Nicky Demitry '26
Production Editor
We’ve reached the part of the semester where nothing feels real, so what better time than now to embark on a journey detailing my top cryptids and liminal spaces of Charlottesville, Virginia. Without further introduction:
Top C’ville Cryptids
1) Professor Paul Freedman at the C’Ville downtown city market, at like 4am.
Politics professor Paul Freedman teaches (among other things) the politics of food at the College, and enjoys lurking around the farmer’s market, hissing at people and correcting Karens about city ordinances.
2) The White Deer™
It’s a deer. It’s white. I saw it once while rowing on the Rivanna Reservoir. I took a grainy photo. I had good luck until the next time I saw a normal deer.
Pictured: The White Deer
Photo Credit: Virginia Rieley, CVille Today
3) Ranger
I’m avoiding naming actual humans in this list for various reasons, but Ranger is an exception because a) I asked and obtained permission, and b) if you go out to bars on the Downtown Mall, you will eventually run across him. My hint for you is sunglasses.
4) Those two lifted dumbass cars that drive laps around the Downtown Mall with loud music, bopping up and down and complete with flashing lights
Love, and also hate. But mostly love. I feel like the cars are friends IRL, outside of the drivers.
5) ZXCV cat
He’s fading a bit now because the artist moved away from Charlottesville. No one really knows what the deal is with this cursed kitty, but I love him, and ZXCV are the four bottom leftmost keys on the keyboard. So there’s that. My favorite thing is the unhinged theories people have posited about ZXCV over the years. See if you can find the remaining ZXCV cats out and about C’Ville.
Pictured: ZXCV Cat
Photo Credit: r/Charlottesville
On to Liminal Spaces[1]
1) York Place
On the Downtown Mall, this weird combo mini-mall/apartment building houses Grit Coffee, Marco & Luca Dumplings, a tailor, a nail salon, some other places… honestly, I don’t know. You can walk through it and emerge on the outside of the mall, pointed at South Street Brewery. Does this sound impressive or liminal? No, not really. You gotta experience it for yourself.
2) Dewberry Building when you can hear the rats
C’Ville’s great shame and curse. So much I could write on this saga and on my not-so-secret passion for zoning meetings. But this isn’t about ME, it’s about that weird, uncertain liminality that haunts the towering expanse of Dewberry. Stay tuned for my next piece on eminent domain reform. And stay tuned for the sound of the rats skittering and chittering in the nights, and picture the roiling horde of bodies—remembering of course that we have uncommonly large rats here—coalescing into a rat king. Cute!
3) Miller’s Third
What else can I say? My favorite place to go after working a bar shift, or if I just really want my hair to smell disgustingly of smoke whilst I watch drunk people do increasingly sexual maneuvers at the pool table while they make heavy eye contact with some unlucky soul. Nothing says 1:30 a.m. drinking culture in C’Ville’s tallest bar like bright lights shining mercilessly upon vacant eyes, reddened by cigar/cigarette smoke. Bonus points if you order pretzel bites, a crispy Coors Light, and gaze upon this renaissance in wonder.
4) The old UVA hospital (West Complex)
Really makes you understand why Charlottesville was the Ground Zero for Buck v. Bell (read the fun sign by Region Ten on Preston if you haven’t come across this delightful story in class). Anyway. Shit’s haunted. Went to free therapy there once in grad school and decided I’d be better off just keeping the depression and recurring nightmares of the weird lil dude from Twin Peaks. And in conclusion, here we are.
5) Gilmer Hall basement (scary!)
Stranger Things, IRL. Conspiracies abound. I participated in experiments there as an undergrad for $20 per appointment, and something definitely went wrong with me. I’ve said too much.
6) Zen Gardens at Morven
I’m running out of space, so Google Morven, UVA past lives, UVA Contemplative Sciences, and John Cleese. TL;DR: They’re trying to figure out if kids are actually describing past lives when they’re being all freaky when you’re watching Frozen, pointing at Anna being frozen solid and saying, “That’s how I died before you were my babysitter.” Lmao, ok. Babysit yourself.
7) Where I Got My First Covid Vaccine During Pandemic
A circus tent, paid for by Dave Matthews, in the parking lot of the desiccated husk of a Kmart and an abandoned Gold’s Gym. Across from Whole Foods. Truly dystopian surrealism.
8) Basement of the Law Library, Maritime Section
9) The Texas Roadhouse
I can’t fully endorse, because I am technically banned.[2] But yeah makes you question reality. Red Lobster was worse, and I’m devastated it closed.
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ncd8kt@virginia.edu