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This week on Tidewater Talk, we sat down with Virginia Beach insurance agent Leslie Scofield to talk about her roots in Coastal Virginia, her family, and the work she’s doing across Hampton Roads. Leslie shared her journey from growing up in Portsmouth to building Tri State MediHealth Solutions and Ashes to Assets Insurance Agency, where she helps families navigate Medicare, life insurance, retirement planning, and veterans’ coverage questions. We also talked about Kiwanis, her passion for serving children in the community, and her perspective on helping people long before they ever need to make an insurance decision.
We also dug into annual Medicare enrollment, what veterans should know about SGLI and VGLI, and why this season can feel overwhelming for people approaching 65 or reviewing their current plans. Beyond insurance, Leslie shared details about One Matters, a nonprofit working to create affordable housing solutions for veterans across Hampton Roads, including shared housing and larger long-term housing projects. We wrapped up with a quick local weather update, a new round of our “Where in Tidewater” clue, and Tidewater tips featuring the Bee and the Biscuit, the Virginia Fall Wine Festival at Town Point Park, the Poquoson Seafood Festival, and fall fun at Hunt Club Farm.
Where in Tidewater
- This is a mountain in a city with no mountains. People have been climbing it since 1973, and it wasn't here fifty years before that.
- It's a hundred and sixty-five acres of hills, lakes, trails, playgrounds, and a skate park, right off I-264. The water table here is only six to eight feet down, so back in the sixties, instead of digging a hole for what went into it, they stacked it.
- The name is a joke, and the joke is on the nose. It's a Virginia Beach park built out of a landfill between 1966 and 1973, and about a million people visit it every year.
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This week on Tidewater Talk, Brodie and Co catch up on everything from new hobbies to big local news around Coastal Virginia. We look back at our conversation with Mollie Alaire from Choose Joy Farm, talk about the recent nor’easter and the unusual salt-related power outages it may have caused, and react to the city’s plan to turn the longtime Dairy Queen on 17th Street into a police substation. We also share a few thoughts on how these local projects take shape and what they mean for the community.
In our Strange and Odd of Tidewater segment, we dig into the story of Willoughby Spit and the legendary 1667 “Harry Cane” storm that may have helped shape it, plus the fascinating origins of the word “hurricane.” We also run through the latest weather, including a cooler and more comfortable forecast for the week ahead, highlight our latest “Where or What in Tidewater” mystery featuring Norfolk’s waterfront pagoda, and wrap up with Tidewater Tips for the weekend, including Hunt Club Farm’s haunted attractions, an improvised ghost story show at Push Comedy Theater, Suffolk Peanut Fest, and a hoedown at the Virginia Beach Farmers Market.
Where in Tidewater
- This week's place is a tower, and it was a gift from the other side of the Pacific Ocean.
- It sits on the Elizabeth River waterfront. It was dedicated in May 1989 as a gift to Virginia from Taiwan, and at its feet there's a koi pond, stone lanterns, and a garden of Asian plants.
- It's a red-and-gold pagoda in downtown Norfolk, right by Nauticus. And here's the fun part: the pillars it stands on aren't Asian at all. They used to hold up a giant molasses tank built by the Southgate Molasses Company in 1918.
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This week on Tidewater Talk, we sit down with our neighbor Mollie Alaire of Choose Joy Farm in Lanexa, out by the Chickahominy. Mollie was born at the old Williamsburg hospital, and her great-grandpa bought the family's 68 acres in 1901. The family grew watermelons and corn until 2008, when Mollie got a goat to make goat milk soap for her brothers' eczema.
Now the farm keeps pygmy goats, Nigerian dwarfs, LaManchas, pigs, silkie chickens, and 15 year old ducks, and Mollie teaches soap making, milking, and goat care to students from 3 to 89. We hear about goat snuggling, piglet yoga, goats launching off a chicken tractor onto the barn roof, and Damiana, the 14 year old LaMancha who runs the whole yard circus.
Co tells us what the nor'easter did to the Boardwalk, and we look at a warm week before weekend showers.
Plus Mollie's picks: mango cheesecake at Colattao on Independence Boulevard and a pistachio cream latte at Elite Coffee in Norge. Also the free U.S. Marine Band concert at the Sandler Center, Zoovies at the Virginia Zoo, the last weekend of Ghent Restaurant Week, and the Tour de ORF bike ride.
We reveal last week's Where in Tidewater, the Old Cape Henry Lighthouse, and give you three new clues for a historic stage on Church Street in Norfolk. Send your guess to
If you're in Coastal Virginia, this is your weekly mix of neighbors, local lore, weather, and where to go next.
Where in Tidewater
- This week's place is a working stage, and it's named for a man who was killed in Boston in 1770.
- When it opened in 1919, it was the only theater in the country financed, designed, built, and run entirely by African Americans. Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, and Louis Armstrong all played it. People called it the Apollo of the South.
- It's on Church Street in Norfolk. It went dark in 1953, sat mostly empty for fifty years, and reopened after a big restoration in 2004. Above the stage hangs a three-story fire curtain, painted in 1919, showing the Boston Massacre.
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This week on Tidewater Talk, the rain finally shows up and we have plenty to talk about while it does. The Navy is handing every junior sailor barracks in Hampton Roads to a private company in a $1.7 billion deal, including a new 17 story tower in Newport News where Huntington Hall stands today, and Brodie has some opinions about that building. VDOT breaks ground on the Norfolk segment of the Hampton Roads Express Lanes, seven more miles of I-64 and 21 bridges, so we get into whether express lanes actually work. There is also an algae bloom called the mahogany tide moving through the lower Chesapeake, and yes, somebody named it Marge.
Strange and Odd goes way down this week, to the 35 million year old asteroid crater buried under the lower Bay near Cape Charles, and the ancient brine that makes deep wells in Newport News and Poquoson unusable.
Co has the forecast, and it is a busy one: a coastal flood warning, wind gusts up to 50, and eight to 12 foot surf before things calm down for a cooler weekend.
We reveal the Where in Tidewater answer (the concrete ships at Kiptopeke) and give you three new clues for a place in Virginia Beach you can climb. Send your guess to
Plus your weekend: the 52nd Neptune Festival, Ghent Restaurant Week, Farm Aid at the amphitheater, and Pirate Night at VA Vintage.
If you're in Coastal Virginia, this is your weekly mix of news, local lore, weather, and where to go next.
Where in Tidewater
- This week's spot is something you can climb.
- It is older than the White House. It was the very first construction project the brand-new federal government ever authorized, back in George Washington's first term. It is built from the same kind of Virginia sandstone you see all over Washington, D.C. And it has not done its original job in well over a century.
- It is in Virginia Beach, on a Navy base, a short walk from where the English colonists first landed in 1607. And it has a younger sibling right next door, a black-and-white tower built in 1881 that is still working today. You cannot climb the new one. You can climb this one.
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Tidewater Tips
- Neptune Festival Boardwalk Weekend
- Neptune Festival Grand Parade
- Farm Aid 2026 at Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheater
- Ghent Restaurant Week
- Pirate Night After Dark at VA Vintage
- An Evening with Sally Mann at the Chrysler Museum
- Hunt Club Farm Harvest Fair
- Chesapeake Farmers Market at City Park
- Phoebus Jazz Festival
- Hispanic Heritage Month Restaurant Week in Newport News
- Chesapeake Celebrates Trees
- Suffolk Rods and Muscle Cars Charity Car Show
- Oktoberfest at Elation Brewing
- A Legacy of Faith and Freedom at Historic First Baptist Church, Williamsburg