I’m posting this story about the Tanger Outlet Center possible delay at the Arrowhead Development because of what Mayor Glendel Stephenson says is coming to downtown. (Drum roll) An independent pharmacy. Woo-hoo. Party time. Somebody put on Kool & The Gang’s “Celebration” and do the Robot.
Why do I have a feeling it will go where Market on Clay Street once stood seeing that that building used to house a drugstore. Seriously, does downtown need another pharmacy?
I saw a sad sign Saturday. It said “Going Out Of Business” and it was hanging in front of the Market On Clay in Mebane.
Apparently, the building that houses the food specialty has been sold and the Market’s owner, Mark Edwards, was unable to buy the building. Funny, I thought the bad economy would have done the Market in or maybe the sell of the building is another product of the recession.
Either way, downtown Mebane is losing a great place that had a wonderful wine selection, a great lunch menu, and homemade brownies from heaven.
A smart business person would be wise to fill the void that the Market’s absence will create downtown.
Hopefully, the new owner of the building has a great plan for the space. If another antique dealer, storefront chruch, bar or Italian eatery opens in that space then I will officially declare the revitalization of downtown Mebane over.
Personally, I would like to see a cool thrift store, a restaurant or another store like the Market go into that space. Let’s face it, Clay Street needs some more retail diversity.
Anyway, sad to see Mark and the Market go. The store is having a clearance sale for the next couple weeks so go and buy something or just say “thanks” to Mark.
We left the compound in Mebane for Franklin Street with about two minutes to go in the game. I wanted to be sure that victory was in hand. I got to hear Woody countdown to zero which I missed in 2005 for various reasons including screaming from my deck and falling through a cardboard box that was still in the living room from moving in the previous day.
This year I was determined to go to Franklin Street if the Heels won because I figured with the kid coming, I wouldn’t get the chance again for a while. Plus, I had a wonderful chauffeur, my wife.
I remember around the 10-minute mark that my wife said something like “Boomer, I think they’re going to win.” This was an attempt to get me to calm down and stop coaching and yelling at missed calls. I simply told her that anything can happen. I wouldn’t feel comfortable until it would be all but impossible for a comeback.
I have to admit that I didn’t have complete faith in this team the way I did in 2005. Maybe it was the meltdowns against Georgetown and Kansas the previous two years. Maybe it was the baffling losses against B.C. and Maryland this year. Maybe it was from years of watching Dean Smith’s and Roy Williams’ humility and art of sandbagging over the years. I’m glad they proved me wrong, again.
We had to park in a lot on Merritt Mill Road and walk up Cameron to get to Franklin. If you were driving down that road and heard a series of Ric Flair-esque “WOOOOOOOs” coming from a wild-looking beast wearing a “Roy Has A Posse” shirt. That was me.
I didn’t understand how big the crowd was or how many bonfires were going until I saw the photo of the corner of Franklin and Columbia the next day. I was also amazed at the amount of injured people I saw walking away and being carted away.
I made it to a bonfire near the southwest corner of Franklin and Columbia and took a couple of leaps over it. I also tried to take some cellphone photos of this but, well, let’s just say my equilibrium was out of whack.
What a great night.
Mebane City Council will meet April 6 to discuss a plan to tighten rules on digital signs in the city. The proposal would ban the use of full animation or motion signs.
Council member Patty Phillips believes these types of signs give Mebane a cheap, Las Vegas strip look.
Personally, the signs don’t bother me that much. They are no more offensive than the standard double-arches of McDonald’s or the monolithic Sheetz sign on Mebane Oaks Road that is visible from Pilot Mountain. If Mebane is going to ban digital signs then why not ban all signs. By now, if you don’t know what a McDonald’s or a gas station looks like without a sign then you’re hopeless and probably have no business driving in the first place.
The bigger issue, I think, is safety. Motion signs can be distracting to drivers. I have found myself staring far too long at motion signs just trying to figure out what they are advertising.
I propose at least making the signs closer to the ground and smaller like some other cities have done. Drive into Chapel Hill down MLK Boulevard and see for yourself. It makes the town look cleaner and less cluttered.
I will admit that I have a weakness for the Mebane First Savings and Loan sign on Center Street during the summer because of the animated dancing sun that promotes “Hot deals!” The sun does a little “Egyptian” jig and looks like it has just gotten back from a lost weekend Buffet concert. A drunken parrothead sun! And why is it wearing sunglasses? Probably just hiding its plasma-shot eyes. Plus, the sign lets me know the temperature and how late I am to work.
A headline in last week’s Alamance News caught my attention. No, not the five deck, wordy one about deputies resigning after a Las Vegas trip. The main headline that said “Churches vs. bars in downtown Mebane” is the one.
You can play Madlibs with that headline because it is a manufactured debate that, I believe, is being pushed by a downtown Mebane business owner and a certain city councilman. You could just as easily have had “Interdimensional squid dealers vs. bars” as the headline.
I can see the argument that the downtown business district may have one too many bars for a town the size of Mebane but to marry that issue with a ban on storefront churches is ridiculous and stinks of self-righteous “Christians” trying to ram their beliefs down the throats of others.
According to the story, the owner of a tanning salon is upset that a businessman is planning a sports bar next to her salon. She never says what her worry is but I am guessing she thinks that somebody is going to have a couple of beers in the daytime at the sports bar and then will stumble out to the sidewalk and accost her customers or the children that go to the dance studio next door. Because, as you may or may not know, this happens all the time in downtown Mebane. I mean, sometimes it is hard to navigate yourself down the sidewalk of Clay Street while the sun is still up without having to step over all the drunks laying around.
Please.
Not to say tht crime never happens in downtown Mebane. Just look at the police blotter and you’ll usually have someone holding up an insurance agency, stealing a bike in front of a store, or someone breaking into businesses in the early morning hours. Some of the bars in downtown Mebane do get calls. Usually late at night when young adults full of Jager and Red Bull feel like playing Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots with one another. Show me a town where that doesn’t happen and I’ll show you a map of that fantasyland.
Now, a certain city councilman has decided to add the ban on storefront churches to the debate. Apparently, Mebane doesn’t allow these facilities in the business district.
This is where I will digress into a little Business 101 lecture that maybe the councilman can understand:
A business district is an area of town, usually a downtown area, where businesses, i.e. antique shops, restauarants, gourmet food shops, tanning salons, and bars, set up shop in order to provide services and/or goods to the public. In return, these businesses hope to make a little profit and provide for their families. In addition, these businesses pay taxes.
Storefront churches are not businesses, presumably nonprofit and do not pay taxes. Oh, and they’re usually only open one day a week. Guess which day?
I had to laugh when the Alamance News’ editorial sided with the pro-storefront church Taliban when it said that storefront churches help downtown’s viability more than vacant buildings.
REALLY!
I dare Tom Boney or the councilman or anyone who think that storefront churches add to a business district to travel to towns in a 50-mile radius of Mebane to see just how aesthetically pleasing storefront churches are to your eyes. Or to see how these downtowns are thriving. From ones I’ve seen in my hometown of Danville, Va., they all have the same spartan look of a 1950s dentist office, a communist party headquarters, or a smalltown weekly newspaper. The places I’ve seen all have the same hand-painted, misspelled signs.
Look, the revitalization of downtown Mebane is a shining example that such things can happen. Mebane’s is still in its infancy, in my opinion. Plans continue for the White Furniture building to be converted into apartments. The hope is is that young and middle-aged professionals will see a thriving downtown Mebane and will want to live nearby and spend there money there. Trust me, they will want to go to restaurants or bars that serve alcohol. They are not going to say “Hmmm, I think I’ll move near the business district because of all of these storefront churches. I’ve got to get my tithe on!”
If Mebane does have one too many bars, then the market will judge that. So far, the market has allowed for three private club bars, and a martini bar to survive and even thrive. The guy who is trying to open the sports bar is trying to quiet the hysteria by saying his place will be laid back and will not be open on Sundays because he said in one of the stories that that is “God’s time.” I have a little advice for him: If he doesn’t want to be fitting his windows for “Out of Business” signs, then he will want to most certainly be open on Sundays. Football! Hello?
I must say though if the city does allow storefront churches then I do not want to hear a word from these people when an Islamic or Kabbalic center opens.
Not much to go on from this story. I get the feeling that Blackmon simply didn’t mesh with the county. Hopefully, they can get a manager who is more in tune to what Orange County is all about. I don’t think the answer is the manager from Rockingham County who was the runner-up for the Orange job before Blackmon was hired.
Here is Blackmon’s e-mail to county staff.
“How do you feel?” my wife asked me last night at halftime. She was half-joking, half-serious because she is my human blood-pressure montior.
“Doomed,” I replied gravely.
“That’s a good sign,” she said.
During the second-half basket-trading, she had me doing breathing exercises like I was the one who was pregnant.
She’s right. As usual, I got that sinking feeling as Duke went up 8 at the break thanks to, of all things, a Lance Thomas basket that could’ve been a 3-point play if he didn’t, ya know, stink at free-throw shooting. My mind starting racing as I contemplated turning off the TV and burning my UNC memorabilia and wondering how bad the next few days would feel. I’m a real barrel of monkeys to be around during these games, right?
Luckily, Ty Lawson put some tiny daggers into Paulus and the crew and Tyler added a WMD in the form of a 3-pointer with the shot clock running out that took the air out of Cameron Hansbrough Indoor Stadium and shut up the painted, ADD kids in the stands.
There is definitely electricity in the air when Carolina and Duke clash. You don’t have to be camped out in Durham or on Franklin Street to feel it.
I felt it at the Burlington Y where game talk was everywhere you turned. One employee walked through the Cardio Theater a few times and yelled out “Go Heels!” to somebody or, perhaps, nobody in particular.
I felt it at Sheetz on Mebane Oaks Road when I went in to get a six-pack of Red Stripe for the game (a four-year-old superstition). Usually, I’m easily annoyed by people taking their time at the counter but tonight I didn’t mind. There were three men talking Carolina basketball and one of them was a State fan. One guy had his two kids tagging along and all three were decked out in Carolina blue. There was much laughter and comraderie that made me grin. Any other day, the pow-wow probably would’ve never happened.
“I ‘ll be pulling for y’all tonight,” said the State fan, “but not when you’re going against these guys,” he tugged on his N.C. State ballcap.
Then a Sheetz employee spoke up and made her allegiance to the Blue Devils be known. Everyone laughed.
About an hour later, I went up to the corner store that is normally dead. Yet, last night, it was extremely busy. I don’t know if there is a correlation but I felt there was. A lot of men in the store. Everyone seemed like they were there to work out some nervous energy with the game only two hours away.
I have always loved the state of North Carolina and this rivalry just reaffirms that affection.
That never gets old.
Alright you Tar Heels, let’s get into a hate-frenzy of epic proportions in preparation of the Wednesday game with Rutgers University of Durham. May Tyler and Danny go 4-0 at the outhouse.
Here are some links to get you in the right frame of mind:
Truth About Duke: A great site that destroys all things Blue Devil.
Dookie V’s Takes: Brian Allen writes recaps of dook games in the voice of the ultimate Rat disciple, Dick Vitale. Funny and jarringly not far from the truth.
DukeBluePlanet.com: A nauseating site by and for kids from New York and New Jersey with little to no knowledge of fundamental basketball rules. Naismith would be appalled. Friends don’t let friends apply to Trinity College. Some might mistake this site for ESPN.
Now if you want to just immerse yourself in a pool of dook hate, visit the Inside Carolina message board. Need to sound off about Wojo’s questionable coaching or Paulus’ general inabilities? You won’t be disappointed by the threads. Enjoy. GO HEELS!
UNC comes to its senses about an Orange County airport.
The newish chancellor with the soap opera name, Holden Thorp, stating the obvious:
“There’s just too much distrust because of the way the authority came to be. We ended up surprising people with the legislation far more than we should have.”
Now use RDU like the rest of us.
Looks like County Manager Laura Blackmon will get her way with the trash transfer site near Orange Grove Road. Not that Eubanks Road deserved the site either but the area the county is now proposing as the location is not exactly sparsely populated nor barren land.
So here’s the list of wonders that western Orange now has to look forward to:
1. Buckhorn Village - A slab of asphalt where people can shop for hunting supplies from a Cabela’s that isn’t coming. I’m sure Orange County will buckle and put a Sam’s Club there.
2. UNC Airport - A facility that will destroy the rural beauty of the Mapleview Farm area and bring plenty of noise pollution to a tranquil spot.
3. Transfer Waste Station - Like the sound and smell of trash trucks? N.C. 54 will be the place to be.
Let’s finish the job and put a hog waste lagoon in Efland and a nuclear fuel tomb under Lake Michael.
Progress. Don’t you love it?
