hauntedheadnc

Where is that?

If all goes according to plan, my husband and I close on our house on September 4... We'll be living off Tanner Road in that weird, nationless plot of land that says it's Simpsonville, but is actually closer to Mauldin and Greenville proper. Still looking for work, so if anyone has any leads on where all the cool social workers/case managers hang out these days let me know. However, I'm also interested in the restaurant scene, supposing this current season of cholera doesn't wipe it out. When there isn't a plague on, we love to eat out and we love ethnic cuisine. Any good Korean places, sushi, Thai, etc on that side of town? Is there an Ethiopian place in Greenville? Latin food? On another note, I've lived in WNC my entire forty years on this planet and the thought of moving anywhere else is just (expletive) terrifying, even as I convince my friends that the state line is more just a psychological boundary, and I'm going to be living one county south of the one where I grew up whereas now I live one county north of there. Privately though, I'm just a storm of inner turmoil. I need a socially-distanced hug.

So... Considering that we're moving to Greenville and hope to close on a house there in September, how might one... well, I hate to bring it up... how might one go about finding a job to pay for said house and move? Specifically, how would one go about that if they were looking find a job somewhere in the field of social work? Feel free to PM me, folks, if you have any ideas.

It's been quite a journey trying to find a house in Greenville... We've found two that were perfect, put an offer in on one but someone with more money wanted it more. The other one sold before we could even put an offer on it. Everything else has, for the most part, been a "plynyl" (cheap, plywood and vinyl) box located in an "aggressively suburban" -- as one of my friends described it -- neighborhood where you pay an extra $30 a month so someone can come by twice a day with a ruler to measure the grass and fine you if it's too long. Man... What do you have to do to find a good, contemporary house in an area where you can actually enjoy property ownership?

Looks like no one has asked anything in this thread in just about forever but it looks like the best place to state... My husband and I are thinking of moving to Greenville. He's a newly-minted psychiatric nurse practitioner and I'm a social worker. Jobs up here in Asheville where we live just aren't there for him, while I've got a good job at the moment. He has a good lead on a job in Greenville, but jobs for me don't seem to be there. Suggestions? And, what's it going to be like for an interracial gay couple down there?

Honestly though... It's really not a good selling point when a place advertises itself as being "just two hours from everywhere you'd rather be!"

I wonder if perhaps Charlotte should take a page out of Columbia's playbook and make light of its worst aspect. Columbia is well known for having the same climate as the devil's dirty wet asshole, and its slogan is "Columbia: Famously Hot". Charlotte -- I hate to say this, but it's true -- is known by outsiders looking in for being boring. So, rather than try to say that a city which seems to consist entirely of parking decks, unadorned beige boxes, and blue glass is something it isn't, why not make fun of what it is? Show people there's more to the city than a bunch of suits running around denying loans and signing foreclosures on your dead mother's house. Laugh at yourself. Run commercials with interracial groups of attractive millennials having the time of their lives and talking about how boring Charlotte is while they're doing whatever it is that millennials do for fun in Charlotte. If there are any murals or any public art that is not of the corporate plaza variety, whose primary artistic message is "Look! Here's some art!", have the attractive millennials file past it while talking about how boring Charlotte is. Have the millennials pop in to one of the five or so buildings in the city that predates the 1970's while talking about how boring it is that Charlotte has no history. If there's any building for the millennials to go that isn't a plain beige EIFS box or plain glass box have them discuss how boring the city's architecture is there. "Charlotte: It's boring!"

"Come for the beige boxes, stay for the blue glass..."

Problem is, Seattle is a poor example. Seattle has a very large stock of historic buildings, and also has a long-established history of incorporating the facades of historic buildings into new development. The example that most readily comes to mind is the facade of the 1920's Seattle Natatorium, preserved and seamlessly incorporated into a highrise condo building.

And... here's another suggestion for fostering some Charlotte culture. As places like Wing Haven and the McGill Rose Garden demonstrate, Charlotte is a good place to garden. The city is known for its trees, but big whoop -- every city east of the Mississippi has trees. If you're a good place to garden, do it and do it well until you're mentioned in the same breath as Charleston, Savannah, or anywhere else that people flock to look at the landscaping.

It's not a matter of using a technique that some other city has already used, but rather a matter of producing unique content. As it stands, Charlotte has a serious image problem, because its image is that it is boring. Downtown/Uptown/All Around does not help that situation because most of what could have made central Charlotte interesting was bulldozed and no one is particularly interested in saving even what small scraps remain. I've lurked here for years and I've seen that in you all. The thinking seems to be that because Charlotte was never a city of historic architectural jewels, it's no big loss that its history is gone now, nor is it a loss when yet another historic building -- gem-quality or not -- like that state office building is on the chopping block. That's the larger part of why Charlotte feels placeless and soulless, at least in my opinion as an outsider looking in. To me, in all the times I've been there, Charlotte has always reminded me of a unit in a suburban apartment complex: colorless so as not to clash with anything. Uptown, which is supposed to be the soul of the city, does not help that impression because it's basically a gray and beige maze. Murals would add color and at this point considering how much of the history of Charlotte has been erased, it's your best chance to actually show people that interesting people lived here, worked hard and did interesting things, and lived interesting lives. There is no indication of that now. There are, however, art-by-committee hokey spindles outside the arena that supposedly harken back to a textile industrial past, and there is a plethora of meaningless gewgaws disconnected to anything that might have to do with Charlotte cluttering up all those needless corporate plazas. For an example of the latter, there's one bank plaza whose fountain has statues of children playing in the water. What does that have to do with anything? And especially, what does it have to do with anything when you'd bring down the wrath of God knows how many rent-a-cops if you tried splashing around in that fountain? Art has to mean something, and it has to connect to something in order to make a viewer feel anything. The closest you come now are the artworks that have something to do with Queen Charlotte, those statues at Trade and Tryon, and all those plaques in the sidewalk that depict whatever historic building used to stand where this parking deck is now. Bottom line, you need help because people think you're boring. They think you're boring because you have almost none of your history still standing and your modern architecture is nowhere near daring enough to adequately replace what was lost. To the outside world you appear to be a city of sterile glass boxes. You tore down your soul and it shows. So. You have a choice in attempting to foster a unique Charlotte culture. You could redeem yourself of the sin of historic obliteration by becoming the world's new hotbed of avant-garde experimental architecture... or you can cover your beige and gray walls with color and you can strew your streets with sculptures that aren't as dopey as the arena spindles. Either one will work, but I suspect the latter would be easier and would foster the culture that would help to remedy all the other ills of Uptown, chief among them the fact that the retail scene in Uptown is pathetic. Granted, all of that is my opinion, so your mileage may vary.

Art. Lots of it. And I'm not talking about that annoyingly meaningless corporate plaza stuff whose only message to the viewer is "Look! Here's some art!" Charlotte needs murals. It needs color. It is, and it may well forever remain, a vanilla city, but that's why God invented sprinkles, and as an Ashevillian looking in from the outside, if ever there was a city that needed some colorful sprinkles it's Charlotte. Take some cues from the Asheville Mural Project: http://liveasart.com/?page_id=279 https://www.facebook.com/pages/Asheville-Mural-Project-AMP/248930645163201

Thanks for the information.

This is Asheville we're talking about here -- it probably really is enchanted. Is it open during the day? Whenever things are going wrong, I like to spend time in churches until I feel some peace again. Going to St. Lawrence or the cathedral usually makes me feel much better, but if there's yet another place I could go and meditate and pray, I'd love to know about it. Unfortunately, most of the churches here are locked during the day.

I go there to pray whenever I'm upset. It's the holiest place in town. The cathedral in Biltmore Village is second.

Most people who live here already are sick of Asheville landing on these lists, because all it means for us is more rich people moving in and jacking up the cost of living, to the point that those of us who live here is that we become those who lived here, because we can't afford it anymore. This is why people are vandalizing new subdivision construction sites and heaving bricks through realtors' windows.

Asheville and Chapel Hill can duke it out as to which is the most liberal city in the state, I think.

At the mall? For some reason I thought they were more a stand-alone place. Regardless, as Asheville attracts high-end retailers, it's better that they locate either at the malls, or in the new urbanist developments' downtowns in my opinion. I don't think it's fair to the freaks and hippies downtown to run them out and replace their businesses with the likes of Emmeline's Cutesy-Wootsy Knick-Knacks (The Preferred Source for Living Room Clutter for 9 out of 10 Fletcher Soccer Moms!) when they're the ones who brought it back to life in the first place.

That entire part of town is dysfunctional. I fear that the DOT will ramrod their proposals through no matter what further damage it might do to the city. As I recall, everyone from the city government on down has demanded the 6-lane proposal, but the DOT is hellbent on building the 8-laner all the same.

Hey, now... there's something to be said for outrageously expensive, trendy stores. I'm hooked on the Godiva store in the Asheville Mall; they're right: once you try Godiva, you can't go back.