New logo rocks the City

Today, the Charlottesville-Albemarle Convention & Visitors Bureau unveiled Charlottesville’s new logo. Did we have an old one? And, boy, what a logo it is! After 22 months of trying this, and that, and scratching that out, and adding that, what the Bureau came up with is a logo with a fat “C” on one side and an even fatter “E” on the other side sitting on top of the “Virginia” in the University of Virginia logo that they say captures our “personality” of “creativity, history, and elegance.” And it only cost $65,000!

Already, it’s creating quite a buzz. The Daily Progress posted the story and invited citizens to post comments. What do you think of the new logo? the DP asked. Well….let’s see. Just a minute…

Okay, so no one has posted a comment yet, but we’re sure that will pick up.

In the meantime, Bureau officials hope their new outreach campaign–which will feature the new logo everywhere!–will draw more of the already too many educated and wealthy people we already have here.

“A new logo? I gotta place for the new logo,” says Charlottesville resident Floyd Blunt, who was busy looking for work on a median strip at the intersection of Hydraulic Road and 29 North. “Right here on my elegant…” (Sorry, we didn’t get the last part of what Mr. Blunt said, as the light changed and we had to keep going.)

Further down the road, at Greenberry’s, café dwellers pondered the meaning of the new logo.

“I think the fat “E” is very erotic,” says Veana Hooch, a grad student at UVA. “It’s like a wide open mouth with the tounge sticking straight out…very provocative.”

Kevin Banks, a State Farm Insurance salesman getting a haircut at Staples, said, “It looks okay to me. But what do I know?”

“Who the fuck cares about a fuckin logo, motherfucker?” says Tony Solinto, a New Yorker originally, who moved here only recently and works as a waiter at a popular urban-style restaurant on the Downtown Mall.

“Are you a reporter?” asks Heidi Shleck, a high school senior at Charlottesville High School with almost no waist and a tatoo of a crab on her an exposed midrift. “Oh, it’s just an online thing? Never mind. What a creep.”

Clearly, Charlottesville citizens are just beginning to feel the impact of the new logo. As UVA professor of philosophy, Phillip Shreverwitz points out, sudden changes in the identity of our surroundings can disorient people for a period of time. “When it has sunk in that we live in a creative, historic, elegant place, which could take years,” says Shreverwitz. “Then maybe you’ll begin to see people adjust to it. Right now, the community is really in a state of shock.”