July 31, 2006

There were 2 posts published on July 31, 2006 (this is page 1 of 1).

City Of Raleigh Tickets People for Actually Using Fayetteville Street

Fayetteville Street has been open to traffic for all of two days, and already the city is cashing in on parking tickets. How cops can justify parking tickets is beyond me, since the street has no markings! It doesn’t even have parking meters, as far as I can tell.

A city official is quoted as saying lines were not painted on Fayetteville Street for “aesthetic reasons.”

Uh, say what?

This I don’t understand. It’s supposed to be a street, not a work of art. Paint it like every other street. If you’re going to hand out parking tickets, paint it and/or meter it so people know what’s going on. Don’t ambush them with tickets because “aesthetic reasons” have made you lose your mind.

Ten million bucks later and the City of Raleigh is still trying to kill downtown.

From Fairways To Stairways

I was checking out my old Charlotte neighborhood on Google Maps today when I noticed Sharon Golf Course, the old 9-hole golf course up the road from where I used to live, has closed. I don’t remember ever playing there, but it used to be a landmark for me, anyway. My parents rented a house directly across from it when I was (anchors?) away in the Navy. It doesn’t look much like a course, now, does it? Though Google still thinks it is, according to its label. Now there’s a retirement home in its place.

I went searching around to find a story on the old golf course. Charlottean Ron Greene Sr. wrote a nice one which praises it for what it was: an everyman’s course. Its stuff like this I think about when I drive by the now-deserted Cheviot Hills course every day.

Like the eminent closing of the Myrtle Beach Pavilion or the end of Miracle Strip Amusement Park – a favorite from my childhood days – I find it sad when places where people used to have fun disappear.