Archive for the 'Entertainment' Category

County Fair at Ash Lawn this Year

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 9, 2012 in Entertainment. 6 Comments
Feeding the Cow

The Albemarle County Fair will return this year, Hawes Spencer writes in The Hook. It will be held at Ash Lawn, temporarily, as they continue to seek out a permanent location. Ash Lawn not being an ideal venue, the 2012 fair will be brought back to its agricultural roots—just three days long, daylight hours only, focusing on livestock, contests, and entertainment, with no rides and less vendors.

Organizers of the event had to cancel the annual event last year, since their long-time borrowed location of Bundoran Farm had been turned into a vineyard. (A small, brief, purely agricultural event was held at a private farm, so that all the 4-H kids would be able to show and auction the livestock they’d been raising for the occasion.) It’s a shame that the Biscuit Run land swap wasn’t able to include some land to establish permanent fairgrounds.

Time Capsule Burial Captured on Film

Published by Waldo Jaquith on August 8, 2011 in Entertainment, General News and History. 4 Comments

Any question of where the city’s 1962 time capsule was buried can be put to rest, thanks to this film from Tom Hartsell:

The 8mm film was made by his father at the time of the capsule’s burial. The capsule’s location has been unclear, and the city has been eager to find out, so that it can be unearthed next year, for the city’s 250th anniversary.

Things Looking Bad for the County Fair this Year

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 26, 2011 in Development and Entertainment. 19 Comments

The Albemarle County Fair can’t seem to find a suitable home, Brandon Shulleeta writes in the Daily Progress, and odds are slim that they’ll be able to have a fair this year—or, indeed, ever, if they can’t find a place to hold it. For years it’s been held on Fred Scott’s land down in North Garden, at Bundoran Farm, but now that the property has been developed, that leaves fair organizers without a physical space to have the annual summer event.

Grandfather and Grandson on the Scrambler

A proper, agriculturally oriented county fair has a permanent home—a few sheds, some covered picnic shelters/performance venues, some administrative space, and a whole lot of relatively flat, open space for parking, games, rides, displays, etc. And that’s exactly what fair organizers are looking for, defining “permanent” as “20-plus years,” needing at least sixty acres. Although Biscuit Run is a distant possibility as a location, that’s far from a done deal.

Unless somebody steps forward ASAP, summer’s going to be rather less exciting this year, and a whole lot of 4-H kids are going to be mighty disappointed to have no place to show—and sell—the prize livestock that they’ve spent months raising expressly for the Albemarle County Fair.

Bel Rio Angering Belmont Residents

Published by Waldo Jaquith on May 29, 2010 in Business, Entertainment and Law and Justice. 32 Comments

The battle over the volume of music at Belmont’s Bel Rio restaurant continues, Rachana Dixit writes in today’s Daily Progress. City Council overhauled the noise ordinance a few months ago just to deal with Bel Rio, and city staff seem to be spending a lot of time on the matter, but a technical problem seems to be hampering the efforts: the fact that decibel meters have a hard time measuring the sort of deep, thumpy bass that can make life miserable for folks who live next to music-playing neighbors (though the maker of the meter they use disagrees). Neighbors on the formerly sleepy street are infuriated by the two-year-old restaurant’s behavior, saying that it’s really reduced their quality of life there.

We dealt with the same scenario back in the mid-nineties with the Jewish Mother, a restaurant on the Downtown Mall that featured noisy live music until very late at night, which was awfully frustrating for downtown residents. As with Bel Rio, the city had to consider proposed changes to a city-wide noise ordinance just to deal with the one rude restaurant owner. Luckily, the Jew Mom went out of business, and that was the end of that. When I lived on South Street in the mid-nineties, the South Street Brewery opened up next door, and my quiet apartment was rendered uninhabitable on Friday and Saturday nights, when they featured live music about twenty feet from my head until the wee hours of the morning. I moved out when my lease was up. I’ve got nothing but sympathy for Bel Rio’s neighbors.

Local Man Wins Health Care Film Contest

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 19, 2009 in Business, Entertainment and Politics. Closed

Local filmmaker Eric Hurt has won Organizing for America’s competition to create short films about the paucity of affordable family health care, Brian McNeill writes in today’s Daily Progress. A thousand films were submitted, with a blue-ribbon panel naming this one the best. It was shot at Riverview Park.

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