While the stupidity of Reverse Angle Parking (RAP) is probably the most Cape Charles thing ever, eventually, it will go away. In the meantime, it’s still here, causing frustration, anger and accidents.

Everyone hates it.

Is backing into stalls difficult? For many, yes. The original dubious mantra by town officials looking to save face was that it is “far easier than parallel parking.” Really? Why can’t we just pull straight into the spot with our eyes facing forward instead of having to maneuver into a tight space surrounded by expensive vehicles?

Case in point:

The Hungry Crab, LLC, the corporation behind the Shanty restaurant has submitted an unsolicited offer to purchase lot 10 (the Shanty pad) at 33 Marina Drive, the current location of the establishment for $262,000.

The waterfront lot is 17.03 acres. The portion for sale is only .40 acres.

The Shanty is currently operating under a lease of the land from the town.

A public hearing on the sale is scheduled for Thursday March 14 at 6:30 in the Civic Center. 

The town received some additional documentation that needs to be vetted by a professional appraiser relative to an additional proposal. Rather than hold separate hearings and votes on two halves, the town will be moving forward on one comprehensive proposal. 

This season, GEAR and the Palace Theatre will present the modern holiday classic, Elf the Musical. Jr.

Showtimes are December 8th @7:30, December 9th @3:00, and December 15th @7:30.

The Palace Theatre is located at 305 Mason Ave, Cape Charles, VA 23310.

Based on the film of the same name, Buddy, a young orphan, mistakenly crawls into Santa’s bag of gifts and is transported to the North Pole. The would-be elf is raised, unaware that he is actually a human, until his enormous size and poor toy-making abilities cause him to face the truth. With Santa’s permission, Buddy embarks on a journey to New York City to find his birth father and discover his true identity. Faced with the harsh reality that his father is on the naughty list and that his half-brother doesn’t even believe in Santa, Buddy is determined to win over his new family and help New York remember the true meaning of Christmas.

“This is really a fun, enjoyable work of musical theater,” co-director Amy Watkins told the Mirror. “For all of our actors, especially those in the dance and theater programs, we try and prepare them to be a triple threat—dance, act and sing. In Elf, they have really been pushed to polish all three aspects of the performing arts.”

The GEAR dance program is an integral part of the program. Ms. Watkins choreographed all the original dance numbers.

“I have really been proud of everyone in this show,” said co-Director Wayne Creed. “The actors, singers and dancers have really put in the work—it has been a joy to be around such a remarkable group of performers who are dedicated and willing to give up a big portion of their lives to make this show great. Amy Watkins has also done a great job once again bringing the show to life visually and spatially, and Katherine Reid, our costume mistress has been wonderful making our transitions from the North Pole to New York believable and aesthetically beautiful.”

Elf JR. features songs by Tony Award-nominees, Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin, with a book by Tony Award-winners, Thomas Meehan and Bob Martin.

“I have to admit, being a fan of the Will Ferrell film, I was a little skeptical about a musical version,” Creed said. “but the numbers are wonderful—you can’t stop singing them.”

The Northampton Football Yellow Jackets season ended Friday on a soggy field at Essex High School. The Jackets fell in the first round of the state playoffs 45-25.

It started off well though. Using the standard offense–CJ Smith up the middle–Northampton took an early 14-0 lead. Both drives were long and ate up big chunks of the clock. Northampton added a third TD, when all was said in done, had used almost 19 minutes of the clock.

The bad news is that Essex scored 3 touchdowns while running just 4 plays, and took a 24-18 lead into the locker room. Essex never looked back.

Photo by Chris Glennon Photography

Injuries also hampered Northampton. Starting QB Tripp Westcoat has been hobbled by a sore hamstring, so it was necessary to get at least half of the snaps to talented freshman Liam Flynn. Flynn was tackled hard in the first quarter and broke his right collarbone. While Flynn was sent by ambulance to the hospital, Westcoat had to try and fight through his injury for the entire game

Long plays and superior line play by Essex dominated the rest of the game. Northampton just could not stop them.

Also, some of Northampton’s issues resurfaced and came back to haunt them. The sieve-like defensive secondary play was once again a problem. In games against West Point, Northumberland and Arcadia, long runs through the secondary seemed way too easy. As far as defending against the pass, at times it seemed like the Jacket secondary could not even cover an ornamental shrubbery, much less an athletic receiver.

Ground and pound offensive schemes are great sometimes, but when you are down by 2 or 3 touchdowns, the one-dimensionality becomes a problem. Good teams like Essex eventually make adjustments and stuff even good running attacks. This is exactly what happened Friday.

Where Essex was able to make adjustments, Northampton seemed to be stuck in a rut. Essex had 4 or 5 good playmakers, and they used them all. Northampton also has 5 or 6 difference makers, but they only chose to use Carlton or Corey Smith. Our fast wideouts seemed to have slants, curls and go routes open all year, but Northampton never attempted to take the top off the defense, opting instead to pound the ball up the middle or run a sweep–an occasional counter or misdirection happened when they got a wild hair.

While this team did not advance, it was still a great season for the Jackets, and for the 18 seniors that played their hearts out.

Photo by Chris Glennon Photography

Congratulations boys, you deserve it.

Two years ago, the Wetlands and Coastal Dune Board (Board) spent several months preparing a set of recommendations to manage sand and the dunes at the beach. Those recommendations
were presented to Town Council in September 2016. Recently the Board has been working on a proposed beach and sand management practices plan for the Town’s public beach.

The draft proposed beach/dune plan outline is completed. On Monday October 1, 2018, the Wetlands Board will meet, and Chairman Ann Walker will present the draft outline. The public is invited and encouraged to make comments on the new plan.

Upon further review and discussion, the recommendations will be sent to the Town Council.

The beach/dune plan review of the past and currently employed beach sand management practices which will allow the Board to make appropriate recommendations to Town Council and provide an opportunity for residents’ input into the scale of the sand wind erosion problem and potential practices to mitigate future wind erosion events.

The meeting is scheduled for Monday October 1, 2018.

The location is Cape Charles Civic Center
500 Tazewell Ave
Cape Charles VA 23310

Cape Charles Beach and Dune Management Plan DRAFT OUTLINE (23 September 2018)
1. Purpose and Need (to be completed)
a. Align recommendations with the annual cycle of town planning, budget, and public works
operations
2. Cape Charles Public Beach (description)
3. Regulations Governing the Beach and Dune System
a. Description (Federal, State, Local)
b. Regulatory implications for this management plan, e.g.,
i. FEMA
ii. Coastal Resilience
4. Issues (to be addressed in the plan. Some examples below, others? See Norfolk CBCMA Guidance
Document 2012)
a. Problems, e.g., sand movement off the beach, waste, trash, flooding/storm surge relationships
b. Access methods, e.g., sand trails, mats, walkways, ramps (different for different parts of beach?)
c. Recreational activities/uses
i. Activities/uses, e.g., tents, dogs
d. Structures, e.g., volleyball courts
e. View – visual access, viewshed
f. Safety
g. Maintenance
i. Winter, e.g., winter preparation
ii. Summer, e.g., sand nourishment on beach each spring, beach cleaning
iii. Monitoring for management
5. Good Management Practices for Beach and Dunes (recommendations, by grouping in section 4, to
address identified issues; describe options, pros and cons, including cost)
a. Vegetation
i. Types: Preferred, e.g. American Beach Grass; invasive/nuisance, e.g., Japanese sedge
ii. Location: Beach side of dunes; Boardwalk side of dunes
b. Dunes
c. Beach
6. Implementation Options and Resources
a. Funding
i. Sand Nourishment Options, e.g., ACOE project, winter sand capture and spring
relocation
ii. Other
b. Equipment, e.g., fencing, vegetation, other
c. Personnel
i. Town staff
ii. Contractors (e.g., for sprigging)

Appendices
a. Definitions and Acronyms
b. Regulations
c. References

[Read more…]

While researching for another article, I came across a term I had never heard before–Generation Jones. If you were born between 1955 and 1965, you were more likely to have grown up watching The Brady Bunch rather than Leave It to Beaver. If you remember President Kennedy’s funeral at all, you mostly remember your parents’ reaction to the loss, rather than feeling a loss yourself. You were too young to protest the Vietnam War. You are part of what is being called Generation Jones.

It’s the club for misfits–those who are neither hippy Baby Boomer nor techie Generation X.

The term itself comes from the word Jonesing, to have a strong need, desire, or craving for something. Really, it was about needing drugs or alcohol. The term originated with heroin users–they used it to describe their withdrawal symptoms.

Jonathan Pontell, who coined the term for this 53 million-member-strong generational segment, describes this generation as stuck “between Woodstock and Lollapalooza.” They didn’t buy into or were too young to understand the Baby Boomer tantrums, yet they were a tad too old to join the Gen-Xers in the mosh pits.

Note: Pontell is way off here.  Real Jonesers invented the mosh pit and were active in the Grunge wave created by Nirvana, Sound Garden, The Melvins and Alice in Chains. We still go to see Nine Inch Nails during the work week.

Pontell describes their heritage:

So who are we? We are practical idealists, forged in the fires of social upheaval while too young to play a part. The name “Generation Jones” derives from a number of sources, including our historical anonymity, the ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ competition of our populous birth years, and sensibilities coupling the mainstream with ironic cool. But above all, the name borrows from the slang term ‘jonesin” that we as teens popularized to broadly convey any intense craving.”

Any generation is defined by shared experiences of historical events and cultural influences during the developmental and formative years, and that generations generally span 10 to 12 years. The classification of Baby Boomers as a “generation” based solely on annual birth rates, from 1946 to 1964, was actually a misclassification. The emergence of so-called “late Boomers” as a subgroup of Baby Boomers was a start in correcting the error, and then Pontell’s research further revealed that the second half of the Boomers were different enough from the first half to break away from the classification altogether.

According to Pontell, Boomers and Jonesers share some traits, such as idealism, but they behave differently. Members of Gen Jones tend to be more practical and rational in their approach to change. Their childhood years were inspired by the positive social change brought on by the Baby Boomers, but then sobering events of the 1970s—including Vietnam death tolls on the evening news, Watergate, the oil embargo, rising inflation, and unemployment—forced them to be pragmatic as they entered adulthood.

By the time they became young adults, the Vietnam war had ended and Watergate had started. Unlike their older siblings, they had to look for work during times of high unemployment and rising inflation. The idealist folk music they grew up listening to had been replaced by thumping disco music encouraging escapism from the real world into the world of partying all the time. The film Saturday Night Fever captures this lost, metallic taste in the mouths of kids growing up in the 70s. The television shows they watched as kids did not reflect the Ozzie and Harriet family structure. Instead, The Brady Bunch showed the rising blended family structure. Julia showed how a professional, black, single mother can raise a well-adjusted child.

Of course, this is a gross over-characterization. In many ways, so many Gen Jonesers have more in common with Boomers. Real Generation Jones is an even a smaller, niche sub-category.

Punk and Hip Hop

While Disco is part of the narrative, real Jonesers, such as the full-scale rejection soaked into the film Repo Man, were the first to reject mainstream rock. They hate the Beatles, (as well as Disco), and took this hate and anger to the streets with punk bands like The Clash, Ramones, Sex Pistols, The Damned, The Misfits, and The Dead Boys.

Stiv Bators and The Dead Boys perform at Club CBGB, 1977 (unknown photo)

Punk is obvious, but what is less talked about is the birth of Rap and Hip Hop in the 1970’s. Generation Jones is the first to accept Joseph Saddler, or Grandmaster Flash, who is considered to be one of the pioneers of hip-hop DJing, cutting, scratching and mixing. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, becoming the first hip-hop act to be honored. In the mid-1970s, he formed Grandmaster Flash & the 3 MCs with Cowboy, Melle Mel, and The Kidd Creole. Cowboy created the term hip-hop while teasing a friend who had just joined the U.S. Army, by scat singing the words “hip/hop/hip/hop” in a way that mimicked the rhythmic cadence of soldiers marching. Cowboy later worked the “hip hop” cadence into a part of his stage performance. (source Wikipedia).

Ed Bluestone came into the office and he said, “You are going to get a dog and you are going to put a pistol to his head and you are going to say: If You Don’t Buy This Magazine, We’ll Kill This Dog.” I said, “Ed, that’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever heard. – Henry Beard

A Futile and Stupid Gesture – There’s no line we won’t cross

National Lampoon sums up Gen Jones–its sensibility and approach to comedy were so different from the previous generation’s. While they liked and appreciated Mad Magazine, it was the Lampoon that they really wanted–mainly because it had lots of tits.

Guys like Doug Kenney, P.J. O’Rourke, Michael O’Donoghue ignored the past, the boomers, and wrote for their generation. They wrote about sex and drugs, and they didn’t care if their parents didn’t get it. They especially didn’t care who they offended.

“You start out with Mad magazine, and you go right through the sort of black humor of Lenny Bruce, Lord Buckley, Mort Sahl, Paul Krassner… If you put Lenny together with Mad magazine and run it through the brain of a college student, you get National Lampoon.” — P. J. O’Rourke. Or as O’Donoghue would say to anyone still listening, “Making people laugh is the lowest form of comedy.”

Like punk, Joneser comedy was a rejection of the older, “Dad” comedy. You know, the kind of jokes your witless uncle, the one that wears white socks to the beach would tell. Instead of Bill Cosby, Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis or even Johnny Carson, they listened to vinyl or 8-track recordings of Richard Pryor, George Carlin or Cheech and Chong (although, there was always a soft spot for Rodney Dangerfield).

Animal House, a raucous tale of a disenfranchised college fraternity that memorably features the late John Belushi imitating a zit, is practically a metaphor for Generation Jones. Dean Wormer, ROTC Niedermeyer, and preppy Greg Marmalard against the Jonesers at Delta House.

“Animal House is fucking funny, and white people are crazy,”- note sent by Richard Pryor to Director John Landis after he had seen a screening, and heard the studio wanted them to cut the roadside bar scene. “It was like a papal blessing,” Landis said.

The original cast of Saturday Night Live, with Bill Murray, speaks for itself.

On Doug Kenney’s suicide/death off a cliff in Hawaii, Harold Ramis, his screenwriting partner on Animal House commented, “Doug probably fell while he was looking for a place to jump.”

Satire and General Disdain…about Everything and for Everyone

Growing up knee deep in their father’s and older brother’s Vietnam blood, no real prospects and with the Sex Pistols lyric “No future for you!” ringing in their ears, real Gen Jonesers are full of satire and dripping with disdain for everything–political parties, voting, and people in general:

The Boss: You know, your satire is not going to get you anywhere in life.

Joneser: Oh, yeah? Well, last year I got a free trip to Rio de Janeiro to compete in the International Satire Competition.

The Boss: Really?

Jonser: No.

Although there is disagreement about exactly when Generation Jones begins and ends (Pontell says 1954 to 1965, while others argue it goes up to 1967), the point is that there was a generation between the Baby Boomers and Generation X that has been lost between the cracks. That’s kind of how they like it though. Cracks…that’s funny.

VDOT officials will be at the Cape Charles Civic Center, 500 Tazewell Avenue on July 24th from 4 to 6 pm to show plans for the intersection of Route 13 and 184 (Stone Road). Given the dangerous nature of this stretch of road which includes the crossover at the Food Lion parking lot, this is a valuable opportunity for citizens to see just what is planned, and to voice concerns to VDOT. The concern for many is that the proposed plans offer mild improvements, but they do not address the real safety problems that exist at this intersection.