Giving Back Awards Reception 2018
On Nov. 1, Coastal Virginia Magazine honored nonprofit organizations featured in the seventh annual Giving Back Awards and businesses featured in CoVa BIZ’s Community Impact Awards at a special reception at Virginia MOCA in Virginia Beach. Guests enjoyed a delicious spread of foods from Mermaid Catering along with drinks before heading into the museum’s theater [...]
Top Lawyers 2018-2019 Reception
Photos by David Uhrin On Nov. 8, Coastal Virginia Magazine and CoVa BIZ held a special reception at a Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Towne Realty luxury home in Norfolk honoring the Top Lawyers in Coastal Virginia as nominated by their peers. Top Lawyers and their guests toured the gorgeous waterfront property at 7433 Flicker Pt. while enjoying craft [...]
Shake Up Your Recipes by Cooking with Bourbon
According to the Virginia Distillers Association, Virginia became the birthplace of American Spirits when colonist George Thorpe distilled the first batch of whiskey made from corn in 1620. This first batch became the ancestor of all corn-made moonshine and bourbon. Roughly 180 years later, our Founding Father, George Washington, began commercial distilling using crops from [...]
Virginia Beach’s First Outdoor Ice Rink
On Saturday, Nov. 17, VB Ice will make its debut as Virginia Beach's first outdoor skating rink. The 100-by-45-foot rink, located at the Virginia Beach Farmers Market, makes for a cheery addition to the market’s Christmas happenings. Preparing the rink for its grand opening is entertainment expert, Joel Cadwell. Cadwell is a Coastal Virginia native who, [...]
Prosperity Bakery Introduces Fresh Pastries and Roman-Style Pizzas
The highly esteemed Commune recently expanded its collection of farm-to-table eateries to include a stand-alone bakery and pizzeria in Virginia Beach’s ViBe District. The bakery dubbed Prosperity has allowed Commune owner Kevin Jamison to enhance his team’s production of baked goods and introduce the beach to true, Roman-style pizzas. Jamison secured the painted brick building on [...]
Coastal Cidery Arrives in Hampton
Late this summer, Sly Clyde Ciderworks was introduced as Virginia’s first coastal cidery. The Hampton-based ciderhouse was founded by local brothers Tim and Doug Smith and was established in the home of the Smith brothers’ late grandfather, H. Clyde Smith. Both the location and namesake of Sly Clyde Ciderworks pays homage to Clyde’s personal legacy [...]
7th Annual Giving Back Awards: Coastal Virginia’s Top Nonprofits
Ever heard the phrase, “See a need, fill a need”? That’s how many nonprofit organizations got started. Someone, or a group of individuals, saw a need—people going hungry, children falling behind in their education, animals with no homes—and made a commitment to make a difference by filling the need. For the seventh year, Coastal Virginia [...]
Giving Back Awards: Toby’s Dream Foundation
“What do you dream of? More than anything.” It’s the question Toby’s Dream Foundation volunteer Dream Makers ask children facing life-threatening illnesses during visits to their homes. “You’re the bright light that comes in when everything else is dark,” Executive Director and Founder Joan Steele says of the foundation’s Dream Makers. “You’re the bright light [...]
Giving Back Awards: Kennedy’s Angel Gowns
In a Granby Street Starbucks on a Wednesday afternoon, Heather and Demitri Wilson tell me about the grueling, 25-hour, induced labor Heather endured just minutes after learning their daughter, Kennedy Milan Wilson, had no heartbeat. The feeling of joyous anticipation the couple had experienced for their eight months of pregnancy was immediately consumed by grief. [...]
Giving Back Awards: Fear 2 Freedom
The Shadow Event gives an opportunity for anonymous survivors silhouetted behind a screen to share their stories with audience members. I’d prepared for my visit to the nonprofit Fear 2 Freedom. I’d done background research on the organization and understood their mission of restoring hope and dignity to survivors of sexual assault. I knew about [...]
The 411 on Four Eleven York
Four Eleven York Norfolk’s dining scene ascended a notch with the opening of Four Eleven York, an intimate, sophisticated restaurant sharing a name and courtyard with the adjacent bed and breakfast (formerly Freemason Inn), both owned by Jeremy McGee and Malia Paasch (also of The Birch). Chef Shawn Matijevich (a Smithfield native who’s been executive [...]
The Hound’s Tale Corner BARkery
Folks kept wanting to buy the decor at dog-themed pub The Hound’s Tale in Williamsburg, explains Don Pratt. So he and his wife Geri recently unleashed Corner BARkery down the block. But beyond bowwow boutique, it’s a “canine speakeasy.” The bar’s accordion window swings out onto a light-strung patio where people and pets nibble and [...]
Tenacity Exhibit Explores Women’s Roles in Jamestown and Early Virginia
Move over, Founding Fathers. The Founding Mothers have been offered a seat at the table at Jamestown Settlement. The Settlement is a museum devoted to 17th century Virginia history and culture, where English, Powhatan and West-Central African influences converged, through both indoor exhibits and outdoor living-history experiences. Over the next year, the institution will expand [...]
Ring in the Holidays at Dickens’ Christmas Towne
Returning to the Peter G. Decker Jr. Half Moone Center for its fourth consecutive year is the festive family attraction Dickens’ Christmas Towne. This seasonal pop-up transforms Norfolk’s premier waterfront venue into a cheerful, 15,000-square-foot Victorian London streetscape complete with snowfall, carolers and more. Dickens’ Christmas Towne runs the gamut of holiday activities, offering festive [...]
CoVa Mom Role Models: Theresa Ceniccola
Qualifying as a CoVa Mom Role Model candidate takes hard work, a challenge Theresa Ceniccola accepts every single day. She is a marketing strategist and writer, president and founder of the International Christian Mompreneur Network, vice president/chief operating officer at Red Orange Studio and a wife and mom. Is she superhuman? Her family, friends, associates and clients [...]
CoVa Mom Role Models: Kate Maxlow
CoVa Mom Role Model Kate Maxlow has achieved superhero status, and it comes with abilities ranging from her knack for traveling all over Hampton in one day and jetting to get two get kids from school and activities to using her dynamic learning powers to pursue her doctorate while opening creative portals to write books [...]
CoVa Mom Role Models: Meghan Stufflebeem
“There is a war on childhood,” says Meghan Stufflebeem. This mother of three children ages 6 to 13 and director of Galilee Montessori School asserts that “Kids are finding their self-worth through Instagram … their brains are not ready for what they are being exposed to.” And she sees this disconnect manifesting itself behaviorally and [...]
CoVa Mom Role Models: 4 Moms Manage a Balancing Act
As more American mothers find freedom and flexibility in the workforce, the creation of a new acronym may be in order. This fresh grouping of letters would represent a blending of Stay at Home Moms (SAHM) and moms working outside of the home to reflect growing options for women. Mothers striving for a more family-friendly [...]
Mom Hacks to Help You Simplify and Streamline Your Routine
Whether you are a working, stay-at-home or work-from-home mom, your days are filled to the brim with tasks and commitments. The seemingly endless to-do list can be overwhelming, and striving to get it all done can take away precious time for engaging with your family. To combat the chaos that mom life can too easily [...]
Family-Friendly Holiday Events in Coastal Virginia
'Tis the season for holiday parades, Christmas lights and winter fun. Throughout Coastal Virginia, experience an abundance of festive family celebrations including a colonial-era Christmas, firework shows, nighttime ice skating and more. Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer Nov. 30–Dec. 1: Rudolph, Santa Claus, the Abominable Snow Monster and more of your favorite holiday characters will [...]
Codex Offers a Seasonal Menu with High-Quality Ingredients and Flavor
Panzanella featuring heirloom tomatoes with balsamic vinegar, melted burrata, sourdough croutons and olives. When the evening light pools across Colley Avenue like spilled honey and thoughts of dinner begin to surface, the kitchen in Pendulum Fine Meats undergoes a change. By day a delightfully down-home butcher and sandwich shop in a house in the business [...]
Sonoma Wine Bar and Bistro Refreshes its Dining and Menu
Fried green tomatoes with roasted corn pico de gallo, shaved mahon and basil- avocado creme. After 13 years, Sonoma at Virginia Beach Town Center has hit refresh. The result? A lighter yet still upmarket dining room, an über-convivial bar area and a connected-yet-separate, more casual outlet called Quirks for burgers, tacos, bowls, tequilas and craft [...]
The Lasting Effects of Incarceration in Our Local Prison System
Fueled by the “War on Drugs” and harsh sentencing guidelines instituted in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, the U.S. prison population has skyrocketed. Today our country is king of incarceration—home to just 5 percent of the global population, we house more than 25 percent of its prisoners. In Virginia, rates of incarceration have risen by [...]
Broken Behind Bars: Mental Health in Local Prisons
In April 2015 24-year-old Jamycheal Mitchell was arrested for stealing a Mountain Dew, Zebra Cake and Snickers bar from a Portsmouth 7-Eleven. Though the junk food was worth just $5, he was denied bond and detained for 101 days while awaiting trial. That Aug. 19, he was found dead in his cell at the Hampton [...]
Doing Time: When Parents Go to Jail, Kids Suffer the Consequences
Illustration by Matt Haddaway Here’s a harrowing statistic: In Virginia, one in 14 children will experience the incarceration of a parent before the age of 18; for African-Americans, that number jumps to one in nine. What’s more, of these 103,000 kids, more than half are under the age of 9 at the time of their [...]
Second Chances Give Convicted Felons a New Start
Richard Walker Uses His Story to Fuel Reform and Help Convicted Felons Get a New Start At the offices of Newport News nonprofit Bridging the Gap in Virginia (BGV), 60-year-old Richard Walker sits listening intently to a young man’s story. Released days before, Leroy Jones, 28, has essentially been imprisoned since his 18th birthday.* “I’d [...]
Right Side: Prison Reform
Better questions are often more illuminating than answers. In the muddy waters of prison reform, clarity is rarely achieved by simply spouting, “If you do the crime, you do the time,” or “actions have consequences.” There’s nothing wrong with these clichés, but they’re half measures. The real barbed wire to cut through is by asking, “What should be [...]
Left Side: Prison Reform
Deeply embedded in our national consciousness is the notion that the United States of America is devoted to “liberty and justice for all.” Alas, we have failed to live up to that ideal. Consider this: Here in the “land of the free” there are approximately 2.2 million people in jails and prisons—considerably more than in [...]
A Cuppa and More at Mea Culpa
No more loading and unloading for Cristina Angelo and Kristopher Harvey of longtime pop-up Waffletina. They have a Park Place home of their own with a first-floor café, Mea Culpa, whose sleek modern style contrasts strikingly against its Rockwellian exterior (white picket fence, wraparound porch). Along with their beloved Belgian-style waffles, they offer pastries, salads [...]
Drinking Healthy for Your Teeth
For most of us, maintaining oral hygiene has become a mindless part of our daily routine. We brush, floss and gargle after meals and are consistent with our six-month cleanings. Surprisingly enough, much of our dental wellbeing takes place outside of the bathroom sink and in our kitchens. All of the beverages we consume during [...]
Artful Impact: OnieTonie’s Public Art
Photos by David Uhrin Public art can give your city a sense of identity; it can inspire individuals to think creatively, unify neighborhoods and instigate a dignified pride in your community. Troy Summerell, better known by OnieTonie, his pseudonym for his work with a paintbrush, has made our region a playground for his public art. [...]
Educational Paths to Take for Successful and Lucrative Careers
What does it take to be successful? Obviously, the very definition of success is different for each individual. But when it comes to potential fields of study that can prepare college students for lucrative careers, you can simply look at statistical data on jobs that pay well, but there’s a lot more to the equation. [...]
How to Make Your College Application Shine
Submitting a college/university application is very much like applying for your first major job. Your grades and SAT/ACT scores are usually the base for getting you noticed, but to really stand out, there are a few things you can do to rise above the rest. Here are some tips from professionals in the field who [...]
Vintage Tavern Combines Fine Dining with a More Casual Experience
Following a six-week renovation, Vintage Tavern reopened to the public on Oct. 16, showcasing new kitchen equipment, new dining room décor and an expanded bar. They still offer the same exceptional dining experience visitors have come to enjoy, but have expanded the “tavern” part of the equation, providing new menu items such as flatbread pizzas, [...]
2018 CoVa Idea House: York Lane Cottage
Photography by Jonathan Edwards Like sipping champagne on your daysailer, the stunning 2018 Coastal Virginia Magazine Idea House is proof positive that elegance and a casual, coastal lifestyle need not be mutually exclusive. The York Lane Cottage, with its turn-of-the-century Nantucket charm and 21st century amenities, is worth every one of its 2.6 million clams. [...]
