2011: Who Needs the Chippendales Award: Bon vivant/troublemaker River Laker gets (nearly) nude one night at 202.
2010: First Annual Good Ship Taubman Award: Taubman Museum loses namesake board member, closes its restaurant and sees its visitation expectation come in at 1/3 of projection.
2009: Wee Wee Wee All The Way Home Award: Governor Kaine closes most of the rest stops on I-81!
2008: Mountain Pond Award: Mountain Lake’s water level gets so low that the remains of a dead guy from the 1920s are found and IDed.
2007: Confederate Tender Degree: To Virginia Western, hit with a lawsuit when 29 nursing grads found out the school had lost its accreditation a year before they got their degrees.
2006: Oops Award: To the monkey of the same name, who sent the city into a frenzy when he disappeared from Mill Mountain Zoo, at just about the same time Victory Stadium disappeared too.
2005: Environmental Stewardship Award: To Novozymes, the environmental pioneer in micro-organism cleaners, for its spill of 1,400 gallons of not-so-environmentally friendly drain cleaner into Masons Creek.
2004: Janet Jackson Award: To the Virginia House of Delegates’ move to get the bare left breast of the female figure on the Virginia seal tucked back in.
2003: ACC Snub Snit Award: To Virginia Tech President Charles Steger for telling USA Today that if Tech were invited into the ACC, “we wouldn’t accept it.” This a few weeks before Tech got ready to walk down the aisle into the conference with Miami.
2002: Rural Mississippi Award: To Roanoke County, which for 25 days in the spring fought a fire in a 139-acre, 4-million-tire fire at a tire dump that had been ruled illegal for at least 10 years.
Did we forget something? Tell us in the comments below!
