Author Archive for Waldo Jaquith

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Remembering the Ridge Drive-In Theater

Published by Waldo Jaquith on August 16, 2011 in History. 11 Comments

My friend Rosanna Bencoach recently scanned in a few bits of memorabilia from the Ridge Drive-In Theater, which her father managed from 1953–1965, and she’s kind enough to let me share them here. Although I’m a generation too young to have ever gone there, I’m told the theater was adjacent to Hydraulic, between the bypass and 29, or basically where Kroger and Dominion Power are located now. Here’s a colorized black and white aerial photo, taken in the late fifties:

You can also see scans of the April 1964 and August 1961 movie schedules, with features including The Facts of Life (starring Bob Hope and Lucille Ball), West Side Story, Flipper, and Gidget Goes to Rome.

Nation Notices Study in Scarlet

Published by Waldo Jaquith on August 15, 2011 in Education. 5 Comments

It was last week that the Albemarle School Board voted to remove Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet from the sixth grade reading list, in response to a parent’s complaint that the book’s portrayal of Mormons is insulting to them. Now it’s making national headlines with outlets like The Atlantic and Time writing of the book’s “ban.” (It wasn’t banned—it was stricken from the sixth grade reading list.) The brief novel was the first Sherlock Holmes story, one of four novels featuring the famed detective, although it was the short stories that made the character famous. A committee was appointed to read the book, and in the committee’s report (2.9MB PDF) they explain that they “could not fathom how anyone who read the book with a critical eye could not see the overwhelming religious bias presented,” and that the book’s general lack of critical claim made it a less than ideal choice for introducing middle school students to the genre, anyhow. I recommend starting with Part 2, Chapter 3 to get a sense of the book’s depiction of the Church of Latter-Day Saints. Since there’s really nothing more to this story, presumably the national attention will die off pretty quickly.

Libertarian Running for School Board

Published by Waldo Jaquith on August 12, 2011 in Education and Politics. Closed

Charlottesville Libertarian Steven Latimer is running for school board, Graham Moomaw reports. The 24-year-old and newly minted library employee is running on a platform of limiting spending on education and establishing more charter schools. The 2009 VCU graduate moved to “the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Charlottesville” a year and a half ago. He’s an occasional blogger and regular twitterer. (Note that school board elections are non-partisan, so parties don’t nominate candidates, nor is party affiliation listed on the ballot.) Latimer is the fifth candidate to declare for the four seats up for election this year.

City Rebuffs Minor’s Request for Hotel Assistance

Published by Waldo Jaquith on August 12, 2011 in In Brief. 4 Comments

Halsey Minor has asked the city to help finish his hotel. The answer was basically “hell no.” #

Thomas Informally Agrees to Limit 29N Access

Published by Waldo Jaquith on August 10, 2011 in Transportation. 10 Comments

Supervisor Rodney Thomas has informally agreed to limit access to 29N in exchange for VDOT funding the Western Bypass, Jim Bacon writes on Bacon’s Rebellion. A major problem with the bypass bypass is that it doesn’t really bypass very much at all—there’s plenty of sprawl to the north of it, and the county has shown no willingness to reduce the rate of expansion of that sprawl. Every new road that connects to 29N, every new business entrance, every new stoplight makes the bypass that much more useless. (Recall that the 29 Bypass actually bypassed 29, once upon a time. But the urban ring sprawled out past it.) Now Thomas has committed the Board of Supervisors and Albemarle County to not just limiting new access, but also potentially to eliminating private roads that connect to 29N and getting rid of some median-strip crossovers that currently allow traffic entering 29N to turn either right or left.

Of course, that’s just Albemarle County. Greene County isn’t about to make any such agreement, and at the rate they’ve been growing in the past decade, our wise willingness to limit access to 29N may be made irrelevant as Greene and points north keep clogging up 29 with new gas stations, shopping centers, and connecting roads.