What is Charlotte North Carolina like?

Poor blacks and white bigots.

Typical Southern town.

What r1 said. One of the few places I have heard white people use slurs for black people in casual conversation.

I have a wedding there in a few weeks, I’m dreading the thought of going there. Haven’t been in 10 plus years and it was pretty boring/bland then.

Charlotte never seemed to have much character - and there's sprawl in every direction

Bump.

Radiant.

piedmont sinkhole

Meh. It's alright, though it is pretty bland. Plenty of gays near center city, once you start getting away from that not so much. Importanf to remember while the county is blue, all the counties that surround it are red. It has a strong economy and reasonable cost of living which has made it a very fast growing city. Constantly new construction whenever I go back.

Thanks for all the replies. Yikes at the racism

Perhaps we can extend this question to encompass NC's cities in general? Asheville seems to be the cool, hip one; while Wilmington is meant to be surprisingly provincial( despite the local film industry). I've always been more interested in Chapel Hill and the Triangle, which seems to be a very liberal area.

I have always preferred Hendersonville myself.

Move to Fayette-nam and start a porn company.

I grew up in Walkertown and then Winston-Salem. Those are great places to be FROM, not places to move TO.

Wasn't there a long thread on Charlotte just a few weeks ago?

[quote]Asheville seems to be the cool, hip one

Everyone talks about Asheville but it’s just a town of 91,000 and mostly a tourist town. It gets boring fast.

[quote]Perhaps we can extend this question to encompass NC's cities in general?

North Carolina is a boring and bland with lots of racists and backwood thinking. Not surprisingly they voted for Trump. There are also lots of snakes 🐍 in the state. And the poor areas are VERY poor and depressing.

North Carolina has a larger percentage of Black people than California, so calling it racist is racist.

My BFF moved to Charlotte few years ago. I questioned it then and I question it still. Little to no gay life. Visited Asheville once and found it filthy.

Your friend must be missing the dl thug bb parties posted on Twitter then.

Arguably the best show of The Rolling Stones 1972 North American tour. Not an honourable scar.

In the late 1980s it was starting its conversion to a big banking center and they started bulldozing beautiful art deco department stores and historic buildings to put up steel and glass. I was horrified, and then I met the residents, understood and ceased to care or ever visit again.

It does have an odd/off vibe. I don't like it.

People love Charlotte. It’s booming and growing by leaps and bounds, and has been doing so nonstop. It’s a huge magnet for New Yorkers and Midwesterners fleeing those areas

I love Winston. Walkertown is a tiny bedroom community. If you have a family or like a slower pace, it’s great. My kind of place

R3 I’m here now for a family event. Everyone is Southern Friendly but lots of Trumpers around. Staying in the Lake Norman corridor and it’s strip mall after strip mall with planned community after planned community. It has no character whatsoever. I get to leave Sunday.

I love hearing about these exotic hinterlands. Tell us more.

For me, it's down to Mt. Pilot or Mayberry.

They have the best peanut butter and jam sandwiches in the country.

The Billy Graham Library, Nascar Hall of Fame....no thank you.....

r26 Don't forget Siler City, which really does exist.

It's in the south. It's

HELL HELL HELL HELL HELL

My friend is a trolley dolly and he hates nightstops in Charlotte. It's so boring.

North Carolina native here. Charlotte is a sprawling shithole of crime. People who want convenience to the few things Charlotte has to offer, move to places like Harrisburg, Concord, or Kannapolis. Btw, Charlotte is a surprisingly quick drive to Asheville.

The Billy Graham museum is equal parts camp fun and horrorfest. An animatronic talking cow greets you at the entrance.

People who call Charlotte racist don’t know a God Damned thing. The entire local government is basically black and liberal in clouding the mayor, who is a black woman. Very little of the population is local. There has been a huge migration from up north due to housing and lower taxes. You stupid Bitches shut the fuck up.

It still is a piedmont sinkhole. Drive in during the heat of the summer and se it sitting covered in smog and humidity and that odd, bad vibe.

The Dowd Y in Charlotte used to be like a bathhouse in Berlin.

People keep moving there and the rest of the south because sprawl is so subsidized in this country.

Doesn't that FAT broad live there. She has that show on TLC called My Big Fat Fabulous Life.

Tell me more about this odd, bad vibe. Is it like the bad vibe in Bar Harbor, ME or Hudson, NY, or Normal, IL?

Is Greensboro decent?

It feels evil to me. IDK. NC native, still here. Went many, many times on road trips in college and my 20s. Then I decided I didn't like it and have only been a handful of times since. It's a flat, hazy, sinkhole. Like a pothole of hell.

[quote] Normal, IL?

I went to college with a Mexican girl who was from there. It sounds horrible!

Gboro/Winston/High Point. will be the next Triangle-like boom. Burlington is cheaper and equidistant from the Triangle and the Triad.

My friends just moved from DC to Greensboro but they are from there so I guess they know what to expect.

West of the Triangle to the Triad will all connect one day. Raleigh doesn't like the east and the north and south have gone about as far as they can.

And, yes, if you lived in Siler City you could be at the new Apple complex in RTP in 30 minutes w/out a bunch of city traffic until RTP.

For now.

[quote]People who call Charlotte racist don’t know a God Damned thing.

This is correct. Some people on DL just make knee-jerk assumptions about the entire South that date from 1950. Charlotte has been voting Democratic for quite some time.

However it's true that Charlotte is pretty boring.

In Charlotte all seems to breathe peace and freedom and to make one forget the world and its sad turmoils.

Downtown is shiny!

It's a weird place. It's big - a "major" or at least semi-major city - maybe 2.75 million metro, almost a million in the city. But, it doesn't feel that "big city." It's corporate, and there isn't much going on. Not that there's absolutely nothing going on, but it just seems stale overall. Not a great gay scene (though in fairness gay "scenes" have diminished everywhere.) I guess it's big enough that you can probably find an area that you liked, but when I've visited, I had no desire to live there. It's like the worst of suburbia and the worst of city life mashed together. But, there's good jobs and the cost of living isn't crazy (at least comparatively).

I didn't absolutely LOVE Raleigh, but I liked it much better than Charlotte.

R50 You summed it up perfectly. Charlotte is so spread out, and has such a boring downtown, it doesn't have a big city feel at all. Greensboro has the best downtown nightlife in all of NC. For a college town, Raleigh's downtown is rather lackluster and you can't walk to bar hop. You have to drive to everything. Meh.

Damn roundabouts!

A co-worker moved from the Chicago area to Charlotte to take a leadership role in our company's office there. She and her husband have put blinders on and go to work and have a pretty comfy home life with their kids and don't even think about - for a second - where they're living it. They are THAT mortified. At least they live in what they call the "tony" area wherever that is and recently traded their very nice Equinox for the top dollar Denali Tahoe. That is the story of their Charlotte life. Another City, Not My Own indeed.

[quote]I’m here now for a family event. Everyone is Southern Friendly but lots of Trumpers around. Staying in the Lake Norman corridor and it’s strip mall after strip mall with planned community after planned community. It has no character whatsoever. I get to leave Sunday.

Oh, Lord. I feel for you. You must be bored out of your mind. All people do there is drink and boat and it gets old really fast.

R53 Funny you say that because I also know someone from Chicago who moved to a town about 30 minutes outside Charlotte last year, and he already wants to put his house up for sale and leave. He absolutely regrets moving there. Says the people are assholes and it’s very boring.

I grew up there and hated it. Racist, sprawling, boring, ugly.

It's absolutely true that the South isn't any more racist these days than the rest of the country, but then a lot of Southerners moved up North during the industrial book of the earlier part of the 20th century and a lot of Northerners moved down South after it collapsed in the1970s. One more reason why we're having this spectacular national identity crisis right now.

industrial boom

R47 Yeah, everyone here shits on the South but its alright with me. We have enough Yankees moving down as it is.

Last year I was offered a position running a company in the midwest. Despite being offered an amazing deal, it didn't take but one weekend there for me to realize that its wasn't going to happen. Everything was boring, boring, boring.

I've lived in SF and NY and the compromises required to be there even in the 90s were not worth it. These days, it's even more true.

People are flocking to North Carolina in droves. The overwhelming majority love it there. It has been booming for decades

Instead of looking at the city, look inward. Maybe you are a loser who would be miserable anywhere.

A lot of these people here are miserable, negative, effete cranks who could only be happy in a handful of places in America. They don’t represent the sensibilities of the vast majority of mainstream Americans

⬆️ How's the conversion therapy going, 'ZaddyBro'? Still getting married to a woman and living your mainstream, heterosexual life in your "affluent" suburb? (while scamming on 18 year olds on Tik Tok 🤣)

R53, wow, you’re really butthurt.

R63, wow, you’re really butthurt.

[quote]People are flocking to North Carolina in droves. The overwhelming majority love it there. It has been booming for decades

Most people move there for work and/or cheaper housing. But even housing is getting expensive there so even that’s not much of a reason to move there anymore.

BTW there is someone on here who is PRESSED and is making multiple posted defending NC. Sorry you’re stuck there, but yeah, it sucks.💁🏻‍♂️

posteds is good.

It’s probably a frauism, but it’s true—only boring people are bored.

And my cabin in the woods (where I have sex naked all over the place) on 15 secluded acres bought for 75,000 in 1995 is worth almost half a million.

[quote]It’s probably a frauism, but it’s true—only boring people are bored.

There’s only so much you can do in a bland town full of strip malls, chain restaurants and subdivisions with cookie cutter houses.

It’s the home-turf territory of the Hardy Boyz (the pro wrestlers, not the kid detectives). That tells you all you need to know.

Ouch, R65. Is that an example of that compassionate, Jesus-y language you Evangelicals are known for? I mean, we already know Evangelicals are full of shit especially after allowing themselves to be lied to by Orange Leader just so that the libs could be "owned".

I used to always say, "Charlotte is where rednecks move when they want to get culture."

The Motor Speedway in Charlotte, NC was the desired destination and eventual aim of the protagonist played by Jesse Bradford in SPEEDWAY JUNKY.

This week in 1965, "Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte" reached #8 on the Billboard Hot 100.

R53, that story kind of reminds me of a former coworker I had. I worked with a bunch of people from Indiana and the y would brag about how much money they saved by living in Indiana. One day, I responded "yes....but you live in Indiana. So that canceles everything out."My coworker from the Chicago burbs laughed.

Charlotte isn’t racist at all!😏

Such a progressive place!

Southern hospitality, ya’ll!

R78- The white guy in the cap is a QUEEN.

So welcoming!

R53 You are ridiculous. The Charlotte area is comprised of highly educated and affluent people. It's hardly "mortifying" to live there. It's just a bit boring. But life is what you make of it. Some of you would complain if you were in SF in a luxury apt. Constant negativity turns people off.

Just lovely!

It’s a liberal oasis!

R77 Almost as bad as the videos showing the racist attacks on Asians in NYC.

R85- Except those attacks on Asians in NYC were committed by blacks.

And the Black people are just as lovely as the whites!

[quote]People are flocking to North Carolina in droves. The overwhelming majority love it there.

I can see why!

Virtually every place in the US has had some era where people were "flocking there". Doesn't mean much or make it a great place. North Carolina just seems like a bad compromise--four seasons with "mild winters" (and unlivable summers". Access to to mountains and the ocean (and most people live near neither one). Lots of sprawlburgs with strip malls punctuated by kudzu, with occasional shithole like Fayetteville. Charlotte doesn't seem horrible, but also not special. It's nickname, "The Queen City" isn't even unique---Cincinnati is better known as the Queen City. I remember stopping off at the upscale mall because they had a one of the first computer stores for a brand other than Dell--it had a Burlington Coat Factory, which normally popup in Grade B mid-Market malls. I'm sure people talk about the big town/little town without mentioning that it usually means insular place with brutal traffic. It really seems like a place with less character than the average mid-sized city like Kansas City. I'm sure that has appeal, but after being there a few times, I'd have to say I don't have any reason to return. It does have a nice sized airport--a hub airport that isn't too big. OTOH finding the rental car return took forever.

Similar to Charlotte's Web, OP.

Where terrified white people who can't afford Colorado Springs flee to.

I like that in North Carolina you can buy a magazine with mugshots of all the local criminals. Makes for fun reading.

R91 Huh? Frightened white people? Charlotte is about 40% black.

I've never understood why anyone thinks that people moving from California or New York to their area make them special.

Big cities have thousands of people coming in and leaving all the time. If everyone who ever lived in NYC stayed in NYC, it would have 5x the population.

And if it is mostly straight people, then - yeah, they see the bland, cheaper suburbs as a decent place to raise kids and drone on in the corporate lives.

NO one has ever said - yeah, I moved to Charlotte (or wherever city that is boasting about their growth) when I was young for all the nightlife, connections and great jobs it offered at the height of the industry they're working in.

I know a gay couple who moved to Charlotte and they're loving it. They bought a large house on land and they're raising livestock while working from home. Their votes are helping to turn NC blue very soon.

I was there maybe six years ago. Stuck there during a storm. Top tourist attractions: the NASCAR museum and the Billy Graham library.

Skipped those and went instead to the Mint Museum. Not a bad regional collection.

I’d rather die than live there. Driving through the streets we saw multiple billboards advertising places where you could go shoot off AR-15s. It’s like a different planet.

I lived in Charleston which has its share of eccentrics, wannabe eccentrics, pompous pricks, and ridiculous queens, but the worst sorts ever encountered in Charleston were the Charlotte gays on a weekend outing.

The most ridiculous vapid gays, sucking all the air out of any space with their gushing descriptions of their gleaming, precious Queen City, who talked and talked and talked on and on and on without end, never saying a thing but never shutting up for a second. They spoke of their city as if presidents of the local chamber of commerce, and often used allusions to Oz (as in Emerald City), I suppose for it's skyline of ugly reflective glass towers? They told everyone how utterly fabulous everything in Charlotte was. It was a dream come to life.

All Charlotte has is some size and an okay airport (with hokey country kitsch porch rockers.). It's big but horizontally big, stretching out everywhere with Panera Bread restaurants and Chick-Fil-A's and JoAnn's Fabric Shops and Hobby Lobby s and McDonalds and branch banks, in a neverending sea of parking lots. It's soulless, centerless, without history, artless, and pointless.

I think any of other city in North Carolina would be much preferable to Charlotte for it will come with shortcomings but also some attributes, and these will both be more honest, not spun of candy floss and Rotary Club hype.

I love you @R97 I would consider Charleston but I heard it’s very racist Thanks for all the replies. This was a good discussion

R47 You're so right as most major cities in the south tend to have more democratic. Montgomery Al, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, etc....

Duh, almost all American cities are Democratic

We know that the appeal of Charlotte to many is that you can buy a suburban McMansion for around 30% of what you'd pay in the Northeast or California for a similar house and your salary will, at worst, be 10% less. That, and the airport is a hub for people who travel a lot for work, so easy to get there from here.

But are there areas within the city of Charlotte that attract young single or newly married heteros, that have interesting non-chain restaurants you can walk to, and a more urban feeling overall, albeit likely more of an LA-style urban feeling than a NYC one.

Or is the city itself a place to be avoided?

Ditto the Triangle cities?

NC itself can be very beautiful (albeit flaming hot), the problem there is the people. Northerners (including my only family, when I was younger) have been moving down there in droves, so it's been one of the fastest growing states in the country for a while now. Culturally though, it hasn't changed fast enough in my opinion. It was historically a very poor, uneducated, hillbilly, Klan-infested state and it will take a few more generations to get a comfortable distance from that. Those that don't fall into those categories are the evangelical Southern belle types, which are equally as obnoxious. The most livable areas there (by DL standards) are near the universities, however those are already insanely overpriced for what they are as housing is out-of-control competitive there. Asheville was "hip", but is now an overpriced, overcrowded tourist attraction. Charlotte is either trash or the wealthy aforementioned Southern Belle types. Better restaurants are popping up, but it's a cultural wasteland. There seems to be job growth though, so if you're desperate...

*own family (not only family). Also wanted to note that I hadn't heard a racist joke or the n-word until I moved to NC as a kid. I'm not kidding.

NC is not that hot. Not usually. It’s humid for about three months a year. It’s called summer

It’s was in the 50s this morning in Winston-Salem. In July! High today around 80. It’s not that hot here relative to the rest of the US in summer.

The film "industry" in Wilmington took a huge hit after Carolco went bankrupt and [italic]Matlock[/italic] was canceled. The Muppet movie that was shot there wasn't the best one, and it resulted in subsequent ones going direct to video for about a decade. It was never more than a place where Hollywood could save a few bucks on runaway productions; [italic]Cutthroat Island[/italic] showed the limits of that.

North Carolina once had a reputation as the most moderate of the Southern states and had the best race relations. Unfortunately the Republican control of state government over the past 30 years has erased that, and NC has sunk to the level of Alabama in terms of social issues.

But there is hope with the election of a Democratic governor, but it still has a long way to go.

R107, when was the last time you went to Alabama?

The Obama backlash transformed NC from a purple state that voted for Democrats for state government into a reddish purple state that elected a supermajority Republican state legislature

This is what you get when you let men in the women's room.

In colonial times, North Carolina was looked down upon as a trackless waste by Virginia, Maryland, Georgia and South Carolina. It was largely rural and thinly populated, mostly by Scots-Irish rather than English settlers.

They were the last state to leave the union during the so-called "Civil War."

[quote] are there areas within the city of Charlotte that attract young single or newly married heteros, that have interesting non-chain restaurants you can walk to, and a more urban feeling overall, albeit likely more of an LA-style urban feeling than a NYC one.

I guess not?

Yes NC developed late, but when it did, it booked. It has an ideal geographic location: midway along the Eastern seaboard. A lot people who would have previously moved to Florida now move to North Carolina for its tech industry, four seasons, universities, and proximity to the big city East Coast corridor

R104 & R105, well then I guess "hot" is relative. I lived there 15 years and considered summers there to be unbearably hot and often humid. For example, July's average temp in NC is 89. That's 10 degrees hotter than most northern states' averages. The difference between 80 and 90 is whether or not I spend ANY time outside in the summer.

When it did, it boomed..

OTOH, it's hard to imagine anyplace being hotter or more uncomfortable than Manhattan in summer, subway platforms in particular.

DC’s average mid summer high is 89 too, similar to Baltimore’s, close to Philly’s

Boston’s average mid summer high temperature is 82, six degrees cooler than Greensboro’s, five degree cooler than Winston-Salem’s, about the same as Asheville, Warner than Boone.

Are you looking for somewhere to move, Bodega Cat? Because so am I. More focused on the west, though. Also I love bodega cats :)

R114: Ideal location for what? Kudu, congestion, and strip malls. Most people are hours away from the ocean and mountains. yes, I've heard all this stuff one too many times.

The West is too dry. Greenery matters

R106: Don't forget that Georgia came up with better incentives. It's mostly a haven for tv movies, Tyler Perry and other second rate fare, but someone (probably the former film office guy) some A-list stuff, too.

Don't forget all the great dining and a gay community to help you enjoy it!

Two relatives, native Brooklynites, moved to NC about 20 years ago. Neither are professionals, the man is blue collar, he works in maintenance, the woman is a secretary. They are cousins, not a married couple. Both told me they could get lot more for their money 'down South'. The woman has a huge house.

While in NYC, both were liberals, heavy drinkers and all around partiers. The woman had a bad coke habit. Now both are ReThugs, voted for Trump and found God.

The worst religious fanatics always turn out to be ex-junkies.

r124 What makes you think those boys are gay? They look like fraternity brothers to me.

r108 Child, I was born in Alabama.

Although Alabama has made more progress in the past 30 years than North Carolina.

High Point is a small town about 15 minutes between Winston-Salem which I half like and Greensboro which I don't know well enough to say. It's a center for furniture making but especially for furniture trade shows and some exhibitors have bought houses because they are cheap as a place to place when in town on business. The upshot is you can get some modest but nice houses that have been done to death by designers who added lots of quality millwork and improvements for which they won't see a big return on investment.

Winston-Salem is nice. Greensboro is nice.

High Point isn't nice.

Greensboro is not nice.

[quote] High Point isn't nice.

High Point has FLAVAH, flavah that’s full of life!

Even in the Triad, High Point is looked down upon

[quote]They are cousins, not a married couple.

In North Carolina, they can be both!

Not funny

High Point, like its northern counterpart in the furniture trade, Grand Rapids Michigan, has been on the losing end of an industry that is getting battered by imports. That's why places are so cheap. But you can go to so many places in the US its size and find nice old houses that are a bargain. They're not all in the East--I spent a few days in Las Vegas, NM which was once a boom town for silver--huge inventory of beautiful , very old houses.

R135: If you can't have a sense of humor about where you live, you should leave. If you have to be defensive, face up to to why it sucks.

Las Vegas New Mexico?

Yes, New Mexico. It was the first Las Vegas.

Try Corvallis, OR

Pretty

This was the highlight of my visit to Charlotte.

Too hot and humid for my tastes...

You're right, R135. It's not funny.

R134 meant West Virginia.

The bottled water offered to you will be from Harris Teeter.

I love HT

The Raleigh/Durham area is better than Charlotte IMO if you want to move to NC.

Everyone loves a Hairy Peter, r146.

There are mento people who prefer Charlotte over Raleigh. People are different

R148, I’m into smooth only

No to Charlotte. It's horrible. And Raleigh-Durham is better only by comparison.

Lots of gays in little Asheville, and the same for Greensboro.

R3 reporting back from my weekend visit, compared to 10 years ago CLT felt less redneck but downtown is a bit tryhard. No discernible city energy. Suburbs are ridiculously sprawling with chain store after chain store, planned development after planned development. There is just a blandness. Davidson was ok but if that’s their top enclave it was meh.

The people we encountered were mainly transplants from the northeast. Had a terrific country ham breakfast that was the highlight of the visit for me.

10 years ago is a very long time ago for Charlotte, a city that is growing so fast that cranes litter the skyline nonstop.

NODA is still "up and coming". It was "up and coming" when I moved there in 2006 (left in 2019). Uptown is awful- no real city character, just half empty over-priced condos. Ballantyne is nothing but cougars and SC trash. Always go into SC to buy gas- it's .15-.20 cheaper. Huntersville/Cornelius- Nascar trash. Dilworth- the straights have taken it over. Selwyn Pub in Myers Park is nice. Mers Park is full of yankees and lacks the charm it once had, so many mcmansions! Steele Creek/ The Palisades ($$$)/Lake Wylie is nice. The Palisades has a surprisingly large amount of gays. Seoul Meat Company in South End and NODA has the best Korean wings EVER and has a k-pop karaoke area.

R149- Those people are FRESH MAKERS!

South End is more poppin than NoDA

WHOA. You can get a lot for your money here!

R157- Yet your neighbors will be people that have their frat bro junk displayed next to a picture of (I think? OJ Simpson.

That’s why people are moving there in droves. and all the companies moving to NC

They have a Frontgate Outlet!

TABOR CITY. HUGE SHITHOLE on the way to the beach. DO NOT STOP!

R92 The Slammer!

no taxes

I don’t like the beach. So, nonissue

Both Carolinas: Hard pass

[quote]TABOR CITY. HUGE SHITHOLE on the way to the beach. DO NOT STOP!

And with a name like Tabor City, expectations were really quite high!

Tabor City suffers from comparison with Whiteville.

The portal of Hell

People are moving there! Kindof irrelevant in terms of some place being great or livable. Low taxes and financial services driving the economy--you get growth. You don't necessarily get culture, openness, and good services with that combo.

Fracking caused a boom in North Dakota--it didn't create livable environments. People flocked to Atlanta for decades until real estate imploded, yet lots of people could tell you it was a dull to horrible place to live. Places where people move in often are places that people also leave, or they go there for work often enough to see that they are oversold.

So far, no surprises here--no burgeoning arts scene, no great park system, no great simple day trips, no hidden gems like a first class art museum. Subdivisions and strip malls with chains you can find anywhere seem to pop-up instead.

R169, most Americans are not looking for your criteria. I’m Cool with safety, great schools, plentiful jobs, pristine streets, huge homes with garages and lawns for low prices, friendly mannerable culture, free parking, low taxes, and short commutes.

Do they have electricity?

Yes, that's what families look for r171. Not gay men.

North Carolina is a popular destination as a place to raise kids, it's not an ideal place for a single gay man.

You realize that many gay and bisexual men today have kids, a family?

The vast majority still do not r173. Only a small minority of gay men have kids.

[quote][R169], most Americans are not looking for your criteria. I’m Cool with safety, great schools, plentiful jobs, pristine streets, huge homes with garages and lawns for low prices, friendly mannerable culture, free parking, low taxes, and short commutes.

For me, weather is more important than most of those things. No snow, humidity, excessive heat for me.

R175, you sound like you should live in SanDiego

The weather in CLT isn't worth the blandness for me, houses cost just as much as in the Northeast.

Think….. Deliverance

So if we want to Zillow-stalk, what are the areas that are walkable, have a lot of younger people living there, hip coffee houses, good ethnic restaurants, etc?

Well?

Is CLT pronounced clit?

Billy Graham!! Can't you Google?

The Coolest Neighborhoods in Charlotte, North Carolina South End. Follow the smell of hops to the city's brewery hub in South End, where nine of Charlotte's craft breweries have taken roost. ... Uptown. ... NoDa. ... Plaza Midwood. ... Dilworth. ... Elizabeth. ... Third Ward.

LOL, I did see that via Google R182, but was hoping one of the DLers who live there would have some input versus some random real estate website.

Downtown adjacent is all I know. I'm the C-avoider.

It's shiny.

South End

Charlotte was a loose conglomeration of 600 textile mills within a 50 miler radius and their company towns that the central part coalesced so loosely into a city its downtown is called "Uptown." The glue that held it together were the banks, mountains of tobacco and other drug money that began in the 60s to foster a white collar labor market in a town with a grade school education. Eventually it turned piratical, laundering Colombian cocaine money in return for the chance to get professional sports teams while extinguishing the textile mills and preventing the mass immigration of African Americans that might have made it another Atlanta.

For a long time in the 90s it was cheaper to drive to Atlanta to fly away than to pay Charlotte-Douglas airfares.

Texans were afraid of it in 1986 when its banks moved into the failing Texas market and propped it up. I wish they had looted it instead.

damn r186. sounds like a Matthew McConaughey movie.

When B of A moved there all America was dismayed.

I agree with that.

Cocaine $$$, banking giant, and professional sports.

Someone get to writing!

Also, it made NASCAR profitable, the silliest excuse for a car race ever. They LOOK like regular cars, but they ain't regular cars (spits some chaw)!

Bad mojo for whatever reason.

What is the cocaine connection?

R194: probably its location at the junction of major trafficking routes.

r186 distilled the truth into a compelling tale. It makes Fresno seem exciting!

[quote]When B of A moved there all America was dismayed.

Especially San Francisco.

Southern cities prove that you can put a mule in a horse harness but he’s still a mule.

Great, pristine, new American darling city

North Carolinians eat Bojangles thrice per day. Bojangles is integral to the culture, almost religious in fervor for it

That's because there's no other fried chicken that has that kind of spice to it.

And also because they had Jake Delhomme in his prime doing TV commercials for it some years back.

And Bojangles is third-rate alternative to Popeye's.

Popeye's is bland and greasy.

Popeyes is miles better than cut rate Bojangles.

Popeyes is overpriced and overcooked.

Bojangles is Superior. Incredible biscuits

Yeah. Bojangles' biscuits make Popeyes' biscuits taste like doorstops by comparison.

BJ's biscuits do differ from spot to spot. So some lady is probably back there making them every morning.

Back in the 70s other North Carolinians snickered at the pretensions of Charlotte, whose Jaycee boosters said it was a "world-class city," when in fact, Charlotte was widely known as an overgrown mill town.

Jump ahead in time and Charlotte has boomed to almost 1 million people and it's still growing. But at heart it is still an empty, soulless mill town.

It seems like a smaller version of Atlanta with a more manageable airport.

Charlotte Has always wanted to be a world class city, unlike its counterpart in the cerebral Raleigh-Durham regions. And by golly, its on the cusp of becoming so

R211: Irony or babbitry? The Triangle is more stripmallish than "cerebral". Places like RTI are known as "Beltway bandits", more about high markups for mediocre work than real thinking.

The Triangle is one of the most educated areas in the nation

Carrboro, which is a tiny town outside of Chapel Hill, actually calls itself "the Paris of the Piedmont." Really? Where's it's Louvre? Where's its Champs-Élysées? And for it to have a Left Bank, first it would have to have a Right one.

Thanks, R214. I didn't know that one.

I love those places that are known as The Venice of the North (six cities in Norway carry that honor) or the Paris of the Prairie Saskatoon, of course.)

Some of them like Skipton (one of the Venices of the U.K.) even have a few points in their favor, but "the Paris of..." cities usually fall laughably flat.

Carrboro does look like like a it might have a nice small town Main Street, but Paris?

Carrboro is a great town

It is a wonderful area. But I didn't write that.

R213: Doesn't mean that it's interesting. A friend of mine left because it was insular and the fellow gays he met were dullards---a lot of that education is statistical/programming types who work for SAS, RTI and the like. It's not an arts center like some other college concentrations (e.g., the Happy Valley in western Mass) or particularly innovative in areas like human services. A lot of college towns are boring and inward looking, including big ones like Bloomington, Indiana (snore). For every one with vitality like Ann Arbor, you have one like Chapel Hill.

R218, I guess we’re very different types of people, dude. I love it

r214 That nickname started as sarcasm 50 years ago, as the Piedmont is nothing like France, much less little Carrboro (pop 20,000). Now that it's caught on, people are left scratching their heads.

Charlotte is SC adjacent, just sayin'.

NYC is NJ adjacent. Just sayin

Boston is as racist as Idaho.

Worse

Of the top 50 tech markets in US and Canada Charlotte is #2 most in the Brain gain category ie tech people moving here in the US cities while NYC was the biggest loser in this category.

Charlotte is the #2 most diverse tech market in terms of employees.

Charlotte overall is #25 biggest tech market in the US and Canada with 62,000 plus techies and Raleigh Durham comes in at #24 with 67,000 plus techies. Nashville comes in with 35,000 plus techies.

Techies = inflated housing

It’s nothing remarkable - just very, very boring. Mostly just a place to work and have a home.

Here’s a video of what Charlotte is like driving around.

.,.!

Most people love boring. It indicates a lack of crime, cleanliness, freaks.

R229: You haven't lived in the South or your just some typical delusional, incurious sunbelt dweller--more litter than in any region of the US and cities with the highest crime rates.

Not in Raleigh.

Bumpn

bland town full of strip malls, chain restaurants and subdivisions with cookie cutter houses.

That sounds just like DFW and yet people are flocking there in droves.

Talked to some friends, a lesbian couple and a straight couple who recently moved down there.

They were very hot on the neighborhoods in the city--Plaza-Midwood, Cherry, Chantilly. Said they were very low-key, had good restaurants, were relatively walkable and still relatively affordable, but were mostly single family houses and had a quasi-Brooklyn/Silver Lake sensibility without all the pretension. (They moved from Brooklyn and Silver Lake, LA, respectively)

Said the suburbs were pretty cookie-cutter with lots of chain restaurants, mostly people with kids who moved there so they could get a bigger house, but that there really was zero reason to go there.

Also noted that things like mask-compliance were pretty high in the city neighborhoods and most people seemed to be Democrats.

Dowd YMCA. Cockapalooza.

In my mind I'm goin' to Carolina. Can't you see the sunshine. Can't you just feel the moonshine? Ain't it just like a friend of mine to hit me from behind?

Yes, I'm gone to Carolina in my mind

bump

Charlotte is a tiny version of LA. Just a bunch of urban and suburban sprawl with a metro area comprised of a bunch of medium sized McMansion communities. The wealthy who work in the banking industry wouldn't dare live in the largely black inner city. The downtown is boring as fuck. Raleigh and Greensboro have better downtown areas as far as bars/clubs/restaurants/entertainment. Strange for a college city.

You assessment appears to be off R238 and/or based totally on your experiences with the suburbs which seem to be as you describe

There are a number of areas in the city proper where very rich people live and a number of semi trendy/hipster neighborhoods, though it all seems to have more of an LA feel as they're single family houses and small apartment buildings, not very urban in feel.

But not McMansions- that is suburbia

JT wrote and sang about Raleigh and the Triangle region, NOT Charlotte.

Never Charlotte.

Bumping this from a year ago out of curiosity whether anyone has visited/moved there in the past year as Charlotte continues to boom.

Also notable: there are a goodly number of posts in this thread from people Muriel has red-lined as trolls. Why does she leave those posts up rather than deleting them? We can still read them.

It's the queen city bitches. Charlotte is probably the gayest of any NC city. Great shopping, great neighborhoods and great clubs.

It's snowless.

That's all you need to know.

(except it does snow! and everything shuts down. also, when there's a chance of snow, everything shuts down)

Charlottes real estate market has been crashing since August 2022. What are you seeing re prices?

What once was the popular Heritage USA is there.

Heritage USA was in SC - not NC

OP: I can't afford to live in [NYC/SF/LA] anymore.

DL: Move.

OP: What's [affordable city] like?

DL: It's an uncultured flyover shithole and we'd look down on you for moving there.

Sorry r246 asshole Heritage USA was in a Charlotte NC suburb of Fort Mill SC.

Charlotte has the second highest percentage in the country among large metro areas of workers making $100,000. Raleigh-Cary was number one. Durham-Chapel Hill was number two in the country among mid-sized metros.