Hall of fame
It’s never the right time to say goodbye, but loyal patrons of the University of Virginia’s iconic, clamshell-roofed venue with notoriously bad sound quality don’t have much longer—the dumping of more than 40 years’ worth of stuff from University Hall has begun, with a complete demolition scheduled by 2020. To help you grieve, here’s a look back at some of the basketball stadium and concert hall’s greatest—and not-so-great—hits.
1965: It opens as the home court of the university’s men’s and women’s basketball teams.
1969: Janis Joplin rocks U-Hall, but trash talks some stage crashers in an after-performance interview with the Cavalier Daily. “That tonight wasn’t natural,” she says.
1971: The Faces grace the stage, fronted by Rod Stewart, who was then accompanied by guitarist Ron Wood—who later became a member of the Rolling Stones.
1973: Paul Simon plays U-Hall and uses portions of the show in his live album Paul Simon in Concert: Live Rhymin’.
1974: Sha Na Na takes the stage, and about an hour after the show, lead guitarist Vinny Taylor is found dead in his Holiday Inn hotel room, where he allegedly overdosed on heroin.
1975: Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie tells the Cavalier Daily in a post-concert interview that the U-Hall crowd was the worst she’d seen in a “long while.”
1982: The Grateful Dead trucks into its highly anticipated show, which sold out two weeks in advance.
1984: Elvis Costello plays a solo acoustic and piano set, though a WTJU DJ pranked the world earlier that year by saying the rock star had died—a hoax that even made it into the pages of the New York Times and Washington Post.
1986: R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck chases, punches, attempts to strangle and rips the shoes off a fan’s feet after he jumps on stage during “7 Chinese Brothers.”
1986: An attempt to break the ACC attendance record by offering free admission, hot dogs and sodas to attendees of a women’s basketball game brought about 13,000 fans, including the fire marshal, who kicked out a couple thousand, bringing the total down to 8,392. Former men’s coach Terry Holland said Hot Dog Night cost them about 1,800 seats for future years, which totaled about $10 million in lost revenue.—Compiled from the Hook
Regrets only
Newsweek reports that the white supremacist leaders who attended last year’s Unite the Right rally, such as Richard Spencer and Mike Enoch, are reluctant to return to Charlottesville for the anniversary event organizer Jason Kessler hopes to get off the ground.
Another chief vacancy
University Police Chief Michael Gibson says he’ll step down this summer from the force he’s led since 2005 and worked for since 1982. UVA has formed a task force to find his successor. Both Gibson and Al Thomas, former Charlottesville police chief, were criticized in Tim Heaphy’s independent review of the events of August 11 and 12.
Vacancy filled
RaShall Brackney, the former chief of the George Washington University Police Department and a 30-year veteran of the Pittsburgh police, will succeed interim Charlottesville police chief Thierry Dupuis. She resigned from GWU in January, after serving for fewer than three years, and was sued by a former student for allegedly violating Title IX policies, according to school newspaper The GW Hatchet. Brackney was also known at GWU for buying her department a fleet of Segways.
Another vacancy filled
Giles Morris, vice president for marketing and communications at Montpelier and former C-VILLE editor, has been named executive director of Charlottesville Tomorrow. His first day will be June 11. He succeeds CT founder Brian Wheeler, who took the city spokesperson job in January.
Sistah city
Charlottesville’s soulmate city in France gets an honorary street at Second and Market May 10: Rue de Besançon.
Oh, brother
Zachary Cruz, the 18-year-old brother of Parkland, Florida, shooter Nikolas Cruz, was given permission by a judge last week to move to Staunton. The man who’s currently on probation for trespassing at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School has been offered free housing for a year, and a job as a maintenance mechanic, both provided by Nexus Services.
Quote of the week:
“What happens to all that hate?” —UVA professor Jalane Schmidt in describing the festive atmosphere often found at lynchings
