The new owner, Lauren Berry is no stranger to downtown. “I’ve been bartending since I graduated from JMU in 2003, and the long hours and late nights were starting to wear on me,” she wrote in an email. “I was ready to do something different, and being a small business owner was something that I’ve been interested in for awhile. The right opportunity just hadn’t presented itself until now.”

She doesn’t expect much to change when they reopen. “Most of my time will be spent learning how the business operates, regaining the customer base, and getting a feel for what sells in the store, what doesn’t, and what customers are interested in seeing that wasn’t offered before. I’m looking into adding some fresh local produce at some point.”

Lauren hopes to have the door unlocked by April, but the exact date depends on licenses and other paperwork.

“I’ve heard anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months, but I’m really hoping to be able to reopen by the end of the month. I know it’s going to be a lot of hours of work, but [previous owners] Dave and Tim have offered any help and advice they can give me in reopening. We all want the reopening to be as smooth and fast as possible. I’m lucky to have them behind me, supporting me.”

“The American people have not responded well to this, and we have received thousands and thousands of e-mail and letters,” [Goodlatte] said. “And the overwhelming majority say push the reset button and that’s what we said when we went to the (Feb. 25 health care) summit.” (Staunton News Leader)

His remarks to the Waynesboro Kiwanis Club today were consistent with statements of opposition the congressman has made about health care reform in the past.

Considering Goodlatte has been in office since 1993, Obama’s recent remarks about congressional obstructionism to his health care plan seem to be tailored for longtime Republican incumbents like Goodlatte (who is now serving his ninth term).

Obama: “I got all my Republican colleagues out there saying ‘No, no, no, we want to focus on things like costs.’ You had 10 years. What happened? What were you doing?” (TPM)

Going back as far as 1992, when Goodlatte was the “candidate for change” during his first run for congressional office, “Democrat Steve Musselwhite and Republican Bob Goodlatte sparred over how best to extend health care coverage to the estimated 40 million Americans without health insurance” (today that number is closer to 47 million).

Goodlatte said his plans would turn poor Americans into health care consumers and give them more options; Musselwhite contended Goodlatte’s policies would only help the middle-class and wealthy . . .

Goodlatte also repeated his call for a system of tax credits and vouchers. Under the plan, devised by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., the federal government would send a poor recipient a voucher, which could then be spent on health care. (Roanoke Times, September 15, 1992)

That was then, this is now, but not a whole lot has changed. Sweeping health care reform and major coverage expansion has failed in Washington since the Truman administration. Will 2010 be any different? Should it be?

The current law forbids concealed carry in restaurants, though it allows guns to be carried openly. It is legal to drink while carrying openly, though intoxication is illegal for all citizens. Senate Bill 334, referred to as the “Guns-in-bars” bill, would change that to allow concealed carry in restaurants, though forbidding those carrying concealed firearms from drinking. The bill will amend Section 18.2-308 of the Code of Virginia (deletions are struck out and additions are in bold):

JJ3. No person shall carry who carries a concealed handgun onto the premises of any restaurant or club as defined in Section 4.1-100 for which a license to sell and serve alcoholic beverages for on-premises consumption has been granted by the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Board under Title 4.1 of the Code of Virginia; however, nothing herein may consume an alcoholic beverage while on the premises. A person who carries a concealed handgun onto the premises of such a restaurant or club and consumes alcoholic beverages is guilty of a Class 2 misdemeanor. ?[ A person who becomes intoxicated while carrying a concealed handgun on the premises of such a restaurant or club is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor. ?] ?However, nothing in this subsection shall prohibit any sworn apply to a federal, state, or local law-enforcement officer. [ or any retired law-enforcement officer who meets the definition of a "qualified retired law-enforcement officer" pursuant to 18 U.S.C. ? 926C and is carrying the identification required by such statute? ] . from carrying a concealed handgun on the premises of such restaurant or club or any owner or event sponsor or his employees from carrying a concealed handgun while on duty at such restaurant or club if such person has a concealed handgun permit.

“I want to believe that [the law] will not affect anything. People are generally aware of their level of safety and we [at the Artful Dodger] feel that we provide that,” Clark said.

Arafaine said, “I don’t know how much it will change in practice. Unless you do something, no one will even know you have [a concealed gun].”

“I don’t think people will react to it unless there’s an incident.”

Neither Arafaine nor Clark anticipated adding any additional security measures beyond what they have currently in place. Neither has had any serious incidents with customers carrying guns, though both have asked patrons to leave in different circumstances. They both said the change would increase the need for staff to be more aware of who was in the restaurant.

The question of security is tied closely to the law’s enforcement.

“I think the biggest problem is enforcing it. What’s stopping any person from bringing a gun into a bar right now?” Craig Moore, owner of the Local Chop and Grill House, said. “How do you know someone with a concealed gun is drinking?”

“You’ve got to be caught to enforce it.”

He said that he would not be searching patrons because it is “a tremendous invasion of privacy.”

“I hope this doesn’t lead to other things where the burden is on the establishment,” Moore said. Arafaine expressed similar sentiments.

“The burden is on the restaurant and it should be on the person,” she said.

Philip Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizen’s Defense League, Inc., a gun rights lobbying group, said that the security concerns aren’t anything new or different.

“Restaurant owners always have the trespass onus on them,” he said, calling the security issue a trespass issue at its root. “It’s nothing unusual.”

According to Van Cleave, Virginia banned concealed carry in restaurants in 1995, and with the passage of this bill would join approximately 40 states that currently allow concealed carry in restaurants and bars.

This bill will give restaurant owners more options, Van Cleave said. He has had experiences where, as the holder of a concealed gun license, he has had to carry openly in restaurants to comply with the current law. He sees this as potentially distracting to other customers, and has been asked to conceal his gun by restaurant owners, which he legally had to refuse to do.

“This empowers restaurant owners to make their own policy,” he said.

His focus on the law’s application was on scenarios where license holders were dining in restaurants. He said late-night drinking scenarios were unlikely.

“One can sit down and picture all kinds of things that could happen, but we have to look at practice,” he said. “Are permit holders going into that environment in practice? I don’t think so.”

“One should not strip away our freedoms because of what might happen.”

Lori Haas, spokesperson for the Virginia Center for Public Safety, a pro gun control lobby group, argued strongly against the bill.

“Guns and alcohol don’t mix,” she said. “A small, vocal group of gun owners wants any gun, any time.” She also expressed concerns about enforcement and said that the VCPS supports responsible gun ownership and gun control laws.

“Restrictions are not mutually exclusive with the second amendment,” she said.

Both supporters and detractors will soon take a back seat to reality, however, once Gov. McDonnell signs the bill into law as expected. What reaction can we expect from the Harrisonburg community once the law goes into effect?

Note: Local gun rights activist and NRA member Jon Ritenour, representatives from Jack Brown’s, Finnigan’s Cove, Clementine, Dave’s Taverna, the Downtown Dining Alliance, the Virginia Hospitality and Travel Association and the Harrisonburg Police Department were unavailable for comment as of posting. Update expected early next week.

This year’s meals range in price from a $4 lunch at Cuchi Guido’s to a $35 dinner with wine at Joshua Wilton House. An example lunch choice is an appetizer sampler, 1/2 sandwich, 1/2 salad, and beverage at Pennybacker’s for $7.49 and one dinner offering is an entree and signature cocktail at The Artful Dodger for $10.

The complete list of participating restaurants and meals can be found here.

Please share your Taste of Downtown experiences in the comments this week!

Image by radsaq on Flickr / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

. . . it’s the Virginia Department of Transportation that decides whether to implement an actual increase and, if so, where . . . For now, I-81 will remain posted at 65 mph, except for 14.7 miles near Roanoke and segments in Harrisonburg and Winchester where the limit is 60 mph . . .

VDOT’s own tracking shows that many motorists have already driven at the planned new limit and presumably still do. In 2008, the last time the data came out, the average speed for cars on I-81 was 70 [mph] . . . (read the full article)

The story makes mention of the opposition this bill faced in General Assembly. Critics said the bill would cause more fatalities and less efficient use of fossil fuels.

From a report in the PilotOnline in January:

A 1999 study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that higher speed limits enacted by 24 states in the mid-1990s resulted in 15 percent more traffic fatalities.

Tyler Madison, a member of the Sierra Club, said 55 is the optimum speed for fuel efficiency, which drops by 10 to 15 percent with a 10 mph increase in speed over that. She said a higher limit will increase the nation’s dependence on foreign oil. (read full story)

For those of us too young to remember it, there are only faint traces of Mystic Den on the web; a hardcore band called Flowers of Discipline, a rumor of a gang called Property.

Chris Edwards writes:

By those years – when 18-year-olds could buy beer – the Harrisonburg bar scene was bigger than it is now. Hot spots of the ’70s and ’80s included Martin’s Garage (a former garage) which Touch of the Earth recently vacated; Gatsby’s, The Other Place and Mystic Den on the present jail site; and the Scotland Yard disco and Generation Gap on South Main. Melrose Caverns near North 11 was a party mainstay.

Poking around on the web led me to this video of a band called Skanks playing Mystic Den in 1986. There’s another song from the same performance called White Lies.

I remember when the jail was being built (my family moved to the Valley in ‘87) but don’t have a very strong memory of these buildings. Any old timers care to fill in the blanks for us n00bs?

Robb Davis, who lives in Davis, CA and has taught at Eastern Mennonite University in the past, corresponded with Harrisonburg’s Voluntary Gas Tax group about the plan to send a local delegation to learn how things work in Davis, which was developed largely around bike culture.

“We want people to be able to live in communities where biking is really an option, like for everything,” said Davis, who said he’s been “car-free” for seven years. “We know it take a lot for a community to change, but we also know that we were able to make that decision to go without a car because of a lot of committed people who came before us.”

Davis said he recognizes the considerable carbon footprint associated with air travel but he figured, since the planes would be flying anyway, it was worth it to get Harrisonburg’s delegation on board.

He organized a four-day itinerary for the Harrisonburg team, which includes biking around town to survey Davis’s layout — including bike lanes, parking and traffic lights — and talking to historians and city officials about development and funding. They’ll meet a business owner who brews and delivers coffee on bikes (Yes, brews. Something about using a pedal mechanism to turn the machine.) and police who travel on bikes and promote bike safety. They’ll harvest fruit from ornamental trees and deliver it to a food bank, and learn how to repair their bikes at a local collective.

“Everybody I call up or e-mail is just really willing to help,” Davis said, adding that local residents and bike coalition members are eager to pick up the Harrisonburg team from the airport, open their houses to them or host pot luck dinners. “Everybody’s been, ‘We’re proud of our town and we want to do this.’”

Even Mayor Pro-Tem Don Saylor of Davis, CA, sent an e-mail to Mayor Degner inviting him to town.

Robb Davis said his city has some advantages for bikers: It’s flat, sunny and warm. Still,  he said, rainy Portland, OR and mountainous Boulder, CO are also designated platinum-level Bicycle Friendly Communities by the League of American Bicyclists.

“I’ve biked Harrisonurg. That’s a bikeable city,” Davis said. “There are some hills. Downtown and all over (EMU) is pretty bikeable. The weather sucks, but it’s pretty temperate. And it’s all about the leadership.”

The local Voluntary Gas Tax club, Shenandoah Valley Bicycle Colation and New Community Project — each of which has been lobbying City Council to increase the number of bike lanes on roadways, among other improvements — were eager to expose Mayor Degner, public works and city planning personnel to Davis, CA’s status quo.

“We felt like it would be really important to get city officials out there so we can really look for seriously at improving bicycle infrastructure in Harrisonburg,” said Tom Benevento, a member of all three activist groups. “We’re working pretty carefully right now I’m looking abut what we can make happen without costing the city very much money.”

The groups pooled their funds and Davis donated a huge sum of his ready-to-expire frequent flier miles to cover several plane tickets. Once there, the Harrisonburg team will stay with host families, eat at potluck dinners and commute on borrowed bicycles. The City of Harrisonburg did not contribute any funds to the trip.

“It’s one of the most creative ways that I’ve seen a group come together to inform council about an issue,” Degner said. “Put simply, I don’t think it would have happened if it had cost the city a dime.”

Degner said the issue he heard most about during his campaign for City Council was improved bike and pedestrian infrastructure. He said he hopes the trip to California will help him address some of Harrisonburg’s infrastructure and budgetary obstacles.

“Our challenges are about retrofitting road infrastructure that was built without bicycles in mind. Also, how do you sort of have bikers and vehicles in some sections in town on the same road in a safe way,” said Degner. “There’s limited money every year. What’s the most effective way or most efficient way to make the most impact?”

Degner will blog about the trip at harrisonburgdavisbiketrip.blogspot.com/

—-

The following is a letter from Davis, CA’s Mayor Pro-Tempore Don Saylor, inviting Degner and his delegation to learn about the city’s bike infrastructure.

15 February
Dear Mayor Degner;

As a member of the City Council and Mayor Pro-Tem of the City of Davis I want to welcome you, and all the members of the delegation from Harrisonburg, to Davis in early March. We eagerly await your visit to our city. We look forward to learning about Harrisonburg and sharing our city and our bicycle culture. We look forward to showing you how it all got started and to reflect with you on what it takes to maintain it.

We are always learning from others how we can improve our community. We stand on the shoulders of others who worked hard and sacrificed to lay the foundation of what we have today. Our challenge is to not rest on our laurels but rather to press on to enable this city to maintain what we have and build it to face the transportation challenges of the future. Your visit reminds us of the imperative to continue to learn, to create dialogue, and to act in order to cede to our children a city that is every bit as bike friendly as the one we inherited.

We have learned and must continue to remind ourselves that bicycling is not merely a recreational activity but that it is a key form of transportation, the system and infrastructure for which must be weighed and developed alongside other forms of transit. Encouraging bicycling, as you know, simultaneously enables us to confront a variety of obesity-related health challenges; reduce automobile emissions that themselves have long-term negative health impacts; reduce our carbon footprint and strengthen our sense of community (getting out of our cars has an amazing way of getting us to talk more to each other!).

The pioneers who laid the foundation for our success understood these issues and gave us a chance to confront them. We are happy to share both what they did and what we continue to do to try to make Davis a place in which people use bicycles for all trips under two miles! We see YOU as the pioneers in Harrisonburg–the people who are laying the foundations for a bike friendly city in the Shenandoah Valley. We will do our utmost to provide you with encouragement, ideas and suggestions while you are here. You will have a chance to meet local bicycling activists who help articulate our vision, city staff who work to develop and maintain our infrastructure, policy makers who help move the vision ahead and citizens of all ages, shapes and sizes who use their bicycles as a key mode of transportation around town.

So… Come! Share your energy with us–remind us of why it is so important to stay focused–and learn from us about the kinds of things a city must do to create what we have today. I look forward to meeting with you while you are here.

Sincerely,

Don Saylor
Mayor Pro-Tem
Davis, CA

Photos by kate at yr own risk.

The Harrisonburg-based Voluntary Gas Tax club, which funds projects aimed at decreasing American’s dependence on fossil fuels, will send Mayor Kai Degner, three local activists, a city Planning Commissioner, a city employee and a documentary film maker to California on Wednesday to learn about bicycle infrastructure.

The grassroots group, made up of local residents who pay into a cache proportionate to how much gasoline they use, has been green projects since its founding in 2000.

“There are lots of other costs behind our use of fossil fuel and we should be trying to pay for some of those costs,” said VGT member Tom Benevento, citing pollution and the potential — and reality — of international conflict. “By taxing ourselves extra, it also makes us think twice about using it.”

Here’s how it works: The 20 or so participants save their gas receipts over a six-month period. They multiply the number of gallons purchased by $.50 and pay the total amount into the VGT’s pool, which usually amounts to $1,500 per half-year. At their bi-annual get-together, they vote on which causes — domestic or international — should receive “grants.”

“It really empowers a group of people to make some changes that they can decide on,” Benevento said.

Over time, the VGT has funded numerous projects, including a bike-powered recycling trailer at Eastern Mennonite University and a local resident’s trip to Iraq with Voices in the Wilderness to learn about the effects of the war on Iraqis. In 2008, VGT gave a $1,266 grant to Central Valley Habitat for Humanity to send two members to an alternative energy conference. Its donation to Habitat also helped them to build a house to Energy Star and EarthKraft (read: energy efficient) standards.

“We’ve been building green ever since,” said Central Valley Habitat Executive Director Marsha Smith, who added that all their houses now come with solar panels and solar water heaters. “It helps the houses continue to be affordable to our families and we’re really proud of that.”

VGT’s de-facto treasurer Earl Martin said about $1,200 of money collected will go to send the mayor, two city employees, members of the Shenandoah Valley Bicycle Coalition, VGT and New Community Project and a documentary film maker to Davis, C.A., which has been designated a platinum-level Bicycle Friendly Community by the League of American Bicyclists. Other donations came from SVBC, NCP and a car-less former EMU professor who lives in Davis and offers up his frequent flier miles to cover several plane tickets.

For four days, the group will commute by bicycles and talk with Davis city officials, bike activists and residents and consider Harrisonburg’s potential for increasing bike- and pedestrian-friendly infrastructure. The group will return on Monday.

They will be blogging about their trip here.

Rebecca Martinez is a freelance reporter and radio geek living in Harrisonburg. She has worked for both NPR and the DNR.

Photos by arlen and Velaia (ParisPeking)

Lynchburg and Harrisonburg were the only two metropolitan areas in the state that grew on a year-over-year basis . . . The largest job loss, however, was 17,683 in Fairfax County. (read the full column)