The Shockoe ExaminerBlogging the History of Richmond, Virginia: The Asparagus Farm and other observations from Emphasis on Virginians, June 1968.

Wednesday, May 31, 2017

The Asparagus Farm and other observations from Emphasis on Virginians, June 1968.

Laurel Street entrance to The Asparagus Farm.

Rare issue of Emphasis on Virginians, June 1968.

Selden shared this magazine with me. From what I could find there were only seven issues of this magazine issued, from June 1968 to December 1968. The Library of Virginia has them.

The article from this issue of magazine I scanned had to do with night clubs for young Virginians. It includes information about two clubs in Richmond - A.J.'s Gaslight (run by Andy Frank, Jr. whose father owned and operated the restaurant Andy's which stood on the 900 block of W. Grace St. where many students from Richmond Professional Institute would hang out) and The Asparagus Farm, the first psychedelic rock club in Richmond. It closed by the end of September of 1967. Share your memories of these early Richmond clubs.

Read the article HERE.

- Ray.

1 comment:

newcomer said...: I own an original copy of the magazine.; August 24, 2019 at 10:51 PM

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Contributors:

Ray Bonis:

Ray worked at VCU Libraries' James Branch Cabell Library from 1989 until 2021. He is the co-author of Virginia Commonwealth University (2006) and Greetings from Richmond (2009) - an architectural history of the city.

Selden Richardson:

Architectural historian and author of Built By Blacks: African American Architecture and Neighborhoods in Richmond, Virginia (2006), The Tri-State Gang in Richmond: Murder and Robbery in the Great Depression. (2012), and Richmond Murder & Mayhem (2023)

On History:

"The dead were and are not. Their place knows them no more and is ours today...The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing into another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts at cockcrow."
-- G. M. Trevelyan (1876-1962) from his "Autobiography of an Historian," An Autobiography and Other Essays (1949).

Key Dates in Richmond History
(more to follow)

1737 – William Mayo laid out the original street plan for the town of Richmond on land provided by William Byrd II.

1742 – Chartered as a town

1780 – Virginia’s state capital moved from Williamsburg to Richmond.

1782 – Incorporated as a city.

1788 - Virginia State Capitol building completed.

1860-1865 – Serves as capital of the Confederate States of America.

1910 - Manchester, the city located just south of the James, is consolidated with Richmond.

1949 - Oliver Hill (1907-2007) elected to City Council, first African American since Reconstruction.

1968 - Virginia Commonwealth University created by the merger of the Medical College of Virginia and Richmond Professional Institute.

1977 - Henry Marsh elected as first African American mayor of Richmond.

2009 – Shockoe Examiner founded.