Home
Description
This week on Tidewater Talk, we sit down with our neighbor Mollie Alaire of Choose Joy Farm in Lanexa, out by the Chickahominy. Mollie was born at the old Williamsburg hospital, and her great-grandpa bought the family's 68 acres in 1901. The family grew watermelons and corn until 2008, when Mollie got a goat to make goat milk soap for her brothers' eczema.
Now the farm keeps pygmy goats, Nigerian dwarfs, LaManchas, pigs, silkie chickens, and 15 year old ducks, and Mollie teaches soap making, milking, and goat care to students from 3 to 89. We hear about goat snuggling, piglet yoga, goats launching off a chicken tractor onto the barn roof, and Damiana, the 14 year old LaMancha who runs the whole yard circus.
Co tells us what the nor'easter did to the Boardwalk, and we look at a warm week before weekend showers.
Plus Mollie's picks: mango cheesecake at Colattao on Independence Boulevard and a pistachio cream latte at Elite Coffee in Norge. Also the free U.S. Marine Band concert at the Sandler Center, Zoovies at the Virginia Zoo, the last weekend of Ghent Restaurant Week, and the Tour de ORF bike ride.
We reveal last week's Where in Tidewater, the Old Cape Henry Lighthouse, and give you three new clues for a historic stage on Church Street in Norfolk. Send your guess to
If you're in Coastal Virginia, this is your weekly mix of neighbors, local lore, weather, and where to go next.
Where in Tidewater
- This week's place is a working stage, and it's named for a man who was killed in Boston in 1770.
- When it opened in 1919, it was the only theater in the country financed, designed, built, and run entirely by African Americans. Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, and Louis Armstrong all played it. People called it the Apollo of the South.
- It's on Church Street in Norfolk. It went dark in 1953, sat mostly empty for fifty years, and reopened after a big restoration in 2004. Above the stage hangs a three-story fire curtain, painted in 1919, showing the Boston Massacre.
Description
This week on Tidewater Talk, the rain finally shows up and we have plenty to talk about while it does. The Navy is handing every junior sailor barracks in Hampton Roads to a private company in a $1.7 billion deal, including a new 17 story tower in Newport News where Huntington Hall stands today, and Brodie has some opinions about that building. VDOT breaks ground on the Norfolk segment of the Hampton Roads Express Lanes, seven more miles of I-64 and 21 bridges, so we get into whether express lanes actually work. There is also an algae bloom called the mahogany tide moving through the lower Chesapeake, and yes, somebody named it Marge.
Strange and Odd goes way down this week, to the 35 million year old asteroid crater buried under the lower Bay near Cape Charles, and the ancient brine that makes deep wells in Newport News and Poquoson unusable.
Co has the forecast, and it is a busy one: a coastal flood warning, wind gusts up to 50, and eight to 12 foot surf before things calm down for a cooler weekend.
We reveal the Where in Tidewater answer (the concrete ships at Kiptopeke) and give you three new clues for a place in Virginia Beach you can climb. Send your guess to
Plus your weekend: the 52nd Neptune Festival, Ghent Restaurant Week, Farm Aid at the amphitheater, and Pirate Night at VA Vintage.
If you're in Coastal Virginia, this is your weekly mix of news, local lore, weather, and where to go next.
Where in Tidewater
- This week's spot is something you can climb.
- It is older than the White House. It was the very first construction project the brand-new federal government ever authorized, back in George Washington's first term. It is built from the same kind of Virginia sandstone you see all over Washington, D.C. And it has not done its original job in well over a century.
- It is in Virginia Beach, on a Navy base, a short walk from where the English colonists first landed in 1607. And it has a younger sibling right next door, a black-and-white tower built in 1881 that is still working today. You cannot climb the new one. You can climb this one.
News
Tidewater Tips
- Neptune Festival Boardwalk Weekend
- Neptune Festival Grand Parade
- Farm Aid 2026 at Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheater
- Ghent Restaurant Week
- Pirate Night After Dark at VA Vintage
- An Evening with Sally Mann at the Chrysler Museum
- Hunt Club Farm Harvest Fair
- Chesapeake Farmers Market at City Park
- Phoebus Jazz Festival
- Hispanic Heritage Month Restaurant Week in Newport News
- Chesapeake Celebrates Trees
- Suffolk Rods and Muscle Cars Charity Car Show
- Oktoberfest at Elation Brewing
- A Legacy of Faith and Freedom at Historic First Baptist Church, Williamsburg
Description
This week on Tidewater Talk, we look at drought concerns in Norfolk and Virginia Beach, Hampton Roads Transit reaching 10 million riders, and the history of Virginia Beach’s iconic Cavalier Hotel.
We also have the local forecast, surf and tropical updates, and another “Where in Tidewater?” challenge near Kiptopeke State Park. Plus, we share weekend picks including Fall Fest at Mount Trashmore, Come From Away at the Wells Theatre, Hoffler Creek Wildlife Preserve, the Oceana Air Show, and the Old Beach Farmers Market.
Where in Tidewater
- It is a graveyard of sorts, but you will not find any tombstones. It sits right on the water along the Eastern Shore, serving as a massive artificial reef for fish and a favorite roosting spot for local birds.
- The permanent residents here are completely hollow and were built during World War Two. They are not made of steel or wood. They were molded out of a material you are much more likely to find on a sidewalk or a driveway.
- If you take a kayak out near Kiptopeke State Park, you can paddle right alongside these twelve silent, battle-worn giants that have been deliberately sunk and lined up end to end to protect the ferry dock and shoreline from heavy waves.
News
Tidewater Tips
- NAS Oceana Air Show with the Blue Angels
- Friday Night Hoedown at the Virginia Beach Farmers Market
- 18th Annual WPA Garden Heritage Celebration at Norfolk Botanical Garden
- Old Beach Farmers Market
- Mount Trashmore 3rd Annual Fall Fest
- Come From Away at the Wells Theatre in Norfolk, closing Sunday Sept 20
- Hoffler Creek Wildlife Preserve, Twin Pines Road in Portsmouth
- The Hunt Room, the tavern inside the historic Cavalier Hotel
Description
This week on Tidewater Talk, we caught up on a little local life and a lot of Coastal Virginia news. We talked about the Wells Theatre reopening quickly after flooding, the Great Bridge in Chesapeake getting stuck open again in the heat, and one of my favorite local history stories yet: Portsmouth’s Richard Dale, who was captured by the British five times and escaped all five. We also revealed last week’s “Where in Tidewater” answer, Fort Monroe, and shared why it’s such a powerful place in regional and national history, from Edgar Allan Poe to its role as "Freedom’s Fortress."
We also highlighted an important Virginia Beach safety reminder that stormwater ponds, ditches, drains, and channels are not safe play areas, especially during and after rain, and shared the city’s reporting line for concerns. On top of that, we ran through the week’s weather outlook, previewed a few upcoming local events like Tidewater Horror Con, the Neptune Fall Wine Festival, and several 9/11 memorial events around Hampton Roads, and wrapped with a new “Where in Tidewater” mystery pointing listeners toward a vanished coastal community at the southern tip of Virginia Beach.
Where in Tidewater
- The people who founded this town did not pick it. They washed up on it. Sailors off ships that broke apart on this stretch of coast, men with no money to get home and in some cases no interest in going, who walked out of the surf and just stayed.
- So they built a town out of what the ocean handed them. A schooner went down offshore loaded with cypress lumber, the lumber came ashore, and they used it to build their Methodist church. At its best this place had three hundred people, two churches, a schoolhouse, a grocery store, and a Life-Saving Service crew. The graves in the little cemetery are packed with seashells, because there was no florist anywhere near and nothing worth picking to put on a grave.
- Then the ocean started coming over the sand more than they could live with, and by the 1930s every last person was gone. The site is still there, at the very bottom of Virginia Beach, inside False Cape State Park, right up against the North Carolina line. You cannot drive to it. You hike in, bike in, or come by boat through Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge. And the church steeple is still standing, sitting inside a white glass-walled building somebody put up around it to keep the weather off.