For some, Labor Day is the date beyond which wearing white shoes is gauche. For others, it’s a day off work, the perfect opportunity to drink and fish or burn animal flesh over open coals. I like to play Billy Bragg and Woody Guthrie records, and read through the “Anarchist’s Cookbook.” But for most people, Labor Day is the artificial end of summer, when schools reopen for business and keg sales soar.

I thought of something while driving through VCU recently, while hordes of underdressed and ever-younger-looking “kids” flocked across Main Street en masse, against the light, causing drivers in expensive SUVs to honk and curse behind their frosted windshields. It hit me that the VCU campus these students are treading across in their Crocs and Pumas bears little resemblance to the one that existed twenty years ago.

Over the past twenty years, the winds of change have ripped through Virginia Commonwealth University like tornadoes from hell, destroying what was once dear to many hearts. VCU was once a collection of charmless institutional buildings with a footprint of a few square blocks smack in the middle of a mediocre city. Back then, VCU knew its place. It didn’t harbor delusions about inclusion on US News and World Report’s Best Of list, nor did it aspire to the NCAA basketball finals; it did not blithely seek to destroy the fabric of Oregon Hill.

No sir. Back then, VCU had no pretensions to being anything more than what it was—for most students, their fall-back position, a third or fourth choice. Or for some, the only college they could afford. It was a shabby school surrounded by shabby neighborhoods, but it had charm. It embraced its contradictions, unaware of its own ironic nature.

Its art students fueled the punk-hardcore scene that raged through the city in the mid-to-late 1980s. Whether they know it or not, nearly every punk band in Richmond today is a spiritual descendent of those screaming heathen. In days past, Friday afternoons were special occasions when, together with a few hundred other people, you could watch a free concert in Shafer Court. GWAR played their first show there. And the Red Hot Chili Peppers played with socks on their ding-dongs. Nowadays it will cost you thirty bucks for a plastic bracelet to see Foghat at Innsbrook. 

Today, a substantial section of Broad Street is owned by VCU. They’ve built apartment complexes, dorms, parking decks, a sports center and attracted a bunch of upscale fast food joints. It looks clean and feels safe. Twenty years ago, the unofficial heart of the campus was Grace Street. But there was little ‘grace’ to be found there. The building that now houses VCU Police was once Newgate Prison, a biker bar. Not a weekend went by without some fight, riot, knifing, shooting, or other pre-millenial monkeyshines.

Though I don’t condone these activities, at least students of yesteryear had a few advantages over today’s students. Back in those days, you could easily stay a few steps ahead of the campus fuzz. Most of them were donut-stuffed fatties, barely able to huff themselves out of their cruisers. Today, VCU cops strut around like sinewy Navy SEALS. They sport high and tight haircuts, ride bad-ass mountain bikes and look and act like some sort of mercenary military outfit.

Yes indeed, kids these days have got it easy. Today you can download porn from the internet literally into the palm of your hand. Back then, horny students had to huff it to Sandor’s bookstore on Grace Street and ruffle through towering piles of secondhand smut. If you wanted porn of the celluloid variety, you could walk across the street to the Lee Art Theater, a vast, nearly always empty auditorium specializing in XXX movies that forever smelled of bleach, disinfectant and male loneliness. And the Greca was the best (and only) place in the city where you could watch strippers while eating flaming Greek cheese.

Today, the first thing students do when they get out of class is to open their cell phones. Twenty years ago, you had to find a public payphone. There were no funky ringtones—but there was plenty of funk. Conversations have a way of being short and to the point when Thunderbird-laced urine assaults your olfactories and the mouthpiece smells like the Devil’s poop-chute.

Today, students can eat fancy at Five Guys, Qdoba, and Great Wraps. But back in the day we preferred dives with less gloss and more grit. If you needed some white rice and MSG to slow a spinning-room PBR buzz, China Chef was there for you at 3am. Lums was always good for stomach cramps and a nasty case of “the James River Rapids.” And there are some today who still speak of the healing powers of the meatloaf at Marvin’s.

So what happened? Somewhere along the line we lost our ability to see charm in the shabby. We got full of ambition, pretension and the struggle for status. I put some of the blame on VCU President Eugene Trani. He took over in 1990, and soon after, everything went to hell. VCU started buying up Broad Street; it bought up Grace Street; it pushed eastward across Belvidere; it crossed into Jackson Ward; it encroached on the very cusp of Oregon Hill. It built ugly buildings. Lots and lots of ugly buildings, and still they build.

Twenty years from now, where will we be? Where will VCU be? Will an ever expanding VCU, together with MCV, solve the problems of downtown by buying it, lock, stock, and Coliseum? Will the campus become a shining city unto itself, a bubble-domed amusement park of higher learning and climate-controlled convenience?

Perhaps the gimps and the unwashed will make a comeback. Perhaps the new generation of students will reject the architecture, landscaping and Disneyland vibe. Maybe, just maybe, a small pocket of the campus will emerge, fester and erupt like a rebellious rash, a stinking oasis for all of us who prefer our VCU a little dirty and dangerous.

I call first dibs on the flaming cheese.

Wow, I found this article by accident. I’m an ‘84 Mass Comm grad. I remember Hababas well…$1.50 pitcher happy hours and nobody went to the men’s room to “freshen up”. The sink often had an alternative use and one had to be a contortionist to avoid stepping in lakes and estuaries. While it’s nice to romantacize those times, I think VC’s progress has been remarkable.

ahh I remember so well that time and era now long ago. I was 20 years old in 1985 and spun records as a DJ at Hababas and newgate prison on a once infamous Grace Street. I even lived in the 1600 block of Grace street, which looking back now might be compared by some as surviving Veitnam. But oh how the memories are stuck in my mind forever and I will always cherish them all…good and the bad. I often go back and visit the area and each time it changed and grew into something that just doesnt compare to ow it once was, you could never describe that aura unless you were there experiencing it all, as it Happened. I now live in California, but still keep in touch with friends from that magical time.

Just sent this link to three friends who remember VCU as I do. You’ve caputured it perfectly. I’m feeling so nostalgic right now. Started school in ‘83, graduated from Mass Comm in ‘88. I have such fond memories of the campus area the way it was, especially Grace Street. Mad King Ludwigs, the (original) Village, A Sunny Day, the Metro. I worked for a year at the drug store next to the Biograph where the clients included transvestites, homeless folks and many a drunken student. I spent Friday afternoons at Shafer Court drinking beer and watching AAE or Boy O Boy. While I understand the need for VCU to “improve and expand,” I really miss the old days and wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything. Thanks for taking me back for a little while.
Sharon
Charlotte, NC