Most people have done it.

The girls’ legs are a gallery of bruises.

Stewart Pollock sees Harrisonburg as a city in transition. He sees recent events — such as the debate about chickens in city backyards, the buyout of farmland for subdivisions and strip malls and the tension about the shift in the mayor’s and city council’s makeup, not to mention the city’s cultural and ethnic composition — and is amazed at the changes that have taken place in less than a decade. And, of course, it makes him think of zombies.

Every weekend, a group of 10 guys from James Madison University drives more than 50 miles to Strasburg to shoot paint at each other on a practice field.

According to Bobby Scheve, the first rule of cooking is to make sure the food looks good.

When Dawn Savage finishes a day of classes at James Madison University, she retreats to her college apartment to unwind and recharge. But unlike most students, who spend at least a few of their university years renting quintessential campus apartments, Savage kicks back at a brand-new four-bedroom condominium in Harrisonburg. And she doesn’t rent the space — she owns it.

Distorted figures of blue and yellow whiz around the outside of the roller skating rink at Funky’s Skate Center. The flashing streaks of color speed up and pass one another, or fall behind, easing the onlookers’ dizziness for just a moment. These swift flashes are members of the Omni Inline Speed Skating Team.

Cropping up alongside Ronnie Wetsel’s fruit and vegetable gardens at his Bergton home is another  money-saving plant. Wetsel, 47, makes his own chewing tobacco in his backyard. After discovering a sample pack of tobacco seeds in a magazine, he made room in his gardens to try them out.

Walking into Rival CrossFit, you suddenly feel stronger. A welcome breeze blows in through the open warehouse door and across the sweat-ridden, toned people hard at work on the rowing machine, the treadmill and the rusted metal pull-up bar. In a “Rocky” moment, you imagine yourself in the best shape of your life, swinging 30-pound kettlebells, sprinting 400s up the hill outside and doing squats.

Walking into Rival CrossFit, you suddenly feel stronger. A welcome breeze blows in through the open warehouse door and across the sweat-ridden, toned people hard at work on the rowing machine, the treadmill and the rusted metal pull-up bar. In a “Rocky” moment, you imagine yourself in the best shape of your life, swinging 30-pound kettlebells, sprinting 400s up the hill outside and doing squats.

You may not know what cornhole is, but you’ve most likely seen it played if you’ve ever been to a football tailgate or a neighborhood barbecue. Now, Brad Dean of Penn Laird has helped start a cornhole league.

New restaurants seem to be springing up all over downtown, serving authentic cuisines and staple sandwiches. Consider this your guide to eats, drinks and entertainment downtown:

It’s the time of year when both temperatures and the population of Harrisonburg begin to climb.

Amasa Davis’ three-car garage is packed to the rafters with relics from other people’s pasts. The floor is littered with piles of discarded backpacks, tote bags, baskets and boxes. Wooden tables hold a jumble of coffee makers, toasters, electric hair curlers and boxes of old cameras and picture frames. Shelves near the ceiling are lined with rows of lamps, with dozens of mismatched shades in a heap below. Industrial sinks are stacked in a back room, next to shower doors, rubber-tipped canes and shelves of books. It’s a mess, but an organized one, according to Davis, who says that in spite of how it may appear, nothing housed on his property should be classified as junk.

"We’ve come a long way since 1979,” wrote Samuel Johnson in his year-end coordinator’s report, submitted to the other vendors at the Harrisonburg farmers’ market after the 1984 season.

A typical day for Brenda Jolly involves being splashed with bathwater and cleaning up after other people’s pets. And she couldn’t be happier about it.

The weather station outside the Shiflet home in Clover Hill isn’t that much to look at, a few alarm clock-sized gadgets and a sort of plastic weathervane contraption mounted on a pole in the back yard. These take all the standard measurements — temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, precipitation — and beam them inside to a computer that records and stores all the data.

Today, in a sun-dappled stretch of woods in Rawley Springs, Jana McDaniel will shoot a gun for the first time.

Last summer, Lindsi Hedrick babysat a little, but that didn’t get her out of the house nearly enough. And so in March, after her 16th birthday, she landed her first payroll job as a server at Kline’s Dairy Bar on South Main Street, where she now works about three five- or six-hour shifts a week, feeding Harrisonburg’s summer sweet tooth.

Something is instantly familiar and comfortable about the Shenandoah Heritage Market, an experience similar to walking in Grandma’s front door.

The past few months have been a series of dead-ends for Brandon Bebout. Some of his résumés have seemed to disappear into black holes, some have generated tepid responses, a good number have resulted in follow-up discussion, at least seven have progressed to a formal interview, and exactly zero of them have led to a job offer. 

Preparation for the 2009 Briery Branch Lawn Party is in full swing. It’s just after a late afternoon thunderstorm, and the field behind the community center is quiet. There’s a funnel cake wagon with a lone worker inside, prepping for the night’s crowds. The lawn party comes with its own dramas; those of community members reuniting and teenage dating angst, but inside the community center building, an entirely different scene is unfolding — that of the lawn party beauty pageant.

For years, avid readers like Gail Kiracofe have perused library and bookstore aisles, hunting for their next great literary escape. They’d crack open fresh hardbacks to read snippets of chapters on crisp paper before settling on a stack and taking them up to the check-out desk or cash register. Kiracofe remains a voracious reader, but now, instead of turning paper pages, she’s pressing a button to turn electronic ones. Instead of scouring the book selection at Barnes & Noble, she’s downloading free sample chapters from Amazon.com. Kiracofe, like thousands of booklovers across the country, now does the bulk of her reading on the Kindle, Amazon’s wireless electronic reader.

It’s loud on Wednesday nights at the Artful Dodger these days — so loud that it’s kind of hard to hear the trivia questions that cause all this commotion in the first place.

It’s loud on Wednesday nights at the Artful Dodger these days — so loud that it’s kind of hard to hear the trivia questions that cause all this commotion in the first place.

There is a field a few miles west of Timberville, a small pasture, sloping gently to a line of trees along a ridge, transected by a few gray veins of Shenandoah Valley limestone, grazed by a herd of Angus cattle. Only on closer inspection is there any visible hint that this has not always been the most typical of Rockingham County fields: a few scattered and overgrown concrete slabs, some rusting metal pipes and the crumbling, cinder block foundation of a small building long since dismantled and forgotten. When Annette and Dick Pierce bought this place back in the ’80s, they heard stories about the excitement here 40 years earlier. Later, when Dick’s dad combed the field with a metal detector, he unearthed a belt buckle emblazoned with a swastika — left behind, presumably, by a young soldier once held at Branch Camp 7.

NEAR FRONT ROYAL, MAY 16, BEFORE DAWN

Mike Bailey awoke at 3:30 this morning, after about three fitful hours of sleep. In the best of cases, he’ll have a big day ahead of him. Otherwise, he’ll have a little more than a big day — 26 hours? 28?

This just in from the U.S. Census Bureau: In 2008, 29.4 percent of American adults older than 25 had earned a bachelor’s degree or higher. In Virginia, the figure stood at 33.6 percent (2007), with Rockingham County checking in at 20.1 percent and the City of Harrisonburg at 33.1 percent (data from 2005-2007).

The changing face of Harrisonburg has a pastel tint and metallic gleam this Cinco de Mayo.

It seems like Harrisonburg’s been going through sort of a rough patch lately.

If I was an audience member,” says Victor Maog, artist in residence at James Madison University, “I would ask, ‘What is worth two hours of my time?’ ”

Follow your nose to the west side of Harrisonburg and you’ll get a whiff of summer.

Everything seemed to be going well. Lonny Wenger’s chicken flock kept him and his wife well-supplied with eggs, his lawn fertilized and his garden beds pecked clean of pests. Kids in the neighborhood came over to check the birds out, passers-by would stop to watch (Wenger’s yard in northeast Harrisonburg is on a highly visible street corner) and during the year and a half that he had the birds, he grew his flock from one to four hens.

Harrisonburg might feel a bit different this weekend. Crowded. Excited. Pulsating. And maybe just a little bit …. rockin’.

Even in the best of circumstances, this is a scary time for college seniors: the end of four relatively free and easy years comes into view, while the hassles, responsibilities and indignities of working adulthood become a fast-approaching reality rather than an abstraction.

Ted Swartz admits that when drama fans hear the words “biblical theater,” they don’t usually sprint to the box office to buy front-row seats. That’s why, although he’s been performing original scriptural plays for more than 20 years, he tends to shy away from the label — instead choosing to focus on the human aspects of the biblical figures he portrays.

As bitter cold gave way to warm sunshine last weekend, the blustery wind arose as an issue. Every few seconds, it tried to wrench the 10-foot tall sign — TOTAL LIQUIDATION! 80% OFF! — from Robert Chavis’ grasp, though it was but a secondary concern.

You pick up each issue of Rocktown Weekly, devour its engaging content, and then, assuming it doesn’t end up lining your bird cage, you cast it aside. You toss it in the recycling bin, or just throw it in the trash, and either way, it’s out of sight and mind — if you stop reading now.

Surely you’ve overheard the conversations. The ones in which a group of citizen legal scholars quibble, gossip and perpetuate ideas about various points of law that might be used to their advantage. They might say you can trick a Breathalyzer machine by sucking on a penny, or tell you that a mall rent-a-cop has no real authority to stop you from spinning donuts in the parking lot. And so on and so forth.

This all began a little more than a year ago, on a chilly fall day, when Mike Trocchia first read “The Blue Hotel,” a short story by Stephen Crane. And this all culminates now, in the premiere of a play Trocchia adapted from Crane’s story, in a full-length album written and recorded for the play and an exhibit of art inspired by “The Blue Hotel” — thousands of collective hours invested in artistic creation of one sort or another.

Wrestling’s a simple thing, really. No ball, no sticks or bats or nets. Just a singlet, ear pads and shoes (Asics and Adidas dominate). One on one. You win on your merits or you lose on your flaws. On the mat, there is no team, there’s only “I,” and in all these senses, wrestling represents sporting competition distilled to its most basic level.

Late in the evening on Nov. 4, Chaz Evans-Haywood stood before the crowd awaiting election results at the city’s GOP headquarters, to deliver some disheartening news: Democrats had won all three seats on the Harrisonburg City Council. In his announcement, Evans-Haywood, the clerk of the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Circuit Court, mentioned student voting, an issue that drew statewide controversy before last fall’s general election.

"I guarantee you it’ll be loud,” said Phil Guengerich, athletic events coordinator at Eastern Mennonite University, preparing to set out extra bleachers for tonight’s game. “You can count on excitement.”

Heading south, U.S. 11 narrows to two lanes as it enters Mount Crawford, just beyond the Exxon/Burger King complex lurking beside I-81 exit 240. Soon, to the right, Cantermill Lane winds into Saddlebrook Plantation, where a cluster of new homes seems to have sprouted from a cow pasture, the remains of which lie just to the west.

Harrisonburg’s Chinese Language School recently started its spring semester with weekly Saturday classes. Though the school began in 2005 to give two adopted Chinese girls in the Valley a sense of their heritage, the school is now catering to a growing segment of the Harrisonburg population.

If you had your eyes and ears open this fall, you must have some inkling of what’s going on with “the economy”: somewhere around 2.4 million American jobs lost, consumer confidence at an all-time low, a $700 billion federal bailout, foreclosures, defaults, election implications, etc., etc., ad nauseum.

Yes, Christmas is supposed to be all about good cheer, and granted, it might seem kind of mean-spirited to devote an entire cover story to the art of coalgiving, but let’s not sugarcoat things: there’s been a lot of naughtiness here this year. Have you read the Daily News-Record lately? Prescription drug abuse in football locker rooms. Misappropriation of funds in the treasurer’s office. Graffiti taggin’ and cockfightin’ and rescue squad fraud. We’re going to need a lot of coal.

Perhaps it’s a sign of the times. Driving into the parking lot of Harrisonburg’s Market Square East shopping center recently, there was still a sign, Equity One Financial, on the door next to Bravo Italian Restaurant.

Every Wednesday night, in a fourth-floor lounge in Warren Hall, the James Madison University Freethinkers hold their weekly service.

If you approach a stranger on the street and say, “Have you ever had a Thanksgiving disaster?” you’re likely to get a friendly shrug and a “Nope, it’s pretty much just family and food.” However, there are some Thanksgiving mishaps, involving everything from family to food, that people were willing to share. Here are some of their stories.

In the back room at Mayland Grocery in Mauzy, standing in a circle, they’re playing “Little Black Train.”

The worship space at the JMU Christian Student Union building is a study in contrasts this morning. The smoky, sweet smell of frankincense — straight from some dim, stone-and-stained-glass cathedral — drifts through the air, beside the grunge rock squeal of the praise band soundcheck.

In a cozy home in Harrisonburg, a group has assembled to watch history in the making.

At the JMU campus:

9:09 a.m., JMU East Campus

Outside the ISAT building, it looks like any other Tuesday morning on East Campus. College kids head back and forth, with purpose, leaning into the wind gusts. It is blustery today (yes, cliché, but true). Almost everyone is holding/using either a) a cell phone, b) coffee or c) iPod.

No one’s debating this point: the upcoming presidential election has generated unusual excitement among area college students. What they don’t agree on is why.

Every time classes let out, the madness begins again at the Champions Drive parking deck. Dozens of cars heading out line up bumper to bumper, while the incoming vehicles circle like sharks, watching and waiting for a fresh spot to open up. The unlucky ones will be late. The really unlucky ones won’t make it to class at all.

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a three-part series about the political debates for the vice presidential and presidential candidates and election night results. In this story, Kate Queram visited Republicans at their campaign headquarters on Neff Avenue and Andrew Jenner visited with Democrats at Clementine.

All the conditions were right: the green movement was going mainstream, the obesity epidemic was causing deepening concern and then gasoline began to flirt with $4 a gallon. All of a sudden, the bicycle isn’t just a playtoy for the 16-and-younger and the Spandex crowds anymore.

In the space of five weeks in July and August, four Harrisonburg restaurants made the headlines by variously running afoul of the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. Even as the dust settles (Rocktown Grill’s owner Isaac Coe received an 81-day jail sentence and must surrender his liquor license; The Pub just began a five-month probationary period with alcohol sales ending at 1 a.m.; Dave’s Downtown Taverna served a 10-day complete suspension of its license; Finnigan’s Cove awaits the outcome of an administrative hearing before the ABC), a move is afoot in Richmond to reexamine, and possibly rewrite, significant parts of the state’s alcohol regulations.

Paul Harmon lines his eight-tank force along one side of the game board, which resembles a 4-foot by 6-foot post-apocalyptic model railroad set, scattered with miniature trees, a few mesas and a couple scale-model burnt-out shells of destroyed buildings.

Everybody has a version of The Story. They can tell you about where they were and what they were doing and how they found out that It happened on that Tuesday morning. They remember how strange the rest of the day was, how they watched It on television. Some of them saw the second plane. Some of them got that phone call: “Have you heard what’s happening?…”

Since fall classes began last week, John McGehee’s been watching eyes widening, necks craning back, gazes wandering up and around, as students walk into the new East Campus Library for the first time.

What we need for this game is an occupation for Sid," says Tony Lopez, a member of the improv comedy and theater troupe Mental Flossing.

When Monica Szymanski, a junior at JMU, received the details of her federal student loans, she simply glanced at the payment schedule, she says.

When Brooke Williams decided to move to Harrisonburg this summer, she knew what she wanted in a place to live.

How green is your favorite watering hole?

In the original “Planet of the Apes” movie, Charlton Heston finds a metal heart valve that suggests the strange planet he treads is actually Earth.

A turntable sits in the display window at eValley, Harrisonburg’s eBay store, next to a stack of 45s. It’d be easy to compare the set to a forlorn puppy in a pet store.

It’s the difference between Chicken Parmesan and Chicken Parmigiana, between L’Italia and Olive Garden, between local restaurants and nationwide chains: The name.

Marney Gibbs can still point out where she sat in The Dixie Theater on her first date about 58 years ago.

Kendra Shickel’s house reminds her of American history. The Mount Crawford house, built in the early 1800s, makes her think of the founding fathers who fought for independence a few years before its construction.

Mark Kline wants you to know it’s not his fault.

Red fire engines, spotted dogs and uniformed men flying down poles as an alarm blares in the background — the mental image most have of fire stations. 

From B.Y.O.B. parties in loud, crowded basements to national recognition as an East Coast music port, Harrisonburg’s music scene is maturing.

Victoria Simmons wants you to feel guilty.

Each week, Les Stroud roughs it along the Amazon, in the Alaskan wilderness or off the coast of Belize. The Discovery Channel’s Canadian “Survivorman,” an ace at identifying plants and starting fires, is resourceful enough to make McGyver jealous.

Eileen Anderson could be an actress. She can trade her native Brooklyn accent for a southern drawl in an instant and transform from a tough Civil War artillerist to a stunning silver-blonde, dolled up for the ball, within the hour.

When Christopher Louderback was 10, his dad let him pick out a treat at the store. He left with a Green Lantern comic book and a new obsession.

Jane Cain walked out of Ross empty-handed last Thursday afternoon.

Because Disney’s animators apparently daydreamed through their history classes, students are a little confused when they get to Rob Lovell’s.

Several decades ago, Wendy Miller was disciplined for giggling during a prayer.

After the syndicated “Bob & Sheri Show” ended one recent morning, Magic 95.5 Classic Top 40 didn’t follow with Elton John, Donna Summers or even the Bee Gees.

Boys in black hoodies and baggy jeans walk through the door in a steady stream.

Tom kha gai from Thailand, pollos a la brasa from Peru or maybe some yakisoba from Japan — it’s not a worldwide dining tour, just the options in a small sector of Harrisonburg behind Valley Mall.

Something was missing from Harrisonburg last spring. The first weekend of April rolled around and, for the first time in 10 years, it didn’t bring a bounty of independent bands with it.

When Angele Bell went to her first American “party” last year, she   wasn’t tempted to drink — even though, at 18, she could legally drink in her native Cameroon.

Cross Canadian Ragweed doesn’t allow “Guitar Hero” on its tour bus. Band members save their real skills for the stage.

Turkey and mistletoe might make the season bright, but it's much brighter when Nat King Cole sings about it. And a little whiter thanks to Bing Crosby, and sometimes a little bluer because of Elvis.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas outside Jim and Janet Doyle's Longview Oaks apartment.

Nancy Wendt, of the Craft House and Studio Art Shop, suggests hanging silver cookie cutters on your tree as ornaments. They also come in handy in t...

If you're in a dorm or a complex that doesn't allow open flames, you can still  enjoy a warm holiday glow and even Christmas scents. ...

Everyone you talk to will give you advice about getting the perfect "college experience."
You have to pull at least one all-nighter. You should go to at least one college party. You should have at least one teacher you would call a friend.

But that's all the stuff you should do on campus. Before you graduate, you have to explore the town you've made your home.

Peering around a rusty pipe you see him. He walks toward you, his flashlight panning the hallway for the slightest movement. “It’s him or me,” you think as the cold steel of a knife brushes your cheek.

So, you think you found the perfect Valentine’s Day gift: Dinner at Dave’s? A pink plush bear ’cause she lost her pet bear last summer? Spinal Tap’s first album…  on vinyl?

Your gut instinct tells you you’re “in,” but can you trust your gut on this, the most sacred of Hallmark holidays? Rocktown’s luv department checked into it.

Name: Chris Thompson
Age: 30
Job: Park Ranger
Tenure: Seven years
Worst Part of job: “Getting up super early.”

Chris Thompson is up every day at 4 a.m. and on the slopes of Massanutten Mountain by 6:30 a.m.

CNN has a list of President Bush’s top 10 flip-flops. But those aren’t the kind of flip-flops that send a telltale sound echoing down the hall.

Flip-flop, flip-flop.

Want to find information on local politics? What about swingers in the area? Or, maybe you just want to read someone’s online diary…

There are blogs, or weblogs, on literally any subject you can think of.

At 10:02 p.m., I arrive at the Harrisonburg Public Safety Building.

At 10:13, I’m informed that I should have filled out the paperwork necessary to ride along with a cop.

This time of year, you must dance around the parking lot at Mac’s Superette in Fulks Run. 

There’s no music at Mac’s, you just don’t want to step in blood.

How do you get from Dave’s on Port Republic to Dave’s Downtown?

Well, first you turn right onto Port Road, and then make a right at the Ski House (formerly the Steak House). Not left – that’s towards the Bunny House and the Dead Cat House.

Hold the glass by the stem. Swirl, then sniff. Keep the wine in your mouth, letting it find its way around to different taste buds.

Emma Randel, owner of Shenandoah Vineyards in Edinburg, has given this speech a few times before.

Charlie Murphy has eaten two pairs of Makesha Wade’s sunglasses. Not Eddie’s older brother, the actor of “Chappelle’s Show” fame. This was Charlie Murphy the bulldog.

“He only likes my sunglasses,” she said. “I don’t know why.”

They’re everywhere. Pockets, palms, pouches, purses, ummm, pajamas. Well, maybe not pajamas.

Then again, who knows — the iPod is everywhere.

When Sarah Richardson and Rosanne North didn’t get a JMU housing contract for this fall, they started looking off campus.

The sophomores looked at big student complexes first, but ended up downtown in a house on N. High Street.

October is the busiest month of the year in Shenandoah National Park. And with good reason, says Park Ranger Enedina Gasaway.

The weather is cool and dry and the fall colors will be at their height by mid-month.

If you look up from the dance floor at the newly reopened Mainstreet Bar & Grill, you’ll see a reminder of the fire that gutted the club last October.

The boards on the floor of the hanging DJ booth are charred black and wrinkly.

You see poker everywhere these days — it’s shown on television, played in homes; video poker is big in bars.

With poker’s popularity, poker clichés are everywhere. Some say, you have to be in pots to win pots. Others say, a smart player waits for hands he can win.

It’s nothing fancy.

Just a rickety two-bay garage, a gravel parking lot and an office trailer off Va. 42.

Not many aerobics instructors will serve you a shot as a warm-up.

Then again, we’re not talking jazzercise here. Nor Richard Simmons or Bil...