Food, Festivals and More
John and Fran Freimarck dig into the barbecue at Buzz and Ned’s on North Boulevard.
When Fran Freimarck flew to Wyoming in 1995 for her grandmother’s 90th birthday, the passengers around her probably thought they were in for a real treat when it came time for their in-flight meal.
For several hours, the cabin smelled of smoky, slow-cooked barbecue.
But it was just Freimarck’s carry-on bags, which contained pulled and chopped pork barbecue from Buz and Ned’s, one of Richmond’s most-loved barbecue joints.
And she wasn’t sharing.
It’s “one of our major food groups,” Freimarck said.
Freimarck says she and her husband, John, are regulars at places like Buz and Ned’s on the Boulevard, or Acacia in Carytown, or Six Burner in the Fan District, which offers a fixed-price, three-course dinner during the week.
In fact, Freimarck – a King William County resident and director of the Pamunkey Regional Library, which includes branches in Hanover, King William, King and Queen, and Goochland counties – loves Richmond and its cultural activities so much that she says she’d think nothing of renting an apartment downtown just so she could take advantage of all the city and surrounding areas have to offer without having to drive home every night.
Much of what she loves centers around the arts, such as the annual French Film Festival put on by Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Richmond, or the 43rd Street Festival of the Arts, hosted by the 43rd Street Gallery as a fundraiser for Freedom House, a homeless shelter.
“It’s like the old-time craft fairs used to be,” Freimarck said of the 43rd Street festival. “It’s a neighborhood party and the people in the neighborhood are very welcoming.”
She regularly attends the Alexander Paley Music Festival, which features classical music by Paley, a Russian pianist, or any of the performances at the University of Richmond’s Modlin Center for the Arts, which showcase everything from tango to Shakespeare, she said.
“These are the events that I look forward to every year,” Freimarck said.
“I spend most of my free time at concerts in Richmond,” she said, adding that the fine arts scene in Richmond “is wonderful now. When we first moved here 35 years ago, it wasn’t so wonderful.”
Her other favorite places are the Cold Harbor Battlefield Visitors Center in Hanover County and the Virginia Center for Architecture at the Branch House on Monument Avenue.
Though Freimarck says she doesn’t spend much of her free time in libraries, what librarian could pass up an opportunity to talk about her favorite facilities?
Like the Goochland library, which is Jeffersonian in design and modeled after the county’s courthouse.
“I love going there at sunset because one whole wall is a window that looks out to the west,” she said. “And the meadow behind the library has a steep drop off and then there’s the sunset.
“It is really spectacular,” she said.
This article originally published in Discover Richmond. Click here to view more Discover articles, or send us an e-mail to request a copy of the magazine.
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