From the dust of the imploded convention center and the concrete trenches along Fayetteville Street Mall, the new downtown Raleigh is slowly rising, a landscape of sleek mixed-use buildings, luxury condos, high-rise offices and ground-floor retail with parking decks hidden behind a row of modern storefronts. City planners hope the $1.5 billion of public and […]
Fiona Morgan
Posted inNews
Austin: A city in harmony with its music community
What the city of Austin does for its music scene will blow your mind. First, theres Jim Butler, who works for the city as a liaison between the music community and city government. Butlers job is to keep Austins 100-plus live music venues happy. The citys music marketing department also promotes live music venues to […]
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Cable hearing
CABLE TELEVISION is morphing into a part of broadband Internet service. In the process, it’s throwing off the shell of consumer protections. A little competition might pressure Time Warner to lower its astronomical cable rates. But what will we give up for the promise of competition? This week, the state legislature will consider a bill […]
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Pay the piper
“Now the rage is sponsored and so’s the machine so’s everything they cherished in between. The sweet imaginings of teenage happenings keep us switching the station hungry, but patient.” –“Battleground Park” by Goner, performed by Caitlin Cary on Songs for Sixty Five Roses: Reworking the Carolina Jukebox The rift keeps widening between what the public […]
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Not your video ho
Saturday night at the vigil in front of 610 N. Buchanan Blvd., a woman from the neighborhood complained to a reporter, “Where are the students? They should be out here.” Apparently she didn’t notice that they were all around her. Many of those who gathered in front of the house were Duke students outraged by […]
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400 channels and nothing for us?
If you live in Raleigh and you’ve got a problem with your cable service, and Time Warner isn’t taking care of things to your satisfaction, what do you do? You call Mike Williams. Williams is the city’s cable administrator. From his office downtown on Martin Street, he oversees the Raleigh Television Network, the city’s set […]
Posted inArt
Something all his own
Grant Hill is more famous than Romare Bearden. That’s the way the world is: NBA players just draw more attention from the general public than artists do. Hill’s not complaining: “It’s a great feeling.It’s a humbling feeling, the reaction that we as professional athletes get from the public,” he says. “But in some respects, our […]
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On the homefront
While the front lines of the war in Iraq occupy our thoughts and our TV screens, another aspect of the fight is invisible. Walking down the grocery store aisles, picking up the kids from school, the spouses of soldiers try to move through the day without breaking down, knowing little about their husbands and wives […]
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Everybody wins
If you want a taste of just how passionate and involved local politics can be, take a look at Carrboro. Last week, the Board of Aldermen appointed Dan Coleman to the board to replace Mark Chilton, who was elected mayor in November. Coleman’s appointment was the result of a messy public process that entailed extensive […]
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Too mixed up
The term “public-private partnership” usually has a positive ring–it suggests public projects made possible by support from private enterprise, meaning they require less from taxpayers. But the North Carolina Museum of Art is finding that public-private partnerships can be very tricky things. Last week, the state auditor released a highly critical report on the NCMA’s […]
