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Chilalay Brings A Positive Outlook To Richmond Streetwear

Norrin Nicholas | October 24, 2019

Topics: Chilalay, Earl Mack, First Friday, Navy Hill Co, Nikko Suave, richmond arts district, streetwear

First Friday brought a new retail streetwear outpost to Richmond’s Arts District — the first brick-and-mortar location for up-and-coming local fashion brand Chilalay.

On a humid October First Friday in Richmond, Virginia, a street that connects different sections of the city together is filled with its residents. Groups of people trotting the sidewalks, coming in and out of stores and restaurants, laughing with one another as they make way for the hundreds of other groups walking on the same strip.

The sounds of music from multiple venues merging and mixing with each other can be heard all around. The doors of almost every store on each block are open to the public, creating a mysterious feeling of wonder for every guest. Alongside these stores sit people behind tables; cloaked and covered with an excessive amount of art and merchandise from some of the more obscure creatives in the city. Conversations about the identity and purpose of these pieces are subtly audible as you walk by; everyone has a story to tell and most have a story to receive.

On one side of the street sits a brand new store. On its front window is a white logo: the word “CHILALAY,” printed above three stars. Small groups of people are walking in and out, opening and holding the doors for others. A DJ sits next to the register spinning popular songs; you see people nodding their heads and singing along with their friends. Others flip through articles of clothing, racing their peers to see who can find their size and who can’t. Faces of a few guests light up, noticing the rarity of each piece as they move from rack to rack; people converse about the store “changing the status quo of Broad St.,” and the revolutionary future it is bringing.

“This location is prime real estate for a lot of spaces that are part of the culture in the city,” said Earl Mack, co-founder of Chilalay. “The immediate radius is filled with popular spaces like Utmost and Round Two. Our store being in the mix of it all is a healthy addition to expand the creativity that’s already here.”

October’s First Friday saw Chilalay experience its birthday grand opening, and have an amazing time. The lights from inside the store shone bright, like far-away stars in space, shedding light and emphasis on the pieces of clothing in the store… and the people inside. What we saw was not only the start of a new creative experience in the city, but also the joy that these native experiences can bring to us in times when we feel there is nothing to be happy about.

“Chilalay means to chill, and not stress out over things that are out of your control,” explains Mack. “The idea is to have a more positive outlook on the obstacles we come across in life.”

“We live by the motto, ‘If you can fix it, then fix it’,” Chilalay co-founder Nikko Suavé. “And we feel this has brought us exactly to where we are now. Don’t stress the things you can’t fix.”

Richmond’s creative culture has paved a solid path for a rising artistic revolution, a path able to withstand the trek of several other creative ventures in the city. Since 2014, there has been an explosion in talented and innovative businesses all over the city, from resourceful DIY clothing stores to art galleries open for creative usage. Richmond’s art scene is thriving as we move into 2020, and the potential is there not just for a more creative present, but for individual creatives to build a new, improved future.

Mack and Suavé — who founded Chilalay, a Richmond-based lifestyle brand, several years ago — have noticed this potential, and they’re acting on it. Where some simply admired the boom from a distance, Suavé and Mack delved deep into this local artistic revolution to figure how they can change the future of Richmond fashion with their own work. A few days before their grand opening, Mack explained how Chilalay has grown, from a brand he and Suavé started by themselves in 2012 to their current position as owners of their own store, through persistence and hard work.

“Things happen for a reason,” said Suavé. “If we rused some of the things we did in the past, we wouldn’t be here having this conversation. We always say we’d rather push things back and do them the right way, rather than rushing it and being mildly happy with the outcome. Patience is truly a virtue.”

“A lot of what we’ve manifested already has come from a consistent work ethic,” said Mack. “This is something we’ve been doing since 2012. Not everything we’ve done has been a major hit, but our consistent effort to reach that point has kept us afloat.”

Before acquiring their new storefront, Chilalay worked through numerous pop-ups around the city. Their ability to find the corners of the city where Chilalay can shine the brightest, and build from there, shows their strength as a Richmond-raised brand operating within Richmond’s artistic scene to bring not only quality clothing but a truly creative approach to the city.

For Suavé and Mack, their goal is to take Chilalay to the level of a mainstream streetwear brand, able to influence and reflect the interests and ideals of young people in Richmond and beyond. They hope to continue growing from here, doing more both within the city and in the state of Virginia as a whole, as their influence increases. And what better place is there to act as a base of operations in Richmond than Broad Street?

“Broad St. allows us to directly interact with the city at any chance we please,” said Suavé. “We’ve done several pop-ups around the city before, and we’ve had a great turnout with them. But now that we’re seated directly in the center of it all, I think it gives us a better chance to show what we have to offer. This space on Broad isn’t just for the supporters, but the entire public as well.”

But it doesn’t end with a storefront — if anything, it is just the beginning. Using their own space and additional side business, Navy Hill Co. — a screen-printing service they provide to other creative apparel groups in the city — they hope to offer other creatives who are just starting out chances to showcase their own work.

“I see [Chilalay] being used as a space for other creatives to manifest their own work,” said Mack. “We got started by doing pop-ups at different spaces, and so I hope that we can give back to the community by doing that same thing for other artists in the city. When there’s good infrastructure laid out, it’s easier to build more.”

The Chilalay store is now officially open on 212 W Broad St. from 12pm-6pm every day. Find them on Instagram @Chilalay and @NavyHillCo, and the owners at @Earl_Mack and @Youngchefgordon.

Photos via Chilalay

GRTC Connects: Route 14 – Bellevue to the Arts District

Wyatt Gordon | April 24, 2019

Topics: Bellevue, First Friday, GRTC, GRTC Connects, GRTC Pulse, MacArthur Avenue, Racial tensions, richmond arts district, Transit app, West Broad St., white flight

Here’s the next installment of a monthly series in which a hometown Richmonder who has spent over a decade abroad explores the many different neighborhoods accessible by GRTC bus lines to find the ways GRTC connects us all.

Bellevue:

Bellevue positively radiates springtime cheer. Manicured lawns brimming with perky daffodils and blossoming dogwoods line Fauquier Avenue — the grand boulevard designed to lure Richmonders at the corner of Brook Road and Laburnum into the belly of Bellevue.

In the lush median a small historic stone arch emblazoned “Bellevue” mimics its larger brother, which frames the entrance to Pope Avenue from Hermitage Road. This larger original, the Bellevue Arch, memorializes John Pope: developer, business partner (and rumored lover) to Lewis Ginter, and founding father of Bellevue.

In the late 1880s the two men bought several farms north of the city to develop into picturesque streetcar suburbs for Richmond’s burgeoning bourgeoisie. Shortly after the completion of Bellevue’s iconic arch in 1894, Pope passed away, leaving the implementation of his grand plans to his less enthusiastic heirs. Construction boomed during the Roaring Twenties, crashed in the Great Depression, and by the end of the 1940s most lots in the neighborhood had been populated by independent owners with the Tudor Revivals, Bungalows, Colonial Revivals, Foursquares, and Spanish Colonial Revivals visible today.

Those Richmonders already familiar with this idyllic area probably have Bob Kocher in part to thank. The two tiny commercial corridors along MacArthur and Bellevue Avenues were nearly vacant save for Dot’s Back Inn, which — like Joe’s in the Fan — functions as much as a local institution as a restaurant and bar. Realizing Bellevue’s potential, Kocher snapped up much of the retail strip along MacArthur and opened Once Upon a Vine. With alcohol to anchor the area, many other independent businesses soon began moving in, leading to today’s thriving, tight-knit community Bellevue is beloved to be.

I met my longtime friend and companion for the day, Ginna Lambert, at Stir Crazy Café on MacArthur. With its cozy interior and fine roasted coffee, this underappreciated gem deserves a reputation as the best coffee house on the Northside. Cold brews in hand, we sauntered toward our next destination on Bellevue Avenue, while being greeted by many a neighborhood cat and one friendly resident on his porch.

As a born and raised Southerner, my heart melts for a perfectly baked biscuit, and if it’s topped with gravy as good as that from the Early Bird Biscuit Company’s latest location, then my morning is made. One order of their “biscuits & crazy” always hits the spot. Stomachs full and spirits high, we moseyed through verdant Bellevue toward Hermitage Road to catch the Route 14 bus downtown.

The Bus Ride:

Studies show that people waiting for a bus at a stop devoid of amenities perceive the wait to be longer than it actually is, while those at stops with benches, a shelter, or a real-time arrival sign perceive the wait to be much shorter. Unfortunately, no seating or shelter greeted us; no route map or timetable was posted.

Standing under the cement columns along Hermitage, which once powered the Lakeside Streetcar Line and today serve as mere utility poles, Ginna navigated GRTC’s website and trip planner (which simply takes you to Google Maps) to see we had a seven-minute wait till the next bus.

I instead checked the Transit app, which uses real-time, crowd-sourced data from its users to let you know when your bus will arrive. Transit showed a 24-minute wait, 17 minutes longer than GRTC and Google’s estimation. We stood (remember the lack of a bench?) and waited. Two northbound buses and twenty-four minutes passed before our southbound bus finally arrived, just as Transit predicted.

This 17-minute discrepancy leads one to wonder why GRTC doesn’t scrap its own app, deploy the savings to expand service, and declare Transit their official mobility app, as other underfunded public transit agencies have done.

A friendly driver welcomed us on board the empty bus as we began to zip through Northside toward the Arts District. On the way, we passed popular spots like the Arthur Ashe Athletic Center, the Diamond, Hardywood Brewery, and Virginia Union University.

At the Maggie Walker Governor’s School, kids sat on the sidewalk waiting on the 14 bus. At the Lombardy Kroger, a dozen elderly women and several families with small children crowded the sidewalk, holding their bags of groceries with nowhere to sit. Along that entire stretch with two dozen stops, just two on Broad Street had benches, and only one stop — in front of VUU — featured a shelter.

The Arts District:

The stretch of Broad Street from the Institute for Contemporary Art to The National — loosely referred to as “the Arts District” — should best be understood less as a formal neighborhood with concrete borders and more as a particularly lively stretch of downtown cobbled together by history, its prime location, and regulatory and financial incentives. The spine of the corridor, Broad Street, wasn’t always the vast, 15-mile-long artery of the city it is today. Until the turn of the 19th century, Broad Street was no more than “a country road with corn fields and cow pastures on either side and here and there a house.”

Railroad trains delivering passengers and goods from up north ran straight down the middle of the street until the end of the 1880s. The throngs of people disembarking their trains patronized the many stores, restaurants, and theaters that sprung up along Richmond’s stateliest of boulevards. Commerce and commotion became the hallmarks of the area, as Broad Street grew into the Commonwealth’s premier place to be. Over the following decades, furniture factories, dense apartments to house their workers, and the world’s first electric streetcar line transformed the area into a raucous mix of residences, retail, and entertainment.

The Supreme Court’s decision to integrate schools in 1954 and the white flight that followed heralded the end of the area’s heyday; however, this prestigious section of Broad Street managed to largely dodge disinvestment until the eruption of the race riots that engulfed cities across the country following the assassination of Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

On the night of April 6, 1968, a group of 300 men started breaking storefront windows, overturning vehicles, throwing firebombs, and looting. Police quickly quelled the chaos, and by morning the violence and destruction had been fully contained in our capital city, which prizes stability and authority. Witnesses reported “at least one store on nearly every block along Broad Street from Adams to Seventh Street had [to replace] broken windows with plywood or makeshift boarding.”

Many of the abandoned and boarded up storefronts that blight Broad Street to this day date back to this spasm of America’s underlying racial tensions half a century ago. The corridor’s reputation was sullied; its many businesses began migrating to Henrico and Chesterfield. Over the 1970s and 80s, suburban shopping centers and mega-malls sapped the area of investment.

The revitalization of this segment of Broad Street and its eventual branding as “the Arts District” is inextricable from the rise of Virginia Commonwealth University in the 1990s. VCU’s aggressive expansion, combined with historic rehabilitation tax credits from the Federal Park Service and the Virginia State Department of Historic Resources, piqued the interest of private developers like local grocery mogul Jim Ukrop. Galleries and cafés catering to students abounded, and old furniture factories morphed into multi-family apartments.

Two decades later, pawn shops and payday lenders seamlessly blend with hipster boutiques and fine-dining (and drinking) establishments like Tarrant’s, Bistro 27, and Comfort. The explosion of first-class coffee houses such as Urban Hang Suite, the Lab by Alchemy, or Lift Café have brought in daytime foot traffic that used to exist here only when a show was on. Perhaps no other business better embodies the ongoing restoration of the Arts District from a long neglected corridor into one of Richmond’s chicest milieus than Quirk Hotel, with its posh gallery and rooftop bar.

Anyone looking to experience the district at the peak of its artsiness need only join in on a monthly First Friday, when the area’s greatest galleries, such as 1708, Black Iris, and Candela, open up their doors to art enthusiasts and revelers alike. Between the National, Coalition Theater, the Hippodrome, and the Virginia Repertory Theater, one could fill nearly every evening with live music, comedy, and drama.

With Central Virginia’s first Bus Rapid Transit line, the Pulse, speeding more people than ever in, out, and through the Arts District, Broad Street is beginning to feel more like the paragon of progress it was a century ago, when its wide streets, linear aesthetics, and electric street lights represented an idealized future of order and prosperity. Perhaps only in Scott’s Addition is the feeling of excitement about the future as palpable.

The corridor’s potential is undeniable. Currently, vacant structures can be converted to dense housing and charming new storefronts. The Pulse offers residents the first Richmond neighborhood in which they can feasibly live, work, and play, all without having to own a car.

Will the further development of the Arts District move in a civic-minded direction, guided by the many noble nonprofits in the area such as the Elegba Folklore Society, Housing Opportunities Made Equal, Code VA, or the Better Housing Coalition? Will this rising neighborhood take an unfortunate turn towards soulless, profit-driven enterprises, embodied by the slated Common House — a “social club” that charges members a $300 initiation fee and $150 monthly dues to access its excessive amenities?

Since its inception over two centuries ago Broad Street has symbolized the exciting future of our capital city. Hopefully the relatively recent addition of the Maggie Walker statue at North Adams and Broad, in the heart of the neighborhood, focuses minds on the power of investment to uplift and integrate historically marginalized communities. The tension between exclusion and inclusion has always existed, and Richmonders will decide which side wins out going forward in Bellevue, the Arts District, and the entire city.

Modern photos and screencaps by Wyatt Gordon. Historic photos from The Valentine’s archives


Let Your Freak Flag Fly: Dirtwoman’s Legacy Returns to Richmond Tonight

Benjamin West | April 5, 2019

Topics: arts, Dirtwoman, donnie corker, First Friday, gallery 5, Gallery5, paint me bitch

Porno theaters and biker haunts, streams of punk rockers flowing from bar to street to bar again, stitched up in Germs gear and Buzzcocks back patches. A line of motorcycles slouch crooked near the sidewalk, like iron horses in front of a saloon.

This was Grace Street in the 1990s, which, at that point, had maintained a rowdy reputation for decades.

“It was a very unusual place,” arts and culture critic and video producer Jerry Williams said. “All the canyons of buildings were not there, it was a bunch of funky stores.”

Anyone can picture the ripped jeans, the stained flannel and chunky boots padding around, a result of our fetishized nostalgia for the grunge era — from which cyclical fashion tendencies are coming back around to a smartphone generation — but the much harder sell is the beautiful weirdness that was Donnie Corker.

PHOTO: Dirtwoman, Alice McCabe

Corker, like a bug in amber, is forever suspended in the Richmond consciousness under his moniker ‘Dirtwoman.’ He was a gay man and a drag queen, who began wearing his sister’s dresses in the 60s when he was just 13, and made a living as a sex worker in his youth. As an adult, he melted into the Grace Street scene, selling flowers from a lawn chair on the corner of Grace and Harrison.

“Donnie was really a sweetheart of an individual, and very intense,” said Parker Galore, executive director of Gallery5 and a friend of Corker for many years.

From his stoop in front of the Village, Corker hurled insults (Williams refers to his famous “potty mouth”) or unleashed pick-up lines and flattery when an attractive guy walked by. He was an endlessly “social creature,” according to Chris Dovi, Codeva executive director, longtime Richmond reporter and friend of Corker’s, and although Corker never learned to read or write, he would memorize the phone numbers of people he met, calling them throughout the day. He could talk for hours.

When Corker died on September 26, 2017, he left behind a lot of stories — from having crabs eaten out of his crotch for a GWAR video, to his over-the-top charity performances, to crashing the inauguration of former Governor Doug Wilder — everybody who knew him has their own, and many who didn’t are intimately familiar with the legends. Williams has spent the last 20 years compiling these stories into a feature-length documentary set to have its hometown premier at the Richmond International Film Festival April 25, and in conjunction with their 14th anniversary celebration, Gallery5 is hosting a Dirtwoman art exhibition tonight — paintings, photos, drawings, and more inspired by Corker himself. This all comes on the tail end of the first-ever Dirtwoman Week, the news of which broke Monday (on April Fool’s Day, ironically enough).

So get out and celebrate the way Corker would have done it.

Let your freak flag fly.

PHOTO: Dirtwoman, Noah Scalin via Jerry Williams

The Exhibition

Among the DJ booths, fold-out tables, singing saxophones, and fire dancers populating the downtown streets every First Friday, Richmonders are bound to encounter Gallery5 at some point in the night. It juts out into a Marshall Street intersection like the stern of a ship, both a literal and figurative masthead of Historic Jackson Ward.

Though he said he’s never used these labels, Galore said the Gallery has been identified as the “art rebels” over the years. They’ve maintained a staunchly-DIY ethic, and the public has latched on, recognizing the nonprofit as something special.

“The city just is bursting with creativity and wonderful ideas,” Galore said. “It’s always really great for us to do what we can to give any of those ideas a home or an incubator.”

Friday, in conjunction with their 14-year anniversary celebration, Gallery5 is hosting an art show dedicated to Corker — who would sometimes hang out on the front steps of the converted firehouse, according to Galore.

The exhibition, Galore said, features “about 34” pieces of art depicting Dirtwoman in many different mediums, from blown-up photos featured in artist Alice McCabe’s famous Dirtwoman calendar, to paintings and illustrations.

“There’s a lot of really interesting, and endearing, and awesome interpretations of Dirtwoman, and it’s a lot more eclectic than you would probably imagine,” Galore said.

So among live music and a local vendor takeover of the second floor, go check out Paint Me, Bitch!: The Dirtwoman Artshow beginning tonight at 7 p.m. inside Gallery5.

“It’s cool to do something that’s part of Richmond history with this person who should be celebrated for all the quirky, wonderful, weird things that they brought, and gave permission for us to be ourselves,” Galore said.

PHOTO: Dirtwoman, Douglas Orleski via Jerry Williams

The Documentary

Much of the Dirtwoman portraiture flooding the first floor of Gallery5 doesn’t stand alone — the art comes directly from Williams’ much-anticipated documentary about the life of Corker.

Spider Mites of Jesus is set to premier at the Florida Film Festival in a couple weeks, followed by a hometown premier at the Byrd Theatre April 25 for the Richmond International Film Festival. The project, nearly two decades in the making, encapsulates Dirtwoman’s history and pinpoints Corker’s unique personality. It’s built from a collection of 70 interviews, rare historic footage, and the loving work of a community of people who knew him well.

Director Jerry Williams, also known as TVJerry, often encountered Corker as a student at VCU in the late 60s.

“I remember him walking around with a wig on,” Williams said. “…He was unashamed, he would call you out if you gave him any shit.”

When the “good old disco days” rolled around (eg. the 70s), Williams started at CBS 6, and Corker, who watched a lot of TV, became fond of Williams. He doesn’t remember exactly how they met, but soon enough, they became friends.

“I guess you could say we were both semi-famous gay people in town,” Williams said with a little laugh.

The idea for the documentary began in the late 90s, when Williams wrangled together a crew of friends to interview Corker and film his 50th birthday bash at a former club on Grace called Caffeine’s. The whole shebang was complete with other drag queens and live music, and later they filmed the aforementioned GWAR music video skit — Sleazy’s Crabhouse.

“And then we all got busy making a living for a number of years,” Williams said.

Corker had congestive heart failure in 2017, and the waysided passion project was resumed once again. Williams said at that point he was “cruising into retirement,” and he knew this was a perfect time to begin again.

He called in many favors from his friends in the industry, a community of local professionals, many of whom had been active on his website — Tales from the Grips, and later Sifter — who collected stories from the TV and film world, told by those who lived it.

“Everybody who worked on it pretty much worked for free,” Williams said.

PHOTO: Dirtwoman, Brad Douglas

The footage, the interviews, and the stories when crafted into the film were much too long at first, according to Williams. He spent over a year editing — cutting, and cutting, and cutting.

“Which was hard because there’s so many stories about Donnie and so many outrageous things that I just couldn’t include them all,” Williams said.

While the task, like Corker, might have seemed huge and daunting, the resulting film is like Dirtwoman in other ways: hilarious and heartwarming.

It’s hard to summarize what Dirtwoman meant — and means — to the Richmond community. Douglas Orleski of RVA Coffeestain, whose work will be featured in Paint Me Bitch! said it wonderfully:

“In a world that is increasingly unauthentic, I found [Corker’s] unashamed nature refreshing.”

“You might have difficulty explaining Dirtwoman to someone from out of town, but Richmonders, they get it.”

Tickets for the hometown premier of Spider Mites of Jesus are $10 for general admission and available here.

Carnival of 5 Fires kicks off 10 year celebration Friday with pyro circus and Poe tributes

Amy David | October 5, 2016

Topics: All Saints Theater Company, Carnival of 5 Fires, fire spinning, First Friday, Gallery5, Party Liberation Front, pyro circus, rva burlesque

Every year, Ringmaster Parker Galore, and a collective of fire spinners and performance artists, shut down Marshall Street in Jackson Ward for what may be the biggest First Friday event of the year. This year’s circus of fire spinners and burlesque performers kick off the month-long Carnival of Five Fires this weekend in a celebration of the weird and taboo.
[Read more…] about Carnival of 5 Fires kicks off 10 year celebration Friday with pyro circus and Poe tributes

Storefront for Community Design to host the National Association for Community Design conference this year

Amy David | June 12, 2015

Topics: art, Association for Community Design, community development, First Friday, Middle of Broad, Storefront For Community Design, VCU School of the Arts

Storefront for Community Design wants you to be their neighbor.
[Read more…] about Storefront for Community Design to host the National Association for Community Design conference this year

Slash Coleman shares his stranger-than-fiction life stories at the VMFA Friday

Calyssa Kremer | September 4, 2014

Topics: First Friday, RVA, Slash Coleman, storytelling, The Bohemian Love Diaries, The Neon Man And Me, vmfa

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts will open its doors during First Friday to showcase the talent of Richmond native Slash Coleman, as he tells stories from his book The Bohemian Love Diaries.
[Read more…] about Slash Coleman shares his stranger-than-fiction life stories at the VMFA Friday

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