The Downtown Mall is the thing Senlin Means loves most about Charlottesville.
A second-generation downtown business owner, Means knows it well. Her parents owned a business on Market St. for years, and so she essentially grew up on the Mall, which was built just a year after she was born. She loved watching poets scribble in their notebooks and play chess at Mudhouse, giggling at how the punks and buttoned-up businessmen alike danced at Fridays After Five.
She later worked at Market Street Wine Shop for 12 years. Since 2023, she has been a co-owner of The Beautiful Idea, an antifascist bookstore, queer maker’s market and alternative community hub on the Mall…