Nobody brings rail closer to the airplanes than Reagan National and Metro.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

It’s late afternoon, and I’m standing inside New York’s JFK airport with over a dozen of my favorite relatives, when we suddenly learn that the flight to Reagan National has been canceled due to a severe weather system in the nation’s capital. Even worse, the storm has knocked out the rest of the day’s flights as well.

As frequent travelers know, when weather grounds planes, there’s no free ride and no free hotel— just the prospect of lining up a set of hotel rooms (which can easily run $500/night rooms in Gotham City) or scrambling to find a squad of large, luggage-ready rental cars and enough drivers willing to launch a five-hour (traffic-willing) trek to the DC area.

But now there’s another way. Thanks to the 2004 opening of a rail link, JFK has easy access to Amtrak. For $8.50 per person and about 30 minutes of our time, the combination of the “AirTrain” and the Long Island Railroad took our voluminous group of cousins, in-laws, and tired children to Manhattan’s Penn Station. And that gave us myriad options to ride Amtrak back to the D.C. area. While we chose the high-speed Acela, which was pretty peppy, the point of this story is transportation redundancy. America needs a transportation system in which the pieces fit together.

Planners call this inter-modal transportation, and it’s something that can reduce auto traffic as it allows people in smaller cities like Charlottesville to seamlessly make their way— typically via rail— to the better long-distance options found in bigger cities. Unfortunately, the promise of an inter-modal system has not been met by (more)

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Some people know him as a quiet man who walks his dog along East Market Street. Some people know him as a boisterous preservationist for the Woolen Mills neighborhood. Some know him for his recent service on the Charlottesville Planning Commission. And some haven’t met him but have discovered his photo-driven blog which shows a keen eye for detail and amazing interplays of light. Thus the name: Black & White.

Bill Emory has put the focus on little noticed corners of Charlottesville and other places, so we this week we thought we’d put the focus on his work. —Hawes Spencer

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The bridge has provided free skyline views since 1904.
PHOTO BY RACHEL OBENSCHAIN

The Sears Hill bridge will be saved. On Tuesday, July 27, the fate of the historic Staunton footbridge was sealed with the city’s decision to take ownership and restore the 106-year-old structure.

The debate came to a close with owner Richard Macher offering to pay up to $20,000 to temporarily remove the bridge, which currently stands atop the Staunton passenger rail station which he also owns. The City of Staunton agreed to match Macher’s pledge and assume responsibility for the restoration. The city’s $20,000 portion will come from its general fund, which City Manager Steve Owen noted might require a budget amendment.

Although no firm repair cost has been determined, prior estimates suggest the price could climb as high as $250,000, so Owen expressed hope that the community will get involved to close the funding gap.

Until January, after it failed a private engineering inspection and a Staunton building official ordered it closed, the bridge provided a direct connection between the Sears Hill neighborhood and the commercial district of downtown Staunton.

For over a decade, the bridge also added flair to the Pullman, the restaurant and ice cream shop which occupied the former C&O railroad station. Macher has reportedly indicated that he intends to place a Macado’s— his 17-venue restaurant chain (more)

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Bel Rio owner Jim Baldi
FILE PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

Since the Hook first reported last week on the mysterious disappearance of Bel Rio owner James K. Baldi, local reporters have busily dug up new information that suggests the debonair 47-year-old freelance accountant and restaurateur’s impromptu vacation could become permanent.

It also appears that his 25-year-old traveling companion, Kristian Throckmorton, a former Bel Rio bartender, was indeed the subject of a missing persons report. While Throckmorton’s mother, Wendy Ellis, declined media comment when the story first broke July 20, a story in the Daily Progress reveals that the family filed a missing persons report, an action that appears to have launched a brief police investigation.

However, when the Hook spoke with Charlottesville City spokesperson Ric Barrick on July 27, he said that Throckmorton was no longer missing and had communicated with her family and friends. Barrick said police did not communicate with Baldi.

Ellis, an author who recently penned a book about being the wife of local pastor Lindsay Ellis entitled His Calling–My Purpose, held a reading and book-signing at Bel Rio last December. When contacted most recently, Ellis declined to comment on the missing person report or the nature of her daughter’s temporary disappearance.

The Progress also reported that Gareth Weldon, who, along with the C&O’s Dave Simpson, opened Bel Rio with Baldi in 2008, filed a $300,000 lawsuit against Baldi on July 7, accusing him of using business funds for his own purposes, withholding information on Bel Rio’s financial condition, and failing to pay an agreed-upon capital investment of $50,000 when the three-person partnership was formed. His lawyer, Daniel J. Meador Jr., tells the Hook that Baldi has until August 2 to respond to the lawsuit— or he’ll lose by default.

Baldi was evicted in February from a Downtown Mall office he leased for alleged failure to pay more than $2,200 in rent, and on March 15 a tax lien was filed against Bel Rio LLC by the Internal Revenue Service for about $13,000 in (more)

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Seth Meachum decided to install security cameras after his father was attacked in Roots Rock Reggae.
PHOTO BY COURTENEY STUART

Lloyd Meachum never saw it coming. He had worked on the Corner for 11 years without incident, so the last thing the 65-year-old shop clerk expected when he turned around to help a customer was to get bashed on the head with a didgeridoo. Another thing he never expected: that it would take police at least three days to collect tapes with images of his alleged assailants.

The incident occurred July 22 at a head shop called Roots Rock Reggae after a trio of young men had already been in several times. That wasn’t unusual, says Meachum, noting that customers often check out merch at other establishments before committing to a hand-blown glass pipe or other piece of reggae culture paraphernalia.

But on the third visit, Meachum— who was working alone— turned to help one of the men who indicated he was ready to make a purchase. That’s when, he says, he was struck from behind with the bamboo didgeridoo, which shattered all over the place.

“The violence was totally unnecessary,” says Meachum. “They didn’t have to do that, to hit a 65-year-old man in the back of the head.”

Meachum fell over and got back up. He believes the attackers didn’t expect that, and they fled (more)

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Flames tear through the Café’s porch.
PHOTO BY JESSICA WILKINS

An early morning fire at Wild Wing Café on West Main Street has been extinguished with no injuries, but there may be water and smoke damage, as sprinklers inside the restaurant activated and hose-wielding crews extinguished the blaze, according to Charlottesville Fire Chief Charles Werner.

Units responded within five minutes of the 6:34am call to 911, and the fire, which was limited to the porch but spread smoke throughout the interior, was knocked down within 10 minutes, according to Chief Werner.

By early afternoon, the Fire Marshal had completed his investigation, according to Deputy Chief Britt Grimm, who says investigators were able to pinpoint the location of origin on the porch close to the building, but were unable to determine the cause. Grimm says investigators found no sign of arson. No estimate of damages was available.

Amtrak, which shares the building with Wild Wing, was cleared to resume operations this morning. Calls to the restaurant went unanswered.

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Earl Hamner is mum about who gets his papers.
FILE PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

Let’s be clear: Earl Hamner, the creator of the TV classic, The Waltons, quipped this story’s “fishy contribution” headline during a telephone interview about where his scripts, manuscripts, and memorabilia from more than half a century as a film and television writer would go.

Last week, Virginia’s Explore Park announced it had offered to house Hamner’s library as a way to draw people to the struggling 1,100-acre living history museum, much of which has been closed for almost three years because its developer ran into funding problems.

Getting the full Hamner archive is not going to happen, according to Hamner, who wrote episodes for Twilight Zone and Falcon Crest and whose Spencer’s Mountain novel became (more)

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Gwen Mason’s job is to help keep the 2.2 million people in the western part of Virginia out of jail.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

Apparently there’s a lot of money in federal grants for crime prevention floating out there, and U.S. Attorney Tim Heaphy’s boss thinks it makes more sense to prevent crimes rather than just prosecute them. That’s why Heaphy has a new hire to help funnel federal grants into organizations that keep people out of the courtroom and the jails.

“Federal prosecutors should be community problem solvers, not just case processors,” said Heaphy in a July 23 press conference, repeating the instructions of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder from a recent meeting in New Orleans.

And with Holder’s backing, Heaphy has hired former Roanoke city councilor Gwen Mason to be the community outreach coordinator for the massive western district of Virginia in what Heaphy calls a “trail-blazing” program.

Mason’s job is to tap into federal grants to stop the big three of drugs, gangs and guns. “I can see her in the coalfields— in a community struggling with methamphetamine addiction,” says Heaphy.

Heaphy acknowledges that Charlottesville has a wealth of groups dedicated to crime prevention.

“Redundancy is a problem here,” he says. “It’s not in other areas.”

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