Yearly Archive for 2002

Page 24 of 75

Not Much Going On

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 9, 2002 in Satire. 4 Comments

Jack writes: Throughout Charlottesville and surrounding Albemarle County, few notable events have occurred in the last week. Analysts note that the infrequency of news is striking in comparison with the same period in previous years.

Throughout Charlottesville and surrounding Albemarle County, few notable events have occurred in the last week. Analysts note that the infrequency of news is striking in comparison with the same period in previous years.

Hawes Spencer, editor of a local weekly newspaper shared one view on the trend.

“Sometimes there’s a whole bunch of stuff going on and we can hardly keep up. But lately, stuff’s pretty quiet. There was that bear that somebody saw last week. A pretty small bear, but it was still a bear. And that was almost news, I guess. I wish Matthew Farrell would do something again. Just dance around with a sign or something. That would work.”

While journalists like Mr. Spencer are taking a generally negative view on the lack of news, local citizens have expressed less concern for the trend.

“There’s still the funnies every day, ain’t there?” remarked Luanne Shiflett, a 24 year old cashier at Food Lion. “Plus I read the classifieds. And the personals- not like I, you know, just to see if somebody else might have, ah…I gotta take over register six for Dwayne now.”

“I don’t read no papers no more,” said retiree Leroy Thomas from the porch of his home on Harris Street. “Get the hell off my lawn!” Things are kind of slow. Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe we’re all worn down after the council race, the CHS/UVa attacks, the C-Ville/Hook schism and the Ivy Road parking garage debates. I don’t know. Thankfully, here we just put up stories when there’s something to talk about; there’s no need to put out an issue every day or week, regardless of whether or not there’s anything to write about. Anyhow, keep reading for Jack’s take on the matter.

Rivanna Trail vs. Land Owner

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 8, 2002 in Politics. 36 Comments

The Rivanna Trails Foundation is bumping heads with a landowner Shirley Presley. Presley doesn’t want people walking across her property, the edge of which has been used for the Rivanna trail, which forms a loop around the city. The non-profit Rivanna Trails Foundation may need to purchase a right of way, but they’re not sure that they can afford to set that precedent. Presley has erected a barrier to prevent people from crossing her land, so the RTF has set up a temporary detour. Courtney Stuart has the story in this week’s Hook.

No Downtown Restrooms

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 8, 2002 in Politics. 46 Comments

The City has dropped their plan to include the creation of public bathrooms in the renovation of the Downtown Recreation Center. The bathrooms would have provided much-needed relief to attendees of events at the Downtown Amphitheater — notably Fridays After 5 — that are currently restricted to portable toilets. The bathrooms are no longer included in the plan because the city estimates that they’ll cost $500,000 to install, well over the city’s budget limit for the overall project. Jake Mooney has the story in today’s Progress.

View from Pantops on July 4

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 6, 2002 in Ask cvillenews.com. 11 Comments

writes: I went out to the Giant grocery store on Pantops and watched the fireworks from there. It was a great view — in fact, it seemed as though we could see fireworks over in Waynesboro or Staunton (you could see the mountain with the fireworks behind it). Looking at the paper and the list of fireworks, it also appeared that we could see the fireworks at Graves Mountain Lodge from there. There were some fireworks that might have been at Earlysville but I wasn’t sure and maybe some at Crozet (you could tell the difference between the Crozet area fireworks and those over the mountains). If anyone else has any suggestions on where I was seeing fireworks, I’d appreciate hearing about it. For a while I thought I was even seeing some faint ones from Harrisonburg. The crowd at the Giant was really nice and it was a fun way to see the fireworks.

I, too, enjoyed the view of Charlottesville, Crozet, and a few other mystery displays from just outside of town. Can anybody ID the various celebrations visible around town?

New Daily Progress Site Launches

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 1, 2002 in Politics. 12 Comments

At long last, Media General has launched a new Daily Progress website. Their site, first launched in January of 1997, has been unaltered since its creation. It used to be that they would delete their stories every night around 1am, replacing them with the stories from the new day’s issue. This approach meant that linking to stories was impossible, as the links would expire within 24 hours. This is a phenomenon known as “linkrot,” and makes it difficult for sites to ever really be integrated with the rest of the web. (cvillenews.com, for example, has been unable to link to Progress stories.) The newly-redesigned site appears to permanently archive all site stories, in addition to containing more than the five stories that the old website was limited to. Congratulations to the Daily Progress for joining the ranks of The Cavalier Daily, The Hook and WINA in having a useful website.

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