Goodbye O’Neill’s, hello Trinity. The upscale Irish pub on The Corner opened in October and it’s already making a name for itself.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

After months of renovation, the former O’Neill’s Pub space on The Corner has finally been transformed into Trinity Irish Pub. Apparently, it was worth the wait. According to manger Mackenzie Smith, the Irish and “European bistro-style” pub has been attracting foodies, grad students, young professionals, hospital employees, late-night bar scene types, and just about everyone in-between.

“We’ve brought something a little more upscale to The Corner,” says Smith. “So we’re attracting all kinds of people.”

Indeed, the place has three bars on three levels with eight beers on tap, including Guinness, of course, and three separate sound systems for each level. There’s also a balcony overlooking the street on the second floor where folks can step out for a smoke, as the owners decided to make the restaurant smoke-free. When the weather gets warmer, the ground floor’s French doors will unfold “Paris café-style” so that tables can pour out on to the sidewalk.

Trinity is the brainchild of two young Chicagoans, Ryan Rooney and Kevin Badke, who may never have opened the place if it weren’t for a one-day visit Rooney made to Charlottesville last year.

“I was literally having lunch outside at the College Inn when they were putting the for lease sign on the building next door,” says Rooney, who says the only other time he’d been to Charlottesville was for a UVA football game when he was 13. Rooney says he tried to get an appointment to see the place that day, but wasn’t able to. Back in Chicago, he couldn’t stop thinking about the space, so friends told him to go back and check it out.

But Dish’s ears really perked up when Rooney mentioned the name of their chef: (more)

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Dr. Peter Heymann, head of Pediatric Allergy and Respiratory Medicine at the UVA Medical Center, spoke with Rick Moore on Sunday about  food allergies. A very informative discussion if you’re interested.

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Film fest director Jody Kielbasa details this year’s program.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

When the Virginia Film Festival unveiled this year’s line-up October 7, Annette Bening, Matthew Broderick and Cherry Jones were among the headliners, along with previously announced cult filmmaker John Waters.

By October 19, Bening had discovered a scheduling conflict and canceled her visit to Charlottesville to screen her new film, Mother and Child. That show will go (more)

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Students cooking up pancakes at the 2006 event.

FILE PHOTO BY BILLY HUNT

On October 10 you won’t want to miss the fifth annual Pancakes for Parkinson’s breakfast on the Lawn at UVA, where students flip thousands of flapjacks to raise funds for the Michael J. Fox Foundation.

Founded in 2004, the event has raised nearly $100,000 for the Foundation. This year’s breakfast will take place before UVA’s Homecoming football game against Indiana University, so organizers are hoping for a big turnout. So you better get there early if you want some pancakes, especially those chocolate chip ones. The breakfast is free, but donations are strongly encouraged.

According to a statement released by organizers, over five million people worldwide are living with Parkinson’s disease— a chronic, degenerative neurological disorder whose symptoms typically progress from mild tremors to complete physical incapacitation. There is no known cure, and current treatments mask symptoms but do not alter or slow disease progression. In the United States, 60,000 new cases will be diagnosed this year alone.

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Andrew Perrault
PUBLICITY PHOTO

While he was a student at UVA, Andrew Perreault never took a film class, and he didn’t even attend a single annual Virginia Film Festival. So no one saw it coming when the 2005 civil engineering graduate announced four years later he would return to his alma mater to screen the feature film he produced.

“It really started with my brother,” explains Perreault, 26. “About two years ago, he approached me with some ideas for a script.” (more)

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The look favored by one woman when she fled Mexico in the spring will soon become de rigueur among unvaccinated UVA hospital staffers.
FILE PHOTO BY LAURA BURNS

As the flu season draws closer, UVA Medical Center is providing an added impetus to its employees who can’t or won’t get a flu shot: Mandatory masks.

Chief Medical Officer Jonathon Truwit informs his colleagues of the unusual new requirement in a September 14 email: “Staff or faculty who are unable to or choose not to receive the seasonal flu vaccine will be required to wear masks throughout the work day/shift when the flu season arrives.”

So much for frequent hand-washing.

Those who do get the flu shot not only get to show their face in the hospital, they also get a blue sticker stamped “2009″ to sport on their name badge.

The reason for the heavy pressure to get a shot (more)

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Jenna Arianna is the only Cavalier in Playboy’s current “Girls of the ACC.”
PHOTO BY COURTENEY STUART

When the latest issue of Playboy hit the stands last Friday, UVA students got a revealing glimpse of one of their own: Jenna Arianna, a blond linguist who eschews Greek in favor of Latin.” In fact, the lovely Jenna Arianna (whose last name is Llewellyn) is a Fourth Year art major who kept her audition a secret from even her sorority sisters until she’d been selected.

“I didn’t want to jinx it,” she says, adding that encouragement from both parents and one of UVA’s previous “Girls of the ACC” convinced her.

“She made it sound like the coolest thing ever, and she was right,” says Llewellyn, who was flown to Chicago by the magazine for her photo shoot last spring.

Jenna’s encouraging Playboy predecessor is Amanda Paige Gellar— who first appeared in the magazine’s October 2004 edition, went on to (more)

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Mac McDonald starts broadcasting August 31 and takes his former UVA play-by-play colleague Adam Gottschalk’s afternoon slot on WKAV while Gottschalk moves his sports talk to the morning.
MCDONALD PUBLICITY PHOTO, GOTTSCHALK  BY JAY KUHLMANN

More than a year ago, Mac McDonald abruptly left his job doing sports radio play-by-play on WINA radio. Almost as unexpectedly, he’s back on the air starting Monday, August 31, not for UVA nor his old pals at WINA, but with his own drive-time syndicated show airing on the competition AM station, WKAV Sports Radio 1400.

McDonald says he was about to move to Orlando after working on a book for the past year. “I had people pushing me to get back on radio and do (more)

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Literary figures like Oscar Wilde become screensavers on Kindle, explains new Darden student Joe Chard.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

Joe Chard just started the MBA program at Darden business school, and he just got a Kindle, Amazon’s electronic reader.

“I had it on the coffee table, and my wife put a cup of coffee on it,” says Chard. “I said, ‘No– it’s expensive.’ She thought it was a book.”

And with Darden-emblazoned leather “jackets” on the test Kindles, they do look like slender volumes.

Chard is one of 60 (more)

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Thornton didn’t see herself as one day being in space as she watched the Apollo 11 astronauts walk the moon in 1969.
FILE PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

As one of the millions watching July 20, 1969, as astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first to walk on the moon, Kathryn Thornton was awestruck.

“I remember seeing them walk on the moon and walking outside and thinking people are up there,” Thornton says. “It was a pretty amazing moment.”

Despite her excitement about the moon landing, Thornton didn’t see a future for herself in space.

“At the time it wasn’t an option (for women),” Thorton says.

Just over 20 years after that first moonwalk, Thornton was in orbit (more)

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