Monthly Archive for November, 2006

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C-Ville on Larry the Cable Guy

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 15, 2006 in Entertainment. 17 Comments

Larry the Cable GuyI got a good bit of e-mail when it was announced that “Larry the Cable Guy” would be performing at the John Paul Jones Arena. Some folks were upset that the stand-up comedian’s anti-intellectual, anti-gay, anti-Muslim, racist schtick was being given an audience by UVa. On the one hand, yeah, fair enough. But on the other hand, I think Charlottesville may devolve into liberal self-parody by getting all upset about the guy. (Speaking of liberal self-parody, everything I know about him comes from a feature article The New Yorker had about him a few months ago.)

Well, C-Ville Weekly apparently agrees that this ain’t right — J. Tobias Beard has a critical look at Larry the Cable Guy in the latest issue, and clearly doesn’t like what he sees.

Slutzky Plans E-Referenda

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 14, 2006 in Politics. 3 Comments

Albemarle Supervisor David Slutzky is launching an online referendum system to regularly poll his constituents, Brian Wheeler writes at Charlottesville Tomorrow. At a website he calls Talk to Your Government he will accept mass feedback — votes, presumably — from registered voters that are within the Rio District in order to get a sense of what his constituents want.

Given that online polls are notoriously useless, I’m not sure that this will tell him much about the will of the voters, but it’s an interesting idea.

Progress Redesigned

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 14, 2006 in Meta News. 1 Comment

The Daily Progress released a redesigned version of their paper today, The Hook reports. It’s nothing shocking — some new fonts, narrower paper, and some more colorful features. They just redesigned in 2003, though those changes were quite a bit more striking than this update to the look.

Beebe Pleads Guilty

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 14, 2006 in Law and Justice. 2 Comments

William Beebe today pleaded guilty to the rape of a UVa student in 1984, Kristen Gelineau report for the AP. Beebe famously confessed in writing to his victim out of the clear blue sky last year, leading to his arrest and then claimed that he did no such thing, despite having, y’know, confessed. The state’s end of the plea deal will have him serving two years in prison.

9:30pm Update: I should have noted that while Beebe pleaded guilty to the rape, the charge to which he pleaded was sexual battery, not rape. Beebe made a statement on his plea today, and The Hook provided the video.

Kudos to The Hook for both recording video and making it available via YouTube.


City Properties, Infrastructure Need Repair

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 12, 2006 in General News. 18 Comments

Many of the city’s infrastructure and buildings are starting to age out, John Yellig wrote in yesterday’s Daily Progress, necessitating millions of dollars in impending repairs and upgrades. Roads, sidewalks, the central fire station and city hall all require costly improvements. (City Hall is hideous. I wish we could tear the thing down and start over again. Who thought it’d be a good idea to construct city hall without windows?)

The article doesn’t mention two of the more costly projects due: the central library and the Downtown Mall. The beautiful old building that houses the library on Market Street is badly in need of some serious renovation that the city can’t put off much longer. And the Downtown Mall is crumbling under the weight of vehicular traffic it was never meant to bear, though a fellow in the city engineer’s office told me some years ago that the whole structure has aged badly, and much of it needs to be torn up and rebuilt.

Seems to me spending money on new maintenance-requiring capital improvements (expanding the Downtown Mall down side streets, revamping West Main) isn’t a great use of money right now, unless they’ll lead to increased city revenues sufficient to offset those costs.

Kevin Lynch makes an interesting suggestion in the article: differentiating between commercial and residential properties for the purpose of taxes, such that they can be taxed at different rates.

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