If you love both books and lap robes, you have likely found The Espresso Edition online. Stephanie Whitman had been blogging full-time before she moved to Charlottesville in 2021, but now her day job is social media manager, and blogging about books at theespressoedition.com is her side gig.
Ten years ago, when Whitman was diagnosed with gastroparesis (a chronic digestive condition that keeps her bedridden a significant amount of the time), blogging was a sensible career choice. “I started in fashion, added lifestyle along the way, and then in 2021, I completely rebranded because, as a lifelong reader, talking about books feels like coming home. ‘Cozy’ is the vibe for my brand.”
What makes for a cozy book? “Very low stakes,” she says. “I want to go into the book knowing that it won’t be filled with crazy amounts of action, emotional trauma, or anything too overwhelming. More often than not, these kinds of books take place in small towns, with a smaller cast of characters who are all familiar with one another, and frequently there are warm beverages and sweet treats involved.” Cozy covers all genres; two of Whitman’s favorites are romance (“the fluffy kind”) and science fiction/fantasy, from a childhood love of The Chronicles of Narnia. “My ideal cozy set-up is a big armchair with a soft blanket, jazz music playing in the background, a warm and spicy candle, a hot cup of coffee or tea in my hand, and a good book on a rainy afternoon.” Sounds perfect!
Want to have something in common with John and Patricia Kluge, The British royal family, The College of William & Mary, and “The Beverly Hillbillies” mansion? Then you should commission a mandmade item from local metalsmiths Stokes of England. Whether it’s imposing wrought-iron gates for your stately home, beautiful and long-lasting furniture for your house or garden, delicate wall scones or a graceful chandelier, an intricate fire screen or a free-standing sculpture, if it’s metal, Stokes makes it.
Despite the name, Stokes was founded here in 1981 by British master metalsmith Joe Stokes and his son Stephen, who had been an American exchange student and decided to stay. (Two years later, Joe went back to Blighty to set up the firm’s U.K. branch, now run by younger son Chris.) The company’s work has been featured in Architectural Digest, Southern Living, The New York Times, and on PBS and the BBC. Since 1995, Stokes has been based at its forge in Keswick, where you can visit to watch its smiths at work.
In August 2022, the local Stokes was purchased by Mike and Truleigh Trennepohl, as part of their dream to live in central Virginia and run a family business. Mike and his son Ashton are now forging ahead, learning the metalsmith trade from Stephen Stokes.
Your wedding is a time to present your best self—which may mean a custom suit. Luckily, Charlottesville has plenty of options. There are national retailers Brooks Brothers, Jos. A. Bank, and Men’s Wearhouse. Or you can go the shop local route.
Eljo’s was opened in 1950 on the UVA Corner by two Wahoo brothers (Elliott and Joseph Hyman, hence the name). Trent Thurston, who now co-owns the shop with his father, Myles, recommends beginning the suit-buying process at least five weeks before the big day. Eljo’s prides itself on more traditional menswear, and prices range from $1,300 on up, depending on size and fabric (the shop has more than 1,500 swatches on hand).
Alton Lane has a strikingly similar origin—started in 2009 by two UVA/Darden grads. The store’s manufacturing process means it can promise a suit within two weeks, but you’ll still need time for fittings (store stylist Ali Taleb says most grooms start the process at least three months out). Prices range from $399 (for a “50/50 fabric”) to as high as $4,000 (seasonal or high-end fabrics). Alton Lane also offers wedding packages for outfitting the wedding party—groomsmen, bridesmaids, even the bride.
The Mens & Boys Shop is a 104-year-old Charlottesville institution. Co-owner Kyle Davis says a custom client should start the process at least two months before the wedding. Prices start at $895, again depending on size, fabric, and styling. Davis notes that grooms will often bring their partner along. It makes for a shared experience, he says, “and it’s always nice to have someone help with making decisions.”
Shenandoah National Park's pilot Trailblazers program gets kids into conservation. Photo by Stephen Barling.
On the last Monday in July, in the fields behind the Fifth Street Starbucks, a crew of sweaty high school kids is taking a mid-morning break, swigging energy water and snarfing down bags of chips (after working outside all morning, they need the salt). Their blue T-shirts say “Trailblazers.” And that’s what they are—pioneers in a pilot program to get local youth acquainted with the outdoors and maybe introduce them to careers in conservation. An added bonus: These kids are earning a paycheck while providing much-needed maintenance on the popular Rivanna Trail encircling Charlottesville.
The Trailblazers: Charlottesville to Shenandoah program is one of those genius ideas that seem obvious—once everyone has done the work to make it happen. But it took four local organizations, two city programs, a local retailer, and a national nonprofit working together to make the idea into a reality.
The lead organization on the Trailblazers program is the Shenandoah National Park Trust, which runs a trail maintenance program called the Shenandoah Youth Corps, designed to provide young people with work experience in conservation. The Appalachian Conservation Corps has partnered with SNPT on the Youth Corps program for the last six years, providing experienced adult leaders for the youth trail crews and handling logistics.
Photo by Stephen Barling.
Tommy Safranek, a Rivanna Trails Foundation volunteer who had previous experience as a youth trail crew leader, had applied for a grant from outdoor retailer Public Lands in hopes of starting such a program here—right before the city hired him as its bike and pedestrian coordinator. Safranek is also on the board of the RTF, which is always looking for ways to get the community involved in both using and caring for the Trail—as is the Charlottesville Area Mountain Bike Club, whose members also use and help maintain the Trail.
“We’d been having conversations with Zach Foster [ACC’s executive director] about how to go about diversifying the Shenandoah Youth Corps, so that was fresh in my mind when I ran into Tommy Safranek one night while he was out walking his dog,” recalls Ethan Serr, SNPT’s corporate and foundations development manager. “We started talking about our different organizations and found a shared challenge in the need to diversify trail usage. He had mentioned that they were exploring the idea of a youth trail crew for the Rivanna Trail, which got me thinking about how we could collaborate as a means of developing a pipeline for more diverse participation in the Shenandoah Youth Corps. I pitched the idea to the Trust’s executive director and the director of partnerships, and they of course were interested and took the lead from there.”
Last August, SNPT and ACC met with RTF to discuss building a paid youth corps program in the Charlottesville area. SNPT was willing to act as lead, but the other organizations contributed as well, with added financial support from Safranek’s Public Lands grant and funding from the Virginia Outdoors Foundation.
It made sense that the adults managing the youth crew would be hired from the ACC staff. “We’re in charge of actual implementation,” explains Foster, “because we have [the Youth Corps] experience at managing the work. We handle the transportation, the risk management, and have the crew leaders who provide mentorship. But CAYIP was really the key because they can recruit the participants.”
CAYIP—the city’s Community Attention Youth Internship Program—finds local retailers and organizations willing to provide Charlottesville youth with paid summer internship programs that widen their experience and help them develop career skills. Latara Ragland, interim CAYIP coordinator, says, “We became highly interested and truly excited about the program. CAYIP is always looking for site partners that are conducive to mentoring young people while they receive a hands-on work experience. [Trailblazers] made it even more exciting because of the commitment and dedication all these agencies were already investing in our community and young people.”
This spring, CAYIP added Trailblazers to the youth internship recruitment efforts it runs every year in Charlottesville schools. Applicants for Trailblazers had to be city residents aged 16 to 18. Participants are expected to work up to 20 hours a week for the six-week session and will earn a performance-based stipend of up to $15 per hour (not to exceed $1,800). They are also expected to build a resume at the end of their internship.
On a Monday in July, five of the program’s eight interns were working on installing a series of steps where the Rivanna Trail heads into an underpass below Fifth Street. Photo by Stephen Barling.
Trailblazers team lead Emma Callan of ACC says the eight interns spent their first day in the field learning how to use the tools of trail maintenance. Each day starts with a “stretch-and-safety circle,” not just to get ready for hard physical work, but to reinforce safe practices “and remind everyone to stay hydrated.” After seven weeks of trail work, the program ends with an intensive three-day camping and trail maintenance project in Shenandoah National Park—a new experience for most of these young people.
On the day I visit, Callan and her colleague Jon Rice have a crew of five—Wes Swanson, Jamond Johnson, Eagan Matthews-Huba, Matthias Zimmerman, and Will Wright—working on installing a series of steps where the trail heads down into an underpass below Fifth Street between the Starbucks and the former Christian Aid property. (Other crew members Christian Martinez, Nava Khurgel, and Nick Brown are out today.)
“Some of these kids are active outdoors—they do sports, some have used the trail,” says Callan. “But they are mostly trail newbies in terms of manual labor.” I arrive during their late morning break (hence the drinks and snacks); the boys are sweaty but good-humored and put their hard hats back on cheerfully when work resumes.
Overseeing construction is Tim Pare, a retired engineer and longtime RTF volunteer. “The trail was being eroded here,” he points out. “This is low ground that gets flooded and gravel would wash away, so we’re cutting in steps, framing them out with lumber, and filling in with a combination of gravel and concrete called lean mix.” (The trail intersects a section of sewage lines at this point, so the Albemarle County Service Authority donated the materials for these steps.)
Photo by Stephen Barling.
In comments provided by ACC, Swanson said he found out about the program through his school’s career fair. “It’s really cool learning how the trails are designed and learning how to make it the right angle so the water flows off it in the right way. It’s also really fun using all the machinery. I definitely want to find a way to work in conservation after this experience. Maybe I could do it every summer during college. I would love to have a career related to this.”
Similarly, Zimmerman, a CHS senior, said, “I’ve always been around the Rivanna River and live right near the trail, so it’s awesome to be making this area even better. I’m learning more skills so I can really use what I have learned to better my community. I was definitely thinking about going into forestry as a career—or something with outdoor nonprofits in the future.”
As this year’s pilot program is wrapping up, the consensus is that Trailblazers has been a success all around. “We are so proud of the interns—all eight successfully completed this session,” says Ragland. “Their feedback has been consistent: They have truly enjoyed the experience.” In fact, she notes, “We had more students interested in the program than we could accept this year, and we hope this interest grows in the future as more teens learn about it.”
“The crew is putting in really solid work, and the kids are getting real skills working with RTF and CAMBC,” says Lauren Croissant, ACC youth program coordinator. That’s good news for ACC and SNPT as well, since these organizations hope the Trailblazers internship will lead a more diverse group of young people into programs like the Youth Corps and help the Park build relationships and encourage interaction with surrounding communities. In fact, Serr says SNPT has had interest in programs similar to the one in Charlottesville from Richmond, Harrisonburg, and Washington, D.C.
Photo by Stephen Barling.
In a Trailblazers press release, Bobby Casteen, a CAMBC board member, calls Trailblazers an important initiative “because it promotes collaboration between community organizations to create change, and it can influence youth to see the value in community engagement and service.”
Safranek sees awareness of the city’s natural resources as another of the key goals of the Trailblazers program. “As the city’s bike and pedestrian coordinator, my job is to get more folks in our community walking and biking,” he says. “Sometimes that means building more sidewalks and bike paths, but this program allows our youth to discover the amazing trail resources that we have right here in Charlottesville. So, my hope is that they not only make our community more friendly to walk and bike, but they also now choose to bike or walk next time they need to get around town.”
For Callan, one of the rewards for the Trailblazers interns is the sense of accomplishment and community pride it gives them. “Once these steps are done—or any of our projects they worked on—they can come back to the trail and show their families and friends, ‘Hey look, I built that!’”
You’ve bought a 1950s home in the Rugby area. It’s lovely and spacious, but it needs a little re-organizing. One example: It has a small, dark galley kitchen; you have four kids who want to bring their friends over and hang out, which means it’s time to re-do the first-floor layout and design a kitchen that works for your family.
“I spend 80 percent of my time at home in the kitchen,” says the homeowner. “I cook a ton, and the kids are always here—we’re the neighborhood gathering place. And I wanted a lot of pantry storage, and a big refrigerator and freezer. I mean, really big!”
Photo: Virginia Hamrick
She found her interior designer, Karen Turner of KTK Design, by word of mouth. Turner, who has been working in the Charlottesville area for four decades (“I went to UVA and stayed,” she says) had done a number of houses in the neighborhood, so she was familiar with both the charm and challenges of 1950s homes. Working with architect Bethany Puopolo, who did the overall renovation, Turner wanted to make sure that the new kitchen met the family’s needs and still fit the house’s original character.
The layout of the new kitchen had to work with the flow from the rest of the first-floor spaces. So on one wall, between two doors (one to the mud room and pool, another to the playroom/hangout space), Turner placed the large refrigerator and freezer side by side projecting out, with the floor-to-ceiling pantry cabinets behind them. That creates two “zones” within the kitchen. The two large appliances are placed opposite a counter with sink, where all the food prep takes place (and where the coffee setup is); opposite the pantry cabinets is a small desk/home office space.
Photo: Virginia Hamrick
The prep counter extends to the oven and gas range, placed between two windows overlooking the pool. The central island, where all the gathering happens, sits underneath a huge clerestory skylight that brings in more natural light to the space. “We couldn’t make a cathedral ceiling there, because of the structure above,” says Turner, so the clerestory was Puopolo’s solution. And for added light on dark days or at night, Turner added two stunning Harford pendant fixtures from The Urban Electric Company.
The central island is another of Turner’s zones. This area is for clean-up; there’s another sink, and next to it under the countertop is the dishwasher. And behind that is an elegant solution to another structural problem that precluded removing the wall: Turner decided to revive the mid-century breakfast room and opened the wall by designing a built-in, pass-through dish storage cabinet with glass-paneled doors on front and back. The doors let light through, visually connect the breakfast room with the kitchen, and let the homeowner put away clean dishes from one side and take them out to set the table on the other. (All the cabinetry work was done by Willis Woodworks in southwest Virginia.)
Photo: Virginia Hamrick
An added benefit: This kitchen is sized to its family. “I’m 5 foot 10, and my husband is 6 foot 6,” says the homeowner. “All our counters are higher than usual, and we have lots of high storage.”
With all the working elements satisfied, the homeowner had one more requirement. “I wanted color—I’m in the kitchen so much, and I wanted it to be bright colors that I love.”
The color scheme started with a backsplash tile that the homeowner found at Sarisand Tile, a lovely variegated blue-green, which set the tone for the kitchen’s navy color on walls and cabinets. Turner set the tile as a backsplash for the range, since that is the central feature on the kitchen’s window wall, and keyed the range hood, the upper and lower cabinets, and the pantry to its blue tones. Happily, Turner notes, the counters’ White Macaubas honed quartzite from Cogswell Stone has that blue in its veining.
The navy cabinets with their brass fittings fit the house in its conservative character—making everything shipshape—but also satisfies the homeowner’s need for color and warmth. “I couldn’t live in an all-white kitchen,” she says. “I embrace color and chaos. This blue—it’s a happy color.”
Homes, in tandem with the lives lived within them, change and evolve. So do their landscapes, as the grounds around one home in the University area demonstrate.
The house has gone through its own evolution. Built in the early 20th century, it was designed by noted Charlottesville architect Eugene Bradbury, whose work includes St. Paul’s Memorial Church; Neve Hall, now Potter’s Craft Cider; Villa Crawford, the central structure at Keswick Hall; and the home of Brigadier General John Watts Kearny, aka the Lewis Mountain House. Bradbury houses are scattered throughout the Lewis Mountain, Venable, Barracks, and Rugby neighborhoods and give that area much of its character.
In 2018, the home’s owners hired Mary Wolf, principal with Wolf Josey Landscape Architects, to turn their lawn into a “more park-like space,” says Wolf. “The whole area was just lawn with grass.” She developed a comprehensive landscape plan, starting from the gravel driveway on the house’s east side through the back yard into the western side of the property. (The owner didn’t see much need to change the front yard: A decades-old boxwood hedge, massive shade trees, and the herringbone brick front walk fit well with the house’s Colonial Revival character.)
Photo: Wolf Josey Landscape Architects
One of the characteristics of a Bradbury residence is its integration with the outdoors, and Wolf’s client wanted to keep that relationship between the rooms in the house and the spaces outside. So, outside the back door of the home’s central hall is a dining terrace, a flat lawn enclosed by a crushed gravel border, and two rows of dwarf boxwood. At the far end is a free-standing fieldstone hearth so that the dining space is useable virtually year-round.
A few steps down from the dining terrace is another flat space featuring what Wolf calls “a hornbeam allée.” It’s designed to offer a shadier lawn area, directly related to the sunroom on the western end of the house. Because it doesn’t have an assigned function, Wolf calls this “a more meditative space”—a spot to sit with a book or just walk under the trees. She chose hornbeams “because they’re a native species, and we wanted to rely heavily on native plants. Also, they’re not huge trees and can take heavy pruning so they can be shaped to the space.” The geometric feel of the two terraces is softened by the existing shrub border along the house—classic hydrangeas and ferns, to which Wolf added autumn bride, tufted hair grass, sedge, and native (or mountain) pachysandra.
Photo: Wolf Josey Landscape Architects
These garden spaces, although only a few years old (they were installed just before the pandemic hit) are lush and thriving. Wolf credits the siting; the terraces are on the house’s northeast side, and by retaining the existing tall trees and shrubs along the property line, “they get a good mixture of sun and shade.”
Creating the two terraces required a good deal of groundwork. The lawn’s natural slope had to be stepped to make two distinct flat areas (the hornbeam allée is lower than the outdoor dining room), and both those spaces had to be slightly angled to ensure good drainage. Michelle Smith Fine Gardening did the planting installation; Andy Guercio did the hardscaping.
Finishing the terraces completed Phase 1 of Wolf’s landscape plan. Then came another evolution: In 2020, the house was sold to new owners. A young family, they had some changes to make—the sunroom on the the house’s west end was converted into an open-air porch, and while the new homeowners liked the idea of a more open lawn area on that side, “they also saw it as the perfect spot for a pool,” Wolf recalls. The only other specific direction she received: Do what was needed to keep the huge existing sugar maple in the corner of the lot. (“Bartlett Tree Service came in to consult us with that,” Wolf notes, since both construction access and pool installation had to be handled without damaging the tree’s root system.)
With those adaptations, the revised Phase 2 began construction in 2020. Since the pool location required a level area cut into the slope, Wolf created a band of hillside garden beds. Alongside the hornbeam grove, below the border of dwarf boxwood, she installed a free-form pollinator garden with “a mix of shrubs and textures”—bluestar (Amsonia), coneflower, penstemon, anemones, fothergilla, bottlebrush buckeye, and peony.
On the other side of the steps leading to the lower lawn is another pollinator garden, this one featuring dwarf oakleaf hydrangea, bluestar, and grasses along with several small dogwood trees. A bluestone-and-fieldstone stair through the center leads directly to the saltwater pool with a corner hot tub. More bluestone paving surrounds the pool, expanded at one end to create a larger seating area. But there’s also enough room to leave a stretch of lawn on two sides as well. (For Phase 2, J.W. Townsend handled the landscaping and Heilbron Ramirez Masonry did the stonework; Charlottesville Aquatics installed the pool.)
Luckily, an existing border of shrubs and hemlocks along the property’s edge creates a screen between the pool lawn and the neighbors. “The owners didn’t want a fence installed—they thought it would close the space in too much,” says Wolf, so she added boxwoods to the mix to help anchor that border. That screen also enables the pool’s mechanicals to be tucked away out of sight. The result is the best of all worlds—pool, lawn, and garden—evolving along with the home and its family.
Whether you keep a roll of Forever stamps in your desk just in case or believe that a handwritten thank-you note or birthday card is still de rigueur, postage stamps continue to be part of our lives. Every year, the United States Postal Service strives to highlight this country’s history, arts, and culture with stamps that are beautiful, historical, educational, and diverse.
Along those lines, this year central Virginia has scored a three-pointer: One of the newly issued stamp series for 2024 features a local species, a local photographer, and a local graphic designer.
The four-stamp series, called “Garden Delights,” shows ruby-throated hummingbirds doing what they do best—hovering next to the flowers they are feeding on like tiny jeweled helicopters. (If you have ever been close enough to a feeding hummingbird, you know the soft whirring sound those hard-working wings make, pumping in an invisible blur. No wonder these tiny birds have to feed constantly!)
The images are the work of wildlife photographer Ben King, who grew up in North Garden just south of Charlottesville and lived there until this spring. For King, photography is an avocation—“It’s a way to share things that brought me joy with other people,” he says. As a nature-lover and a recently retired professional cyclist, his online portfolio contains many stunning landscapes from here and around the country—but it’s overwhelmingly full of the wildlife that he loves to capture, from majestic raptors to humble insects.
When he was contacted about using his hummingbird photographs for a stamp series, it was “an exciting surprise,” King recalls. “Hummingbirds are common, but there’s something magical about them—a sense of wonder.” The photos all show female birds—delicate and delightful, although they lack the male’s distinctive iridescent red throat feathers. And the light has to catch a male’s throat feathers at the perfect angle, or that area merely looks dark.
Just as photographer King has to compose his shots, turning his photographs into a work of graphic art requires a designer—in this case, another North Garden resident, Greg Breeding. Breeding, who runs his own independent design firm called the Journey Group in Charlottesville, is one of four art directors who work for USPS. While the ideas for new series come from all over the country (USPS encourages public input), the chosen subjects have to work as stamps—making an impact as small graphics while still containing the necessary information.
Breeding’s challenge combines gaining familiarity with the subject, searching for the appropriate artist, and coordinating the process from design through production to launch. It’s a process that can take years. Distilling a series down to a number of images (from four to 12) can be daunting—especially when Breeding has worked on subjects as diverse as religious Christmas imagery, heritage American farm breeds, the Harlem Renaissance, espresso drinks, and Buzz Lightyear. Sometimes he’s even part of the series’ launch as well—for this year’s “Dungeons and Dragons 50th Anniversary” series kick-off at Gen Con Indy 2024, Breeding will be available for autographs.
Luckily, ruby-throated hummingbirds don’t have conventions. Every summer, they magically appear to visit at our feeders or in our back gardens.
You’ve found your life partner. You both share a love of the Blue Ridge and the outdoors, and you want to have family and friends gather and share your commitment ceremony. Enter Love Ridge Mountain Lodging.
The name is no coincidence. The little town of Love sits astride State Route 814 (aka Love Road), close to milepost 16 of the Blue Ridge Parkway. The hamlet has been here for almost 100 years, pre-dating the current wedding boom in central Virginia. But now there’s a new event venue right next door.
Love Ridge Mountain Lodging is—in the best wedding tradition—something old and something new. The site opened in the 1960s as Meadow Mountain Campground, then became Royal Oaks when cabins were added in the 1990s. Natasha Sienitsky and her husband Oliver Platts-Mills, who run Charlottesville real estate development and renovation firm 6th and Dice, took over the complex in 2022 and re-named it to fit their vision of creating an all-in-one site for getaways, events—and weddings.
“We found this place that needed love and renovation,” recalls Sienitsky; she and her husband are both big nature and Blue Ridge fans and own a renovated cabin in the area. “It wasn’t hard to see its potential. But we needed to keep the place running, so we began renovating one building at a time.”
The accommodation renovations are now complete. Love Ridge has 12 units available (three family houses and nine cabins) that can sleep up to 75. Or more, if you have adventurous guests—there’s also a newly refurbished, small-scale forested drive-in campground with a brand-new camphouse featuring a community kitchen, restrooms, hot showers, and two glamping bedrooms.
While Love Ridge is well suited for single, couple, or family mountain getaways, Sienitsky says they planned from the beginning to make it more workable as a single-event venue. The couple renovated the existing lodge into a 2,000 square-foot event space that can seat up to 120 guests (or handle up to 150 for a reception), with four restrooms and a catering kitchen. The adjacent 3,000 square-foot Gathering Lawn, rimmed by plantings of multi-seasonal flowering native plants, overlooks the Three Ridges Wilderness Area—making it a wonderful site for the ceremony or a post-wedding social gathering, open-air or tented to accommodate up to 200 guests.
As a fairly new event venue, Love Ridge is still developing relationships with wedding planners and a list of preferred vendors. But its owners are committed to being both flexible and helpful, and Sienitsky notes there will always be a staff person on site for events if help is needed: “We do have a great team up there.”
One added benefit: The setting is amazing for all sorts of outdoor activities. Love Ridge has its own walking trails, and the beauties of the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Appalachian Trail, Sherando Lake, and Shenandoah National Park are only a drive, hike, or bicycle ride away. Man-made entertainment is also nearby—Nelson County’s Route 151 and Wintergreen Resort, and, during evening or bad weather, the shopping, dining, museums, and theater in Waynesboro, Staunton, and Charlottesville. And after a full day, Love Ridge is also a dark skies site to enjoy from your front porch or around the fire pit.
Wedding photos can be formal or casual, posed or of the moment. Or you can step into the booth…
Kyle Kirkeide turned his own wedding guest experience into The Photobooth Company. “I went to my sister’s wedding in Florida in 2011, and they had a photo booth set up,” he recalls. “Afterwards, I started thinking about it—my wife had left her job, we had young kids. I thought it was great idea for Charlottesville—we have so many events and weddings here. I found a company to get the equipment, and started out doing events at UVA [his alma mater].”
A decade later, Kirkeide’s idea for a side hustle now handles about 60 events a year (“roughly one a week”). About half of them are weddings.
One of the things that makes The Photobooth Company perfect for weddings, in Kirkeide’s view, is that “we customize the whole thing to what you want.” The company offers two set-up options: the traditional booth, where people go in and sit before the camera (“although our booths allow for a much closer shot”), and a more open setup with an 8’x8′ customized backdrop.
For each “sitting,” guests get photos printed on a strip customized for the big day. The booth produces copies for the guests, and an extra one for the newlyweds. “Then we bind all the photos together into a scrapbook for the couple—many of them use also use it as a guest book and have people sign,” says Kirkeide. The couple also gets a digital version.
It’s your day, so if you want formal photos, The Photobooth can produce them. If your wedding leans more to the causal and creative, you can have that too—with a wide range of props and costume items that the company provides. “We end up doing props for most of our events,” Kirkeide says. “People like that, and it can be something that fits with your wedding theme—or it can be your university, or people’s pets.” (And, in case you’re worried about posterity, there’s a television monitor in which guests can check how they look before the camera snaps.)
What makes photo booths so popular? Kirkeide thinks part of the appeal is “a bit of nostalgia” for the days before a camera/phone in your pocket. A photo booth also provides a memento for both guests and the couple, without anyone having to worry about carrying a camera, getting everyone in the selfie, or finding someone willing to take “just one shot for us.”
“Kids love photo booths,” Kirkeide says—a real benefit for anyone who has tried to keep youngsters entertained or get reluctant adolescents into a family photo. “And this gives guests something to do—not everyone wants to dance, so during the music they can come play around in the booth. There are always a few guests who are really enthused about it, and bring other people over.”
Pricing for a wedding is in the $800-900 range for a four-hour rental, says Kirkeide, depending on the guest count and the distance to the venue. Because it is a side business, and there are busy wedding months, Kirkeide prefers a few weeks’ notice to help in scheduling and producing custom graphics.
Then, once the big day comes, all you have to do is smile for the camera.
From the outside, Reid’s Super-Save Market looks like what it is—a mom-and-pop grocery and Charlottesville institution that’s been serving the neighborhoods along Preston Avenue for decades. The store was in the news last winter, as the community rallied to help it survive changing demographics, post-COVID supply challenges, and inflation hitting food prices hard.
But for foodies in the know, Reid’s has always been a mecca for those who love their meats. What makes Reid’s stand out? It’s one of the few places in the Charlottesville area that has its own butchers.
“We’ve always been known for our meat department,” says operations manager Billy Clements, who’s been working at Reid’s for more than 35 years (his wife Sue and her sister took over the store after their father’s death). “Most stores have moved away from fresh-cut meat. But here, that’s what draws people in.”
The meat department takes up the store’s entire back wall, with packed shelves of carnivore’s delights. Its beef offerings run from minute steaks and ground-in-store hamburger to New York strip, T-bones, filets, and every cut in between; “we sell a lot of carne asada,” notes Sue. Long-time butchers Domingo (15-plus years at Reid’s) and Robert (at least 10 years) are happy to have customers call ahead to get their meat cut to order. “You want your steak two inches thick? No problem,” says Billy.
As for pork, Reid’s offers cuts from the head to the toes—literally; “we sell everything but the squeal,” in Billy’s words. If you’re craving pork loin or short ribs, great; or you can pick up some pig’s knuckles, hog maws, trotters, or pig’s ears. And when you can’t find a Kite’s Virginia ham anywhere in town, Reid’s stocks them.
If you’re shopping for chicken, look over a good 8 feet of shelf space, with everything from roasters to wings and feet (if you’re into dim sum). Sue Clements says the poultry comes pre-cut, but Reid’s packages all its meats in store.
Reid’s gets fresh fish delivered once a week, but its selection doesn’t compare to the acres of meat. One of the hard lessons Sue has learned is that while the grocery business used to be about options, “people don’t shop the way they used to.” She’s working to cut back to a smaller number of low-, mid-, and higher-price options for the staples her customers need. “We’re trying to serve all the genres of our neighborhood,” she says. The shelf labels letting shoppers know what’s eligible for SNAP benefits will stay, and so will the butchers behind the counter.
The Clementses are committed to keep meat and produce the heart of the store, which serves an area of town that would otherwise be a food desert. And it’s appreciated. Long-time customer Norman Lamson, who has shopped at Reid’s for more than 30 years, says, “I live five minutes away—I would rather get everything there than [run around town] trying to save money. And Reid’s has the best meats in town.”
Gordon Sutton agrees. Sutton is president of Tiger Fuel, which owns The Market across the street from Reid’s and donated to the GoFundMe page customers set up to support the store.
“I live downtown, and I shop there all the time,” he says. “The people are really friendly and service-oriented. It’s one of the few places that has an old-school butcher.” Sutton especially appreciates that service; he’s a hunter, and says he stops by Reid’s to get fat trimmings for his ground venison.
