The Beer Retard - May 20th, 2004

Spent the afternoon in Downtown Greensboro yesterday. As downtowns go, it's pretty small and there's a lot of empty storefronts. On the outskirts there are some homeless dudes drinking, but in downtown proper you can see the signs of a concerted effort at development (or gentrification depending on your perspective). There are artsy cafes, boutiques, lofts and condos for rent/sale, etc. They're also starting construction on a new stadium for the minor league baseball team, the Class-A Greensboro Bats. Come back in five years and this place will be an entirely different city. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Probably some of both.

I did see some cool stuff while I was there. There's the Carolina Theatre, which I've been told is a pretty famous venue. On the marquee for June are concerts by the Nashville Bluegrass Band and Keb Mo' and an Orson Welles film festival. Next door to the Theatre is the Gate City Rubber Stamp Co., which I think decadentscholar would've enjoyed checking out. I also scoped the Greensboro Public Library, which seemed quite excellent. But the highlight of the downtown excursion was the Greensboro Historical Museum . I'd thought it was going to be pretty rinky-dink, but it turned out to be really interesting. It was also free, which is always a plus.

I spent almost an hour and a half in the museum and didn't even check out the upstairs, which had some kind of O. Henry exhibit and some other stuff I can't remember. The main highlight of what I saw was the photography exhibit by Carol Martin and Malcolm Miller, a couple locals who documented life in Greensboro from the 1930's to the 70's. These guys took amazing pictures. I also got a lot out of the local history exhibit, which had a section on the lunch counter sit-ins in 1960. I had no idea that the sit-ins started in Greensboro. Four North Carolina A&T students did the first one at the Woolworth's in downtown. Eventually, it spread to fifty plus cities in 9 states and the racist pricks had to serve everyone. So now I know a couple of things about Greensboro.

Last night, my uncle and I hit a par-three course and driving range. I did alright on the par-three, but hitting at the range really humbled me. I hate being lousy at stuff and I'm lousy hitting with woods and long irons. I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing unless it's a short iron or putter. I suck and I hate sucking at things. If I'm going to play this sport some day, I need to take lessons. I told my uncle that I don't really want to play 18 on a nice course because it'd be a long, frustrating day. I think we might just play 9.

Better get ready to go. Looks like I'm heading to Chapel Hill today. I'll report back on that later today or tomorrow.