Charlottesville Breaking News
Toasty: Grammy-winning Arcade Fire fires up hot Pavilion
Twenty minutes after the 6pm gate opening, fans still stretched past new eatery Positively Fourth Street-- shown here-- and nearly to Central Place.Tom Daly
With temperatures still topping 95 degrees at 6pm on Wednesday evening, cool-seeking concertgoers made their way through a misting tent.Tom Daly
Under the tent and steaming: some concertgoers lined up as early as 11am to ensure a front-row spot for the sold-out show.Tom Daly
Taking the stage just before 9pm, the band opened with "Ready to Start," off their Grammy winning album The Suburbs.Tom Daly
Lead singer Win Butler expressed appreciation for the crowd. The band performed at Bonnaroo the following night.Tom Daly
Accordion-playing multi-instrumentalist Regine Chassagne co-founded the band with husband Butler.Tom DalyLast year this time, you might have had a hard time finding anyone who'd heard of Arcade Fire. Their third album, The Suburbs, which was released last year, changed all that in February by winning the Grammy for Album of the Year. On Wednesday June 8, in spite of soaring heat and miserable humidity, a sold-out crowd packed the nTelos Wireless Pavilion to hear the band perform.
VQR's Genoways: Did bully defense lead to code offense?
Since the tragedy last summer, Genoways and the VQR once again found themselves in the winners circle at the National Magazine Awards.After last summer's suicide of Virginia Quarterly Review managing editor Kevin Morrissey, the Hook obtained a series of emails from editor Ted Genoways that revealed "poisonous" tensions between the staff, accusations of "workplace bullying," his banishment of Morrissey and another staff member from the office for unexplained "unacceptable workplace behavior," and his frustration and anger with both colleagues and co-workers. Nearly a year later, another email fired off by Genoways has surfaced– and it could get him in some hot water.
After Washington Post reporter Daniel de Vise wrote a May 3 story about grieving sister Maria Morrissey speaking at a news conference in support of proposed New York legislation on workplace bullying, Genoways took issue with de Vise's reporting and fired off a stern email to him and his editor Victoria Benning.
"I see that you have, once again, written about me without speaking to me–...
IRS yanking: Over 150 non-profits lose tax status
The bread line statue at the FDR Memorial in Washington.flickr/spatweiThis year, you probably won't get a tax deduction for donating to the Bologna Foundation. That local charity, along with the IBM Club, the Save the Fireworks Foundation, Charlottesville Lesbian-Feminists, and Santa Matters– over 150 between the city and county– have lost their non-profit tax status, according to the Internal Revenue Service.
In a national move, the IRS announced June 9 that approximately 275,000 organizations lost such status for allegedly failing to file the requisite annual reports for three consecutive years. A 2006 law allows the IRS to automatically delete such companies from the rolls.
"The IRS believes the vast majority of these organizations are defunct," reads a statement from the IRS.
Loss of tax-exempt status can trigger a wide range of outcomes including property and corporate income taxes, as well as lessening the attraction for donors who are accustomed to earning deductions for gifts.
In making the announcement, the IRS also announced special steps to help any existing-but-deleted organizations apply for reinstatement. Such well-known Charlottesville-based groups as Trout Unlimited, Camp Albemarle, and the Toaster Museum– none of which had a representative immediately available for comment– might want to get a hold of those procedures.
But there may be errors in the IRS records.
"This is all strange," says...
Parkway panic: Rooker vexed as Dorrier rekindles Bypass
Rooker has long opposed the U.S. 29 Bypass, while Dorrier just reversed his position.file photos by Lindsay Barnes and Jen FarielloTaking the reins from the late Charlotte Humphris, Dennis Rooker built his political career on fighting the Western Bypass, a much-maligned planned freeway that would rip through hills and neighborhoods just west of Charlottesville. And Wednesday night at 11:35pm, according to a Tweet by Charlottesville Tomorrow's Sean Tubbs, retiring Albemarle Supervisor Lindsay Dorrier flipped his vote from just a week earlier to let the Bypass live.
The Bypass earned infamy because it was designed in the early 1990s before much of the northern U.S. 29 development had occurred and before its price tag skyrocketed to something around $270 million. Its high per-mile cost, its inability to get around those northern suburbs, and VDOT's own research suggesting that 90 percent of existing 29 traffic is local led a national group called Taxpayers for Common Sense to name it one of the most wasteful road projects in the nation.
However, business leaders in Lynchburg and Danville have long complained that Charlottesville remains an expensive bottleneck for trucking operations that in 2005 won a bypass around the Lynchburg suburb of Madison Heights.
Around 2006, a pair of prominent Charlottesvillians proposed a cars-only alternative called the Ruckersville Parkway, but that died almost as quickly as it was born.
One thing that must be weighing on the minds of Virginia Department of...
What do you think about false confessions?
Jenny Prey: "I could see where someone might get flustered enough that perhaps they would think that their only option is to confess and that if they're already committed to being kind of screwed over, confessing might be their best option out."Hook staff
Gary Munn: "I think it's almost impossible to overestimate people's desire to get publicity and press coverage. Some people are willing to do anything and say anything."Hook staff
Rebecca Meadows: "I think it's a possibility. Were not sure what kind of coercion that an individual was under at that time."Hook staff
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