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I feel like we've seen this one before... hmm.

One day, long from now, all of these will get published. The book will then get thrown into a time capsule and be unearthed thousands of years from now. At which point future society will be based around it, taking it as an accurate account of history.

My parents would take me and my sister to Mike's at least once per trip to Blacksburg when I was a kid. It was the only place in town other than Lane that I ever cared to go to back then. They'd always talk about how, back in the late 70s/early 80s, it was a great bar with pool tables in the back. I don't remember how long it's been since the last time I went though, and now I feel guilty about it

Wondering with the good talent and depth we have this season
if we'll be pretty good at DL. I mean, with good players
2 deep that could be a good thing.

This reminds me of my favorite story about William Tell.

Everyone knows that Tell was an expert marksman with the bow, but few realize that he was also one of the early practitioners of what would eventually become modern bowling. It was a rather crude sport back then, nothing as refined as what we have today, but it was still about precisely throwing a ball at some objects to knock them down; something that Tell could easily do thanks to his years of mastering bowman-ship.

Tell actually got his wife and oldest son to take up the sport as well, since from its very early days it was enjoyed as a team sport so that one person could record their last score while the others collected the (hopefully intact) pins and reset them. These pins would break so often that it quickly became very expensive, as you can imagine.

Much like other expensive hobbies that could provide entertainment, patrons soon got involved as individuals who were glad to spend a few of their nearly endless coins in return for the enjoyment of seeing someone as famous as William Tell practice a new sport. Sadly, since it wasn't the fashion of the time to write down who patronized such a new phenomenon, we will never know for whom the Tells bowled.

I like your style. going tubing when in wnc taking a couple river sodas, likely veil & trillium.

not just the sheer number of officers on duty...all the task forces..mobile units, helicopter, plane...dogs..etc...it all sounds like a really freakin' expensive production which mostly goes unseen

My off duty jobs paid me 25-35 dollars an hour. Any officer besides VT officer you see inside the stadium is working an off duty gig and is getting paid out of atheltic dept budget money.

wow...very interesting stuff. Thank you for sharing.

My biggest take-away....sounds expensive as hell!

I agree with you 100%, if the developer had been up front on their plans from the beginning with the Town, I don't think you would have gotten a store with a cavernous parking lot in front of it - from a storm water management ability of that site - it wouldn't have been able to take in all the storm water the flows through that property if they had a giant parking lot. You would have had to have huge underground storm water storage to achieve that.

However, I think you would have gotten a much better development with a solid anchor that is more successful for the businesses currently occupying it if both parties had compromised.

Worth posting here, Hoda gave a great speech at the 2008 spring commencement.

You'd be hard pressed to find someone more against the blight of big box stores than myself, but I think there's a world of difference between what this would be (an anchor store to attract customers designed to be integrated with the surrounding neighborhood) and what wal-mart wanted (an ocean of a parking lot surrounding a mega store permanently preventing an entire area from any development). There needs to be some kind of shopping available in Blacksburg so that Christiansburg isn't the only option and to attract people downtown outside of dinner rush and late night, but the town was right to fight off wal-mart who was actively trying to ruin a large portion of town.