Cover Stories
The Liar's Club: Keeping the wild history of White Hall alive
Published on Jan 31st, 2013
6 comments Nazi POWs picking peaches in Crozet? Check. An Albemarle County farm boy surrounded by Ethiopian tribesmen carrying spears? Believe it. The Albemarle County area called White Hall might not look like...
The session: What local legislators are up to in Richmond
Published on Jan 24th, 2013
4 comments The 2013 Session of the Virginia State Legislature kicked off on January 9, and if last year's focus was all about probing lady parts, this year's legislators will tangle over a variety of no less...
Luckily Local: Stomachs, get ready to rumble!
Published on Jan 17th, 2013
0 comments  There's a running joke here in the newsroom about using "fresh ingredients" in our stories, taken from the often-used phrase in restaurant promotions, which is basically code for meaningless...
Missing: Inside the Dashad Smith investigation
Published on Jan 10th, 2013
21 comments At the Preston Avenue Shell Station, a few blocks from the apartment Dashad "Sage" Smith last occupied on Harris Street, his name is familiar and his disappearance is on people's minds. "He used to...
Timeline: Tracking the Dashad Smith case
Published on Jan 10th, 2013
0 comments November 20, late afternoon: Smith talks to father, Dean Smith, for 37 minutes.         November 20, after 5pm: Smith leaves home without sharing the evening's plan with...
Armed ed: Should teachers be packing heat?
Published on Jan 2nd, 2013
55 comments "Schools should be places of safety and sanctuary and learning. When that sanctuary is violated, the impact is felt in every American classroom and every American community."– President George...
Cliffhanger: The best-- and worst-- of 2012
Published on Dec 19th, 2012
3 comments When Mark Warner was governor, he once told the Hook the most annoying thing about Charlottesville was its belief that it is the center of the universe. Guess what? In 2012, Charlottesville was the...
Big year: Bruce unplugs and lots more
Published on Dec 13th, 2012
0 comments The year 2012 was another big one in the annals of Charlottesville music history. It would have been news enough to have "The Boss," Bruce Springsteen in town, but it's what he did with his time in...
Person of the Year: UVA President Teresa Sullivan
Published on Dec 13th, 2012
66 comments Two years ago, after Teresa Sullivan was selected as the eighth president of UVA, and the first woman to fill the role, replacing John Casteen, III after 20 years at the helm, an associate dean in...
Person of the Year: The runners up...
Published on Dec 13th, 2012
2 comments UVA President Teresa Sullivan was a shoo-in for the Hook's Person of the Year, but she certainly wasn't the only one who made waves in 2012. From a certain UVA rector to a determined sheriff to an...
Season of giving: Is panhandling, vagrancy, destroying the Downtown Mall?
Published on Dec 6th, 2012
57 comments The success of the Downtown Mall is a miracle in many ways. After it was completed in 1976, initially eliminating five blocks of Charlottesville's Main Street to revitalize the downtown area, it did...
Towing tales part deux: Wreckers, guns, and money
Published on Nov 29th, 2012
85 comments Nicholas Rigterink may not have been seeking a fight over property rights when he went out for a mid-November dinner, but the 29-year-old Charlottesville man found one– one that ended up with...
Towing trouble: Is Lethal owner back in biz?
Published on Nov 29th, 2012
6 comments Mention the words "Lethal Wrecker" around Charlottesville and chances are you'll find someone with a story. For nearly a decade, the towing operation, and its owner, George Morris, earned a...
We Love This Place: Shopkeepers, citizens dish on local holiday tradition
Published on Nov 27th, 2012
1 comments The Hook's editorial staff takes a break this week from producing the hard-hitting news you've grown accustomed to (at least in the cover story), choosing instead to check in with local shop owners...
Bantam wait: Another indie theater gears up
Published on Nov 12th, 2012
21 comments As Vinegar Hill prepares to duke it out with Regal cinemas for the art film market in Charlottesville, another independent art house is gearing up to open, but its co-founder says it won't be...
Bond on Bond
Published on Nov 10th, 2012
15 comments The grand opening film at the biggest and most luxurious movie theater in Charlottesville was Skyfall, the newest movie in the James Bond spy series; and, appropriately, the box office faces Bond...
Featuring Charlottesville: New indie flick packed with country music
Published on Nov 9th, 2012
2 comments A pair of overseas hitmen come to Charlottesville to kill musician Jim Waive. 'My Fool Heart' Playing: Paramount TheaterDate: November 17 @ 7:30pmTickets: $12-15Noted musicians: Merle Haggard, Ralph...
Flick trick? The downtown Charlottesville Regal goes indie
Published on Nov 7th, 2012
19 comments Amid all the hullabaloo about the opening of the 14-screen stadium-seating Regal theater at the Shops at Stonefield, some other big Regal news seems to have escaped notice: on Friday, November 9,...
Slamdancer: Indie mensch Mirvish reveals secret society
Published on Oct 31st, 2012
0 comments Dan Mirvish is getting the check-engine light on his minivan checked in Los Angeles as he's speaking with a reporter, a seemingly mainstream activity for a filmmaker known as a subversive. Mirvish co...
This property condemned: Marc Singer goes house hunting
Published on Oct 30th, 2012
2 comments Actor Marc Singer’s roles have varied wildly. He has co-starred in period dramas like Roots: The New Generations. In TV’s V, he battled aliens. In the title role in The Beastmaster, he ruled the...
En garde: Carradine offers 'shocking' details from 'The Duellists'
Published on Oct 30th, 2012
1 comments In The Duellists, a French Hussar (Keith Carradine) insults a fellow soldier (Harvey Keitel) during the Napoleonic Wars. For years afterward, they engage in a series of brutal duels, driven by the...
Festival origins: Founder Patricia Kluge tells how it all began
Published on Oct 30th, 2012
2 comments On the 25th anniversary of the Virginia Film Festival, Patricia Kluge and former Governor Gerald Baliles both are being honored for its founding. According to Kluge, however, someone else first...
One-man band: McElwee persists in first-person documentary
Published on Oct 30th, 2012
0 comments In the mid-1980s, filmmaker Ross McElwee considered shooting a documentary about General Sherman’s march through the South. And he did shoot a documentary following Sherman’s trail, but in wholly...
Rogue cinema: Boyd Tinsley makes film you can feel
Published on Oct 29th, 2012
1 comments For violinist Boyd Tinsley, it's always about the music– even when the medium is the movies. In films like Star Wars, Psycho, and North by Northwest, the music creates the tension, says Tinsley...
Fat kid: Lillard's directing debut rules the world
Published on Oct 28th, 2012
1 comments Some people recognize Matthew Lillard from Scream. Others know him from Scooby-Doo. Sitting in the airport in Dallas on the day he's talking to a reporter, someone tells him they just saw him in SLC...
Flick picks: What local filmmakers want to see
Published on Oct 28th, 2012
1 comments The curtain is getting ready to rise on the 25th Virginia Film Festival, and there's the recurrent problem: what to see? Sometimes, it's simply too much to weed through more than 100 films for the...
Living in the shadow: As Samantha Clarke's family mourns, a suspect claims police harassment
Published on Oct 25th, 2012
23 comments Every day brings fresh torment for Barbara Tinder. "I keep expecting her to walk in the door," says the 37-year-old town of Orange resident, who has spent the last two years anguished over the...
Cavalier developments? UVA buys 199-acre near-town farm
Published on Oct 22nd, 2012
11 comments After two decades of dealing, a sprawling Charlottesville-area farm recently came into the possession of UVA, practically completing a sort of university-owned western wall around Charlottesville and...
Mr. Jefferson's greed: New book challenges image of reluctant slaveholder
Published on Oct 17th, 2012
75 comments Publishers Weekly calls it the number one history title of the fall and one of the best of all genres. Both Smithsonian and American History magazines have made it a recent cover story. However, thus...
Greenwood: EPA leaves Superfund site 27 years after fatal disaster
Published on Oct 10th, 2012
11 comments The most obvious disturbance to the bucolic setting of Mt. Zion Baptist Church is the sound of constant traffic zooming from Interstate 64. Less obvious, but way more disturbing about the location of...