RVA #30 FALL 2017 by RVA MAGAZINE

10 YEARS OF RVA MAGAZINE 2005-2015

RVA MAGAZINE 24 | SPRING 2016

10 YEARS OF RVA MAGAZINE 2005-2015

RVA MAGAZINE 24 | SPRING 2016

10 YEARS OF RVA MAGAZINE 2005-2015

RVA MAGAZINE 24 | SPRING 2016

10 YEARS OF RVA MAGAZINE 2005-2015

RVA MAGAZINE 24 | SPRING 2016

10 YEARS OF RVA MAGAZINE 2005-2015

RVA #30 FALL 2017 RVA MAGAZINE EST. 2005 RVAMAG.COM

FOUNDERS R. Anthony Harris + Jeremy Parker PUBLISHER Inkwell PRESIDENT John Reinhold PARTNER LANDON SHRODER PRINT EDITOR Doug Nunnally DESIGN R. Anthony Harris WEB EDITOR, RVAMAG.COM Amy David Web editor, GAYRVA.com Marilyn Drew Necci SALEs MANAGER JOE VANDERHOFF ADVERTISING Steven Anderson WRITERS Landon Shroder, Shannon Cleary, Doug Nunnally, Cody Endres, MEGAN WILSON, Davy Jones, Marilyn Drew Necci, Amy David, Taylor Peterson & Madelyne Ashworth PHOTOGRAPHY Joey Wharton, jason lappa, patrick biedrycki, alec gray, Landon shroder, Chris Boarts Larson INTERNS Malik Hall, Christopher McDaniel, Caitlin Barbieri, Nidhi Sharma, Ryan Persaud GENERAL, EDITORIAL & DISTRIBUTION QUESTION hello@rvamag.com ADVERTISING JOHN REINHOLD 276 732 3410 // john@rvamag.com SUBMISSION POLICY RVA Magazine welcomes submissions but cannot be held responsible for unsolicited material. Send all submissions to hello@rvamag.com All submissions become property of Inkwell Ventures Inc. The entire content is a copyright of Inkwell Ventures Inc. and cannot be reproduced in whole or in part without written authorization of the publisher. ONLINE Every issue of RVA Magazine can be viewed in its entirety anytime at rvamag.com/magazine.

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Pasture, Barcode, Tobacco Company Bottom’s Up, Kulture, Alamo BBQ, Legends, Plant Zero Cafe, Cha Cha’s Cantina, Urban Farmhouse, Manchester Market, Union Market, Mbargo, Frame Nation

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ALB Tech, Strange Matter, Lamplighter VCU, Kulture, 821 Cafe, Fan Guitar & Ukulele, Ipanema, The Village, Mojo’s, Rumors

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HEADS UP! The advertising and articles appearing within this publication reflect the opinion and attitudes of their respective authors and not necessarily those of the publisher or editors. Reproduction in whole or part without prior written permission from the publisher is strictly prohibited. RVA Magazine is published quarterly. Images are subject to being altered from their original format. All material within this magazine is protected. RVA Magazine is a registered trademark of Inkwell Ventures.

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RVA Magazine is printed locally by Conquest Graphics cover by Jason Lappa Credits page by Nils westergard SPECIAL THANKS to King of The North HUNTER HAGLUND

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PLAYLIST

STUDIO NEWS

The big news over the course of 2017 has been coming mainly out of The Ward, a relatively new recording studio on the third floor of a big old Broad Street building downtown, not too far from where Sixth Street Marketplace once stood. This studio has been bringing in a lot of new equipment and getting things all spiffy, SINGLE, BANDCAMP and the results are coming through in I don’t know how the political crisis we’re in will end, but I do know that the form of some new material from several up-and-coming RVA bands.

TRACKS WORTH LISTENING TO

DAVE WATKINS, "RESPITE"

it feels like some sort of long, wrenching crescendo. I’ve found myself seeking comfort in music that fits that mold. Add Dave Watkins’ 21-minute track “Respite” to the playlist. Watkins has such a gift for variety and exploration, and “Respite” features wave after wave of building sound -- dark passages, lighter moments, sections that are rhythmically driven, others in which field recordings take center stage. Listening reminds me of flying, in the sense that you board, buckle in, relinquish control for as long as the pilot has you in the air, and when you land, you’re somewhere else. Maybe that qualifies as escapism, but I think there’s real healing mixed in as well.—Davy Jones

EMMA STANFIELD, "CAR KEYS" EMMA STANFIELD, BANDCAMP

Unmaker have been holing up at The Ward lately with producer Ricky Olsen, putting finishing touches on their forthcoming debut LP. The group features two members of Occultist and recently added bassist Chris Compton, formerly of Hex Machine, so you might have some strong ideas of the sort of music they're pumping out, but if you haven't actually heard them yet, you're in for a surprise. Rather than the metallic thrash you might expect, this group has an intriguing early80s postpunk lineage, bringing some serious early-Christian Death vibes (from back when they were almost a punk band), as well as a spooky heaviness reminiscent of Danzig's post-Misfits project, Samhain. The band's calling their forthcoming LP Used Future, and a teaser track should hit the internet by the end of the year.

The opening track to this young instrumentalist’s debut release, “Car Keys” is a strong piano ballad that shows off Stanfield’s eloquent lyrics and complex vocal melodies. The backing music is simple and restrained, giving Stanfield’s voice free range to dance and skip all over the track, which she does freely, either disrupting her cadence mid-phrase or inserting a loveable “la da da” line. With a plethora of strong singer-songwriters in Richmond, “Car Keys” shows we can never have enough as each are as unique as they are talented, and it also shows that we can never have enough love songs, with a perceptive and candid take on new love that’s so Meanwhile, local soundman and recording engineer extraordinaire sincere, you can’t help but hit repeat. --Doug Nunnally

HOAX HUNTERS, "SAD!" SINGLE, BANDCAMP

Bryan Walthall has been ensconced at The Ward with buzzworthy new math-rockers Majjin Boo, whose name is a bit of a conundrum but whose sound is always pleasing to the ear. Earlier this year, the group released an updated version of their 2016 demo, showcasing a prettier sound with a more layered male-female dual vocal approach. The demo features songs slated for their upcoming LP, though whether they're the finished versions is anyone's guess. However, we don't have too long to wait, as the LP is slated for a spring 2018 release.

The lack of local songs specifically targeting our bleak political outlook is surprising, but leave it to punk band Hoax Hunters to remedy that situation with a blistering takedown of the populist garbage that’s plaguing this nation. Though clearly Trump inspired, this melodic vitriol is directed at local congressman Dave Brat, a beleaguered politician who, at best, openly lies to his district, and at worst, proudly abandons it. Frontman PJ Sykes, a vocal critic of Brat’s limp policies, is red hot on this track, but it’s the inclusion of back-up singers perSisters that really cut deep at Brat, who’s openly complained that the “women are in my grill,” in of the more embarrassing moments of 2017. Earlier this year, before all the With Trump in office, that’s saying something. --Doug Nunnally renovations, Gritter finished up their

UNO ITSUMADEMO, "BROKE AND LOCAL" SINGLE, BANDCAMP Hip-hop is a great form of therapy, specifically a great form of exercising demons and venting when all feels lost. For Uno Itsumademo, it is his calling card for his single “Broke And Local”. Over a chilling cinematic loop, Uno pivots through the maze of life coping with tragedy and hustling to pay bills when the ends are low: “My friend was murdered, money was slow, and I was debating if the sacrifices I made were even worth what I’d get back from my artistry”, spoke the rapper/producer. The hook exposes how fame really doesn’t bring happiness, but only the need of wanting more and continued dissatisfaction ("One closed just open more doors / Need more mils, more honies, more gold / More shit, more stunting, more shows"). --Christopher MacManus

WATCHDOGS, "FALSE IMAGE"

PROMO, BANDCAMP

Most cathartic in 2017 is both scenes and fandoms policing themselves, and the second half of Watchdog’s new single does just that with chugging rhythms, piercing guitars, and guttural vocals. The song turns its ire on those who seek to shrink the image of hardcore down into something manageable and ideal, as opposed to broadening the horizons to the growing list of artists that offer just a bit more. Watchdogs could be one of these groups, but that’s irrelevant here as they’re more focused on delivering a succinct message the “elitists” have to heed: “Get the fuck out of my scene / You’ve got nothing to give / Just get up and leave.” Simple plea in design, brutal demand in execution. --Doug Nunnally

fourth album (well, I think they're calling it their third, since the first was under a different name. Close enough), Nobody Cares, over at The Ward. After a couple of years of lineup shakeups, Gritter seems to have settled down a bit, with vocalist Ryan Kent back in the fold and a steady rhythm section of Jake Coleman and Kevin White. They put this album together with John Angelo, a Buffalo transplant who arrived in Richmond a few years ago to become part of the GWAR extended family. He got a red-hot sound out of Gritter on this new album, which sees their dark, swampy metal sound taken to a more brutal extreme than previous releases. Kent's time doing some outright screaming in his speedthrash project, Murdersome, shows in his rougher, throatier vocals on this release. RVA Mag got to rock out with an advance copy, but the album will be available for streaming soon, and in hard copy form not long after that. Grab one for yourself. -- Drew Necci

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LOCAL REVIEWS

SHANNON CLEARY (SC), DAVY JONES (DJ) & DOUG NUNNALLY (DN)

ANT THE SYMBOL X NICKELUS F FURY

(ANTTHESYMBOL.BANDCAMP.COM) Ant The Symbol releases this “unofficial” project featuring isolated rhymes from one of Richmond’s most celebrated rappers. Even though Nickelus F’s contribution is unintentional, it still dominates this release with memorable rhymes and jaw-dropping sequences, showing off the same power and swagger that’s led him to dominate the local scene for so long. All in all, one wonders just how strong an “official” collaboration might sound. (DN)

FELITOS

DON’T STRESS IT (SOUNDCLOUD.COM/FELITOS_NKVA)

BIG BABY

SOUR PATCH EP (EGGHUNT)

There might not be another release from this year that feels as cathartic and triumphant as Big Baby’s Sour Patch. Five songs that transform pop wonders into a sensibility for allowing depression to take over in order to overcome. The trio impresses with a full sound that never falters and it’s easy to see why with dynamic passages like “Lemons” and “Everybody.” Though brief in runtime, this rivals much of the strongest local releases of 2017. (SC)

FM SKYLINE

DELUXE MEMORY SUITE ™ (FMSKYLINE.BANDCAMP.COM)

BLUSH FACE

WHAT DO YOU WANT? (BLUSHFACE.BANDCAMP.COM)

Clocking in at just 26 minutes, HazyMoods goes by in a flash, but the effects of Devonne Harris’ debut release for Stones Throw linger in the air long after the album stops spinning. Newcomers to the respected RVA collaborator’s solo work will get a sense for his keen ear -- how he can blend disparate sounds, often from his own storied output as a producer and multi-instrumentalist, and make a cohesive musical moment. Harris’ analog instincts shine through, and the result is as groovy as it gets. (DJ)

MCKINLEY DIXON

MINOR POET

WHO TAUGHT YOU TO HATE YOURSELF? (WADADA RECORDS)

A side project from the prolific local musician Pete Curry, this bright and fun instrumental release solidifies Curry’s place as one of Richmond’s more intriguing musicians. Vaporwave meets chillwave meets synthpop, there’s still plenty of Curry’s own jangle charm to be found in the music, even if it’s buried under the many impressive layers each song offers. If you need a starting point, there’s nothing more glorious than listening to “Sunset Cruise” on your Friday evening commute. (DN)

McKinley Dixon is the promise of where music is heading. On his debut, recently re-released, topics like imbalance, nepotism, anxiety, sacrifice, enlightenment, and death all come into play. This record isn’t just waxing poetically about the realities people face on a daily basis. It’s a reaction to the world that many have lived in for generations, and the tensions that go with it. (SC)

NIGHT IDEA

SAMMI LANZETTA

THE WIMPS

Lush, dense, and wildly daring, Riverless is a fascination display of Night Idea’s talent and vision, one that’s as vibrant as it is scattered. The way they follow each musical thought is inspiring at times, something most musicians would shy away from at the risk of unbinding their music. But Night Idea is not most musicians, and not only do they embrace these little journeys and detours, they somehow make them all connected, unlike the river-less world they highlight. (DN)

Rage and poise that is fleeting by nature, but still highly memorable. The former Venus Guytrap member proves she is a musical force to be reckoned with thanks to dense lyrical songs that journey the complicated emotions of her mind and soul. Bold statements like “Circle” will ring in your head for weeks, but it’s the sweet advice of “For Avery” and the introspective realizations of “Anxiety Olympics” that cement this as a truly remarkable release from one of Richmond’s brightest rising stars. (DN)

FOR AVERY (6131 RECORDS)

HAZYMOODS (DJHARRISON.BANDCAMP.COM)

Despite the prowess of singer Allie Smith and her talented band, it’s the sparser moments of Blush Face’s debut that seems to show off their shine and promise. That’s not to say the more upbeat, jangle, or rocking moments on the record aren’t to be enjoyed – “Eat My Blues” is a winner in any decade – but it’s the sparser ones where you can feel the real impact of their musical worth, as they hone in on the exact notes, progressions, and words needed to make something special. (DN)

This New Kent MC’s seamless and heavy flow is sure to be a hit in the local hip-hop scene, especially with his numerous references to the struggle of the grind in a young rapper’s life that any struggling youth could relate to. The production is poppy and airy at times, giving Felitos the power to weigh down songs with his own lyrical power, something he does often throughout this inspiring release, often to stunning results. (DN)

RIVERLESS (NIGHTIDEA.BANDCAMP.COM)

DJ HARRISON

REEL WHIRL (THEWIMPSRVA.BANDCAMP.COM)

The Wimps are quickly accelerating towards becoming one of Richmond’s all-time favorites. Their second full-length feels like another dimension of sound that is charming, quick, witty, and bountiful on every listen. As their origins might lead you to believe, they might have been birthed from the garage. Now, they are glistening stalwarts of anxious, dreamy pop that feel as vintage as they do contemporary. Reel Whirl is an ephemeral example of how far pop has come in town. (SC)

AND HOW! (EGGHUNT RECORDS)

Crafted in solitude while another project was stalling, And How! shows how creative honesty and love for the recording process can combine to make something truly special. Lyrics to songs like “River Days” and “Sudoku, An Enlightenment” depict and elevate idleness in such a fascinating way -- one that could be seen as ironic, given the ambitious vocal and instrumental layering (heads up, Brian Wilson fans) and the fact that the album has kicked the former Mad Extras frontman’s career into a higher gear. (DJ)

DON’T LOOK AT ME (VVFAXMACHINE.BANDCAMP.COM)

There are many that consider VV to be the best band in Richmond and this release is a strong testament as to why. It plays out like an all-out assault of spooky punk fit with haunting grunge that feels like a reckoned passage of nightmarish horror. As screams and laughter can be heard throughout, frenzied tracks like “Face Smasher” and “Can’t Sleep At Night” are distinct entries into the burgeoning abyss of intensity and harsh realities that surround every song. A treat for all listeners. (SC)

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THE LOCAL HUSTLE

JAY SMACK & STUDIO B By Christopher McManus

all the production and recording, and keep it at a be tougher getting things done on your own. I’m still a firm believer in recording through a studio, length that was required of them.” but it is so much more convenient now getting After that, Jay recorded the show in various your art out there to the masses.” studios across Richmond, including Scott’s Addition with Steve Barber. Around 2009, he While Jay appreciates the advent of streaming began transitioning Studio B into a podcast. At services giving additional exposure to local acts, first, the podcast existed alongside the radio show, he does not see them as a revenue route. “Artists expanding the time after the radio broadcast to will barely make a percentage of a penny from give local artists from the growing scene more their music, yet these places will make as much With well over 20 years in the music radio time and exposure. For a show that’s focused as they can off of them,” he said. “I would rather profession, RVA legend Jay Smack has dedicated on the intimacy of the small-level artists, Jay’s do my part in helping these artists grow by giving his life to promoting and supporting artists from ambitions have the sights set on a larger goal. them money.” Richmond and its surrounding areas with his show Studio B. Whether through radio in the ‘90s or “I know that the best way for this show to get Along with taking requests from associates and podcasting now, Jay has been the go-to name better is to grow with the scene,” he said. “There’s fans, Jay often studies and researches dozens of in introducing people to some of the best talent never enough music out here in Richmond and the artists before playing them on the show. He also surrounding that’s untapped. And finding the time buys many of their songs to further support artists Richmond has to offer. necessary to do it is what I want to accomplish.” in his quest to being a voice of local independent “When I first started out with the show I just music. graduated from VCU as their program director Creating a podcast to do away with the restrictions at WVCW,” Smack explained as he laid out the of radio was just the start. After being let go from “I feel better about myself buying their music origins of the show. A radio station, 106.5 The 102.1 due to downsizing, Jay Smack took Studio and helping them out, knowing that they buy a Buzz (now 106.5 The Beat), was hungry for new B completely into the podcast world, posting on lot of their equipment out of their own pocket to content, especially that of the local kind. Jay Mondays and Thursdays. With the sweeping even create their art,” he divulged. “Spending my was the easiest choice to bring it. “At the time I change in the music industry in recent years, money on them shows a stronger link of solidarity was a drummer for a band, and the execs at the the middlemen between fans and the artists are than just giving them a thumbs up and help more show saw me as someone already within the local becoming less of a factor. For Jay Smack and artists that giving their music out for free.” scene, so it made sense.” many of the music consumers, that is something they are noticing. When it comes to the process of making these Studio B was initially held within an hour time shows, Jay admits that it can be a hassle trying limit and got off to a roaring start by featuring “A lot of fans and listeners are becoming more to put so much music into such little time. Unless live performances from bands. There were specific with their tastes and making them consumers know the artists, it’s hard for them to some definite growing pains early on, though. smarter with how the industry operates,” listen to relative unknowns for 45 minutes. Working with stringent limitations and imperfect Smack explained. “As a result, many execs are equipment made for a number of issues. controlling less and less as artists and fans have “For keeping a low profile for so long, that really “Sometimes the bands wouldn’t know how to get more control.” was the only difficult aspect of the show,” he the performances down pat as the environment laughed. “But for me, I got into radio and music was new to them,” Smack said. “Eventually we With growing streaming services in Spotify, because I love it and I want for it to grow. There’s had to keep certain things pre-recorded to meet Tidal, and Apple Music, artists can promote still much to learn in due time, and if you have the themselves in an easier fashion, communicating drive to do it, it is easy to do your part.” the time constraints.” with their fanbase through social media and build Studio B aired on 106.5 The Buzz until 1999, when their brand through means without the help of PODOMATIC.COM/STUDIOBRVA the frequencies changed and the show was moved corporate big wigs. It is still an uphill battle when to 102.1 WRXL. “They brought me in at first as a it comes to revenue, however. producer and mixer to the station and proceeded to have the show there for a few years, until about “The hustle for the modern independent musician 2005,” he remembered. “At that point, I told the is a given,” Smack remarked. “That’s always folks there that I want to still do the show, handle going to come with the territory, though it will Richmond, Virginia is a cultural leader in art that doesn’t receive the attention it deserves. From its spirited First Fridays highlighting the art and expansive music scene in the River City, the local sound is only growing with the help of streaming services and multiple festivals popping up overnight. Still, there is an outlet that continues to be the best gatekeeper for music out of the mid-Atlantic region.

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PRISONER’S ODYSSEY THROUGH RICHMOND & BEYOND THE INFINITE By Cody Endres photo by Chris Boarts Larson

The phrase “beyond the infinite" is incomprehensible. What does that mean anyway, to be “beyond” something that the human mind can hardly comprehend? It’s a mysterious phrase that, in the context of Prisoner’s music, becomes terrifying: it’s the name of the title track of Prisoner's latest release, an eerie collage of samples that slowly morphs into a slow, ominous metal track.

vocalist Pete Rozsa explained. “We wrote all of our songs for the next two years thinking of how they would run together as an album and which side/what order they would appear in.”

In addition to the concentrated effort to produce an album that flows well throughout, Rosza’s push to incorporate more electronic elements, and Finn’s heavier involvement in the songwriting process (due to a move from Brooklyn to D.C.) Guitarist Dan Finn notes that the phrase is a helped to produce Prisoner’s most textured, direct reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey -- detailed work to date. the last section of the film is called “Jupiter And Beyond The Infinite.” He arranged the first “We made a conscious shift for this material” half of the track only using samples from the Finn described. “We had a lot of enthusiastic film, seeking to create a "sonic analogue” to the discussions about expanding the influences that trippy, somewhat terrifying wormhole sequence could be brought to bear on what we'd been doing, featured in the last part of 2001, and it certainly and how electronics could help open up some of works as such. It also works as a mid/late album those directions.” palate cleanser, a slight respite from the assault of crust-influenced hardcore and atmospheric The industrial elements and samples didn’t exactly materialize out of nowhere though -sludge that precedes it. Rosza’s solo electronic project R Complex proved That’s not to say that Beyond The Infinite is all to have some crossover appeal with Prisoner, about pummeling the listener into submission according to Finn. “What Pete gets up to in R — the album is a fairly diverse mix of influences Complex was influential” he remarked. “He had and sounds, which combine to create a unique the concept for what became ‘Elapse’ really early and largely cohesive whole. For Prisoners, the on and there's a strong R Complex vibe to the first album is the product of years of work. half of that track.”

According to Rosza, many songs start out as strings of guitar riffs that are shaped into songs through practice and tinkering with parts, but a synth and drum machine progression can just as easily serve as a starting point. Electronic elements can also help potential Prisoner songs coalesce into more complete compositions, like in the case of album closer “Abyss,” a song that started out as a late-night jam on one riff. Vocalist Justin Hast came up with a synth part to lead the song off, and the rhythm section (drummer Joel Hansen and bassist Tommy Brewer) came up with a compelling ending.

On the other hand, album opener “Disintegration Of Time” started simply with an A part going into a B part, but instead of complicating the song by adding more parts, the band opted to fold electronic elements in to create something structurally simple, yet texturally dense and complex. While the recorded versions of those songs are excellent, one has to imagine how heavy they must be live. Opportunities to catch Prisoner live in Richmond are sparse, but the band is taking Beyond The Infinite on the road for almost two weeks beginning in November where they’ll get a chance to journey beyond the finite realm of Richmond and show people just what musicians “After Fear Is The Mind-Killer, we had a few songs Far from being an afterthought or window from here are worth. written but wanted to focus on writing a cohesive dressing, the electronic elements are a fully 30-40 minute album for vinyl release” guitarist/ integrated part of Prisoner’s writing process. FACEBOOK.COM/PRISONER804 20

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INSIDE MCKINLEY DIXON’S EVER EXPANDING SELF BELIEF By Taylor Peterson

Getting in touch with local rapper McKinley Dixon proved to be a great challenge, and rightfully so. Between preparing for a final tour for his first mixtape, Who Taught You To Hate Yourself?, finalizing the recording of his second mixtape The Importance Of Self Belief, creating content for a third unnamed mixtape, and working a full-time retail job, this 22-yearold has been busy, to say the least. Although Who Taught You To Hate Yourself? was released last March, Dixon said many fans have just started to catch wind of it recently. While he is always happy to pick up fans at any point, Dixon said he is working on finishing that musical chapter and moving on. “[It] was created and started and released in a very pivotal time in my recent years, but it was released last year,” Dixon said. “There’s a lot of different changes that have been made in my life since that tape has been created. It was like an accumulation of a lot of different feelings that I don’t feel now, thoughts that I don’t have now, and expressions that I express more now.”

photo by alec gray

Dixon said he drew a lot of inspiration for Who Taught You from learning more about African American studies while in school. This is evident in the title itself, which is a reference to a Malcolm X speech made in 1962. In the speech, Malcolm X talks to a crowd made up mainly of black women, urging them to recognize their worth despite outside voices condemning their very being. “Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair?” Malcolm questions. “Who taught you to hate the color of your skin to such extent that you bleach to get like the white man? Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet?”

Malcolm X’s inquiry into the importance of black identity, and blunt criticisms about the struggles of black folk during the Civil Rights Era, is a theme that parallels Dixon’s commentary on the struggles of the modern black American with issues such as racism and police brutality, making the title appropriate on several levels. These ideas, paired with Dixon’s naturally Born in a majority white neighborhood in introspective and self-critical personality, help Annapolis, Maryland, Dixon said he didn’t feel create a truly observant and self-aware piece of like he could fully open up and be himself. It work. “I was coming up in college and realizing wasn’t until he came to Virginia Commonwealth [the] problematic nature of a lot of different University to study Kinetic Imaging that he was things,” Dixon explained. “From where I extend exposed to diverse communities, which allowed from, from where I came from, [from] people him to realize his own creative potential. “I who I grew up with, from people I know now.” started learning more and blossoming more once I came to a place where it was just as diverse as my thinking,” he explained.

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The album takes place in a fictional world called “God’s Land” and focuses on black issues primarily from a male perspective. Dixon said he wanted to be able to tell these stories in an imaginative space in order to have more creative freedom with recurring characters and stories that illustrate a picture much bigger than himself. Dixon is focusing on pushing the narrative even further, but wants to be able to completely put Who Taught You to rest first. To complete this chapter, Dixon said he is planning on going on a final Who Taught You How to Hate Yourself? tour that will encompass multiple cities and states. This is a big change from his last tour, which only included four dates from Richmond to Baltimore. With a bigger team now, Dixon said he is excited to see how this upcoming tour pans out. “I have a solid group of friends that all have certain ideas to make this [tour] the best it can be,” he remarked. “It’s all coming together, which is really nice.” Since the release of his first mixtape, Dixon has realized that he was still missing out on stories from other perspectives within the black subject, such as black women, femme people, and trans people. This progression in ideology birthed the concept for his second mixtape, The Importance Of Self Belief, which does not have an official release date as yet. “I think that’s where The Importance Of Self Belief came from,” Dixon said. “That kind of switch in ideology of talking more about my maternal figures in my life. But not in the sense of being a savior, more in the sense of, like, trying to... talk in the eyes of somebody.” To elaborate, Dixon said that he equates the perspective of the second album to the boy on the album cover looking up to these queer and feminine figures. However, he doesn’t plan on telling these stories alone. Some of the collaborations on the next album include rapper Babe Simpson, singer Ali Thibodeau, poet/writer Maiya Pittman, and even his young niece, who is a toddler now. For Dixon, the incorporation of feminine voices not only allowed femme subjects to tell stories from their own perspective, but also created a larger thematic message of what he thinks is the true core of the black subject. Dixon said when he took a step back and thought about his ideas of what black identity is, he always circled back to one thing: black women. “There’s no monolith idea of blackness,” he explained. “But at the core of everything is black women.” In regards to his music, Dixon said that having femme voices at climactic points in his songs allowed for him to illustrate this point musically. “There’s a lot of moments and endings of the songs that kind of resonate where Ali [Thibodeau] sings,” he said. “It’s supposed to [show] like, how all these different stories are going on [and] all these different battles are being fought by different men, [but] there’s still the real people affected, and at the core of all these things are femme, black trans, black women.” Dixon admitted that it was a long road before he arrived at this point. “I was learning a lot of different things about my behavior and how, like, even though certain things didn’t mean what I wanted them to... it was still there, and how that affects people on a level that a majority of masculine people don’t really think about,” Dixon said.

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Dixon credits a lot of his enlightenment to the friends that he has made while in Richmond, who have continuously pushed him to think differently. In fact, Dixon goes as far as to say that he would not have realized his full creative potential had it not been for the strong and supportive community of queer people and people of color that he met in this city.

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Among the friends that Dixon works closely with is his band, who will be featured on the upcoming album as well. This is another major change from Who Taught You, the music of which mostly consisted of programmed beats. Dixon said that having a full band has always been his intention.

To Dixon, this freedom and accessibility also allows different styles of rap to emerge, which, in turn, lead to more perspectives emerging about alternative black identities. “Every style that comes from those rooms is valid and important, because it’s all just black kids being black kids,” Dixon said. “None of the stories they’re telling is bad, and none of the music they’re making is bad, because now they’re able to make it on a Dixon’s partnership with the band platform that doesn’t require you to be dictated began when he first came to VCU. He by a certain audience.” recounted making a song about the importance of music and bands, which As far as Dixon’s plans for the future go, he showed to some of his current band everything seems up in the air. While Richmond members when they were all freshmen. has greatly shaped his music, Dixon also noted That simple exchange sparked a the monopoly of sound that seems to dominate relationship that is still growing the music scene. “It’s very monolithic when it today. When talking about the creative comes to making music,” he said in regards to relationship between him and his band, the Richmond music scene. “Large groups of Dixon said that he has little to do with people make the same types of stuff.” how they play what he says. Because of this, Dixon said that he often finds “I will tell them a very bare concept that many musicians have the same sound. and then they will play whatever they Despite this, Dixon said he still finds it possible feel,” he expounded. “I think people to thrive in Richmond and attributes a lot of like that and respect that, so they that success to his band. “It’s incredible what tell other people. You always need people will do if you put a band behind you,” instruments. You always need homies.” he remarked. The trust and collaboration between Dixon and his bandmates, who often Even with his local success, Dixon said he doesn’t perform together as “McKinley Dixon think it is good to be stuck in one place in general, and Friends”, is even more electric on and knows that he will eventually make a home stage, where the band often improvises somewhere else. Where that community might their solos during live performances. be is something he’s leaving completely open. Dixon said that he has a surprising international Because his bandmates have so much fanbase, with listeners concentrated in places creative freedom, Dixon has more time like Germany, Korea, China, and Japan. to focus on the concepts and details for his albums. Before he finished recording Dixon has a lot of promise for a long-lasting and The Importance Of Self Belief, Dixon said successful career, but he isn’t thinking that far he already finished the concept for his ahead. To him, as long as he is creative and in third mixtape, which is set to be the control, whatever else happens will happen. As last installment of a trilogy. of right now, he can’t see himself doing anything else. Creating content this quickly is nothing to Dixon. When reflecting on his “I don’t know what else I’d be rapping about,” he creative process, he explained that he admitted. “This is everyday life for me. This is normally starts with a loose concept, everyday life for my homies. This is everyday life has a rough draft within two weeks, for my family. This is everyday life for my friends. sends it off to local producers like I wouldn’t be able to write about anything else.” Onirologia, who recently relocated to Florida, and then has a finished product MCKINLEYDIXON.BANDCAMP.COM a week after that. Easy, right? Dixon explained that the shift in hiphop culture to be more D.I.Y also has an impact on his ability to put out music so quickly. If he needs to have big band arrangements, he records them in his friends’ living room, not a studio. And when he’s done, he can just upload any content to a free-streaming platform like SoundCloud or Bandcamp, where anyone can access it.

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PHOTO BY ZACHARY NORRIS

RVA MAGAZINE 24 | SPRING 2016

C U R R E NT E X H I B ITI O N S SEP 16, 2017 - FEB 11, 2018

Wayne White: MONITORIUM

C U R R E NT E X H I B ITI O N S Small Works, Tall Tales

SEP 16, 2017 - FEB 11, 2018

Toobz Muir: Misshapen Demise

TheWhite: Disposable Film Festival Wayne MONITORIUM

Photos by Glen McClure

SmallARTlab Works, Tall Tales

new exhibitions, including Wayne White’s site-specific installation exploring ToobzFiveMuir: Misshapen Demise

the 1862 Battle of Hampton Roads through gigantic props, masks, and puppets. Photos by Glen McC

The Disposable Film Festival

ARTlab

Five new exhibitions, including Wayne White’s site-specific installation explor

the 1862 Battle of Hampton Roads through gigantic props, masks, and puppe

TH E ART OF NOW

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Yemen has been at war since 2015. Multiple aid agencies and the United Nations now claim the humanitarian crisis in-country is at the point of no return. As of this March, 17 million people faced food insecurity, with a total of 7 million people deemed to be in a state of emergency. The violence is relentless, the bombing is relentless. 16,200 people have already been killed, and this number shows no signs of abating. Militias are rampant, the influence of terrorist groups like al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is growing. The regional and global powers are fighting an incessant shadow war in Yemen. Good governance no longer exists. War crimes have been committed. This is the world where Asiya al-Sharabi’s art was born - a world that is almost impossible for most Americans, let alone those of us who live in Richmond, to comprehend. Before we met in person, I felt a quiet apprehension about doing this interview. Not one that was necessarily societal or cultural, but pragmatic. How could I ever effectively communicate the context of her art, which originated in a part of the world riven with such political and social upheaval?

“You mix all these things together, and here I come wanting to be an artist.” Asiya’s art is mixed media, but the images she’s conceived and the way in which they are presented is just as much about message as it is about the medium themselves. This goes back to the start of her career not only as a photojournalist, but a female photojournalist in Yemen. “There are no limits in art, but...” she trailed off for a moment before regrouping her thoughts. “During my whole artistic career, I

“Our house was kind of... bombed. Everything was exploded - the windows, the doors." always captured the Yemeni women who are not socially allowed to be photographed.” Part of her strategy to do so was to create a technique which allowed them to hide their identity in clever ways, so she could “maintain their beauty, personality, and where they come from.” Indeed, the plight of women in Yemen is desperate. According to the last Human Rights Watch report from 2015, women in Yemen face

SLOW DEATH INSIDE

Sometimes curiosity is all it takes. And oftentimes art is the vehicle by which that curiosity can challenge the taboos and traditional norms which prevent progress. This paradox, and many others like it, have always been the underlying truth that characterizes the Middle East. For those who have never been, it will always seem like hypocrisy wrapped in the veneer of orthodoxy, culture, or religion. But for those who have been, and experienced the elaborate connection to those things, the idea that art simply depicting women can challenge centuries of tradition becomes a deeply profound revelation. The war in Yemen, much like all wars in the Middle East, can be traced back to centuries of meddling by the great regional and international powers. Along with Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, Yemen was deeply influenced by the series of regional events known as the Arab Spring in 2011. Unfortunately in the Middle East, the quest for better government, more democracy, and greater freedoms is never that easy. What happened next in Yemen was not unique, but came to represent the failure of governance all throughout the Middle East, resulting in the worst kind of sectarian and proxy conflict.

THE ART OF ASIYA AL-SHARABI SLOW DEATH OUTSIDE

By Landon Shroder

For the first twenty minutes of our interview, Asiya spoke to me in Arabic. Her husband Faris, also from Yemen, translated her words. Even though she spoke good English, she did not want to be misrepresented. Not when it came to her art, not when it came to her story. I understood this feeling well, having spent a significant portion of my life in the Middle East. And over the years, I also came to understand that as Americans, we see the world with a base simplicity that is contrary to the complexity of the Arab world.

“severe” discrimination under the law and in cultural practices. This comes in a variety of forms, including female genital mutilation and a well established custom of girls - some as young as 11 - being married to older men, so families can collect a financial dowry. All of which informed how Asiya was able to develop her art, while at the same time protecting her subjects. She described this to me in stark terms. “It is dangerous in Yemen. If a girl is photographed and people know her, then she might be killed.”

“I come from a family who was in the media, and were in opposition to the government,” said Asiya, describing her family in Yemen. “Then I married someone who worked for the regime, also in the media - very contradicting.” We laughed, but it was not to acknowledge the irony. It was more of an acknowledgement that they survived the internecine challenges which come from a relationship like this, set against one of the region’s most brutal civil wars. In the Middle East, things like sect, tribe, and provincial identification have the potential to be lethal, even without marrying someone from the political opposition.

To protect the identity of the women she was photographing, she would buy fabrics and paint, dressing the women a certain way. “This was to tell who she is, that she is from Yemen, because we have a special way of dressing up,” said Asiya. After shooting she would work with the photos, turning them into negatives, and paint over them creating the distinctive mixed media style that is reflected in most of her art. Eventually her discreet but bold way of portraying women in Yemen started to catch on, gaining a slow acceptance throughout the conservative country. When I pressed her on this, she said simply, “People started to become curious and interested.”

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Yemen became embroiled in a shadow war between countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran. Asiya’s husband Faris, who was an advisor to the deposed Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, described what this

“During the revolution, you wake up and you could die any second." situation looked like in vivid detail. “During the revolution, you wake up and you could die any second.” Anyone who has ever worked in an environment driven by political upheaval knows this feeling - one of exhaustion and overwhelming unpredictability, ending in constant anxiety. “For me, the right thing to do was to stay and let the president leave peacefully and get out…,” said Faris. “Not to leave, because if everyone leaves, he will panic and let the crazy people advise him.” 29

During this period of the revolution, Asiya, along with her children, had moved to Egypt for their own safety. While in Egypt, she received a letter from Faris telling her that he was not sure how much longer he was going to be alive. He asked her to be strong, and to look after their children. There is a certain kind of fatalism in the Middle East, a regional characteristic that can be summed up in one phrase: in’shallah. Arabs like to use this phrase as part of their everyday interactions, and it

“It is dangerous in Yemen. If a girl is photographed and people know her, then she might be killed." roughly translates to “god willing” or “if god wills it.” “I was almost assassinated, a couple of times,” said Faris. “Including the explosion inside of the mosque - I was with the president and was hurt as well. I have burns on my back and stomach.” Faris was referring to a rocket attack on a mosque inside the presidential compound in June 2011, by opponents of the regime. For most Americans, it is almost inconceivable that two people could be so nonchalant in how they articulate their experience with war, revolution, and assassination attempts. But for most in the Middle East, it is simply a case of in’shallah. In 2013, after surviving the revolution in Yemen, Asiya and Faris moved from Egypt (which also had its own revolution during this time) eventually relocating to the US, first to Woodbridge. “I spent one year just getting to know the atmosphere and culture,” said Asiya. Yet like most who brave the suburban wilderness of Northern Virginia, she found that her creativity was stifled by the endless parade of traffic and debilitated strip malls. 30 30

“Suddenly I realized, I don’t want to stay here any longer...I wanted to be exposed to art.” This realization prompted Asiya to start seeing what other cities had the kind of art scene she was looking for, eventually leading her to Richmond. “It is picking up,” she said, when we spoke about how she found the city’s art scene, and what it was like to create art in the River City. “It is like gold covered with dust. You remove the dust and it chimes that’s Richmond.”

“It is like gold covered with dust. You remove the dust and it chimes - that’s Richmond.”

immigration and travel from the Middle East and imposed his so-called “Muslim Ban,” Yemen was named as one of the six countries from which people would be barred entry. This made Asiya feel disconnected from everything around her, more so because her kids were For Asiya, Richmond was the kind of waiting on immigration papers. “I knew we environment she needed to start making would be directly affected by Trump, targeting art again. That process was not without our basic rights.” its difficulties, however; after profound experiences including revolutions in both Her inspiration for the project eventually came Yemen and Egypt, the process of starting in stages, right before Trump was elected in over was challenging. With a fair bit of November 2016. Much like in previous projects exasperation, she told me, “To be honest, I this started with preparing clothes, materials, didn’t know how I was going to start. I didn’t and accessories from Yemen. “I took these have anything with me except the camera, so I started from zero.” This might seem exciting for a certain kind of artist, but not when you have to flee your home under the stress of political revolution. Regardless of what your circumstances might be, what you leave behind can never be recovered. This is something Asiya wanted me to truly understand; how all of her art, photos, and the flash drives with her work were destroyed. “Our house was kind of... bombed,” she said. While she was talking, her husband Faris pulled out his phone and showed me some pictures of their destroyed house. “Everything was exploded - the windows, the doors.”

“I knew we would be directly affected by Trump, targeting our basic rights."

things and I went to my surroundings and started taking self-portraits of my immigrant trip to the US.” She paused for a second and laughed, before telling me that this is something she never would have done in her home country. Using the self-developed techniques she pioneered to photograph socially isolated Yemeni women, the project started to take shape. “Being an artist, I have always felt that I am a citizen of the world. But in the beginning I called [the project] ‘The Immigrant’, as opposed to Trumperie.”

Trumperie is a series of mixed-media artworks created by Asiya, which speaks to the deep uncertainty about being an emigre Arab Part of the reason for the project’s transition during the presidency of Donald Trump. When was the hostile tone the president and the president started taking a hardline on his supporters were taking against those RVA MAGAZINE RVA MAGAZINE3024||FALL SPRING2017 2016

“Our voices are unheard, and all doors are closed,” she told me towards the end of her interview. “The situation in Yemen has become a slow death on the inside, but it has also become a slow death on the outside for Yemenis and others trying to find home and acceptance."

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who shared her experience. As a result, the Trumperie project became a series of self-portraits with Asiya represented as a traditional Yemeni woman. Each portrait contained a reverse negative of her positioned among a clutter of passport and visa stamps. In bold clinical red letters are the bureaucratic marks of rejection. These have come to inform her experience and that of all people seeking refuge in the US, against the backdrop of the president’s “Muslim Ban.” Asiya’s appearance in the self-portraits does not betray any sense of despair, however. Her expressions remain bold, defiant, and non-compliant, a refusal to be labeled or intimidated in the face of interminable circumstances. The other stages of her project started with researching the Yemeni experience in America, so she knew how to best articulate that experience within her own artwork. Through this research she learned about the struggle of her countrymen and women in coming to America. “…our struggle started decades ago, carrying a Yemeni passport,” she said, her voice taking on a very nurturing tone. “I wanted to highlight how this feels, having to deal with the limitations of being able to travel freely around the world seeking knowledge.”

The final stage of her project was adding the now iconic bureaucratic marks of rejection that have come to define the Trumperie series, those speaking to the feeling of marginalization that is defining our current political age. “And now, ‘deported,’ ‘rejected,’ and ‘denied’ was facing us as a family and as humans,” she said, an experience faced by Yemeni and Arab people all throughout the US. Around the same time Asiya was finishing the series, her lawyer recommended that her husband Faris rush home from Egypt, so he would not be denied entry back into the US. Her Trumperie series had proven prescient. “Our voices are unheard, and all doors are closed,” she told me towards the end of her interview. “The situation in Yemen has become a slow death on the inside, but it has also become a slow death on the outside for Yemenis and others trying to find home and acceptance.” Her journey and the connection to so many contemporary intersections has made Asiya al-Sharabi one of the most relevant artists in Virginia today. Yet in the end, there is no objective metric to measure the effectiveness of art; only the feelings we can engage with from a certain interaction at a specific time and place. Asiya al-Sharabi has touched one of those raw nerves that has come to define what an entire generation of people are feeling, regardless of what country they come from.

We all nodded in silent agreement. There was not much which could be said or expressed to reinforce this particular sentiment. To fill the break in conversation she pivoted in the direction of her children, speaking about what their experience might be like in this new INSTAGRAM.COM/ASIYAART version of America. “Why do our children have to deal with such unfair decisions, and pay all the bills?” she asked.

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"If I die in my studio like a mouse in my cage Will the neighbors smell my corpse Before the rats eat my face?"

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NILS WESTERGARD "Always gonna Fall on the Sharpest Sword" By angie huckstep PHOTO by patrick biedrycki

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The writing on the wall of Nils Westergard’s Museum District studio, while somewhat morbid, pokes fun at the compulsive working tendencies that have resulted in his expansive, cohesive body of work, despite the ingenious artist being only three years out of school. Since graduating from VCU with a film degree in 2014, the Belgian-American Richmonder has amassed a prolific portfolio of around 60 murals in both the United States and Europe, and has also exhibited his paintings and smaller handcut stencil works in galleries on both sides of the Atlantic. RVA Magazine has followed his career since he appeared on the scene in 2015 as the first local artist (and one of the youngest artists) to participate in the Richmond Mural project. Most notable here in town for his introspective, usually monochrome mural-scale portraiture, his hand-cut city map works were also picked up by popular press in Amsterdam and London, as well as the front page of Reddit on a few occasions. While preparing for the upcoming Richmond Street Art Festival, Nils, alongside his feathered friend Paco, answered a few of our questions, giving us some rare insight into the artist’s captivating & conscientious work. What has been your experience as a working artist in Richmond? Taking forever to get a wall here. For every 30 walls I hit up, maybe one goes through, so I’m always bitching about trying to get a wall. In some ways I wish it was easier to do, but as a result I’ve ended up painting overseas so much. I would like to exhibit in Richmond. I sometimes feel like I don’t get a lot of love from Richmond, and more so, I don’t think people realize I’m from here. People will ask when I’m in town, or, “Hey dude when do you go back home?” and I’m like, “I’m from here! I’ve lived here seven years! I’m from Richmond!” I like to be from Richmond, but people think I’m just here for the mural project or other events, when I’m really here full time.

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down in Europe when I was in middle school, through tiny websites and blogs that were following it, and this was way before it blew the fuck up. And then once social media came along, it totally just blew work like this forward. Any kind of image sharing platform is naturally going to boost something like this forward. I actually really loathe smartphone culture. I’ve had this old phone for twelve years. I have no desire to have a smartphone. I do have one that I use as an iPod and to run my Instagram off of, so I recognize it as a necessary evil, because I do think 90% of the gigs I get are a result of people seeing my work online. I’ve also noticed this culture develop where artists are painting for the picture, and they’re like, “Am I done?” [Then] they take a picture on their phone and say, “That looks good enough.” It’s easy to fall into that because you know the majority of the audience that you care about probably are online, but the fact of the matter is by painting in a community you are changing a lot of people’s environments. They have to walk You had a thoughtful response to Times- by this every day, so you really have to paint Dispatch writer Mark Holmberg’s rant that it with the knowledge that this is meant to be the Richmond Mural Project and others seen in person, not just on a two-inch screen. like it “send an ugly message.” Any further What elements of your process would you comments you’d like to share? say are shared between your more intricate, Get fuckin’ real, man! There are places I have hand-cut stencil work and the larger murals? been where I think, “This is too much.” Places like Wynwood [Walls, Miami] jump to mind, I don’t think most people realize that I do the where everything is just covered. But we are so stencil work. I think most people know me for far from that here. You know, we could easily the walls because they are dramatic and big, have two or three times more walls than we do and that’s what people see. I’ve only started now and I still don’t think it’d feel suffocated. Go doing the walls a couple years ago, and I’ve to Philadelphia. They have one of the longest- been doing the stencils for over a decade. When running, most successful mural programs in the I think of myself, I consider myself more of a country, and it’s excellent. They’re proud of it. stencil guy over anything, because I’ve spent It’s all over the city. But it’s ridiculous that this way more hours doing this than I’ll ever spend would be considered too many [in Richmond]. doing a wall. The walls go quick. I do a wall in There’s definitely a point where there’s too like two days; even the large ones, I do in three many, but we are very, very far from it. Plus, days max. But the stencils take me forever, so I I see it as a way to combat ads. Driving down consider myself more about this. As for common Broad [Street], I see maybe five murals and process, I would use the exact same picture that I cut out of, break the image into layers, about 500 signs for fast food, or billboards. and draw the shades out. If I’m doing a wall, What role has new media or social media had I’ll maybe sometimes project some outlines, but I more often just take that and go. If I’m in your career thus far? doing the stencils, I just cut it out and break it I was doing a bunch of graffiti in middle school, down into cuts. and started learning to make stencils around that time from a website out of Australia, a What drew you to doing the murals after all of small forum called Stencil Revolution. I learned this stencil work and a film degree? all the basics of what I do now from that. It was cool to be privy to this little group of people I think it’s the graffiti mindset that I came up that were doing that. A lot of the artists that in as a kid -- go big and go everywhere! And are larger now were definitely posting on there, I just admire it. Big work like that has a large and I guess in a sense that was an earlier form effect, and it’s a physical experience. But why of social media. So now when I travel, I see and did I originally get into it? I just saw work I meet up with artists that I knew from the forum, liked, and I wanted to do it myself. The first like ELK when I was in Australia a couple years year that the Richmond Mural Project came ago, who is a larger artist now. I had known him around, and brought these people that I’d followed online for a decade when they were since I was 12 thanks to this website. just tiny people, I’d never really had a chance It’s hard to think about what it was like before to see any of this stuff in person because it was social media. I was watching what was going overseas. So I was pretty excited to finally put I was walking by one of the local galleries getting some coffee, and I notice their show up called “RVA Street Art,” and my reaction was a little “WTF?” I walked in and it was Ed Trask, Mickael Broth, Matt Lively, and, I mean, those guys are great and I really love what they’re doing, but how did I not even hear about this? How did I not hear this was going on when I have three murals outside of their back door? How am I so disconnected from the Richmond “Street Art Community” that I didn’t even know the show was on? That kind of shit gets me. I’d love to do more in Richmond, but instead I end up showing everything in Scandinavia, London, Amsterdam, and such. I’m proud to be from here. I’d like to do stuff here. I don’t know if the community is a little older than me, or my stuff is a little darker, or what. I think the biggest thing is that my stuff is not the most colorful or uplifting, cardinals and shit. Maybe not as easy to digest. And I get it. It just doesn’t fly, and I don’t want to bend for it.

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faces to the work I had known. I skipped about a week of school and was just hanging out with them, and after spending some time with them, I realized that these were just normal people and watching them work made it feel less intimidating. So I ended up doing my first wall, and just kept going. I also feel like the murals allow me to bypass any “velvet rope” mentality that galleries might create, where people who feel like, “Oh I’m not a gallery person, I don’t go to art shows,” wouldn’t get to see the work. A lot of people have never been to a gallery show. It’s just not a world that they’re a part of, and I get that. Also, considering how people might view the art world as an elitist place, I feel like you avoid a lot of that when you paint on the street. People can pass it and enjoy it in their own right and there’s no pretense to it. You have a few distinct projects you’ve been working -- the murals, these hand-cut stencil figure paintings, and also hand-cut layouts of city maps. How do you move from one project to the next? I’m in a constant nebulous free-flow with the things I want to make. I’ve always gone by this: If you put yourself in a sink or swim situation, you’re going to swim. So if you’re going to come up with an idea, just jump into it all the way. For Wallflower [his senior thesis film], I just had to cut out a bird silhouette one night, and all because of a 15 second thought, I decided to dedicate the next year of my life to this project. Eight hours a day, every day. Go all the way in on it and see how it goes. That’s how it happened with the maps I’ve done too. I could think about why I’m doing it, or I could just do it. So I started doing the maps, and I’ve been doing this floral stuff recently. I’m not sure why I’m doing it, but I have a lot of time to figure out why while I am. I really just get an idea, feel good about it for six seconds, and then jump in. For someone who has only been out of school for three years, your professional resume is quite impressive already. What advice would you have for college students and recent graduates? Effort. Hours. I think 98% of people in art school are pretty lazy, and I know that’s hard to hear because you work really hard to bust out your school work. But then what? You make your A in painting, and no one really gives a shit. You have to make your own work on the side. If you’re trying to make a living off of your art, that’s crazy. You’re trying to tell the universe that you deserve to live off of painting pictures. There’s a degree of ego that’s insane, to think you deserve to pull that off, so you have to put in an ungodly amount of effort as payment. Just be careful not to lose your mind in the process. NILSWESTERGARD.COM RVA MAGAZINE 30 | FALL 2017 41

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SUMMER OF HATE AS TEMPERATURES RISE, VIRGINIA WEATHERS AN ONSLAUGHT OF WHITE NATIONALIST UPRISINGS By Madelyne Ashworth | photos by jason lappa

“SHOOT! FIRE THE FIRST SHOT OF THE RACE WAR, BABY!” The man smiles as he shouts. He wears a blue button down, blue baseball helmet, and carries a Vanguard America-Texas flag. A small gasmask hangs from his neck as he stands behind the metal cordon inside Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, VA. Other young white men surround him, holding various shields and plastic face masks with similar symbols representing alt-right and white nationalist groups. They stand behind him, their faces contorted into a singular steely gaze of hatred, looking out at those on the other side of the fence. It’s misplaced. It’s scary. This is the scene as about 500 white supremacists gather around the Lee Monument under a guise of solidarity for Unite the Right.

the crowd. They cruise overhead, along with colored gas canisters. Some of the young white men swing bats and poles while others brandish pepper spray. “What happened?” “I never thought in 2017, as a 25-year-old, that I would have to experience anything like this,” she says. “[Trump] is the reason why they feel so emboldened to run these streets and hit people over the head with bats. We’re here peacefully to say that racism is wrong and that it’s not acceptable. I know this country was founded on slavery and the genocide of Native Americans, but this is not acceptable.”

She walks away with her friends, all equally shocked by what they’re witnessing. They melt into the crowd of counter-protesters, almost 2000 of them, shouting and holding signs high above their heads; thinking, hoping, and praying these messages will somehow make a difference for these angry young men. These men who have become dangerously radicalized. These men who, “Are you okay?” I ask her. She puts her hand on convinced of their victimhood, have adopted white my arm and guides me to the sidelines of the supremacy as a badge of pride and the mark of park, warning me of flying rocks and projectiles patriotism. that angry young white men are flinging into I see a young black woman standing on the side of the park, holding a cloth over her face. Her name is Reneigh Jenkins, an organizer with Refuse Fascism, a group that believes President Trump is a fascist. Her voice is hoarse from tear gas and cracks several times while she speaks.

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“JEWS WILL NOT REPLACE US!” THEY SHOUT. “BLOOD AND SOIL!” Darting through the crowd, I notice a large skirmish across the perimeter fences the police set up to keep white supremacists and counterprotesters from physically confronting one another. Those fences have failed. Police line the fence and stand in formation as if preparing for a military operation, while armored vehicles and the Virginia National Guard awaited orders from the sidelines. As I draw closer, I suddenly realized I can’t breathe well. Tear gas burns and stings my airways as if I were swallowing thumbtacks of fire. People run from the area. I see that same young man holding the Vanguard America-Texas flag ram it into the forehead of a counter-protester. Blood runs down his face like water. More tear gas. More screaming. As I struggle to breathe, a man pushes a water bottle into my hands and urges, “Put water on your shirt! You have to breathe through wet cloth!” I do as he says. When I turn back around to return the water, he’s gone. A medic treats the head wound on the young man. Police stand motionless.

and shouted that the white race is under attack in front of several African American police officers protecting them from about 1000 counterprotesters. They were an obsolete caricature of what they once represented. Klan members no longer hold clout or inspire fear; they’ve become old, tired bigots in clown hats. The torch wielders, the re-invented skinheads, the young, modern Nazis and neo-Confederates are now the dangerous ones–born-again white nationalists who have inherited a false sense of displacement, who cling to outmoded hate and fling it like children playing with fireworks. The road to the radical, alt-right violence as witnessed in Charlottesville begins with the poor white working class of America, a demographic of American life that many educated, progressive Americans won’t ever encounter and rarely think about. They occupy small town dive bars and rural landscapes, and are often swept under the rug as an unsavory part of American reality–people who never seem to matter until election time.

Charlottesville is a small Southern city in Central Virginia, situated at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Historic Downtown Mall, stretching about a half mile, is its entire metropolitan area. The University of Virginia is nestled just to the west of the mall, giving Charlottesville some economic stimulation. The remainder of the city is really a town, in all its suburban, quiet glory. It’s the perfect place to raise your children, or to settle down once you’ve retired.

They are the people who have been defeated by the system, people who were raised in good Christian families who were taught to love God and Country unconditionally, people who are undereducated and have no idea they have as great a right to condemn the system as anyone else. They are victims of the same politics we all are, yet they have accepted their position in life as fate. A fate which, with the advent of the internet, younger generations have taken into their own hands, opening a chasm from white It’s also a place that’s steeped in history. People nationalism may emerge. living outside of Charlottesville’s city center haven’t quite caught up, in that they still hold Later, in the home of Jason Lappa, a local fast to old-fashioned, Southern perceptions. It’s Charlottesville photographer, my reporting team an odd collision of old and new, conservative and I sit and wait as Lappa paces through the and liberal, intolerant and forgiving. Not exactly house, receiving call after call. Two of his friends the place you’d go looking for a domestic terror have joined us in our reporting hideout, escaping attack... but they got one. the heat and madness of what Charlottesville has become. We munch on chips with our faces Of the several white nationalist rallies which glued to Twitter, watching as more pictures and occurred this past summer, Unite the Right on videos of the attack surface. Damani Harrison, a August 12 was the most violent. One of the white black Charlottesville resident, sits on the couch in disbelief. supremacists in attendance that day committed a domestic terror attack when he got in his car, “Did you see it happen?” I ask. sped down 4th Street, and drove into a group of counter-protesters, injuring 20 people and killing one woman, Heather Heyer. “No,” he replies. “I was there right after it happened. It was crazy.” He leaned back in the Around Charlottesville, people scrambled to call cool house, watching Facebook friend requests friends and loved ones, hoping everyone was safe. pile up as a result of using Facebook Live during the event. “Did you see what Trump said about it?” By comparison, the Ku Klux Klan rally in Charlottesville earlier in the summer was almost laughable. Around 50 old white men with “No,” I say. We sit and listen together. Harrison antiquated racist ideas and costumes walked chuckles from his seat as Trump states that “both into Justice Park waving Confederate flags to sides” were responsible for the violence. protest the removal of the Stonewall Jackson “We didn’t kill anyone.” monument. They made racial slurs about Jews 46

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The night before August 12, hundreds of torchwielding white supremacists marched through the UVA grounds to the Thomas Jefferson memorial, encircling the statue as their tiki torches lit the dark lawn, resembling Nazi rallies of the past.

one percent increase in overall internet access between 2012 and 2016, meaning the change has occurred within the marketing and branding of white supremacy, not due to increased internet accessibility.

“The torches are to commemorate the fallen dead of our European brothers and sisters-like Robert E. Lee, like Thomas Jefferson, like George Washington--who are under attack by these leftist cultural Marxists, who hate white people, who hate white people’s history, and want to blame them for things that happen in the past that every race on Earth did,” said Jason Kessler, a Unite the Right organizer, alt-right blogger, and conservative internet personality. “Right now we are in a civil rights struggle to save white people from ethnic cleansing, which is happening across the Western world.”

According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the unemployment rate for Americans under 25 is over twice the overall rate, coming in at a whopping 10.5 percent. Meanwhile, according to a study by the Urban Institute, over one-fourth of college graduates are overqualified for their jobs; as economic weakness from the 2008 recession lingers, finding a job at all continues to be a struggle. Middle class college students who come from a line of middle class, hard working family members are now unable to find jobs that fit the career for which they went to school.

Kessler posted a video of himself at this event on his blog, “Real News with Jason Kessler,” in which he continues a narrative of white genocide, one seemingly endorsed by President Trump, and theorizes that white people are being “torn down and replaced” through current immigration policies. Rhetoric like his has spread across the far reaches of the internet through message forums like 4chan and Stormfront. It spreads to conservative news sites like Breitbart, pushing a seductive yet inaccurate account of white struggle, what it means, and how it can be helped. This internet recruitment effort has gained so much momentum, it outpaces that of the Islamic State (IS). A study conducted by George Washington University shows that expansion within white nationalist movements on Twitter has grown over 600 percent since 2012, grossly outperforming similar growth within IS groups on all social media platforms. According to a Pew Research study, there has only been a 48

He wears a blue baseball helmet. It’s the same young man with the flagpole, but now his face is covered with tear gas neutralizer. The gas didn’t seem to slow him down. He whips his Vanguard flag into the faces of the crowd, then retreats into the group. He couldn’t be older than 25.

In the last week of September, FBI Chief Christopher Wray told Congress that the FBI has about 1,000 open investigations into potential domestic terrorists, largely people and groups connected to white nationalism and extremist white supremacy. This number is exactly on par with open investigations into IS. The liberal narrative around those recruited by IS is that they are scorned by circumstance, left with no prospects, and joining what is essentially the largest gang in the Middle East sounds better than the alternative. Obviously this comparison Finishing his UVA degree in 2009, at the height is hyperbolic when juxtaposed to a bunch of of the recession, Kessler comes from this group privileged American white boys, but the process of children who grew up in a comfortable lifestyle, engaged in by these groups is the same: take only to discover they cannot find jobs to sustain someone who hates their life, fill them with rage, that lifestyle after graduation. As Kessler and put them in a group of people just like them, and other underemployed, disillusioned white college give them someone to blame it on. grads watch the middle class disappear, wellspoken white internet personalities directly And I wasn’t surprised to see it. address their problems: it’s because of race, they say. The non-whites are taking everything from you. Being in the middle of things at Unite The Right For these young white men, it’s an easy answer. was shocking, but knowing that it happened And too many of them are settling for it. wasn’t. This exit from the shadows doesn’t mean radicalized neo-Nazis weren’t there in droves As the hours tick on during the Unite the before August 12, 2017. They might not have Right rally, I come face to face with a group of been as vocal or as certain of their beliefs before white supremacists marching down the street being validated by a demagogic president, but outside Emancipation Park, shields barred as they were there. Confederate statues are the if ready for combat. They stare straight ahead, Archduke Ferdinand of the United States–a small occasionally shouting back at the hundreds of excuse triggering a much larger battle. counter-protesters lining their pathway. One man is particularly enthusiastic, as he jumps and shouts, “Fuck you!” RVA MAGAZINE RVA MAGAZINE3024| |FALL SPRING2017 2016

“So what are your thoughts on the Qur’an?” We stand on the East End of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It’s September 16. My team and I have arrived expecting tension and skirmishes between opposing political groups. Instead, we have found… a conversation. A young black man wearing an ‘American Guard North Carolina’ t-shirt faces a white woman in her clergy uniform. She holds her phone as she streams their conversation to a Facebook live feed, an outsider looking in. “I read it 20 years ago, I’m not claiming to remember everything,” she replies as three other young men stand in a circle with the two debaters, occasionally weighing in on the conversation. “I’m not Christian, but I can surmise that the Old Testament was violent. Can you surmise that the Qur’an is violent?”

“Trump, patriotism, and America” gather in small numbers, decked out in red white and blue. They sit together as guests like Florida gubernatorial candidate Bruce Nathan speak to a passionate crowd. Various counter-protesters hover at the outskirts of the gathering, including this member of the clergy, occasionally venturing into the crowd to make their presence known. These protesters are not thrown out, pushed away, or attacked. A group of Black Lives Matter protesters walking through are even invited on stage for a couple of minutes to deliver their platform. Despite certain stereotypes, these Trump supporters stand by their claim to support and protect free speech, and ensure that anyone who walked through their gathering has a chance to speak their mind. Unassociated with any white supremacist groups, their death grip on traditionalist American values like liberty and patriotism has actually translated itself into something we didn’t quite expect: tolerance.

“As violent as the Bible.” No one screams, no one is injured, no one dies. Their conversation goes on so long, people begin to tire of it, leaving the small circle entirely. On this late summer afternoon, the Washington Monument stands proudly as supporters of

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The conversation continues. And summer turns to fall.

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GOOD EATSRVA MUNCHIES. Follow us @RVAmag TOP ROW: Sheppard street tavern, little saint, lady nawlins 2nd row: beauvine burger concept, the graduate, nate's bagels 3rd row: the camel 4th row: kuba kuba & kabana GOOD EATS RVA -- tag us @RVAmag

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GOODEATSNEWS LUNCHEONETTE OWNER BRINGS WAFFLE-THEMED JOINT TO DOWNTOWN

If you work near the Capitol and smell the alluring aroma of batter, sugar, and toasty goodness, you can thank Brad Barzoloski for that. The restaurateur, who owns both Luncheonette spots, opened a new venture downtown on East Main Street at the beginning of September and it only serves one dish: waffles. You can walk into Capitol Waffle Shop any time of day through the week and build your own waffle with a variety of toppings and flavors for only $4. “I wanted to open up a specialty food shop and I’d been kinda looking around for a building and the Financial District doesn’t seem to have much specialty food or anything that’s really different so that’s what I decided on,” Barzoloski explained. The space has been home to Sugar Shack, a coffee shop, and a few others, but remained vacant for the last year. Every time Barzoloski would pass it, it would get his gears turning. “I know other businesses haven’t been successful in that building, but I kind of like trying something different,” he reasoned. Besides offering something different to the movers and shakers downtown, Barzoloski said he wanted to offer something to patrons that his other restaurants didn’t. “The only thing breakfast wise that we don’t serve there is waffles, and people always ask about waffles. That location is actually very small, it’s already hard to keep the product we do have in available at all times so rather than putting something else in there, I literally just decided to open up a whole separate shop.” And for those who’ve yet to venture into Capitol Waffle Shop, it’s not just your run of the mill place selling waffles slathered with butter and syrup. Of course, you can get those toppings, but Barzoloski wanted to shake it up a little, so the shop sells sweet and savory waffles as well as a combination of the two. “There’s plenty of things you can do with waffles, not only can you do different toppings, but you can do different batters, rosemary waffles, a pretzel waffle, a red velvet waffle, pineapple upside down…,” he listed. The shop sells savory toppings as ham, turkey, chorizo, chili, and gravy, to fruit, and on the sweeter side, Capitol Waffle offers everything from Oreos, to M&Ms, Sour Patch Kids, and Caramel. And the options don’t stop there. “We have Ruben waffles, club waffles, a Coney dog waffle, waffles topped with sausage gravy and Doritos,” he listed. “We let people get creative and we also get creative ourselves.” His shop boasts a regular menu of 20 waffles and the plan is to expand to 40 soon. In addition to waffles, Capitol Waffle Shop offers 10 OF RVA 2005-2015 2005-2015 10YEARS YEARS OFMAGAZINE RVA MAGAZINE

Mathews has pop ups at Byrd House Farmers Market and Randolph Community Center on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays at Roaring homemade dessert and local coffee blends from Pines in Church Hill, and The Veil Brewing Co. the second and fourth Fridays of every month, Black Hand, Ironclad and Rostovs. as well as Union Market and Outpost. “When The Luncheonette owner, which has locations we serve sandwiches, we serve about 40 to 50 in Shockoe Bottom and Northside, has never customers and [at] the Farmers Market, we usually sell about 100 bagels,“ he said. dabbled in waffles before, but so far the concept seems to have taken off. “This is a concept I really enjoy and the staff really enjoys and I plan Nate’s Bagel shop will be open seven days a to move forward with it, more of these specialty week with seating for about 12, but mostly serve as a takeout place. All the bagels are shops in other areas,” he said. hand-rolled, kettle-boiled, and then baked on And if the above isn’t enough for you foodies stone, and the menu will consist of 10 staple out there, Barzoloski is already churning out bagel flavors, though they will also be mixing another idea which he plans to unveil soon. it up with unique recipes. “We’ll always have Ice cream made by an employee from his really awesome creative bagels you’ve probably Northside Luncheonette spot who is opening never had before rotating out,” he remarked. their own ice cream shop, will soon show up “We’re going to have a really good the bird on the menu. “Waffles topped with ice cream seed bagel. It’s got chia, sunflower, poppy, and and then whatever toppings people want. We’re a little bit of toasted coconut. Seasonally, we’ll looking to roll out a whole dessert thing too for have a pumpkin spice bagel with pumpkin seeds on it. We’ve got a gingerbread bagel we do at night-time,” he said. Christmas.” BY AMY DAVID

The shop is open Monday through Friday from 9 to 5 pm, but the owner said he plans to expand In addition to bagels, the shop will have eight cream cheeses including scallion, olive, plain, to weened hours soon. and veggie, along with breakfast sandwiches and lunch options that include lox, white fish FACEBOOK.COM/CAPITOLWAFFLESHOP salad, and pastrami. Also available is coffee Blanchard’s as well as out of town rotating BAGEL SHOP TO RISE IN THE from blends, Nitro cold brew, Kombucha, and a line of house-made sodas. Mathews even said he FAN THIS WINTER has plans to work with a local brewery to sell a beer-boiled bagel. You’ve seen them at farmers markets. You’ve seen them at Union Market and Roaring Pines. You’ve probably even ordered some online. If All of the bagels will be vegan except for the you’re super into them, you’ve probably become jalapeno cheddar, and its extended vegan a member of the club. menu includes vegan cream cheese made with fermented cashews as well as vegan Well, for those of you who haven’t tasted Nate’s meats, vegan chicken soup, and vegan lox Bagels, you’re in for a treat. The first bagel according to Mathews. “We’re going to have subscription service and pop up shop to launch a good vegan sausage and good vegan bacon. in Richmond will have a home of its own by We’re really looking to serve the vegan crowd next year. for sure... and we want to give people the option of treating their body well if that’s Nate Mathews, who launched his bagel startup how they feel.” in May 2016, has been looking for a place to And while he took inspiration from New York settle into from the very beginning. bagel shops and made connections with “Early on, we decided we wanted to have a entrepreneurs in big city, make no mistake, place,” Matthews explained. “That was always Mathews stressed these aren’t the same as the goal. We really did want it to be in the Fan. It you would find in The Big Apple. “We’re not a can be hard to find good real estate in the city.” replicating what is done in New York,” he stated. “This is a Richmond bagel.” He landed a former longtime appliance repair shop, at 19 S. Allen Avenue, just recently after Mathews said he plans to offer discounts to relentlessly scouting out locations in the area. VCU students, those who bike to the shop, and “It was a lot of me spending two hours in my car local musicians. If you are all three, do you get triple discount? That remains to be seen. driving around the city meeting with realtors. I wanted it to be in the city, but not downtown; I wanted to serve our city folks. It’s not out in Once the shop gets up and running, the plan the suburbs. I really think this location can feel is to expand with a catering service offering like it’s been there for a long time.” sandwich platters for parties and events. Online ordering for pickup and delivery will still be an And while the subscription service is no longer option, but expect to see less of the pop-ups once Mathews opens his shop. available, people can still pre-order bagels through the website and most of the business now comes through regular pop ups around Look for Nate’s Bagels soft opening sometime town serving breakfast sandwiches and bagels in the winter and an official opening sometime in large quantities. “We have three throughout in the spring. the week where you can buy bagels in bulk,” NATESBAGELSRVA.COM he detailed. 53

And so that’s what he did. He went to work at luxury resort The Greenbrier in West Virginia, cooking 20 hours a day alongside 150 chefs to hone his craft. “You would work service, and then you would have to go into cooking competitions,” he recounted.

MIKE LEDESMA: THE MYSTERY CHEF BEHIND A FEW OF RVA’S MOST SUCCESSFUL RESTAURANTS He may have managed to fly under the radar in Richmond’s culinary scene, but Chef Mike Ledesma’s resume is quite impressive. With 16 years in the industry, the chef has worked his way up through tough apprenticeships and fine dining, to developing menus for six restaurants in the Richmond Restaurant Group. Now, he’s multi-tasking at the helm of Kabana Rooftop, hosting pop-up dinners at Belle & James, and will soon open his own venture. RVA Magazine recently caught up with the busy, but laid back and sweet chef to get his back story and find out why he decided to make Richmond home. “I thought I could have a career as a cook in Richmond. I didn’t know the direction it was going to be,” he began. The chef has lived and worked all over. Born in Brooklyn, Ledesma grew up in Annapolis and worked in finance in Baltimore for six years. Around 2000, he moved to Hawaii to contemplate his next move. He worked for the Bank Of Hawaii and Morgan Stanley before growing tired of the corporate grind and daily 9 to 5. Like so many other late starts, he decided it was time for a change, and entered an entirely different field. “I chose being a chef because growing up in Annapolis, I used to work as a deckhand and that was a lot of learning how to sail, how to cook and entertain, bartend,” he remembered. “So I kind of drew upon that as a reference point.” In 2001, he enrolled in culinary school at the University Of Hawaii Kapi’olani Community College. After working with restaurant veterans Roy Yamaguchi and Alan Wong in Hawaii, the two encouraged Ledesma to explore other locations if he wanted to branch out on his own. “That was their push for chefs to get more experience,” he explained. “There was actually a lot of chefs pushing me to learn more by going to these crazy apprenticeship programs.”

“I find that developing menus for an old restaurant, you have to kind of cherry pick, change out the dated ones,” he said of his process. “Also, realizing who you have on staff, you don’t want to lose your cooks if you’re trying to execute something too difficult. So, write a menu they can replicate and also do it consistently and take pride into it. I Similar to Food Network’s “Chopped”, the work with the cooks and figure out their style and apprenticeship program would give chefs mystery go from there.” baskets and ask them to make meals from the ingredients. “Our judging would start at 5 in the After making his mark with RRG, Ledesma was morning so we’d work all through the night,” he itching to get his hands on his next project. An detailed. “It’s like the military. They would put opportunity came up with owner Kunal Shah at sweetbreads and all kinds of internal organs in Kabana Rooftop and he jumped at the chance. it, and it would share [about] you how much you “We started doing pop-ups downstairs at Belle don’t know about the ingredients, so that just & James,” he said. Shah and Ledesma created made you study more and open[ed] your eyes “Passport Pop-Ups” where the food focuses on to different cooking techniques.” different ingredients, recipes, and traditional cuisines from around the world. To date, they’ve The grueling program paid off because it prepared sold out the a la carte pop-ups for the Philippines, him for the grind and the effort it would take Spain, and Cuba. for his career. “I got lucky by choosing the right restaurants and the right chefs to work under,” he Seeing his potential, his creative culinary skills, said of the experience. “[It] just kind of propelled and the clientele he was attracting, Shah brought me to, ‘What am I going to do? What kind of chef Ledesma on in July as head chef at Kabana Rooftop am I going to be?’ They kind of prepare you for to revamp the menu. “It was all small plates and I that. You have to have that fire and that drive feel like for this view, you spend your time dining though.” and enjoying it,” he pondered. “I think multiple courses you can take the menu and choose your After the Greenbrier, he worked stints at the adventure sort of. Kabana is very contemporary. Baltimore Country Club, The Belmont and the I just try to match the cuisine with where we are.” Woodberry Kitchen, sometimes as a sous chef, before finally before deciding it was time to make In addition to running Kabana’s kitchen and his next move. “I just got tired,” he reasoned. “I creating menus for these pop-ups, this mad man wanted a change of pace. After being in Maryland, is also getting ready to open his own restaurant I didn’t want to cook there anymore I was kind of in Scott’s Addition in the former Joy Gardens feeling unmotivated so I drove a 200 circle around restaurant space. “[I’m] just trying to break out Maryland and applied to Northern Virginia, DC, and take all these influences that I have and the fun places that I’ve cooked and put it in one place,” he Delaware, and all these different states.” described. “This is like a 16-year process of opening Richmond Restaurant Group found Ledesma restaurants for other people and now I’m taking on Craigslist, which would build and grow his all this information and executing it.” reputation in the foodie-obsessed city more than he predicted. Coming on as Corporate Executive He couldn’t give any specifics on the name, but said Chef, Ledesma opened the second Hard Shell it would be a reflection of the cuisine, which he could location in the Bellgrade Shopping Center in only tell us would be “electric, but approachable” Midlothian, and from there, he went to work as with an homage to Joy Gardens because of its a chef at Max’s On Broad, focusing on French and 60-year history. The rustic/industrial restaurant Belgian gastropub fare, followed by the relaunch is slated to open sometime in January or February. of Patina Restaurant and Bar in 2014. For aspiring chefs, Ledesma has some pretty “Max’s was fun to open, super busy, and then I straight forward advice. chose to go to the West End and be obscure for a bit and just cook,” he said of the move to Patina. “I “Have a lot of passion, it’s not about the money, just wanted to cook again. There’s no guidelines just do your own thing and stick to what you believe in,” he instructed. “There are no short cuts to just cook food and have fun.” success. It’s all hard work and blood, sweat, and Yearning to come back to the city, the chef joined tears. Always challenge yourself. To be a successful RRG again in 2015. “I wanted to try to make a chef, you have to have a great team so my goal is difference and figured I could do it with multiple to train all these cooks to be sous chefs and then restaurants,” he thought. And the group, which be chefs to own their own restaurants, if they owns East Coast Provisions, The Daily Kitchen want, and then eat at their restaurants and really & Bar, Pearl Raw Bar, and The Hill Café, gave feel proud.” Ledesma free reign for the most part to develop Ledesma’s pop-ups run Friday and Saturday nights. menus for each place for two years. With a strong background in Asian foods, Ledesma said he tends to gravitate towards that, but also his time spent in West Virginia creeps into his style when creating dishes. When it comes to a menu already in place however, the chef has his methods.

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10 YEARS OF RVA MAGAZINE 2005-2015

RVA ontap BREWS. Follow us @RVAmag top row: champion brewing company & legend breweing company 2nd row: twisted ales & hardywood park craft brewery 3rd row: VÃ¤sen 4th row: the veil bottom: the answer brew pub GOOD EATS RVA -- tag us @RVAmag

RVA MAGAZINE RVA MAGAZINE30 24 || FALL SPRING2017 2016

RVAONTAPNEWS VÄSEN: A Swedish word that roughly translates to “inner essence” or “animal spirit.” Also, a new brewery in the quickly developing Scott’s Addition area, just down the street from The Veil Brewing Co. and Ardent Craft Ales. So why the name, and the giant psychedelic reindeer head painted on the wall? Väsen president Joey Darragh and head brewer Tony Giordano, cousins, tracked their ancestry to Sweden and discovered that their ancestors were reindeer herders. Combining that inspiration with an appreciation for the outdoors and adventure -- Tony and co-founder Nathan Winters lived in Colorado at one point -- makes for a unique aesthetic, but it also informs the beer that Väsen produces. Winters heads up the marketing and environmental branches of Väsen; he seeks to make the brewery as sustainable and environmentally conscious as possible. The brewery is largely focused on yeast-forward styles like saisons and various sour ales, and as such, has dedicated part of the company to harvesting and researching local wild yeast strains, yet another aspect of the company that is intertwined with the natural world. Co-founder Jon Warner is the Head Brewery Scientist, and does all of the microbiological research. With his expertise, the brewery is working towards building their own house yeast strain, and hopes to be able to package and make available to other brewers a variety of local yeasts. They also plan to be fully transparent in terms of what goes on behind the scenes of beer production via having information available to public regarding which beer is in which tank, and at what stage of the process any beer is in at any given time. That all sounds like a lot for a young brewery to undertake, but they seem more than capable -- Warner holds a PhD, Winters used to do environmental work for Patagonia, and Darragh worked at Tesla early on. The brewery has also been in planning for two and a half years, with lots of pilot batches and experimentation going on in that time period. A recent visit revealed that the brewery had a variety of farmhouse ales on draft (six in total), a gose, a vanilla dubbel, a Belgian Wit, and even a sour stout on draft. Some of those beers are the products of early experimentation, and beers like Nate’s Wheat will likely be mainstays. In terms of beers that brewery plans to put out in the future, a Belgian-style Quadrupel Ale, a barleywine, and a chocolate wheat beer are planned for this winter. Further out, in about a year, more sours will be available -- the production schedule for many traditional Belgian-style sours is fairly long-term, with a great deal of time needing to be devoted to the aging of and, in some cases, the blending of multiple beers. Väsen hopes to have 750 milliliter bottles of sours available in about a years time. Currently, the brewery is draft only, but Winters noted that they plan to install a canning line in about four to five months. According to him, the neighborhood has been kind to Väsen so far, and with more food options popping up in Scott’s Addition soon, he sees things only getting busier in the coming months. 10 10YEARS YEARS OF RVA OFMAGAZINE RVA MAGAZINE 2005-2015 2005-2015

BY CODY ENDRES

TWISTED ALES Legend is no longer the only brewery in Manchester. Twisted Ales opened up their doors in June, and so far, it seems the reception has been rather warm. The brewery is located in a charming, historic taproom, a building built around the turn of the century. While the brewery is still fairly new, and as such mainly offers draft pours, a couple of recent rounds of canning of their New England-style IPA Industrial Rev have proven successful. In addition to that beer, at time of writing, the brewery has several other varieties of IPA available, as well as a hefeweizen, a saison, and an English Brown Ale made with espresso. Besides beer, Twisted also offers board games like giant Jenga, trivia night, and live music. The brewery is family-owned and communityminded; they support urban renewal, and they support causes such as FeedMore, James River Conservation, Amy Black’s Pink Ink Fund, and Richmond’s Daily Planet. Although fresh on the scene, Twisted Ales seems to be fitting right in to Richmond’s beer scene, and more good things can be expected of them in the future.

imperial version of Hornswoggler, conditioned on Heaven Hill bourbon barrels for fourteen months. It’s sure to be a decadent treat, and will also be available in 500 milliliter bottles. Additionally, Double Espresso Hornswoggler and Blackivy will be available in The Veil’s usual format of sixteen ounce can four packs. Also in Scott’s Addition -- which now boasts two cider makers, one meadery, five breweries, and one distillery, making it THE up-and-coming neighborhood for brew lovers in the know -- the Three Notch’d RVA Collab House has released Reaper’s Red, a low-alcohol red IPA brewed in collaboration with Creepy Hollow Scream Park. The ale is mild enough to continuously sessioned, and the sweeter malt character paired with piney, citrusy Centennial and Cascade hops calls to mind classic red IPAs, but with virtually no detectable alcohol. October saw the release of HARDYWOOD PARK CRAFT BREWERY’s Sixth Anniversary Stout, a coffee and coconut flavored imperial milk stout bourbon-barrel-aged for one year. Later that same month, Hoax was unleashed upon the world. Hardywood normally has Trickery, their imperial milk stout Cassowary aged in apple brandy barrels, available around this time of year, but in 2017, Hoax took its place. While Halloween is more about tricks and treats, a hoax will do. Instead of the apple brandy barrels used with Trickery, grape brandy barrels were used to make Hoax, imparting some different characteristics upon Cassowary, with notes of oak, grape jam, fresh plum, and dried date. On November 12th, Hardywood will hold their Fall Harvest Festival, a family-friendly event with carnival games, pumpkin painting and face painting starting at noon, as well as live music from two to five.

A little ways back in our spring issue, we first featured CHAMPION BREWING COMPANY’s Richmond location, which had not yet opened its doors at the time. Champion RVA has now been open for several months, and has rolled out some really fun additions to their taproom. While the kitchen mentioned in issue twenty-eight may or may not still be planned, the brewery has installed bar-height “viking tables” for taproom patrons, as well as a wall of pinball machines with varying themes, such as Game of Thrones and Metallica. Additionally, the brewery has begun hosting free shows every Thursday, so far featuring all local acts: The Milkstains, Fat Spirit, Dazeases, Gull, and many others have played so far. Most interestingly, brewing at Champion finally began in September. So far, a Biere de Garde and a Patersbier-inspired Belgian Pale Ale have been produced on the LEGEND BREWING COMPANY accompanied the Richmond brewery’s system, and more interesting Manchester Harvest Festival on October 28th with the release of a fall seasonal, dubbed “Ember brews are sure to come. Ale.” Details on this one were also unavailable at Fall is upon us, and while it hasn’t quite cooled down press time, but one might imagine it to be some at the time of writing, the leaves are changing, sort of twist on an amber ale. What we do know and pumpkin beers are appearing on the shelves. is that Legend’s third Urban Legend release of the While pumpkin ales are not for everyone, there year, The Witch of Oak Hill Road, also made its are plenty of other seasonal beverages out there debut in October. The urban legend that it’s tied to was actually spawned not in Richmond, but to appreciate. in Danville, Virginia. On a hill known as “Gravity THE VEIL will be putting out their imperial oyster Hill,” it is said that if one is to leave their car in stout Unloved sometime in October, with an neutral at the intersection of Oak Hill and Berry accompanying oyster roast, courtesy of Northern Hill, it will roll backwards up the hill towards Oak Neck Oysters. The brewery will open early (at Hill cemetery, gaining speed as it does. Seems noon) on November 24th for a dark beer-themed like a risky proposition -- you should probably Black Friday event, Dark Daze. They will have ten just stick with this high gravity ale. November plus dark beers available, which so far includes ninth sees the release of Legend’s Lebkuchen. It’s bourbon barrel-aged imperial chocolate milk an American Brown Ale inspired by the German stout Whangdoodle, espresso bean-conditioned dish of the same name, a savory spice cake that robust chocolate milk stout Double Espresso is traditionally made during the holiday season. Hornswoggler, black double IPA blackivy, their Brown sugar, nutmeg, molasses, and cinnamon are anniversary imperial stout Sleeping Forever, plus included in the beer, making for a nice seasonal Vanilla Sleeping Forever, and bourbon barrel- beverage for those who like their beer roasty, warming, and a little sweet. aged 2016 Sleeping Forever. Whangdoodle is the

Could you give me a day in the life of the Director of Operations for Stone?

JEFF MARTIN, DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS AT STONE BREWING COMPANY IN RICHMOND Ever since it was announced back in 2014, Richmond craft beer fans have been excited for Stone’s expansion into the river city, and for good reason. Stone Brewing Company has been producing some of the most iconic craft beers in America since the mid-90s, such as Stone IPA, Stone Pale Ale, and Arrogant Bastard Ale, perhaps the most enduring example of the American Strong Ale. While Stone Richmond certainly produces plenty of their mainstays, there’s plenty of other cool stuff coming out of the brewery, like Stone’s Throw Down, the festival they recently held on Brown’s Island, and collaborations such as the one recently made with Petersburg brewery Trapezium. While Stone is obviously not native to Virginia, and is one of the largest craft breweries in the country, they are also publicly steadfast against selling to a larger brewery and maintain a dogged support of all things craft. As such, the brewery has released quite a few collaborations with local breweries, and their presence is certainly felt on store shelves, but not to an extent that pushes out the smaller Richmond breweries. To learn more about Stone’s unique presence in Richmond, and what they have planned for the future, I recently spoke to Jeff Martin, Director of Operations and Interim Quality Assurance Manager for Stone Richmond. He had quite a lot to say about how the brewery maintains quality and freshness, and what it’s been like acclimating to Richmond’s beer scene.

again, it’s a series of meeting and conferences, and all that kind of fun stuff. Of course at the end of the day, the fun part is, we can go down and I start in the morning -- I get here pretty early, have a shift or so, and enjoy the product. around seven o’clock. At that point, we’re getting ready for day shift production. We don’t run shifts How do you feel you’ve been received by overnight, so we start all our production on day Richmond’s beer-drinking public? What kind of shift. Now, we might already be brewing and impact do you think Stone has had on Richmond’s mashing in on our brewing side. As far as our beer scene? packaging line, we tend to be getting ready to run right around seven o’clock, so I’ll take a walk That’s a good question. I would call us kind of around and see how things are going. At 8:30 “subtly here.” We don’t necessarily advertise out. we have a daily production meeting, so all the If you’ve been by our brewery, you notice there’s highlights are covered that will happen during no signs. That’s just the way our philosophy is: the day, for example: what our brew schedule We’re here, but we kind of want be more that is like, what our fermentation schedule is like, natural state, and that’s kind of the way it is where we are harvesting yeast, filtration, and with the Richmond scene. We’re a national finally we get into details of packaging, any key brand, we now distribute in all fifty states, issues that have come up. Maintenance, what are and we understand that we also have a lot of the key items that will be looked at or worked on neighbors here that we have good relationships that day, quality assurance. with. There’re organically grown breweries in Richmond, and this is their birth-ground, and I’m currently the interim quality assurance this is where they rely on, their bread and butter. manager. I’m transitioning from quality assurance We like to be present as much as possible. We over to the director’s position. We are currently know we are, from a retail standpoint, on premise. looking to fill the position, so I will handle the That’s where it is competitive and tricky in this quality assurance. You know, what’s happening area. We know there’s a number of local craft during the day, which includes sensory. We have brewers. We know everybody wants to vie for a taste panel called a brewmaster taste panel, tap handles. We do our best to get our product that meets and we do all our fermenter checks out there, but we’re not overly pushy. It think it around nine o’clock. Of course I participate on that was described by [Executive Chairman] Greg with some of our key managers, along with our Koch at one point like, “We’re all running a race, sensory coordinator in quality assurance. So we’ll but if somebody kind of stumbles, we like to just do a taste panel and check out where our brands give them a hand and help them up. We want our are in fermentation, give ‘em a taste, see if they beers out there, and everybody else does, but we meet profile at that point, which is obviously key. know we also have a neighborhood that we’re in.” We don’t really do Unitank, but it’s a process of fermentation and filtration into bright beers, so You don’t want to be seen as an invading species of sorts. key pieces are where they are in fermentation. You know, “Has it been dry-hopped?” We’ll taste it after it’s been dry-hopped, recirculated one time, Yeah, there’s also a cutthroat method, a then maybe recirculated a second time. Then competitiveness that we don’t agree with. We from there we chill, then we taste post-chill. So, want to be the neighbors here, and we want to wherever the fermenters are at that point, we’ll be good neighbors, and I think that our beers give ‘em a taste and see if they’re meeting profile. are pretty well-represented in a lot of areas of We use a fairly disciplined sensory methodology Richmond. We have a lot of fans in Richmond, to do that. and I think that was also apparent when we had our recent Stone Throw Down event and Then, I have a series of meetings -- my schedule musical festival. It was super well-intended. We is really booked tight with meetings generally certainly had our selection of beers available at every day, whether they’re meetings that involve that festival, but we also had the opportunity for local issues, or we have WebX meetings with our Richmond brewers to have their beers available headquarters in Escondido. Then, we also have at that event. I think that everybody enjoyed an eleven o’clock taste panel where Mondays themselves, and enjoyed the products as well and Wednesdays, again we have our key taste at that festival. members that are part of our brewmaster panel. We typically do studies, we’re doing freshness For the rest of our interview with Jeff Martin, studies, we’re tasting beer in the bright tank, including thoughts on the shift away from extreme and then package, and then tasting these special hop characters, head over to RVAMAG.com. releases, so again we make sure the beer meets profile and is true to brand. Tuesday, Thursday, FACEBOOK.COM/STONEBREWINGRICHMOND and Friday we have taste panels as well, but then we invite what we call our “tank farm,” which is folks throughout the brewery that have undergone sensory training, they get an opportunity to also taste beer at various parts of the process, typically finished or bright beer, and the packaged. Then WRITTEN RVA MAGAZINE BY CODY 24 | SPRING ENDERS 2016

10 YEARS 10 YEARS OF RVA OFMAGAZINE RVA MAGAZINE 2005-2015 2005-2015

MASS APPEAL FIRE emoji. Follow us @RVAmag top row: shockoe atelier by @corymahlke, RUMORS, city baby 2nd row: KULTURE, yesterday's heroes, MONUMENT 3rd row: the good wear blog, sun & selene 4th row: utmost, jackson & james mass appeal RVA -- tag us @RVAmag

RVA MAGAZINE RVA MAGAZINE3024|| FALL SPRING2017 2016

MASSAPPEALNEWS THE GOOD WEAR BLOG LAUNCHES TO HIGHLIGHT RICHMOND’S SUSTAINABLE FASHION

“I think a lot of parts of the ethical fashion movement can be compared to the food movement that started years ago,” remarked Kelly LaFerriere, the writer behind The Good Wear blog. Like we might examine the label of our meat and produce, LaFerriere pushes her followers to do the same with their clothing and accessories. “Everyone in Richmond wants to do better for the world in some way and that’s why I think some of these ideals fit well with the city,” she stated. On her newly launched blog, The Good Wear, LaFerriere has highlighted local shops including Verdalina and Love This who carry ethically made and environmentally friendly clothing, accessories and housewares. She’s also featured Liberatus Jewelry whose designer, Ginny Rush, frequently uses ethically sourced metals and environmentally conscious processes. LaFerriere also mentioned Shopping consignment is another great way to shop consciously. “Shopping local has risen as something that’s important to do and we’re now all doing it in Richmond as a way of life,” LaFerriere explained. “These brands raise awareness because they are local and they also try to promote the global scale of the business while they do it.” LaFerriere will collaborate with Love This to host another Fashion Revolution Week in Richmond in 2018, which will bring in speakers, presentations, and events to raise awareness. On The Good Wear, LaFerriere also highlights national and international brands who sell ethically sourced and made goods. Travel guides will also highlight places to shop in cities around the world. In a sea of bloggers who endlessly feature big box stores, LaFerriere’s creative stamp on the platform is one to pay attention to. “I simply want to create better content that tells the story of this movement and how we can all make it our own,” she reasoned. THEGOODWEAR.COM

BY MEGAN WILSON

BRITTANNY CHANEL REBRANDS AS SUN & SELENE JEWELRY

JACKSON & JAMES OPENS FIRST MEN’S BOUTIQUE IN SCOTT’S ADDITION

Geometric minimalism, hammered metals, natural stones, and zodiac inspired designs comprise the shapes and textures of Brittanny Chanel DeRaffele’s jewelry brand Sun & Selene. Under a new name and vision, Sun & Selene has morphed into the goddess DeRaffele always thought it could be.

Richmond’s fashion sense is changing, especially when it comes to men’s clothing.

It all began in her aunt’s jewelry store, which had plenty of antique and estate pieces to capture her imagination. Years later, she picked up a studio art minor during her senior year of college. This led her to try metal work or the first time.

“We’ve seen workwear starting to include dressed-up denim,” said shop owner Rachel Anderson. “There’s also a shift to investing in well made things that are going to last a lifetime.” Anderson opened Jackson & James Men’s Clothing boutique (3200 Rockbridge Street) with her brother Mike Anderson in the summer 2017. The men’s shopping destination prominently carries raw denim and by winter, Rachel says the shop will have 25 cuts and colors available, all made in the USA.

“Day one I knew -- this is where I’m meant to be,” DeRaffele recounted. “I haven’t put the torch and hammer down since. The thought of being able to sketch something on paper and then turn “It’s the foundation of a man’s wardrobe,” it into something you could wear, out of metal, she remarked. was really addicting. I spent hours in the studio just working away.” Rachel and Mike have created a space that is much more than a store. It features a lounge DeRaffele launched her first jewelry brand in area where men can relax during the shopping 2010, which was self-titled as Brittanny Chanel process. The boutique’s location in Scott’s Jewelry. Her original designs are similar to those Addition was one they thought long and hard found in her Sun & Selene collection today. “I’ve about. The two scouted locations for more always thought about the idea to ‘effortlessly than two years after Mike decided to leave adorn and empower,’” she explained. the banking industry he’d been working in for 20 years. By 2016, she was searching for a new brand identity to better connect her vision to her products. From “Scotts Addition checked every box: it was the beginning, her designs have been inspired centrally located, we could design the space, by nature and astrology. The new name nods to and it was up and coming,” Mike explained. Selene, the goddess of the moon, which was the name of one of her first ring designs -- still a best Situated next to a growing number of breweries seller. “Simple, dainty but powerful, subtle, and and restaurants, the store gets just as many hammered” is how DeRaffele describes the pieces. destination shoppers as they do walk-ins. Customers who are transplants from cities “I think my favorite part of the rebrand is that if such as Los Angeles and New York say this is you look back through the history of the jewelry, the kind of shop they were used to -- personal it feels like it was meant to be Sun & Selene all attention, high quality items, and curated along,” she remarked. collections. SUNANDSELENE.COM

Alongside the extensive denim collection, Jackson & James carries shirts, outerwear, socks, scarves, and additional items that are exclusive to their store in Richmond. In addition to apparel, customers can find candles, home decor, and even custom razors custom created from salvaged wood that are, believe it or not, locally-sourced coming from a Shockoe Bottom warehouse through Quills Confectionery And Woodworking. JACKSON-JAMES.COM

10 YEARS OF RVA 2005-2015 2005-2015 10 YEARS OFMAGAZINE RVA MAGAZINE

RIDER BOOT SHOP: FROM FRANCO’S TO BROAD STREET A BRAND COMES TO LIFE When you first walk into Rider Boot Shop on Broad Street, you’re hit by the smell of fresh leather. It’s not the usual leather you find floating off your Steve Madden boots from the sale rack, though. Here, you’ll find Chelsea boots, Oxfords, and sneakers made from South African Antelope (known as kudu), waxed horse flesh, ostrich, elk, stingray, and other unique high quality leathers from tanneries in Italy and England.

When Ambrogi decided to move away from the wholesale business, Ron and his wife Lisa Rider took the reigns. Over the next several years, Ron travelled the country to sell Rider Boots to various independent retailers and the brand grew. Eventually, Jeff encouraged Ron to move the shoes into a storefront.

In the front of the long and narrow store, the walls are lined with rows of Chelsea Boots in a variety of styles and materials. They’re sitting alongside another popular Rider favorite, the Dundalk, which is a lace up boot that can be easily dressed up or down.

“We didn’t invent the Chelsea Boot,” Jeff “It’s all about making ourselves available for the remarked. “We take classics and put our twist people of Richmond to become familiar with us,” on them.” Jeff reasoned. “My dad has been standing by a product for 10 years and word of mouth is how Rider also carries a collection of women’s shoes it has grown and continues to grow.” and boots. You won’t find heels, but instead more classic shapes that can be worn every day. Ron actually spent many years as a sales The same philosophy applies: classics with a associate in the shoe department of Nordstrom. twist that can be worn day-to-night for years. “We source from family run factories who have He even wrote the fitting guide used in “We don’t want you to buy them and then buy been doing this for generations,” Jeff Rider departments across the country. Today, he says, something new to replace them a year later,” detailed. You can find him daily in the storefront you won’t find a custom fitting experience at a Jeff said. helping walk-ins and customers who have department store. That’s where shops like Rider Boot come in. made the store a destination during their visit Some are from Rider’s own line including several to Richmond. “We work hard to develop trust styles of Chelsea boots, but others are sourced between our manufacturers and our customers.” “We can cripple someone if we do the wrong job,” from outside of Rider so the family could begin Ron grimly stated. “We have a responsibility and to test and learn what women look for here in Jeff learned much of what he knows about shoes we take it seriously. It’s worth the extra time and Richmond and online. effort that we can spend with people.” and the business of fashion from his father Ron Rider, who has been working in the shoe industry The storefront has allowed Rider to strengthen for decades. The father-son pair opened the Jeff confirmed saying he’d rather someone walk its ties to Richmond and has opened doors Rider Boot Shop in November 2016, though the out empty handed than with a pair of boots that for local collaborations. In September, Rider footwear brand’s story starts long before then. didn’t fit. Jeff hopes to encourage the younger released a custom boot design in partnership generation to avoid patterns of purchasing with Handy Ma’am Goods, a line of fashion for “There’s an impression that Richmond isn’t a new shoes each season. He works to educate women who “get dirty” -- coveralls, the “drapon,” fashion town,” Ron remarked. “I think people customers about investing in key wardrobe and more. The brand, like Rider, also prioritizes pieces from which to build personal style. have that all wrong.” quality over quantity and was a natural fit. The collaboration idea came over whiskey during an Franco’s Fine Clothier has been a quiet hub for “Richmond’s sense of individuality and selfafternoon in the store. Richmond’s fashionable men for years. The expression is a really cool thing,” Jeff continued. flagship store opened in the 1970s on Lakeside “People here want you to pay attention to what “Bella [Weinstein] just came in one day,” Ron Avenue and specializes in custom suits and they’re wearing. Often, people will look to your remembered. “We were talking about issues other men’s and women’s apparel. After a move shoes first. You should have a solid foundation.” she’d come across for her customer and their from Baltimore, Ron became the buyer for men’s needs.” and women’s shoes. He traveled with founder The storefront is located in the Arts District, and owner Franco Ambrogi to Italy to select within walking distance from a growing list of Ron thought of a men’s military boot design galleries, boutiques, and restaurants. leathers and meet manufacturers in person. and suggested they blend it with the Chelsea Eventually, Franco and Ron began to develop Boot. They successfully launched the product “Early on I knew this was the right place to open during First Fridays. It will be the first of many and grow a wholesale shoe brand. a storefront,” affirmed Jeff. collaborations, he said. The brand grew a loyal following from Franco customers and more. The shoes were spotted on Depending on who greets you, you’re offered “We’ve been waiting for Richmond to welcome celebrity bloggers and on screen -- from Russell a fresh shot of espresso or a shot of Jameson. us,” Jeff said. Brand in Arthur to Leonardo DiCaprio in The The atmosphere is warm and comfortable. Great Gatsby to characters in Boardwalk Empire. Customers can try on shoes sitting atop benches RIDERBOOT.COM from Georgetown Park and shop by light of school house lamps sourced from Governor’s Antiques in Mechanicsville. 62

WRITTEN RVA MAGAZINE BY MEGAN 24 | SPRING WILSON 2016

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10 YEARS 10 YEARS OF RVA OFMAGAZINE RVA MAGAZINE 2005-2015 2005-2015

RVA MAGAZINE 24 | SPRING 2016

10 YEARS OF RVA MAGAZINE 2005-2015

RVA MAGAZINE 24 | SPRING 2016

10 YEARS OF RVA MAGAZINE 2005-2015

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RVA MAGAZINE 24 | SPRING 2016