Category: The Editor’s Desk

“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.”

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.”

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. 

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.

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.

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.  

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.”

On a recent gorgeous spring afternoon,I took my daughter along in the car on the way to pick up an order at the bakery. Our windows were down. WNRN was playing a community connection ad that clearly hadn’t been revised post stay-at-home order, promoting an upcoming dance performance. The dogwoods were in bloom. For a few seconds, everything felt normal.

It’s an odd moment we’re in. While the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 has been steadily creeping up in the Charlottesville area (as of April 6, there were 95 cases in our health district), we are still mostly in a stage of prevention and preparation. The pandemic has utterly changed the life of our community and devastated many people’s livelihoods. But the news reports from New York, where more than 600 people died in a single day and a field hospital has been set up in Central Park, still feel like dispatches from another planet.

Meanwhile, we are all trying to figure out how to live in this changed world. This week, we bring you stories about local efforts to grapple with the same issues that have come up in communities across the country and the world: How do our farmers get their food to customers? (p. 12). How do our public schools make sure kids with wildly different resources can equitably learn at home? How do we prevent our jails from becoming hotbeds for the virus?

Like so many other places, we are adapting on the fly, coming up with new solutions, and trying to make it work. We are hoping that the sacrifices we are making now will protect us. We are holding our breath.