Cover Stories
Year in review: The best and worst of 2011
Published on Dec 22nd, 2011
2 comments December 22, 2011 Since the Hook started doing a year-in-review issue 10 years ago, we've always wanted to say that this is the best year ever: The economy is on a roll, employers are hiring as fast...
Year in music: Avett Brothers twice, Lucinda Williams, and the Civil Wars
Published on Dec 21st, 2011
5 comments Despite its small size, Charlottesville has long held its well-deserved reputation as a music town. For its size and scope, the sheer amount of musical talent that resides (and stops through) town is...
Person of the year: Ken Boyd. King of the road... and the midnight vote
Published on Dec 15th, 2011
18 comments If Ken Boyd's entire political career were an Aesop's fable, he'd be the slow-and-steady tortoise. But when the opportunity arose earlier this year, the usually mild-mannered Republican maneuvered...
Person of the year: The runners up
Published on Dec 15th, 2011
51 comments  Images in slideshow GIL HARRINGTONWhen the remains of her daughter Morgan were discovered on a southern Albemarle County farm nearly two years ago, Gil Harrington could have let searing anguish...
Unsilenced: How this mother fought to protect her daughter... and yours.
Published on Dec 7th, 2011
27 comments Related stories • 'I harmed you': 21 years, 12 steps later, rape apology backfires • Bombshell dropped as Beebe pleads • Victims' legacy? UVA overhauls sexual assault policy • Her day in court: UVA...
What's next? Occupiers ponder the future
Published on Nov 30th, 2011
26 comments Tuesday, November 29 is deadline day for Occupy Charlottesville, but at noon– just six hours before protesters must decide whether to stay in Lee Park in violation of an expired permit or to...
The road: Death count mounts in Albemarle
Published on Nov 22nd, 2011
25 comments "Let me grab my phone– I'm expecting a victim's family to call." That's Sergeant Sean Hackney on November 17, the morning after the fifth person has died in less than a week on an Albemarle...
By the Wayside: Busted bridge burns businesses
Published on Nov 17th, 2011
86 comments Back in May, just a month into a planned 18-month project, owners of several business located next to the Jefferson Park Avenue bridge replacement complained that the construction was hurting their...
The flip that flopped: Biscuit Run men want $20 million more from taxpayers
Published on Nov 9th, 2011
56 comments Biscuit Run is the gift that keeps on… taking. Initially sold to the public as a $10 million state park, the nearly 1,200-acre tract has actually extracted more than $21 million from state taxpayers...
'Natural Selection': Meanie 'Hangover' actress plays nice
Published on Nov 3rd, 2011
5 comments Rachael Harris can play mean, and in the 2009 smash hit Hangover, she plays really mean as Melissa, the girlfriend of Ed Helms' character, Stu. "My agent was getting calls for me to play the shrew,"...
Hazardous act: UVA grad had 'JFK' moment
Published on Nov 3rd, 2011
6 comments Sarah Lyman Kravits, UVA class of 1988, was in grad school in Washington when she was picked for a few moments of screen time in Oliver Stone's 1991 film, JFK. "Oliver Stone wanted everyone smoking...
Festival faces: Spacek, Stone, Sabato, and Wasikowska
Published on Nov 2nd, 2011
5 comments Just in case the movies aren't enough, the Virginia Film Festival sprinkles in a few stars.
Grindin’ it out: Kevin Everson keeps on filming
Published on Nov 2nd, 2011
0 comments It’s hard to tell whether Charlottesville’s resident experimental filmmaker Kevin Everson spends more time behind the viewfinder of his 16mm camera or at airports. Since 2010, Everson’s films have...
Best o' the fest: What real filmmakers want to see
Published on Nov 2nd, 2011
0 comments Salivation. That's what happens when you're a cinephile and you pick up the program for the 24th annual Virginia Film Festival and see all those unreleased new movies, and all those classics you've...
Production values: Jack Fisk finds days of heaven
Published on Nov 2nd, 2011
0 comments Cismont resident Jack Fisk has a charmed career. Few movie production designers have worked on so many critically acclaimed films or as consistently with extraordinary directors, such as Terrence...
Jury: He did it. Abshire murder trial
Published on Oct 25th, 2011
46 comments As the jury weighed its decision in the first-degree murder trial of the Greene County dump truck driver accused of killing his wife for a $1.5 million in insurance payout in a crime so shabbily...
Balance of power: What's at stake in the 2011 elections
Published on Oct 20th, 2011
22 comments Three perennials always make the list of top local controversies: the Western 29 Bypass, Meadowcreek Parkway, and the water plan. Whether you love these projects or hate 'em, the deciders on these...
Reefer madness? Copter and SWAT team weeded out 2 plants on their property
Published on Oct 12th, 2011
85 comments Philip Cobbs likes gardening. You can tell from the neat perennial beds, the carefully trimmed yard, and from the fenced vegetable garden on the 39-acre tract in southeastern Albemarle that's been...
Thanks a million: Students raise seven figures to honor Mead
Published on Oct 6th, 2011
1 comments When Greg McLean, University of Virginia Class of '95, had chemotherapy over the summer he was an undergrad and then insisted he was returning to school, a professor said, "Why don't you live with me...
Turf warriors: Silverbacks put Charlottesville on the football map
Published on Sep 29th, 2011
8 comments When a football team with the name Virginia Silverbacks hits the field, you might expect to see a bunch of macho guys living up to their animal kingdom namesake, flaunting their strength, agility and...
Green light: Why not sync every signal before Bypassing?
Published on Sep 19th, 2011
34 comments Can you imagine zipping up U.S. 29 north through green lights and reaching the airport in a matter of minutes, so efficiently that, wait, we don't need this new $436 million, forest-cutting, mountain...
Glitchy system: Inside the student software debacle
Published on Sep 15th, 2011
90 comments Why did Albemarle County school officials commit nearly $2 million to a software system that has proven faulty, despite multiple complaints from teachers that using it was a "waste of time," and an...
9/11 reflections: 3,000 dead and freedom too
Published on Sep 8th, 2011
25 comments We lost the World Trade Center. We lost 3,000 people. Black people, white people, Asian people, Middle Eastern people. People we didn't even think were at risk. My girlfriend called me to say that a...
Not political? Boyd names bypass terminus committee
Published on Sep 1st, 2011
31 comments Sometimes it seems there's nothing local governments love better than to set up citizen task forces. That's why it was so out of the ordinary to hear a rash of criticism when Rivanna District Supe...
Stocking up: Gourmet eats... après le déluge
Published on Sep 1st, 2011
2 comments Fortunately Hurricane Irene didn't bring the rain and winds and days without power that 2003's Isabel did, nor did the Cuckoo quake leave us electricity-less. But with microbursts and Snowpocalyse-...
Commemorations planned for tenth anniversary of 9/11
Published on Sep 1st, 2011
15 comments The public can watch a march of Charlottesville's first responders and get a peek at the city's own chunk of World Trade Center steel as part of the "Weekend of Remembrance and Honor" to commemorate...
What's next: Is the quake just the beginning?
Published on Aug 31st, 2011
10 comments Unless you were in the presence of a perceptive animal– and there were scattered reports of skittish dogs– it came without warning four seconds after 1:51pm on a sunny Tuesday, August 23...
Right to bare? TSA screeners face lawsuit
Published on Aug 30th, 2011
12 comments Aaron Tobey, the 21-year-old Charlottesville native who made headlines last December when he was arrested after stripping down to his shorts at the Richmond International Airport while going through...
Quake closed Carmike
Published on Aug 30th, 2011
1 comments In the immediate aftermath of the Tuesday, August 23 earthquake, it appeared Charlottesville had avoided the building damage that closed two schools for a year and crumbled countless chimneys in...
Books, bags, iPads-- oh my! Local students show school spirit
Published on Aug 25th, 2011
7 comments Summer may be ending, but for Charlottesville and Albemarle County students, the start of a new school year brings the excitement of picking out new clothes, planning extracurricular activities, and...