Over a cup of coffee at the Village, Anna—her family calls her Jennifer—Hartl doesn’t act sassy. But Sassy magazine thought she was sassy enough to be one of the six Sassiest Girls in America in 1990.

Christina Kelly, the extremely businesslike and conversationally abrupt editor of the New York-based magazine, says there ain’t much to being sassy.

“Our idea of a sassy girl is someone who is really smart and has a real sense of herself,” she said in a recent phone conversation. For example, this year’s winner studies hard, is a real academic go-getter. But last year’s Sassy girl was a skateboarder from Canada.

Anna Hartl falls somewhere between the two.

A fashion student at VCU—she’s planning on escaping to New York next year—and a well-dressed girl herself, Anna is smart, has a sense of herself and awfully quiet. Not the kind of girl who’d give her teacher a lot of lip, you think. She also skates. Or used to.

“I had a skateboard until last year and I lent it to my old boyfriend. Now he won’t give it back,” she says.

Her roommate’s boyfriend is in local hardcore punk band First Five Through. She has been grooving to old Pixies lately, having finished with her Babes in Toyland phase—“I ran around the apartment screaming all summer,” she says. Her cat is named Renoir. But is she the really one of the sassiest girls in America?

Well, hard to tell.

She definitely recognizes the trends.

Clothes? She shops at Urban Outfitters in Georgetown—a step above the J. Crew outlets where I snag $8 t-shirts. “When it comes to clothes and music, I’m really moody.” In her fashion groove, she leans towards a hearty blend of former Richmonder Betsy Johnson and Calvin Klein. “Betsy Johnson is really crazy and, to me, Calvin Klein is really traditional.”

Coffee? “I like the idea of coffee,” she says. “I have an espresso machine at home that I’ve never used.” Hmmmm.

Sassy? She doesn’t read it anymore. Back in the day, though, Anna says “it was very new,” introducing her to hip fashion and music.

Knitting? “I have two books at home on knitting, but I can’t figure it out.”