Duck and Cover

Tell a man to preach and he'll tell you where the bomb shelters are.

Coming back from the river through Jackson Ward, I overheard one man telling another, "We all got to get out and vote on November seventh," which was more than enough of a statement for me to stop, put my hand over my heart and entreat a perfect stranger to preach.

It's positively life-affirming to know that other people feel as strongly as I do on this subject.

As I engaged with these two men about our problematic leader and the urgency of getting the vote out next month, passersby greeted them and moved on, but I stayed put because the conversation was so engaging. Especially once the gregarious one started sharing neighborhood history with me.

The blue building I pass almost daily that now houses King's Seafood? Apparently a cabinetmaker for 30+ years and the shyer of the two men I was talking to had worked there for 17 of them. Now it just reeks of last week's fish.

The other guy tried to tell me about the Richmond Dairy building, but, pshaw, my grandfather worked there, so that wasn't news. His childhood memories of stealing a glass bottle of milk off the truck, though, that was sweet in a Norman Rockwell kind of way.

"It was summer and my brother and I were thirsty," he recalled. "And that milk was cold!"

What was news was all the bomb shelters in the neighborhood he listed out under nearby buildings and schools, although it made sense given the drills of the Cold War era. He joked about going down in one now and discovering rusty old cans of pork and beans.

His buddy said it was a damn shame nobody knew about them for history's sake. Just when I think I know Jackson Ward, I meet a native who makes my head spin with new information.

As far as earning my keep, I had one deadline to make and two interviews to do today - one about wine, another about music - and just enough time to get ready to go to dinner, which these days means putting on something cute and then covering it up with a jean jacket for once the sun goes down.

I dread the impending time change. Come on, spring, you can't come back soon enough.

Walking into Dinamo, I was immediately greeted by a favorite wine rep, newly shorn and looking pretty handsome despite his claim that his hair was an oily mess (and they say women are vain). After a bit of chit chatting, he told me to give his best to the wife and kids (his idea of humor) and I moved on to the bar, serendipitously sitting down next to an old friend and her new squeeze, who was busy tearing into the chocolate espresso torte of which I'm so fond.

How lovely to go to one of my favorite restaurants and run into so many favorite people.

They'd just finished a fabulous meal including the roasted half chicken with maitake special, the same one our server said John Waters had ordered the last time he was in, a comment that led to a discussion of him coming back in December for a show.

You know, because nothing says Merry Christmas like a transvestite eating feces.

Me, I'm a sucker for my old favorites, though, and before I'd even walked in, I knew I wanted the fish soup - thick with rockfish, mussels, calamari and octopus in a hefty tomato broth laden with fregola  - and a white pizza layered with red onion. I only wish I could have eaten all the pizza but the hearty soup and glass of house white wine ensured that didn't happen.

Sadly, dessert was out of the question because I had a radio show to make and you can't be late when you're talking about live radio.

All the other times I'd see the On the Air Radio Players perform, it had been at the Cultural Arts Center at Glen Allen and while it's a lovely facility, it's on the other side of nowhere, whereas tonight's show was at Pine Camp Center, less than four miles from home. Much more my speed.

Billed as "A Night of Suspense," tonight's bill included "Inner Sanctum Mysteries: Death of a Doll," originally aired on October 18, 1948, about a newspaperman falling in love with a corpse (undoubtedly more disturbing 70 years ago) clutching a doll and "Goodbye, Miss Lizzie Borden," first aired on October 4, 1955, about a newspaperwoman investigating Ma and Pa Borden's deaths.

Every time I go to one of these radio shows, I tell myself I'll close my eyes and pretend I'm listening to the radio, but inevitably I'm too curious not to watch how they do all the sound effects onstage.

It's not as simple as you might think. It took four grown women being given hand signals when to stop and start to create the sound of one possessed doll baby. And how do you make the sound of a morgue drawer opening? By dragging a dolly across a piece of metal, of course.

Oh, and in between plays, there was a singing commercial for Tuck Toothpaste, especially relevant during this high tooth decay Halloween candy season.

And since it'll probably be another 70 years before either play gets produced again, I'll go ahead and satisfy any curiosity about how they ended: he doesn't get the girl and the doll stops talking once the devil is dead, and Lizzie's sister, the real murderer, gets away with it.

But back to my latest J-Ward discovery. Would it have been wrong to stock a bomb shelter with wine and cured meats? Asking for a friend.

Tag This

The bottom line is: you have to do something you think is fun.

It's not like I didn't leave my house - in the pitch black, mind you, since street lights throughout Jackson Ward and Carver were dark - already aware of that fact, but tonight I had plenty of confirmation from my betters.

My destination was Pine Camp Center for a panel of four mural artists: Sir James Thornhill, Ed Trask, Hamilton Glass and Matt Lively talking about the highs and lows of using buildings for a canvas.

Waiting for the panel to start, I wandered over to the gallery where former boxer Everett Mayo's new exhibit "Driftwood Comes to Life" turned out to be a delight. Using pieces of found driftwood, Mayo searches for the eye of the animal trapped within and creates from there.

All kinds of animals had been coaxed from driftwood and painted: a reindeer, a giraffe, an iguana, a duck in flight. The most magnificent was a lion, although unlike the others, it was created from many pieces of driftwood, not just one.

Back in the room for the panel, I heard person after person greet the older gentleman sitting nearest me. Finally, I had to ask why everyone knew him.

A native born in the Navy Hill neighborhood 87 years ago, Mr. Taylor was a photographer (he's in a group show next month), involved with Boy Scouting and active in the local Catholic church. In fact, he informed me that the now-shuttered convent I'd seen so many times on First Street was the site of the first black Catholic church in the entire South. Altogether, a most delightful man.

A woman approached me and while I recognized her, I couldn't place her. She pointed at me and nailed the place (VMFA) and the conversation we'd had. From there, we talked about everything from the Afrikana film festival to shows at Capital Ale House and Balliceaux.

Our only difference of opinion is that she abstains from events where parking is challenging and I suck it up and go anyway.

The panel discussion began with the four artists introducing themselves and a slide show of their murals around town. I'd been especially eager to see and hear from Thornhill since I walk by his Bob Marley mural on Marshall Street almost every day of my life. I was pleased to learn he was a Jackson Ward native.

Lively introduced himself as the first Lamaze baby born in Richmond, insisting he was only an artist because he didn't want a real job, but that was just the introduction to his offbeat sense of humor throughout the evening. Trask, I knew, came up through VCU and the punk rock scene while Glass started out as an architect before jumping ship to mural painting after a job layoff.

While a moderator asked questions to facilitate the discussion, many tangents were taken and it felt more like a conversation between an artistic brotherhood. All four agreed that the first rule of being an artist was to have fun, to truly enjoy what you do so you want to keep doing it.

They discussed the importance of a good work ethic, that it was key not to be afraid to make mistakes and that rejection was part of the process. Lively said his mother had broken his heart when she'd criticized a figure he'd drawn at age five because it had too many fingers.

Saying his mother had remained critical, he said, "Ed knows. He met my Mom. She criticized him." Trask nodded. "She criticized me pretty hard. It hurt."

Thornhill talked about the importance of getting involved in the community, going to civic meetings and talking to people to get some sense of their interests and priorities.

Part of the discussion was about the differences between graffiti, murals and street art. "Graffiti is painting on a building that's not yours. A mural is the same but you get paid," Lively said in his deadpan way. Trask saw graffiti as an identifier of buildings in decay, but an egalitarian one since everyone, not just people who go to galleries, get to see it. "I like that."

"Graffiti is language that says this place is messed up," Glass explained, saying graffiti artists don't get their just due. It was impressive talk for a man who only began mural painting full time two years ago.

The moderator told us the real definitions: a mural is commissioned and with street art, there are no rules for what is to be created. "If people like it, great," Lively said. "If they hate it, great. If they paint over it, great...as long as I've taken a picture of it."

Thornhill shared how the owner of the Jamaican restaurant on Marshall Street wanted him to do a mural but had limited funds. "You can eat here for the rest of your life," the owner had promised but Thornhill said it wasn't long before he was sick of red beans and rice while the mural took several months to complete. He said the satisfaction was in how traffic slowed down and backed up to look at it every day.

That made Trask point out that art needs to be put where people can see it, and not just people who go to galleries; he suggested restaurants, community centers and every unlikely place you could think of.

After the panel spoke, there was a Q & A from the audience, including a woman with an attitude who wanted to know why Happy the Artist wasn't on the panel (probably traveling for yet another big commission). Lively got right back at her, demanding to know why no girls were on the panel.

Another man wanted help understanding a mural so he could explain it to his granddaughter, but Trask said interpretation was up to the viewer. One woman asked how she could help paint a wall on the next Street Art project and Trask told her to leave her name because there are a lot of walls in Manchester and she'd be contacted. Everyone onstage also expressed interest.

That led us to the final point of the evening: recent history has shown that when decaying neighborhoods get shown some love with street art, gentrification soon follows. Such is the power of public art.

As Glass said, a mural is the biggest business card you could ever have. Listening to people who have fun doing what they love is the best reminder that I made the right choice after my job layoff six years ago.

The only difference is that my business card ends up at the bottom of birdcages every week. I guess that's sort of like getting painted over. If it is, great.