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Archive for October, 2007

First Friday 11.02.07 - Raleigh

Published by The Furry Geezer October 31st, 2007 in Uncategorized, Art, First Friday and Raleigh. 4 Comments

First Friday in its many manifestations across the area is a wonderful concept that benefits artists, galleries, and human beings. Raleigh’s is user friendly in general but daunting to explore by the list, which is long and non-geographical. Here is an annotated list of what I would love to hit myself Friday night - concentrating on downtown and ignoring Glenwood South. I’ll take a deep non-gentrified breath and try some of those out sometime for another post. Hope to see you!

HIGHLIGHTS

Don’t miss the NCSU Student Exhibition of work based on Ghana travel at Fishmarket, the NC printmaking show at the Visual Art Exchange, or the Exposed Nudes show at Litmus Gallery. Free Range Studio, The Gregg, and others have new work. Read on!

Continue reading ‘First Friday 11.02.07 - Raleigh’

The Subversive Power of Maps

Published by Robert E Leebowitz October 27th, 2007 in Raleigh and RDU. 4 Comments

I just heard a rebroadcast of an episode of This American Life from 1998 including a segment featuring Denis Wood, the author of The Power of Maps. The subject of that segment is Wood’s maps of the Boylan Heights neighborhood in Raleigh. You can listen, and should listen to the episode here. Denis Wood is a complicated figure. Arguably one of the most brilliant minds in our region, he may also be one of the most controversial among those who know of him and his work. The controversy is maybe best illustrated by this map. We know people whose lives were changed for the better by Wood’s courses in Environmental Design at the School of Design. They learned to question some of the most basic assumptions about Society and the environment (It is crazy to poop into the water system! Why do we do that?). We also know people who flatly refuse to read his work because his crime was heinous and truly indefensible. His book Home Rules is an annotated guide to his family home in Boylan Heights. From the Amazon.com description:

The authors examine this relationship with a specific case in point–the living room of the Woods’s home. The study reveals 223 rules addressing safety, behavior, and treatment of the room’s 70 objects. Each rule has been coded to indicate whether it relates to the protection of a thing or a kid (TCON, KCON) or the appearance of a thing or a kid (tAPP, kAPP). The lines are drawn, the rules are made, and the rationale behind them is analyzed from a societal and cultural viewpoint, with personal commentary also provided.

It’s an interesting book without knowledge of Wood’s history. With the added knowledge of what values may have actually been transmitted in the house, it becomes more subversive. More David Lynch than dryly academic.

New Raleigh and the New Rich

Published by Robert E Leebowitz October 26th, 2007 in WTF, Architecture, Raleigh and RDU. 5 Comments

We like the New Raleigh blog very much and somehow they’ve managed to start a great argument with the ghost of a now defunct blog, Raleighing. Raleighing was a daily read for us but it sometimes seemed like a cheerleader for any and all new development. The current discussion at New Raleigh is right up our alley. Raleighing commented in response to a New Raleigh post about the AIA’s list of the most important buildings in North Carolina by slamming some of our favorite houses and a vigorous argument ensued. We urge you to read the New Raleigh post and the ongoing discussion in the comments thread. We disagree with many of the arguments Raleighing is making, which we will summarize like so:

Raleigh’s early modernist experiments repulsed people and created a backlash against Modernism in the region. Similarly, Nirvana drove people to purchase Britney Spears records.
The market is the ultimate barometer of taste and if these houses were worth saving, people with money would save them. This can be seen in the choices of the houses and buildings built by the wealthy in recent decades.
Early modernist houses such as the Catalano House, Paschal House, Poole Residence and Fadum House are similar to current day infill McMansions because they are incongruous with their surrounding neighborhoods. Continue reading ‘New Raleigh and the New Rich’

Hizzonner vs Hizzonner

Published by Robert E Leebowitz October 18th, 2007 in WTF and Raleigh. 2 Comments

An article by business writer Jack Hagel, in Monday’s N&O, announces the plans of former Raleigh Mayor Smedes York & HBS investment partners to develop the block at the Southest corner of Hillsborough and West Streets. Former home to Gummi and current home of Flex, you could call it the fetish block. It’s also the former home to Marsh Woodwinds and current home to John Montgomery Violins, so maybe it’s the instrument district?

The group is trying to sway Montgomery & Associates, whose partners include Mayor Charles Meeker, to sell its 0.16-of-an-acre sliver at 509 Hillsborough or partner in the development.

“It’s an imminent situation,” York said. “But a lot of things have to be done.”

Foremost: HBS must first find new homes for John Montgomery Violins and an architect that occupy the property. Then HBS has to win city approval to build.

Imminent? Let’s hope it’s eventual that HBS will have to build around this sliver of 1930’s storefronts! I heard months ago that Montgomery had no intention to sell and when asked today, Montgomery said “nothing is final.” Montgomery Violins is a great looking shop and it would be sad to see it replaced with faux 1930’s storefronts. Continue reading ‘Hizzonner vs Hizzonner’

OMG The Spoon is back!

Published by The Furry Geezer October 8th, 2007 in Raleigh and Music. 2 Comments

WSHA is a treasure of the Raleigh community - but it is having its ups and downs lately. I was mildly horrified to hear the returning voice of an old morning DJ whose silky stylings get on my nerves somehow. Especially references to using her spoon with a hole in the side to stir up the morning jazz “flavahs.” I really need my twenty minutes of jazz for the morning commute, and a couple of years ago I found myself having bad, bad thoughts about what I would like to do with that spoon if she mentioned it one more time. Then John Bouille got hired, and WSHA experienced a real boost in quality of music and entertainment. John is from New Orleans, and he and Bob Rogers helped bring Shaw radio to the forefront of national doings in the field. There are only a few jazz stations left in the whole country, and with NCCU radio, the Triangle has two of them. John left to make decent living, and Bob recently resigned after over twenty years of volunteer deejay work. Though Dave Barnwell is still wonderful when you can catch him on the brunch set, the playlist overall seems to have stepped back toward earlier days of Smooth jazz that borders on R&B pop. More ominously, the silence from WSHA regarding the ongoing Thelonius Monk festival may signal a grave misstep in isolation and iconoclastic pride. On the other hand, they are co-sponsoring another nice jazz event, and there is still plenty of good music and excellent community programming being provided. But I miss Bob and John - and I hate hearing about that damned spoon! Thank God for my anthology CDs.

Water Garden RIP

Published by Robert E Leebowitz October 8th, 2007 in WTF, Architecture, Raleigh, Durham and RDU. 5 Comments

The Water Garden, a small office park on Highway 70 between Crabtree Mall and RDU Airport, is easy to overlook. It’s nestled behind bamboo, cattails and a pond that buffer the property from the traffic. A few years ago, I was driving an architect friend from the airport and as we approached The Water Garden, he remarked on the neighboring development, “That’s a development model for you: just rape and scrape the landscape clean and then cram as much shit on it as possible.” The Water Garden is an oasis in that earth-raped highway of crap. Today the N&O reports:

Water Garden project sinks RALEIGH — Landscape architect Dick Bell, who for three years has tried to redevelop 11 acres at the Water Garden Office Park off U.S. 70 in northwest Raleigh, is giving up on the project for good. A string of broken deals ruined several potential developments ranging from an 800,000-square-foot mixed-use building to a modest mix of condominiums and single-family homes. Bell agreed to sell the property for $1.6 million to a partnership that plans to build housing aimed at retirees.

Dick Bell has had an incredible impact on the shape and appearance of North Carolina. Bell is a landscape architect who, among other things, designed and built The Brickyard and the Student Center courtyard at NC State and Pullen Park. Last Year, he gave a lecture at the College of Design at NCSU and recounted the early years of the Design School. He described studying in Rome and traveling around Europe on a Vespa and how those travels shaped his vision and goals for North Carolina, especially his mission to make the profession of Landscape Architect known and respectable in North Carolina. He was cantankerous, strongly opinionated and thoroughly entertaining.
When Bell and his wife built The Water Garden, Raleigh ended where Glenwood Village now stands and Glenwood Ave - HWY 70 became a country road between Raleigh and Durham. Bell and his wife opened an art gallery on the grounds that featured NC artists and works by faculty from the School of Design. The opening night parties that accompanied gallery shows were legendarily raucous events (before our time but we’ve heard the stories) of local art history. Over a hundred cars parked along The Water Garden driveway and Highway 70, many of which stayed all night due to the multiple cases of wine and whiskey that flowed. The Garden Gallery closed earlier this year.
Take a Sunday drive ASAP and look at The Water Garden while you have a chance. The property features early work by Ligon Flynn, another star of the early School of Design. Dick Bell and Ligon Flynn both excel at creating environments and structures that are modern but very rooted in the Carolinas. It’s sad that Dick Bell was unable to realize any of his redevelopment plans for this property and the resulting development will most likely blend in with the neighboring environment - and that’s unfortunate in this case.

Red star on a green field

Published by A Loud Arcane Toad October 4th, 2007 in Uncategorized and Chapel Hill. 5 Comments

Apropos of nothing, does anyone out there remember the Club Morocco, in Chapel Hill years ago? That might not even be the right name. This was a place above the Cat’s Cradle, back when the Cat’s Cradle was located where The Bookshop is now. It might’ve been called the Morocco Club, or even the Casbah or something similar. It seemed pretty much like a speakeasy operated for the benefit of Cradle insiders and touring musicians.

Hipster elitism (usually) sucks, but we need more places that like that in the Triangle, and fewer like, for instance, the Depot Complex.

Oxford American Music Issue

Published by Robert E Leebowitz October 3rd, 2007 in Good Stuff and RDU. 0 Comments

The Music issue is on newsstands and in mailboxes now. It features a cover story about Thelonious Monk’s stand at The Frog & Nightgown, written by Sam Stephenson. It’s well written and full of local history and interesting trivia - I had no idea that Max Roach was from Scotland Neck, NC.. North Carolina is well represented in this issue; there’s also an article about Raleigh’s indie darlings, The Annuals.

Non-NC features include: Pieces about the recording of Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, Barry Cowsill, and The Red Krayola and an accompanying 26-track CD.
Buy this issue, subscribe and give gift subscriptions. Oxford American deserves your support.

N&O Life Stories

Published by Robert E Leebowitz October 2nd, 2007 in Uncategorized, WTF and RDU. 5 Comments

There’s an abundance of annoying crap in every issue of the News and Observer but I read it every day. I don’t envy publicly traded companies trying to survive a dying industry. The most annoying features of the N&O are the “personalities” they employ to entertain and and convey snarky attitude without offending anyone. Well, it offends me. I think they’re trying to compete in a game they can’t win and it’s painful to watch. The Vice Magazine DON’Ts once displayed a photo of a guy playing saxophone while riding a skateboard and the caption was something like; “This is what your aunt envisions when you use the word “cool”. She’s not thinking of swimming on acid or having anal sex while listening to Black Flag.” Vice can write that. We just wrote about that. The N&O cannot and has to appeal to the boring Aunt. They fail when they try to sell “attitude“.

But here’s an area where they excel: The obituary. The Life Stories feature of the N&O is consistently great. Nowhere else in the N&O will you see writing as compelling as this:

Cora Mae Teander lived 10 years with the circus, adopted a son as a single mother, drove a taxicab and ran an arcade back when that meant balls pitched at milk bottles rather than neon-lit video games. She was 95 when she died May 14 in Cary.

Or this:

Dietrich von Haugwitz loved animals, and he loved sausage.

The Willie “June” Watkins and Hazel Watkins (probably not related) stories are exceptionally good. The Life Stories are interesting because they’re concerned with writing a short and interesting piece about a life and not about failed attempts to entertain with affected attitude or folksy musings. And yes, I realize how uncool it is to mention Vice Magazine but being uncool is a privilege of writing without an editor who wants your company product to seem “cool”.

Lantern

Published by Robert E Leebowitz October 1st, 2007 in RDU and Chapel Hill. 1 Comment

Of the three points of our Triangle, it’s Chapel Hill that gets short shrift from our writers. It’s not that Chapel Hill is the bastard stepchild, undeserving of our attention. On the contrary, The Cat’s Cradle, Local 506, Orange County Social Club and a long list of good restaurants are all regular destinations for RDUwtf. Some stereotyping for you: people from Raleigh go to Chapel Hill at night, people from Chapel Hill do not come to Raleigh. We’ve asked Chapel Hillians to contribute articles or ideas about subjects for this blog but we haven’t received a single tip. Sutton’s Drugstore? The Carolina Inn? Ye Olde Waffle Shop? We don’t know! We do know the bar at Lantern is one of the best places in the region to have a drink. We’re assuming that you already know about Andrea Reusing’s award-winning restaurant on Franklin Street, because you should. Lesser known is the lovely bar in the back of the restaurant. Enter through the restaurant, down the long hallway to the back, or use the side alley entrance. The room has dark paneled walls, soft amber lighting, banquette seating and bartenders that actually know what they’re doing. The obscured location doesn’t create a speakeasy feel as much as it adds to the decor of the room to create a timeless, placeless quality - very removed from the day-to-day and that’s a great quality for a bar. It’s a comfortable and deserving destination independent of the Lantern Restaurant. The bar gets crowded on most nights (we said it’s lesser known, not unknown), so plan accordingly. And try the Junebug or The Big O.

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Archive for October, 2007

First Friday 11.02.07 - Raleigh

The Subversive Power of Maps

New Raleigh and the New Rich

Hizzonner vs Hizzonner

OMG The Spoon is back!

Water Garden RIP

Red star on a green field

Oxford American Music Issue

N&O Life Stories

Lantern

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