Washington City Paper: Contents for Jan. 11

Mall and Chains
Visit Celebrate Virginia, your summer playground for golf, shopping, and slavery!

Cover Story

Visit Celebrate Virginia, your summer playground for golf, shopping, and slavery!

Photographs by Charles Steck

Cruising for fun on I-95 usually means a 90-minute ride to Paramount's Kings Dominion. Where else can you climb a replica of the Eiffel Tower, plunge over a waterfall without suffering a concussion, and shoot out of a big bad fake volcano at 70 miles an hour--all in a single afternoon?

But former Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder wants to throw a detour in the family cow path about 50 miles south of Washington. It's called Celebrate Virginia. A sprawling 2,400-acre "Visitor's Campus" on the outskirts of Fredericksburg, Celebrate Virginia will have everything you and your loved ones could want: restaurants, shops, hotels, even a convention center.

There will also be three championship golf courses. And after 18 holes, you can take a tour of the interior of a re-created slave ship and, with the help of virtual reality technology, ponder what it might be like to lie in your own excrement for three months while you are transported thousands of miles from home to a place you have never seen but where you will live for the rest of your life as human chattel.

And that's only the beginning, for there are 380 or so years of the history of slavery in America to see. Yes, alongside the resort pleasures of sylvan Virginia, Wilder wants to create a monument to the most painful, prolonged saga in American history. It will be called the National Slavery Museum at Fredericksburg. Last month, Wilder pledged that some portion of the museum will be open in 2003.... Continued

Issue of Jan. 11 - 17, 2002

News and Features

Mall and Chains
Visit Celebrate Virginia, your summer playground for golf, shopping, and slavery!
Cover Story By Annys Shin
The Chair's Fair Share
Linda Cropp's salary hike is running a bit ahead of inflation.
The City By Christina Larson
Wet Behind the Arrears
An Anacostia landlord claims he needs some help from his tenants to pay the water bill.
The City By Felix Gillette
It's Up to You, New York Avenue
The strip where District drivers end up in construction hell
The City By Jason Cherkis
The Polluted Plain
While many D.C. neighborhoods field proposals for condo developments and strip malls, Southeast's D.C. Village invites dumps, prisoners, and the homeless.
The City By Jason Cherkis
Wake and Bake
The Mail By Robert Sharpe
One-Hit Wonder
The Mail By Rob Kampia
Who's Got the Kind?
The Mail By Adam Eidinger

Columns

There Is No Joy in Pikesville
Cheap Seats By Dave McKenna
Barriers to Exit
City Desk By Julie Wakefield
Committee of the Poll
City Desk By Brian Montopoli
The Politics Of Stagnation
Loose Lips By Elissa Silverman

Eats

Upper Crust
Young & Hungry By Todd Kliman

Movies

Ghost Busted
Film Review By Joel E. Siegel
French Toast
Film Review By Mark Jenkins

Music

Deep Shit
Music Review By Ta-Nehisi Coates
Natural Disaffection
Music Review By Michael Little
Not on the Menu
Music Reviews By Tina Plottel
Pyramid Technology
Music Reviews By Brent Burton
Bahama
Music Reviews By Christopher Porter
Action Chemistry
Music Reviews By Mike Kanin

Theater

Runaway Trains
Theater Review By Bob Mondello
There's No Place Like Home
Theater Review By Alexander C. Kafka

Arts and Events

Transcribin' and Decipherin' the Blues
Fifty years ago, local music fanatics Dick Spottswood and John Fahey decided that Charley Patton was the best bluesman on earth. Now they're proving it to the rest of the world with a six-pound box set.
Arts By Eddie Dean
Time Exposure
Artifacts By Garance Franke-Ruta
Major Technicalities
Artifacts By Louis Jacobson