C-VILLE Weekly

Q: Who the heck are you, Ace, and how do you know so much? 

A: The details of Ace’s life are quite inconsequential. But, since you asked (and Ace never could resist a question), he’ll give you the need-to-know details.

Ace was found on a dark and stormy night on the doorstep of Albemarle County residents Mr. and Mrs. Atkins. Tucked in a wicker basket with a letter that read "Answer me," they took in the inquisitive tyke and indulged his penchant for TV quiz shows, 20 Questions and third-person references.

Ace grew up fast and strong and eventually explored the wonderful world of Charlottesville. He scoured the storm drains, hung out in the coal tower and lounged about Grounds. In 1989, he hooked up with the new C-VILLE Review (later renamed C-VILLE Weekly when it started publishing—you guessed it—weekly), which rewarded his gotta-know personality with a Q-and-A column, "The Bottom Line." And no, Ace never understood the title, either. On January 21, 1997, he got his name up above the title where it belonged all along, and "Ask Ace" was born.

For 14 years Ace has pounded the pavement and worked the phones to get the answers that you, the dear readers, desperately want to know. How does he have all the answers? Well, since Ace has to bug sources every week for the details, you could say he doesn’t have any answers at all. You could say that. But you’d be wrong.

 

A dash of creativity

October 3, 1989 

Q: Why is it that your magazine uses a hyphen in the spelling of its name instead of an apostrophe, as is the usual abbreviation?—T.C.

A: To answer your question, I talked to the upper management at Portico Publications Ltd., the parent company of C-VILLE Review. "The usual, the mundane, the banal—these are not what C-VILLE Review is all about," they said.

But besides an attempt at the unusual, it’s a story of phonetics. Many people write "C’Ville" when abbreviating the name of this town, and many of the letters I receive are addressed this way. But while tolerable in print, this version, when pronounced, would give the magazine a Spanish air ("Seville Review"). And that, as they say, is not what they’re about.

The hyphen separates the word into its phonetic pieces, and besides that, where else would they put "Review?"

 

Seuss: Who, not ’Hoo

November 28, 1989

Q: Here’s a question that is particularly appropriate as Christmas approaches: Did Dr. Seuss and/or his wife ever attend UVA and/or live in Charlottesville? (Yes, I realize that this is actually four questions in one.) Every year this rumor resurfaces along with the airing of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," which features "the Hoos down in Hoo-ville," and I have never been able to resolve it to my satisfaction.—Q.P.

A: At first I thought your question was merely a prank. Later I realized that it was merely an honest response to an urban (or in Charlottesville’s case, a semi-urban) myth. This myth has its obvious origin in the phonetics of the town and its dwellers. As this is a television-weaned society, you are familiar with the story as it is portrayed each year on the tube. But as with most masterpieces of literature, How the Grinch Stole Christmas began as a book. If you don’t have a copy in your personal library, you can scoot over to the public library to peruse its copy. Then you will find that the "Hoos down in Hoo-ville" are actually "Whos down in Who-ville."

Incidentally, Seuss also features the Whos in his 1954 book Horton Hears a Who, in which the protagonist saves the colony of Whos, who live on a speck of dust, from extinction.

 

A taste of Vinegar Hill

September 18, 1990

Q: Where do Vinegar Hill Theater and the Vinegar Hill Pub in the Omni get their name? I think I understand correctly that the neighborhood they are in goes by that name, but still, where does that come from? I ask, wondering about Vinegar Hill in Limerick, Ireland. Are Irish folks involved or what?—J.H.

A: I turned to the Albemarle County Historical Society for answers. After chatting with Melinda Frierson, the director, and with Margaret O’Bryant, the librarian for the historical collection, I found myself laden with several possibilities:

1) A tailor named George O’Toole called it Vinegar Hill because his family was from Vinegar Hill in Ireland.

2) As the neighborhood was mostly populated by working-class people of Irish origin, it may have garnered the name to commemorate the 1798 revolt against landlords at Vinegar Hill, Ireland.

3) Grocers in the area sold large quantities of homemade whiskey, the barrels of which were labeled "vinegar" to deter the watchful eyes of revenuers.

4) There were several tanneries in the area, and the chemicals used in the tanning process may have smelled like vinegar.

5) One day, a car slowly climbing Ridge Street dropped a barrel of vinegar or whiskey onto the street. It broke, and the smell remained for a long time.

So which of these is the reason Vinegar Hill got its name? I don’t know, but the area was first called Random Row because piecemeal development caused the streets to be placed "randomly" unlike the orderly street layout of Downtown. The name Vinegar Hill appeared sometime between 1840 and the Civil War.

 

V aren’t going anywhere

October 15, 1991

Q: I just think those big orange Vs on Main Street are so cool. I guess either the City or the University put them there, right? Are they supposed to wash off like the other ones, or are these supposed to stick around a little longer? Do you think if I called MTV they might come down and spray little MT’s right next to the them so that we could have a whole Main Street of MTVs and get on the news? Also my friend wonders if he can call someone and get permission to spray-paint some letters of his own on the road. Can he? Thanks!—Chris S.

A: Well Chris, first maybe you’d better just sit down and catch your breath, you sound a little dizzy to me. The City of Charlottesville Department of Public Works is happy to hear that you have proclaimed their big Vs to be "cool." The Vs were first painted on the street last year before the big pep rally before the UVA football game with Clemson (somewhat like the tiger paws painted on the streets of Clemson but with a bit more literary value). Judith Mueller, the City’s Director of Public Works, doesn’t know where the rumor started about wash-away paint. She says the Vs were always intended as permanent. And she says that this summer when Main Street was resurfaced, covering last year’s Vs, her office was "besieged with phone calls" wanting the Vs restored. The new Vs have been applied (going both directions on Main Street) with "special therma-plastic material," which the Public Works Department uses for all highway markings now; it lasts much longer and maintains that bright, happy color longer than the "old" type of highway paint. The Vs were paid for entirely by private donations; no tax money was used at all to paint the 78 "cool" orange letters.

No, there is not an office you can call to get permission to paint other letters on the street, and really, having MTV in my television is about as close as I want it to my life, thank you. However, there is a bridge on Rugby Road that you can paint to your heart’s content. Letters, paw prints, names, portraits, you choose. Maybe you can find out what the behearted "Frescoln" message meant a few weeks ago while you’re at it.

 

Filling the Bodo’s hole

September 16, 1992

Q: What’s the deal with the new Bodo’s Downtown? We want our bagels now. Is it going to be another one of those "bagels are coming" deals in which the sign goes up but the bagels take years to show up?

A: Maybe. Before he earned a reputation for great bagels, Bodo’s Bagel Bakery owner Brian Fox earned a reputation for restaurant delay. The immensely successful Bodo’s on Emmet Street was once a sort of Charlottesville joke as it taunted Charlottesville for over a year with a "bagels are coming" sign. But they quit laughing and started gobbling when the place finally opened up. History seems to be repeating itself at the additional Bodo’s location. For more than a year, Fox has owned and worked at the new place to get it just right. "We gutted the place from stem to stern" and performed a lot of "remedial work" on the building, Fox says. Perfectionist Fox also says he performs much of the work himself and even admits to repainting the exterior sign twice. (An earlier color scheme made it look "like a motorcycle shop.")

So when will it open? Fox is mum. Though admitting that he receives plenty of ridicule for the slow pacing, he will only say that the opening is "close." He says he works at both locations every day—managing at Emmet Street and building at Preston. "My projects are laughably slow," he says, "but they work."

Update: The Bodo’s on Preston did open at last, in March 1993. Since then Fox has added another location to his bagel empire—1609 University Ave., on the Corner—but like its two predecessors, the "Coming" sign has remained unchanged for years. But like Preston, that might soon change, he says.

"Well, I would say that I wouldn’t want to make any definite predictions," Fox says. "However, I hope to open it this fall. Can’t say it’s going to happen, it will have largely to do with staffing matters, feeling that I have a strong staff, enough managers and bakers and that everything feels comfortable that we can do it successfully and without a lot of stress."

 

DMB CD on RCA

October 20, 1993

Q: I hear the Dave Matthews Band has signed a recording deal. True?—B.T.

A: Ace called the band’s manager, Coran Capshaw, a few days ago to inquire. "Nothing’s final yet," Capshaw said. The rumor is that RCA is the label with whom things aren’t quite final. Capshaw declined to confirm or deny.

Update: As you may have heard, the band signed a contract with RCA, and in 1994 released their first major label disc, Under the Table and Dreaming. Since then they’ve gone on to become international über-stars (although several of the band members still call Charlottesville home), and Matthews himself will release his solo debut, Some Devil, from BMG on September 23.

 

Ice to know you

June 1, 1994

Q: I keep hearing that that Danielson guy is building an ice-skating rink on the Downtown Mall. Is it indoors, or is he going to try to keep it frozen all summer? Fat chance on the latter.—C.D.

A: Neither. It’s an outdoor rink. But Danielson expects that it will only operate with ice October through April. At other times of the year, it will be a rollerblading rink.

Update: Um, yeah. Ace got this one wrong. As anyone who has strolled on the west end of the Mall knows, the Ice Park is indeed a year-round indoor ice rink. The $4 million project opened in 1996.

 

The plots thicken

August 10, 1994 

Q: On the UVA Grounds, at the corner of Alderman and McCormick, there’s an old graveyard—I’ve seen students sun bathing and having picnics there. Is it still "receiving," and, if so, who can be buried there? Is it privately owned, or does the University own it?—Janet

A: The cemetery in question is owned by the University, and yes, people are still being laid to rest in it. (Someone was buried there as recently as July 29.) The in-ground plots sold out almost 30 years ago, according to Jeff Ertel of the University Cemetery office. But the University has recently built a columbarium—a wall that holds urns—and there is still space.

The cemetery has been around almost from the beginning of the University. "Just about everybody who was anybody in early Charlottesville is buried there," said Ertel. Ace poked around the cemetery recently and found that, indeed, the markers read like a UVA version of Who’s Who: Alderman, Humphreys, Manahan and Echols—just to name a few.

So who can buy space in the cemetery? "Current faculty, assistant professors or higher can buy space as well as current or retired University administrators," said Ertel. "There’s a cemetery committee that makes the final decision." Apparently, there is some question regarding the burial of alumni in such a prestigious resting place.

Adjacent to the University Cemetery is a Civil War cemetery, a large grassy place surrounded by a wall. In the middle is a monument listing the names of 1,097 (including 55 northern) soldiers buried therein. At seemingly random intervals, there are a few markers. "Originally, all the graves were marked with crosses," said Craig van Castle, who is currently working on an article about both cemeteries for the UVA Alumni News, "but those rotted after about 20 years. At the time these young men were buried, their families couldn’t afford to make the trip to mark the graves; it was an expensive proposition, and most of the men came from families who simply couldn’t do it.

"The soldiers who are buried there aren’t necessarily associated with UVA," the authority continued. The sick and wounded were sent to Charlottesville for its medical school and two other hospitals.

So are sun bathing and picnicking O.K.? "None of the cemetery’s residents have ever complained," Ertel laughed, "and to my knowledge, neither has anyone else. One elderly visitor commented that she was delighted to see students keeping the occupants company while enjoying themselves. Those large flat stones do get nice and warm in the sun and make a really nice place to sit."

Update: According to Vicki Bradt, office manager of the University Office Business Operations, UVA is still accepting applications for those interested in being interred in the cemetery’s columbarium, a second of which is set to be completed in October. Of the 180 vaults in the original (finished in 1991), 150 have been sold. In addition to the eligible parties listed above, active and retired members of Board of Visitors and alumni of the University and friends and students of University can also apply for vaults, with acceptance based on distinguished service to UVA. Vaults cost $1,800 for the original columbarium and $2,500 for the new one, and interested parties should contact the University Office of Business Operations.

 

Ruined to perfection

December 19, 1995 

Q: I have always wondered why Barboursville is left as ruins. Why doesn’t someone restore this original Thomas Jeffersonian building?—B.K.

A: Jefferson’s design for the home of Governor James Barbour (1775-1842) was built in Orange County in 1822 and must have looked something like T.J.’s own pad, Monticello. But, on Christmas Day, 1884, the home burned to the ground. It has remained in ruins ever since.

Immediately after the fire, the remaining walls of the gutted mansion were stabilized, and the slave quarters and carriage house next door were upgraded so that the Barbours could move in. The family lived there, just a stone’s throw from the shell of their former mansion, until they sold the entire estate in 1947.

The Barboursville ruin is on the Virginia Landmarks Registry as well as the National Register of Historic Places. Inclusion on these registries does not, however, preclude changes to the structure. "There’s no restriction on what a private property owner may do," says Kathleen Kilpatrick of the State’s Department of Historic Resources. Although, as she notes, "Part of its historic value is as a ruin. Virginia and the entire country have very few ruins, unlike Europe."

The present owners, four Italian brothers named Zonin, run a vineyard—Barboursville Winery—on the 131-acre estate and apparently have no plans to restore the mansion. Winery CEO Gianna Zonin lives in Italy and was unavailable for comment. However, Vineyard assistant manager Mark Scheurenbrand would say this: "The ruin is too fragile. If we [reconstructed the mansion], we’d have to tear it down and start over—it would be a Williamsburg kind of thing."

So there you have it, B.K.—it would be more of a reconstruction than a restoration. Besides, ruins are beautiful and fascinating in their own right.

However, I have learned that should the brothers Zonin ever change their minds, the original house plans survive and are kept in the archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

 

The stalker among us?

November 5, 1996 

Q: I was driving on 250 the other night, and a police car pulled alongside me and the officer just stared at me until I smiled and waved, then he drove off. That’s the third time this has happened in the past few months, and I’m getting sick of it. I just had my truck inspected, so I know there’s nothing wrong with it, and I don’t think I was speeding. I drive a Nissan pickup, is that illegal?—H.G.

A: There might be some die-hards at the Ford or Chrysler factory who think so H.G., but technically no, it’s not illegal to drive a Nissan pickup truck. My guess is that you are one of many small truck owners here in Central Virginia who have been getting the once-over as a result of an unexplained abduction and murder case.

You might recall that Alicia Showalter Reynolds disappeared near Culpeper on Route 29 on March 2 of this year. Her body was found in early May near Lignum, Virginia (Culpeper County). Though there is a composite sketch of the man believed to be responsible for the murder, no arrests have yet been made.

Besides a description of the suspect, a detailed account of his vehicle has been circulating over the past few months. My guess H.G., is that the police are checking out all the trucks like yours that resemble the one used in the crime.

To confirm my suspicions I called the Virginia State Police Hotline about the case (1-800-572-2260), and talked to a friendly young woman who requested that I not use her name. I asked her about truck owners getting the extra long stares from police.

"What you’re describing is probably a result of officers seeing if the driver of the vehicle matches the description of the man that’s wanted."

What exactly is the type of truck they’re looking out for?

"A dark-colored Nissan pickup with a teal-colored design on the side."

And the police are looking in the window of every dark Nissan truck?

"That’s probably what they’re doing," she said.

Have you had many leads?

She laughed and shuffled some papers. "Right now we’re at 6,300 leads."

I later spoke with Lucy Caldwell, spokeswoman for the State Police in Northern Virginia.

"It makes you feel bad," she said, "There’s been so many people that we’ve been called about just because they own a small, dark pickup. Most likely the suspect is not even in a small pickup anymore, which is why we’re not stressing that quite as much now. Logic would dictate that he got rid of it, but you just never know."

Caldwell says that the case will be featured on TV’s "Unsolved Mysteries" in November, and that hopefully that will spark some fresh leads.

"We’re whittling away through many rumors now, and that can be difficult. It is a long process."

Update: Unfortunately, no arrests have been made in the Showalter case, and the "29 Stalker" remains at large. Ace put in a call to four different harried State policemen who seemed to have too much on their plates to deal with the case, but was told it is still open—merely in the "cold case" file (where cases go when leads have dried up).

 

Strip tease

October 21, 1997 

Q: Why doesn’t Charlottesville have a strip joint? Or more importantly, could it have a strip joint if somebody wanted to open one?—C.C.

A: Charlottesville does have a long history of brothels—the most famous of which, Marguerite’s, wasn’t torn down until 1972 (though Marguerite herself had passed away in 1951). But as for exotic dancing or the like, I don’t think Charlottesville could compete with places like Florida.

Ace remembers his days down in Tampa, for example, where strip joints line the main drag like fast food restaurants. And in "strip" malls throughout the Tampa Bay area, there are any number of massage parlors and lingerie modeling businesses.

But here in Central Virginia, things are obviously a bit different (thank goodness).

As far as your first question goes, C.C., why Charlottesville doesn’t have a strip joint, I’m not sure—I don’t think it’s on the To Do list of any of our gung-ho Downtown developers.

In answer to your second question: We sure could have one if it got past City Council (haha, good luck).

I talked to Deputy City Attorney Craig Brown and asked him if there was any law that specifically prevents someone from opening a striptease club in Charlottesville.

"There’s nothing that expressly addresses that," Brown said. "But as a business, it would still have to meet the normal requirements" (like being in the appropriate commercial zone and all that).

Brown also pointed out that our hypothetical nudie club—if it plans to serve alcohol—would have to jump through all the hoops of the A.B.C. board to get
a license.

So I called Jennifer Toth in the A.B.C. public relations office in Richmond. She set me straight on some facts about Virginia law.

"If it is a business that has a mixed beverage license (i.e. liquor not just beer)," Tosh explained, "then 45 percent of the total gross must be in food sales and non-alcoholic drink." And the monthly sales of food must be at least $4,000—so the joint would have to serve up plenty of French fries and sandwiches.

That makes sense; the same law applies to all our area restaurants.

Toth also drew my attention to the Virginia Administrative Code, which expressly speaks to the naked dancing issue.

According to the law, the strippers can shake and twist all they want to, as long as they are on a stage that is "reasonably separate from the patrons." However, they can’t get too naked—as the law suggests they must keep on pasties (to cover the nipples of the breasts) and a g-string or such to cover the genitals.

Update: In 2002, the City Department of Neighborhood Planning and Development initiated zoning codes for "adult-use" proprietors, which include any bookstore, bar, massage parlor or movie theater devoted to "specified anatomical areas." Those include "less than completely and opaquely covered human genitals, pubic region, buttocks or female breast below a point immediately above the top of the areola, or human male genitals in a discernibly turgid state, even if completely and opaquely covered." Any adult-use enterprise must stay 1,000 feet away from nearly any structure in town and 1,000 feet away from each other to prevent a "red light district."

 

Suite to be the Feds

April 7, 1998

Q: On Emmet Street just north of Barracks Road there is a white building up on the hill with an official-looking entrance that says "Federal Executive Institute." What in the heck is that? And are my tax dollars paying for it? —H.T.G.

A: According to a glossy brochure I got up at the Institute, this country-club-looking place is the "Federal government’s training and development center for senior executives"—which means high-level bureaucrats come here for four weeks at a time to sit through a bunch of lectures about increasing performance and building corporate culture.

Oh, and they get to enjoy a mini-vacation in the heart of Charlottesville as a perk. And taxpayers do pay for the $9,000 per person tuition—who else would?

Originally this 14-acre complex was the home of the Thomas Jefferson Inn, which opened on May 19, 1951, and was heralded as a "hotel of the future."

Designed by renowned local architect Milton L. Grigg, the 50-room hotel bragged about its "modernistic" features, which included air conditioned rooms for only $10 a night.

The TJ Inn was where all the glitterati shacked up when they came to town, including Harry Truman, Eleanor Roosevelt, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Taylor, Bette Davis and Rock Hudson.

The popular hotel was closed in July of 1968 and reopened as a training ground for Federal executives—where career civil servants come to learn about leadership and "improving the quality of government"—sort of a summer camp for suits.

Although it seems that cutting back on expensive government programs is a good thing, you can’t blame the private sector for offering something Uncle Sam will pay for.

Update: Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Federal Executive Institute changed its sign from the proper name to simply "1301 Emmet Street." The reason, said Robert Gest II, deputy director of the institute, was "for security reasons and a reaction to the state of heightened awareness that the President has us all under."

 

Grease is the word

July 27, 1999

Q: I’ve worked in several restaurants in this area, but I’ve never seen what I saw last week outside Downtown’s Mono Loco. It was a black bin, not terribly unlike a small trash dumpster. The sign on the side said something about restaurant grease. I guess they must put excess grease in there, but where does it go, and what becomes of it?—Deep-fat Donnie

A: Well, Deep-fat Donnie, your question about the afterlife of grease almost made a vegetarian out of me. It turns out that most local restaurants recycle their grease, but if you’re like Ace, that’s not something you want to think about.

I sped over to Mono Loco to inspect the mysterious black plastic box that’s tucked discreetly behind the restaurant. After propping open the lid, I almost lost my cookies. Inside was dark, oily pool of nastiness that smelled like a deep-fried bad dream. Worse, when I caught a glimpse of my reflection in all that grease, I couldn’t help but take it as a grim reminder of my poor eating habits. Gathering myself, I spotted the name "Valley Proteins" on the side of the bin and jotted down the company’s phone number. I tooled away in the Acemobile, shivering as I passed my usual fast-food stops.

Next I called the Valley Proteins plant, located in Linville (on the other side of the mountain), to get some quick answers. At first, finding someone who could explain the company’s grease recycling process was harder than untangling a clump of fried onions. Several employees transferred me to the voice mail of company president Gerald Smith Jr., but they cautioned me that he only works on Fridays, long after Ace’s deadline. Finally, after doing the trademark Ace grovel, I got a call from Smith, a jovial man who chuckles about his obesity.

As Smith proudly explains, Valley Proteins is a…er…beefy national company, with rendering plants spread out from Pennsylvania to New Mexico. About 10 percent of its business involves picking up grease from restaurants. Since local health codes forbid restaurants from throwing out grease, which has been known to clog sewer drains and contaminate landfills, they must store the icky mess in special containers. That’s where Valley Proteins comes to the rescue. Company drivers in trash truck-like vehicles make the rounds to pick up the lipids on a regular basis. Big grease producers like McDonald’s need pick-ups every week; slower-paced restaurants are on a bi-weekly schedule. Smith estimates that his company picks up a total of at least 10,000 pounds of grease from more than 200 Charlottesville-area restaurants each week. If you ask me, Donnie, that’s a whole lotta heart attacks.

Essentially, America’s fried food addiction keeps companies like Valley Proteins in business. They pay restaurants for the grease, not the other way around. Why? Simple: They can sell restaurant waste right back into the food chain. After collecting thousands of gallons of the slop, drivers haul it back to the Linville plant and dump it into a giant, gurgling vat called a "grease hopper." The grease is boiled to cook out the impurities. Then, the company delivers truckloads of the resulting product to big-time customers such as Purdue and Southern States. They in turn make the guck into poultry and animal feed. Seems like some agro-companies think the high-fat, high-calorie stuff is swell for growing bigger birds and beefier cows. So, next time you’re marveling at the robust cuts in the poultry aisle, thank the grease men, thank the restaurants, and thank yourself. After all, your taste buds helped that chicken to grow up big and strong.

Update: Grease remains a problem, as an August incident in Forest Lakes proves. Late in the month a greasy substance that allegedly smelled like french fries covered the body of water. The nearby Arby’s was blamed, although management denied culpability while pledging to help with clean up.

 

The fix for Ix

January 4, 2000

Q: After C-VILLE’s big story on the Frank Ix & Sons company, I was hoping for an update. I heard that some rich guy bought the mill for mega-millions. Who was it? Is some big-time business going to move in there or what? Will the building be razed? What’s the deal, Ace?—Ware Street Wally

A: It’s a rich man’s world, Wally, and if Ace had the right map, or maybe a law degree, he would find a way to reach those green fields. For the moment, however, your poor sleuth can only marvel at rich developers like Bill Dittmar, the Albemarle County businessman who bought the 17-acre Frank Ix & Sons property last month for an unbelievable $5.3 million. Dittmar, owner of Enterprise Travel, is no stranger to the redevelopment game: A few years ago, he started turning the former United Way building on Market Street into upscale office space called, oddly enough, the Enterprise Center.

As you recall, Wally, Frank Ix & Sons, once a large textile company, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last spring after years of fierce competition with Asian imports. Yet even as Charlottesville’s oldest business was slowly dying, heavyweight developers were drooling at the thought of purchasing the Ware Street property, just around the block from the Downtown Mall. Heavyweight developers Lee Danielson and Charles Hurt were among those who sniffed around the site during the last few months. But it was Dittmar who signed a $4.1 million preliminary contract to purchase the choice chunk of land last month.

The deal, however, wasn’t done. Five other bidders had a chance to make higher offers until December 20, so the final price soared well beyond the initial offer. Last month, Danielson—the man who brought you the Regal Cinema and the Ice Park—bid $5.3 million, a Santa-sized sum that wowed local real-estate types. But Dittmar’s contract entitled him to match any offer, and match it he did.

Lest you have any doubt about the strength of the local economy, Wally, take a look at the property’s value and compare it to the final price. Earlier this year, the City assessed the Ix & Sons property at $4.1 million, about 30 percent less than Dittmar will shell out thanks to Danielson’s competitive bid. The mostly windowless structure may not be pretty, but in a town where business property is increasingly scarce, developers obviously think it’s worth a pretty penny.

As for a "big-time business" occupant, we will have to wait and see who moves into the mammoth mill where hundreds of workers once wove countless fabrics. Dittmar says that he plans to convert the 300,000-plus-square-foot brick-and-block building into warehouse and office space.

"Information technology firms" Dittmar guesses, might savor the site for its size and location. So while it doesn’t sound like the building itself will come a’ tumblin’ down, the new tenants definitely won’t bring hulking machines with them. As far as Ace can tell, some company (or companies) will make a lot of money at the Ix property someday, but compared to the mill’s bustling golden years, their labor will seem very, very quiet.

Update: The gutted Ix building has been enjoying renewed life as the City’s coolest industrial-chic arts venue. The Fringe Festival set up shop there last fall, for instance; C-VILLE used it as a location for a fashion shoot. Also, last fall owner Dittmar and his developer partners, including Allan Cadgene, Gabe Silverman and Ludwig Kuttner announced plans to convert the Ix building into a shining example of mixed-use Downtown renovation, creating business spaces on the ground floor and residential condos above. Ace still stands by his prediction that somebody will make a nice chunk of change out of the project, especially as demand for Downtown condos skyrockets.

 

The potty breaks

September 25, 2001 

Q: Hey, Ace, everyone’s always talking about how Downtown Charlottesville has this certain European feel to it, what with all its open air cafés, street musicians, etc. But one thing is painfully absent from this supposed euro-ville: public restrooms! What’s a loiterer to do when he needs to use the john while Downtown?—Ready to Burst

A: Don’t duck into a back alley just yet, my micro-bladdered friend. Word around the C-VILLE office has it that there are already plans for public restroom facilities on the Downtown Mall. (I know, I know, have we nothing better to gossip about?)

A quick call to Charlottesville spokesman Maurice Jones confirms. Public restrooms will be part of the renovation of the downtown recreation center. The rec center, site of the future restrooms, is located on Market Street near the east end of the downtown mall (that’s the "far side" near the amphitheater for the geographically challenged), across from Lucky Seven convenience store.

The entire project has a budget of $1.5 million, including a Federal grant of $500,000 earmarked solely for the rec center renovations, and that extra money has freed up funds to spend on the restrooms. (Ace is suggesting silver soap dispensers and automatic everything.)

Because the specific plan has yet to be finalized (the City has just sent out a request for proposals), Jones is unable to reveal some details of the project, such as how many stalls would be included, though he did say that the facilities wouldn’t have any extra amenities such as changing areas, nursing couches, or towel-toting, perfume-spraying attendants.

Unlike its European counterparts, this facility will be free to all. If all goes as planned, construction will begin in December and the facilities will be open by summer 2002.

Asked if he had heard anything about Charlottesville’s proposed public facilities, Chap’s owner Tony LaBua replies, "Only for the last 10 years!" Until the fabled restrooms are opened, he says, everyone and anyone is free to use the restroom at Chap’s, whether they’ve bought something or not. "If you gotta go, you gotta go," LaBua laughs.

Other restaurants on the Downtown Mall are also potential restroom providers until the public ones are made available. An anonymous manager at Bizou points out that with all the patio dining downtown it’s difficult to tell who is a paying customer and who isn’t. Also, "It would be really easy at Miller’s" to use the restrooms as a non-customer, he says, because of the many people going in and out at all times. Duly noted.

So until the much-anticipated opening of the public restrooms, Ace proposes a new brand of "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy. If you don’t ask to use the restroom, they won’t tell you that you can’t, and going about your business will remain a purely private practice—as it should be.

Update: It was a royal flush—the bathrooms in the rec center never opened, and the only other public restroom Downtown in York Place has been shut down. Best prepare your bladder.

 

The secret’s out

March 26, 2002 

Q: Ace, could you tell me anything about those weird letters painted on buildings all around UVA. I’m not talking about the Greek ones, and I’m not talking about the graffiti on Beta Bridge. I’m referring to the Zs and IMPs I see painted on steps, building sides and stone slabs. Thanks, dude!—Alpha B. Letterman

A: Alpha, you’ve stumbled across one of UVA’s oldest traditions—secret societies.

It’s really quite simple. With, the exception of Yale, perhaps, no other university can claim as many secret societies among its ranks as UVA. A few of these covert clubs have been around almost as long as the University itself.

The largest and oldest secret societies include the super-secret Seven Society, whose members’ identities are revealed only upon their death (by the tolling
of seven bells at the University’s chapel), and the semi-secret IMPs and Zs. Newer and more peripheral groups include P.U.M.P.K.I.N., T.I.L.K.A., Raven, Rotunda Burning, Purple Shadows, K.O.T.A. and Eli Banana.

At present, secret societies are known for their philanthropy. The Seven Society is notorious for making donations in sevens (like $777,777.77). The IMPs give an annual award to a "faculty member who has been outstanding in promoting student-faculty relations." They also give the IMP Student Athlete Award at commencement each year to an exemplary female athlete who has shown exceptional performance and integrity both on the playing field and in the classroom.

But, Letter-dude, benevolent did not always describe these clubs. Many existed for reasons no deeper than good-natured fun. Eli Banana, for example, would often hold Saturday night parades, complete with bass marching drums. They could be heard near and far chanting diddies like "We are drunk boys, yes every one!"

This boyish hilarity got out of hand, at times, however. For example, the IMP’s predecessor, the Hot Feet Society, was disbanded in 1912 by University administration after a night of especially raucous revelry.

On the night in question, Hot Feet Society members removed an assortment of life-sized, stuffed creatures, including a moose, kangaroo, polar bear, Bengal tiger, three-toed emu and boa constrictor, from the basement of Cabell Hall and placed them before the front door of each professor’s Lawn residence. Crazy, eh?

But now, Alpha, let me address this question to you, since none of this history explains why secret societies would have their names strewn all over campus. Like a dog peeing on a fire hydrant, the secret society graffiti has to do with marking its territory.

As for the letters all over the place, the elite secret society groups (the Sevens, IMPs and Zs) have an agreement with UVA that enables them to brand their name on university buildings whenever a member of their society dies who lived or worked in that building. Since these clandestine clubs have been around for so long, their territorial paint jobs are ubiquitous.

Labor Day is a bittersweet holiday, a day off for many but also the occasion to bid summer goodbye. Out with the cool of ice cubes on the tongue, in with the earthiness of pumpkin in the belly. So long, head-in-the-clouds; hello, nose-to-the-grindstone. But before we all break out our flannels, remember that summer’s end is a gradual process, not an overnight change. Between now and when autumn really sets in is special period that’s one of the best times of year for traveling. With the high tourist season over, crowds thin considerably and cooler weather makes outside activities more comfortable. Travel at this time of year is relaxed and contemplative, even in the same spots that would have felt cluttered and stressful in July. Virginia obliges the early-fall traveler with a wide array of destinations. Three day trips follow. They include two presidential homes, those of George Washington and Woodrow Wilson – one is a major tourist mecca while the other is a little-known but delightful stopover. Also on the menu are the antebellum mountain resort at The Homestead, thriving historic districts in Alexandria and Staunton, mineral baths, European farmsteads and chamber music. Enjoy – and this time, don’t worry about bringing sunscreen.

Minerals and melodies
Relaxation abounds in two Appalachian outposts

The perfect day trip should feel like a brief departure, as though you just accidentally drove your car through a curtain into another world. You can’t force that to happen. But you can stack the odds in your favor by heading to a pair of towns – Warm Springs and Hot Springs – that have drawn travelers to their high perch in the Allegheny Mountains for centuries.

I left I-81 in Lexington and headed west on Route 39, which is also called the "Avenue of Trees." The name calls to mind giant redwoods in California, but here the trees are not so much the main attraction as part of an appealing mix: horse farms, trailheads and swimming holes on the Calfpasture River, and little villages that seem sweetly well-cared for. This is the western flank of Virginia, its most mountainous part, and 39 climbs through several passes, opening onto enormous views, before descending to an intersection with US 220, which connects Warm Springs and Hot Springs.

As their names imply, these towns are historic destinations because natural mineral springs bubble up from their hillsides. In Hot Springs, the waters have been the raison d’etre for local tourism since the 1750s, when small cabins were built to accommodate visitors. The property has evolved considerably since then: It’s now The Homestead, a sprawling resort that nearly matches the scale of the mountains that cradle it.

I strolled onto the property past the spa and gardens and got a table at an outdoor café facing the hotel. It’s a huge brick battleship of a building, with multi-storey wings radiating from a central spire that dates from the turn of the last century. I snuggled into my wicker chair, sipped lemonade and looked out through white columns at brick walkways carving through a sloped lawn.

Golf is a big deal here. Of the constant parade of well-heeled visitors passing my porch, several were observed practicing their swings. In fact, the whole resort is quite pricey. Aside from lunching, strolling and people-watching, there’s not much here for the budget traveler. Still, the hotel’s maze of carpeted corridors is worth a look, leading past shops, a theater and fine restaurants. And if you do have hundreds of dollars a night to spend on a room, activities from falconry to caving will be at your disposal. The Homestead dwarfs its hometown, but Hot Springs does have a block or two of shops and restaurants.

Five miles north, Warm Springs is a bit more down to earth, and has a more direct connection to the tourism of yore. The Jefferson Pools (named for – you guessed it! – our very own Thomas, an enthusiastic soaker at the spot in the year 1818) are enclosed by gentlemen’s and ladies’ pool houses dating from 1761 and 1836, respectively. Technically part of The Homestead, they have an entirely different feel. Simple wooden structures right on the roadside, their peeling white paint and crumbling foundations make them endearingly ramshackle. They also make the $15 fee for an hour’s soak a bit steep.

Still, if you’ve driven all the way into the mountains, you may as well splurge. The pools are a wonderful experience. I was issued a fluffy towel and a styrofoam "noodle" for floating before stepping into the eleven-sided ladies’ pool house. Nearly five feet of 98-degree water were circled by a narrow wooden catwalk, onto which opened curtained dressing rooms. The bottom of the pool was made of irregular stones, like a riverbed, and in the center of the high ceiling was a large skylight, allowing natural light to sparkle on the clear-green water. It was a delicious combination of natural elements and minimal human enhancement, and it took about three seconds to relax once I descended the staircase into the water, which is said to have restorative powers. Floating on my back and watching clouds drift over the skylight, I felt like I’d fallen completely under the spell of this quiet, pristine corner of the world.

On a side note, more natural wonders can be found in Douthat State Park. About 20 minutes from Warm Springs, the park is another highlight of the region. Its Depression-era cabins are a thoroughly charming and less expensive alternative to the inns and hotels of Hot Springs and Warm Springs. Hiking its trails or boating on Douthat Lake gives a closer look at the natural setting that, in the towns, serves more as background.

But back to Warm Springs. The day wasn’t over yet. I still had one more stop: the Garth Newel Music Center, a converted farm at the top of a precipitous driveway off US 220. Once the country home of a wealthy couple, the center now boasts a 30-year history of chamber music performances in its complex of white wooden buildings on a steep mountainside. In the summer concerts take place on Saturday and Sunday afternoons in a barnlike building called Herter Hall, and various musical programs are scheduled most weekends throughout the fall into October. With exposed beams, wooden floor and large windows, it’s a much more casual setting for classical music than the usual velvet concert hall.

When I realized I could get a glass of wine and sip it during the concert, I decided I’d landed in the most civilized spot on earth.

True to the relaxed setting, the musicians were conversational and helpfully explained some history behind the pieces they played. Their performances sparkled, especially that of a guest clarinetist, Richard Faria. While the day’s program featured lesser-known composers (Rebecca Clarke, Darius Milhaud and Ernest Chausson), most pieces are by classical music’s big names, from a variety of eras. Saturday concerts are followed by gourmet set-menu dinners, and post-summer there are occasional weekends of music throughout the year. You can even spend the night on the grounds.

On my way out of town, a gas station attendant addressed me as "Milady," the area’s last extravagant gesture of hospitality before I left. I took a different way home: Route 42, a laid-back valley road that led north into a dramatic summer storm and on to Staunton.

View from the Valley
Staunton is an appealing flipside of the coin

It’s easy to overlook a place like Staunton. It looks so unassuming from the interstate that it doesn’t exactly scream "day trip." But Staunton is, in many ways, Charlottesville’s fraternal twin: We’re so closely related that our differences become all the more intriguing. And, with the cost of living rising steadily on this side of the mountain, Charlottesville and Staunton may soon become even more intimately linked, as artists and others flee Valley-ward. Now’s the chance to get some impressions of Staunton before its hipification gets underway.

Decidedly pre-hip is the city’s main claim to fame, the Woodrow Wilson Birthplace. Yes, I know: You don’t care about Woodrow Wilson. But stay with me. The museum is worth a visit even if the Fourteen Points are the last topic you care to explore.

The president who would lead the country through World War I was born here in 1856, and spent only his first two years in this Greek Revival-style Presbyterian manse before his minister father was called to another church. The museum freezes this upper middle-class household in that antebellum moment. Because it’s neglected by the madding crowds, the excellent guided tour through its dozen rooms is an unhurried look at the Victorian age – when, for example, sewing machines were so newfangled and expensive that if you had one, as the Wilsons did, you put it in your front window so passersby could admire it.

This was a period – like our own – of rapid technological change, when plumbing and paved roads were changing society. Staunton, as a railroad town, had access to all the newest inventions. Our guide painted a vivid portrait of the Wilson’s brand-new range woodstove (so called because it actually offered a range of temperatures for cooking – imagine!) being unloaded at the station, then hauled up Gospel Hill to the manse.

After we’d been through most of the house’s dozen spacious rooms, we gathered on a second-floor balcony and looked across the street to Mary Baldwin College, named for a crafty Civil War-era headmistress who hid supplies under her hoop skirts during Union raids. Today, the school is a women’s college. Looking down, we could see the formal gardens where, in the Wilsons’ day, chickens would have roamed through vegetable patches – even wealthy city homes were mini-farms at the time. And even the well-to-do bathed only once a week, using the same tub of water for the whole family.

When the tour was done I checked out the nearby museum relating Wilson’s biography through photos, keepsakes and his 1919 Pierce-Arrow limousine. He was an interesting man – probably dyslexic, but one of the most educated presidents, serving as president of Princeton University and writing numerous books. His White House tenure from 1912-1921 saw major changes in this country: World War I made the U.S. an international power, women got the vote and the eight-hour workday became standard.

The birthplace is right in the heart of Staunton’s downtown, so it’s natural to take off on a stroll after getting your history lesson. I walked past the appealing Mary Baldwin campus, with its cluster of cream-colored buildings, then headed for Beverly Street, the main drag through Staunton’s historic downtown.

Here is where comparisons with Charlottesville become tempting. Both cities are rightly proud of their thriving, well-preserved downtowns, and both feature brick Victorian facades graced by tidy details. But whereas Charlottesville resurrected its Main Street by banning cars and cultivating the arts, Staunton’s downtown feels more down-home. Perhaps it’s the agricultural bent of its Shenandoah Valley setting, which tends more toward corn and poultry than showhorses. Gift shops along Beverly Street – of which there are many – offer antiques and dried flowers rather than the Vietnamese pottery or artisan jewelry you’d find in Charlottesville.

That’s not to say that Staunton is inhospitable toward the arts. It’s the home of the Blackfriars Playhouse, for example, and Beverly Street houses several galleries. Architecture fans will find lots to look at, from an imposing neoclassical bank to an English half-timber structure to a theater with Art Deco tile mosaics. Lots of buildings had signs of their original uses – "YMCA" or "Elks Club" – still bricked into their facades.

I poked around in funky Zelma’s, a secondhand store, then had lunch at the Pampered Palate, one of many cafés in the area. It boasts a huge menu of quiches, sandwiches and salads and a potpourri-and-antique-dolls sort of atmosphere. Again, a different brand of charm than Charlottesville offers, but no less inviting.

Down the hill in the Wharf District, another cluster of shops and restaurants lines up along the railroad tracks. The tone of this development seems just right – good smells and appealing storefronts co-exist with, rather than overpower, the romantic melancholy of the railroad station. Staunton is doing a great job of re-inventing itself without sacrificing a palpable sense of its history.

The town’s other major attraction, which I’d visited on a previous trip, is the Frontier Culture Museum, just off I-81. The idea here is to illustrate how three major immigrant cultures – German, Scotch-Irish and English – blended in the Shenandoah Valley during the 1700s (when the area was considered a frontier) to create a new American rural society. The lesson is elaborately presented: Four separate farms have been moved here from their original European and Virginian locations and reassembled along a half-mile path, which you stroll at your own pace.

From the wattle-and-daub German farmhouse to the whitewashed Irish cottage, costumed interpreters are ready to explain what they’re doing. And since these are working farms complete with livestock, there’s lots to be done: making cheese, shearing sheep, threshing grain. I appreciated that the interepreters, though very knowledgeable and friendly, spoke of their characters in the third person; I always find it awkward when interepreters say "I have to go out and saddle up the horse" as though they didn’t drive to work like everybody else.

Like other authentic historical sites, the museum can be appreciated in an academic sort of way, or as a purely sensorial experience (read: kids will like it). If history’s your thing, though, you can’t beat a visit with the granddaddy of American history, George Washington himself.

Return to fatherland
At home with the original George W.

Living in Charlottesville, you might start to believe that Thomas Jefferson founded not only UVA, but the whole darn country. And that Monticello, somehow, is the very birthplace of democracy. Well – ahem – one million annual Mount Vernon visitors beg to differ. George Washington’s home near our nation’s capital (what was it called, again?) is a major American destination.

When I visited Mount Vernon, I took my favorite route toward D.C. (20N to Route 3 east to I-95) and exited into suburbia south of the city. Sanitized housing developments march right up to George’s door, but once you arrive at Mount Vernon you know you’re in tourist-land: The license plates in the parking lot are from all over our great nation, and everybody’s sneakers are brand new.

As I waited in line to buy a ticket, a soccer mom-ish woman stopped her SUV at the curb and pulled from the backseat a curving, four-foot-long bugle. She stood by her car, played a rousing little tune to no one in particular, replaced the instrument, and drove off. As it turned out, such weirdly anachronistic scenes are the norm at Mount Vernon. Mostly because there are so many 21st-century visitors around, the 18th-century elements have to compete for the attention they deserve.

I walked uphill a short distance and came upon one end of the mansion’s wide lawn, or bowling green, which was mowed with scythes in Washington’s day. At the other end was the familiar, almost barnlike house: red roof, black shutters and white wooden siding, topped by a cupola. I joined a long line stretching backwards from the door.

Up close, it became obvious just how wealthy the Washingtons were (the money, by the way, came from Martha’s family, not George’s). Their imposing home, built gradually over the second half of the 18th century, presides over an entire little city of outbuildings, slaves’ quarters, and riverfront along the Potomac – 200 acres now, 8,000 in George’s day. There’s even a special building just to house the servants of the Washingtons’ many houseguests.

Unfortunately, during my visit the inside of the mansion was so packed with visitors that it was next to impossible to really see it. The situation wasn’t helped by Mount Vernon’s assembly-line guide system: Instead of leading a defined group through the house, guides stay put and spout a continually repeating stream of information at whoever happens to be shuffling past. Like any normal human being would, they start to sound like robots, and visitors must patch together a narrative from disconnected fragments. If this is the postmodern approach to historical interpretation, I’ll take mine the old-fashioned way.

Still, I did catch interesting glimpses: George’s deathbed, his presidential chair, the key to the Bastille (a gift from the Marquis de Lafayette). In the kitchen (a separate building, minimizing the risk of fire) wild turkeys and ducks hung from the ceiling, and beautiful stoneware jars lined up along brick shelves. Everything is restored to its 1799 appearance, the year Washington died, and is as luxurious as you’d expect.

Back outside, I joined the ranks of amateur photographers lining up to frame the most familiar view of Mount Vernon: its wide porch overlooking the Potomac. Frustrating as the house tour had been, there was still lots to see around the estate. I peeked into the smokehouse, stables, and dung repository (how often do you get to see one of those?), visited Washington’s grand tomb, and wandered the kitchen garden. Looking with interest at the pre-industrial gardening techniques used there, I reflected that Mount Vernon could accommodate deeper inquiry into lots of different topics: architecture, agriculture, slave history. Visitors who want to go beyond the surface should plan on a whole day and take advantage of the estate’s specialized walking tours, and now, in the off-season is the perfect time to do so.

The one quick way I found to gain insight into Washington the person was in the small George Washington Museum, which showed that Washington, like Jefferson, was a man of many talents. Even before the American Revolution, he was an accomplished surveyor and held several public offices. Also, unlike other founding fathers, he freed his 316 slaves upon his death. I couldn’t help but long for the days when presidents were competent outdoorsmen, social progressives and avid, self-taught scholars.

What better remedy for historical nostalgia than a little shopping? I headed north 15 minutes to Old Town Alexandria, a delightful port city that proudly preserves its colonial architecture while layering it with modern consumerism. If you have money to blow, you can do it on the King Street corridor, via Thai food, shoes, or furniture. If you don’t, you can still wander brick walks for hours admiring details of the old buildings. The city seems perfectly symbolized by one very old brick and stone structure, now jarringly occupied by a national coffee chain which shall remain nameless. The bastards.

On Alexandria’s very pleasant waterfront, the Torpedo Factory Art Center is the big draw. It’s a flashier, bigger version of Charlottesville’s McGuffey Art Center; it actually was a torpedo factory from 1918 through World War II, and now houses the studios of 160 artists who are billed as eager to chat with visitors. I felt a flush of hometown pride when I realized that McGuffey houses, on average, much better art than the more urban "Torp." Much of what I saw there was fairly commercial, and artists were actually using most of their studio space as mini-galleries.

Though I preferred McGuffey’s edgier aesthetic and paint-splattered authenticism, I still found some gems throughout the Torp’s three floors. Robert Roselle’s ceramic sculptures, for example, were highly original and magically evocative. Another plus here is that much of the art is quite affordable.

If you want to continue following Washington’s trail, you can do it in Alexandria by visiting Market Square, where City Hall is flanked by several historical attractions. Washington actually shopped at the Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary, and Gadsby’s Tavern Museum dates from his era too. Both offer tours.

Any of the above three trips make for a great one-day getaway, and plenty of other fantastic sights and scenes can be found across Central Virginia. Now’s the time to grab a map, get in the car, and get away.

Since its birth on September 5, 1882, Labor Day has provided every workingman and woman at least three crucial with things: an excuse for a picnic; a chance to sit in shore-related traffic; and an occasion to complain about work. For the al frescolunching and OBX traveling this Labor Day, you’re on your own. But when it comes to capturing just how miserable work can be, C-VILLE can get you started. From roller-skated table-waiting and street corner traffic-counting to cigar-making, box-packing and propaganda-spreading, 15 Charlottesvillians here unleash their horror stories from the job market. If nothing else, on this workforce holiday, you might find yourself grateful that you don’t have to pick coffee beans all day.

James Watts

Manager and cook

Garden of Sheba

In 1998, I was in need of some quick cash, so I took a job picking coffee beans for a day while visiting Guatemala. Not only was the job located high in the mountains but the weather was too cool in the morning, and far too hot in the middle of the day.

At the time, I thought it might be an adventure—until I realized how many actual beans you had to pick to make one U.S. dollar.

If I had owned the field, as if it was my coffee, maybe I would have seen it differently. But at that rate, picking one bean at a time, I knew it would take me years to get one day’s wage. I only lasted half of the day.

 

Susan Payne

President

Payne, Ross and Associates

In the early 1970s my mother made me take a job at the Vermont State Fair, so I worked at the "pig in a blanket" bar, a fancy name for selling corndogs out of a sweaty trailer. I was about 18. Eventually I made friends with everyone in the traveling circus.

I hung out with all of them from the bearded lady to the sword-swallower every night at the beer tent and little did I know I was making friends with them for life.

More than five years later while attending the Virginia State Fair with my new husband, [L.F. Payne, former U.S. Representative for Virginia’s Fifth District], lo and behold, who should run up to me but all of the same people from the traveling circus.

They all recognized me, ran up and started saying, "Hello Susan," and my husband must have really been wondering about the person he had just married.

 

Devon Sproule

Singer-songwriter

I waitressed at a restaurant in Woodstock, New York, called Heaven. I partly waitressed and partly answered the phone to take take-out orders. So it started with me answering the phone, "Hello, Heaven. This is Devon."

The worst day I had there I came in 15 minutes late and it turned out the boss had fired all the cooks. He was the only cook that day and I was the only waitress. In addition to yelling at me for being late, he was the most demanding and perfectionistic gay restaurant owner I had ever met. Every time there was a mistake in the order he would blame it on me. As a waitress you want to offer people breaks on things, and he would remind me to charge an extra 90 cents if someone ordered the black currant sauce instead of whatever else. At the end of the day I was literally in tears, and he said, "Guess it’s time to take off the roller skates, huh?" It was the only nice thing he said to me all day.

 

Saul Barodofsky

Owner

Sun Bow Trading Company

The year was 1966 and the President was Lyndon B. Johnson. I became a research investigator for the Office of Economic Opportunity under the President’s Commission for Manpower in Los Angeles, California. I supported the President’s Commission and actually took the job thinking I could make a difference. Instead my experience was utterly hellacious.

On my first day, I wore a suit and I was immediately told I was overdressed. When I asked them what was wrong they said it looked too expensive, and that I was making everyone else look bad. I told them I only owned one suit, and they said, "Well then, wear a sport coat."

For 20 hours per week, another part-timer and I collected data on the program, which was set up to retrain potential workers at different companies. That data then made work for 23 separate people in the LA office. For three months, I carried around this personal letter from President Johnson stating that he would personally appreciate it if the person I was talking to would give their full cooperation.

For one national moving company, for example, I learned that the "retraining" of potential workers amounted to 1,200 hours worth of lessons on sweeping and 3,000 hours on properly moving boxes.

And these companies actually got tax write-offs for this, while we taxpayers paid for this supposed training in which no one, in reality, was given any work experience. I would continue to ask these employers I was talking to, "What percentage of these trainees actually go to work for you?" They’d consistently respond, "Uh, we’d have to get back to you." I’d say, "Can you just guess a number, be it even a very vague number?" And they’d say, "We’d have to get back to you."

The best part is that they told me if I stayed the course, I could go to exotic and exciting places to have conferences, which is what most of these people spent their time doing. I couldn’t do it. I decided I would never work for another employer again. And I never did.

 

Cindy Stratton

Vice-chair

Albemarle-Charlottesville Branch

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

I worked as a carhop at Shoney’s on Barracks Road in the 1960s. People pulled their cars up to the monitor and placed their order, and I had to bring it out on my roller skates. I could barely even roller skate. But the worst part was my too-short black poodle skirt and dirty white blouse, full of not only food stains, but dirt from repeated falls on my skates.

Generally I tried to wait until I rolled inside to drop a tray of food, which didn’t always work. Luckily for me, shortly after I started, they decided to do away with the carhops on roller skates theme. I only lasted about three months.

When I look back on that I know I’d rather clean people’s houses than ever do that again.

 

Andrew Holden

Living Wage Activist 

The worst job I ever had was three jobs, a few years ago. I’d wake up at 4am, be on the road by 5 and arrive at my first job, working the line at the Plow & Hearth factory, by 6 in the morning. That job lasted until around 3 in the afternoon, though in December, 16-hour days weren’t uncommon.

I was employed seasonally, which meant I would get an extra 50 cents an hour—bringing my pay up to a whopping $6.50—if I lasted until after Christmas. A lot of people quit early, since the job meant working in a rush all day in silence, packing boxes and breathing in dusty, dry air from the mass quantities of cardboard in the warehouse.

After that I’d head home and rest for a few hours while waiting for my next job, at 6pm, washing dishes at the Tokyo Rose. Atsushi Miura’s a great boss, and he pays well. No complaints.

I’d head home around midnight and be up at 4am to do the whole thing over again. On Sundays I did janitorial/gopher work for Blue Ridge Mountain Sports.

Aside from just being exhausted and smelling like dead fish, the worst part was thinking it would never end. My insurance carrier had dropped me and I was paying most of my earnings directly into the 12 pills I have to take every day (for a genetic disease). There were a few times when I fell asleep at the wheel and almost drifted off the road on Route 29, which I’m not proud of, but it happened. I sold off most of my stuff to make ends meet, got a couple Madison County speeding tickets, and missed my family and friends terribly.

Eventually I just gave up on surviving with a job, and found life was a lot better without one. Some of my new streetpunk friends taught me about dumpster diving for food, and I eventually fell into a small anarchist commune house on the outskirts of Charlottesville. I’m still working hard of course, but now it’s to produce a better society, not more wealth for the already rich.

 

Jill Hartz

Director

UVA Art Museum

I think my worst job was during a college summer, when, because I was a fast typist, I took office jobs. I worked for an insurance company where I had to transcribe all day long interviews with people who had accidents, including car accidents where people had died. As a young person it was traumatic and frustrating to be inside every day during the summer. But it was a difficult job.

 

Horace Gerald Danner

Co-owner

Dr. Ho’s Humble Pie

My worst job was one in which I had to wear a three-piece suit. I learned very early on that I never wanted to do anything that required me to wear a suit and tie. Even now, if I have to go to an event, or a funeral, I’ll wear one of those straight collar shirts that don’t even allow you to wear a tie.

In 1985, I took a job as a glass salesman in the D.C. metro area. One other co-worker and I were considered "Beltway Bandits"—visiting large companies who bought glass in the greater D.C., Baltimore and Philadelphia area.

I basically spent all day driving around and telling jokes and being jovial to these big-wig guys who were buying glass for one building project or another. It was horrible.

Along with my three-piece suit, I had this slicked-back hair and I weighed about 200 pounds.

Sadly enough, that was the most money I’ve ever made in my life. But it definitely wasn’t worth being rich, fat and about to have a heart attack.

 

Susanna Nicholson

Director

Union Yoga Loft

The best part of this particular job is I was fired on my birthday, which in some ways was a present. I went to work for a small, essentially vanity publisher in Northern Virginia and I did it because Eugene McCarthy had a manuscript there. I was told that he was too perfect to edit. They asked me instead to market these huge boxes of a book called Feeding Fido: A Gourmet Guide to Feeding Your Dog. It was a cookbook with incredibly time-consuming recipes dog owners could make for their dogs. I had to call around, go to cable station after cable station trying to push this.

The funny thing is, I’ve done window washing, but usually you find nice people in the grungy jobs. I remember once I did dishwashing but the guy next to me was a retired member of the Australian Navy who would recite Shakespeare. The worst part is these so-called glamour jobs—I worked for Us Magazine and I was forced to write a positive review of a Bruce Willis film, one of his bombs, and I had to write three positive lines for Us to be able to interview him. The next day my review was reprinted in an ad in The New York Times in big bold letters. You get a feeling in your gut, that stomach-churning feeling, when you realize you have your "dream job" and it turns into ashes.

 

Fran Smith

Graphic Artist

I worked for Blackstone Cigar Company. I sewed tobacco leaves together so that the little climbers from Puerto Rico could climb up to the rafters to hang them. We took the green leaves and sewed them on machines, 32 leaves per lath. Then Puerto Rican guys would come and climb to the top of the barn and hang the leaves to dry. It was in Simsbury, Connecticut. It was cigar tobacco, not cigarette tobacco.

I got this job because I wanted to go to college and I wanted to earn money. I could get hired there at 13. Because I was so big I got hired to be a supervisor, so I was a supervisor to kids my own age. After a few months they upped my salary to $2.25 an hour and that’s where my trouble started.

If you couldn’t get 32 leaves together sewing you could turn the machine down so you could do it slower. I told this one girl that if she couldn’t do it fast, she would have to have another job. So she went to Betty Jean, the power girl from North Philly, and told her that I said I was going to kick Betty Jean’s ass. Well, Betty Jean rode the bus with me back to Bristol. She sat behind me and it was an unusual day because the black kids and white kids were sitting together on the bus. I had no idea what was coming. Betty Jean said, "I heard today that you were looking to kick my ass." And then she hurt me pretty bad. Put a nail file on the inside of my mouth. I still have a scar over my eye from where she hit me. I got one good punch in and then she pulverized me. I walked home and my father said, "What happened to you?" I said, "I just walked into a wall." He said, "Whatever wall you walked into you better face it tomorrow. " And I did.

The next day I waited for her. I knew she smoked pot at 10 o’clock. I waited for her to come out from her potty break. I was much taller than her. I grabbed her hands and twirled her around until she was dizzy. I got her on the ground and punched her lights out. That girl’s face was a mess. It was to a point that if I was going to keep this job and get respect, I had to do this. It was not about being vicious. After that we became friends. She said, "Hey you’re tough." Then nobody could play us off each other. Betty Jean and I went to this girl who set us up and we just looked at her. She left.

 

Alex Gulotta

Executive Director

Legal Aid Society

Sometime between college and law school I worked at the Gunite Steel foundry in Rockford, Illinois. They had a steel foundry and an iron foundry, making wheels and brake drums for semi trailers. It was the best job and the worst job. The best because it was cash, baby. I was working my way through college, and it was good money. If you didn’t care about the conditions you worked under, it was the best summer job you could come by.

Working conditions…how should I put it? You couldn’t find OSHA in your alphabet soup. Dante’s Inferno is a fair comparison.

Most of the college students are on the night shift, so lunch is about 1am. The foundry is well over 100 degrees at that time, and you’re wearing a hard hat, safety glasses, a mask, earplugs, a long-sleeved shirt with leather arm covers, long pants and steel-toed work boots. You’re in this little cocoon.

There’s a job students would do called "skull pulling." Essentially, they’d melt metal in a huge oven that would tip and pour molten steel into big cauldrons, maybe 8′ tall and 6′ around. When you pour steel into a mold, some of it bubbles over. While it’s still red hot you have to break off the extra steel or it screws up the mold. You get a hook about 12" long and this little shovel, and for hours you "pull the skulls," these pieces of red-hot steel and dump it in a bucket. That’s your job. In the daytime, it would get to 130 degrees, and the guys who would do that job would pass out, so they’d round up college students to keep the line going. What got me through it was the fact that you worked on various aspects of the job. The concept of doing one thing all summer was death.

The crowning blows were "shutdowns," where everyone had a week off and the maintenance people would come in and work. We spent an entire week crawling down into these sub-basements that flooded regularly and get filled with this black, gritty, muddy sand. Our job was to spend all day shoveling this smelly muck into buckets someone would haul up and dump.

The dirt, the loud noise…it was almost awe-inspiring. The force and power of the machines were incredible. You cannot help but respect people who work in a place like that for a living, because it’s such hard work and the conditions are so disgusting––at least that’s how it was in the late ’70s.

I think that job influences me every day. I’ve worked a lot of labor jobs to work my way through school––working at grocery stores, blacktopping roads, painting houses. I respect the jobs people have to do because I know some of what’s involved, and I have to say it motivated me to stay in college.

I hope my kids have a period where they do different jobs. I can’t think of a better way to teach them about how the world really works.

 

Paul Curreri

Singer-songwriter

It’s really difficult to narrow it down. I was just making a list of all my bad jobs. The first on the list was telemarketing tickets for the Broadway musical Rent. The boss insisted for our morale on having the music from the show piped in all day, every day. We had to keep track of exactly when we made our calls. We have to make three a minute. So you’re writing down 3:31, 3:31, 3:31, 3:32 and in the meantime this music, "I will liiiiight a candle…" is playing in the background.

For two years I had a job called traffic engineer. But it was in reality traffic counting. From 7am to 7pm four days a week you sit on a corner at an intersection and push a button on a thing that looked like a GameBoy with a drawing of an intersection on it and a button above each lane. On the fifth day you entered your "data" in an office. It was used for timing traffic lights and it was cheaper to have two college kids do it than to pay for those strips that do it automatically. I figured out how to beat the system. For 54 minutes I would just sit there reading or sleeping or whatever and for the last 6 minutes I would record the traffic and push each button 10 times. The worst thing was that while I was doing that job I was taking medication for acne, so I couldn’t sit in the sun. So I literally had to sit there with a pillowcase over my head with a floppy hat on top of that. No kidding. I have a picture of it from the Richmond Times-Dispatch. People thought I was a burn victim or the Elephant Man or a member of the KKK or something.

There’s the mailroom in New York City where I would have to leave, because I was breaking down crying all the time. I realized I was just moving and lifting heavy stuff all day. My boss didn’t like me all that much and one day I knocked on her door. "Why don’t you just have a monkey do my job?" I asked her. Then I said, "I realized the monkey couldn’t read to see where the mail would go. That’s why you hired me."

I’m a vegetarian and the job I had for only one hour was in a steak house in Knoxville, Tennessee. I carried these enormous slabs of meat draped over my arm into the room where they would be cut into steaks. I didn’t last too long there.

 

Jen Sorensen

Cartoonist

I think probably the most colorful job I ever had was when I was a waitress in a Pennsylvania Dutch family restaurant. I had this big, teal green oversized jumper that was very matronly with white socks and white sneakers and a ponytail. But that wasn’t the worst part of the job. I had to serve this dish called hog maw. It’s a Pennsylvania Dutch delicacy that consists of pigs’ stomachs that are stuffed with sausage and boiled potatoes. People were very enthusiastic about hog maw and very excited when it was on the menu. I would actually see trays of pig stomachs loaded into the oven—I actually worked that into a comic strip once. It’s not that it was bad, it was just kind of bizarre. The worst part was having to serve more tables than I was capable of serving.

The actual worst job I ever had was working in Hoboken in a coffee shop that seemed to be run by Mafioso-type guys. I can’t be sure that they were mobsters, but they were very intimidating and tough. One guy, when he was trying to make a point, was yelling at me once and threw a big pointed knife on the floor at my feet. There was definitely something shady going on there.

 

Browning Porter

Graphic artist, musician

When I finished my undergraduate degree at UVA in 1989, my plan was to take a job in my dad’s sign shop in Manassas, make signs by day and write poems, novels, screenplays, etc., by night. The first job given to me was strange, hopeless and horrible.

The shop had a client who was one of those builders responsible for throwing up McMansions all over the NoVa sprawl. Still giddy from the over-the-top opulence of the Reagan era, they had a notion to adorn each of their signs with a brass medallion about the size of an extra-large pizza, tricked out with their corporate logo in bas relief. When they learned how ridiculously expensive this would be, they still insisted that the shop imitate the effect by whatever means necessary.

My dad had no idea really how to do this, and so someone referred him to an expert sculptor who needed the work. The guy had been working for the Smithsonian, building giant fake rocks for one of their dinosaur exhibits. Apparently he knew how to do anything. His name was Viktor, and he was an unreformed Romanian Communist—somewhat of an insider in the Ceausescu regime—who had fallen out of favor and fled to America. Apparently before he had immigrated to this country, he had specialized in creating monolithic statues of party leaders, the kind that got hauled down and danced on by the oppressed masses only a few years later. Somehow this character landed in Manassas where he fashioned a method of casting giant fake brass medallions out of plastic for my father.

But Viktor didn’t quite fit in with the sign shop. He worked at his own pace—that of a party apparatchik, I suppose—and drank vodka all day long. When he spoke at all to co-workers, it was usually to disparage American capitalism or to hit them up for money. No sooner had he cooked up the first batch or so of medallions, than he quit. By the time I came home to work, he was long gone, and I had never met him. No one else knew how to do what he’d been doing, so it fell to me, the returning prodigal college boy, supposedly smart, to figure it out.

I was given Viktor’s big rubbery handmade molds, several dozen gallons of raw plastic goop to pour into them, a tiny vial of chemical catalyst, an old mechanical postal scale with which to measure out the catalyst, and a sort of dusty, wheezy Darth Vader-ish gas-mask to wear so that I didn’t asphyxiate. This stuff had fumes so deadly that I was also given an empty industrial warehouse all to myself in which to mix my vile concoctions. My dad had been able to rent very cheaply when the upholstery business it had housed went belly up, and so it was a very creepy, lonely place, filled with the hopeless skeletons of furniture and spiders.

One of my co-workers, an affable West Virginia country boy named Kenny, had found Viktor fascinating, and liked to visit me on his smoke breaks to tell me stories about him. "Viktor," he told me, "always used to wear them Walkmans on his head. I asked him once, ‘Viktor, what on earth are you listening to on them Walkmans all the time?’ And you know what he told me? ‘Classical music and static.’"

Casting the disks was a tricky business. The goop sort of looked like corn syrup and smelled like nail polish remover. One whiff of it without the Vader mask was enough to make you fall over dead of cancer. Too little catalyst in the plastic goop and the disks would turn out soft and sticky and gum up the mold. Too much catalyst and the chemical reaction would overheat and bake the disk right into the rubber. It didn’t help that the amount of catalyst called for in one casting was far less than the margin of error of my decrepit postal scale. I began with five molds, and after my third week I had ruined all but two of them. I was nervous, isolated and hypochondriacal.

Everyone in the shop listened to the same classic rock station, but I’d grown sick of their single 24-hour playlist scrambled fresh every day. (You knew you’d hear Strawberry Alarm Clock’s "Incense of Peppermints." You just didn’t know when.) I bought myself a Walkman, and I became addicted to NPR’s news in the afternoon, and soon I didn’t bother to change the station in the morning when they played Bach and the Mozart. The reception was lousy though, back in my ghostly upholstery shop, and so the station went in and out as I stalked around the premises, muttering chemical miscalculations to myself. One day I realized with a sudden horror that I was listening to nothing but classical music and static.

When I ruined the next-to-last mold, I got permission to purchase an expensive digital scale, and my father coaxed Viktor back for one day to show me what I was doing wrong. Viktor was very thin, white and humorless. He wore jeans and a blue denim vest without a shirt, so that his pale, round little vodka belly protruded over his belt. Sure enough, he never removed his headphones, and their wire seemed inextricably tangled in his long, greasy black hair. He talked like a sullen, mumbling Dracula.

He and Kenny and I went back to my empty warehouse to watch him work his magic. He refused to wear the Vader mask, and, in fact, kept a lit Marlboro in his mouth the whole time he stirred and poured the toxic goop, while Kenny and I stood well away and waited for him to burst into flames. He didn’t bother with the scale either, but somehow eye-balled the correct amount of catalyst, tapping it out of its vial as if it were pepper in a pot of borscht. He seldom spoke or met our gaze, and when he’d finished casting the medallion, we all stepped outside to smoke.

"Viktor, I understand that you know all about statues," said Kenny. "I was wondering what you thought of the Statue of Liberty." Viktor sneered, mumbled something about the doomed Romanticism of the bourgeoisie. And Kenny said, "Well, I think it’s a pretty good statue. There’s just one problem with it. It ought to have a No Vacancy sign on it." Viktor spit and flicked his cigarette into the weeds.

Viktor’s casting worked just fine, and he collected his pay and left. I learned nothing from his demonstration except that I had no aptitude for working with toxic and persnickety chemicals, and soon I’d ruined the last of Viktor’s molds. One of my co-workers stole my digital scale, and it no doubt was put to good use weighing out perfect quarter-ounces. My Dad convinced the client that they couldn’t afford even fake brass medallions for all their signs. I gave up on Manassas, and moved back to Charlottesville to join a band and get an MFA in poetry. I still make my living in graphic arts.

 

Meredith Richards

Vice-Mayor

City of Charlottesville

When I was in college, I would spend my summers as a temp working for ManPower. Most of the jobs lasted a week or two and they were replacements for people on vacation. The worst one I can remember was bad not because of the people but because of the task. It was in a construction trailer in the middle of nowhere. Nothing for miles around, but me and a bunch of men. They were doing legal construction contracts and I had to day in and day out sit in this sweltering trailer typing letter-perfect contracts on legal paper on an IBM Selectric, and every time I made a mistake I had to rip out the paper and type again. It was terrible.

I remember a lot of stressful and tough jobs during that period as a temp. Sometimes people would call a temp because they had so much work they were overwhelmed. You’d arrive Monday morning and never lift your head from your work until Friday evening. Other jobs were bad because they were boring and you had nothing to do but answer the phone. I don’t envy people who work in temp agencies and I did that for four summers.