes,” the Ednam association said in a news release. “Their anti-Mugabe stance doesn’t really affect us, and even if it did, there is no direct flight from Matabeleland to Charlottesville, so we figure we can avoid a lot of the fallout.”

Speaking through an envoy, Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change replied, “Thanks a helluva lot.”

With the traditional “too-busy” season upon us, members of the Charlottesville press are expecting a downswing in pronouncements from neighborhood groups. Once the new year turns, however, there is widespread hope that resolutions will be issued regarding Haiti, Cuba, Kashmir and Martha’s Vineyard.—Cathryn Harding

Ashlin and Lloyd Smith, like many Charlottesvillians, are no strangers to the clash between developers and residents. The Smiths are also no strangers to “firsts”: Lloyd was among the earliest members of the Downtown Board of Architectural Review in the late 1960s and Ashlin was one of the founding members of Preservation Piedmont in 1993, as well as one of the first artists to settle into the McGuffey Art Center. It comes as no surprise then to find they were also instrumental in the preservation of Park Street during its nascent stages—and have remained so for the past 38 years.

When bulldozers arrived at the house (now known as 630 The Park Lane Apartments) next door to the Smiths in 1964, they knew that it was only the beginning of development on the quiet, historic Park Street they had grown to love. They also knew they had to do something, so they began buying adjacent houses themselves.

Long before the Smiths bought their 620 Park St. residence in 1961, the street had been zoned R3 (meaning it could support apartment complexes). Law offices, accountants and insurance companies were already spreading from Court Square north onto the line of Victorians and Queen Annes that completes the street today. While discussing the influx of commercial business with neighbors one day, the Smiths quickly found they weren’t the only concerned Park Street residents—Charles Webb, Lucious Bracey and Dick Howard were growing worried about the fate of their street, too.

The four families decided to pool their money and purchase the house at 621 Park St. The Smiths drew up closing papers with stern restrictions against subdividing it or turning the property into a multi-family residence. “We were never out to make a profit,” says Lloyd, “we just wanted to save our street.”

Raising small children, beginning to restore their own home and struggling with new careers (Lloyd started as a litigator at Tremblay and Smith in 1967), the Smiths and their neighbors continued to buy. They purchased three more residences, in fact, including the Frazier White house at 702 Park St. They even put up a fight with a senior center at one point, unwilling to take any more chances on so-called growth.

The Smiths and company then took their fight to City Hall armed with a handful of signed petitions. Finally, in 1991, the City permanently re-zoned Park Street (from Comyn Hall northward) to R-1A (residential, single-family units).

Ashlin, currently serving her second term as president of Preservation Piedmont, has, with her board members, spared the lives of many bridges, roads and homesites in Charlottesville, Albemarle, Nelson, Buckingham, Fluvanna, Greene and Louisa. She doesn’t strive to protect other people’s heritages only. She and Lloyd have spent the past 40 years refining their own 1894 home, too.

They’ve worked together for a long time as a team, but even as preservation partners they have differing views on the subject. Somewhat frustrated with his stint on the BAR, for instance, Lloyd says architects “are very glib.

“Perhaps even more glib than lawyers,” he adds.

“Ashlin and I sometimes disagree about preservation,” Lloyd says. “You do need extra places for people to live. Otherwise, we’d all still be living in tepees God knows where.”

About a year ago, John Coleman noticed that the parking spaces outside his business, Central Battery Specialists on Grady Avenue, had been changed. What had previously been all-day free parking now had two-hour time limits. According to the landlord, Ivy Realty and Management, the City had made the change. So Coleman, who has been in business at that neighborhood for 15 years, made an appointment with then-mayor Blake Caravati.

“I went in there with guns drawn,” says Coleman, upset the City hadn’t consulted him about a change that could affect his business. Further, he wondered whether the City was planning a project at the convoluted intersection where Preston and Grady avenues and 10th Street meet.

The parking change, it turns out, had been made by Ivy Realty after all. According to Coleman, Caravati said any City plans to build on Preston were on “the back burner.” Now, however, it’s not so clear who’s culpable. The City is planning a one-acre mixed-use housing development right in front of the former Monticello Dairy building, where Central Battery is now located. Coleman says the City neglected to inform business owners about the plans. Furthermore, he says, City leaders don’t seem to care that nearby businesses may suffer because of the construction.

“The City doesn’t want to engage those who might have a problem with this project. That’s fundamentally wrong,” Coleman says. “It’s the hint of arrogance I find distressing.”

Despite Caravati’s assurances in 2001, Coleman began to suspect at that time that the City had plans for Preston when he saw utilities workers marking gas and water lines on the median with spray paint. Finally, in August, the City’s head of strategic planning, Satyendra Huja, held a meeting for the 30 neighborhood businesses. Huja unveiled drawings for Preston Commons, projected to contain 50,000 square feet of housing, 2,800 square feet of office space and a partially underground parking deck for 70 cars.

“Huja implied that we had missed the boat,” says Coleman. “The City acted as if it had already been decided, there’s nothing you can do. It was laid out the same way as when I tell my kids, ‘Because I said so.’”

Coleman vented his frustrations to City Council during its regular meeting on Monday, November 18. Caravati didn’t respond. Mayor Maurice Cox, however, said the project enjoyed wide support.

“It seems like we’ve lived with this for a long time,” said Cox. “Hundreds of people in the neighborhood have talked about wanting a more urban style of living. It is a radical change, and it needs to be understood and supported by the people who will benefit from it.”

Coleman says that sounds “like a spin job.”

Cox also said the City has an idea for the project, but not specific plans. Huja has put out a request for proposals to match the City’s idea for Preston Commons; interested developers must submit applications by January 6. Huja requests that the developer begin construction 120 days after winning the contract.

Preston Commons was originally envisioned by local architect Gaither Pratt in 1999. Ironically, now Pratt is circulating a petition to halt the project. He says it is the lack of public input that has produced only one design concept, even though the City said in the past that big projects should have several different designs available.

The controversy over Preston Commons likely is a harbinger of future debates. Proposed changes in City zoning codes have also caused a stir among residents who are uncomfortable with the higher density that will be allowed in some neighborhoods, including Preston-Grady.

Coleman, meanwhile, doesn’t want to be a guinea pig in the Council’s urban-design lab. Because Central Battery serves mostly drive-up customers, Coleman predicts his business will fall off during construction of Preston Commons. If so, he vows to relocate to Albemarle County. If he does move, it would mean the loss of a business that has managed to succeed in a place where many have failed.

“This is my ass on the line, and I don’t like my ass being discussed so cavalierly,” he says. “This is a signal to the business community that you’re dispensable.”––John Borgmeyer

 

Wage war

Two activists put the cost of living on trial 

Charlottesville General District Court begins at 9am. Before that, the courtroom is closed, so the folks scheduled to appear before the judge––either by virtue of profession, arrest warrant or subpoena––wait in front of the police station on Market Street for their cue.

On Monday, November 18, lawyers huddled with their clients; defendants stood alone or with family and friends, some smoking cigarettes; police officers bustled in and out of the station; and about 15 people sat together on the curb. Two of them, Andrew Holden and Jennifer Conner, held a poster that declared “Living Wage Now.” The rest sat quietly; moving only to lift their feet off Market Street when a police officer told them not to block the right of way.

Of all the defendants waiting for court that morning, Holden and Conner were probably the only ones who made a deliberate decision to land there. Around 11am on September 9, 16 people walked into the lobby of the Courtyard by Marriott on West Main Street, loudly chanting for the hotel to raise its minimum wage. Charlottesville’s Living Wage campaign originated at UVA several years ago, and since then UVA, the City and the County have all pledged to pay employees more than the $8 per hour activists advocate as a “living wage.” Two years ago, activists took their protests to the private sector. They targeted the hotel industry because it tends to pay housekeepers low wages for dirty work, and because the housekeepers tend to be single mothers or immigrants with families. Every Friday for the past two years, protesters have focused on the Marriott, which they see as a symbol for corporate chains that use underpaid labor to support a high-end image.

When police broke up the sit-in last September, all but three protesters left. Holden, Conner and 17-year-old Ian Burke were then arrested.

The juvenile court last month found Burke guilty of trespassing. He got a six-month deferred sentence. On November 18, Conner and Holden didn’t expect to be so lucky. Despite previous arrests for protesting at the White House and at a military base in Georgia, Conner didn’t have a police record and was not concerned for herself. Holden, however, was one of four protesters who chained themselves inside the elevators at the Omni Charlottesville Hotel in July 2001. The stunt earned him and his comrades a suspended 30-day jail sentence and two years probation.

Conner and Holden served as their own defense on November 18 before Charlottesville District Court Judge Robert H. Downer, Jr. A Marriott manager testified against them, as did the arresting police officer.

“I got their attention and told them to leave,” said the officer. “Most of them left. The three that stayed said, ‘We’re not going anywhere. Do what you have to do.’ They weren’t violent or aggressive. They just got down on the floor.”

In her defense Conner said the Marriott has so far refused to meet with activists to discuss the hotel’s minimum wage. In her job at a foster care agency, Conner said she sees the effects on parents who must choose between spending time with their children or working multiple jobs to provide for them.

“Because the Marriott continues to trespass on their workers’ dignity by not paying them a living wage, despite the efforts of so many, I have felt it necessary to act beyond the bounds of what is considered acceptable,” she said in a prepared statement.

Downer, who previously sentenced the Omni activists, said he understood the protesters’ point of view. “But if you act this way, you’ll have to pay the consequences,” said the judge.

For Conner, it meant a 30-day suspended jail sentence, two years probation and five hours of community service. Holden got a similar sentence; but because his conviction violated the probation he received after the Omni incident, he was taken to the Charlottesville-Albemarle Regional Jail on Avon Street Extended to begin serving his 30-day sentence.

Immediately, activists sent e-mails to at least 100 people to plot responses to Holden’s incarceration. After discussing a jailhouse protest, it seems the consensus is to keep attention aimed at the Marriott.––John Borgmeyer

 

Toy story

The French invade Earlysville with tiny trucks 

The two-level yellow house in Earlysville doesn’t look like it would be the American branch of an international toy company. There are half barrels of plants on either side of the entrance, two cars in the driveway and carved wooden bears greeting visitors on the porch. Only the Foosball table in the middle of the kitchen gives a clue that this isn’t your average family home.

Consider, also, that while the domestic branch of the French company has some 50 employees and the capacity to produce hundreds of small-scale cars and trucks at a moment’s notice, the American branch has…Kim.

Kim Robinson is the general manager and only full-time employee at the American branch of the Eligor Company. Founded in France in 1978 and brought to the United States in 1999, Eligor makes high-quality die-cast cars and trucks.

These aren’t your father’s toy cars, however, and they’re not Matchbox cars, either. While Eligor started as a car collectible company, producing such classic automobiles as the European Bugatti and American Ford V8 pick-ups, it was with the 1988 introduction of the truck line that things took off.

“Today the truck part of our business is 80 percent,” says Anne Marie Vullierme, co-owner of Eligor with her husband, Paul. The mini trucks are sold to companies such as Michelin, Volvo, Great Dane and Kenworth, which use them as promotional tools or schwag at company anniversary parties. “It’s almost business-to-business,” Vullierme says.

Even with such a nifty product to market, Eligor’s ascension in America has been slow. “We had to start from scratch,” says Vullierme. American cars can be quite different from European cars; that distinction holds for trucks, too. The company has spent much of the past few years designing new products, acquiring licenses to manufacture parts and introducing its cars and trucks at trade shows. And while the post-September 11 economy put a damper on business, “Now it seems it is picking up well,” says Vullierme.

For six weeks of the year, Robinson, who otherwise works alone, has Vullierme for company in Earlysville. The owner comes mostly for shows and exhibits around the country.

The Vulliermes purchased the company seven years ago, although Anne Marie says they have “always been in the toy business.”

At present, the Vulliermes’ son John is in Earlysville, too, fixing up a Web site, which, to the chagrin of the French, was constructed entirely in English.

For the occasional group they comprise, Robinson and the two Vulliermes share a nice synergy. For every fourth question they are asked they exchange glances and laugh, as if the answer has been long debated around the dinner table. “How do you like working for the family business?” for instance, receives looks and laughter. “How often do you come to the States?” gets more glances and laughter. And “What made you choose Charlottesville?” emits the most laughter of all.

As for the last query, John replies with a chuckle that “It’s the Jefferson factor,” whatever that means in regard to toy trucks.

Anne Marie Vullierme is excited at the possibility of being part of TJ’s neighborhood. She is eager to meet other small businesses in the community. Apparently, some other firms have already discovered Eligor. It recently produced old-fashioned cars for the Auto Appraisal Group, a local company.

Can die-cast scale trolleys be far behind?—Allison M. Knab

No doubt the ancient Greeks had something we might call a culture, as did the Persians, Egyptians and Phoenicians. An Appalachian quilt, a plate of spaghetti or a vase is created according to values, principles and traditions; these cannot be proven or disproven. Culture is irrational. To maintain a culture you have to guard it, fight off outside influences that might taint its purity and attack whomever and whatever threatens its pristine force. But the Greek artists, and their followers through the centuries, never needed to avoid the taint of foreign contact. Instead of being committed to promulgating cultural values, principles and traditions, Greek art sought truth – the telling of things as they are. Thus, the Greek philosophers and artists whose names and works have come down to us were the enemies of culture, the liberators of the individual mind from the irrational tyranny of culture.

While the epics of Roland or Gilgamesh extol the warrior virtues of their sentimental heroes, the Greek Iliad is about a warrior who refuses to fight. It neither denies the glory of the warrior tradition nor shrinks from demonstrating the cruelty and suffering caused by it. The classics purely show by means of artistic metaphor how life is – beautiful, painful, glorious, shameful, lonely, joyful, sad.

One of the more astute spiritual children of Homer was the Athenian playwright Sophocles, who took a barbaric myth about a man who kills his father and sleeps with his mother and turned it into a play called Oedipus Rex, about a man searching for the cause to the suffering in the city he rules, only to discover that he is the cause.

In turn, one of Sophocles’ locally astute spiritual children, Rita Dove, America’s former poet laureate, has drawn inspiration from the Sophocles tragedy to create The Darker Face of the Earth, which recently ended its run at Piedmont Virginia Community College under the able direction of Teresa Dowell-Vest, who is quite astute herself.

A white plantation owner in antebellum South Carolina has found herself pregnant by one of her slaves. The child is secreted away to be sold and raised in bondage and by chance is bought by his mother 20 years later. Neither he nor the woman nor his father knows the truth of his origin. Augustus, the prodigal slave, plans a revolt and begins an affair with his mother (not knowing she’s his mother) and of course he is doomed, as are they all.

Borrowing from history but not trapped in anemic historicism, Dove manages to create a plantation which feels organically possible and dramatically flexible, yet is cut loose from the sentimental Gone With the Wind conventions. This alone is a magnificent achievement. But the play has other strengths as well – great ones. A soaring spirit, a defiant anti-sentimentality and an effective mix of humor and brutality are but a few. The acting is committed and energetic, although there is the constant amateur mistake of energy displaced by actors shifting on their feet and, at times, awkwardness with cues and transitions. Lighting and scene design are effective, by Larry Hugo and William T. Hurd, respectively. And Dorothy Smith‘s costumes were excellent – particularly her rag-tag revolutionary army (though the coachman’s sweat pants weren’t quite disguised enough).

Darker Face feels unfinished in some respects. The hoodoo woman’s cabin scenes are essential and played well but don’t quite work, and the subtheme of the Haitian revolt would be more effective if the slaves were asking Augustus to give them information about something they had already heard rumors about. But these are tactical details. The overarching problem with Darker Face is not Dove’s failings but theater’s.

Watching this play, one realizes how far modern theater is from possessing effective storytelling techniques. To tell a story truthfully, you have to believe there is a truth to tell. Yet, belief in and respect for culture allows for no individual truth except personal feelings. The lyric mode, that is, the expression of personal feelings, gives individuals some breathing room within the monolith of culture, but even that isn’t enough. The lyric form is an appropriate vehicle for characters who are trying to make meaningful lives within the culture of slavery, but it doesn’t work if the task is to give expression to those who refuse to respect culture.

Rita Dove is by profession a poet of lyric expression, and an extremely good one. Lyric poetry is practically the only poetry America has these days, possibly the only poetry America has ever had. For those attuned to lyricism – the expansion and contemplation of personal experience – everything I’ve just said is untrue, and you should find Darker Face effective from beginning to end. But many of us need rhythmic variation in two hours of theater as we would in two hours of music. Darker Face‘s lyricism is beautiful: lyric speech, lyric songs, lyric movements, lyric staging. But there’s too much of it, or more precisely, not enough of something else.

What that something else is, I don’t know. Other kinds of poetry, certainly. Still, I loved Darker Face of the Earth because it is a threat to the culture of theater, a stubborn unshaped mass of truth defiantly telling us what we don’t know how to do and hinting at what we might be able to do.

Dove has gone to the Greeks with questions and that is an assertion in and of itself that questions are worth asking, that there could be such a thing as truth. The liberating power of the classics is that they don’t give us answers. They offer no irrational value- or tradition-oriented beliefs. They remain for us the liberation from whatever irrational value or tradition is currently imprisoning our minds and souls, because all culture is a prison, and truth is the only way out.

On Friday, November 8, Architect-Mayor Maurice Cox delivered a jargon-heavy lecture on his vision for the future of Charlottesville–something about creating public spaces through the juxtaposition of built form and whatnot. On Saturday, a green cardboard dragon-car trampled picnickers and excreted pavement on the floor of Nature Gallery.

The two events had nothing to do with each other, except for one thing–each manifested the belief that the future of Charlottesville can be planned democratically. The Mayor’s lecture outlined his plan for a dense, urbanized Charlottesville. The car skit was part of an "Un-Road Show" organized by the local activist group Alternatives to Paving. Both events were short on details and long on faith in the power of ambitious design and public participation.

Cox’s slide show at UVA’s School of Architecture traced the influences of his architectural work to Italy, where he was inspired by the idea that cities "could be planned by form, not by zoning," he said.

Cox’s vision of a dense Charlottesville, where people walk for groceries and ride buses to work, is getting more real as the City Department of Neighborhood Planning and Development Services drafts major changes to the zoning ordinances. When the changes are approved by City Council next year, they will likely spawn major increases in certain City neighborhoods such as Fifth Street Extended, Fifeville, Cherry Avenue and Jefferson Park Avenue. The Mayor’s talk also alluded to City plans to develop the Mall’s east end and make West Main Street more pedestrian-friendly.

Not everyone will be happy about the changes. Just as people threatened to sue or lay down in front of bulldozers during construction of the Downtown Mall in the mid-1970s, the current proposed zoning changes are inciting discontent. "It’s an expected consequence of working in the public realm that people will not always understand the vision," Cox said.

After more than an hour, the Mayor’s will to lecture was outlasting the audience’s desire to listen, and there was almost a collective sigh of relief when Cox–an associate professor of architecture at UVA who’s obviously comfortable at a podium–finally asked for questions.

Perhaps he could have taken some cues from the Un-Road Show, sponsored by Alternatives to Paving, an activist group organized by perennial Council candidate Stratton Salidis and his many family members. The group lured people into Nature with promises of folk music from Devon and Paul Curerri, then slipped politics into the punchbowl.

ATP covered the walls of Nature with various morally charged maps of future road projects (bad) and the Rivanna Trails system (good). There were pictures of innovative public transit trams from Oregon, an explanation–captioned in cursive by Dave Norris, chairman of the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority board–about how auto-centric sprawl makes things tough for poor people. Slogans like "Roads=Sprawl=Oil=War" abounded. The topper was a skit featuring the fictional politician Joe Slick who feeds tax dollars to a cardboard dragon car that excretes roads and big-box developments.

During the festivities, City Councilor Kevin Lynch made sand art while Harrison Rue, director of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, picked his guitar and sang his ode to smart growth, "The Unjam Song."

Cox’s lecture, and the participation of leaders like Norris, Lynch and Rue in the Un-Road Show, indicate that in Charlottesville, ambitious visions of change are not just the province of freshly politicized University students or disenfranchised youth. Both the Mayor and Salidis, however, say the real trick is getting voters to bestow a public mandate on big ideas.

"If people actually exercised their power to vote, we wouldn’t have these massive road projects," said Salidis at Nature, possibly overstating things. Cox, however, believes public support can make it easy for leaders to resist noisy critics.

"Now is the time to think long-term and not be blinded by the moment," says Cox.– John Borgmeyer

 

Outside interference

Supes consider if WVIR will get a 250′ tower

Come 2006, if you haven’t gone digital, you could be kissing your UVA football and "Friends" reruns goodbye. That is, if the Federal Communications Commission and Albemarle County Supervisors don’t pull the plug on your cathode ray pleasures first.

On Wednesday, November 13, Harold Wright, vice president of Virginia Broadcasting Corporation and general manager of WVIR-Channel 29, came before the Board of County Supervisors to request they approve the construction on Carter’s Mountain of a 250′ lattice tower mounted with a 50′ antenna for digital broadcast television.

The new obelisk would be the latest addition to the 11 structures known as the "tower farm," which already top the mountain property owned by Crown Orchard. But WVIR isn’t just edgy to update its toys – it has the FCC breathing down its neck to switch from the current analog system to one that is solely digital, which, says Wright, is why WVIR is "desperately under the gun."

Built in 1972, WVIR’s current tower on Carter’s Mountain had earned WVIR the phrase "Virginia’s most powerful station." The proposed new tower, with its ability to distribute 5 million watts into the airwaves, has only one problem – its purpose is to serve digital customers only. That means WVIR would need to keep its existing tower, too, until the year 2006 much to the chagrin of local environmentalists, like Jeff Werner of the Piedmont Environmental Council, who likens the existing towers to "litter."

Still, WVIR has exhausted all of its options. "The old tower with its 4,000-pound antenna simply cannot hold any more weight," says Wright, "and if we are forced to take the old tower down before building the new one, that will mean we will be off the air for two weeks." Not only will lost air time upset local viewers of the NBC affiliate, WVIR could lose its federal license, as well.

In March, 2001, the FCC gave Wright and WVIR one year to plan and build the new digital facility. Having already received one extension until December 1, 2002 for the planning and approval stages, Wright doubts he will get another one. "I encourage you to pass this today," Wright said to the Board, "because it already took me a year to deal with my landlord and others and get the motion this far." Wright furthers that if he is forced into using a temporary, low-power transmitter because no plans were presented to the FCC before his December 1 deadline, the 1,000-watt facility would serve only the City and the surrounding 10-mile radius. The rest of the County will be left to listen to the radio.

The Board moved to defer a decision until its December 4 meeting, and WVIR is running out of time – and options.

"If this new tower is not approved," says Wright, "I will cancel my lease on the old tower and move to another location. Our license depends on it. We will have no other choice." – Kathryn E. Goodson

 

Precinct politics

With rezoning, UVA neighborhoods could get denser

When the Planning Commission held its regular meeting at City Hall on Tuesday, November 12, they gathered an hour earlier than usual to listen as Jinni Benson, a planning consultant, conducted a question-and-answer session on the City’s new zoning ordinances.

Sixty minutes, however, was hardly enough time to discuss all 73 different sections of the inch-thick draft ordinance. There was just enough time for Benson to explain details of some of the more controversial changes, including the rezoning of some neighborhoods around UVA into higher-density "University Precincts," dodge some of the more difficult questions from the gallery, then duck quickly out of City Council chambers when the hour was up.

The University Precinct designation allows developers to build seven-storey buildings close to the road in certain neighborhoods adjacent to UVA, with a density of up to 64 units per acre. The City will also allow new developments to have retail and commercial space on the ground floors.

The prospect of such urbanization is irritating to residents like Elizabeth Kutchai, vice-president of the Jefferson Park Avenue neighborhood association. She’s also upset by the fact that the City will not require developers to provide off-street parking for the new units. The City believes if students can walk to classes and grocery stores, they won’t bring their cars to Charlottesville, or they’ll park them in garages, easing the burden of `Hoo traffic in City streets. On October 4, UVA Vice-President Leonard Sandridge revoked the right of first-year students to bring cars to school during their spring semester, saying that construction projects like the new basketball arena will reduce parking on Grounds.

"It’s a risk to reduce parking and increase density," Benson admitted.

"It’s baloney," Kutchai said later.

Kutchai, who participated in several community meetings on the proposed ordinance changes, says JPA residents have strongly opposed higher density. But neighborhood feelings, she says, have taken a back seat to City and commercial interests. The University Precinct will keep students inside the City, where they add to Census totals but don’t burden the public school system; the developers who can build the profitable high-density units also support the plan.

During the Q&A, someone in the gallery wondered why the City, and particularly neighborhood residents, had to suffer the housing crunch prompted by UVA’s swelling enrollment. "Why can’t UVA solve its own problems?" he wondered.

Benson passed the question to Jim Tolbert, director of Neighborhood Planning. "Philosophically, you’re right," Tolbert said. "But we could talk about that all night, and there’s only 20 minutes left in the public hearing."– John Borgmeyer

 

Vision quest

The Paramount expects A-list acts to grace its stage

In order to understand The Paramount Theater Inc.’s vision for the future of The Paramount Theater, everyone must put on their rose-colored glasses. Now we are ready to imagine the transformation of the Downtown Mall theater that has been closed since 1974 – and is currently boarded up by plywood disguised as murals – into Charlottesville’s future leading performance theater. Or is this simply too hard to imagine?

According to Chad Hershner, executive director of The Paramount Theater Inc. – the group of individuals formed in 1992 with the mission of saving The Paramount – the once-bright lights of the theater marquee will soon shine again. And it is his belief that The Paramount will be announcing performances by diva Natalie Cole, singer/songwriters Alison Krauss and Bruce Hornsby, comedians Sinbad and Jeff Foxworthy, and classic old-timers including The Drifters and The Platters (never mind the fact that four of the five original members of The Platters are dead).

The recent surge in the development of the arts and culture scene in Charlottesville is everywhere apparent, exemplified by the popularity of venues for fine and performing arts such as Piedmont Virginia Community College’s V. Earl Dickinson Building and Live Arts, which will be moving into the new City Center for Contemporary Arts on Water Street after construction is completed next fall. Still, the question remains: Is it possible for The Paramount, which has been closed for more than 25 years, to become a viable Downtown center for the arts?

Robert Chapel, chairman of the UVA Department of Drama and producing artistic director of the Heritage Repertory Theatre, is confident it can. The Paramount’s success is guaranteed because of its ability to present shows – concerts, stand-up comedy and movie presentations – that other venues cannot. "The Paramount will serve a different function than the rest of us," says Chapel. "So far in Charlottesville, each of the arts venues has its own identity. People who go to Live Arts also come to Heritage and so on. But each entity has its own personality, and I’m sure that The Paramount will have its own personality, and that’s what attracts people."

Like Hershner, Chapel doesn’t perceive competition between the venues. For one thing, The Paramount will accommodate between 1,000 and 1,100 seats, while the new Live Arts space is intended to seat 395 people in three theater spaces. Chapel believes the various-sized arts centers will complement each other. "We all feel that the more arts in Charlottesville, the better," he says.

Chapel attributes the success and quality of his Heritage productions to his own hard work, yet maintains that hard work is not a foolproof formula for a theater’s success. Chapel believes it is rather The Paramount’s uniqueness that will attract the kind of shows for which Hershner strives.

As The Paramount’s reopening is tentatively scheduled for winter 2003 or spring 2004, the Paramount Theater Inc. is currently raising funds to meet its goal of $14,400,620 and finalizing the floor plans for what it calls "the new Paramount." Having completed the pre-demolition work, Hershner is hoping to begin active construction work and full restoration and renovation by December.

Donations exceeding $300,000 each from the County and the Commonwealth, as well as $500,000 from the City, will certainly help Hershner and associates, if not to resurrect The Platters, then at least to achieve their goal: to restore "the grandeur of a Charlottesville landmark and to create a lively center offering programs to entertain and educate, enchant and enlighten."—Maura O’Brien

For Dominick Palamenti, theater is a family affair. He first became involved in theater while living in Italy, working in Shakespeare troupes. When he moved to New York City to study acting, he met Sea Aviar, whom he married. Aviar was originally from Virginia, and when the couple decided three years ago to move back, it was the theater scene that drew them to Charlottesville. "It seemed alive and accessible," Palamenti says.

When in Charlottesville, Palamenti met Janine Reagan, president of Horseshoe Bend Players in Scottsville, which he regarded as a "small group with a great space." With Aviar, Palamenti took on a collection of one-act plays, directing two and acting in a third for Horseshoe Bend. It was all part of his plan to "re-energize the mission of bringing good theater to the Scottsville area."

Palamenti recently took over the reins as artistic director for Horseshoe Bend. As is typical of small troupes, this artistic director schedules the season’s productions and runs every aspect from audition to promotion. He even fills in as director or actor when needed. For Horseshoe Bend’s current production of Donald Margulies’ Collected Stories, which runs through November 23, Palamenti directed.

Palamenti says he was attracted to Collected Storiesfor basic technical reasons. The play, which he says is easy to cast, is "very smart with an intellectual bent." The play follows a familiar story line as an established writer becomes a mentor for a young aspiring writer, who, in time, becomes an equal to, and then surpasses the older writer. Palamenti is intrigued by the play’s dynamics.

"It deals with loyalty and betrayal," he says. "It’s about the conflict the older generation feels to let go but retain their own individual achievements, while being overshadowed by a younger generation."

Though he just recently began working for Horseshoe Bend, Palamenti already has long-term goals for the Players to establish it as a company "that can be depended upon to produce a series of shows."

Meeting that goal could mean reorienting Scottsville audiences, who have yet to get used to the idea of a resident theater company, he says. "We hope that the town itself and local restaurants will benefit from theater nightlife," he says. "We want to be a dependable source of theater, rather than ‘catch it while you can.’"

Horseshoe Bend is in the process of remodeling its current Valley Street space, Victory Hall. The former firehouse is being made more conducive to theater. Lobby construction is underway, and wall partitions have gone up to create a backstage and green room area, as well as a tech booth.

As far as life beyond Collected Stories, Palamenti is playing it by ear. He will stage three shows for Horseshoe Bend this season, and looks forward to ongoing collaboration with Aviar, who is assistant directing Collected Stories.

"It’s fantastic working with her," he says. "She brings a keen point of view. It’s a blessing and it works well."

 

For a schedule of Collected Stories performances, see InsideOut’s Stage listings, page 21 in this weeks paper.