Producer Steven Klein and Director J. Clay Tweel at the LA Film Festival Awards Brunch
PHOTO COURTESY WIREIMAGE.COM

Sometimes, the first time is the charm. Out of a pool of over 2,000 submissions, Charlottesville native J. Clay Tweel felt lucky just to have his directorial debut shown at the Los Angeles Film Festival. But he was astounded to learn that his picture was the feature documentary winner.

“I was literally speechless,” Tweel laughs. “I had no idea that I would win the award or that it was even possible. Documentaries like Make Believe don’t win a lot of critical awards because it’s not about a social issue.”

While Tweel’s family was present for the premiere earlier in the week, they received the news of the win on Saturday, June 26 after the awards brunch. Tweel’s father, local lawyer Ron Tweel, was floored.

“You always hope for these things, but it was shocking,” says the elder Tweel. “I’m still grinning frankly.”

In addition to the honor of winning the Jury Award for a feature documentary, Tweel received an unrestricted check for $50,000 presented by Academy Award-nominated actress Gena Rowlands. However, the recognition may prove more vital than the prize money.

According to indie documentarian Chris Farina, distributors take a close look at film festival winners, so a win at any festival is a great launching point— particularly one with 80,000 attendees.

Make Believe emerged from producer Steven Klein’s personal encounter with boys in a magic shop as well as his own past endeavors as a teenage magician. The film follows the lives of (more)

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Clean-up following a storm strenuous– and dangerous– work. CLICK FOR SLIDESHOW.
PHOTO BY TOM DALY

As the stormclouds rolled in late on Thursday afternoon, June 24, commuters finishing work for the day may have planned on a wet ride home. They got a lot more than that as an intense three-minute storm commonly known as a “microburst” turned what should have been short drives into harrowing hours-long affairs plagued by downed trees and power lines. Unlike the much smaller June 3 microburst, however, most commuters’ nightmares didn’t end at their driveways, as 45,000 Dominion Virginia customers were rendered powerless by the storm, with some homes in the dark for as long as four days.

“This was worse than Hurricane Isabel,” says Charlottesville Fire Chief Charles Werner, noting that his department responded to 31 homes struck by trees– four more than during the remnants of Hurricane Isabel, a day-long storm event in September 2003. In the urban ring, another 15-20 houses were hit by trees, says Albemarle County Fire Chief Dan Eggleston, noting that the worst hit neighborhood was Bennington Road just off Barracks Road near Georgetown Road. (more)

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Anoop Mirpuri and Chelsea Marie pack up to leave their ruined rental hosue.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

It was only later that Anoop Mirpuri considered, “I could have died.”

On June 24, Mirpuri was at his rental home in his upstairs office, preparing to defend his dissertation as a fellow at the Carter G. Woodson Institute. As the wind picked up, he decided to go downstairs and close the bedroom windows. That’s when he heard a loud noise.

“I thought it was an earthquake,” says the California-raised scholar. “I looked up, and the roof started cracking.”

The microburst that snapped trees all over Charlottesville had sheared off the side of the house he rents with his girlfriend on Westwood Road. Gone was his desk, his Macbook, and nearly his life.

I ran out and saw the tree,” says Mirpuri.

Four days later, a blue tarp is the only wall for the office and bedroom on that side of the house. Monopoly money, a GQ magazine, and a battered printer that were inside pre-storm now litter the yard.

Anoop Mirpuri had just closed the windows when the big oak hit.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

Thirty-one houses in town had trees crashing down on them in the June 24 storm, exceeding the 27 homes tree-bombed by Hurricane Isabel, a multi-day event, says Fire Chief Charles Werner.

Mirpuri and Chelsea Marie, who is wrapping up her post-doctoral work at the UVA Medical Center, are trying to pack what’s left of life in Charlottesville for a moving van coming in two days.

“Our neighbors have been great,” says Marie. “No one else has helped us.”

When she thought things couldn’t get any worse, Marie says a television station, running a story about the damage, gave the address of the house, which is owned by Hook culture editor Rosalind Warfield-Brown, and they experienced a dose of post-storm looting.

“Someone came and walked off with a new propane tank,” says Marie. “Sixty dollars is a lot to us now.” The couple doesn’t have renters insurance.

Good news came the following day when Mirpuri’s MacBook was found amid the rubble. Better yet, the computer came on. His dissertation secure, he plans to continue its defense as planned.

They’ve been staying with friends and plan to go forward with their move in a month to Drew University in northern New Jersey.

“We’ve rented a basement townhouse,” says Marie. “That sounds great right now.”
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Van der Linde’s recycling facility(surrounding the holding pond) is permitted to handle 1,000 tons of trash a day. The RSWA’s Ivy transfer station: 150 tons a day
PHOTO BY SKIP DEGAN

Last year, our local governments stood behind the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority as it spent nearly $400,000 trying to prove that recycling entrepreneur Peter Van der Linde had defrauded area tax payers. Now it appears that tax payer funds, including disposal fees that once went to the RSWA, will be headed Van der Linde’s way.

Last week, Charlottesville City Council said good-bye to its long-standing support agreement with the RSWA, which had required City trash be taken to an RSWA-sponsored transfer station for the purpose of collecting a “service contribution fee” to support the Authority’s services, awarding a new City contract for trash disposal services to Van der Linde Recycling.

Under the contract, all City curbside trash will be taken by Waste Management (whom city has a separate $759,430 hauling contract with) to Van der Linde’s Materials Recovery Facility in Zion Crossroads, which is permitted by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality to process commingled recyclables, construction and demolition debris, and household waste for recycling.

With a low bid of $39 per ton, Van der Linde beat out his neighbor, former RSWA partner Republic Services Inc. (formerly BFI and Allied Waste), which has received City trash since (more)

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The Very Light Cars are the only contenders now in the X Prize’s mainstream category.
PHOTO COURTESY EDISON2

If Oliver Kuttner’s Very Light Car doesn’t win the Progressive Automotive X Prize, nobody will.

That’s not boasting— it’s now a fact in the mainstream category of the international contest after every other four-seater vehicle in that class– more than 60 of them originally— was eliminated, leaving only two of the Very Light Cars built by Kuttner’s company, Edison2, in competition for the $5 million prize given to the maker of a vehicle that can get 100 mpg while meeting steep emissions and safety standards.

“Things are looking good,” says David Brown, the Charlottesville city councilor who became spokesperson for Kuttner’s Lynchburg-based company earlier this year. As detailed in the Hook’s June 17 cover story, “Can this car save the world? Oliver Kuttner’s counting on it,” Kuttner’s cars were rare in the contest in that they run on a combustion engine fueled by E85— a mixture of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline as opposed to most of the other vehicles which were electric or hybrids. The impressive efficiency is achieved by using extremely lightweight materials– hence the Very Light Car’s name. The bullet shaped vehicle weighs less than 725 pounds, but thanks to high tech engineering, it offer handling and safety that cars many times its weight can’t offer. (more)

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Chief Miller in 2003.
FILE PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

After 21 years in office, Albemarle Police Chief John Miller has announced his impending retirement effective September 30. A press release from County spokesperson Lee Catlin points to a variety of accomplishments during Miller’s 21 years on the job.

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Nothing was cooking when things started smoking up this morning, say staffers who evacuated the restaurant.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

A mop head stored in a closet beside a hot water heater burns briefly this morning around 9:30am at Revolutionary Soup.

The fire is quickly put out, the damage minimal and the Charlottesville Fire Department ventilates the basement eatery.

The souperie will be open for lunch. And today’s special: blackened tilipia salad, according to owner Will Richey’s blog.

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Despite a pot-holed parking lot, 58 percent of the ridership between Lynchburg and Alexandria comes from the Charlottesville station.
FILE PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

In an effort to give another city what Lynchburg and Charlottesville have already shown to be wildly popular, the state recently approved a $93 million outlay to upgrade private train tracks to enable a daily roundtrip train to run between Norfolk and Richmond. The expenditure, approved June 16 by the Commonwealth Transportation Board, would bolster a vast market for the northeast rail corridor, the busiest passenger rail line in America.

“The rationale was that it would provide infrastructure improvements to expand Amtrak passenger service to an under-served market in South Hampton Roads,” says ardent rail-pusher, Meredith Richards, who notes a market of over 1.5 million citizens whose only Amtrak service currently lies in Newport News, across the mouth of the James River for much of that population.

Richards, a former Charlottesville City Councilor, says the General Assembly believes so strongly in augmenting Tidewater’s Amtrak access that it exempted the usual 30 percent funding match by the host railroad— in this case Norfolk Southern— with a project-specific budget amendment. Richards notes that (more)

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An umbrella tumbled down Preston Avenue.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

Update: SLIDESHOW.

One of the hottest days of the year delivered Charlottesville a tree-smashing, traffic-stopping microburst Thursday. Drivers had to dodge sideways winds, tumbling limbs, and moments of hail as the storm struck just before 5pm.

Rio Road is said to be grid-lock, and so is Georgetown Road. There are even— according to callers on Coy Barefoot’s WINA radio show— problems on Interstate 64. The right westbound lane near the Fifth Street Exit has a tree on it, according to a caller

This tree was uprooted along Rose Hill Drive.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

WINA’s own property on Rose Hill Drive is the site of an uprooted evergreen tree as well as an another evergreen snapped like a toothpick.

– developing—

On Holmes Avenue, there’s a tree atop a house, according to a caller.

Roads with giant problems:

- Alderman

- Route 250 Bypass between Best Buy and Ivy Road Exit

- North Avenue due to fallen utility pole

- Georgetown Road

- Hinton Avenue in Belmont, site of fallen utility pole

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A signed contract offers fresh hope that the Charlottesville Ice Park won’t have to close after all.
FILE PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

The owners stayed on message: it will close for business on June 3o. But in news sure to inspire hope in skaters devastated by talk of its imminent closure, the Charlottesville Ice Park has just been placed under a sales contract to an ice-minded buyer, according to listing agent Bob Kahn.

“The buyer and seller have worked exceptionally hard to save this community asset,” says Kahn, who, though noting that the contract was signed on June 22, declines to name the buyer. Kahn also stresses that a “contingent contract” is no guarantee of the Ice Park’s survival but rather “a glimmer of hope that that outcome may be achievable.”

Realtor Roger Voisinet, a hockey aficionado who earlier tried to purchase the Ice Park, says he is in contact with this buyer and is working to help raise the remaining approximately $300,000 he says the deal requires to be finalized.

“I don’t think he would have given a deposit if he didn’t think he could close,” says Voisinet of the unnamed buyer.

Ice Park owners Bruce and Roberta Williamson could not immediately be reached for comment. The Park’s website shows no public skating after June 30.

..Story developing…

Original headline: “Under contract: Ice Park buyer unleashes cash to save skating”

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Splendora’s on the Downtown Mall.
PHOTO BY STAFF

Splendora’s Gelato Café, which has been thrilling Downtown Mall mavens with its big city design and exotic Italian gelatos and coffees since 2004, has changed ownership.

Like Bodo’s founder Brian Fox, original owners Fax and Andrea Ayres appear to have used the Willy Wonka method of passing things on, handing the golden key over to a former counter girl, Patricia Ross, a UVA grad who started in 2005 and has been in charge of making the gelato and running the place since last year.

We decided to sell to Patricia because she will be a great new owner,” says Andrea Ayres. “She has really learned the ropes with regard to the whole business. We felt that Splendora’s needed some new ideas, and Patricia is incredibly creative and into food trends.”

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Jefferson Area Tea Party chair Carole Thorpe wants to assemble closer to Congressman Tom Perriello’s office.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

The sidewalk in front of Congressman Tom Perriello’s office was the scene of two protests last week. The Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice protested the war in Afghanistan, and the Jefferson Area Tea Party objected to… having to stand on the sidewalk rather than right in front of Perriello’s door.

“Our primary concern is that he’s leasing an office on private property,” says Tea Party chair Carole Thorpe. “Liberal groups are being allowed to protest unimpeded and conservatives are not.”

While the June 16 protest of the left-leaning Center for Peace and Justice also was restricted to the sidewalk or inside Perriello’s office, the Tea Partiers harken back to an earlier Peace and Justice protest on May 19 when members performed street theater in the parking lot and were neither booted off nor arrested.

Lloyd Snook, attorney for landlord Lisa Murphy, denies his client had any knowledge of the May 19 event, which went largely unheralded except for getting videotaped by Tea Party activist Keith Drake. “There is no policy of prohibiting conservative protests and tolerating liberal protests,” insists Snook.

The ranks of the 20 or so Center for Peace and Justice protesters against an additional $33.5 billion in war funding were swelled by the media, police, and Jefferson Tea Party observers, following a June 10 letter to both groups from Police Chief Tim Longo, warning them to keep their petitioning and assembling activities out of the private parking lot or face trespassing charges.

“I don’t like the Hook,” says Tea Party member Bob Quinn, seated. “It’s too liberal.”
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

The June 21 Tea Party “Right to Redress” rally was slightly larger, with approximately 28 protesters, including 5th District Republican primary candidate Laurence Verga, and radio host Rob Schilling.

Protester Bob Quinn had a further complaint about the sidewalk: It’s not handicapped accessible. “Perriello has to be told the people who are his voters don’t like what he’s doing,” says Quinn. “We might as well have [U.S. House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi as our representative.”

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