Carrboro, North Carolina

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 Chapel Hill and North Carolina as the East Village is to New York and the USA.

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. Former mayor Mike Nelson was 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 and beautiful bartender named Heather who moved here from Vermont and always tells me what to order and is usually right. 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 Friday night at the bar there is usually a crowd of interesting people, many who I invited there. Saturday night Steve from Santorini tends bar for those who want to reminisce about their last trip to Greece.

A shop that has escaped notice by many is Miel Bon Bons, owned by Bonnie Lau, pastry chef who has worked and studied under some of the world renowned chefs such as; Ewald Notter, Jacquy Pfeiffer, Colette Peters, and Ron Ben Israel and in France where she studied pastry art under the M.O.F (Meilleur Ouvrier de France) at ESCF Ferrandi in Paris and the l'ecole Lenotre Paris. In 2008 Bonnie Lau opened her own shop in the historic Carrmill Mall in Carrboro, NC where she shares her passion by delighting customers with her uncompromising quality in each hand-crafted chocolate, decadent cake, or delicate pastry. Check out their website at http://mielbonbons.com

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, 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. This is one of the best places to eat and hang out in the area. They have half price bottles of wine on Wednesday! The Nachos are good as are the fish tacos and some people say they serve the best burgers in town. The specialty of the house is tater-tots loaded with chili and probably whatever else you ask them to put on it. At night The Station rocks and the crowds linger into the wee hours listening to Dexter Romwebber and other local and visiting acts. Check out their website at www.thestationcarrboro.com

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 though he tends to delegate this job to the interns that he personally trains.

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. In the same shopping center in Visart which like most video rental stores as fallen on hard times, so hard that in 2010 when I went to look up a film at their Roger Ebert's Movie Review book and could not find it I looked at the cover and discovered it was from 2002. That's a bad sign.

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. John Edwards had his 'end of the road' party here when he dropped out of the Democratic primaries, and will probably be spending a lot more time at the bar now that his political career has been shot to hell by the disclosure of his affair and the sex tapes that you have to wonder why anyone who planned to be president would make. But America's loss is Carrborro's gain and I have always had my doubts about his strengths as a national politician but not about him being a mayor of Carrboro one day or maybe opening a video store or something. In the meantime while we wait for John's re-emergence, stop in at Milltown for a spectacular selection of beers including probably the largest number of Belgian Ales that you will find anywhere which go nicely with their Belgian-style fries and mussel dishes. The bartender knows more about beer than just about anyone besides the brewmaster from the nearby Carolina Brewery who also drinks here.

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 Jesse's with a comfortable environment and a menu of all coffees, teas, beer, wines, fruit drinks, deserts and they serve breakfast too! 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 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. Behind the Century Center you'll find the Club Nova Mural, or you would have found it if this jerk had not painted over it after the town of Carrboro made him paint over his sign that was advertising his business on the historical building he owned. The mural has been replaced 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 a decent 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 watch girls playing pool and guys trying to pick them up. On the other side of Tyler's and in fact owned by Tyler is the Carrboro Beverage Company which is a brew-lovers dream. They have beer tastings too. And if you don't find what you are looking for here you may find it at TJ's Beverage and Tobacco in front of the Art Center which also has a fantastic collection of local, national and international beers.

On South Greensboro Street is the Open Eye Cafe, which besides having local art on the walls and bluegrass and folk performer. 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. Its one of the best places to hang out and meet people, with a large horseshoe shaped bar and a mature and interesting clientele. The fact that is less than 100 yards from my house is not the only reason I am a regular here. I really like the place and the owners and employees are nice too.  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 at Tres Amigos on West Main, the only place in town that serves menudo. Most nights there is a traveling cantina truck that makes tacos and other Mexican food parked by the Cat's Cradle or in front of Fitch Lumber and these places also serve terrific mexican food that tastes even better after a night of drinking.

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. Wednesday night all entrees are $12.95.

If you keep walking up main you will pass the Ink Spot which as its name suggests is a copy center for people who would rather give their business to a small business, rather than Kinkos, or prefer to be able to park. Looking Glass Cafe coffee shop has a nice outdoor area and good coffee too plus a smoke-shop-boutique with a pool table in the back. If you keep walking, past the point where you think that you must have made a wrong turn because there is nothing but houses you will come to Johnny's, named for the bait and tackle shop and good ol boy hangout that used to be in the building. The front is a Mexican grcoery store, or as we in Carrboro now know is called a bodego. In the back is what is now known as Johnny's, a wine and beer and cheese shop that has invloved into a nightlife and cultural center with a large outdoor area where local chefs and a taco truck serve Indian and Mexican food as well as sausages, and the occasional oyster roast. They host Bingo on Wednesdays, live music, a small farmer's market on Tuesday and Saturday, wine tastings on Thursday and by the time you read this there will probably be some more stuff going on there. It's at 901 West Main Street a block or so before you get to Highway 54.

If you go back to Main Street in downtown Carrboro, Acme compares favorably with Elaine's, Crooks Corner and The Lantern in Chapel Hill which some national food critics include in their favorite restaurants in America lists. 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 delicious 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  who in my opinion is the most entertaining weekly restaurant newsletter writer in the biz. Come on Tuesday night when all entrees are $12.95.

All Day Records is located at 112A E Main Street and specializes in vinyl. Walk past a few law offices and architects who are taking up valuable shop space for businesses that could easily be upstairs in an office, and you will come to Orange County Social Club which gave a home to all of us who had nowhere to go when Chapel Hill's Hardback Cafe closed and has remained an essential part of Carrboro nightlife.

Across the street is the Jade Palace Chinese Restaurant, with a very friendly staff who always make you feel that you should eat here more often. I love the homemade kimchee. Try the Hibachi Shrimp too.

Past the former year-round Christmas-tree lot which now hosts Carrboro Raw, our neighborhood juice bar in a cantina truck, 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.

Finally let me mention the Gourmet Kingdom, across the street from the Cat's Cradle at 301 East Main street. "With over 150 authentic dishes created for you by Chinese chefs directly from Szechuan Province, Gourmet Kingdom offers a unique eating experience and will forever transform your idea of Chinese cuisine." This is putting in mildly. The menu is mostly in Chinese. The clientele is mostly Chinese. The staff barely speak English. The food is mostly amazing. Try the crispy whole fish in black bean sauce or the fish filets in spicy Szechuan sauce. The sauteed green chile peppers are actually stuffed jalapenos and were too spicy for most of the people at our table but not for me. The pig's ears were about what you would expect pig's ears to be like. Worth trying just for the sake of water-cooler conversation but probably not a staple. The chinese greens and green beans make a healthy and delicious side dish. I have only been here three times (twice this week) but as I become more familiar with the restaurant I will add more favorite dishes.

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. 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. But the center of nighttime activity seems to be Southern Rail, especially in the summer when their beer garden is full of people who also fill the deck areas outside The Station, where there is often live music going on.(Blues on Saturday night) Also worth a stop is Milltown when it is warm enough to sit outside in the patio area though I happen to think it has the best bar and the best beer selection in Carrboro, if not the world and I would drink here anytime.

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 was very involved in the conservation of the North Carolina coast but sadly died in 2010.
TIP: I used to 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 three, but with Bryan's Guitars doing mostly mail-order and internet sales the only walk-in and play music stores are The Music Loft on Main Street and Carrboro Music a couple doors down in the Tim Peck Building at 204 West Main. With a great collection of new and used acostic and electric guitars, bases and amps, and friendly people who know how to play them work at both places. There is also a music school affiliated with the loft where my daughter took 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 and now have expanded into the hog business as so many organic farmers have, something that nobody would ever have expected to happen twent years ago. 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.

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. One day it was gone and I like to think that he flew it away. If you want to see some amazing sculptures go to the corner of West Main and Poplar Street where there is a garden full done by award-winning artist Mike Roig.

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. But I have to say that this past summer and much of last year I spent in Greece and met a lot of people from Paris and none of them had ever heard of Carrboro!

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