Want to host your wedding reception at a city-based venue that makes you feel like you’re in the mountains? That’s the jam at Level 10, an event space perched above downtown Charlottesville, and offering unobstructed views of the Blue Ridge.
“We’re the highest venue in Charlottesville, and that is pretty fun,” venue director Mary Blanton says.
Launched last fall, Level 10 has space for 117 inside and up to 155 together with its attached heated deck, which takes full advantage of the venue’s height. The indoor space is 1,600 square feet; the deck offers another 800. Separating the two areas is a 50-foot glass wall facing west toward the mountains. Weather permitting, guests can keep about 50 percent of the window wall open at any time.
“The stunning views off of the heated rooftop balcony were certainly a highlight of the evening,” says Meghan Byrnes, who hosted a Level 10 event for her downtown startup, Hexagon Energy, LLC.
Level 10’s aesthetic is clean and modern, allowing guests to customize the place to their preferences, Blanton says. She and her team can set the venue for seating with six 60-inch tables and chairs, and their commercial kitchen is available for use by customers’ preferred caterers. They also offer a bridal suite, concierge desk, parking, and private elevator access.
Kate Lambert, chief development officer at the Boys & Girls Club of Central Virginia, said the amenities made everyone at her “80-person fundraising event feel like a VIP as they entered.”
Level 10 features sound by Sonos, video by Xfinity-connected smart TV, and room controls by tablet. In addition to rehearsal dinners and wedding receptions, Blanton and her team are open to hosting corporate events, meetings, fundraisers, workshops, and any party guests can dream up.
“We’ve had a number of wonderful events, from corporate cocktail parties, to venture startup companies, to rehearsal dinners and welcome parties for wedding guests,” Blanton says. “What’s neat about the venue is it can also be intimate—it’s just the nature of the room. We’ve had great dinner parties of 30 people.”
A certain virus may have affected the event mix for Level 10 thus far, but Blanton expects the coming wedding season to be a big one. She and her team are developing a list of preferred vendors and building out their marketing materials (including a new website), and believe they are priced competitively.
And while some venues offer catering and alcohol in their base pricing, Level 10 goes for flexibility by allowing guests to customize those add-ons. The result is a unique combination of pampering and privacy.
“The venue has this open-air-flow kind of environment, but it is exclusive. There is nothing else going on—it is completely your space,” she says. “And, it doesn’t stay static. Depending on the time, it morphs from a lovely setting during the day to sunset to the night lights of the city.”
With its first new album in six years, The Hackensaw Boys’ David Sickmen (right) says the new lineup brings the same vibe and energy to live shows. The eponymously named record was released on June 24, and the Boys take the stage at The Southern Café & Music Hall on August 11. Supplied photo.
David Sickmen and The Hackensaw Boys have been a lot of things to a lot of people over their two-decade run. But they’ve never forgotten where they’re from.
“When we go out in the world, I still say the band is from Charlottesville,” Sickmen says. “Charlottesville was a magical place in the mid-’90s and into the early 2000s. I can’t imagine the band could have formed in any other place.”
Sickmen and his updated lineup of roots rockers—Caleb Powers on fiddle and vocals, Chris Stevens on bass, Jonah Sickmen on percussion, and Park Chisholm on backing guitar and vocals—released their new self-titled album on June 24. It had been six years since an LP bore the Hackensaw name.
Upon their recent return from Europe, Sickmen and his stringmen announced a stateside tour for the new record, along with a slight personnel change. Playing bass for the shows, which include local dates at The Southern Café and Music Hall on August 11 and Devils Backbone Basecamp Brewpub on October 7, is Chicago import Aaron Smith.
“We still play some of the old songs, and we play new songs,” Sickmen says. “The band and the shows still have the same energy—high energy. It’s still a Hackensaw Boys show. It’s the same vibe it has always been.”
Indeed, change is no new riff for the Boys from central Virginia. The band boasts nearly two dozen past members. Some of those, like John R. Miller and Pokey LaFarge, have gone on to successful solo careers. Others have moved on to even bigger bands; founding member and multi-instrumentalist Tom Peloso joined Modest Mouse in 2003.
Sickmen, the only founding Hackensaw remaining, has dealt with his own ups and downs over the years. Six years in with the band, he left in 2005 for mental health reasons. He came back six years later, and has played and sung with the Hackensaw Boys continuously over the last decade. In the meantime, he’s been challenged with vocal polyps, an ongoing issue he’s had surgery to correct.
With a lack of consistent members, Sickmen has struggled with what the band is exactly. About four years ago, he was working on an EP, A Fireproof House of Sunshine, and he asked himself whether he was using The Hackensaw Boys name in good faith. The songs were taking on a more personal, songwriter’s touch, and he didn’t know if it was Hackensaw material.
Sickmen did some soul searching. “I thought to myself, ‘What am I going to do, man?’” Sickmen says. “I have done enough solo shows to know how hard it is to be the solo guy with the guitar. But I also thought, ‘Am I a poser if I continue to carry the name Hackensaw Boys?’”
Sickmen eventually plunged ahead, using the band name with no reservations. He’d been there since the beginning. He’d put 13 years of his life into The Hackensaw Boys. He’d put his family through all the touring and difficult times. Damn right he was going to use the name.
A Fireproof House of Sunshine became something of a turning point. Hackensaw records will always feature some foot-stomping fiddle-racers and raunchy, punked-up alt-country tracks complete with the infamous charismo, a percussion instrument a former band member invented by piecing together cans and scrap metal. But the band has matured along with Sickmen. The lyrics on the new record often find him struggling with the ravages of time specifically. ”No one wants to live in the past,” he sings on “Things We’re Doing.” Then, in “Cages We’re Grown In”: “The clock in your head will not let you go.” The pacing and melodies in songs like “My Turn” and “All I Really Want to Do’’ find a slow cadence that Sickmen reluctantly admits.
“I am 53 years old at this point. Hopefully I am maturing at least a little bit,” he says. “It is very much a songwriter’s album.”
A songwriter. It’s something Sickmen says he’s only recently gotten comfortable calling himself. He says he tries hard to stay humble, but he’s finally decided he’s earned the right to the title.
So, what does a songwriter do, even after more than 20 years in a band that has changed seemingly with the seasons?
“I have been trying to write songs for most of my adult life. I don’t seem to ever get tired of it,” Sickmen says. “I hate to sound pretentious, but I can’t help myself. It is what I do. And when I say I am a songwriter, it’s because I am writing songs. I’m not relying on my past.”
Cade Wiberg used a musician fantasy video game to frame a book about his early adult years, and charted My Life According to Rock Band into the top 100 of the Amazon subcategories dating and friendship. Supplied photo.
The book deal for My Life According to Rock Band traces back to a Christmas morning 15 years ago.
Charlottesville native Cade Wiberg unwrapped his favorite video game ever on December 25, 2007. The young gamer had played and enjoyed Guitar Hero, Rock Band’s predecessor, but it had always felt like a solitary pursuit.
When Wiberg and his younger sister picked up their plastic guitar and drums, and plugged into Rock Band for the first time that Christmas Day, the experience was something more.
“Rock Band was, like, the first all-inclusive music game,” Wiberg says. “With Guitar Hero, people would see those plastic guitars and think, ‘oh that’s just a video game.’”
Rock Band would become an obsession, with Wiberg chugging through every song on every release of the game, bonding with friends over their shared love of virtual rockin’, eventually picking up a real guitar, and dreaming of becoming a real rock star.
The obsession, if not the rock god aspirations, stayed with Wiberg throughout college, when he began dabbling in creative nonfiction writing, all the way up to now. (He still hosts monthly Rock Band nights at Reason Beer.) Wiberg’s writing first merged with music when he penned a short essay structured around The Beatles’ greatest hits album, 1, for a class at James Madison University. Writing a few autobiographical paragraphs inspired by each song on 1, Wiberg found a narrative style. With supportive feedback from his classmates and teacher, he decided to expand on the idea—Rock Band was the obvious structural hook.
Wiberg completed My Life According to Rock Band, which contains 58 stories about his life, in 2019. This time around, the stories riffed off the 45 standard and 13 bonus tracks featured on the original Rock Band game. There’s Wiberg’s opening chapter, “29 Fingers,” inspired by the Konks song of the same name, along with others like the Metallica-inspired “Enter Sandman” and Weezer-driven “Say It Ain’t So.” A Bon Jovi chapter, “Wanted Dead or Alive,” tells of two old friends growing apart even as they have their first beers together. And “I’m So Sick” finds a love-ill Wiberg first paranoid that he’s lost his girlfriend, then deciding she’s gonna be his girl after all, but all the while lacking the self-awareness to know the relationship is dead on arrival.
When Wiberg set out to publish My Life According to Rock Band, he turned to Jay Varner, the professor for whom he’d written his Beatles-inspired essay. On Varner’s advice, he sent his manuscript to 100 literary agents. They all rejected him. “They all said, ‘We would love it if you had published something,’” Wiberg says, understanding the irony. “They want you to be popular already.”
Then, he found Brandylane in Richmond. The publisher liked the story right away and gave Wiberg a co-publishing deal. Pre-sales went live in February this year, and partly on the strength of Wiberg’s reputation in the Rock Band community, the book sold well, breaking into the top-100 in two Amazon Books subcategories: dating and friendship.
“It’s basically a coming-of-age story and just entails all of those teenage things we went through: growing up, falling in love, drinking for the first time, striking out with girls,” Wiberg says. “It started as random journal entries and came together from there.”
Wiberg, who’ll read passages from the book on June 17 at New Dominion Bookshop, doesn’t know where My Life According to Rock Band will take him. He says he’s been writing short stories his whole life, but he doesn’t expect his new essay collection to let him quit his day job as a Violet Crown Cinema manager.
Wiberg does know that, between his short-form, Beatles-inspired essay and his first full-length book, he did a lot of growing up; he had more stories to tell. Maybe, if the first book does well while his own life story keeps a-rollin’, Wiberg will shred through a Rock Band-inspired trilogy. “I have toyed with the idea, but I haven’t done anything official,” he says.
Wiberg expects his love of Rock Band the game to continue. While a lot of folks rocked out to it for a few years in the wake of 2007’s plastic guitar high-water mark and then put it away, Wiberg keeps buying all the downloadable content he can and hosting his Rock Band parties.
“I never expected to be solely living off the income from the book forever or anything like that,” Wiberg says. “It’s just something I wanted to do. And it has been really cool.”
Charlottesville Arts Festival launches with three days of art, artists (painting by Sean McClain, above), and public participation with music, food, and live demos. IX Art Park organizers hope to make it an annual event. Supplied photo.
IX Art Park attracted about 356,000 visitors in 2021. But only 16,000 of them bought tickets to an event or The Looking Glass, the park’s immersive art experience.
Now, with free events stacked nearly back-to-back throughout the summer, IX will host its biggest ticketed happening of the year. The first Charlottesville Arts Festival, which administrators hope will build on last year’s inaugural Metamorphix Art Festival, kicks off on Friday, May 27, and runs through the weekend.
“We were thinking about it, and Metamorphix is kind of an IXian brand,” says Alex Bryant, the park’s executive director. “This festival is for Charlottesville and about Charlottesville. It’s a bigger thing—and more sustainable.”
Bryant and IX events planner Ewa Harr hope the more expansive festival, which will host nearly 60 artists from central Virginia and beyond, becomes a yearly signature for the park. They’re billing CAF as “a three-day celebration of creativity, diversity, and community providing locals and visitors a chance to immerse themselves in arts of all genres.” That means in addition to the five dozen art vendors featuring paintings, drawings, photography, sculptures, ceramics, jewelry, glass, fiber arts, and tattoo designs, the festival also invites attendees to experience and make art in unique ways.
Charlottesville Arts Festival opens with fire dancing and the unveiling of its portion of the Mural Mosaic Global Roots project. The America Connects National Mural features contributions by more than 1,500 artists across the country. Mural Mosaic, which has been creating public murals since 2003, launched the collaborative project in April 2021 to reconnect folks in the post-pandemic world.
“We’re just really excited about three days of art and activation,” Bryant says. “It’s everything you would expect from an art festival…and it’s also a mural launch. It compounds itself, and everything coalesces in a great way.”
To select the expansive list of artists at the festival, Harr, Bryant and others from the IX Art Park Foundation board formed a panel to sift through applications. The “judging process was terribly challenging due to the high caliber of work from all of our applicants,” Bryant says, and the panel was unable to allow everyone who applied to exhibit.
Harr, who also coordinates the Crozet Arts and Crafts Festival, was central to the selection effort, Bryant says, as she’s personally connected to many of the region’s artists. The result of the panel’s selection process is an eclectic collection of fresh artists, Harr says.
“The thing about IX Art Park is it allows for us to have a wide variety of art—from more traditional printing and photography to funky mixed media—that you wouldn’t see any other place,” Harr says. “We have a lot of artists participating that people have not seen.”
Most of the vendors will display their wares in traditional festival-style tents, according to Bryant, but the Charlottesville Arts Festival will also feature installations in the field stretching across the park, performances, and an outdoor art room for demonstrations and workshops. The goal is to use as much of the available space as possible and make the event “experiential and immersive,” Bryant says.
Among the vendors will be artists Sean McClain, Charlene Cross, Erin Harrigan, Jamie Agins, Jessie Rublee, Michelle Freeman, Rebecca Razul, Sarah Tremaine, Sam Ashkani, Nicole Pisaniello, and Tom Toscano. Food and craft beer will be available throughout the weekend.
Still, Bryant says tickets aren’t what drives the nonprofit IX Art Park Foundation, as festival-style events typically pay only for themselves, with revenues going into the pockets of vendors and other staff. IX hosts only four to five gated events per year, and the foundation’s board hopes even those someday could be made free of charge.
Going forward, the organization hopes to support its 24-hour mural and sculpture art park and community-driven events with small grassroots donations. Bryant says The Looking Glass will remain a critical revenue stream, drawing tourist dollars from outside C’ville to fuel the local art community. Sponsors are also crucial for events like IX’s summer film series.
“We are trying to do as few ticketed events as we can,” Bryant says. “We are growing and giving back to the community. We want to open the doors and be a public art park, 365.”
IX Art Park Executive Director Alex Bryant says Saturday’s High Arts Cannabis Festival is “leaning more educational than recreational.” Photo: Eze Amos
It’s a pot potluck.
Yes, home growers coming to the High Arts Cannabis Festival at Ix Art Park are invited to bring one ounce of their own supply—state law says no more, but honestly, that’s kind of a lot—to exchange among themselves.
The April 23 High Arts Cannabis Festival will take place right next to The Looking Glass immersive art experience. (Cue Jon Stewart in Half Baked: Have you ever been to The Looking Glass…on weed?)
But no, organizers say the High Arts Cannabis Festival, with its dual focus on trippy art and wacky tobacky cultivation, will not be hazier than a Wiz Khalifa concert.
“We are leaning more educational than recreational,” says Alex Bryant, who in late January succeeded Susan Krischel as IX Art Park’s executive director. “It’s not like a beer festival, where you come and try all these beers.”
Smoking marijuana at the High Arts Cannabis Festival is in fact strictly prohibited, just as it is in any public place by Virginia law.
But as they’re exchanging indica, Bryant says home growers at the festival will also be in a position to exchange ideas. In addition to hosting live music, artists, and cannabis-adjacent vendors, the High Arts festival features information sessions and panels designed to heighten growers’ awareness and abilities.
The cannabis-themed gathering and exchange is the type of event that’s been going on in progressive states for years. But marijuana reform has moved at a roach’s pace in Virginia. The state legislature didn’t pass a bill allowing farmers to grow hemp until 2018. That same year, a federal mandate made cannabidiol, or CBD, a low-potency cannabis derivative, legal across the country, and CBD retail proliferated in Virginia in 2019. Former Virginia governor Ralph Northam was a vocal supporter of legalizing marijuana, but the current administration is less stoked on the matter.
Skooma owner David Treccariche says marijuana’s increased presence in mainstream American Life is why he decided to “jump feet first” into the market for legal weed. Photo: Eze Amos
By early 2019, Virginia legalized THCA, another non-psychoactive cannabinoid, and licensed dispensaries slowly began opening around the state. The commonwealth was behind 45 states to move on medical mary jane—at a time when nine states had already gone all in on recreational use and retail.
Today, Virginia home growers are allowed by law to cultivate up to four cannabis plants, given that they are not publicly visible and only for personal use. And while full-blown retail may still be several years away, local green thumbs have plenty of knowledge and experience to share, according to The Original Farmacy’s Alexander Respeto, who’s consulting on the High Arts Cannabis Festival.
So, when the Virginia legislature finally pushes recreational retail across the floor, will that horticultural know-how benefit the sativa-savoring crowd?
“I don’t know that the festival is really for the home grower to be more ready to go into commercial growing down the road, but I do think the point is to create a community among the small growers,” said Albemarle Cannabis Company’s Joe Kuhn, who’s also consulting with IX leading up to High Arts.
According to Kuhn, it’s big corporations that stand to benefit when Virginia begins licensing growers and retailers. While the relevant bills are constantly changing, fees and other regulations may keep marginalized businesses, such as hemp growers like Kuhn and the many small CBD shops that are already established in C’ville, like Skooma on the Downtown Mall, from being able to compete with big pharma in the legal weed trade.
“We understand what the government is trying to do. They want control,” Kuhn says. “But in my mind, and among like-minded people, we actually think they are moving too fast.”
According to Kuhn, some legislative provisions regarding cannabis seeds and allowed THC levels have flipped back and forth so frequently that they’re often in contradiction with themselves and federal law.
Bryant wants the High Arts Cannabis Festival to be a part of that larger regulatory conversation. While employed by the Tom Tom Foundation in 2020, he and his team worked with Virginia NORML to help pass cannabis equity legislation designed to keep small businesses from being shut out of the marijuana money conversation. “We had front-row access and could see that people that are marginalized, who could have life-changing economic boons, could be ignored [in favor of] big pharma,” he says.
Respeto joined the commercial kush biz after he finished high school. He went to southern California to visit his grandfather, whom he’d never heard much about growing up, and “lo and behold, he was the owner of the Farmacy.” Pop-pop’s smoke business was an early fixture on the Cali marijuana retail scene, Respeto says, and he knew he wanted to follow in his footsteps.
Respeto’s grandfather told him stories about going to jail for his cause and seeing countless others prosecuted in the early days of dope decriminalization. Now, 20 years later, Respeto’s own cause is what he calls “the fully integrated lifestyle.” For small growers, that means being involved with reefer on a regulatory level so they don’t get pushed out of the business—even after they’ve gained a foothold. “They come in and buy out everything,” Respeto says. “At a small level, home growers have this collective consciousness, and by building this community, we could put together a team that could fight against these big pharmacies.”
Respeto joined up with Bryant and Krischel for the High Arts Cannabis Festival after meeting through mutual acquaintances. He explained he and his California-based business partner had experience working for the Emerald Cup, the Super Bowl of pot cultivation. There, they’d learned the best ways to turn a festival otherwise focused on a recreational hallucinogen into an educational summit. The experience made Respeto a natural partner for the fest.
Dubbed by organizers a “celebration of the psychedelic arts and homegrown cannabis,” High Arts will host vendors—CBD dispensaries like Greener Things, hempers like Solar Roots Farms, seed slingers like Blue Ridge Seed, and activist groups like Grass Roots VA—as well as artists, including Emily Zampetti, Equilibrium Crystals, and Holy Mountain Glass. DJ Bristol, The Oversteppers, and Zuzu’s Hot 5 will provide live music.
“We want to highlight the role that cannabis and substances have played for artists and what that means,” Bryant says. “Some people that are coming may have only seen marijuana in D.A.R.E. It’s for people that have questions, and if they want to have a CBD gummy, we want to be a safe space for that.”
The festival has not been without its detractors. Some say prohibiting marijuana use at a festival encouraging its exchange is futile. But after his experience working on cannabis-related events with Tom Tom, Bryant says the backlash hasn’t been as heated as expected. “We’ve had nothing but a positive response,” he says. “We were anticipating some negative feedback—we got a little at Tom Tom—but I think people are coming around and saying, ‘it’s okay, you can do this safely and responsibly.”
Kuhn says he hopes the High Arts Cannabis Festival will help to continue breaking down the stigma that’s been associated with marijuana use for decades. That means he and the other festival organizers will do everything they can to make sure vendors are licensed, police officers know what to expect, events are serious-minded and truly educational, and no one smokes out.
“We’re trying to keep it more on the up and up,” Kuhn says. “There is so much misinformation. I live in these businesses, and I think all businesses involved in CBD—in order for us to get where we want and thrive—we just want to bring the conversation to curious folks to learn more about cannabis and get away from the negative connotation.”
Of course, there’s nothing in state legislation that says attendees can’t consume a reasonable amount of cannabis before they attend the High Arts Cannabis Festival.
“If I’m being honest, there is definitely a chance for people, especially at The Looking Glass, to step back and see how art combines with the collective consciousness we’re trying to build,” Respeto says.
Hoping to help families navigate difficult conversations—especially around the pandemic—Jacquelyn Lazo co-penned Comeback Kids: A Pocket Guide to Post-Pandemic Parenting. Photo: Eze Amos
Jacquelyn Lazo thinks a lot about communications. So, as the Charlottesville resident spoke to a friend whose child was having trouble with the COVID-19 pandemic, she was really listening.
A former Darden Report managing editor and current poetry magazine proofreader, nonprofit communications consultant, and engagement specialist for Save the Children U.S., Lazo sprung to action. She started talking to kids. What were they feeling as the pandemic evolved?
Lazo’s initial discussions within her circle led to wider conversation and eventually to a new book, Comeback Kids: A Pocket Guide to Post-Pandemic Parenting, written with family friend and University of Pittsburgh Professor of Psychiatry Frank DePietro.
Lazo, who will host three fireside chats about Comeback Kids at Jefferson-Madison Regional Library on March 24, April 21, and May 19, recently spoke with 434 about the book and beyond.
434: How did you come to the idea for the book?
Jacquelyn Lazo: I was talking to a former colleague around the time the pandemic started. It was her daughter’s birthday, and the party had to be canceled. Then her daughter started to show some signs that were a little concerning—just asking a lot of questions her mom didn’t have answers for. She didn’t even know where to start, who to talk to. I have always been interested in mental health issues and working with children, and it got me thinking. I wanted to see if I could find a way to help other families.
So the process started well before you decided to write a book?
In April 2020, I made a short questionnaire to get some feedback, to start the dialogue with kids. It was five questions trying to get everyone to start talking about this. How do you start to talk to your kids about something you don’t know anything about? What we found from those who responded was that it did allow them to open up the conversation. And, it was not necessarily this big scary thing.
What was the next step?
I thought it was going to turn into a children’s book. But as we got responses from people all over the United States and even internationally, it became a whole journey. My background is in writing and communications; I am not an expert on mental health. Frank is a family friend who has watched all of my husband’s family grow up. After looking at the kids’ quotes, he said, “What kids need to hear is that their parents are okay.”
So how should people read Comeback Kids?
It really is meant to be a pocket guide. Dr. DePietro and I are both parents. He is a father of four. I have a little girl at home. We were coming at it as parents. Parents know their kids best, and this book is to be used at their discretion when it’s helpful.
Is there a specific type of parent or family that would benefit most from the book?
I would say it’s even for the broader audience of caregivers—the people that care and are paying attention. There is so much data pointing to the fact that having a good, loving relationship with adults is instrumental for kids. And while the book is specifically around the pandemic, it is really about helping communicate during times of stress and change. We put it at a relatively low price point because we want it to be accessible. We’re doing a lot locally with the library. The goal is to begin to create a community of caregivers.
What about the caregivers who are feeling pandemic fatigue?
That is huge. We all feel that. Some days you won’t want to pick up this book, some days you will. And as much as we don’t want to hear about the pandemic more, the nice thing about the book is that it is forward thinking and hopeful. The book is really focused on tapping into humanity. Your kids are little humans, and raising them is a hard job anytime. Now, we are faced with doing it in a time of greater stress. This next generation has been forced to grow up a little faster, and in a way, that is going to serve them well.
Through her nonprofit United by Chocolate, Esther Bobbin hopes to break down language barriers in the cacao industry. Photo: Eze Amos
Esther Bobbin only had to be near the chocolate industry to fall in love. Now, through her nonprofit United By Chocolate, she’s trying to change the business for the better by breaking down language barriers.
“There are about 4.5 million cacao producers worldwide, and the majority of them don’t speak English,” Bobbin says. “And yet, the majority of chocolate industry groups do all of their events in English. Imagine what we can do, especially now with Zoom and other technology, if we could just translate events into one other language. We can reach so many more people.”
Years ago, Bobbin was working for a government contractor in Seattle and learned her firm’s neighbor was Theo Chocolate, the first fair trade chocolatier in the United States. Drawn to the Theo mission, Bobbin toured the facility multiple times and learned cacao producers often struggle to earn a living wage.
Bobbin, who “grew up in a very international household” with her father and Peruvian mother, eventually left her government contractor job and completed an MBA. She then got involved with the Northwest Chocolate Festival—never forgetting about those industry-wide wage disparities. She thought making the festival accessible to non-English speakers could give them game-changing new networking and educational opportunities.
“It started as something simple, and honestly it was kind of naïve of me,” Bobbin says. “But you would see the cacao producers, who would come to the festival with these baggies of beans to try to connect with the chocolate makers, and they were losing out on this huge opportunity.”
In 2018, Bobbin and her husband moved away from the Pacific Northwest. They had ties to central Virginia and chose Charlottesville as their new home. In February 2019, Bobbin founded United By Chocolate, a nonprofit aiming to “lift the barriers of language to amplify connection and trade” in the cacao industry.
Bobbin and United By Chocolate spent their first several years on translation projects, first manually transforming existing conference videos into new languages, then launching two automated translation efforts with Arizona State University and the University of Virginia. But the UVA project relied on dictation technology that wasn’t quite where it needed to be, Bobbin says, and she and her team tabled it.
In March 2021, Bobbin turned her attention to hosting her own chocolate industry conference. And in January of this year, the first inaugural United By Chocolate festival debuted virtually in three languages: English, Spanish, and French.
Bobbin hopes to hold the event annually and add Indonesian translations at some point in the future. In the meantime, United By Chocolate will distribute the money it has already raised through its Language Bridges program, work with other industry event organizers to encourage translations, and raise funds for future projects.
“For me, cacao and chocolate can be a vehicle for change,” Bobbin says. “The majority of cacao is grown in the southern hemisphere, and they take on so much risk in the supply chain…and end up getting cut out of pricing. It has always been an issue. It’s just that now, we are seeing it more.”
Kylie Britt's love of learning (and teaching) about wine led her to the Wool Factory, where she organizes retail, does bottle services at Broadcloth, and helps educate staff. Photo: Eze Amos
Kylie Britt knows the wizardry behind winemaking. And she wants you to know it, too.
“I think it’s important to know where wine comes from and the people who make it, but I want to share that in accessible ways,” says the aspiring consultant and current “wine specialist” at The Wool Factory.
Britt’s journey into wine science began at the University of Richmond, where she studied chemistry—among a slew of other subjects. She liked chem enough to start a Ph.D. in it, but soon found she was looking for a more applied brand of science. A job at a retail wine shop in Durham, North Carolina, gave her direction. She found her next oeno-industry post at Michael Shaps Wineworks in Charlottesville.
Britt’s knowledge of wine and its production process grew, as did her own appreciation of the vine’s versatility, which led to her current Wool Factory job, where she organizes retail, does bottle service at Broadcloth, and helps educate staff.
Last year, Britt launched Teacher’s Pet Nat to provide outside customers wine education consulting. But COVID-era obstacles have held the business back, and for now, she’s using a Teacher’s Pet Nat-branded Instagram (@teachers_pet_nat) to push out pointers—slide shows on what makes wine sweet, different kinds of hybrid grapes, the spritzy piquette wine style, etc. She hopes to begin helping wine lovers with events and tastings, and restaurants with staff training as folks become more comfortable meeting in groups. “I’m still figuring out exactly where I want to be,” Britt says.
Britt’s dipped her feet in consulting through a few public education events—tastings outside of those she does weekly at The Wool Factory’s Workshop. She tries to build her educational events around themes: think sensory analysis or tasting through a scientific lens. And that’s something she’d like to continue as Teacher’s Pet Nat grows.
Since she’s moved to Virginia, Britt has become obsessed with the state’s booming winemaking practice. She comes to wine from a modern, rather than traditional, background—“I tasted meritage before a Bordeaux blend,” she says—and that helps her appreciate what she sees as the state’s strong suit: taking old-world techniques and turning them on their tête. “The culture of wine is there, and we’re figuring out how we fit into it,” she says.
Britt says some of the highlights of Virginia vino are producers’ willingness to experiment with new varietals, such as Austrian Blaufränkisch, and wine-cider hybrid styles, such as the co-fermented pét-nats at Patois Cider in Albemarle County.
So, what is all this about pét-nat anyway? The term is short for pétillant naturel, a process by which winemakers let their juice ferment at least partially in the bottle. The finished products are light, semi-sparkling wines that can be unpredictable and exciting in terms of sweetness and flavor profile.
“Pét-nat is a sparkling wine that undergoes one fermentation rather than two,” Britt says. “A lot of traditional sparklings use two—they’re still wines and you add carbonation. Pét-nat takes advantage of the carbon dioxide produced during initial fermentation. Every bottle is unique, and it’s a pure representation of the fruit and the earth.”
Natural wines in general are all the rage, Britt says, but pét-nat is distinct because consumers can be sure of the process being used. Folks making “natural” wine might eschew sulfites, or they might be low-intervention and/or organic-certified. Other producers making great wines that are indeed natural might not pay to be designated as such.
If it’s all a little confusing, that’s where Teacher’s Pet Nat comes in. “It’s for nerds and newbies,” Britt says. “It’s wine education for everyone.”
Katie Kishore opened Kindness Café to give adults with cognitive disabilities structured, gainful employment and a place to feel like they’re part of something big. Photo: Eze Amos
Kindness Cafe + Play opened quietly during the first COVID-19 wave’s peak. Now, after battling pandemic-related challenges for almost two years, owner Katie Kishore is looking to expand on her mission: To give adults with cognitive disabilities structured, gainful employment and a place to feel like they’re part of something big.
“It has been wonderful—even getting going during the pandemic was great for us,” Kishore says. “Adults with disabilities often have a hard time engaging with the greater community, and during the pandemic that was even more so.”
Since its outdoor-only start in July 2020, Kindness Cafe has grown to employ eight part-time workers. The cafe opened its indoor space in May 2021, and Kishore says the shop is finally developing the sense of community she always envisioned.
Kishore is considering multiple ways to give even more adults with unique skill sets the sense of structure and responsibility employment provides. One option would be to expand hours (located in the Brooks Family YMCA, the Kindness Cafe is currently open from 8am to noon). Another would be to open a second location.
“There are people that are asking us to join our team and be a part of it,” Kishore says. “We intentionally began this small, and we are lucky to be at the YMCA, which gives us flexibility. I’m not saying we need to be open 12 hours a day.”
Kishore, who has two daughters, one with Down syndrome, modeled Kindness Cafe after Bitty & Beau’s in Wilmington, North Carolina. She had seen a video about the coffee shop, which also employs adults with disabilities, and visited to see what it was all about in 2017.
Kishore ran a crowdfunding campaign to get off the ground in 2019 and launched Kindness Cafe about a year later. The cafe uses grant funding and community support, in addition to sales revenue, to thrive.
“It is beginning to feel like a real community for people with and without disabilities,” Kishore says. “The staff has been fantastic. They show up each day and do their best to have a positive impact on those around them.”
When people look back on 2021-2022, what will they think of? Okay, other than that.
With a little luck, it will be the new coffee shops, bakeries, and lunch counters that braved the elements to open their doors to the city’s hungry and thirsty. With a little luck, it will be that elegant cake they brought to a small gathering, that brilliantly executed latte they grabbed while strolling the Downtown Mall, that picture-perfect main course they enjoyed with a friend.
Because with a little luck, the following nine restaurants and cafés will be some of our new favorites for years to come.
Photo: Anna Kariel
New to the coop
Birdhouse is the brainchild of an architect and communications pro, but you’d never know it for the inspired rotisserie chicken flocking out of their small kitchen.
Occupying the old Ace Biscuit & Barbecue space on Henry Avenue (Ace relocated one street over in 2020), Birdhouse roasts free-range, organic Cornish cross chickens on the spit before adding a glug of olive oil and more seasoning—sumac, which hits acidic, is the not-so-secret ingredient—and crisping the skin to order.
Tim Popa, who handles communications for a design firm by day, charts Birdhouse’s chicken work, while former architect Liz Broyles builds out the rest of the menu. Small plates like roasted squash and green pozole soup gird the chicken-focused offerings. Broyles says the pozole “is the one thing I feel like I could eat every day and never get sick of.” Birdhouse sources the soup’s hominy from heirloom bean supplier Rancho Gordo in Napa, California, soaks the kernels in-house, and marries them with a tomatillo-based broth infused with poblano and jalapeño. Cilantro and rotisserie chicken finish the dish—“lots of layering,” Broyles says.
Birdhouse currently gets its chicken from Shenandoah Valley Organic in Harrisonburg, but Popa and Broyles are working to find local farmers to provide other bird breeds. “We’re still playing with things and don’t necessarily have a strict thing we’re going to adhere to,” Broyles says.
Photo: Anna Kariel
A sweet spot
There’s a saying about too many cooks in the kitchen, but lucky for Cake Bloom, the same hasn’t proven true for bakers.
Susan Sweeney moved her cake business from the West Coast to Charlottesville in late 2019 and quickly pivoted to a home-delivery and small-party format due to 2020’s setbacks for wedding and other large-party suppliers. Sweeney’s sisters, Elizabeth, Mary, Sarah, and Paige, then joined the team, bringing to the turntable a variety of backgrounds and expertise in baking, event planning, and design.
Together, the Sweeneys have launched a new brick-and-mortar, cake-and-bubbles bar to pair their passions for baked goods and sparkling wine.
At the former Snowing in Space location, the sisters covered the former tenant’s Caddyshack murals and created a bright, modern atmosphere that’s modeled after a retail/restaurant hall down under. “We have a sister (and business partner) living in Australia whose recipe ideas, aesthetic, and sense of humor infuse everything we do here,” Sweeney says.
And if you try only one thing when you hit the new Cake Bloom bar, make it the five-slice sampler of the Sweeney’s rotating seasonal signature flavors, which, she suggests, you pair with a bottle of Cava Aurelia Brut Nature Gran Reserva.
Photo: Anna Kariel
FARMacy Café
Wife-and-husband team Jessica and Gabino Lino have taken fusion to the next level with FARMacy Café. Not only do they blend Executive Chef Lino’s native Mexican food with Italian, Indian, Asian, and classic American comfort influences, but they also try to make it as nutrient rich as possible.
Jessica Lino (née Hogan), who’s worked nearly every job in hospitality on top of spending years in retail, started FARMacy as a superfood smoothie delivery service, then bought a food truck with her husband (boyfriend at the time). They began focusing FARMacy on local, organic, superfood Mexican fusion and opened their new restaurant in the CODE building courtyard earlier this year.
FARMacy’s best seller is the Super Naan Taco: garlic Indian-style flatbread stuffed with organic al pastor pork, “super guac,” lettuce, minced kale, cilantro, onion, feta, and sour cream. The café’s just started offering breakfast items, as well, like a burrito with local eggs, chorizo, avocado crema, raw pepper jack cheese, minced kale, and black beans. “So full of flavor—it’s a great way to start the day,” Lino says.
Photo: Anna Kariel
Wine buzz
Nick Leichtentritt founded the business that would become Milli Coffee Roasters in 2012. Tragically, he died seven years later at the age of 34. The business survives today, though, having been shepherded through the hard times by Leichtentritt’s wife, Nicole, and later sold to regular Milli Coffee patron John Borgquist.
It was Borgquist, the coffee conglomerate’s somewhat accidental successor, who launched Milli Second Café & Wine Bar in December last year. Another new CODE building culinary destination, Milli Second adds alcoholic beverages to the group’s repertoire; Borgquist suggests trying the rotating Virginia wine flight. “It shows off the best of local wines, including wines that are tough to find anywhere but the winery itself,” he says.
Of course Milli Second still offers the goods in the grinds, like pour overs using micro-lots of green coffee roasted 100 grams at a time. It’s “coffee you’d otherwise have to get on an airplane to taste,” Borgquist says.
Milli Second has more to roll out in the coming months, but its Thursday night free wine tastings have already been a hit, Borgquist says. The wines are new every week, and like the café’s Virginia wines and micro-lot coffee, they’re drinks you’d have a hard time landing anywhere else.
Photo: Anna Kariel
Say “cheese!”
Ask a few chefs what they like to eat at home. They’ll likely say something simple but delicious, made with great ingredients treated gently, respectfully, properly. For cheesemonger Carolyn Leasure and chef Zack Leasure, the answer is deliciously predictable.
“I owned an artisan cheese shop in D.C., and I would bring home all these delicious cheeses from small farms,” Carolyn Leasure says. “We would make grilled cheese.”
The couple’s home kitchen experiments—with different toppings, compound butters, cheese combinations—led to some happy customers when Leasure began offering the sandwiches at her fromagerie. C’ville got its first taste of the results when ooey gooey crispy opened in the CODE building in mid-February.
If you’re a first-timer, what should you request when you come to the counter? You could go with one of the flavorful, hearty salads, like the Blustery Fall, with roasted celery root, arugula, celery hearts, lemon-soaked currants, toasted hazelnuts, brie, and sherry vinaigrette. But you’ll probably end up with something ooey and gooey. Leasure suggests the brie, truffle butter, and crushed potato chips cheeser. Her husband’s favorite is the fontina val d’aosta, coated and crisped with sage butter. “It’s so simple but so delicious,” she says.
Photo: Anna Kariel
You’re welcome
Kitty Ashi needed more space. Fans of her family’s Thai delicacies at Monsoon Siam had asked for years about catering services and a place to host special occasion dinners. But the beloved restaurant just wasn’t big enough to answer the call.
Ashi had her eye on a spot that could pad her Thai empire, though, and along with her brother and his wife, a chef, she opened Pineapples Thai Kitchen in the old Coca-Cola building last year. “I loved this space so much when it was still Timbercreek Market,” she says. “And it’s been empty for a long time.”
Pineapples have strong ties to southern Thai food and represent hospitality. Welcoming patrons to the Pineapples Thai Kitchen menu are appetizers like the Punim Pok Pok Salad, with green papaya, grape tomatoes, string beans, roasted peanuts, and spicy lime dressing, and Num Tok Pork Belly, with red onion, scallion, cilantro, spring mix lettuce, and dressing in a rice cracker bowl. Standout entrées are the crispy chicken with roasted cashews and the biyani style yellow curry with bone-in beef rib, served with roti. For those who like their yum yum with a side of pain pain, the Southern Heat brings it with minced chicken, kaffir lime leaf, yellow curry powder, rice paper, and steamed veggies.
French twist
Rachel De Jong has worked as a pastry chef for some of the world’s most accomplished culinary personalities—Ludo Lefebvre, Patrick O’Connell—but Cou Cou Rachou is her first solo gig. Here, she’s creating seasonal cakes, traditional French pastries, and inspired breads by elevating the classics with her own natural, organic style.
Cou Cou Rachou doesn’t offer a set menu; the pastries rotate almost daily, giving De Jong freedom to flex her creativity. She’s in the process of optimizing her cake production, so while she loves making custom cakes to order, she plans to rotate three options seasonally going forward. Coming soon are choices like pistachio and citrus and chocolate mousse with red fruit jam.
De Jong says several Cou Cou Rachou pastries are quickly becoming fan favorites and difficult to take off the daily list. For a past/present hybrid, check out the French onion croissant, inspired by Lefebvre’s renowned soup of the same name and oozing with caramelized sweet onions, thyme, black pepper, bay leaf, and local cheese. Or go sweeter with a croissant that features frangipane (almond pastry cream) spiked with loads of fresh citrus zest.
The secret to de Jong’s decadent croissants? “The two biggest things are patience and beurre d’isigny,” she says. Aka: “French butter, from Normandy.”
Photo: Anna Kariel
Answer the call
Laura Fonner made her name as one of Charlottesville’s best chefs at Duner’s, where she settled in for many years turning out acclaimed, upscale-but-accessible, American-fusion fare. Since leaving the Ivy Road restaurant, Fonner’s bounced around a bit, but great talent usually finds its place, and for Fonner, that place may well be Siren.
Focused on American- and Mediterranean-inflected seafood, the new Ridge Road dining room (in the former Shebeen space) is part of the Champion Hospitality Group, which now has five in-demand restaurants under its um-beerla. Fonner, who’s a mother of three and former “Guy’s Grocery Games” winner, has held various roles with Champion since summer 2020.
The Siren menu is short and simple, opening with soups and salads, such as the crispy fried lentil falafel with tzatziki, quinoa tabbouleh, and feta on mixed greens, turning to shareables like curried yogurt-marinated grilled shrimp with harissa tomato jam and crispy fried chickpeas, and crescendoing with entrées like rockfish with kabocha squash gnocchi, mushrooms, and lemon beurre blanc.
Photo: Anna Kariel
More to love
Justin van der Linde’s come a long way since he launched his Smoked BBQ Co. food trailer almost a decade ago. Back then, his stock-in-trade was a 250-gallon offset smoker and all the pulled pork, ribs, chicken, and beef he could crank out. Now, he’s expanded his culinary point of view to a wider selection of comfort food and sandwich styles.
“We don’t invent many new items,” van der Linde says of his new venutre, Taste Shack. “We just like to make a run at the classics our way.”
Those classics include a housemade pastrami; van der Linde and his team start with a whole brisket, brine it, season it, smoke it, and pile it on a classic Reuben or in the Shack Pastrami, with Swiss cheese, cole slaw, tomato, onion, bread and butter pickles, and Shack Sauce. Then there’s the steak and cheese made with hand-trimmed, thin-sliced rib-eye. “Every steak is made to order, and we use a signature roll that we get direct from New York,” van der Linde says. “We are probably the only place in town using real rib-eye.”
