The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Jody Kielbasa, Ilya Tovbis, Courtney Cacatian, And Carrie Pledger Live On “The Downtown Spotlight!”

Episode Date: October 3, 2024

Jody Kielbasa, UVA Vice Provost for the Arts and Executive Director for The Virginia Film Festival, Ilya Tovbis, Artistic Director for The Virginia Film Festival, Courtney Cacatian, Executive Director of the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention & Visitors Bureau, and Carrie Pledger, Owner of Pawprints Boutique, joined Greer Achenbach live on The “The Downtown Spotlight!” The Downtown Spotlight airs live Thursday from 2:30 pm – 3:15 pm on The I Love CVille Network. Watch and listen to The Downtown Spotlight on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, iTunes, Apple Podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Fountain, Amazon Music, Audible and iLoveCVille.com.

Hello and welcome to the second installment of the Downtown Spotlight, a web show bringing you all the news from downtown Charlottesville. I'm Greer Achenbach, the Executive Director of Friends of Charlottesville Downtown, and I am joined today by Jodi Kielbasa, Executive Director of the Virginia Film Festival and UVA Vice Provost for the Arts, Ilya Tovis, Artistic Director for the Virginia Film Festival, Courtney Kocasian, Executive Director for the Virginia Film Festival, Courtney Caucasian, Executive Director for the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau, and Carrie Pledger, owner of Paw Prince Boutique on the Downtown Mall. It's going to be a great show, so we're going to jump right in. All right. Thank you all so much for joining me today. Oh, thanks for having us.

So I'm going to start right away because there's a lot to cover here with the Virginia Film Festival, and it's right around the corner. So it's coming up October 30th through November 3rd. This is the 37th year of the festival, and it's always remarkable programming. Can you all share with us a little bit about what goes into the process of selecting films? Well, I'll throw to you, Ilya, but it is a year-long process that really the cycle begins every year in January with the Sundance Film Festival, which really kind of launches the festival season and starts to inform programming.

But we travel to a lot of different film festivals, Ilya, if you want to pick up from here, I think. Yeah, as Jody says, it's a decently big team, obviously. We punch a little bit above our weight, but we have a series of guest programmers, myself and Jody, who are scouring film festivals, who have ongoing conversations with distributors, with agents. We have a very robust board of people working at the top levels of the Hollywood

industry who also help us with connections. And really it's staying up to date with the newest films. Just about everything we show are contemporary films, sort of hot off the press as it may be, that are just hitting theaters. Everything we show with maybe one or two exceptions only is not yet available. If it's not in our festival, it's not streaming. It's not in cinemas. And so the way that we find out about that is through our board, through our connections,

and through the hard work throughout the year. And eventually we end up collating on a program that we're very proud of, just like this year. You all have a really incredible team, just from the research I've done and attending the festival in the past. How many films is it at the Virginia Film Festival? So in a given year, it's somewhere around 100 to 120,

give or take, and that's right around where we are this year as well. Okay. And I know that there are lots of different themes and different styles of storytelling. Are there any things that kind of tie together in a thematic way the films being shown in this year's festival? Well, I'm going to respond to that for just a

second because the festival before I came had a history of being wrapped around a theme every year that was selected by a committee, and then films were often shoehorned into that theme. That's not uncommon in the academic world, but you're then really reliant on choosing a good theme, and if you don't choose a good theme in a particular year, your box office can go up, you can go down in terms of attendance. You may have films that are odd fits for that particular theme. So, for instance, my very first year,

I had five months to pull the festival together. My theme was chosen before I arrived here in Charlottesville, and it was funny business. And I worked really, really hard to try and broaden that landscape of programming by thinking of the funny business of politics and the funny business of government and of

finance because we were in the middle of a recession in 2009 when that theme was the theme for the festival. And I quickly went out into the community and I asked people and people liked the idea of the theme but they said the same thing. Well, if they weren't interested in the theme that year, they wouldn't attend the festival. And why would we be confined with this theme when we're part of a major research institution that has so many intersections across the grounds and we could do a focus on religion or sexuality or politics or international films or current documentaries? And so very quickly, I lost the theme. And the focus since then, since 2010 really,

has been on the very best cinema in a given year that is often defined not only by the festival circuit that Ilya mentioned earlier, and Ilya travels to the Cannes Film Festival, the Toronto Film Festival, and occasionally the documentary film festivals, and of course up to Tribeca, Full Frame, and Past Years. I go to the Telluride Film Festival.

But we can respond to what's happening in the world in real time, whether it's a war in Ukraine or it's political season with the presidential election to a pandemic, you name it. And that programming that we have now illustrates that almost in real time within that year. And I think that's far more interesting to the general public. I think just to follow up on that a little bit, so I think what we've done is actually exactly as Jody said. There was sort of a singular theme, and it was difficult to fit a lot in. We do now have a lot of through lines, a lot of strands that we hang our hat on, and we shift some of them year to year, and some of them are evergreen.

For example, we take great pride in our Black Excellence section films that focus on the African-American and African experience. We have a great section sponsored by the Southern Environmental Law Center on nature and environment. We do indigenous cinema of the Americas. We do Korean cinema.

These are ones, and this is not a holistic list, that we do year in and year out. We have about nine or ten of those series. I recommend just this morning our website went live, and it can be overwhelming because, like we talked about, 100, 120 films that are flying at you. One of the great ways to sort of filter through that program is say, I'm really interested in black excellence,

I'm really interested in indigenous cinema, and then you can specifically take a look at those. But also to Jodi's point, we are responding to the absolute best of cinema to current events. We want to be a film festival that is relevant. We believe we are in the topics and conversations we have and the guests that we invite in.

That makes perfect sense, right? Why stick to sort of an arbitrary theme and instead you've taken it in a direction where people can use those not themes, but those categories to help them kind of make sense of something that can be very overwhelming so you all just had your launch party earlier this week there's been a lot of buzz there's a couple of films that i specifically want to ask you about so the first film i'm hoping you can tell us about is the opening night film. Is it Anora? Anora, that's right. Yes, very excited about this. It is one of the most innovative films I

think people will see in the year. What it's doing is sort of reinventing the idea of a screwball romantic comedy in a way that hasn't been done in quite a while and never done quite in this fashion. So it centers on a woman named Annie Orinora, who's played by someone whose name you may recognize, you may not, I guarantee you, in three months after the Oscars, after all the buzz, after the film is out, everyone will be talking about Mikey Madison, who's a central character. And she plays an exotic dancer living in Brighton Beach, who seizes her sort of golden ticket out. She quickly falls for, very quickly gets married to this man. They're having a great time.

And then it turns out that he is the son of a Russian oligarch. And his father, when he hears about this union, is none too happy, as you might imagine. He booktails it over to the US and tries to break up their union. And it's an incredibly fun film. It's an incredibly engaging, emotional film about sort of self-liberation, being self-possessed.

All of the characters are just so richly drawn. I think people will literally be walking on air as they're walking out. And we're not quite ready to announce who they are as we're sort of dotting the I's and crossing the T's. But in addition to screening the film, we will have special guests in from the cast here that night. So it'll be a really special evening at the Paramount on October the 30th.

October 30th. You have such a beautiful way of talking about that film. It makes me so excited to come and see it. So another film I wanted to ask about was the centerpiece film, Amelia Perez. I know you saw that, Jody, you saw that at the Telluride Film Festival. Yes, I did. And this actually was one of my very favorite films that I saw at this past year's Telluride Film Festival. And it's got a truly unique premise.

It stars Carla Sofia Gascon, who plays a Mexican cartel drug lord. And he essentially reaches out to Zoe Saldana, who's sort of a high-powered Mexican lawyer, to represent him because he wants to undergo gender affirmation surgery. And he's already started to transition, which he reveals to her. And he wants her to essentially cover it up so he can go undercover, have a safe operation, and reemerge as a new person. And the kick to all of this, and this is when my head explodes, he's married to Selena Gomez in the film and has two young children. And you get about ten minutes into the film, and I read the synopsis, I knew it was coming, but I had entirely forgotten it. It's a musical.

Yes, exactly. Does Selena sing? They all sing, and it's just remarkable and incredible. Beautifully done. I have a background in producing musical theater as well and a career prior to this, and it really works. And it's exhilarating, exciting, just extraordinary, extraordinary film. So I think this is going to be a really popular film during the festival.

I think it's going to be incredibly well-received, and we're really excited to have it as our centerpiece film. And where is that being shown? That's going to be at the Paramount on Saturday afternoon. Saturday afternoon. Okay, you've got me on the edge of my seats. I want to make sure I get tickets to this. Just one quick note on that film, too.

It set a lot of sort of visual landmarks, as Jodi said. It set a lot of history. One bit of film festival history that I think is important to note, all four of the leading women in the film collectively won the Best Actor award at Cannes, which is unusual, normally it's one person, but amongst them is the first person Jodi mentioned, Carla Sofia Gascon, making her the first openly trans actor to win a major award at the Cannes Film Festival. It's a huge, huge deal.

So that alone would be a reason to see it, but everything Jodi said, of course. It's a fun film, and it's one you've got to see for yourself on the big screen. What a fun job you all have to view all these films and put together this festival. So two other films specifically I wanted

to ask about because of their ties to Charlottesville, and I think have ties in different ways but the Piano Lesson and Pavements. Yeah, happy to touch on them. Very different films though they do have some musical similarities and as you say they both have sort of

different and unique ties. So the first one, I'll talk about Piano Lesson which we're very excited about showing on Friday night also at the Paramount. Many of the films we're covering right now are sort of our top-line gala evenings. Those tend to happen at our largest venue at the Paramount Theater. And then, of course, we have many others that we won't be able to touch on today, but that happen at venues throughout. But going back to the piano lesson, this is the third of the adaptations of the August Wilson plays

that are all being done by the Washington family, as in Denzel Washington. He has the rights to adapt all of them, and this is, as I say, the third. So you may have seen Ma Rainey's Bottom or Fences before. And this is truly a family affair because Denzel produces. He's not in the film, he doesn't direct

and he brought on to direct the film one of his sons Malcolm Washington who's making his debut as a director and does an absolutely phenomenal job I actually think of the three August Wilson adaptations this is by far the most visually daring most engaging, the one that least feels like an adaptation of a play, least feels like a film play, and most films like a movie that takes off from where the play

leaves off. But also, in addition to Malcolm, you have his other son, John David Washington, a famed actor from Black Thunderman and other films, who's playing one of the central roles along with Samuel L. Jackson and Ray Fisher, Daniel Deadweiler. He's got this great cast. And the basic story, if you are not familiar with the play, it centers on this heirloom piano

that's been in the family for a couple of generations dating back to their enslaved ancestors. And the whole sort of pivotal point of the film is what to do with this piano. And some people want to hold on to it as this painful keepsake. Some people want to sell it in order to forge the way for a brighter future, even buy back some of the land on which they were used to be forced to work. And it's itself is not a musical of a film,

but there's a lot of incredible music in it. You actually do get to see Samuel L. Jackson briefly sing, which is an incredible moment and is certainly one to watch for. And should mention that I believe Charlottesville actually has the distinction as the only city in the whole country that has produced an entire cycle of August Wilson plays. And so that's sort of the connection here at the Jefferson African American School. And we're very happy to be working with them, hopefully, on a discussion and getting folks out for after that screening as well. And then Pavements, which you talked about, is totally different, except for the musical connection, except for the UVA connection.

This is by Alex Ross Perry, who is really considered at the vanguard of sort of indie American film. He has previously done really sort of wild takes on Thomas Pynchon, just sort of just crazy films that combine. I would say if he has any sort of through line and each film is very unique, it's that he likes to combine a hybrid of fiction and fact and in a way that you really can't tell the difference. And so here the film is called Pavements because it's dealing with the 90s iconic band Pavement, which has its roots in this town and at UVA, Stephen Malcomus and Bob Mastinovich, who

are two of the leads, Stephen Malcomus, the front of thevich who were two of the leads Stephen Malcomus the front of the band met at UVA, was part of the whole scene with Yellow Tango and Silver Jews as well at the time and they actually approached Alex Ross Perry and said we'd love to have you make a film about our band but with a couple of key caveats the first one being that we will not give an interview

and we don't want to tell you anything sort of outwardly about the band we want you to just bottle up our mischievous spirit. And he goes about in the best of ways. He creates a fake museum and some of the artifacts in the museum that are filmed are real and many of them he made up.

And he has this whole mythology and again part of it is made up and part of it is not. And you have to sort of extricate what's what. He stages a whole musical in the middle of the screening and also shoots that. And again, you're seeing some of the band members, he's following them around.

Some of it is real archival footage, some of it is reshot with the current band members, and you're also seeing actors playing them as well. And so it's incredibly heady, it's spirited, it's really fun whether you know anything about the band or not. And we're going to have Alex Ross-Perry in with us for our directorial award this year. So another great evening. This one will be at the Culberth Theater on Saturday.

Thank you. That's a great segue, actually. And I apologize. I didn't mean to connect those two films. No, they're connected. They're very different films. But, of course, it's special to us that they have Charlottesville connections. So you touched on something.

This festival is about so much more than the movies. What are some ways that people can engage with the festival throughout its five days here? I mean, I think one of the things that people love so much about the festival really is the discussions that they can engage in immediately following the films. It's really a hallmark of the festival that almost all of our films are introduced either by someone who is a subject matter expert, a professor from the University of Virginia. And it's not a lecture, it's a three minute introduction that places the film in context and gives people a little bit of background on the subject matter. And then there are panels usually immediately following with the artists that we're bringing in that are moderated either by a UVA professor or a journalist that we brought in of note. And they're fascinating discussions. And then very often the community that's there, the audience, is invited to ask questions as well. And people really love that.

You know, we announced the other night we had 350 people over at the Jefferson for our announcement just to hear about these films and somebody took me aside and said that they drive in all the time every year from Lynchburg and that's their favorite part of the festival are those discussions immediately following. And the other thing is that this really just

electrifies the entire downtown mall. You have all of our patrons and the artists that we're bringing in they're walking up and down the mall you can identify a lot of them by the badges that they're wearing they're going into the mud house and the whiskey jar and then out of other bars and restaurants and coffee shops and and you know it's our audience suddenly is having coffee and they start talking to one of the short filmmakers

and the next thing you know, they're going down to see the short film program where they're seeing this independent film that one of the filmmakers made and they establish relationships. So it's a real convener of our community. So I'm so glad that you said that. You seem to be kind of anticipating these questions

that I'm going to ask. So that's really important to us at Friends of Charlottesville is that community building piece. We're always looking for the community to find ways to connect downtown or to bring people downtown and kind of under all the wonderful things that are happening down here. Why is that important to you all? Well, I think first and foremost, having a vibrant downtown is something we all enjoy in our community. Being able to walk on that downtown mall, being able to go into the restaurants and the shops, the festivals that happen on the mall and off the mall, obviously, as well.

And if you just look at the Virginia Film Festival as an example, it happens here during peak fall color. We're a university town, so we have a lot of people that come in, obviously, for football games and other athletic events, but we have people that come in from all over the mid-Atlantic for the Virginia Film Festival. Again, at the press announcement the other night, a woman took me aside and she said, I have eight friends coming in from around the country, and they've done this for the last nine years. And I put all eight of them up in my house.

And they're here for the Virginia Film Festival, which is really extraordinary. So I know, at least for those five days, we're pretty popular on the downtown mall with all the restaurants and the shops because they're all full, and it's just a really remarkable energy, and it's something that, you know, having lived in Charlottesville now for nearly 16 years, it gives me great pride to see that we have this incredible area that brings people together. There's excitement, there's energy, there's commerce happening, there's so many great restaurants, and then at the heart of it is this film festival where people

are, you know, attending this art form, they're having great conversations, and then they're talking about it afterwards. One of the great feelings for me was last year at the end of the festival screening American Symphony at the Paramount.

And the director, Matthew Heineman and John Batiste, five-time Grammy Award winning, Oscar winning John Batiste. He was here. He was here on the stage at the Paramount, did a 20-minute Q&A, and then got up and did a 20-minute performance that electrified the audience. We had a thousand people in the Paramount, locked arm in arm together, singing When the Saints Go Marching In and You Are My Sunshine, My Only Sunshine. And this was 10.30 at night when it ended, and on Sunday night, and they all left

and about 400 people stayed under the marquee in the Paramount on the downtown mall and just wouldn't leave. They were so happy and there was so much buzz and energy and excitement. I just couldn't believe that John Batiste had delivered that performance. And it was such a moment of unity and feel-good for me here in Charlottesville. It was extraordinary. We are so incredibly grateful for all that you do for the downtown mall.

I agree. I think it is the perfect setting for this type of event. You all do an incredible amount of work to make this happen. Your team is amazing. We are so grateful. I wish we could sit and talk with you all day. Is there anything else you want to share with us about the film festival or where the audience can find out more information?

Well, I think you want to go to virginiafilmfestival.org because the entire film program, including our guest artists that are attending, is there at virginiafilmfestival.org. Public tickets go on sale on October 11th. So be looking to that date. It's a week from this Friday. That's when the general public can purchase tickets. But go on now and start planning your festival and seeing what films you want to go to at the Violet Crown, the Paramount Theater, or at the Culbert Theater on the grounds of the University of Virginia. Ilya? Yeah, I think you pretty much covered it.

I will just put in a slight pitch that you may have noticed October 11th is not right around the corner. What we do between now and October 11th is we have a short window of time for our donors to buy advanced tickets. And we actually were talking to some folks last night and said, oh, how can I become a donor? Can I still get in? And you actually, at any point, if you become a donor today, you can get access to that week-long period. Tomorrow, same thing. So starting tomorrow, we have donor presales. So if folks are really interested and want to support, we definitely need support.

It takes a lot to put this kind of event on. You can get your tickets even earlier. Because on the 11th, events will start selling out. It happens every year. Last year, a good half or more were actually sold out for the festival. Wow. Thank you. You've made me very excited for this.

I can't wait to get my tickets and come check out some of these films. I really appreciate you all being here with us today. Up next, we're going to be joined by Courtney Caucasian from the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau. Thank you all. Thank you so much. Have a great day. Good luck. Bye. We'll talk soon. Hi, Courtney. Thanks for joining me today. You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

So Courtney's a friend of Friends of Charlottesville Downtown and a great partner. And I really wanted to have her on the show as we kind of gear up for the 50th anniversary of the Downtown Mall. Courtney, I'm going to start with just asking you to explain the CACBB, the Convention and Visitors Bureau, and your role here in Charlottesville? Sure. So the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau is the organization that the city and the county combine effort on to get visitors to come here. The primary mission is to generate overnight stays because that generates the lodging tax. Most of that lodging tax goes back to our localities to fund all the wonderful things that they do. And a small portion of that comes back to our organization to keep us going and keep bringing people here. But we also do a whole lot more than that. We promote experiences from wineries to shopping to dining to events like the film festival

and others so really trying to get people to spend as much money as they can while they're here and then go back home which is ideal for us that generates a whole lot of economic activity especially right now october is a small town but yeah that's what we need yeah absolutely so um that's that's our primary mission okay and corny's being kind of that's a very high level oversight she's being humble about the work that they do they have a number of different focus areas everything from like outdoor recreation to you know i don't even know but you've got all these kind of different areas that you're promoting and Charlottesville, as we know, is very, has so much to offer. So we'll talk about that a little bit as we go through. One thing I wanted to talk with you a

little bit about downtown is that Charlottesville does have so many strengths other than downtown. How can we downtown sort of, how can we capitalize on some of those other strengths, whether it's wine or some of the other areas we mentioned? Yeah, I mean, it's all about storytelling, right? We are telling the story to the visitor. And so depending on what stories downtown wants to tap into, wine is the perfect example. You know, most of our wineries close when the sun goes down. And so people want to go somewhere else.

They want to continue that wine experience or that wine-themed experience. Crush Pad is a great example of a place that you can go and really continue to have that experience downtown. But for businesses that maybe are not so obvious in how we're telling the wine story or a different story, really thinking about how they fit into the larger picture of the region, whether that's history or outdoors, like you mentioned,

or just what we love about our home and providing things that people can buy that are unique to Charlottesville, supporting our artisans and all of that, and then telling that story through their website and through their communications, and then we can leverage that as we are telling visitors where to come. That's so smart.

There are things all the time that I don't kind of put the pieces together in that way. So like I had thought when we talked about this before, it's like you could go from vineyards to coming downtown for an incredible dinner and then seeing a show at one of our kind of amazing arts and entertainment venues. But there's even things like Red Random River Co. is right down the street. We even have some of that like outdoor recreation. So I feel like there's a lot like Red Random River Co. is right down the street. We even have some of that, like, outdoor recreation. So I feel like there's a lot of potentially cool partnerships. Yeah, 100%.

And we do have a lot of agritourism, but then you are able to taste that food in our local restaurants, right? And that is something that we've talked about. That connection there is really strong, and that is something that was trendy for a while, but we have stuck with it. It's something that is've talked about that connection there is really strong and that is something that was trendy for a while but we have stuck with it it's something that is unique to us um agritourism is that like kind of like farm to table yeah farm to table is an example right um going out and doing goat yoga would be an example right um or riding llamas um and having that kind of or walking with llamas i think is the proper way of talking about that. But there are lots of kind of tourism experiences that you can have out on our farms. But then you can also get those goods and you can taste that food and you can have that. is a great example because they're always putting up on their chalkboard

where their food came from for their menu at that time. So that's a huge connection. Okay. Yeah. That's really cool to know. Or even, I was even thinking like our two farmer markets downtown. 100%. They source from the area.

Yes. Okay. So the thing I really wanted to talk to you about is the 50th anniversary of the downtown mall is coming up, as well as the 250th anniversary of the United States. Yes. Big tourism push. Yeah. What, how do we prepare for that downtown? Yeah, I mean, a lot of it's there because it's historically based, right? But it's also a time for us to tell our stories, retell our stories, to tell our stories in a new way, right?

We continue to have issues, lingering reputational issues nationwide, right? But this is an opportunity for us to bring in national and international visitors who will think of Monticello as a major part of the 250th story, because it is. Right. Right down the street. And so how do we tie that in, but also tie the 50th anniversary story into what people

need to see when they're here. There's incredible civil rights history downtown. There are free blacks-owned businesses downtown. We have so many stories that can be part of what we're calling revolutionary stories that are being told as part of the recognition of the 250th, all the way back to the Monacan Nation, whose land we're on.

So making sure that we're not just focusing on the 250th and the 50th anniversary, but really what is this land that we're talking about in all of the iterations and so much of the history that has happened here. And Charlottesville is really a microcosm for the entirety of the United States. And that's a really interesting story to tell. You know, I thought that a lot. We have so many stories here in such a small space that really you see stretch across the entire country. So it sounds like one thing you said in there that I really liked

is that we kind of focus on history. So maybe we might want to kind of lean into the historic walking tours or historic society. Okay, so maybe we might want to kind of lean into the historic walking tours or historic society. Okay, so that's great. I know that the CACBB provides a lot of support in these areas all the time, but some are particularly around the 250th. Can you speak briefly about that and what kind of support you all provide to the community? Sure. So I am leading the VA 250th Committee for Charlottesville, Albemarle, and Scottsville. And that is the one activity that we do that isn't solely focused on tourism. It's, again, because it's about storytelling. But through that initiative, we've been able to bring people together to cross-promote.

I know the Escape Room has, they're doing a theme. I'm forgetting the name of the scavenger hunt that happens in March. Oh, the Seville Weekly, the puzzle hunt. The puzzle hunt. Thank you. Seville Puzzle Hunt. We'll have a 250 a theme, which will be very neat. And I know that's a great Saturday for the downtown mall.

It sends people all over, and that will be an itinerary that hopefully we'll be able to replicate, you know, once people complete it. As a way of exploring downtown through the lens of the 250th. So those aren't activities that other communities are talking about. I feel like that's really engaging and bringing history to life and also bringing new people into the history experience in a very experiential way and getting our community really excited about that. We have two chapters of the local DAR, Daughters of the American Revolution, who are creating brochures that begin and end at Monticello and tell stories.

So there's a lot of storytelling that's happening. But the support, in addition to convening the group, that group is able to go after grants. The CACVB is going to match a grant to support the Puzzle Hunt and a podcast series that we hope to do that will be audio tours of different locations that we can share with people. So really excited.

Wait, so you've mentioned this podcast to me before. Tell us a little bit more about that. So it's reliant on Virginia Tourism Corporation funding that we haven't received yet. Okay. So I'll tell you more soon. Okay. Hopefully, Virginia Tourism Corporation is a great partner of ours, and almost all of the grants are offered through them,

and those are the ones that we typically pursue. If we're able to get those grants and we'll be able to do that podcast series and it's through a partnership with the university. That's so cool. I can't wait to listen. I think that's such a neat idea. And as Courtney mentioned grants,

I should mention that the CACBB and Virginia Tourism have been wonderful to Friends of Charlottesville and enabled us to start a lot of neat initiatives downtown early on. So we're very thankful for that and thankful for all that you're continuing to do to bring people downtown, particularly some of those things that are not just one-off events, but these are really place-making opportunities that someone might want to come and explore Charlottesville at any given time. So I think that's really very smart of you and thoughtful.

We're going to talk a little bit more to Carrie in just a minute, but while I've got you, is there anything else you want to tell me about the CACBB? Maybe more house tourism for all going? Sure. I'll step back for a second to say, you know, we do have different areas of work. Promotion is the one that people are probably the most familiar with, marketing and public relations. We have visitor services. We used to have a downtown visitor center inside the transit center. And now we have a mobile visitor center. And what's great about the mobile visitor center is it can drive people downtown when it's not downtown. And the hope is that we're able to connect people who are doing one activity

to another part of the city and the county where they could do a different activity. And really that cross-selling. We have a salesperson who brings groups here, which is big business and hopefully midweek business when we really need it. And then finally, you're talking about our destination development team, which is a new team for the CACVB. And it's really about that convening and finding ways to tell our stories together and getting our partners ready for the stories that we want to tell. So like when we won Wine Region of the Year through Wine Enthusiasts last year, that was a moment for our destination

development manager to bring the wineries together. What stories do we want to tell, and how do we want to leverage that opportunity, right? And that team is the team that helps us with Tourism for All, which thank you all for participating in this year. That is really about helping our community be the most welcoming community that we can be. And I think it's been a really exciting pilot project for Destinations International, us, and TripAdvisor. So it's the first of its kind, and we hope to see it replicated all over the world. So we're really excited about it. We are, too.

So that's one of the four tenets of Friends of Charlottesesville too, is we want downtown to be a welcoming environment for everyone. But I think that's so what you said about it makes perfect sense. I don't know why I didn't think about it like this, but it would be, you're not just coming to Charlottesville for one thing. You're not just coming to a basketball game. You're going to build out a whole weekend or a trip while you're here. And so how do we get everybody working together so that we can package and promote the city for all that it has to offer? Absolutely. Courtney, thanks so much for joining us today.

It was great to talk with you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. And up next, we're going to have Carrie Pledger from Pawprints Boutique. Hi, Carrie. Hi. How are you? All right. So first, just tell us a little bit about Pawprints. How

long have you owned it? Why did you start the business? So Pawprints Boutique is on the downtown mall. We have both dog and cat items. People are always concerned that we don't have cat items but we do. And I started it because funny I guess I wanted to take my pets to work with me so I decided what a better place than a pet store I never knew that story but yeah we've been in business for about six or seven years okay so that's a little bit newer than I thought. So the reason I wanted to talk with Carrie today is because we're coming up on one of my favorite, there are a couple, but Doggy Halloween is an event downtown that really stands out to me. It's an event for the entire family, including your pets. So I brought Carrie in to talk about that. So when you opened Pawprints, did you then take over Doggy Halloween? I did. So it was actually started.

It's in its 16th year. Wow. So it was one of maybe the first doggy trick-or-treating activity in the U.S. Charlottesville is pretty unique for that. It was started by someone who had a dog who had cancer, had passed away from cancer, and was fundraising using this model of doggy Halloween, which is a super fun event because you get to take your dog out on a date

and essentially walk around the downtown mall to the local businesses and get treats for your dog instead of candy. But yes, I ended up taking it over. So I can't really take credit for it, but it's just a wonderful event. I actually used to go to it when I was, you know, walking around the downtown mall before I had my dog. And so it's kind of exciting to actually be able to have it. Host it now. Yes, to host it now. So I don't know how many of the viewers that are watching this at home have been to Doggy Halloween before, but it is just the best atmosphere. It is so

joyful. The dogs are so excited. People are excited. People that walk by and don't know what's happening just think Charlottesville is the most dog-friendly, wonderful place they've ever seen. And your dogs dress up in a costume, which is so cute, and people are incredibly creative. It's funny, actually. So sometimes it's on the film festival week. So these people from across the country are here. There's all these dogs in costumes, and they're like, what's going on?

But it's really funny that we didn't line up with it this year. But, yeah. So that's a good segue. When is it? It is October 25th we actually have a rain date as well as November 1st okay October 25th how do people sign up can they sign up day of or in advance you can sign up um the day of it's really what most people do is just come in and register the day of and then you get your number for your dogs for the costume contest as well. We'll also have a way to sign up from the Facebook site or website,

but it's not necessary to do it in advance. So you can sign up. And is it, it's low cost. So it's a $15 suggested donation. We kind of rotate around the different charities or sort of rescue groups for animals in the area. And we're working with one right now, so I don't have exactly the name of it, but yes, it's a, it's a donation. So if you can't afford it, that's fine as well. So you mentioned that there's, there's actual trigger-or-treating for dogs with treats but there's there's other things that happen that night so tell tell those people watching at home what

sure so right so sort of the main event of of doggy halloween was to do this trick-or-treating thing um the other thing that happens then sort of after that is that we do a little costume parade down the mall and back again and i've known you, depending on the years, we've had people that just come down. They don't have pets, and they just come down to watch all of the dogs. And then there's a costume contest. We have five different categories this time. There's most Halloween-y, funniest, most creative, best group theme, and then overall best in show.

And we've actually, like last year, the businesses donate a lot for this. So we had over $2,000 worth of prizes last year. Wow. And then we also do a raffle. So your dog doesn't have to win the costume contest. You can also win the raffles. So I knew that you had a lot of prizes. That takes a lot of work to put together.

It's mostly just you going to the businesses and asking them to participate in this? It mostly is. We're getting help from Friends of Charlottesville this year and, you know, in the past couple years. But yeah, it has mostly been me walking around talking to the businesses. But again, it's the businesses participating that make the event happen like without that the event the event wouldn't happen so really we've often had maybe 40 45 businesses that are willing to you know be involved in this and that's what makes the event so i did want to make sure you got credit for that because it is i don't know that people always understand what a huge amount of work an event is to put on and how much it is just kind of like prodding people along. So

Carrie deserves a lot of credit. We're very grateful. Um, I think one thing you said that I, it makes doggy Halloween so special to me is that it's this perfect model for how I'd like to, you know, we want to see the businesses work together all the time. The businesses really do all participate and show up for this event. It's very business-driven. Obviously, you're a business that puts it on. So that's something I'm very grateful for. Why was, obviously you talked about coming just as an attendee. Why was it important to you that you continue Doggy Halloween?

Oh, I think it's just like you said in the beginning. It's such a fun activity just for the whole community. And, you know, again, like you don't have to have a dog, you just come down and watch. Or if you have, you know, want to do, I think particularly for people who like don't have kids, it's nice to be able to do an activity with your dog. and the whole event is just hilarious I'm not sure how the dogs always feel about it but um it you know they are really cute in these costumes so cute and you know even there's with the best group theme a lot of the times it's like families get together and you can see all these families like dressed up with you know five people in this

matching sort of theme with the dog being part of it um I think it's great just a great family activity as well I was going to say that that's something I loved about it is you did you saw parents and kids and you saw single people and couples and yeah it brought out a lot of people um and you do such a great job of making it a really fun thing uh i also would assume it drives business somewhat downtown as you're bringing people out and um kind of out and maybe i think like it at least it it makes the downtown feel so fun that evening um but you know the another thing that we actually have that I didn't mention is we've had photographers come. We have like a photo booth as well that you guys are

helping out with. And that kind of you can get your, you know, these momentums. We also take photos of the costume contest for you. And then we've had a caricature artist last year. Michael Heath Pecorino was our caricature artist last year, and he did a really great job at getting everyone's caricature that wanted it. Oh, I'm sure people loved that. We did the photo book two years ago, and I still look at some of the pictures the first time we used it. There's so much fun these

dogs in costume there was one dog that was dressed up as the downtown mall yes um it's just people are so creative and clever and so fun and I know one of my favorite ones was I still remember this this wasn't this was way before I had the the event but this person had I guess it was a t-shirt over top of the dog, and then all of these purple balloons on it, and so as it walked, all the balloons shifted around, and it was a bunch of grapes. It was hilarious. And the dog was tolerating it well?

I mean, it didn't really know they were on it, I guess. But, you know, because they're so light, but they just as it walked, all the balloons wiggled around. I need to start thinking about, I try to put my dog in costumes a lot, I need to start thinking about, I try to put my dog in costumes a lot. I need to start thinking about what she's going to meet this year. Oh, and you know what? So we also have some people bring their cat, which is just amazing

because there's hundreds of dogs and this cat doing okay. Did the cat participate in the competition? Yeah, twice. Well, last year we had someone with a cat in a backpack, but I know one of the years I went there, they literally had all these little dogs with little hats on and a cat inside of a little wheelbarrow thing. And I don't think anyone was confined in there. They just kind of hung out. The cat just hung out. That's great. So bring your cats too. Not just doggy Halloween. I know I'm waiting's great so bring your cats too not just doggy

i know i'm waiting for someone to bring a doggy and cat um another thing i love about this is for me it feels like kind of the the kickoff to the holiday events here in downtown is it starts with doggy halloween and then you've got downtown safe halloween that's put on by the city and then pretty soon after that we start our magic on the mall series which is um we checked out a little bit on the last episode but there will be attraction lighting coming to downtown as well as a number of different the holly trolley and hanukkah celebrations peppermint trail elves in seville um alakazam does letters to santa so they're kind of this is a time this this holiday season fall yeah there's so much for families to do on the downtown mall so i always really want to drive that point home because it's we can get stuck in our own

routines and making sure that we have reasons to bring people out so um anything else you could tell us about about paw prints or about doggy halloween oh we just really appreciate having it we um we actually would love to have suggestions if any of the rescue groups want to be involved or if anyone else wants to be involved in some way, we'd be happy to expand the event and have vendors

or anything like that too. Vendors like, oh people coming as part of the, like a character artist or something like that. Yeah, sure. And businesses, we need you to participate. So if you're willing to pass out treats or to donate prizes, please make sure you get in touch with Carrie or Friends of Charlottesville, and we can connect you with Carrie that way.

But we're really excited. We hope you all mark your calendars for October 25th. And that's all we've got today for the second installment of the Downtown Spotlight. We look forward to seeing you back here in November thank you all Thank you.