The Supper Clubb

Unless you’ve been under a rock, you know something about the legal issues a nightclub in North Raleigh is facing. The Supper Clubb [warning: like the club, the website plays music] on Atlantic Avenue is in a legal battle to keep its doors open amid protests from the neighborhoods around it. Residents have complained about club patrons parking on their neighborhood streets, loud noise, and violence in the club parking lot. The Raleigh City Council has sided with the neighborhood and voted to revoke the club’s amplified music permit.

While I understand the residents’ concerns about the noise and violence, I think its a bit of a shame that the club is being forced to close. The owners have obviously put a lot of money into it. The food is good. The music is good. Its just that they’ve had problems controlling what goes on outside the club.

The Supper Clubb moved into a moribund, faceless strip mall, setting up shop in what was a long-vacant restaurant building. It became popular with the African-American community with its soul food menu and hopping music. Sure, the noise and traffic is a problem for the neighbors, but those are problems that could be solved without condemning the joint.

I can’t help but wonder if this is more of a race thing than anything else. Maybe the neighbors don’t want black people milling around near their homes at night. Seems like the old Plum Crazy nightclub near Brentwood went through the same thing.

I was an NCSU student when Raleigh police aggressively targeted Hillsborough Street bars in the early 90’s, using the noise ordinance to close them down. Neighbors who complained about college kids having a good time successfully closed many bars and catapulted neighbor Benson Kirkman to a seat on the city council. In that case, however, the university – and the bars that front it – had been there practically forever and were arguably the reason the houses were built. If you don’t like the college bar atmosphere, don’t buy a house next to college bars!

College kids want to go drinking. They will find bars that will allow them to do that. It makes much more sense to have those bars within walking distance to campus to discourage drunk driving. I thought the enforcement was a snotty move by the city and I still do. Now the Hillsborough Street scene is largely a ghost town, filled with blowing trash, shuttered stores and wandering vagrants. The neighbors got what they wanted.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a college student, white, African-American, Latino, or all of the above. We all need a place to meet friends and have good times. We don’t need a place where we can get stabbed or overrun neighborhoods, however. The city should be more willing to work with business owners to make things right. The Supper Clubb’s success proves there is a need and desire for what it offers and that should be considered, too. I hope the club can work out its problems and continue operating, perhaps by finding another location if need be.

I hear there are vacancies on Hillsborough Street.

Pullen Park Train Sabotaged

Is there anything lower than sabotaging a kiddie train full of passengers? That’s what some little punk or punks did Sunday afternoon at Pullen Park. The perp put rocks on the tracks and watched as the train derailed, sending 77-year-old train driver Jackson Dean Oakley to the hospital with a cut hand. This kid was at the scene of the derailment. Police want to talk to him.

If that wasn’t enough, the park’s caboose was vandalized Tuesday morning. Some kind soul broke the windows on it.

We were at the park Sunday morning and were disappointed that the train wasn’t running until the afternoon. Still, we could have been on that train and would not have been amused when it derailed. Now I’m going through my pictures from that morning to see if that kid is in any of them.

Now the kid in question may have just been conincidentally hiding in the weeds near the derailment. Yeah, and I may be mayor of Raleigh. Fortunately for the perp we weren’t around when he pulled his little stunt. If the twit had derailed the train my family was on, he would have been begging for the cops to arrive.

I hope they catch this delinquient and get him the help he needs before he moves on to bigger destruction.

Hurricane Fran, Ten Years Later

It was ten years ago this evening when Hurricane Fran came ashore at Cape Fear and raged through central North Carolina with devastating flooding and 80 MPH winds.

At the time, I was a young IT manager at a local software startup. I was working late because a technician was working on our phone system. My friends hung around to play some network games. Earlier in the day we had watched the forecast ominously, having a feeling that this storm was going to be a bitch. Someone made a run to the store for ice and beer and those of us not working had a pre-hurricane party at the office.

As the wind picked up, my coworkers all high-tailed it home, leaving me to wait for the tech to finish up. Finally he departed and I left the office. As I made my way south on the Beltline, I saw the sky filled with the eerie green glow of arcing high voltage power lines. Civilization was already coming unglued.

I arrived back home around 10 PM, grateful to see the power still on at my apartment. My brother Jeff, who lived a few doors down, was waiting on my doorstep. He managed to lock himself out of his apartment the night of a hurricane.

I let him in and got him back into his apartment before I settled down for some sleep. The wind hadn’t gotten too strong at that point and my roommate was out, so there seemed to be no reason to wait up. I fell into a light sleep as the wind slowly began to build.

I had just drifted off into deeper sleep when I was awakened by a deafening crash. Right above my head a falling pine tree had punctured the wall. I leaped out of bed to see all hell breaking loose in the apartment complex. Beautiful oak and maple trees were getting beaten up by the hurricane-force winds. Rain pounded the window as I watched. Lights flickered around me until finally they surrendered. The rest of the night was spent watching those trees slowly get ripped apart before my eyes. I caught some more restless sleep before dawn, which was announced not by the usual buzzing alarm clock but instead by the striking silence of a city stilled by a hurricane.

At the light of day, I ventured out to check the damage. The tree that almost took me out was lying harmlessly next to the building. Fortunately it was the only one to fall on the building. While the complex was filled with trees, few caused any real damage. Out of over 200 residents in the complex, only one had his or her car damaged by a falling tree.

Amid chainsaws and tangled power lines, I dutifully ventured into the office to check on the building. Aside from the usual leaks in the roof, things were safe. The magnetic door locks had run out of power, leaving the building open to anyone. Some UPS systems continued to buzz. I locked everything up and toured the nearby neighborhoods looking for damage.

The office was near North Hills, which had gotten hit especially hard. I could not believe the tree damage around me. Fran had softened the trees up with two weeks of torrential rains before it raged ashore with its 135 MPH winds. The trees never had a chance. I quickly saw that traveling further would be impossible in the tangle of debris so I headed back home to see what I could do there.

By some miracle, my apartment still had running water, so my nearby friends came over to shower. While there, many of the coffee drinkers turned positively homicidal. They were willing to travel all the way across town to feed their caffeine fix. I decided right then and there to kick my own coffee habit. No way did I want to be a slave to that.

Later that day, we decided to make the most of the situation by throwing a hurricane party. We cooked up the thawing meat from the freezer, drank heavily and marveled at the crystal-clear starry sky above us. It was a wonderful coming together during a rough time.
The next morning I got notably sick, blaming the culprit on “bad ham” rather than the 4-5 drinks I had the night before. Bad ham has since become an inside joke among my friends.

By some miracle, my apartment complex got power back within three days, at which point my roommate and I became even more popular. Others weren’t so lucky. My parents, living out in the boonies that was Falls Lake at the time, went two weeks without power. Those who didn’t have any were welcome to stay with us, and some did. You’d be amazed at what a hot shower can do for a person’s morale.

I remember not having enough cash because the ATMs were all down. I remember people lining up for bags of ice distributed from trucks. I remember the Hillsborough Street Waffle House being the destination for many coffee drinkers because of it never losing power. I remember the unending drone of chain saws. And more chain saws. More than you’d care to count.

I remember the huge tree that planted itself gently on my parents’ house, and the damn fool way we all moved it off, wielding chain saws above our heads. Its amazing someone didn’t get killed. We had to do it, though, because no one else would. Not for weeks, anyway.

I remember huge oak trees ripped from the ground, everywhere you looked. Pine trees sheared off thirty feet off the ground. Bark and pine needles everywhere. And strangers pitching in to help move logs or just to see if you were all right.

Yes, I think Fran united people in the Triangle in ways which newcomers will never understand. You either were there or you weren’t. Around town the mention of Fran can still strike up animated conversations about that night. Its funny how a destructive storm can wind up binding people together.

At the same time, Fran took the fun out of taunting hurricanes. I’ve lived it once, thank you, and do not wish to live it again. While there will undoubtedly be other storms, none will pack the whollop of Hurricane Fran.

Labor Day Weekend

The Labor Day weekend was full of fun. Kelly and I set the kids up with a babysitter Saturday and met the former owner of our sailboat for a few hours’ sailing Falls Lake. The conditions were spectacular! Tropical Storm Ernesto swept all the heat and humidity out of the area, leaving a fall-like day for sailing. Winds were from 5-10 MPH with enough gusts to give us a nice little ride around the lake. Will, the former owner, was generous in passing on his knowledge and was good company, too. If it weren’t for the limits on his time (and our babysitter’s), we may have stayed out all afternoon.

Rigging and unrigging the boat went much easier this time around, too, as did my experience at the boat ramp. I’ve got plenty of confidence with everything now that I feel I could sail the boat myself if need be. I also feel comfortable that the minivan can handle the ramps just fine. No need to get a bigger vehicle.

We had hoped to go out on Sunday as well but the wind was nowhere to be found. Instead we made plans to take the kids to Pullen Park. Kelly and I got into a spat around then which put me in a foul mood for most of the day. Fortunately we patched things up around dinnertime but not soon enough for me to avoid a pounding headache caused by stress. While there were some good aspects to it, Sunday was one of those days I wish I could just do over.

Monday was better, though. We met my brother’s family at my parents’ pool and had a chilly swim – the clouds had kept the temperature way down. When the kids’ teeth began to chatter I knew it was time to move on. While the kids took their naps I headed out to do some quick work on the boat, adding some wooden rails to the trailer to make boat recovery easier. I can imagine that a boat is just like a house in the respect that if one looks one can always find some work to do on it.

Now its back to work. Oh yeah, that.