Carrboro has come a long way since the days they called it the Paris of the Piedmont. With more artists, musicians and visionaries than perhaps any small town in America, Carrboro is to North Carolina as the East Village is to New York
Introduction to Carrboro
I wrote
elsewhere on this website that Chapel Hill
is
one
of the
most progressive towns in North Carolina (or maybe
I said in the South. Same thing, anyway). Well,
Carrboro is
the
most
progressive town in North Carolina. Formerly known
as
The Paris of
the Piedmont
because of the
number of artists and writers living here, Paris
is now being called the Carrboro of Europe. OK.
Maybe not, but the
Paris of the
Piedmont
label sounds
a little pretentious if not just plain
goofy now. Let's just call Carrboro the
least-boring small town in the southern United
States. The residents of Carrboro not only were
against the war in Iraq but they also fully
supported the French: they've kept the name
associated with fries, toast and kisses, and still
drink champagne and eat brie. Ex-mayor Ellie
Kinnaird became a state senator, where she
sponsored a two-year moratorium on the death
penalty. Unbelievably, this passed in a state that
like Texas seems to have a love affair with
capital punishment. Presently, Mike Nelson is the
South's first openly gay mayor and certainly one
of the most progressive and friendliest and he
doesn't own a car. Carrboro is a town full of
writers, artists, rock musicians, visionaries,
activists, lovers of freedom and civil liberties,
non-conformists and a few good ol' boys and girls
thrown into the mix. Carrboro is a town where it
seems almost everyone comes from somewhere else.
My neighbors are British, Italian, French,
Australian, Mexican, Chinese, Indian, Salvadorian,
Libyan, Greek, and from just about every state in
the USA. It's home to Baptists and Catholics,
Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and Muslims and there
are even a few Rastafarians, Rosecrucians and
a Sufi Order. It's a town that makes a lot of
conservative people in North Carolina a little
uncomfortable. Maybe more so than Chapel Hill. In
fact, the Republican-controlled state government
felt so threatened by tiny Chapel Hill and
Carrboro they rezoned the voting districts to give
us one state senator instead of two.
Carrboro History
In the late
nineteenth century, there was a proposal to build
a railroad station for the University of North
Carolina. The merchants in Chapel Hill were
concerned because they didn't want the students to
be able to leave town so easily and spend their
money elsewhere every weekend, so they stipulated
that the station had to be two miles from the
campus, just to make it a little more difficult to
get away. They built the station and connected the
tracks, and since they now had transportation to
the markets they decided to build the Alberta
Cotton Mill. Once they built the factory, they
needed to build houses for the workers, and this
resulted in the coveted mill houses of
Carrboro, which everyone now wants to own. (Sorry.
There are only about 28 of them left.) The town
began as West End, meaning the west end of Chapel
Hill, but was later named Venable, after UNC
president Francis P Venable. In 1914, it became
Carrboro, after Julian Carr, the last owner
of the mill and the man who gave electricity to
the town. The mill closed in 1930.
Carr Mill Mall
Carr Mill
Mall
is the old
Alberta Cotton Mill that the town was built around
in 1898. Surprisingly, the Carrboro Board of
Alderman wanted to demolish the mill and build a
new mall (like the ones that are being torn down
all over the country). The community was horrified
and fought to save the mill, which reopened in
1977 as Carr Mill Mall. Probably one of the most
architecturally interesting malls in America, with
wood floors, ceilings and walls and giant beams,
it contains a number of interesting shops and
galleries including Cherokee Spirit Gallery, which
sells Native American art, jewelry, sculpture and
collectibles. Within Carr Mill is
Elmo's
Dinner
(sort of the
Breadman's of Carrboro), which on weekend mornings
has a line so long that they give everyone free
coffee. (They have a community bulletin board here
and it is sort of my unofficial job to keep it
neat.) On the opposite end of the long hall
is
Panzenella, a Northern Italian restaurant with high
ceilings, a cool bar and an engaging bartender
named Joe who loves Captain Beefheart, in case you
want something to talk to him about. There is a
nice outdoor patio under the trees and they make
some great little pizzas. The food could stand to
be a little less Northern and a little more
Italian, but the atmosphere is good, the wines and
draft beers are good, and if you like sitting at
the bar and discussing
Trout Mask
Replica
you won't find
a better place to spend a Friday night.
The original
Carrboro train station is still standing. For many
years it was The Station, a restaurant and rock
club that hosted such bands as The Bad Brains,
REM, The Dads and Secret Service. Then it went out
of business and became a Chinese restaurant, a
store that sold Lionel Trains, a cafe and a few
other things. In the meantime, the railroad cars
parked next to it have housed a number of bars,
restaurants and cafes. They have now become Southern Rail, one of the best restaurants in the Triangle, serving lunch, dinner and Sunday brunch. In the evening the coolest people in Carrboro fill the bar car and the bar in the old terminal. With a lot of room to expand this promises to be one of the best places to eat and hang out in the area if it is not already.
Weaver Street Market
The center of
Carrboro is
Weaver
Street
Market
, a natural foods grocery store and cafe with a
big tree-shaded lawn that is a gathering place
whenever the weather is nice, which is
several hundred days a year. From spring to
fall, there are concerts of local musicians on
Thursday evenings and jazz on Sunday mornings. The
picnic tables are a favorite place for people to
come and eat and drink beer and wine on warm
evenings or lazy afternoons. Celebrations like
Earth Day or the annual Blessing of the Pets is
also held here, and this is usually where you can
find people setting up their information stands to
collect petitions against whatever war we are in,
to get Ralph Nader on the NC ballot, to
close the Shearon Harris nuclear powerplant
or any number of other noble causes. The best time
to be here is for their wine tastings or when
local reggae star Pluto shows up with his pots of
chicken, turkey and pork to show off his
Caribbean
Bliss Jamaican
Seasonings
.
Cat's Cradle
Just east of
the mall on Main Street is Cool Breeze Cuts and
Styles, in the longest and narrowest store space
in Carrboro. It's right across the street from the
musical Mecca of North Carolina, perhaps the
state's greatest treasure, the jewel in the
crown of Carolina culture. I am talking of course
of the
Cat's
Cradle
,one of
the best places in the world to hear your favorite
band. To list who has
not
played at the
Cat's Cradle would be easier than who has. The
Beatles, the Stones, Beethoven and a couple
others. I can think of several dozen of my
favorite performers who I've seen there. For
starters: Arrogance, Badfinger, Jonathan Richman,
Al Stewart, Cheap Trick, Ben Folds Five, Bruce
Cockburn, REM, Dave Davies, NRBQ, Nils Lofgren,
Bad Brains, Del Amitri, Alex Chilton, John Mayall,
Junior Brown, Let's Active, John Hiatt, Chris
Stamey, Elliot Smith, Replacements, 3Mustaphas3,
and probably a few hundred bands that are more
famous then these but not to me. A club the
size of the Cat's Cradle, situated midway between
Atlanta and Washington is attractive to groups and
promoters because it breaks up the trip and
it's a college town. So performers who play the
Cradle may have sold a million records a
few years ago or may sell a million next year
or they may sell fifty thousand of each
of their records until they reach a million. But
unless a performer has been raised in an incubator
until they were ready to get their first
multimillion dollar record deal and headline an
arena tour, any band or singer who is making it
the hard way and paying their dues will at some
point in their career be at the stage when they
are suited for playing the Cat's Cradle, and many
of them do. And it's in tiny Carrboro. Frank
Heath, who owns the club, has the reputation of
being the nicest and most honest club owner in
America, and bands love to play here because
they're treated with respect and their shows are
well promoted. Besides
The Poster
Guys,
Frank Heath is the best flyer-putter-upper in
North Carolina.
Check out this clip of Dixon at the Cradle doing Fever . Also take a look at the Cat's Cradle calendars from bygone days. See also reviews of Chapel Hill/Carrboro Clubs Bars and Nightlife
The ArtsCenter
In the same
little former Piggly-Wiggly supermarket shopping
center that holds the Cat's Cradle, Avante Pizza
and Visart Video is
The
Arts Center
. The center was created by Jacque Menache, a
Frenchman who spent his life in Mexico City before
coming to America in the late seventies.
Fueled by the passion and hard work of
Menache and the small group of talented people
around him, the center grew so fast that they
couldn't be contained in Carr Mill Mall. They
bought the supermarket property and built the
ArtsCenter into what it is today: a theater,
classrooms, a large central gallery and several
other multi-purpose rooms. For a while, the
ArtsCenter was the pride of the town, attracting
the best bands and performers, showing art films,
lots of different classes, and putting out a
monthly newsletter of everything that was coming
up. Then, in a bloodless coup, Jacque was
overthrown, and the era of growth ended. For awhile the center struggled with a lack of
money, vision and leadership. But with new director Jon Wilner and an energetic and enthusiastic staff The Art Center has been turned around and offers some high quality acts (I saw Sean Penn here and Johnny Winter, Chris Hillman and others have played there this year).They have been developing many other programs for adults, children and senion citizens and it is usually the best stop on the 2nd Friday Art Walk. As for Jacque Menache, he is now running Carrboro's very own radio station WCOM.
Across the
street was
Temple
Ball,
a combination art gallery and performance center
for bands that are more visionary, experimental
and otherworldly than the usual urban and
suburban angst-driven groups. The club was also a
shop with psychedelic and aboriginal folk art and
unique glass creations, a live recording studio
and a CD and audio duplication facility. Run by
Rick Ramirez, who has spent more than half his
life traveling and living in Europe and the Near
and Far East, Temple Ball had brought back the
creativity that music club and band posters have
been lacking for the last several years with his
colorful flyers. It's the immigration of people
like Rick who give Carrboro its unique flavor and
keeps the place a lot more entertaining than your
average Southern town. Unfortunately for Carrboro and Rick Temple Ball was busted by the Bureau of Alcohol and Tobacco and never quite recovered, closing its doors in the summer of 2005. It will be missed and the spot has been taken over by Milltown Restaurant which is similar to Tylers with good old
American food and lots of interesting beers.
Eastern Carrboro
Where Rosemary
and Franklin streets actually meet
is Carrburritos
, owned by my favorite California person, Gail,
and her jazz bass-playing husband, Bill. If it's
not the best Mexican restaurant in greater Chapel
Hill, it's at least the best in Carrboro.
Fantastic burritos, ceviche and the best
collection of complimentary salsas in an informal
atmosphere that reminds me of a small
cafeteria on acid. It's all self-service, but you
can make a lot of friends in the line on Friday
and Saturday night and it's a pleasure to hand
your money to a beautiful smiling California girl
at the very end who always seems to be in a good
mood. They also have a small outdoor patio so you
can eat your burrito and drink your cerveza under
the stars.
In the old gas station right next door to Carrburritos is the new coffee-shop called Padgett Station with a comfortable environment and a long menu of all natural coffees, teas, organic wines, fruit drinks, deserts and something unique: a large variety of crumpets, a cross between a muffin and crousant (you know...like they have in England) made into sandwiches. Great coffee and there is an outdoor area too. Across the street, where Main Street has
to veer off to connect with Franklin Street, is
one of the wonders of the modern world, Ted Bleeker's Bleeker Street Gallery
that's not only built entirely
from mung-bean and alfalfa sprouts but has
been built by one man and his dog. (Great job Ted!) There were spaces for artists to work as well as hold
exhibitions and it was a popular stop during Carrborro's 2nd Friday Art Walk, held the second Friday of each month. Unfortunately when Ted died of cancer the gallery was bought by Fleet Feet, the local running shoes company and they pretty much gutted it leaving the outside as the only evidence of the work that Ted spent the last 10 years of his life on. In case you are wondering they did not buy it to keep it as a gallery or workshop for artists, but it will still be included during
the Second Friday Art Walks.
Not only are the many galleries open with wine and food and of course some art to go with it, but even some of the businesses take part and become art galleries for that night. Recently The 2nd Friday Art Walk added Chapel Hill's Ackland Museum and The Chapel Hill Museum, to their long list of venues.
Next door
to the former Bleeker Street is
Nice Price
Books
and CDs, which
sells used books, and CDs of course. Across the
street is
Sizl
Gallery
, a sort of cooperative of artists and crafts
people which usually has some of the most interesting works in Art Walk. Next to that is Gates of Beauty owned by
the man known as PeaceMaker, a fine body worker
and a legend in this town, who lost 35 cars when
the hotel behind his shop burned down. Beyond
Peacemaker is a no-man's land of muffler shops and
corporate pizza until you get to Brewer Lane,
where you'll find
Automotion
, where Ronny from Brazil fixes my car every other
week with help from Daye Thorpe, a fine guitar
player and mechanical wiz. Brewer Lane also has
the
Tai Kwan
Do
School and
Apartments
, where you can totally live, eat, sleep and
breathe martial arts. If you continue down Brewer
Lane, you'll pass
Kitchen
Media
, where you can get your CD mastered and
manufactured before taking a right on the
Elizabeth
Cotton Memorial Bike
Path.
Elizabeth Cotton was a local blues singer who
wrote the song
Freight
Train
back when the
mill was shipping their cotton goods all over the
country by rail. The path brings you past a
cement factory, Butler's Junkyard and what looks
like a small oil refinery until you find
yourself right back in the middle of
Carrboro.
Midtown Carrboro
If you walk
west on Main Street, you'll come to the old church
that is now the
Carrboro
Century
Center
, another performance and dance hall, hosting,
among others, the area Swing Dancers, who make
being a couple fun, at least for a few hours
or so. It's also the home of the Carrboro Police
Station and the popular Officer Bob. (Officer Bob
has a plan that would end traffic snarl in
Carrboro and eliminate all the traffic lights. He
also saved us from a snake.) Behind the Century
Center you'll find the Club Nova Mural, and parked
in front of it the newest, fastest most powerful
looking police cars in the state. The Recreation
Department has their offices in the Century
Center for their many classes, baseball,
basketball and various seasonal sports and
events.
Right across the street is Tyler's Restaurant ,which is owned by former School of the Arts and NYC ballet dancer Tyler Huntington, who was one of the most promising dancers in the state before he injured his back.Tyler proves that it sometimes takes someone with the sensitivity of a ballet dancer to create a place where beer-drinking sports fans can feel comfortable. Tyler's has a large menu that mixes American, European and bistro food, great nachos and lots and lots of different kinds of beer. It's probably the best all-purpose restaurant in Carrboro, where you'll find college students, families and senior citizens all eating and drinking beer together. There's a wood-burning pizza oven right next to the secret door that is the entrance to the Speak Easy, where you can hear local rock, folk and blues performers, watch the NY Mets or the Tarheels or watch girls playing pool with cigarettes dangling from their mouths.
On South
Greensboro Street is the
Open Eye
Cafe,
which besides having local art on the walls and
bluegrass and folk performers, features David, who
makes coffee so good that I can write the text on
these pages for both Chapel Hill and Carrboro in
one four-hour sitting after one double latte (try
it with almond flavor). It's one of the simple
pleasures of being an artist in Carrboro to sit
outside at the cafe tables and watch people with
real jobs on the way to and from work before
heading home to figure out how you're going to eat
tonight or pay last month's rent by
yesterday. In September of 2005 they took over the building that used to house Scott's Rent-all ("Nobody rents anymore-if they need something they just buy it" says Terry the final owner). We will miss Terry but the new Open Eye is ten times large than the old one and they are doing their own roasting at 6am which makes my neighborhood smell delicous. (Do you know anything that smells better than roasting coffee with the exception of the smell that comes from Chinese restaurants? If coffee
and Chinese food tasted as good as it smelled I would be a 500 pound insomniac).
Next-door is Touchwood Antiques , owned by Emily, a former rock star who wrote the big hit "I Want To Be Like Jackie Onassis". Emily moved here from Indiana and has managed to hunt down some of the most interesting antiques you can find and put them in what has to be the smallest shop in Carrboro. The shop is fsamous for these giant chickens made out of steel drums. Across the street is Richard, who owns The Trading Post antique shop, which is the size of a small factory. He has a big old moving van parked outside that says "TRADING POST WORLDWIDE MOVERS" and, in small letters, "If Your World Is Chapel Hill." Richard shares the building with Glass Half Full, a sort of wine-bar-tapas restaurant that attracts a clientele of people who would rather drink wine, talk and nibble at hors devours than gorge. Behind it is 5th Season Gardening Company which specializes in organic and hydroponic agriculture. Organic and hydroponic gardening can reduce water usage, increase yields, reduce pest and disease problems, replenish dead soil and increase microbial life, thereby stimulating long-term and sustainable plant production.
Across the
street on Main is
Cliff's Meat
Market
, the last of Carrboro's small family-run grocery
stores, where they still make their own sausage
and sell any kind of meat you want, including
goat, rabbit, pigs feet, fatback and chittlins.
Cliff's is the place to be in the late afternoon
and on Saturdays, when many of the old local
people come in for their meat supplies and members
of the Latin population come for the amazing spicy
chorizo sausage. In the same little group of shops
is yet another antique shop and, as would be
expected in a community where everyone has a
bicycle, a bike shop. Across the street is the
Club Nova Thrift shop and a few steps farther is
the PTA Thrift Shop. Between the two is the most
authentic Mexican food in Carrboro in the back of
the little Hispanic
Central Food
Market
on West Main, the only place in town that
serves menudo. But don't all rush there at once.
There are only four seats.
Sometimes there is a traveling cantina truck that makes tacos and other Mexican food parked at Cliff's or in front of Fitch Lumber.
Going west on
Main is
Akai
Hana,
part of the collected works of two of my favorite
authors: Lee Smith, who is perhaps North
Carolina's most popular contemporary writer, and
celebrated columnist Hal Crowther, who, despite
the fact that I agree with everything he says, is
probably the least popular among people who
are not residents of Chapel Hill, Carrboro and
pockets of Raleigh and Durham. The restaurant is a
vehicle for their friend and sushi-chef Bob
Huneycutt, who spent years in Japan learning the
art of sushi-making. The photo though is of Josh, Lee's son who I became friends with by hanging out at the counter at the Skylight Exchange. For years we made small talk and one day I came in and heard the most beautiful piano music I had ever heard. It was Josh. He had not even mentioned he played. A few years later he was working at Akai Hana, doing prep work, learning to make sushi and playing piano at night. Then one day he died. I think of him everytime I walk by the restaurant.
If you go back
to Main Street in downtown
Carrboro,
Acme
compares
favorably with Elaine's, Crooks Corner and The
Lantern in Chapel Hill. Kevin, who opened the restaurant in the old hardware store played manager-maitre'd for years and a succession of chefs, some great and some not so great. Finally taking matters into his own hands he took off his suit and went back into the kitchen and became the chef himself with surprisingly delcious results. Acme serves generous portions of local vegetables, steaks, fish, pastas and is in my opinion one of the best restaurants in the triangle. The menu
goes through changes with specials every week but there are some
staples you can almost always count on, including
the fried calamari, which is more like a
fried-squid salad or slaw than your typical fried squid
rings. Now that Kevin is the chef the quality is always good, or has been everytime I have gone there which is a couple times a week. It is also the place to be on Sunday for their brunch. If I have not convinced you yet let me add that they give big portions and you leave Acme feeling like you have gotten your money's worth. You can get their weekly specials and events e-mailed to you by writing to kevin@acmecarrboro.com
Across the street is the Jade Palace Chinese Restaurant , owned by the elegant Jenny Chan and her staff of smiling Chinese people who always make you feel that you should eat there more often. Remember to ask for "no MSG" if you do. I love the homemade kimchee. It may not even be on the menu so just ask for it. On the side of the building was a beautiful patchwork mural painted by children and members of the community that overlooked the Carrboro Police parking lot. One day the mural was completely painted over by three homeless men who said they were hired by a man who they assumed owned the building. Rumour was that a disgruntled former building owner who had been forced to remove his sign advertising his coffee business destroyed the mural as a reprisal. The Chans pressed charges. The police investigated. What happens to the wall remains to be seen but hopefully the community will be invited to paint another mural.
Past the year-round Christmas-tree lot is the Spotted Dog in the oddly shaped building that used to be Bullwinkles Bar and later Spring Gardens. When Spring Gardens closed, this building sat empty for years. One night I hung up some posters that said "COMING SOON: HOOTERS!" with the Hooters logo I had gotten from a book of matches and had blown up at CO Copies. This sparked an avalanche of calls to the mayor, to the owners of the building, to the newspapers and to the corporate offices of Hooters from an army of horrified Carrborians. A year later it was open, not as a Hooters but as a family restaurant with burgers, pastas and some great salads like the Tofudabeast . This was proof that activism goes a lot further when combined with humor. I can't think of any restaurant less like a Hooters than the Spotted Dog.
The Carrboro Scene
While the lawn
at Weaver Street may be the center of Carrboro for
families and conventional people, it's the bar
known as the
Orange
County Social Club
that attracts
many of the people who had no place to call home
when the Hardback Cafe closed. Though at primetime
hours, the bar is significantly smoke infested,
there are off-peak hours where it's a comfortable
place to have a drink and find someone interesting
to talk to. When the weather is warm at night, the
back garden is the best place to be in town, and
if you imagine the parking lot as a small harbor
with SUV-shaped fishing boats you might think you
were in the Greek islands. Here is Mike Simpson, a
talented artist and a veteran of such famous old
bars as Tijuana Fats, Pyewacket and Linda's. This
is the place to come before a show at the
Cradle, after a show at the Cradle, or during
a bad show at the Cradle. On Sunday afternoons,
Alvis buys the
New York
Times
, opens the bar and people come in to talk
culture, politics, revolution and the Tar
Heels.
Carrboro Fish
Behind the main
street of Carrboro and across from the Emergency
Rescue Station is
Tom
Robinson's
Seafood
, where you can get fresh fish on Thursday through
Saturday, driven in from the coast by Tom himself.
Tom started out in an outdoor stand in Chapel Hill
in what was the first outdoor fruit and
vegetable market in town. Tom left the area
and went overseas to work and study and finally
returned to reopen in his present location. His
specialty is seasonal fish from the coast of North
Carolina, and so what he sells depends on what
they're catching. Some of my favorites are his
fresh oysters in the shell or already shucked,
king mackerel, bluefish, North Carolina shrimp and
live bluecrabs and soft-shell crabs. He has some
non-NC fish like Norwegian smoked salmon and fresh
Atlantic salmon. Tom is very involved in the
conservation of the North Carolina coast.
TIP:
I
buy octopus from Tom, and instead of
beating it on a rock like they do in Greece I put
it in a cuisinart with the bread-kneading blade
rather than the cutting blade for about a minute
to make it tender. Not much longer, or it makes it
mush. Then I grill it.
Music Stores in Carrboro
Chapel Hill doesn't have a musical instrument shop. Carrboro has two, but with Bryan's Guitars doing mostly mail-order and internet sales the only walk-in and play music store is The Music Loft on Main Street. With a great collection of new and used acostic and electric guitars, bases and amps, and people who know how to play them work there. There is also a music school affiliated with the loft where my daughter takes bass lessons from Robert Sledge, former bass-player of Ben Folds Five. In fact if you call them for lessons you never know who will be your teacher since there are so many great musicians in the neighborhood, many from bands you have actually heard of.
Carrboro Farmers Market
On Saturdays,
the area next to the Town Hall becomes the
Carrboro
Farmer's
Market
,
where about a
hundred farmers sell their seasonal vegetables,
fruits, meats, cakes, crafts, plants and cheeses.
My sister and her family sell their organic
vegetables here and my mother sells her knitted
hats and sock dolls at the Eco-Farms stand. They also provide many of the restaurants with their various lettuces and arugala. Though most of the young
people who hit the clubs and bars wake up too late
to ever see it, the market is a nice meeting
place on Saturday mornings and the best place to
do your meat, fruit and vegetable shopping
for the week, supporting local farmers instead of
giant agri-business corporations that are filling
you and your children with pesticides. The covered
area also hosts displays for Carrboro Day and a
Crafts fair. The Farmers Market is also open on
Wednesday afternoons. My favorite stands are the
guy who sells organic meat and eggs, the woman who
makes the brown-rice and aduki bean thingys, the
two cheese stands (one goat, the other cow) and
Alex and Betsy during pepper season.
Carrboro Music Festival
Every year,
Carrboro hosts the
Carrboro
Music Festival
with a couple
hundred bands and solo performers playing on
several dozen stages indoor and outdoor.
Originally this festival was called
Le Fete De
Musique
. Jerry Williams, who moved to Carrboro from
Georgetown in DC to open his Roots Record and CD
store, has turned it from a local event to
something that attracts people from all over the
Triangle by bringing in great acts playing a
variety of styles and changing the name
from
Le Fete De
Musique
, because so many people didn't know what it meant
and didn't come. Besides making the festival
a success and bringing a great
used-record and CD store, which the town was
unable to support, Jerry was responsible for
bringing some terrific acts to the floundering
ArtsCenter and for Carrboro hosting the annual CD
and Record Convention, where collectors from all
over the Southeast come to buy, sell and exchange
rare music on CD and vinyl, held in the Carrboro
Century Center. Check out Greenville's
Lightnin'
Wells
from his
performance at the Carrboro Music Festival in
2002.
Once a year in May, Carrboro hosts Carrboro Day at the Town Hall and Farmer's Market with arts and crafts and usually a band or two. Check out The Backbeat and Jon Shain from 2003.
Changing Carrboro
Visually,
downtown Carrboro needs a little work. The
sidewalks are a little too narrow to inspire the
type of shopping and pedestrian traffic that
Chapel Hill has. The traffic patterns, courtesy of
the NC Dept. of Transportation, seem like they
were created by some guy at a desk who did it by
looking at a map while he was arguing with his wife on the phone. Getting through town at rush
hour or crossing the street can be a frustrating
experience. There is a useless traffic light in front of Performance Bicycles that make the cars stop for no reason when it used to always be green. Nothing has changed. People still don't cross the street in large enough numbers to stop 5000 cars a day. Then there is the Wendy's entrance right after the traffic light at the corner of Main and S Greensboro Street which invites rear end collisions. OK. I understand that anyone who eats at Wendy's has to be ignorant or not care about their health. But to give them the opportunity to sue someone who is smart enough to not eat at Wendy's for rear-ending them does not seem fair. But that being said, Carrboro has a
lot going for it. More walk-able than just about
any town or city in North America, plans are in
the works to make it even more pedestrian
friendly. Carrboro is one of the few places in
America that when someone buys a piece of real
estate downtown, they invite the whole community
to a meeting and let the people tell the
developers what they would like to see on the
property.
The town has
seen its share of development, and areas that were
woods and farms are now houses and streets, but
for the most part it's been very sensible. One
reason is because the town is very strict about
what you can and can't do with your property, and
in some situations neighborhoods have risen up in
arms against a plan. An example is the tiny street
of Old Pittsboro Road, with its single-dwelling
houses and lots of wooded area. Real Estate
Associates, a developing company, came in and
decided to get rid of the woods and build
an apartment complex for students in this
tiny residential neighborhood. The Old Pittsboro
Road neighbors fought back, bringing experts in
several fields to testify about environmental and
traffic impact and the dangers of having a couple
hundred college students plunked into the middle
of a small family neighborhood. In the end, the
neighbors won and the developers lost, something
that rarely happens in America.
Frank Porter Graham Elementary School
Many of the
people who grew up in Carrboro attended Frank
Porter Graham Elementary School, one of the best
schools in the state, due to its ability to
attract some of the best teachers in the state,
like Meg Malliard and the legendary Mrs Friarson,
who somehow manage to create a love of school in
their students. There are two other elementary
schools in Carrboro, Seawell and Carrboro. At the
end of the year, the Frank Porter Graham
Elementary School holds its annual dance, where
each grade does a performance outside on the
basketball court. By the time a student has
reached the fifth grade, he or she has done the
Chicken Dance in kindergarten and seen it every
year since. Even people who are now adults have
performed the Chicken Dance and remember it. It's
a rite of passage in Carrboro. That's why for the
first time on the Internet, I am presenting for
those of you who have never been to or had a child
in school here, the FPG Kindergarten class of 2003
doing
The Chicken
Dance
.
While FPG is a progressive school, there is a problem which I would like to use this page to bring attention to. It's the absence of sidewalks leading to the school. The school is a sort of island that can only be reached by car. People who want to walk their kids to school or ride bikes are risking their lives every day. The problem, I assume, is no money in the school budget and a Depart. of Transportation that doesn't believe in sidewalks. In fact, if you walk or drive around Carrboro and Chapel hill you'll be amazed at how the roads controlled by the state are unfit for pedestrians. In some places, they've painted a line on the edge of the road so that if you're on a bike and you're within the line and the shoulder, an area of about six inches, cars are not allowed to run you over. Most people assume that because of Chapel Hill and Carrboro's left-of-center politics, sensible ideas like sidewalks and bike lanes are put on the backburner by the State of North Carolina in order to have money for more important projects like building a private road for the fatcats who donated money to the Smith Center, so they can avoid traffic after games.
Sculptures of Carrboro
Another unique
thing about Carrboro is the number of large
sculptures that have been placed on lawns all over
town. In the same way that Chapel Hill has murals
scattered around, you can't walk down the street
in Carrboro without coming across a sculpture,
from the giant fountain birds at Weaver Street to
my favorite, the dinosaur thing in front of the
Century Center. My favorite used to be the
helicopter on Weaver Street that was so convincing
that a man used to sit on it every day and pretend
he was a pilot.
So there you have it. The good with the bad of this little town of Carrboro, that has been the toast of Paris and has become one of the best places to live in North Carolina. Back to Top
See Also: Carrboro Photos, Carr Mill Mall, Mill Houses, Farmers Market, Chapel Hill, Restaurants, Nightlife, Hotels