>On Oct 26, 2008, at 9:18 PM, shag wrote:
>
>>The good news is: Obama signs were evident, even outside of
>>Charlottesville (where Doug once went to grad school, btw). There
>>were plenty in Staunton, even way out in the boonies on winding dirt
>>roads in the heart of Appalachian farm country.
>
>You say: "C'ville was awesome and, while I realize that Doug and Seth
>hate this backwoods college towns, aiy, well, for those of us who
>actually had to grow up even further out in the woods, places like
>C'ville and Ithaca were
I don't know what I'd have done without it!"
>
>As I recall, when I used to visit my first mother-in-law in
>southwestern Virginia (Emory/Abingdon area), C'ville looked like Paris
>by comparison! Re: C'ville, as a DJ on the great (then at least) UVa
>radio station used to say, "don't leave the 'harlot' out of
>Charlottesville!"
We listened to public radio, out of habit, nearly the entire trip. But at one point, afternoon on Sunday, we caught the university radio station, finally. I'd tried to find it on the way in, but lots of static from the mountainous terrain. What time we could listen, though, it still sounded pretty good. I have been living in towns that are bone dry in terms of decent college radio. Hell, even the state college in my old hometown was better than what I checked out in Tampa.
>In any case, today's NYT travel section had a feature on weekend
>visits to C'ville. It sounds a lot more civilized than it was in the
>late 1970s. But even the hardcore urbanite in me has to admit that
>central Virginia is really beautiful. Once you get away from what an
>old C'ville friend of mine called "the stinking plain" in the eastern
>part of the state, Virginia seems to me one of the most beautiful
>states in the USA.
C'ville was awesome, to me, because it was like being home again: the steep hills in the downtown area, the bricks, the architecture, lots of hardwoods and pines. The downtown mall, described in the NYT piece, was reminiscent of Ithaca's downtown area, though quite a bit livelier than Ithaca's downtown was in the late 90s. Its heydey was in the late 70s and 80s when I loved to go to people watch and hang out as a kid. Mom used to take us there, as did a friend of mine's mother -- the friend's family was from NYC. There are tons of artisans who've migrated to or stayed in the region after college, because so many people love the landscape. The land and housing was also cheap, though from what I saw, the prices were right up there, in a way I wouldn't expect given what I understand to be the typical wage. If you live 15 miles out, though, you can get a 100 acres and a farm house for less than the price of a 3br/2 ba in town.
The local chambers of commerce have obviously been hard at work, pitching the place as a tourist attraction. A woman I work with says that, when she lived in the unreal Va, that's one of the weekenders people frequently did: travel the Skyline Parkway through the Shenandoah Valley, stopping off at various artists, sculptors, potters, iron workers, etc. (as well as the antiquing) to get their fill of what would be, to them, affordable craftwork. They also liked to visit Amish and Mennonite artisans to buy furniture and outdoor storage sheds.
The real test of a place, though, is Sunday. C'ville was *not* much on Sunday. For whatever reason, even though the sun finally came out, driving through town on a Sunday did remind me of driving through some beat up hole of town in S. Carolina. A pall of heavy air hung over the place; hardly anyone seemed to be around. It was almost spooky.
Good coffee shops, decent eats, a listing of lots of decent music, though by the time I finished dinner Friday night, had a glass of wine, I was ready to crash. Some theatre -- and lots of festival events, such as the film festival coming up this weekend.
There was a mall on a street called Barracks Rd. It would have been like any other strip mall save for a sprinkling of shops that either weren't chains or were from obscure chains. IOW, the mall was not the same mall you can find anywhere and the chains were more upscale than even the so-called upscale malls in other cities where I've lived. I'm sure, though, that area students from NYC are probably distressed as all gittout at the lack of true designer fashions. I noticed that, right across the street from that mall was a service that provided luxury group travel shuttles to NYC every weekend.
For my next trick, I'm going to get one of those special spa getaway deals somewhere. I could use a weekend of pampering in the mountains one of these weekends.
http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)