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Opinion The Editor's Desk

This week, 6/10

“We need equity,” 19-year-old Joshua St. Hill told a crowd of roughly a thousand people Sunday night at the UVA Rotunda. “We can’t take our foot off the gas.”

Keeping their foot on the gas is exactly what protesters in Charlottesville have been doing over the past two weeks, since the murder of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. In a city that, despite the events of 2017, is not noted for its activism, residents here have turned out by the hundreds and thousands to protest racism and police brutality, at massive marches on May 30, June 7, and June 8, and at other smaller demonstrations too.

Nationwide, as protests have continued night after night, and police in many cities have responded with brutal force as damning as Bull Connor’s fire hoses and attack dogs, there’s a feeling that a tipping point has been reached, that things might actually change. In Minneapolis, the City Council has vowed to dismantle the police force. In New York and L.A., mayors have pledged to cut police budgets and move the money to community programs. And in Richmond, leaders are calling for a police civilian review board and a new way of responding to calls involving mental health crises.

In Charlottesville, City Council appointed the final member of our Police Civilian Review Board last week, though it has so far ignored activists’ demands to implement the stricter bylaws an initial board submitted last September. School board members have endorsed pulling cops from our public schools. Council members have been meeting about removing Confederate statues from downtown. And Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Hingeley has vowed to continue the progressive criminal justice reforms put in place to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, like limiting pretrial detention and supporting alternatives to incarceration.

Whether these and other changes will stick depends, in part, on whether residents will keep paying attention, and keep the pressure on, in the weeks and months ahead.

“We can’t use Black Lives Matter as a hashtag,” PVCC student Tyler Tinsley said on Sunday, at the march he helped organize. “We gotta keep doing it every day.”

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Opinion The Editor's Desk

This week, 6/3

Over the past few days, videos of the murders of unarmed black people by cops and white “vigilantes,” which sparked nationwide protests, have been replaced by new videos, of cops brutalizing those protesters in cities across the country.

Many police officers have met the legitimate expression of pent-up rage with violence, beating demonstrators and journalists on camera, firing tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets, holding protesters all night without food or water, and, in a sickening echo of Heather Heyer’s murder, plowing their cars into crowds.

As I’m sure someone will write to me to point out, a few agitators have taken advantage of the chaos to loot and destroy businesses, including the office of an alt-weekly in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, where the editor reports their office was set on fire. Obviously, this is reprehensible (not to mention counterproductive). But it’s also no excuse for law enforcement to escalate violence.

Here in Charlottesville, hundreds turned out for a protest on Saturday, and the Black Student Union at Albemarle High School led another demonstration on Sunday. CPD, perhaps finally learning from its heavy-handed approach to past protests, was on hand largely to redirect traffic. Cops did not confront protesters, and the events were nonviolent.   

That’s commendable—though it’s also disturbing that police not attacking nonviolent protesters should be such an anomaly. But the city still has work to do. The Police Civilian Review Board, created in the wake of summer 2017 to promote transparency and build trust, has yet to meet (the final member was appointed by City Council on Monday). And no board exists in Albemarle County, where residents have complained of racial bias by the police, and African Americans are disproportionately arrested, as shown in a report the county declined to fund.

Charlottesville spends $300,000 a year to put police officers in city schools, part of an alarming national trend that has contributed to the school-to-prison pipeline for youth of color. Ending that contract is among the demands put forward by the organizers of Saturday’s march, a list that could serve as a handy map to the steps required for real change.

Demonstrations matter. But supporting the work that follows is even more important.

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Opinion The Editor's Desk

This week, 5/27

Monday was Memorial Day, the unofficial start to summer, but with local lakes, spray grounds, and pools closed (except to those who can afford membership at private clubs), some took to the Downtown Mall in the hopes of another day not exactly the same as the last.

In spite of the Phase One reopening, closed signs still dominate downtown. “Maybe in June” the signs at 2nd Act Books say hopefully. At Citizen Burger Bar, the sight of several tables full of patrons casually having lunch (none of them wearing masks) felt jarringly out of place. At Chaps, customers waited outside the door, a roughly appropriate number of feet apart. “How are you?” one parent on line called across to another. The mom, behind her mask, made a face that seemed part smile, part grimace. “Today’s a good day,” she said. “We had a bike ride, and ice cream, so today’s a good day.” 

That’s pretty much the best any of us can manage, as our strange spring turns into an uneasy summer. Left to find our own ways to salvage the season, many have turned to gardening, so this week we offer some tips, whether you’re just starting out or ready to explore a deeper relationship with nature.

We’re also launching a new series, Checking In, to catch up with familiar faces around town and hear how they’re getting through this time. “We’re trying to make the best of it,” says Ragged Mountain Running’s Mark Lorenzoni, who’s still coaching runners and even organizing socially distant races. “If you go looking for negatives, it’s not hard to find, it’s in our faces all days long,” he says. “But if you go looking for positives, it’s just as easy to find. It’s just more subtle.”

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News

Running strong: Ragged Mountain Running Shop’s Mark Lorenzoni tries to focus on the positive

Mark and Cynthia Lorenzoni opened Ragged Mountain Running Shop on Elliewood Avenue in 1982, and they’ve been pillars of the Charlottesville community ever since. Every year, Mark trains hundreds of athletes, from newbies to elite runners, and directs a dozen local races, all without pay.

Under lockdown, Mark has kept the training going, emailing workouts and even organizing the “Triple Crown,” a series of socially distant races (runners choose one of multiple courses to run any time in a three-day window) to raise money for local charities. 

The shop, once described in these pages as “part clubhouse, part support group, part town square,” has also kept going, even though it was one of the first in town to close its doors, on March 13. “We had a big family meeting,” says Lorenzoni, whose two oldest children, Alec and Audrey, become co-owners of the business last fall. “It was like a reality show, it went on for an hour.”

Though Mark initially thought closing was premature, his children convinced him, and now he says Ragged Mountain will likely be one of the last to re-open. “We won’t do that until it’s 100 percent safe.” In the meantime, he’s staying positive. “We’re trying to make the best of it,” he says. “And to be good neighbors.”

 

How has your business adapted during the shutdown?

We’ve been using this motto that we closed the doors, but we’re still open to serve you like we have in the past. We’re trying to recreate the same service, but in a safe manner.

Our online store, we just went to town with it, getting that as up to date as we’d ever had it before. We started offering a 15 percent discount to everyone. And then we did next-day shipping, free. That’s huge. We tried to get out ahead of it, to say, “okay, you’re willing to support our family during this time, we’re going to give back to you as best we can.”

We’ve done free home delivery for years, but most people weren’t aware of it. Now we do anywhere from 15-25 a day. And we have curbside pickup and try-on. That’s the coolest thing.

People are doing a virtual gait analysis with us [through video] if they’re new. Then what we do is we put about five shoes out on the curb, they come up, we have all these try-on stations that are 10, 12 feet apart, and we go out there and help, with masks on. We’re not touching people, but we’re able to talk to them.

In a weird way, we’ve kind of expanded services beyond what we’d normally do. It’s good for Cynthia and I, it’s exciting to create new things. Here we are in our mid-60s, and it’s like we’re kids again, starting up the business.

 

What have you struggled with the most during these past few months?

For me there hasn’t been the great sacrifices that so many other families have had to make. We live in a community where we can go outside. Life has been good to us in a lot of ways.

We’ve had two family things: We don’t get to be physically with our grandkids, that’s been a little tough. And my wife’s mother died recently. We had her in a nursing home here in town, and we couldn’t see her for nine weeks. That was really a sacrifice for my wife, and for me too.

I think the worst part for me has been knowing that there are so many people in this country and around the world who are suffering.

 

What’s bringing you joy?

One thing that’s come out of this that’s been a joy has been to see us appreciating the everyday people. You know a lot of times we don’t appreciate people who work in the grocery store, doctors and nurses. And so I think it’s been a good time for that.

And I think we’re really lucky that this hit our area in the spring, when we can get outside. Cynthia and I garden a lot. We get up in the morning, we go for a walk. We’ve walked every morning together since we closed the business.

We feel the spirit of this community even more than we ever have before, in the outpouring of support we’ve had. Our business is down, but we’re keeping going, people are keeping us going.

This has been one of the most thrilling times in that people are wanting to help their neighbors. So many local businesses are shopping with us, and we’re trying to give back to them too.  

 

What’s something you’re reading, watching, or listening to that you’re enjoying right now?

I listen to the news every day, but I try to find a movie at night. I just watched Something’s Gotta Give. I love that movie. I completely disappeared into Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton for two hours. I think we have to be responsible, we have to read  the news but we also have to find a balance.

I do a Zoom meeting, social meetings, at least four or five times a week. Like tonight, it’s my floor: I was an RA in 1977 to 1978, two years, I had freshmen and sophomores, I called them my boys. And we’ve kept in touch, there’s 30 of us, and tonight we’re having a happy hour, on Zoom. I’m doing this with my athletes once a week. Those have been fun things.

We’re so busy, we’re so stressed, and now, I think it’s this incredible pause. And I do think it’s a silver lining to the death and the sadness of it.


In this new series, we’ll be catching up with familiar faces around town, to talk about how they’re weathering this crisis. Is there someone you’d like to hear from? Email us at editor@cville.com.

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Opinion The Editor's Desk

This week, 5/20

Last Saturday, I was in Pen Park for the drive-through version of City Market—a creative adaptation to our social-distancing circumstances that, while not as good as the real thing, at least comes reasonably close. On my right, as I drove in, was Meadowcreek Golf Course, acres of open, rolling green hills marked at the edges with “no trespassing” signs noting the course was closed.

I have zero interest in golf, but the vast emptiness of the public course—where it would be far easier to social distance than in any local grocery store—seemed to drive home the absurdity of the
city’s decision to keep most of its outdoor recreation facilities closed in the name of safety. Last week, the Parks & Recreation department announced that all spray parks and pools—the places where many children survive a Virginia summer—would be closed for the season, and Albemarle County declared its swimming lakes would also be off limits.

According to the CDC, there’s no evidence the virus is transmitted through pools or water play areas, and there is some evidence to suggest that access to public pools prevents drownings elsewhere. The city’s decision seems less a careful weighing of risk and safety than a sign of a lack of imagination.

Under Governor Northam’s reopening plan, outdoor pools are allowed to open for lap swimming, and private clubs like Fry’s Spring and ACAC have already done so. It would be more difficult, but still possible, to limit crowds at the outdoor spray parks. It would take some thoughtfulness, creativity, and effort. But for kids who have been cooped up inside for months, glued to screens, unable to access playgrounds, basketball courts, or ball fields, it seems worth it. 

The pandemic is far from over, and as businesses begin to (cautiously) reopen, it’s important to remember that the risks haven’t gone away, that we can’t go back to normal yet. But it’s also important to recognize that this virus will be with us for a long time, and we need to adapt—to find ways, like those drive-through markets— to meet community needs while staying safe. 

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Opinion The Editor's Desk

This week, 5/13

Livestreamed concerts are better than no concerts at all, but, let’s face it, they’re nothing like the real thing. As the Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl put it recently, “the coronavirus pandemic has reduced today’s live music to unflattering little windows that look like doorbell security footage and sound like Neil Armstrong’s distorted transmissions from the moon.”

Like so many of us, Grohl, who was planning to play a show for 80,000 outside D.C. this Fourth of July to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his band’s debut album, is longing for the return of real live shows. But, though outdoor restaurants may open as early as this Friday, the summer concert season is still a distant dream. As our Culture reporter Erin O’Hare writes, even if and when local venues are allowed to reopen, who can imagine a socially distant rock show? The closeness—the sweaty, ecstatic, singing at the top of your lungs, jumping arm in arm with strangers closeness—is the point.

So this week, we’re reveling in reminiscence. Our call for your favorite Charlottesville concert memory yielded dozens of stories, from legendary, now-shuttered venues like Trax and Tokyo Rose, to more recent shows at the Jefferson and the Pavilion.

Two months into social distancing, it’s become clear that we can’t just wait this virus out—it’s going to be here for a long time, and we had better find ways to live with it while staying safe. So whether it’s drive-in concerts, or theater seats six feet apart, I’m hopeful that we’ll come up with creative ways of experiencing art that can bring some solace in this uncharted time. In the meantime, I’ll keep pulling out my old records.

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Opinion The Editor's Desk

This week, 5/6

Like so many others, I’ve been taking a lot of walks lately. My walk, and getting the mail, have become the highlights of my day. In this, my quarantine life resembles my life when my first child was born. She came, too, in early March, and life slowed down enough that, for maybe the first time, I began to notice the progression of spring.

As I paraded up and down the Brooklyn blocks to get her to sleep or, more often, just to give myself something to do, I watched the world wake up, and I marked every flower. First the daffodils and forsythia, then the azaleas and the tulips. The magnolias gave way to the cherry blossoms. Finally, the rhododendron and the roses.

Here, we are lucky enough to leave near Meadow Creek, and this spring, with nowhere to go, I’ve watched the bare brown banks come slowly alive. I’ve noticed the first yellow wildflowers, lesser celandine (which a friend later informed me were invasive), and how the buttercups have shown up now, after the violets. My girls have been delighted by the preponderance of robins in the yard, the occasional flash of a bluebird. In the creek we’ve spotted lizards and snakes, and once, I swear, a turtle.

As cities around the world have seen how clean the air gets when auto and air travel drastically decrease, many people have also discovered a newfound connection to the natural world around them. That matters, because, while global emissions levels have dropped, they haven’t dropped enough.

To have any hope of mitigating the most disastrous effects of climate change, we will need to sustain much bigger shifts after the pandemic is over. So far, rational argument and evidence have failed to persuade the world to change. Perhaps remembering this time, when so many experienced nature as a source of solace and delight, will be what saves us.

 

 

 

 

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Opinion The Editor's Desk

This week, 4/29

The last time I went out for dinner was a Friday in early March. My husband and I met friends for drinks and nachos at Beer Run, then headed to the Downtown Mall for dinner. We probably shouldn’t have: Schools had just been closed (for “two weeks”), we were all washing our hands maniacally and not giving hugs. But it was a warm, beautiful spring night, and it felt like maybe the last time in an long time we’d be able to feel some semblance of normal.

Restaurants were packed that evening, but over the next few days they all began to close, one after another. More than a month later, Charlottesville’s food scene is still in limbo, as local spots try to survive through a springtime with no graduation, no lunch crowds on the Downtown Mall, no Fridays after Five, no weekends of live music and picnics at the wineries, no weddings.

Some places tried takeout and delivery for awhile, then closed. Others shut down immediately, but have recently reopened with revamped menus and ordering systems and curbside pickup. None of it has been easy. “We are working more now than before we closed, and we were open seven days a week,” says Angelo Vangelopoulos of the Ivy Inn. Vangelopoulos has enlisted family members to help turn the sit-down, upscale American spot into a takeout joint open four evenings a week.

For eateries that had already done some takeout, like Mel’s Café on West Main, adapting is a little easier, but business has still taken a hit. “It’s not the same money right now,” owner Mel Walker told us. “But we’re hanging in there.”

As businesses continue to try to access federal support, the City of Charlottesville has offered some financial assistance of its own, though many restaurants were unable to qualify for its recent BRACE grants. More help is coming, says Jason Ness of the city’s Office of Economic Development. Let’s hope it’s enough.

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Opinion The Editor's Desk

This week, 4/22

As unemployment reaches staggering levels, those of us who still have full-time jobs right now are the lucky ones. But for parents, especially folks with younger children, the fact that work has not stopped even though everything else has (including schools and childcare) poses its own problems.

This week, we talked with parents who are scrambling to educate and care for their kids while also holding down full-time jobs. Their coping methods range from squeezing in work between bedtime and midnight to calling in grandparents (and potentially putting them at risk).

“Pandemics expose and exacerbate the existing dynamics of society—good and bad,” writes Chloe Cooney, in a recent piece called “Parents are not O.K.” “One of those dynamics is the burden we put on individual parents and families. We ask individuals to solve for problems that are systemic.”

Pre-pandemic, that meant every new parent had to figure out, as if from scratch, how to manage jobs that assume workers are available 24/7, with childcare options that are inflexible, mind-bogglingly expensive, unreliable, or all of the above.

Now, the struggle to balance work and family obligations is simply more stark. It’s impossible, but we’ve collectively decided to pretend it can be done.

As the virus has highlighted our existing inequalities, some are hoping that it will also prompt sweeping changes afterwards, from paid sick leave for low-wage workers to a better health care system for all. Perhaps, too, the collective experience of having all of our children at home will inspire more respect (and better compensation) for teachers and caregivers, and policies that make it easier to have a career and a family.

With schools in Virginia closed until at least next fall, there’s plenty of time to dream.  

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Opinion The Editor's Desk

This week, 4/15

It’s been about a month now since Governor Northam closed Virginia’s schools (initially for only two weeks) and suggested we all stay home. Many of us have done so, carving out offices in the basement or at the kitchen table, finding the gallery view button on Zoom, and attempting to create a rhythm to days that seem endless as the borders between home, work, and school have disappeared. It may be chaotic, or tedious, but it’s safe.

A lot of people, however, don’t have the luxury of working remotely. From the doctors, nurses, and paramedics caring for those who are infected, to the cleaners, mechanics, and cafeteria employees keeping our hospitals running smoothly, locals are stepping up and potentially putting themselves at risk to help keep the rest of us safe. Outside of hospitals, too, there’s an army of workers still showing up to supply our community with essential services, from grocery store employees to bus drivers, food pantry workers to homeless shelter staff. In this issue, we talked to nine of them to see how their jobs have changed, what they’re worried about, and how they cope.

Also in this issue, we’re continuing to cover some of the more mundane aspects of life at home, from how to make a doctor’s appointment (when you don’t have COVID-19), to how you can still support local shops  and restaurants, and even what to do about your hair. It’s going to be a long spring. As paramedic Erik Bailey told us, “take care of each other the best you can.”