The Third Kingdom: Notes From the Underground
By Tench Phillips, Naro Cinema After a cool August morning searching vainly for chanterelle mushrooms within an aspen forest on the high slopes of the San Juan Mountains surrounding Telluride – I had reluctantly given up. Turning back towards town empty...
America’s Best Idea
By Tom Robotham Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. – John Muir Thirty years ago, when I began contemplating the idea of moving from New York City to Norfolk, I made...
Eggleston’s Noble Mission for the Holidays and Beyond
(Brad Kirkpatrick, Director of Retail Operations, Eggleston Services) By Jeff Maisey Many people during the holiday season contribute to people and organizations in need. Most also decorate their homes with festive Christmas trees and wreaths, and look forward to...
COMPLETE GUIDE: Holiday Events/Concerts/Parades
(“Holidivas: A Holiday Cabaret” featuring Lindsay Eure runs December 12-15 at Zeiders American Dream Theatre) HOLIDAY LIGHTS & PARADES Million Bulb Walk Norfolk Botanical Garden Through December 14 4-9 PM Nightly www.NBGholidays.org Olde Towne...
Virginia Arts Festival Announces 24th Season
(Hong Kong Ballet’s “Alice” will be a visually spectacular performance) By Jeff Maisey The Virginia Arts Festival announced its 24th season in a ceremony attended by corporate sponsors, the media, and leaders from other arts organizations. The many highlights of the...
The Demise of Common Culture
By Tom Robotham Recently in a public speaking class I teach at Old Dominion University, I decided to show my students a YouTube video of a commencement address that Peter Dinklage gave to the 2012 class of Bennington College in Vermont. I’d had the good fortune...
ADVICE: Basics of Parenting
BY JOHN L HORTON “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your...
Virginia Beach Needs Laura Habr as Treasurer
By Jeff Maisey Virginia Beach restauranteur Laura Habr has long been an advocate for positive change. Over a decade ago she led the effort to ban smoking in restaurants — a bill then Governor Tim Kaine signed into law at Croc’s 19th Street Bistro, the...
NEON Festival Turns 5
(Artists descend upon the Chrysler Museum during NEON Festival) By Jim Roberts The third weekend in October—which includes the Town Point Wine Festival and the Stockley Gardens Arts Festival—is widely considered one of the best weekends of the year in Norfolk—if not...
Proteus Festival Brings Ambitious Local Arts Showcase to Virginia Beach
By Ron Wray Zeiders American Dream Theater, the vision of local businessman Michael Zeiders, extends its ambitious dreams for Virginia Beach once again with its Proteus Festival 2019 at its showcase venue in Virginia Beach Town Center on October 8-13. Proteus,...
STAGE: Anastasia Will Be Visually Captivating
Lila Coogan (Anya) and the company of the National Tour of ANASTASIA. Photo by Evan Zimmerman, MurphyMade. By Jerome Langston “It’s a blessing,” says actor Bryan Seastrom, who is about to perform tonight, with the rest of the cast, at the Embassy Theatre in Fort...
One More for the Road: James Taylor & Jackson Browne
By Jim Morrison Aging as a rock 'n roll songwriter and performer is a tricky journey. It's a balancing act between the desire to continue to create while acknowledging that your fans – or most of your fans -- are encased in a time warp of your peak years, that...
Exploring the Success of Jae Sinnett Trio’s “Altered Egos”
Jae Sinnett Trio (L-R) is bassist Terry Burrell, pianist Allen Farnham, and drummer Jae Sinnett. By Jeff Maisey In late summer, jazz group Jae Sinnett Trio released “Altered Egos,” a 10-song album that absolutely cooks. Throughout, Sinnett (drums), Terry Burrell...
La Bohème, Fresh and New, at Virginia Opera
(Raquel González stars as Mimì.) By Montague Gammon III The Virginia Opera’s La Bohème: Rodolpho Remembers, a concentrated, intensified staging of what a poet can say about a girl who died, was born to the San Diego Opera a year ago, conceived by the necessities of...
Cheap Trick or Treat
By Jim Morrison Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick has had his third COVID shot and he's happy to finally be back out on the road. It's not the 300 dates a year the band played back in the day. More like 150 to 175, but then they're not young anymore. The guy who...
Nick Colionne: The Godfather of Smooth Jazz Guitar
By Jeff Maisey The release of smooth jazz guitar artist Nick Colionne’s album “Finger Painting” went on as plan in April 2020. The tour in support of the 10-song studio recording was delayed and then canceled due to the pandemic. Jazz venues across the world...
THEATER: Legend of Billie Holiday Comes Alive
By Jerome Langston “You literally feel like...when you walk into that theatre, that you are right there in 1959 with Billie Holiday and her band,” says Georgia native Ashley Bishop-Diggs, who portrays the iconic jazz singer in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill,...
ART: To the Moon and Back
(Luke Jerram, Museum of the Moon, photo by Carl Milner, Leeds, UK, Light Needs Light, October 2017) By Betsy DiJulio A muse of poets, politicians, artists, athletes, and academics, the moon has infiltrated virtually every aspect of world culture since ancient times. ...
Violins of Hope
By Jeff Maisey If you think about, every classical music performance is a history lesson in some sense. Generally its because the musical work was written hundreds of years ago, and quite often it expresses something about each composer, whether the point in...
Hunter’s Sunrise Live at The Z
(Blue-rock guitarist/singer Jason Cale (left) in the studio with Hunter Hughes. Photo courtesy of Hunter Hughes.) By Jeff Maisey Hunter Hughes, host of WHRV’s Hunter at Sunrise digital radio program, has teamed with Zeiders American Dream Theater to present the...
Real Ale Makes a Comeback
By Elizabeth Erschens Okay, class, raise your hands. Who knows what a real ale is? Until relatively recently, most people in this country wouldn’t have known the answer. The process of brewing real ale goes back to the origins of beer - some 6,000 years ago -...
Treaty of Ghent Brewing
By Jeff Maisey The idea of a collaboration between O’Connor and Smartmouth has been brewing beneath the surface for some time. While each of these Norfolk-based craft breweries have collaborated multiple times on one-off, specialty beers with other local breweries as...
Say YES, YES to B-B-Q in NoNo
Words & Photos by Joe Lowrey I’m guessing everyone reading this has their own idea about what makes barbeque special. I’m also thinking it is a pretty safe bet that most of you have never experienced the magnificent meats served up by the two joints I’m...
Get Ready to Savor the Sour at Beach Brewing
By Elizabeth Erschens & Diane Catanzaro Pucker up people. Sour power will transform your mind as it tantalizes your tongue, as Beach Brewing enters the third dimension of brewing. While most people think of beers as one-dimensional (that dimension being...
100 Craft Breweries Now in Virginia
RICHMOND, VA –The Virginia Craft Brewers Guild announced today that the Commonwealth is now home to over 100 craft breweries. This important milestone was celebrated at the Guild’s annual meeting and Craft Beer Caucus legislative reception, attended by over 150...
Norfolk Looks Beyond Stone to Lagunitas, others
By Jeff Maisey While Stone Brewing Company will likely bypass Norfolk and select Richmond or Columbus, Ohio as the site of its eastward expansion, there is a silver-lining. Though all three cities are finalists on the California craft brewery’s list, Columbus...
German Wines: How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By Few
By Gina McVeigh While pondering with regards to my first wine article for VEER, I suddenly realized it would be in what is the largest beer issue of the year—Oktoberfest. Feeling a bit intimidated, I decided to embrace the spirit of Oktoberfest and talk about German...
The King of BBQ: Belmont House of Smoke wins awards, hits the festival circuit
By Jeff Maisey Belmont House of Smoke is on a roll – a barbeque roll at that. Last fall, the Norfolk Ghent restaurant participated in Festevents’ Ribtober Festival in Town Point Park and won first place. Then in May, Belmont House of Smoke was crowned Grand Champion...
Duck Donut Dynasty
By George Culver The old gas station at Kings Grant Rd. and Virginia Beach Blvd. has always been there; I remember filling up at those pumps back in the ‘80s. Several years back it just shutdown and sat abandoned, overgrown grass and all. Living in Kings Grant,...
King of Hop Imperial India Pale Ale
King of Hop Imperial India Pale Ale Starr Hill Brewery This is the latest edition to Starr Hill’s all-star All Access series of special, limited edition beers available on draft and in 22-ounce bottles. The Crozet-VA brewery is keen on naming its beers with musical...
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