Only if they are reusable straws. Oh wait no we have to throw them away after someone who potentially has COVID uses them. WAIT NO THAT POLLUTES THE EARTH!!
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What more do you need other than a neighborhood watering hole to belly up and catch a buzz? Bonus points if it smells like piss. I always felt like Raleigh is severely lacking in the neighborhood dive bar category. Everything is so upscale and concepty.
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That’s what I’m saying, the “speakeasy” concept would likely be upscale and pricey. Not neighborhood bar at all. And we have plenty of upscale/pricey bars. As for “what more do I need?” - pinball!!! 
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Night Rider has pinball machine FYI and the shittiest pool table in town.
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Y’all, this will sound similar to Level Up but I swear it was different and better. I present to you Arcadium in Lexington KY.. Intimate, bourbon on tap, gritty, and a doughnut shop across the street that gives the bar the leftover doughnuts and the end of the day. And its in a retail intersection surrounded by a neighborhood of 100 year old houses. Freakin’ perfect. Similarly, Philly has the original Barcade in Fishtown. Same deal as Arcadium but bigger space. Equally gritty and surrounded by neighborhood. My main gripe about Raleigh has always been the lack of these neighborhood retail intersections and the overabundance of the concept crap. It sucks. Anyway no point…just griping and wishing Raleigh had some soul and character beyond the shiny new BS.
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I love pinball! And they can be darn hard to find.
Dive bars and pinball, that is something I can get behind. With a hole in my mask so my beer straw will reach my mouth.
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That’s because most people in Georgia knew how crazy it was and have stayed home. The pictures of their empty businesses show that it’s not correct to assume that just because they ‘reopened’ only a handful of business days ago shows that everyone else is in the clear.
Well the hell with all that, just miss going out for drinks and sitting down and having an intelligent conversation with a nice woman that I don’t work for or with.
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Mine too! I will miss these places so much.
Absolutely. They have the best pinball selection in Raleigh at this point. Monster Bash alone makes it. Night Rider may potentially be the coolest bar in the city, and along with Wicked Witch upstairs (admittedly not my favorite venue to play or see shows, but still a small indie venue and thus important and adds vibrancy), Cold Off the Press, the tattoo parlour, etc- that building may be one of my favorite little spots in general.
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From the May 19 council agenda:
Mayor Baldwin also inquired about potential opportunities for restaurants to expand their operations outside into the street and sidewalk as stay-at-home orders and business restrictions are eased. Space in the right-of-way or within private parking lots may provide a restaurant the additional seating necessary for financial viability while maintaining current social distancing recommendations; however, several factors may influence the feasibility and attractiveness of a particular approach.
Transportation Staff will provide a presentation and overview of “best practices” and concepts for using shared street space for both recreational and business opportunities concepts while maintaining appropriate social distances.
http://go.boarddocs.com/nc/raleigh/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=BPJHG5482DD2
If a business can make better use of the parking spaces out front that are already being used for curbside then by all means, let them work with it.
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Hell yes. This is a great idea. And the last council made these provisions worse.
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Seems like in some places the city could suspend not just the sidewalk rules, but the parking in front, and let small, local restaurants spill out into the street if necessary.
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Yes!! This should be implemented yesterday. Close streets to delivery/service vehicles only!
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I think it was Seatle the closed streets temporarliy to traffic at the start of the pandemic, and they have now made it permanent.
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It was Seattle. Though there the argument was folks needed to get out and walk with social distance. I had not seen if it was going to be permanent. That does open up other issues.
Such as?
If mobility is the main concern, at least for Seattle, it looks like there’s plenty of other ways to get around neighborhoods with Stay Healthy Streets (with barely any impacts on driving time). Hell, even if you were to expand it up to 130 miles like this one blogger is envisioning, you’re not shooting down major arterials.
If you were to use Raleigh as an example, it looks like it’s closer to closing down Harrington Street or Davie Street, rather than Glenwood Av. or Martin St. You’re activating local neighborhoods and connecting lots of local parks/storefronts; unless you’re super inflexible about where you want to drive. a permanent version of this doesn’t sound like a bad thing?
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I haven’t look at the map of which streets they shut down, the article I skimmed seemed to say they were mostly residential. But some level of traffic if often necessary and desirable, especially for businesses.
We are getting a Starbucks in my little town, (our locally owned coffee shop is closed & for sale) and they picked the most congested part of this one road town, right across from the new Chick-fila. They will have to tear a building down to build their corporate building. There are empty lots, right up the road, next to the Hampton Inn, but those lots are not on the main drag. Why? I expect its traffic count.
Partial shut downs with only local traffic, particularly in residential neighborhoods, can work. Tucson has a residential road limited to local traffic only & bikes. It does provide a nice artery to the U of A. Basically every couple blocks their a bollards that block auto traffic. While it sounds nice, I am not sure I want to live on a street that is blocked that way, and more than I want to live on a cul-de-sac or a subdivision with 1 or 2 entrances.
But that is just my two cents. If people there are ok with it, more power to them.
True. Yeah I agree, there’s still some upper limit for how many streets you can block off from cars before car drivers have an unfair amount of issues getting around. I just think that limit is a lot higher than what a lot of journalists who cry wolf are saying.
Raleigh also has more cul-de-sacs and subdivisions than Seattle, where they have a grid pattern that actually extends far outside of the city center. It’s probably hard to go all out with it, anyways (though if you ask me, that’s a good argument for getting as many cars off Raleigh streets as possible -simply because you’ll see results without even having the option to go overboard).
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