A Maniac wreaks havoc at a police station in Live Arts' Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Supplied photo.
A farce for the force: Italian playwright Dario Fo’s political satire Accidental Death of an Anarchist pokes fun at the Italian police force by imagining a fictionalized aftermath of 1969’s real-life Piazza Fontana bombing. Giuseppe Pinelli, an anarchist wrongly accused of the bombing, plummets to his death from a fourth-floor window while in a police interrogation room. In the acclaimed play, the Maniac works his way through the police station, confuddling officers with absurd disguises and witticisms until the truth is revealed. Susan E. Evans helms the production—her first directing gig as Live Arts’ artistic director.
Through 6/5. $20-25, times vary. Live Arts, 123 E. Water St. livearts.org
Jazz ensemble Tuba Skinny performs at the Jefferson Theater on May 22. Supplied photo.
Preservation haul: New Orleans jazz ensemble Tuba Skinny fulfilled a lifelong dream this year with the release of Magnolia Stroll, its first album of original music. The group formed in 2009 as a loose collection of street musicians that combines cornet, clarinet, trombone, tuba, tenor banjo, guitar, frottoir, and vocals. Influenced by a wide range of music, including spirituals, Depression-era blues, ragtime, jug band music, and more, Tuba Skinny is known for its commitment to reviving long-lost songs—which is what makes Magnolia Stroll so special. It’s an ode to the musicians, past and present, who’ve inspired the group.
Sunday 5/22. $25-28, 8pm. Jefferson Theater, 110 E. Main St. jeffersontheater.com
Soprano Alyssa Weathersby stars as Venus and serves as stage director in the Early Access Music Project's production of Venus & Adonis. Supplied photo.
Sad, mad love: A grumbling Cupid, lovesick Venus, and dishy Adonis star in Venus & Adonis, a modern operatic take on the classical Greek myth, produced by the Early Access Music Project, a rotating group of musicians that brings early music to the community through accessible programming. Originally composed by John Blow in the 1680s, Venus & Adonis features a baroque band with period instrumentalists, and stars sopranos Alyssa Weathersby and Julie Bosworth, and baritone Harrison Hintzsche.
Ralph Sampson’s American Tap Room is open six days a week at the Barracks Road Shopping Center. Images: Anna Kariel
It’s been more than 40 years since Ralph Sampson led the University of Virginia Cavaliers to a run of basketball glory that included an NIT title in 1980, an NCAA Final Four appearance in 1981, and a trip to the NCAA Elite Eight in 1983. The 7-foot, 4-inch Harrisonburg native was one of the most sought after college recruits of his generation, winning NBA Rookie of the Year and making the cover of Sports Illustrated six times during his college career. He retired from pro basketball in 1995, went into coaching for several years, and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011.
For his latest rebound, Sampson returns to Charlottesville to lead a new team at Ralph Sampson’s American Tap Room, which held its grand opening at its Barracks Road location last month.
“The opening weekend was crazy,” says Sampson. “It happened to line up with alumni weekend, so the opening celebration with the teams tested us from the start.”
The stylish restaurant combines a traditional sports bar with upscale-casual dining, and it’s clear how much consideration went into every aspect, including the decor. Seated under a wall of signed basketballs, accented by a miniature statue of Sampson himself, the superstar baller takes care to emphasize that “this is not just a sports bar. We want it to be a place where people can have great experiences and great food. You’ll never see me hang my jersey on the wall.”
The idea, says Sampson, is to bring together the community as a whole. “The world of UVA can feel very separate from the rest of the city,” he says. “Like when I was a student, I didn’t feel like I knew the rest of Charlottesville. So we hope that this can be a place for both communities.”
The menu follows the vibe of the restaurant with a mix of bar food and fine-dining options, intending to offer something for everyone. A bacon-wrapped filet mignon with lobster tail rings in at $54, with burger prices around $14.
Supplied photos.
An order of the jumbo lump crab cake arrived softly composed, herby, and drizzled with grilled lemon accompanied by crispy, well-seasoned fries. A side of dijonnaise complemented the crab dish, as did the house IPA—Ralph’s Big Juicy, a mouthwatering citrusy beer developed in partnership with Three Notch’d Brewing Company.
With plenty of room for dessert, Sampson personally recommended the Rockslide brownie sundae. “It’s one of my favorites on the whole menu,” he says. “The chocolate is so rich and soft, there’s nothing else like it.”
Sampson approaches his foray into the restaurant business with a coach’s mentality. “I want to win championships in the restaurant industry,” he says. He understands that success in this field, like sports, comes from building a team of talented, hard-working players.
Sampson partnered with Thompson Hospitality, the group behind The Ridley on West Main Street, to build his first original-concept restaurant. “I first met Warren [Thompson] back when we were both at UVA, but it wasn’t until recently that we connected again over this project,” he says. “There were so many moving parts and some setbacks when it came to opening this place up. It really showed us our strengths and our weaknesses, and I was lucky to have such an experienced and professional team on my side.”
Sampson says he has lots of plans for the space, everything from screenings of classic games to meet-and-greets with professional athletes and live recordings of his all-things-sports podcast, “Center Court.” With its community focus, and sports history foundation, his American Tap Room is a place where Sampson is sure to power forward once again.
Artistic blacksmith Ellen Durkan’s Wearable Ironwork workshop takes place at the Virginia
Institute of Blacksmithing in Waynesboro from May 23-27. Learn more at vablacksmithing.org.
Photo: Joe Hoddinott.
In an industry divided by art and craft, blacksmith Ellen Durkan is forging her own path. Durkan creates intricate, complex, wearable art, known as “forged fashion.”
She was drawn to blacksmithing while pursuing a master’s degree in fine arts at Towson University. No one in the program was a blacksmith, but that wasn’t a problem for Durkan. She started messing around with metal and scored a blacksmith assistant position at Peters Valley School of Craft in the summer of 2008, which gave her a taste of what forging could be.
With no background in fashion and half a summer’s worth of ’smithing experience, Durkan got to work on her thesis—a runway show that combined her newfound love of blacksmithing with her passion for figurative work and performance art. The finished show featured six women in fabricated dress cages, complete with metal shoes. Durkan is open about the beginner quality of her early pieces. “They weren’t forged or fabricated particularly well, and they weren’t structurally sound, but you’ve gotta start somewhere,” she says. “I have to credit the exploration of crappy stuff that fit poorly and was extra stabby and all over the place.”
Today, Durkan’s wearables are dynamic, accessible, and significantly more comfortable thanks to clever leatherwork. Her portfolio includes copper collars with ruffles so smooth they look like fabric, armor-like bodices, curling skirts, soaring headpieces, and more. She makes all of it at Iron Maiden Forge, her one-person shop in Delaware.
Ellen Durkan working on a piece of her forged fashion. Photo: Ric Frane.
Durkan’s work takes inspiration from numerous sources, including gothic architecture, Celtic knotwork, and Alexander McQueen. One of he favorite creations features a fitted neck piece and face covering. “I really like that piece because it’s conceptually dynamic, and on a technical level it’s dynamic,” she says. Inspired by triptychs, the face piece features three layers. The top layer is a cage-like steel face covering, which hinges open to reveal the second layer—a nose and mouth formed out of copper. The face looks like it could be from a mold, but Durkan actually hand-formed it using a chasing repoussé technique, where a design is created on the front side of a piece of metal by hammering the back side, and chasing involves pushing back metal on the front side to define a design.
The final layer opens to view the wearer’s own face. “I like working with pieces that the model can manipulate on the runway. The face piece goes with a skirt that has hinging doors and a tryptic opening that’s based on gothic architecture, and a rose window inspiration in the center,” says Durkan. “The model can open the doors on the skirt and on her face, so she’s in control of what she’s representing.”
Her work is a beautiful, impressive feat by itself, but it comes alive with new meaning when it’s worn. It gives power to the wearer, acting as literal and metaphorical armor that invites vulnerability, inspires confidence, symbolizes strength, and literally takes strength to wear. You can see the finished products—bodies wrapped in metal—at runway shows. One of the last shows Durkan held was in 2019, and it featured 45 minutes of original music, aerial performers, and 16 models from ages 15 to 72. The oldest model was a friend of a friend. “She was very reserved,” says Durkan with a smile, “and then as soon as she hit the runway she was just owning it. And she kept her piece on all night, the heels and skirt.”
Photo: Joe Hoddinott
This confidence is something Durkan also sees in students’ workshops, where she works with them to design and forge something to fit the neck or chest. It’s a class that not only teaches students about blacksmithing, but about themselves.
“It’s a personal exploration as well as a forging exploration,” says Durkan. “Most people aren’t super in tune with their bodies, and in order to make these pieces, they’re allowing me to help them. We get personal about stuff, their stories.” It’s an intimate process, forming metal around the curves of the body, and Durkan can see peoples’ confidence grow as they fit pieces to themselves, sometimes to cover insecurities, other times to embrace them.
From May 23-27 she’s teaching a five-day workshop at the Virginia Institute of Blacksmithing in Waynesboro—the only artistic blacksmithing school certified to operate by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. VIB offers a variety of classes that require no experience, like Durkan’s, as well as a Certificate of Artistic Blacksmithing, taught by co-founder Dale Morse.
Despite making art that’s undeniably badass and takes an extraordinary amount of skill, not everyone sees what Durkan is on to. In graduate school, Durkan says she was told not to pursue the direction she did, and today, she still faces pushback from a male-dominated industry. “I think it’s a little better now, but 12 years ago there was such a divide between art and craft, and you were just shoved into one of the dimensions,” she says. “If you have crossover, which I kind of do, the art world is like ‘well this is too much craft’, and the craft world is like, ‘there’s naked women, she’s dealing with emotional issues through metal, we don’t know what to do.’ But I just kept doing what I wanted, and eventually people came around and were like ‘Oh shit, maybe she’s doing something that other people might be interested in.’”
Durkan is still doing what she wants, and expressing herself through any art form she can get her hands on—ceramics, drawing, makeup, photography, pinup. “I don’t feel like I should be pigeonholed into just one thing. It’s all part of the same artistic expression. Do whatever you want to do.”
The Paramount Theater screens Andrew Dominik's new documentary, This Much I Know To Be True, about the friendship and collaboration between Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. File photo.
True companion: Andrew Dominik’s acclaimed 2016 documentary One More Time with Feeling followed Australian musician Nick Cave on an emotional journey of creation and loss when, during the recording of a new album with his band, Cave’s son tragically passed away. Dominik has reunited with Cave and Warren Ellis, Cave’s collaborator, for the companion film, This Much I Know To Be True, an optimistic and hopeful doc that captures the creation of their last two studio albums.
Wednesday 5/11. $13-15, 7:30pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. theparamount.net
Bob Log III performs at The Southern Café & Music Hall on May 11. Supplied photo.
Enjoy the ride: Clad in a skin-tight jumpsuit and singing through a motorcycle helmet wired to a telephone handset, Bob Log III delivers a one-man show of musical mayhem like no other. The Arizona-based multi-instrumentalist stomps on a homemade cymbal with one leg, a kick drum with the other, and plays finger-picked slide guitar while singing original crowd favorites including “Boob Scotch” and “I Want Your Shit On My Leg.” The interactive show features plenty of props, shots, and maybe a little bit of crowd surfing.
Monday 5/16. $12-15, 8pm. The Southern Café & Music Hall, 103 First St. S. thesoutherncville.com
Kat Maier is a trained physician’s assistant with over 30 years of experience teaching and practicing herbal medicine. She will read from her new book, Energetic Herbalism, at New Dominion Bookshop on May 13 at 7pm. Supplied photo.
If Kat Maier were a plant, you could say she has released her seeds all around Charlottesville. She’s been here since 2005, teaching and practicing herbalism, so at this point she has many former students and clients in and around town. Her Belmont home, also the site of her apothecary, classroom, and garden, is a node where all these people—and many plants, from the weedy to the endangered—have gathered. The place itself, you might say, is a kind of tincture, or concentration, of our area.
On a visit in late spring, the garden is bursting with fragrant azaleas, plus the foliage of low-growing plants like goldenseal, trillium, and bloodroot. Maier is warm and welcoming, with intense blue eyes and a ready laugh. She sits in a shady backyard spot and explains that her new book, Energetic Herbalism, distills wisdom gleaned not only from her years of work in Charlottesville, but the two previous decades she spent in Rappahannock County. It’s a guide to several world traditions of herbalism and 25 of the most essential medicinal plants. She’ll give a book talk at New Dominion on May 13.
“I never went to herb school,” she says, summarizing a life history that she details more fully in the book’s introduction. “I really apprenticed to the plants. I taught myself by spending incredible amounts of time in Shenandoah National Park.”
She also trained as a physician’s assistant—a grounding in Western medicine that shows, for example, in her requirement that students bone up on anatomy, physiology, and the Latin names of the plants they use. But one senses that herbalism, for Maier, is really a matter of the spirit. “For me, the foundation is that relationship with the plant,” she says.
“I feel like she has been studying it and living it constantly for all these years,” says Katherine Herman, who completed the three-year herbalism course at Maier’s school, Sacred Plant Traditions, in 2013 and went on to found Gathered Threads, an herb farm in Nelson County. “It’s not just book knowledge. It’s just amazing the amount of wisdom that she has.”
A quick dip into Energetic Herbalism hints at the breadth of that wisdom; you might be looking for basic information on the uses of calendula, say, and find yourself reading about how the history of colonialism relates to our sense of disconnectedness from nature. Maier advocates for a lifelong practice of curiosity and humility toward plants. “Often when I lead a plant walk, people ask me whether this plant or that one is ‘good for anything,’” she writes. “Imagine if someone introduced me to you and, after greeting you, I wondered aloud whether you were good for anything, or how I could use you.”
Besides running Sacred Plant Traditions, Maier has also been deeply involved with United Plant Savers, a group that aims to protect native medicinal plants. A growing market for medicinals has threatened certain wild species, like black cohosh and ginseng. Maier’s city garden is, she says, a sanctuary for some of these plants and, she hopes, a model for others. “People are talking about how to rewild the urban areas,” she says. “We have to have many different people planting the plants. The time is now.”
She grows delicate natives—on this day, a colleague is transplanting wild yam along the side of the house—but that doesn’t mean shunning the plants that Europeans brought to North America and that usually get labeled as weeds. “Our major medicines are chickweed, dandelion, cleavers—all the plants on the Roundup label,” she says, adding that dandelion’s genus name, Taraxacum, means “remedy of all disorders.” “They were brought over as a primary food and medicine,” she says. In the age of climate change, she advocates for an inclusive view of the plants we find ourselves living with now, rather than a strict division between native and invasive.
At an earlier point in her career, she enthusiastically gathered medicinals from around the world, but she’s settled into a belief in bioregionalism—in her definition, “trying to have your food and medicine from the region where you live.” That’s why the book lists the characteristics and uses of just 25 plants. Choosing these, Maier says, was “one of the most agonizing parts of the book,” since she has knowledge of so many others. But working with a small number of plants, she says, is a mark of folk herbalists the world over. The book presents three different energetic systems—vitalism, ayurveda, and Chinese medicine—based on the idea of elements that make up the universe and the body. During her training, Herman says, this approach “gave us a well-rounded approach to the human body and how to look at herbs.”
Along with the publication of Energetic Herbalism, Maier has closed her clinical practice in order to travel and teach, as well as redesigning her clinical training. Her former students are carrying on her work in various ways—a local ecosystem of seeds she sowed, now blossoming.
Alexander Skarsgård stars as a brutally violent Viking in The Northman. Photo: Focus Features.
Set in ninth- and 10th-century Europe, Robert Eggers’ brutal revenge saga The Northman is a lavish, sweeping film, but its unrelenting gore will undoubtedly repel many viewers.
Loosely based on the Scandinavian legend that inspired Hamlet, with elements of Macbeth thrown in, The Northman’s antihero, young prince Amleth, vows revenge after seeing his father, King Aurvandil War-Raven (Ethan Hawke), slaughtered by his uncle, Fjolnir (Claes Bang), who then steals his kingdom and marries his mother, Gudrun (Nicole Kidman). After being raised into full warriorhood by Vikings, the adult Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård) tracks his uncle down and sets his vengeance in motion, aided by one of Fjolnir’s slaves, Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy).
The Northman doesn’t sugarcoat its pagan characters’ bleak, filthy, violent lives. These are bona fide barbarians who thrive on casual slaughter and enslaving conquered peoples—their facility with mayhem means the difference between freedom, death, or lowly servitude. Beheadings, disembowelment, and general bloodletting abound—a Viking raid on a Slavic village is particularly hideous, and makes for troubling viewing, especially in light of recent world events.
For his tale of bestial savagery and revenge, Eggers drew heavily on John Milius’ Conan the Barbarian—lifting the opening narration, the overall plot structure, key scenes, ad infinitum—but The Northman lacks a critical ingredient that made Conan a more successful film in every sense: Milius’ wicked sense of humor.
The Northman’s humorlessness is arguably its weakest point, while no doubt an artistic choice by Eggers, and the film takes itself too seriously. Eggers also draws on Roman Polanski’s bleak Macbeth in many ways, from its pivotal witches to the consciousness-raising medieval drug-induced hallucinations. The Northman’s score by Robin Carolan and Sebastian Gainsborough also seems to echo the Third Ear Band’s unforgettable soundtrack for Polanski.
Although not on par with Eggers’ excellent The Witch, The Northman is a well-crafted production and a distinct improvement over his meandering The Lighthouse. The film’s cast is fine overall, particularly Kidman, Willem Dafoe as Heimir the Fool, and Bjork in a small, memorable appearance as a witch.
Production design and costumes are high-quality, the Nordic locations are striking, and Eggers keeps his camera mercifully steady, eschewing senselessly jerky camerawork. CGI effects don’t overwhelm the movie, but the sadism and bloodshed levels are high enough to reach Valhalla.
Bleak and grim, with glaring plot holes, The Northman is 20 minutes too long and doesn’t inspire multiple viewings. Films about truly barbaric characters are a gamble, because, as in this case, they focus on inarticulate thugs who are little better than the vermin they’re battling. Eggers succeeds at making a Viking epic, but a joyless, often repulsive one that’s easy to appreciate, but not so easily palatable.
Our annual, and always subjective, look at the movers and shakers around town is a mix of stalwarts and surprises. Here’s our take on the people shaping our city and county this year, for better or worse. We hope it gets you talking.
Politics
Nikuyah Walker
Since Mayor Nikuyah Walker was elected in the wake of the horrifying violence of Unite the Right, she’s made good on her campaign slogan: “Unmasking the Illusion.”
Unlike many previous mayors and city councilors, Walker — the city’s first black woman mayor and the first independent to win a council seat since 1948—was born and raised in Charlottesville and attended city schools. And while some wish she’d stop trash-talking the town in national media outlets (meanwhile refusing multiple interview requests from C-VILLE), Walker is keen to point out the ugly history and lingering inequities that exist beneath Charlottesville’s lovely façade.
When not arguing with constituents on Facebook or throwing shade at Baggby’s sandwich shop, she’s making forthright calls to change the status quo—from replacing Jefferson’s birthday, as a city holiday, with Liberation and Freedom Day, to taking a closer look at how nonprofits use their city funding.
Walker’s confrontational style hasn’t gone over well in this conflict-averse city. As she told The Guardian in August: “I feel like the majority of the City Council, when I walk in the room the conversation shifts…I’m kept out of a lot of discussions.”
But it’s still worth it, she says. “They are no longer in control of the narrative. Whether they exclude me or not, I’m in the story.”
Michael Bills and Sonjia Smith
Michael Bills (A photo of Smith was not available).
Hedge fund manager Bills and attorney Smith have plowed millions into political campaigns, usually for Dems, with an eye lately to younger, more progressive candidates. The couple met at Hampton High and went to UVA before heading to New York, where Bills worked for Goldman Sachs. Later, back in Charlottesville, he managed investments at UVA and co-founded Charlottesville Tomorrow.
Last year, Bills started Clean Virginia to encourage candidates to eschew Dominion Energy donations with funds from his PAC instead, and in this year’s election, with all 140 seats in the General Assembly on the ballot, he’s gotten 76 candidates to swear off Dominion donations. In 2017, Bills put $500,000 into Ralph Northam’s campaign for governor, while Smith favored Tom Perriello with $650,000 for his run.
In a Roanoke Times piece, Smith said reproductive rights are a top issue for her because two aunts had to drop out of high school because of unplanned pregnancies. She has contributed over $2 million to candidates, and in the past year, favored UVA professor Sally Hudson with a $100,000 check over incumbent Delegate David Toscano (before he decided against running for re-election). She’s shared the wealth with 22 other legislative candidates so far in 2019, according to Virginia Public Access Project. And Smith made an eye-popping $50,000 donation to Albemarle commonwealth’s attorney candidate Jim Hingeley, and supported City Council candidate Sena Magill and Albemarle sheriff’s candidate Chan Bryant, both of whom won their primaries.
Hate-Free Schools Coalition and Matt Haas
Members of the Hate-Free Schools Coalition protested at Albermarle County School Board meetings for over a year, advocating for a ban on Confederate and other hate symbols. Photo: Eze Amos.
It took six arrests, more than a year of steady, determined protest, and one decisive action to ban Confederate imagery from Albemarle County schools. The Hate-Free Schools Coalition of Albemarle County, a grassroots group of local parents and activists, refused to be ignored, even after several citizens were arrested and one father was knocked to the ground by a cop. (That parent, who was taken to the emergency room with a sprained wrist and other injuries, was later charged with a felony for assaulting a police officer.)
After months of waffling by the school board, Superintendent Matt Haas announced that imagery associated with white supremacy, racial hatred, or violence is disruptive to learning, and that Confederate and other hate symbols would be banned from county schools. The policy, presented as a reinterpretation of the dress code, didn’t require a vote. “You’ve already given me the authority by hiring me,” Haas told board members.
While the board can still enact a formal ban, the announcement was a hard-won victory for activists and a clear example that sometimes, actions speak louder than words.
Roger Johnson
Photo courtesy subject.
There was a time when Albemarle County was seen as unfriendly to business: Its first economic director departed shortly after being thwarted in an attempt to add land to the growth area for Oregon-based Deschutes Brewery in 2015.
Things are looking much more promising for new hire Johnson, who came to the county from Greenville, North Carolina, and has been busy pushing the Board of Supervisors to codify policies and tools to make a more nimble economic development office. He’s showing up everywhere: at Governor Ralph Northam’s announcement for Castle Hill Gaming’s 106 new jobs earlier in June, helping Potter’s Craft Cider expand in January, and at WillowTree’s figurative groundbreaking at Woolen Mills last August.
In December, the supervisors adopted Project ENABLE, the county’s economic development plan, which Johnson says will increase the county’s tax base and the number of quality jobs.
We predict we’ll be seeing a lot more of Johnson as business booms in Albemarle.
Counties, Cities and Towns Subcommittee No. 1, Virginia General Assembly
Though Charlottesville’s City Council voted unanimously, more than a year ago, to remove our Confederate statues from the heart of downtown, the fact that they’re still standing is thanks in part to six state legislators you’ve probably never heard of.
For two years running, Charlottesville Delegate David Toscano has introduced a bill to allow localities to decide for themselves what to do with controversial Confederate statues, currently protected by Virginia law forbidding the removal of war memorials. And for two years running, Subcommittee No. 1 of the Counties, Cities and Towns Committee—eight white men, five of whom are Republicans, and none of whom are from this area—has killed the bill before it could even reach the floor for a vote.
Subcommittee members, led by Chair Charles Poindexter, from Franklin County, were unswayed by testimony this January from Charlottesville residents who want the statues gone after they became a rallying point for white nationalists and neo-Nazis in 2017. One Democrat joined the Republicans for a 6-2 vote to kill the bill.
The majority party speaker makes subcommittee appointments, even if that majority is literally the result of pulling a name out of a bowl, as happened with Republicans in the last election. So while Charlotttesville voters may have elected millennial Sally Hudson in hopes of progressive change, what Hudson will be able to accomplish will depend largely on whether Democrats can tip the House this November.
Charlottesville Twitter
It’s mortifying, in the year 2019, to talk earnestly about social media’s power to unite people and bridge gaps between communities. But there is at least one place where the big tech companies’ self-serving rhetoric has moments of ringing true: local Twitter.
Twitter is a sprawling and amorphous thing, but nodes of conversation tend to form within the chaos, and the day-to-day discourse around Charlottesville can be revealing, educational, and even exciting—if you can say that about a scene with a heavy dose of government-meeting content.
It’s important to distinguish Charlottesville Twitter from #Charlottesville Twitter, which is focused on the events of Aug. 11 and 12, 2017. Management at Twitter, the company, tends to be roughly as interested in controlling Nazis as Charlottesville’s government was before Unite the Right, so that particular conversation can be a disaster: Some well-loved Charlottesville Twitter personalities routinely receive credible death threats for their efforts.
Still, (and, yes, that is a very big caveat), it can be genuinely heartwarming to see a loose-knit collection of our neighbors—appointed and elected officials, local government staffers, socialists, anarchists, internet capitalists, lawyers, musicians, professors, restaurateurs, librarians, desk jockeys, teachers, hospital workers, filmmakers, and so on—hashing out the problems and pleasures of the town in real time.
And, since there’s always a chance of people running into each other on the street, things usually don’t get too rude. It almost looks like a form of that justifiably dreaded concept, civility. The real thing, not the marketing pitch.
Photo: Eze Amos
Business and Development
John Dewberry
The last we heard of the guy who holds the Downtown Mall hostage with the skeletal remains of his unfinished hotel was in a New York Times story earlier this year, about Dewberry and his bride refurbishing a 1920s condo in Atlanta. Dewberry, developer of what was once—more than 10 years ago—going to be the deluxe Landmark Hotel, has pretty much cold-shouldered Charlottesville since December 2017, when City Council voted against giving him a $1.1 million tax break that it had previously favored.
But hark. Daily Progress reporter Nolan Stout discovered that renderings of the Dewberry Hotel on the Dewberry Group website have moved from its hospitality section to the living section and the project is now dubbed the Laramore, “poised to become the city’s premier luxury multi-use property.”
Of course, city staff haven’t heard anything from Dewberry, so hold off on ordering wallpaper for your luxury condo.
Photo by Amy and Jackson Smith
Jeff Levien and Ivy Naté
Want to become the least popular couple in Charlottesville? Try tearing down the Blue Moon Diner. Fortunately for developer Jeff Levien and his wife, artist and designer Ivy Naté, the city’s Board of Architectural Review rejected that idea.
Their resulting consolation prize is the six-story, 53-unit apartment building hurtling toward completion at 600 W. Main Street, wrapped around the Blue Moon by Bushman Dreyfus Architects. Moreover, Levien is awaiting approval to build up to 55 more units next door, at the less-beloved site of University Tire.
Levien and Naté, who split their time between Charlottesville and the Upper West Side of Manhattan, are working together on the 600 W. Main project, and have bought up much of the property on West Main between Fifth and Seventh streets, plus the Market Street Promenade downtown, the building that houses The Artful Lodger.
Levien’s firm, Heirloom, has not announced its intentions for redeveloping the Market Street Promenade. But if its aesthetic follows suit with Six Hundred West Main, Levein and Naté’s contribution to Charlottesville’s urban future will not be clad in red brick.
Jim Ryan
Photo: UVA
The president of the University of Virginia will always be on a local power list, but Jim Ryan is likely to rise above the pro forma nomination. He started last August and has already put his stamp on the job, beginning with an apology for UVA’s handling of the white supremacist march through Grounds in 2017.
He raised the university’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, a goal activists have sought for years (though their most recent calls were for $16.84 an hour). And in May, he debuted his “great and good” strategic plan, notable for its emphasis on values and responsibility to employees, the community, and society in general.
Ryan’s sense of humor and approachability set him apart from his recent predecessors—he’s a lively presence on social media and throngs of students regularly join him for early morning runs through Grounds.
Perhaps that schoolboy charm will help smooth the way for difficult negotiations over UVA’s role in housing, transportation, and other contentious issues. Keep watching.
WillowTree
Photo: WillowTree
With 246 employees in several offices on the mall (another 110 are in Durham), mobile app company WillowTree has become a powerful presence downtown—and now they’re moving.
In a coup for Albemarle County, WillowTree ditched the city with plans to move its headquarters across the county line. There, the historic Woolen Mills building will be redeveloped with around $4 million in funding from the county and state, with WillowTree plowing in more than $20 million.
The new HQ will “attract the best and brightest from around the country to come here and to work,” says CEO Tobias Dengel. He’s said that he plans to hire an additional 200 people—good news for those who hope to make our area an innovation hub.
Rich guys*
Let’s face it, money is power. Just look at hedge-fund manager Jaffray Woodriff, who is literally reshaping the Downtown Mall, replacing quirky and unique spaces like The Ante Room and the ice rink with a 170,000-square foot office building geared toward tech startups, perhaps one day to be filled with graduates from the School of Data Science he funded at UVA with $120 million.
As Joe Nocera wrote in Bloomberg last year, “What Woodriff really wants to do with his wealth is transform Charlottesville into a place that will attract more people like, well, him.” (It’s worth noting that Woodriff and his wife also gave $13.5 million to build a new home for the Boys and Girls Club on the campus of Albemarle High School.)
One of the richest guys in town is surely Ted Weschler, one of two investment managers (and likely inheritors) of billionare Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, which owns The Daily Progress. Weschler—who got his job after paying a total of $5.2 million in charity auctions for two private lunches with Buffett—is also an investor in C-VILLE’s parent company.
He keeps a low profile, so his local impact is hard to determine, but he has reportedly been a longtime supporter of the Free Clinic and many other area nonprofits, and served on the boards of St. Anne’s-Belfield School and prominent businesses like Virginia National Bank. Earlier this year, according to VPAP, Weschler donated $10,000 to the campaign of Republican Delegate Rob Bell, who has an “A” rating from the NRA and recently voted to repeal the “one gun a month” law.
If we could, we’d devote a year and multiple staff members to deciphering the real net worth of our local million- and billionaires (like Forbes does) and where their money goes, or, at the very least, pay a research firm to do it for us (like Washington Monthly did this spring). But the fact is, we don’t have the resources for that.
*Employing “guys” in the general (sexist) way here, to mean people. Rich women can reshape the city, too—see: Sonjia Smith.
Food and Drink
Will and Priscilla Martin Curley
Photo by Stephen Barling
In a region crowded with vineyards, the most knowledgeable oenophiles have a leg up. Or in this case, four—two each for Will Curley and wife Priscilla Martin Curley, new owners of The Charlottesville Wine Guild, a wine club and store in Belmont.
Will earned his wine chops in Chicago, where he worked at The Purple Pig, a Michelin-recognized restaurant. In Charlottesville, he served as general manager and wine director of Brasserie Saison. Priscilla, a certified sommelier, is the wine director at Tavola, which has held a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence since 2016.
Charlottesville is crowded with wine experts, including Erin Scala, formerly of Fleurie and now proprietor of In Vino Veritas; Gabriele Rausse, the local “king” of wine; and influentials including star winemaker Michael Shaps and Joy Ting of the Virginia Winemakers Research Exchange. But with Will and Priscilla’s recent purchase of the Wine Guild—and the upgrades they’ve put in place—they have landed firmly in the designated driver’s seat of local wine.
Simon Davidson
Photo: Eze Amos
In a food-obsessed town, the foodiest foodie of them all might be Simon Davidson, a lawyer who runs the Charlottesville 29 food blog and each year bestows black and white “29” road sign stickers upon the 29 restaurants he deems the best. Davidson, who used to write the “At the Table” column for C-VILLE, is cozy with a number of local chefs, and clearly has his favorites (a generous portion of his Instagram is dedicated to pricey steakhouse Prime 109 and its sister restaurant, Lampo Neapolitan Pizzeria). But he posts only positive write-ups to his site, on principle. With a few thousand followers on each of his social media accounts, plenty of folks look to Davidson for info on what’s cooking around town.
The Smith family
Elizabeth, Hunter, and Tony Smith. Photo: Amy and Jackson Smith
It’s well known that Hunter Smith is a player in the local craft beer industry: The 33-year-old mogul-in-the-making opened Charlottesville’s Champion Brewing Company taproom in the fall of 2012. Since then, Smith has parlayed the success of his popular Missile IPA (and more recently, Shower Beer pilsner, which The Beer Connoisseur calls “a gem”) into a 15,000-barrel-a-year business, with
a second brewpub in Richmond as well as retail distribution in nine states, including the recent additions of Michigan and Kentucky.
But for Smith, beverage industry success is a family affair. His parents are Tony and Elizabeth Smith, owners for 10 years of the small but increasingly influential Afton Mountain Vineyards. Larger wineries may tend to dominate the conversation, but after a decade of methodical growth, sustainable winemaking practices by French import Damien Blanchon, and the addition of an events pavilion and four wedding-party-ready cabins, Afton Mountain is poised for wider recognition.
Perhaps not coincidentally, Hunter Smith is also making a move. He recently took sole ownership of Brasserie Saison on the Downtown Mall, announced a spinoff brand and gastropub, Selvedge, which will debut soon at The Wool Factory complex, and began consulting for the new micro-distiller Waterbird Spirits, at Water and Second streets.
Elizabeth Smith confirmed that she and her husband had acquired additional acreage adjoining their vineyards—but demurred when asked about a possible joint venture with her son. In any case, Hunter Smith recently told C-VILLE Weekly that he and Brasserie chef Tres Pittard had visited Afton Mountain Vineyards, surveying the site for culinary events. Is it too soon to add Afton Mountain to the list of marquee Central Virginia wineries? Perhaps. Does the Smith family appear to be moving into fresh territory? Yup.
Culture
Kristen Chiacchia
Although Second Street Gallery already had a claim to fame as Central Virginia’s oldest nonprofit contemporary artspace, their bragging rights grew further in 2016, when Kristen Chiacchia became the gallery’s executive director and chief curator. Coming from years of experience in New York galleries, she’s used her big-city expertise to compile memorable and diverse exhibitions—from a Joan Mitchell–inspired collection (featuring paintings by Mitchell herself!) to a selection of Aboriginal Australian works. Since arriving in Virginia, Chiacchia has also established herself as an activist for the arts, joining organizations such as the Americans for the Arts Action Fund and Washington, D.C.’s chapter of ArtTable.
DIY Music
House shows give Charlottesville music fans choices beyond the mainstream. Photo: Tristan Williams
Charlottesville’s corporate-sponsored music spots get all the attention (and the big names), but if we’re being honest, big venue crowds kinda suck.There are a few too many people paying good money to sip rosé or a local IPA and catch up with friends (or gather content for their Instas) while the same rotation of touring acts provide the backing track.
For a welcome alternative, there’s the DIY music scene, fueled by a small but committed group of local musicians, their friends and fans.
Hip-hop, hardcore punk, experimental noise made on homemade synthesizers, electric cello, no-nonsense garage rock…there’s plenty of great music under the radar, and these folks make sure you can hear it, likely in a dim room with a bunch of attentive strangers (some of whom will probably become your friends). Finding out about it isn’t impossible, either: to start, ask a local record store clerk, or keep your eyes peeled for show flyers on cork boards and telephone poles.
Alan Goffinski
The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative has a simple mission statement: “To bridge diverse communities through the arts.” In his tenure as its executive director, Alan Goffinski has realized this goal in impressively creative ways, using the small but mighty space to host everything from improv comedy events to community concerts to a “Gallery of Curiosities” last Halloween. He’s also bridged Charlottesville’s two largest and most separate communities—the student body and the townies—through the innovative Telemetry, a music series co-founded with Travis Thatcher, the technical director of UVA’s music department. The monthly program features both student and local performers and, like the vast majority of The Bridge’s events, it’s free.
Emily Morrison
Photo: Amy and Jackson Smith
The Front Porch, a music venue and roots music school, is still in its infancy. But executive director Emily Morrison, who founded it in 2015, hasn’t dawdled in those three years. The organization has already moved twice—from her own home to Mountaintop Montessori to its current location on Water Street East, a roomier venue which allows for larger class sizes and better jams. The events and classes offered at Morrison’s nonprofit bring together diverse cultures and celebrate their differences, all through the power of music.
Leslie Scott-Jones
This actor, director, producer, singer, radio host, poet, and playwright has been working for years to make space for artists and audiences of color in Charlottes-ville. Scott-Jones shares her skills and knowledge with other theater artists, giving roles to actors who’ve never been on a stage, guiding new directors through their first productions, and effectively broadening the scope and the reach of local theater.
Leslie Scott-Jones. Photo by Sanjay Suchak
She recently directed a powerful production of The Royale at Live Arts, and among her current projects is the revival of the Charlottesville Players Guild, an all-black theatre troupe first active in town in the mid-20th century. The company is now in the midst of staging all 10 of August Wilson’s “Pittsburgh Cycle” plays, and last summer it presented the very spectacular Black Mac, a telling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth in a black aesthetic. We hear there’s another CPG-does-Shakespeare coming this summer, too.
Brad Stoller
Brad Stoller
Among such a rich selection of arts-related venues, the Piedmont Virginia Community College might not seem like the obvious destination for theatre, but Brad Stoller is working to change that. As assistant professor of theatre arts at PVCC, he’s made a name for himself and the college by organizing fresh, creative reinterpretations of Shakespeare plays like As You Like It and Romeo and Juliet. Stoller also explores the ideas of the theatre of the oppressed and theatrical improvisation, hosting workshops locally and around the globe on both concepts.
Brian Wimer
Where to begin with Brian Wimer? He has many accolades to his name—he once provided the voice for the Taco Bell chihuahua and is the “primary instigator” of production company Amoeba Films—but locally, he’s known as the co-creator, executive director, and self-proclaimed “wizard” of IX Art Park. The open-air event space is home to weekly yoga and salsa classes, music festivals, the upcoming LARPfaire (which promises to be fun), and such iconic Charlottesville sculptures as the Bumper Buddha and Love Butt. Basically, it’s just as eclectic, fun, and endlessly creative as the man himself.
Arts Powerhouses
These folks appear on our list almost every year, but they still have an outsize impact on the city’s arts scene.
Paul Beyer Love it or hate it, Tom Tom is the festival that just keeps growing, and Beyer, its creater, is the reason why. Founders Fest, with its overwhelming array of talks, panels, parties, and performances, celebrated its eighth year this April, and is seeking to grow beyond its tech-focused roots into something more inclusive of the community at large.
Coran Capshaw This media and real estate mogul, whose name is attached to everything from the 5th Street Station shopping center to The Jefferson Theater, is the OG of our power list, and perhaps of Charlotteville itself.
Andrea Douglas The executive director of The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center for almost ten years, Douglas is a formidable force who shows no signs of slowing down. This year, her projects included co-founding the civil rights pilgrimage and hosting Jamelle Bouie’s first-ever photo exhibition.
Jody Kielbasa It’s easy to forget—or rather, hard to believe—that Jody Kielbasa is both the director of the Virginia Film Festival and UVA’s vice provost for the arts. Between the two roles, he facilitates a head-spinning amount of humanities-related events, and is often the man who brings Hollywood to Charlottesville.
Levien blurb updated 6/27 to correct an error regarding the proposed development on the site of University Tire, which is still awaiting approval for a Special Use Permit, and 6/28 for word choice.
