While the last two years have been an exciting foray into the internet, Charlottesville culture and restaurants, we’ve never had any major complaints or issues (excluding the photography lawsuit threat). Sure, we’ve dealt with some ethical violations in our local media, we’ve had writers come and go, but overall, it’s been an awesome experience. As always, we have our audience to thank, because without you, this site would be a group of mimes, alone on their computers, typing, on the internet.
Our recent post regarding drugs in Charlottesville, seemed to have rubbed a rather wealthy alumnus of the University of Virginia in the wrong way. As of yesterday around 3PM, our ISP has been issued a court-ordered sub-poena to take down our website starting at Midnight on Friday, at 12:00AM. We are not allowed to publish any information about the lawsuit given advice from our lawyers. It’s a little complicated legally and I hope I can share more details with you in the future.
Unfortunately, this is not just a threat, and something with serious legal ramifications, we have decided to shut down Spicy Bear. We cannot afford to hire the lawyers to fight this alumnus. Given the time requirements of the site, we all thought it was better to fold rather than spend hundreds of thousands of dollars defending ourselves. We’ll be having one final hurrah and I’ll be contacting you via E-Mail with those details. Please feel free to leave a comment, but understand we cannot answer questions about the case.
Kind Regards,
Kyle, Francesco, Thor(s), cocoNUT, Scowly, Vanillavy and the rest of the Spicy Bear Team
We’re gonna close survey results and choose a winner on Friday at noon and I wanted to remind you to fill out the Charlottesville Fitness Survey if you haven’t gotten a chance. You can win an 8GB IPOD Nano. Click the link to take the survey:
If you have a chance to check out this year’s Banff Mountain Film Festival, please do so. It’s a collection of some of the best films about the outdoors you’ll ever have a chance to see. It’s playing at Darden on Sunday and Monday evenings.
Hey everyone, I’m trying to figure out what your thoughts are on the Charlottesville fitness scene. Please fill out the survey (even if you don’t workout) and get entered to win a Silver 8GB IPOD Nano.
Dave Norris has decided to run for reelection for City Council. He’s willing to answer your questions, so leave them in the comments and we’ll send them to his people.
Maybe you remember our St. Patty’s Pub Crawl from last year? It rocked. We had about 100 people join the fun and we tromped around Charlottesville like we owned it. We’ve made two changes this year. First off, we are only charging $5 or 5 cans of food for an entry fee. You can give more if you feel generous. Secondly, we expect this event to be bigger than last year, so we decided to go with X-Lounge, because no other bars would be able to handle the crowd.
The event starts at 9PM on Tuesday, March 17th. Your $5 goes directly to the Thomas Jefferson Area Foodbank. Hope to see you there. RSVP on Facebook.
First 50 guests get special Scowly/cVillain shot glasses provided by Mike and James!
If anyone else wants to donate door prizes, let me know. We’ll feature your business with your door prize in an upcoming post. Email me at kyle@spicybear.com.
I recently had the pleasure of participating in an event hosted by the Piedmont Council of the Arts and run by Maggie Guggenheimer and Kate Daughdrill. The event’s purpose was to discuss and evaluate how to market Charlottesville as an arts community. Some of the specific questions we tackled were:
What is a creative community and is Charlottesville a creative community?
What are the benefits of marketing Charlottesville as a creative community?
How does the private/business sector view the role of arts and culture in our community?
Who in the local community supports and participates in the arts and creativity?
How can we attract more arts-related tourism to the Charlottesville area? How can we market the arts in Central Virginia as a region?
How can we market Charlottesville as a creative community and what is the right vision to market?
While I have little formal background in the arts, it was interesting to hear the gamut of opinions on these topics. You can listen to a condensed version of the meeting over at Charlottesville Podcasting, but I have a shortened summary for you after the break and offer a digital tool which will help solve some of the problems identified in the discussion.
