George “Papa Joe” Chrisofis, standing with his trusty baseball bat outside the old Papa Joe’s nightclub long after it had been shut down. | Photo submitted by Maria Christofis

Friday Column Reprise

Note from Dan: While I’m on vacation, I’m treating you to some oldie-but-goodie columns from the past. This one, published March 22, brought as much reader reaction as just about anything I wrote all year. VDOT hasn’t yet torn down the building, but that’s scheduled to happen soon, to make way for Roanoke’s second traffic circle.

Roanoke will lose a piece of its history later this year.

It’s doubtful to raise the ire of any Roanoke Valley preservationists when a nondescript building along Wise Avenue in southeast Roanoke (most recently the home of Vinton Roofing) is demolished to make room for the city’s first traffic circle.

However, in years past the two-story block, brick and stucco structure was one of the most newsworthy and notorious in Roanoke.

Back in the 1960s, it was Papa Joe’s, a beer joint reputed to be the first topless bar in the Bible Belt. Its fame — or perhaps infamy — stretched for hundreds of miles.

The proprietor was George “Papa Joe” Christofis, an Egyptian-born Greek who had a mind for business and an outrageous flair for publicity. On the side of his building, he painted in large letters, “The place that made Roanoke famous.”

That was not much of an exaggeration. Read more »

Some of the neighbors on Arlington Road in the Raleigh Court neighborhood who created an unusual and interesting coordinated holiday lights display. (Left to right) Spencer Duval, Madison Duval, Ella Scoville, Jane Bailey, Gibson Scoville, Ben Scoville, Olivia Burkett, Julia Burkett, Nicole Lenderking, Jack Lenderking and Nancy Duval . The display is in front of 10 homes near the intersection with Windsor Avenue. Photos by STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS | The Roanoke Times

On recent nights, the cars have been creeping along the 1700 block of Arlington Road in Roanoke’s Raleigh Court neighborhood.

It’s a narrow street anyway, but since Thanksgiving weekend, drivers there have been a bit more distracted. That’s because of the large, 18-inch or so diameter white-lighted balls hanging from the trees.

There are more than 40 of them, strung up in front of 10 houses on the block’s northern end at Windsor Avenue. They create an odd, almost otherworldly effect that’s pretty cool. I’ve never seen any holiday display quite like it in the Roanoke Valley.

Behind it are a handful of women who live there: Jane Bailey, Nicole Lenderking, Julia Burkett, and Nicole Duval,who lives a few blocks away. They love the block, and they and their neighbors have a lot of fun.

Call it a bit of friendly holiday-decoration competition with Westover Avenue, which is just a few blocks away. At least one house on that street has an elaborate Christmas lights setup that  looks like the Las Vegas strip.

“We decided last year we wanted to try something to outdo them,” said Julia Burkett, who’s lived on Arlington for six and a half years.

READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN HERE.

Photo by STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS | The Roanoke Times

Loch Haven Lake in northern Roanoke County.

Carilion did the right thing last week by changing its ill-advised policy barring same-sex couples from joining the Roanoke Athletic Club and Botetourt Athletic Club as families.

The pity is, it took 40 days, a lawsuit and a torrent of criticism to accomplish that.

By now the facts are well known. Will Trinkle, a real estate agent who’s gay and is raising a child with a male partner, signed up for a family membership at the RAC May 15.

Nine days later in a telephone call, the RAC revoked it, under the reasoning that Trinkle and his partner didn’t qualify as “a family.” Carilion had claimed it was following Virginia law.

That was a crock, because Virginia law doesn’t define the term “family,” at least not yet. Nor has the General Assembly gotten around to prohibiting private businesses from granting such memberships to families headed by same-sex parents. (But give them some time. Del. Bob Marshall may be working on the bill as you read this).

So Trinkle filed a lawsuit, and the ensuing story made national news. By Thursday afternoon, at least 100,000 people from across the country had signed a petition at Change.org condemning the RAC and Carilion. The number more than doubled in a single day.

This brought the RAC more publicity than anything else in its history. And all of it was negative, aimed at a company that is by far the Roanoke Valley’s largest employer.

By extension, it made this region look like the kind of atavistic backwater that only the Rev. Fred “God Hates Fags” Phelps could be proud of. Read more »

Marian McConnell with her dog, at the edge of Catawba Murder Hole as Roanoke Times' photographer Sam Dean takes a shot of t hem on Friday. She took Sam down to the bottom of the cave's upper level Monday. | Photo by Dan

Out in Catawba, a good ways off the beaten path, there’s a yawning gap in the earth that’s darkened in early-morning shadows cast by the craggy ridge of McAfee Knob.

Its ominous-sounding name is “Catawba Murder Hole.” To the naked eye, it’s 100 feet wide and another 120 feet deep. But that part, named “Daylight Cave,” is merely the visible section of a larger cave system that stretches beneath Dan and Marian McConnell’s 34-acre wooded spread .

Two unseen lower levels take its depth down to 234 feet. One of the underground chambers has a 75-foot-tall ceiling.

Talk to Marian and you’ll hear stories — some are fact and others are legend. There’s the one about the Virginia Tech student who fell and died there when his climbing rope snapped during a caving expedition in 1958.

That one’s a fact. Tragically, fibers in the rope had weakened because some toilet-bowl cleanser stored with the line had leaked onto it. Read more »

Jacquelyn Martin | AP

Sunday, President Barack Obama will speak at the unveiling of the newest monument in Washington, one that’s long overdue.

It’s to the Rev. Martin Luther King,  the indomitable civil rights leader who used peaceful protest to urge this country to eliminate vestiges of racism that hung on for more than a century after the Civil War ended.

Here’s an interesting story about the monument, and the long, bickering road to its development by the Associated Press. More after the jump. Read more »

Loch Haven Lake, Roanoke County | Shot by Dan

Well, that attempt to make a blog post from my smart phone went a little awry. . .

I’ve update it by correcting the headline and putting up the pic I shot there.

Here's a clear-day view from the side yard of a home on Bent Mountain that Jim and Joan Ferguson recently put up for sale.

If you’re in the market for a home with a spectacular view, Jim and Joan Ferguson may have the ideal place for you.

By virtue of its location, their place is one of the more eyeballed residences around, and the retired Floyd County couple recently put it up for sale.

Their two-story, 4,800-square-foot brick home hangs off of Bent Mountain along U.S. 221. It’s on the left at the final rightward sharp curve just before you reach the top of the mountain.

Oh my, what a view. I’m hardly an expert but I’d peg that alone as worth $1 million or so.

The Fergusons are offering both it and the house for $419,000, for sale by owner. That’s certainly not chump change but still seems like a deal, provided you have the money and no fear of heights.

The house dates back at least to the 1950s, perhaps earlier, when it was a gift and craft shop, part of a small tourist complex that stretched across U.S. 221, operated by E.L. and J.M. Glover. Read more »

Zach Casey, 12, carries his bike over -- and under -- some trees that fell across the Greenbrier Trail in West Virginia during Wednesday night's storm. The storms in West Virginia didn't cause anything near the havoc that happened in Alabama, Georgia or Virginia. But thousands of West Virginians were still without power late by late Thursday afternoon, the conclusion of our 4-day, 112-mile mountain biking/camping trip.

We’re back!

Zach and I left Monday on a 4-day trip along the Greenbrier Trail in West Virginia. We started in Caldwell, WVa., just west of White Sulphur Springs, and rode up to Marlinton and then back to the car. We finished Thursday afternoon.

The plan had been to camp each night in beautiful trail-side primitive campsites. We camped the first two nights but a park ranger warned us about the severe weather slated for Wednesday night, so rented a cabin in Renick, W.Va instead. That turned out to be a great move.

The trail is an old C&O Railroad logging, passenger and freight line that was in operation through 1978. It’s 77 miles long and stretches from Caldwell to Cass, W.Va. We rode to Marlinton (milepost 56) then turned around and rode back. Here’s an article I wrote about the trail back in the 1990s.

What follows are pictures from our adventure. Zach’s been listening to my bike trip stories for years (I’ve been bike tripping since 1976). This was his inaugural bike trip — and he’s already planning the next one. Read more »

A tidal bore is when an incoming tide meets an opposing current, and in a few places around the world it creates low-level waves  that can be surfed for amazing distances.

Cook Inlet in Alaska is one of those. Check out the cool video. More on tidal bores here.

The blogger who posts here as Ron sends in this pic from northern Indiana!