Fan fare: Collectors treasure local mementos

Oct 3

Preston Coiner grew up in Charlottesville, where he remembers Miller's Drugstore as the place to go for a milkshake after seeing a Western in the Lafayette Theater downtown. Miller's is no longer a drugstore, and the Lafayette is now the site of York Place. His memories of those days have led Coiner, 62, to appreciate artifacts of early 20th century Charlottesville, particularly the advertising items that businesses gave away. "It's a nostalgia thing for me," he says.

The ultimate swag: Enron's sign goes for $44,000 at auction

The big "E'' went for big green. Enron Corp.'s trademark "tilted-E'' sign sold for $44,000 last week as the bankrupt former energy giant began auctioning off surplus items. Jimmy Luu, sent by his boss at a Microcache Computer store in Houston to buy the sign, said he was given explicit orders regarding the five-foot stainless-steel sign that once stood outside a downtown Enron satellite office. "He said, 'Just do anything to get it,'" Luu said after the gavel came down on the big E in a crowded Houston hotel ballroom.

4Better Or Worse

The week in review
Best reversal of a trend in drought-stricken Charlottesville: On September 30, the water supply increases rather than decreases, thanks to last week's rains. Worst result o...

The Dish

Papering the problem: Project H2o's a go
In September, when the City of Charlottesville and the Albemarle County Service Authority ordered all car washes to close, the news seemed to many restaurant owners like a ...

Essays

Drug czar must abdicate
According to survey data released this month, past-month use of illegal drugs increased from 6.3 percent in 2001 to 7.1 percent last year. These numbers can mean only one t...

Real Estate

Foreclosure auctions
October 10, 2002, at 3:30pm at the Fluvanna County Courthouse Property: Parcel on Route 3 in Palmyra Debtor: Marlene E. Gibson Originally owing: $58,282 Bidder brings: $5,...

Real Estate - $old

$old
Charlottesville 7/10 Jimmy J. and Kelly P. Johnson to Lair D. Haugh, Trustee. Parcel in Orangedale, $52,000. Michael E. Bell to Catherine D. and Richard A. Baritaud...

Real Estate - On the Block

On the Block- Update
Address: Arrowhead Valley Road/ Dudley Mountain Seen in The Hook : 4/25/02 Asking: $183,000 Contract price: $170,000 Days on market: 182 days Sellers Agent: Patrick Pu...
Time travel: Back to the '60s close to town
ASKING: $295,000 SIZE: 2392 fin. sq.ft., 979 unfin. YEAR BUILT: 1961 ADDRESS: 2806 Northfield Road NEIGHBORHOOD: Northfields CURB APPEAL: 7 out of a possible 10 LISTED BY: ...

Movie Reviews

Lecter series: Red Dragon has bite
It's hard to imagine anyone in Hollywood having the imagination to look at the Rush Hour movies and choose director Brett Ratner to helm a first-class thriller, the prequel...

Music Reviews

Gut reaction: Hardcore punks pack the house
"The Intrinsic Virtues and Values of Death Metal," was a common topic of discussion between the ad hoc debate teams The Icarus Fallen (Me), and Mazor's Razors (my friend Br...

News

Greenest envy: STAB grads round up trouble
Even though no game was scheduled, the St. Anne's-Belfield football team was the victim of an illegal use of hands on its own gridiron. The team arriving for a scrimmage on...
Site-clearing
On Thursday, September 26, two days after massive trees were felled, crews began clearing the site for UVA's controversial $17.5 million, 1,180-space parking garage. The ga...
Sites gone wild: Cybersquatters push porn locally
Vic Bradshaw was doing research on Charlottesville's top television station, WVIR Channel 29. Not knowing the station's website, he typed in wvir.com and suddenly found him...
The big chill: Danielson and Rolph's split final
The men who remade downtown Charlottesville have severed the last of their ties. After a blistering lawsuit that included charges of bullying so profound that an accountant...
Urine-- or out: Our effluent is good enough to drink
Residents of Lake Monticello have something in common with Fido: they drink water that's been in a toilet. Yes, after leaving the Moore's Creek Advanced Wastewater Treatmen...
Waldo power
Published October 3, 2002 in issue #35 of The Hook. Online is not the most popular way to read news. Typically, any given article on www.readthehook.com might get read onli...

Strange But True

Striking facts
Q: Funny thing about lightning is a) it never strikes the same place twice; b) if it strikes a place once, it may strike there dozens of times. B. Franklin A: Bot...

Facetime

Aiming high: Lopez questions the Charlottesville legacy
Guy Lopez didn't come here to rave about how great the University of Virginia is. His mission: to hold a mirror to this town and show a different view of its much-vaunted h...

Hotseat

Speaking up: Sally Thomas knows her stuff
Sally Thomas' life has a storybook quality to it. She met her husband, George, at Harvard. She lives in Ivy, in a quintessential white Virginia farmhouse that most transpla...

Letters

Let me count the ways
Coy Barefoot never gets around to telling us why he actually does shop at Wal-Mart [Essay, "Guilty: Why I shop at Wal-Mart," September 26, 2002] (http://www.readthehook.com...
Potty poems
I read with nostalgia in your recent issue about the drought the oft-quoted West-coast water-wise jingle "If it's yellow, let it mellow," etc. ["It's the flushing, stupid,"...

Cultural preview

Cut and piece: Quilts come out of the closet
Circles of 19th century women with nimble fingers gathered around sitting room fires crafting masterpieces fine enough to display as art. Because this was utilitarian “wo...
Free labor: Where's mom's signing bonus?
Back in the days when technology jobs appeared limitless and hot-shot new enterprises challenged the gospel of conventional business practices, there was an enthusiastic no...
Grand scale: Dance combines many arts
Grab your dancing shoes and head over to the McGuffey Art Center on Friday afternoon in time to join the “Dance Technique Class” which is a prelude to a performance by ...
New paths
Two years ago, Meg West’s focus shifted from graphic design to oil painting, and the inspiration for that change is obvious in every one of her paintings. A resident of C...
Stow the shanties
“Arr. Methinks the Pirate Mark does not like these sea shanties, laddy.”That was basically all I had to say after seeing Elf Power for the first time, when they opened ...
The great grape: Boar's Head festival honors vintners
Who knew that Virginia would become such a boon to the viticulture industry? For the last 20 years or so, vineyards have sprouted (so to speak) exponentially across the sta...