The Huffington Post published a story today offering 15 reasons why Charlotte is weird.
No, HuffPo, your list is weird. I can appreciate snark and tongue-in-cheek and all that, but if that was indeed the intention, you missed the mark.
I’ll give you your props, HuffPo, in that a few items rang true. Yes, it’s a little odd that our downtown area is called Uptown (but after a year or two living here, you get over that). And those murals at Bank of America Corporate Center are definitely strange.
But the rest of your list is crap. It’s not informed. It’s not funny. It’s not even relatable, like that Onion article was. The fact that you had to resort to using a JLaw GIF clearly shows this list was half-assed.
In no particular order, and in no way complete, here’s a real list of why Charlotte is weird.
1) We’re the home of the incredibly confusing intersection of Providence/Providence/Queens/Queens.
2) Thongs are oddly popular here: Earth Angel, a shop that offers thongs, bikinis, corsets, lingerie and more has managed to remain open – and lets you know with a sign that screams the words “Yes We’re Still Open” – in an almost deserted strip mall along the construction-torn Independence Boulevard.
3) We like companies that fund terrorists so much so that our officials lobby for them to relocate their headquarters.
4) We’re weirdly fascinated with shady evangelists. First Jim Bakker, now Elevation’s Steve Furtick.
5) We’re a city of sometimes fantastic, mostly random smells.
6) We’re the Pimento Cheese capital of the world. Nuff said.
7) Some of our innovative restaurateurs thought to pair sushi and burgers together to create burgushi. I don’t know what’s weirder than the word burgushi.
8) We’re the largest metropolitan city without a zoo.
9) We have people like Jim McGuire, who thought it cool to place a 6-foot head in his front yard. (He no longer lives at the house on The Plaza, but the head remains.)
This article appears in Mar 19-25, 2014.
We have a glittery Toucan Sam that we call art in Uptown.
What about the intersection of queens/queens/queens/kings. Or that many major roads change names 5 times (tyvola/fairview/Rama/idlewilde/etc). And how about the abandoned Tammy Faye site, which still displays an enormous crumbling hotel which no one has ever stayed a night.
don’t forget about the statue of Hugh McManaway at Providence/Providence/Queens/Queens, a memorial to a guy who wore a raincoat and directed traffic at that intersection from the 50’s to the 70’s
75 degrees on Monday, snow on Tuesday
Technically, everyone who has lived here for years or grew up here, uptown (yes, center city, trade/tryon) calls it downtown because it actually is on an incline. (It was used as a high point during the revolutionary and civil wars).
Downtown = Center City. Upton = The Caberet.
(@Kelly Davis: But … the Disco Chicken is awesome!)
Heh. I guess someone had to retort.
That HuffPo article was just full of hate. I have lived in and around Charlotte since 1990, and I can tell you with some amount of certainty that most of the article has no basis in fact. The NoDa atheists, as an example; I am a former NoDa resident and in my experience there was much religious diversity there.
In any case, it’s fairly obvious that the writer of that article is some 2-bit hack that knows nothing about how Charlotte actually is.
The sad part is, the Onion did this very thing better than HuffPo not two months ago.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/horrified-man-suddenly-realizes-hes-putting-down-r,35102/
Don’t forget the dirt hamburgers in Scaleybark, or the Stargate on Providence Road.
This drivel is worse than the HuffPo. How is Creative Loafing still around again???
That “companies that fund terrorists” hyperlink just links back to this article. Could you fix that please?
LONG LIVE CHILLY WILLY!
The writer of the Hufpost article least brings out certain aspects of Charlotte that are kind of weird and obviously she was trying to be funny and not literal. People now days have no sense of humor and always get butthurt so easy. Chill out and relax if you don’t want Charlotte to be weird then do something about it.
I have said for years that Charlotte is weird. Because it is, in a quirky, bless-your-heart sort of way.
But please allow me a few clarifications.
We call it uptown because Tryon Street sits on an escarpment. When the first streetcars rolled from Dilworth, Elizabeth, etc. many, many years ago, they had to go up a slope to reach the business district. Hence the name, uptown. The marketing campaign to revive uptown in the ’70s and ’80s drew on that history. The campaign did not invent “uptown” out of thin air. It had a historical basis.
If you want to really see the escarpment that is Tryon Street, go out West Morehead to about where WBTV is located, turn around and look. You’ll instantly understand why it’s called uptown.
But I simply cannot provide any clarification for Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Bakker Messner (may she RIP, bless her heart), I surely cannot.
Here’s some more weird stuff:
~Livermush
~Might, could = maybe (rapidly disappearing, sadly.)
~The drawl trapped inside a preppy lockjaw that is the classic accent of mizePAHK (still with us and quickly acquired by arrivistes, I’ve noticed.)
~Park Road Park. I’m sorry, Park Road…what?
~Harris Teeter. Great store, sounds like the name of a law firm.
~Our very strange liquor laws. Private club, sure, honey. Whatever.
~Greek diners that serve grits, collards, gyros and souvlaki.
And Nico, it isn’t Queens/Queens/Queens/Kings. It’s Queens Road West/Queens Road West/Kings/East (as in Boulevard.) Or try some never-ending name changes like Morehead/Queens/Providence. Or 3d/Providence/Queens/Selwyn. Or the Sharons. Or the Carmels. And who was Dabney Vigor? Or Peggy Wallace? Or Shuffletown? Or Derita? Derita?
Warm personal regards, shoogah!
Marie Francoise
The lady in orange who rode around Elizabeth on a blue bike and fished beer cans out of dumpsters.
I had no idea Earth Angel was really open. I’ve seen that sign for years, thinking they just forgot to take it down when everything else closed.
Charlotte is stuck in an ODD predicament. It wants to be both a “wholesome” Christian city, with more churches per capita than most, AND a “world class” metropolis, banking and commerce center, with, for a time, more topless establishments per capita than a lot of Cities. The Bank of America frescoes that are a strange sort of surreal, along with the disco ball on acid (fire bird) at the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, and the statue of Queen Charlotte at the airport that looks like she just got punched in the gut… No wonder Charlotte is deemed a tad WEIRD! or is it just “eccentric”? Throw in the Fourth Ward “Historic” District that has no real History! And yes weird, confused, pluralistic, (schizophrenic?), and eclectic fit too. So WELCOME to the “Buckle of the Bible Belt”!
EARTH ANGEL is very much OPEN and still in business! We put up the sign just so everyone would KNOW we were still there! Yes we’re a “weird” store, but we like it that way! You never know what you are going to find in our store but we guarantee whatever you DO find is going to be awesome!
We have NO plans to close or move anytime soon! Drop by and see us!
http://www.facebook.com/earthangelcharlottenc
Long Live Earth Angel! Best “Girls Night Out Shoes” ever!
How about parks where there are very few if any people present most of the time. Busses and railcars that travel around often with hardly any passengers. Also, virtually no real retail stores uptown. Police officers who rarely smile or speak to anyone. Car drivers who block anyone from merging, changing lanes or exiting roads. The most beautiful real estate in the country, but with many homeless and children on government subsidized meals. Famous battles between Yankees and Southerners on the editorial page of the Charlotte Observer.
I think this article sucks yet now we have a mayor who has apparently been under federal investigation for four years before being elected mayor and he is at the moment in handcuffs.
Yes, very weird indeed. Are you thinking of making a list for Augusta or have you already done so?