Category: 2021 Best of C-VILLE Staff Picks

Several art projects helped us cope during 2020’s stay-at-home months. We searched for original works in windows along a mapped route, downloaded coloring pages by local artists, attended distanced concerts and plays, and amped up our holiday light displays, letting them glow well past the season. We also embraced the porch photography trend that swept the globe, with projects launched by local photographers. 

The C’ville Porchraits project formed after Eze Amos saw a story about Massachusetts photographer Cara Soulia’s pivot to taking family photos on stoops, porches, and front yards in exchange for donations to charity. Amos enlisted fellow local shutterbugs Tom Daly, Kristen Finn, John Robinson, and Sarah Cramer Shields to join him in a similar effort, and at final count the team had snapped over 1,000 pictures. 

Charlottesville photographer Robert Radifera also took note of Soulia’s Front Steps Project and created a local outpost that benefited the Charlottesville Community Foundation.

“The project made it possible for folks to see each other and interact with one another through our photos,” says Amos. “The Instagram page was a colorful window that reminded everyone that we were still holding on strong as a community.”

“Over 50 years, Madison House’s model of student-led, peer-recruited service has created an unmatched culture of service at the University of Virginia,” says Tim Freilich, executive director of Madison House, an independent nonprofit that coordinates volunteer opportunities in the Charlottesville area for UVA students. He’s got the numbers to back it up: In a typical year, Madison House’s 2,500 students lend a hand to 125 community partners, including schools, hospitals, and nonprofits. 

When the pandemic disrupted much of its usual operations, the organization still managed to make a difference, pivoting quickly to virtual volunteering. For example, 300 bilingual Madison House volunteers (in partnership with the Virginia Equity Center) provided online science tutoring for English-language learners in Albemarle County Schools. This year, volunteers will be back to their regular programming, including helping out in hospitals, assisting in senior living facilities, and even working with United Way to guide community members as they fill out their taxes.

Freilich emphasizes that the benefits of service go both ways. “Students realize how much they can learn from the wisdom and knowledge of the community,” he says. Madison House knows the students are getting as much benefit from volunteering as anyone. It’s a model of how the relationship between UVA and Charlottesville can work: Collaboration makes everyone stronger.

In an effort to give working locals a break, Charlottesville Area Transit made its CAT buses free to ride at the beginning of the pandemic. Then, in March of this year, the city announced that money from the federal American Rescue Plan would allow the bus system to remain free for three more years. It’s a great deal—the CAT is out of the bag!

Immigrating to the United States is a challenge in itself, but not knowing English can make adjusting to everyday life even more difficult. To ease this tough transition, Literacy Volunteers of Charlottesville/Albemarle offers free one-on-one reading, writing, and English language tutoring to local adults in need of basic literacy skills. 

The nonprofit—funded by government grants, fundraising events, local organizations, and individual donors—pairs each student with a trained volunteer, who works with them to create a curriculum tailored to individual wants and needs. In addition to meeting with their tutor two hours every week, students are provided with a range of online resources to hone their language skills on their own. 

Those who have applied for naturalization are also invited to participate in weekly small group and one-on-one citizenship classes, which prepare them for the daunting U.S. citizenship test. However, LVCA does not only serve immigrants—over 9,000 adults in the Charlottesville area are functionally illiterate, or struggle to read and write at the level required for many jobs and everyday activities. 

By drastically improving their English abilities, students have gone on to gain U.S. citizenship, and also obtain better jobs, earn their G.E.D. or college degree, and pursue their life goals.

The winding, lush, scenic Rivanna offers a great opportunity to beat the summer heat and experience central Virginia’s natural beauty without leaving Charlottesville city limits—and the best way to enjoy it is with your butt in the water. 

Yes, kayaks are more agile, and canoes can hold more gear, but if the goal is all-out relaxation, a humble inner tube can’t be topped. Pro tip: Bring an extra flotation device specifically for the cooler. (Another great advantage of the tube is that it leaves your hands free to hold on to the beverage of your choice.)

Rivanna River Company, located on East High Street, will rent you a tube seven days a week, and pick you up once you’re finished floating. Or you can or bring your own and drop it in the water wherever you feel so inclined. (Just remember to leave a vehicle at your downstream destination. And don’t float past Riverview Park, or you may find yourself dragging your tube—and the cooler tube—back upstream.) That floats our boat, alright.

With roots dating back to 1860, the Pratt Ginkgo—named for a civil engineer credited with improving Grounds in the mid-19th century—gets our vote for best tree (if there were such a thing). Peep the ginkgo in late November, when it’s at its most brilliant yellow, on the west side of the Rotunda.

How well does the Charlottesville Skate Park rate nationally? It’s not huge in raw size, so it doesn’t make a splash on the major top-10 lists. But the city was able to attract high-level talent to manage the place—pro skater Matt Moffett, who’s supervised parks all over the country—and the park has begun to bring in riders from up and down the East Coast, attracting action sports enthusiasts to its combination of obstacles, features, and aesthetics.

“It’s been very much a success, and we have people come here regularly from all over,” Moffett says. “I’m in contact with the Tony Hawk Foundation, and they drool over this skate park.”

Aesthetically, the draws are the park’s intermittent maple trees and open spaces, not to mention the lack of a surrounding metal fence that so many parks feature.

But what of the main event, those obstacles and features? The upper portion of the Charlottesville Skate Park boasts an 18,000-square-foot street plaza with banks, ledges, rails, ramps, and funboxes (among other extreme sports lingo most folks will have to look up to understand). The lower portion offers another 15,000 square feet, devoted to a series of three bowls and pools. The park also has a flat asphalt multi-use area.

The street plaza is further divided into two tiers, one geared toward beginners, the other an Olympic-size course. Moffett says he hopes the different areas make the park accessible to a range of skating abilities, and attracting newbies seems to be one of the skate park’s best tricks. According to avid street skater and Cinema Skateshop owner Louis Handler, the facility’s visibility from the road is clutch.

“People love it, and the level of skateboarding in Charlottesville is going to shoot through the roof because of the park,” says Handler, who skates there several times per week. “Without a place like that, it is a lot more effort to get better.”

Handler says folks will have to overcome their fears; street obstacles and bowls can be scary for beginners. And they’re always going to come across intimidating skate park experts who’ve been doing it longer than they have. 

But that’s something Moffett and Charlottesville Parks & Recreation know well and are doing their best to curb. The park helps organize lessons and camps to keep people skating. And in practice, Moffett says skaters fall into traffic patterns like those on a freeway and are respectful of others and their space.

“You don’t throw yourself in front of a moving bus, and this is similar,” Moffett says. “This is one of the unique places you will see tattooed men getting along and coexisting with little girls with unicorns on their helmets.”

The Charlottesville Skate Park was conceived as far back as 2012 but only officially opened in March 2019. And it’s still a work in progress. The lights that designers hoped to install before launch fell victim to a budget overrun, so the park is currently raising funds to equip for night riding.

“With the lights, in summertime you can skate another four or five hours,” Handler says. “Then you would really be getting a lot of bang for the buck. I only want to see it get better.”

Former UVA pitcher and Major League Baseball player Sean Doolittle made national headlines last year when sporting events were shuttered, and he reminded us that “sports are the reward for a functioning society.” 

If that’s true, the University of Virginia is functioning just fine. 

Since March, UVA’s student-athletes have earned four national championships (women’s swimming and diving, men’s lacrosse, and individual titles in women’s tennis and track and field). The women’s soccer team made it to the College Cup semifinals and the rowing team finished fifth in the NCAA Championships. The four female swimmers Virginia sent to the Olympics each returned to Grounds with a medal, and several of the UVA alumni who were in Tokyo added to the count. 

And then there was the baseball team. Circling the drain with a 4-12 ACC record at the beginning of April, the Hoos improbably earned their way to the College World Series in June. 

Along the way, we got to know the team’s relief pitcher, Stephen Schoch, who became one of college baseball’s greatest characters thanks to an ESPN interview about refusing a Dippin’ Dots bribe: “I heard a fan offer free Dippin’ Dots if I blew it, Schoch said after a dramatic regional win. “The price of Dippin’ Dots, with inflation, is just unreal. So, for a brief moment, I was like, ‘Damn, Dippin’ Dots sound good.’ But also I thought in the back of my head, we win today, we win [tonight], we’re gonna be here another day. That’s more per diem. So that means I can buy my own Dippin’ Dots and be a winner.”

When asked if anything makes him nervous, Schoch, a 24-year-old, sixth-year graduate student who throws sidearm and is known to punch himself in the head while on the mound, said, “Caves, mainly.” And then, looking around the baseball field, he added, “Nothing really. I don’t see any caves out here.”

Virginia baseball coach Brian O’Connor told a Richmond radio station that Schoch is “an interesting cat. …He’s been around a few blocks a few times, and he brings a looseness, a belief, a confidence level that you can do anything.”

Alas, Schoch and co. were eliminated from the College World Series by No. 2-seed Texas, but the closer came through one more time for the Cavs: A large box filled with three massive bags of Dippin’ Dots (cookies and cream, rainbow, and banana split flavors) was delivered to Schoch to share with his teammates. 

As for baseball, he said it’s “just a game. There’s gonna be way harder things in life. I think I’m a cool guy. My dogs think I’m awesome. My teammates like me, and my friends like me.” Reward enough for anyone, if you ask us.

The first time Chris Alan saw Vince Morris do his stand-up was on an episode of “Def Comedy Jam.” “After watching it, I go, ‘What the hell was that? Was that even comedy?’” Alan reflects. “It was funny, it was very poignant, and—this was the early 2000s—it was pretty pro-Black stuff. And I was like, man, this guy is just—he’s so different.”

Some years later, Alan was starting to do his own comedy while stationed in Las Vegas. One night, after his show ended, he met a friend at Harrah’s casino. “We’re at this outdoor club party thing,” Alan says, and his friend wants to introduce him to someone who’s working the Improv Comedy Club on weekends. “He taps this guy on the shoulder and he turns around, and there’s Vince Morris, the guy that blew my mind.”

Morris showed Alan how to get started in the world of comedy. And a lot of Alan’s signature style—his love of crowd work, his quick wit, his firm belief that comedy can speak to people’s real lives—came from Morris.

When Alan retired from the military (his last duty station was here in central Virginia), he decided to make a go of comedy full-time. Then the pandemic hit.

The last year has been a surprisingly fruitful time for Alan. He did a number of Zoom shows with The Southern, where he’d already been hosting the LYAO Comedy Showcase for a while. He produced live shows called “He Got Answers” and “Do You Believe?” and a podcast called “Negro Please.” He got a new laptop and started writing sketches. And he recorded his first full comedy album, Off Script. 

One thing the pandemic has taught Alan is that he’s more comfortable off script, even in his comedy. “I’ve learned so much about myself, why I operate the way I do, why I think the way I do,” he says. “I hate being put into boxes and given all these restrictions, which is weird because that’s exactly what the military was for 20 years.” Like his mentor, he’d just rather be different.

Long, hot central Virginia summers always leave us dreaming of snowy slopes. The Sandman delivers in the form of Nelson County’s Wintergreen Resort. Open for nearly 50 years, Wintergreen’s 11,000 acres features 26 ski slopes for varying expertise, a terrain park to test your skills, and a 12-lane tubing track (for those who are ready to take The Plunge). The top of the mountain breaks 3,500 feet in elevation, and offers an unparalleled view of the Blue Ridge—until you’re slicing down the hill, that is.