Valentine's Weekend
* I love NoDa (short for “North Davidson,” the street that is the main drag through there). It’s the funky, arty section of town, full of galleries and theaters and restaurants. Every time I’m there I feel simultaneously more at home than I do anywhere else in Charlotte and not cool enough to be walking down the street. Saturday I saw a young couple taking art photos in front of an old coal and ice delivery building, a middle-aged couple taking photos of each other in front of graffiti murals, three white 20-somethings with dreadlocks, two well-groomed guys with messenger bags, two hipster-ish couples carrying babies, and one hippie mama with her baby in a sling. Way more our kind of people than the junior thugs-in-training that hang around the basketball court behind our house, or the SUV-driving country clubbers that populate Charlotte’s more expensive neighborhoods, but not people I could offer much to in a friendship.