Focus On: Charlotte, NC

Though it’s come a long way in the past decade or so, I still maintain that Charlotte, NC is the most boring city of its size that I have ever seen. Now, of course, any time you say something like this, a town’s defenders are going to launch an offensive, pointing out, say, seven good restaurants and one cool place to hang out, and therefore this means you’re a moron who hasn’t given it a fair shake. But I never said Charlotte sucked completely – only that, given its massive sprawl, there should be a whole lot more to rally around.

For starters, the live music scene has always been curiously lackluster. In about 15 years of truly trying, I’ve found maybe five musical outfits that I thought were any good. Okay, okay, though, you might saying, this really isn’t our thing. Here’s a rundown on my thoughts concerning this city, based upon personal experience, in a few loosely defined categories:

Camp North End

NoDa

Events

Bars/Breweries

Restaurants

Attractions

Camp North End

This project looks like a bomb went off inside a modern market, flinging every business a quarter mile in every direction. And then a bunch of really cool looking and creative art flourishes were added to spruce up the spaces in between. I’ve never seen anything quite like this setup here, and though not even all that old, it’s already among the city’s most defining features. As such, it rates its own section. This is some sort of decommissioned military compound and the basic deal here is that you park and walk around to check out various shops, restaurants, art installations, you name it. Therefore there’s a little bit of exercise involved, but nothing too strenuous. Anyway, here are some random highlights, culled from our adventures:

Patty & The Dogs: everything we try here is awesome. Erin has the St. Bernard, which is an Italian sausage with basil garlic aioli & grilled onions (hold the peppers) on a bun. The turkey patty I try (no onions) is maybe not quite so original, but the meat tastes fresh and the chipotle mayo has a wonderful kick. As far as sides, the dill pickles are homemade, and amazing as a result. Also the chili cheese chips, which are Mrs. Vickie’s sea salt flavored, topped with their own homemade chili and then a hearty ration of shredded cheese.

In the live performance area, Council Ring are the band who eventually begin playing, and round out the limited collection of the five or so that I have really dug. They sound like kind of a modern jazzy take on Traffic or something. All wearing Santa hats, the first tune of their set is (or at least sounds to us as though it must be) a psychedelic, slowed down take on Carol of the Bells. As though Pink Floyd were playing it circa 1971 or something. The singer just crouches on stage for this one, mostly, and lets the four musicians do their thing. He finally gets to belt some stuff out on the next tune, which I don’t recognize, and might be an original, is the moment I begin thinking they sound a little bit like a reimagined Traffic. The third song is their rendition of Voodoo Chile, then, and kind of confirms I had been onto something with these comparisons.

In this one huge but mostly empty factory looking building, they were setting up for a later screening of the movie Die Hard. Strings of white Christmas lights were dangling from the rafters, in parallel lines, across much of the room. A corner is set up almost like somebody’s living room, and there’s also a food truck of some sort here indoors, but otherwise this area is mostly empty at this early hour.

Erin is partial to tonkatsu from the ramen noodle place (pictured above). And it’s great, although I am more into the burgers from Bleu Barn. These are both located outside, in a row of food stands on the southeast side of the compound. Elsewhere, there are of course some indoor restaurants, and the expected coffee, beer, dessert operations sprinkled throughout.

NoDa (North Davidson Street)

This smallish pocket of town is much more crowded and slightly less interesting than it used to be, though still worthy of your time. Smelly Cat Coffee is a treasured old standby, as are Neighborhood Theatre (mid-sized concert venue), Cabo Fish Taco (Guy Fieri has featured this on Triple D), and Evening Muse (bar meets local music hotspot). Among relatively new entries, Room And Board is a solid dining option at the main corner. Particularly if visiting NoDa for the first time, though, you might want to pick a non-prime hour for coming here, as parking is minimal, foot traffic heavy, and tight spaces abound at every turn. If you come here on, say, some random Tuesday night in February, you might even find the area somewhat deserted – which works better for you, and I’m sure the businesses would appreciate your patronage more at this time anyway.

Events

St. Patrick’s Day Parade: one notable highlight that we’ve attended a handful of occasions. This year’s edition had Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden leading the parade, he of I Am Homicide fame (a must see if you’re into true crime TV shows), while in past years floats have featured the likes of local radio celebrities Woody & Wilcox.

Below you can see one commonly found feature at these parades, the bagpipe players gathered in this small park (The Green) found downtown along Tryon – next to Ratcliffe’s Flowers, across the street from the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art. As you can also see, they have some amusing author-related directional signs posted here. The Mark (Illinois) and Twain (California) ones are visible in this video, but there are others.

Bars/Breweries

Thirty Beaver Saloon: An anomaly in the increasingly upscale, trendy, Plaza Midwood district, this scuzzy throwback is as charmingly old school as they come. I mean, they didn’t even have any IPAs as of the last time I was here, if you can believe that. Although a place like this has probably come back around to something hipsters find cool right now. Anyway, here are some notes I jotted down during my most recent visit:

Light up Hamm’s sign with canoe in front of waterfall, looks like water is flowing. Row of 4 wooden theatre type seats elevated along one wall. Blonde girl comes in an orders double shot of Tito’s, knocks it back and leaves – barmaid says she does this all the time. No drafts, not much beer period, I have can of Miller Lite. Old Colt 45 calendar with Billy Dee.

Mick Jagger came here alone not so long ago (accompanied by one bodyguard), during a Rolling Stones tour. Wearing a ballcap, sipping a beer outside, not making a big deal about it – and nobody recognized him! You can find a picture of this outing elsewhere online. The owner happened to not be present that night, and was royally kicking himself in the pants when he found out about this the next day.

NoDa Brewing: This is probably my favorite of the local breweries. Despite the name, it’s actually located around the corner, more or less, from the beating heart of NoDa, and traffic is typically not too horrible. It’s a fun, spacious building with plenty of room to move, outdoor seating, and most importantly of all, many great beer offerings.

The Hop Drop N’ Roll is a nice solid entry point for those favoring a totally normal IPA, with nothing “hazy” or “triple” or “imperial” or some such insanity in the name. I would recommend starting here, and if you like this, perhaps venturing outward with your selections.

Restaurants

Hawkers Asian Street Food

We stumbled upon this place one day while driving around, decided to give it a try, and have not regretted this in the slightest. A somewhat small but interesting menu, with plenty we haven’t seen anywhere else. Everything we’ve tried has been good to awesome and the decor is enough to keep your eyes occupied during the short wait for your food.

The grilled shishito peppers are a great way to kick things off. Our server advised us the first time that these are mostly mild, but every so often one will light you up, and this is right on the money. Aside from all that they are charred to perfection, with a creamy sesame sauce underneath and topped with these bonito flakes that come across as crispy little salt bombs. Otherwise, if opting for the edamame as an appetizer, even these are done better than most places. Once again fried instead of steamed, and in this instance with crispy little charred chili flakes atop them.

Most of all, though, we like come here for happy hour, where these apps are $5 and the bao bons half price. As one would expect, the crispy pork belly appetizer is amazing and nearly a meal in itself. The pieces are half crispy, half soft, with a tasty sidecar of hoisin.

Concerning the bao buns, once again pork belly was probably the best offering here. Presumably you know the drill here, but if not they are basically wrapped in something that resembles a small, floppy pita. Ranging down from the pork belly, the duck was merely awesome, Korean chicken very good.

Let’s Meat:

a Korean BBQ place, which for the uninitiated, is not what the name might imply. I certainly had no idea what this meant, until I first visited this place. That was two years ago, and we’ve been here a few times since. Better yet (although the owners would surely disagree) some of the mad fervor has died down since that initial foray, meaning you’re usually not looking at an outrageous wait time nowadays.

Okay, so the setup here is, you pay one flat price for an all-you-can eat experience. There’s this huge burner in the middle of your table, and you can pick whatever you like from an extensive list of offerings, to fry up yourself right there. With various trays of accessories off to the side, such as dipping sauces and so on, most of which are truly awesome as well. All in all, a very memorable, tasty, unique experience.

Blacow: This one has multiple locations around town. The basic premise here is it’s a burger meets sushi place, which doesn’t sound like it will work. But they pull off both of these seemingly mismatched elements very well. It’s not really a fusion of the two – you can pretty much just get some kind of gourmet burger, or you can get some really good sushi. Everything we’ve tried is awesome, though, over a handful of visits, and it’s nice in that you can potentially keep different groups of picky eaters happy at the same time.

Attractions

Ghost Tours: The family and I went on a downtown walking ghost tour a handful of years ago and found this to be an incredibly interesting experience. Didn’t see any ghosts, although in the spooky old cemetery along 5th, Erin was bitten by some mysterious bug that made her neck instantly swell up considerably. We were wondering if we might have to skip out on the remaining tour and take her to the hospital, in fact. I’m a major fanatic when it comes to funky and/or old buildings, so this was one notable angle, plus our tour guide had a ton of cool stories to tell at every destination.

Our guide meets the group at this agreed upon spot along Tryon, where modern construction projects only slightly mar the vibe. He compensates for this, however, by dressing the part in an old fashioned looking vest, suit, and hat combo, and carrying a lantern with him.

Walking north up Tryon, one of our first stops is this spooky old hotel for which he offers all kinds of crazy legends. During our travels, this random black woman who is just walking past asks us with a grin what we are doing. When everyone explains this is a ghost tour, she laughs and gives us an encouraging wave, tells our party, “do the damn thing, then!” as she continues on her merry way.

These assorted shots gathered here are ones I took, some of the isolated highlights that turned out looking cool:

As we leave here, our guide is telling us something interesting I did not know about the slang term of “spirits” concerning liquor – some sort of tale about they used to be hidden in shipments with dead bodies, inside the caskets.

Mint Museum: March of ’23 finds Erin and I coming here (the downtown one) for a Pablo Picasso landscapes exhibit. This is one of only two places in the country that is getting this exhibition. I’ve never been here before, but she has, and breezes through it much faster than me.

This here was probably my favorite of the Picassos:

But then there is this curious specimen. Erin was freaked out, claiming that the “cow” was staring at her. “Cow,” I had laughed, and then snickered. Only much later, upon posting this observation to Facebook, did she realize what we were in fact looking at here:

She did point out to me in another painting that either a hair or a brush bristle was embedded in the paint, which was another cool, humanizing touch, making you feel that much closer to the artist – if you buy a book or an album, chances are, the creator never came anywhere near that object. But there’s only one of these, and he stood right before it, wherever he was, making this. Elsewhere in the museum, there’s a sizeable display of local master Romare Bearden’s artwork. Despite the nearby park named after him, I never knew much about the guy or his stuff, but wound up digging quite a few of his pieces on display here.

this couple in front of me was looking at the above painting (Camouflage Man in a Landscape by James Guy) and the dude said, “this looks like my dreams.”

“You have interesting dreams,” she replied.

Notes on overheard conversations: “contrast” was definitely the word I heard most. Far outranking even “juxtapose” in its various forms, believe it or not. So we could be witnessing the leading edge of a hot new trend.

Things To Avoid

Truist Field: not to be confused with Truist Park in Atlanta, this is actually a minor league stadium for the AAA Charlotte Knights. This is about as boring and soulless as a baseball field can be – I seriously think I might take one of those cookie cutter Astroturf domes from the 1970s over this. It has no personality whatsoever, and the only things that really stand out about it are bad. Jammed into a tiny scrap of land downtown, there are high rises and skyscrapers pressing in from all sides, unless of course you’re talking about the huge construction cranes looming where future buildings will sit. Meanwhile, in the thick of summer, those bleacher seats get positively pulverized by the sun. The lone occasion that Erin and I attempted sitting out there, it was so hot and eye scorchingly bright that virtually nobody was in their seats, preferring instead to stand along the walkway fence above, in this thin parcel of shade from the awning. So yeah, we crowded in there as well to join them. Trust me, there are plenty of other minor league parks around this region, and you can do better.

Rush Hour On Weekdays: Just don’t do it. Don’t. Don’t come anywhere near here unless your life depends upon it from about 7-10am and 3-6pm, Monday through Friday. There are a pair of closely related issues that have made this city an ongoing traffic disaster (three if you consider these are positively the worst drivers I have ever seen – although some of that is maybe a reaction to the first two points): the city has exploded in population over the past couple of decades, and the infrastructure is so weirdly atrocious it will make your brain melt just thinking about it.

The infrastructure was always bad, and though improvements have been made, let’s be generous and say this nightmare is only about halfway over. They could get away with these perplexing oddities when the city was much smaller, but the population growth has been the proverbial lit wick to that barrel of gunpowder.

If you do make the mistake of driving down here during these hours and are curious what I’m talking about, maybe cruise southbound on I-77 and try to make a quick double lane change to get off at Wilkinson Blvd, as an on-ramp pours in approximately three inches before that. Or perhaps come up East 12th Street and try to turn left onto I-277 as people exiting that highway attempt switching places with you. That’s a fun li’l do-si-do, there. And just think about how these remaining headaches were by far the least problematic ones that needed addressed, if your mind can even contemplate such horrors. As an added bonus for outsiders, street names change often for seemingly no reason, and those colorful direction icons on the highway signs are pretty much pointless.

Olde Mecklenburg Brewery: 15 years ago, there was just one craft brewery in Charlotte; nowadays there are a gazillion, which means you can safely skip this puppy. The compound itself has a cool enough appearance to it, I’ll give them that. So much so that Erin was able to talk me into attending some kind of holiday hoedown over there, last Christmas season, which was outdoors and featured a number of different food and trinket vendors. The problem, though, as I explained to her when she asked why I wasn’t drinking any beer, is that Olde Meck’s offerings aren’t very good.

Now, I know they have their adherents, and have won medals for such and such, blah blah blah. But this means absolutely nothing – Milwaukee’s Best has millions of fans, too. To me this entire product line tastes like something you’d create with your first batches of a home brewing kit that somebody bought you for your birthday. Which makes sense because that’s what the labels on the bottles look like as well, the stickers that would come with such.