Greensboro: The Stunted City

It started with the location of the North Carolina Railroad. It was only Governor John Motley Morehead’s political pull that landed the railroad in Greensboro rather than Asheboro. Had the railroad gone through the centrally located city, it’s very likely that this state would have many more people because Asheboro would've been better suited to compete with the Triangle and Charlotte. 

Instead, as these pictures indicate, various cities played hot potato with the top four spots after the Wilmington coup of 1898. 

(Note: The population figures are from the October 15, 2006 edition of the News & Record)

Then, there's this tidbit:

Then, in 1923, High Point surprised Greensboro by an annexation that expanded its population to 21,000 and made it the state's sixth largest city. Greensboro was number eight, and its backers immediately submitted a new charter to the General Assembly, increasing its limits from four to nearly 18 square miles. Its population more than doubled to more than 45,000. "Greater Greensboro," as it was known, became NC’s third largest city overnight, a rank it holds today.

The annexation tit for tat within Guilford Country alone is partly why the Triad has never been a viable threat to its neighbors down I-40 & I-85.

Another thing that surprised me was that it wasn't until the last decade that the Triangle surpassed the Triad in population. One only has to wonder how the region to the east was able to stick to its vision like Research Triangle Park while the much less spread out Piedmont Triad struggled to even recognize itself as a region.

Durham and Winston-Salem traded the #4 and #5 positions between 2007 and 2012 before the Bull City pulled away from the Twin City. Given the stagnant growth around the Gate City, it's plausible that Winston could leapfrog it for #3 or rather Greensboro falls to #5 some time around the 2020 Census or afterwards. Now, if Forsyth County ends up with more people than Guilford County, look out because somebody may want to pull the plug on the whole Triad concept then.

The various regional partnerships have done nothing for this area. While Winston has rebranded itself as the City of Arts and Innovation, Greensboro has developed a tremendous inferiority complex (High Point has become a glorified university town, which is a different set of circumstances altogether). Said complex has also spread over to the arts/entertainment/nightlife scene. The reason why the Tanger Performing Arts Center is even being built is due to Greensboro leaders being so envious of a similar venue in Durham. The city's "leaders"never bothered to evaluate the possible negatives, only the need to keep up with the Joneses. The truth is that the TPAC will actually have a negative impact on the arts as the big money donors will show up to the venue while shunning more organic projects that actually touch more people's lives.

Not asking for a friend, by the way

What happens first, the Triad becomes the Southern equivalent of the Rust Belt or rap music goes the way of jazz?

In other words, the former means that an area that already has trouble getting on the same page suffers an overall loss in population by 2025 or 2030 while the latter means rap music goes from being a popular genre to reverting back to a musical novelty that will eventually be reduced to noncommercial stations two generations from now (try finding a good jazz station and you know what I mean).

For the second time in a six-year span, Debbie Yow had to find a new basketball coach because if she hadn't, Mark Gottfried would have become Herb Sendek 2.0 with half of the fanbase calling for his head and the other half rallying behind him. Two bad seasons followed four consecutive trips to the NCAA Tournament. In reality, Gottfried had three disappointing seasons because in Year 2, the Wolfpack were picked to win the ACC, but the team wound up playing the first day of the ACC Tournament and flamed out against eventual champion Miami in the semis. It's pathetic that football schools and Virginia were able to win four straight conference titles while this program is still looking for our first conference title since 1987.

Kevin Keatts needs to realize that Sweet 16s won't cut it any more. This program wants regular season titles, ACC titles, and to be in the mix for the Final Four from this point out. After all, FSU, Miami,Virginia, and Notre Dame were able to do at least one or two of the aforementioned. If Keatts doesn't get the job done, then, apathy will reign supreme. After all, the University of San Francisco also has two national titles but has been insignificant ever since Bill Russell left.

Gottfried wasn't alone in helping this program underachieve. C.J. Leslie was exposed for what he really was: being selfish. He was so much of a problem his freshman year that Sidney Lowe suspended him at Duke and benched him in what would be the ex-coach's last game at the 2011 ACC tourney. Gott tried to work with the dude but C.J. was too problematic in the end.

Rodney Purvis is someone who I wish nothing but ill for because of how ungrateful he turned out to be. He was the hometown player who was supposed to lead State back to the promised land but cut and ran to UConn after his freshman season.

A Requiem for Oak Hollow Mall: August 9, 1995-March 10, 2017

Oak Hollow Mall is now closed after less than 22 years. On the last day, nothing but the Dillard's was open. So, a city with more than 100,000 people is now without a mall.

The place should have closed much earlier but due to the obstinacy of Dillard's and Sears, it lingered on until the surprise announcement that I didn't even know about until over a week ago. The pharmacy school fiasco of 2014 also exposed High Point University president Nido Qubein for not being as good of a negotiator as he was made out to be.

The mall was what it was. I'm not going to express my opinion in detail--others have evaluated the situation much better than I ever could. I, however, do remember a high school classmate saying how Westchester Mall should have been expanded and how much my vocational teacher agreed with her--mind you, this was two years after Oak Hollow opened. 

Nobody knows what will happen next, but with all of the major retail in the city's north side, given the divide of the city, is bad news for other parts of town.

One Last Look at Election 2016

The worst election in history with the two least liked candidates in history is finally over and, boy did the disappointment live down to the hype:

• An enthusiasm gap between the two parties
• Biden pretty much being discouraged to run by the big money donors unless he wanted to be the sixth reigning vice president to not make it out of his own party's primary
• Trump and Clinton spending the bulk of the campaign explaining why the other candidate was worse rather than explaining why he/she was worthy of being elected
• Putrid debates that discussed very little of substance
• Polls that pointed out that the winner would have no honeymoon and that he/she would enter the White House with the lowest approval rating ever
• The DNC rigged the primary and may have turned off an entire generation to either the party or to electoral politics altogether. The party and its cohorts in the media refuse to learn from its mistakes. There's a reason why people refer to the Democratic Party as the graveyard of movements
• Speaking of which, the Hillbots have yelled "why now" regarding people who didn't vote. The first response that comes to mind is that enough people who sat out finally gave the pundit class's declaration of 2016 being "the most important election of our lifetime" the boy who cried wolf treatment (I had heard the same thing every election cycle going back to the 2000 election even though last year was finally the realigning election). Second, is the constant Russia bantering once the Democratic establishment was caught by Wikileaks. Nobody wanted to discuss the fact that Sanders supporters were vindicated. The third thing is that Hillary should not be absolved because she chose the big tent strategy, only for it to blow up in her face
• While the populist uprisings in both parties took center stage, very few people paid attention to the fact that 2016 was the year that the political center collapsed. Normally, this would be a horrible thing, but because of what the post-Reagan Era centrist consensus represented, this vision had to be vastly discredited by the voters. A quarter century of neoliberal austerity at home and neoconservative policies of endless wars something that turned the public off, not to mention the massive loss of jobs and the near collapse of organized labor
• The final tally was supposed to be 306-232 but was 304-227 due to seven faithless electors 
• Given that there were four other candidates--Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, Evan McMullin, and Darrell Castle--who were on the ballot in enough states to win 270 electoral votes, the fact that not one of them received an electoral vote showed a lack of courage of the seven faithless electors to really make a statement
• If we aren't going to get rid of the Commission on Presidential Debates, then, the minimum requirement should mandate all candidates to be in enough states that equal 270 electoral votes. Three six-way presidential debates (and one for the VP debate) would have been far more entertaining than what we ended up with
• Donald Trump is the Ultimate Sailer Strategy candidate

2016: The Year in White Privilege

Given that white nationalists are empowered by Trump's election to the White House, a recap of enraging events that showed that this sector just couldn't handle one term of a black man in the Oval Office, let alone two.

Spring

• Harper published an admission by a Nixon aide that the "war on drugs" was, in fact, racially motivated
• Speaking of drugs, black people are being shut out from selling legal marijuana in Colorado due to drug war era laws
• There was a lot of outrage from white America over Harambe the Gorilla in Cincinnati at the end of 2015 but practically none a few months later when an alligator killed a two year old at a Disney resort
• The Stanford rapist aka Brock Turner's laughable sentence. His dad yapping about Turner's "20 minutes of action" was beyond reprehensible. There's also the possibility that Judge Aaron Persky may have cited "political correctness" in sentencing Turner to six months

Summer

• Gabby Douglas got blasted for not placing her hand over her hart when the national anthem was played for the women's gymnastics team while two men's shot putters who also failed to place their hands over their hearts after one of them won received no reaction from the same people who ripped the gymnast 
• The idiotic blogger who denounced swimmer Simone Manuel for making truthful comments
• Ryan Lochte essentially got rewarded for his bad behavior by getting that Dancing with the Stars slot
• This sicko in Iowa

Fall

• The whole DAPL-Standing Rock drama 
• Members of the tribe were treated harshly on the same day an Oregon court acquitted members of a militia who illegally occupied land further west

The only good thing that happened was the fact that the Supreme Court didn't allow a mediocre student to dismantle affirmative action in late June.

ADDED 1/7/17: Let's not also forget the heroin epidemic. When it hit black neighborhoods in the '70s, the response was "lock 'em up"but now, when white neighborhoods suffered the same fate in recent years, everybody talked about treatment and needle exchanges.

Beyond the National Folk Festival

It's now two down, one to go with Greensboro's three-year run hosting the National Folk Festival.

Edited on 9-25-16: The Living Art America Championship move from Atlanta to Greensboro looks to be permanent.

The real question is what will the Greensboro arts scene look like around this time in 2018? With the Folk Festival gone, the 17 Days Festival will likely revert back to a mid-September to early October timeframe versus its temporary early to late September timeframe adjusted for the NFF. 

I’m not sure what will happen with the East-West BBQ Festival. It was on North Davie Street for its inaugural event in 2013. Construction around that area moved it to the N&R parking lot in 2014. Last year’s event was moved to the West McGee Street parking lot. It was canceled this year and presumably next year (whether that cancellation is NFF related or not is uncertain because the promoter has had issues with people in Greensboro criticizing the barbecue festival when other cities have had no such problems with similar events).

The Living Art America bodypainting championships are here in the Triad this year but it’s to be determined whether it will find a permanent home here after being held in Atlanta for its first three years.

The Tate Street Festival is basically untouchable given its four-decade long run so the fact that its dates have been altered not only due to the NFF but also the LAA body painting event will have no effect on it.

According to this bit, the National Folk Festival spawns regional festivals from time to time—Maine, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Montana all come to mind. Given that Greensboro has spent tens of millions on a white elephant known as the Steven Tanger Performing Arts Center, it is highly unlikely that there will be a folk festival in North Carolina in 2018--the same year that the STPAC is scheduled to open. Coordinating such an event is way beyond the comprehension of this area’s so-called leaders who have historically paid lip service to the arts community anyway. Whereas the NFF serves the public and attracts out of town visitors for free, the STPAC will primarily attract the area’s well off while pricing out the rest of the population.