Author: nick-gorski

The big attraction at the City Council meeting on February 19 was the public hearing on the proposed amendments to the city’s noise ordinance. While the new ordinance applies to restaurants across the city, which would now be held to a 75-decibel limit from 10pm to 6am, the Downtown Mall would have a 75-decibel limit “24-7,” according to Jim Tolbert, director of Neighborhood Development Services.

Currently, the ordinance only applies to residential areas, which are limited to 65 decibels during the day and 55 decibels from 10pm to 6am, and the Downtown Mall, which has regulations after 10pm during the week and midnights on weekends.

Ryal Thomas, owner of the Belmont jazz lounge Saxx, was the only member of the public who spoke at City Council against a proposed city noise ordinance.

Tolbert laid out his case, explaining that the problem consists of restaurants that leave their doors and windows open while having bands or large crowds, but the main target is obnoxiously loud musicians on the Mall.

Only eight speakers came out to discuss the ordinance, split evenly between residents and business owners. Rapture Manager Mike Rodi said that he wasn’t concerned about the noise levels from his own business, but was concerned with loud amateur musicians. Sage Moon Gallery owners Morgan and Jim Perkins had the same response, mentioning that acoustic street performers are a draw to the Downtown area, but the amplified musicians and drummers sometimes made it impossible to hear inside the store.

“They’re no longer working with us to make the Mall a more pleasant place,” says Morgan Perkins in an interview.

Residents supported the new regulations as well. Brent Nelson, who lives on South Street, hoped that it would prevent late-night parties on commercial properties from getting out of hand.

Only Ryal Thomas, owner of the Belmont jazz bar Saxx, was publicly ambivalent about the ordinance, telling Council that he wished that more dialogue had taken place between restaurant owners and nearby business owners instead of simply imposing new rules. “I understand the concerns of people,” he says in an interview. “I just want it to be fair.” He adds that Saxx was soundproofed in December.

Because of the existing lease between the city and music promoter Coran Capshaw, the Pavilion will be exempt from the new regulations. Belmont neighbors have complained in the past about noise from concerts at the outdoor venue.

While the councilors’ discussion after the hearing leaned towards enacting the amendments, Mayor Dave Norris worried that it was “unfair to hold small businesses to a higher standard than the Pavilion.”

Thomas thinks the problem could be larger than that. “You can’t tell people when to go to bed,” he says.

The vote to enact the noise provisions will take place March 3.

For some local music figures’ reactions to the ordinance, read this week’s Feedback column.

C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.

Leading up to Valentine’s Day, UVA students protested Dominion’s proposal for a new coal power plant in Wise County, Virginia, including stunts on the Lawn. But what about the emission spewing steam plant on Jefferson Park Avenue?

Not dealing with the coal plant in our backyard is “a curious conundrum for local environmental advocates,” says Jeff Werner of the Piedmont Environmental Council. Fortunately, UVA has nearly completed a $73 million renovation intended to significantly reduce air pollution released by the coal-, oil- and gas-burning boilers.

In 2003, the University steam plant produced 527 tons of sulfer dioxide. After $73 million in renovations, it’s supposed to be down to 107 this year.

The biggest changes are to the boilers themselves. Prior to the renovation, the plant contained four primary coal-burning boilers, as well as one that burned No. 2 oil—a fuel loaded with sulfur. Now the plant contains two boilers that run on No. 6 oil, which is an ultra-low sulfur fuel. Two other coal-burning plants have been replaced, and the last has been retrofitted with a new sulfur dioxide and particulate scrubbing system.

All the boilers can run on natural gas as well, but use of gas is limited by both cost and the capacity of the natural gas pipeline that runs into Charlottesville. “During a cold spell, the city will curtail use of gas and force us to use other fuels,” says Jeff Sitler, the environmental compliance manager.

The new gas scrubbing system, designed to reduce the amount of sulfur dioxide released by the plant, has two stages. First, a lime and water slurry is added to the exhaust gas, reacting with the sulfur to form calcium sulphate. Then it’s blown through the “baghouse,” a series of 169 bags (like in a household vacuum) that the calcium sulphate adheres to. The goal is to reduce the emission of sulfur dioxide by almost 80 percent a year from the 2003 high, when the plant produced 527 tons of the pollutant. In 2006, when the plant was burning mostly the low-sulfur oil and natural gas, 237 tons were produced. The permit limit for this year, when the scrubbers are in operation for the first time, is only 107 tons. Emblematic of the tradeoffs between controlling types of pollution, the lime-infused ash cannot be recycled for concrete, but must be used as fill for construction projects.

Other changes include the replacement of the employee lunchroom with an emissions-monitoring station, which will sound alarms if any of the pollutants exceeds the permit levels, and a system to regulate the emission of nitrous oxides and carbon monoxide within the boiler itself.

As for the future, the University is looking into increasing its sustainability over the next few years. According to Cheryl Jones, UVA’s utilities director, a study is currently underway to investigate the use of renewable fuels for the heating plant.

C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.

Interspecies sexual relations are typically reserved for the seedier parts of the Internet, but Live Arts addresses them head-on in the Upstage production of Edward Albee’s The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? Chronicling two days in the life of Martin Gray, an award winning architect who happens to be having an affair with a goat, Albee’s intense exploration of a marriage gone awry starts off far funnier than it should be, and ends with a devastating scene that stunned the opening night audience into silence.

Can you guess which one of these folks is boinking a barnyard animal? Live Arts makes Albee’s The Goat a swift, ferocious show.

The actors carry almost all the weight of the play’s intense plot, and each responds fantastically. Bill LeSueur (by day, C-VILLE’s art director), who plays Martin, always hints at the emotional void within him. Even after his secret is revealed to Ross (Stewart A. Moneymaker), a journalist, and Stevie (Daria T. Okugawa), his wife, he continues to react like a wounded animal—lashing out at his family and struggling to come clean with both himself and his family about his relationship with a goat named “Sylvia.” Stevie, for her part, expertly navigates the line between emotional distress and pity. Though she gets to do some comedy, especially in the first act, Okugawa steps into the role as she is forced to jump between impossible hoops—fiercely angry and flinging furniture around at one moment, vulnerable and bewildered the next.

The other actors, Moneymaker and Casey Wagner (who plays Martin’s son Billy), keep the play moving. Billy’s scene of semi-reconciliation with his father in the final act is heartbreaking to watch, while Moneymaker’s Ross cannot comprehend his best friend’s life, or how he forced it to fall apart.

The set design (by local architect Gate Pratt) is simple and restrained, though it feels extravagant compared to other Upstage productions. Set up as a living room with modern furniture and hearth facing the audience, it brings every viewer into the Gray family living room. Scott Keith’s lighting design does a great job as well, highlighting the voids left behind as Stevie systematically tears her home apart.

Ray Nedzel, the director, keeps his touch light during the first two acts of the play, drawing the humor out from Albee’s script. But, as Stevie remarks at one point, when the joke stops being funny, the desperation swarms in. The comedy in Albee’s play stands in stark contrast to the emotional wreckage that follows, and is all the more powerful as a result.

Last November, a report by the City of Charlottesville’s Committee on Environmental Sustainability turned some heads when it revealed that the glass collected locally for recycling ends up in a landfill. Fortunately, the situation has improved—and was never quite as bleak as the report made it seem.

Where do all the glass bottles go? For the most part, into the landfill, though as road bedding rather than general trash.

Jason Halbert, chair of the Materials Management Subcommittee, says that the report was actually written last summer, and the situation has since been steadily improving. The biggest problem is a dearth of markets for recycled glass, partially because of the difficulty in sorting, cleaning and refurbishing it. Glass must be strictly sorted according to color, and pyrex, window glass, paper and metal must be removed before returning it to the furnace, making it an expensive process.

“It’s not the city’s fault or Allied’s fault,” Halbert says, referring to the company that handles curbside recycling. “It’s that the markets for green glass are poor.”

If you’re thinking you should start tossing all those bottles in the garbage, it’s not that there aren’t uses for waste glass, however. Bruce Edwards, recycling director for the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority (RSWA), took umbrage at the notion that glass from the McIntire Recycling Center was simply being thrown away. Instead, he pointed out that glass was being used as road bedding within the Ivy landfill in place of gravel. RSWA Executive Director Tom Frederick added that 600 tons of glass replace gravel roads and help with ground water remediation, saving the authority around $10,000 each year. In addition, RSWA has been working closely with a geotechnical engineer to find new markets for the glass, including asphalt mixes (or “glasphalt”) and in concrete.

UVA’s record is a little more complex. Until late last year, glass from the University ended up in a Fluvanna landfill. Again, it was used as road bedding, but also as “alternative fill,” used to separate layers of trash. Now the glass is sent to a facility in Madison Heights, where it is ground up and given to concrete producers. Allied Waste Management sends its glass to Tidewater Fibers in Chester, Virginia, which is a reclamation facility. However, Tidewater did not return calls by press time regarding the ultimate fate of that glass.

C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.

Less than a year since they last played at the late Starr Hill, the Band From Hoboken returned to Charlottesville to play a seated, “Freewheeling” show at Satellite Ballroom, and the anticipation was palpable. There were no stragglers, and the room was packed by just a little after 9pm.

The show began suddenly: In the dark, Kurt Wagner walked to the stage through the audience, singing “Give It” a capella. Wagner is the lead vocalist for Lambchop, a band with a dozen regular members, but the acoustic set revealed that Wagner’s voice is their best instrument: a low, authoritative growl that wavers with vulnerability as he reaches for higher notes. He only played a few songs, with minimal accompaniment on his custom Gibson, but the set still seemed full.

Last Tengo in Charlottesville? New Jersey indie rockers Yo La Tengo performed a wide-ranging set of subtle to noisy tunes for a packed Satellite Ballroom.

Yo La Tengo opened their set with “Sudden Organ” and finished their encore with “Yellow Sarong,” the same songs that opened and closed their last show in town. But everything in between was completely different in tone, focus and performance. Ira Kaplan and crew spent almost as much time answering the audience’s questions as actually playing music.

Not that the music really got short shrift. The best part about an acoustic performance is that familiar songs become unfamiliar. The band played “Tom Courtenay” more quietly than normal as drummer Georgia Hubley sang the lyrics, making the song even more thoughtful and lovesick than usual. “Autumn Sweater,” normally instantly recognizable for the kick drum beat that starts it, surprised the audience with a different opening, gaining cheers only after the band was a few bars in.

After the second song, Kaplan announced that the rest of the show would grow from interaction with the audience. A few amazing covers followed: Bassist (and former Corner parking lot employee—read more about McNew in this week’s Feedback column) James McNew rocked Prince’s “When You Were Mine” in a furious falsetto, and the band spent most of the encore on The Stooges’ “Raw Power,” even if it was strange to hear straight-ahead rock (and so good!) after the softer attitude of the night.
The only problem with the show was that Charlottesville show-goers aren’t used to sitting down for so long: Yo La Tengo’s set was nearly two hours, and the audience’s attention sometimes wandered (though the band’s banter usually brought them back). Still, “The Freewheeling Yo La Tengo” showcased the band’s amazing eclecticism and musicianship. At the end, Kaplan mentioned, “We’ve sold out two shows in Charlottesville, so we can’t come back.” Hopefully that won’t be the case.

music

It’s a truism that hip-hop in Charlottesville doesn’t get a lot of attention compared to the other genres here that have had break-out local artists. But one hopes that’s changing, as Outback Lodge has started a new underground hip-hop night, beginning with last Wednesday’s Killa, Endless Mic and Touch show.

The show opened up with Dareales, a local rapper. He went on a little earlier than he had planned, and it showed a bit in his stage presence. Although he only performed a couple of songs, Dareales shook off his nervousness and got a call-and-response session going fairly quickly, with a slow, bouncy rhythm to his songs.

Droppin’ rhymes like nerds, ya heard? North Carolina’s Endless Mic give it their geeky-MC best during a set of hip-hop tunes at Outback Lodge.

After the laid-back feel of Dareales, Endless Mic’s sudden energy came on as a bit of a shock. Mostly playing beats off a laptop, they started rapping after the first note and suddenly were jumping around the stage and the audience like the second coming of the Beastie Boys. Endless Mic is just this side of nerdcore—the group is named after a "Pete and Pete" character, reference Skeletor from "Masters of the Universe," and sample from White Town’s "Your Woman." The crowd wasn’t particularly into it, and the fact that they weren’t using Ducktape as a live DJ made it harder to win the audience over.

After a brief break, Touch came on. Another local rapper, he was able to switch instantly from double-timing his verses over the beat from Ghostface Killah’s "Back Like That" to turning Mims’ "This is Why I’m Hot" into an ode to popping pills, with a suitably calm and menacing delivery. He managed to keep his cool throughout the set, even as more and more folks encroached upon the stage. During his last song, as the beat dropped out behind him, Touch kept rapping for another two minutes or so, crouching lower to the stage as the audience surrounded him.

It was nearly a quarter to 1am by the time Killa got up on the stage, following a few quick verses from local kids Q Black and Marqui, as well as Zano from Endless Mic. Killa’s set was pretty straightforward—holding a mic in one hand and a beer in the other, he made boasts over synth-heavy tracks from the DJ. But the late hour was taking a toll, sapping the energy of both the group and the audience. Charlottesville’s newest hip-hop night may have opened up with a burst of energy, but it ended anti-climatically as the crowd filtered out into the rain.