Soldier made it back from Iraq only to be shot in Fayetteville
The Fayetteville Police Department is investigating the robbery and shooting of Sergio Sanchez early Saturday in the Blue Street area behind Sharkey’s Night Club. Sergio Sanchez, 22 years of age, was shot and critically wounded. He is a soldier who recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. Detectives believe Sanchez happened upon a robbery in progress and was shot during the commission of the crime.
Fayetteville Police would like to talk with anyone who was at Sharkey’s Night Club Friday night. If you have information about the crime, call the Fayetteville Police Department at (910) 433-1856. To remain anonymous and receive up to a $1,000 reward, contact Crime Stoppers at (910) 483-8477.
Innovating old media
It’s long bothered me that newspapers try so hard to be boring. That’s why Sarah and I started SmartNews, where our basic mission is to be interesting. That’s also why I don’t often write about SmartNews — behind the scenes, what we do is boring.
But I must put the spotlight on our SmartStyle contest and, in last week’s edition, the debut of coupons.
Also basic to our mission is interactivity — see, read, participate. We always seek participation from our readers, and have lots of ways for you to reach us — phone, fax, e-mail, Web site.
But what about the other half of our newspaper, advertising? How do we take something as traditional as advertising, and make it fresh and interactive?
SmartStyle is one way.
When we first unveiled it, I think people didn’t know what to make of the SmartStyle contest, in which the winner got a free makeover valued at $2,500. We had only four contestants.
But once we opened the voting to readers, the votes came pouring in — about 300 in all, almost half in the last 24 hours. We’re still getting a trickle.
Thirteen local businesses sponsored the contest. They spent a week doing their magic. Last Friday we unveiled the winner at a party (see our coverage elsewhere in this edition), and jaws dropped. It demonstrates that local businesses can do just as good a job with something like a makeover as anything you see on TV.
“Next time you’re going to have a lot more than four contestants,” one advertiser told me.
Ads are a passive thing. You may or may not see one, and if you notice it, you may or may not go buy something.
With SmartStyle, we made advertising active. Our readers saw it in SmartNews, they nominated themselves or their friends, and our advertisers provided a world class makeover. SmartNews did what a newspaper should do — it facilitated positive change.
Expect another SmartStyle-style contest very, very soon.
How else can we make advertising interactive? Believe me, we’re brainstorming, but one obvious way is coupons. Again, we’re taking advertising, something that is ordinarily passive, and making it a little interactive. See something you like? Cut out the ad and save some money.
Coupons are nothing new, but because they’re interactive, they are a natural fit for us. Expect to see more, and look to SmartNews as your coupon destination — the newspaper that’s not only free, but can save you $40 or $50 every time you pick one up.
Did you miss last Friday’s edition? Don’t fret. Wherever you find our racks, look on the bottom shelf and you’ll find the most recent coupon edition (unless we run out).
Got any other ideas to help make SmartNews more interactive? E-mail me and let me know. My address is just a line away.
Randy Foster can be reached at randyfoster@smartnewsnc.com.
Road trip
Google Maps said the drive would take 16 hours one-way. Somehow I managed to squeeze it into a day and a half. And I did it four times in nine days.
I can’t think of a worse time than now to go on a 4,500-mile road trip with the kids. Still, two round-trips to Iowa in the family minivan, even with today’s gas prices, was far less expensive than airfare covering the same distance for three people.
My children have it much easier than I did as a child on family road trips. Somehow my parents were able to cram four kids into the back of a Chevy sedan and drive us from California to Texas and back — in the summer, without air conditioning. We played “Spot the License Plate.” And every hour we’d ask, “When are we going to get there?”
Blake and Cole had their choice of Gameboy, a laptop with its array of goodies, and a DVD player. They reclined and kicked their legs up amid pillows and blankets.
And every hour they asked: “When are we going to get there?”
Here are some things I noted along the way:
* Pennsylvania has its primary in about a month, but who cares? Neither Barack nor Hillary will get enough delegates from the remaining primaries to clinch the nomination. It’s now up to the super delegates (party insiders and elected officials) to decide who will run against John McCain in November.
Put another way, there are no scenarios in which North Carolina’s primary ever matters.
* Gas is at an all-time high, but I swear, gas pumps have been set to pump more slowly. I think it’s so we won’t notice how fast the dollars click by.
* The cheapest gas was in Iowa, at $3.09 a gallon for the middle-grade (which has ethanol added; corn growers have a bit of clout in Iowa). The most expensive gas was in North Carolina, thanks in part to its high gas tax — $3.31.
* Used to be diesel was cheaper than regular gas. Now it’s more expensive than premium — $4 a gallon or more in most places. Truckers pay more, you pay more.
* The former copy editor in me has always cringes at signs that warn, “Bridge ices before road.” A good traffic sign is a work of art: it conveys a message at a glance. The more you have to read, and the longer you have to think about it, the worse the warning sign.
“Bridge ices before road” is one of those signs that you’re trying to decipher as you skid across the bridge and over the railing. It comes off sounding more like a factoid than a warning.
I like West Virginia’s sign much better: “Watch for ICE on Bridge.” The word “Ice” is in huge type. It doesn’t go into the why of it; it just gets to the point.
The most confusing traffic sign I know of is in Fayetteville, at the right lane on Rowan Street where it intersects with Bragg Boulevard — “Free flowing lane.”
I’d guess about half the drivers either don’t see the sign or don’t know what it means, so when they reach Bragg Boulevard, they stop. Or, put in the parlance of the city streets department, they don’t “free flow.” And 100 percent of the drivers behind them know you’re not supposed to stop.
A better sign might be: “Right turn don’t stop.”
Pretty? No, but it is art.
Randy Foster can be reached at randyfoster@smartnewsnc.com.
Parks are magic
Ever notice that whenever the city seems to have some spare money lying around, parks and rec’ seems to always be the one to benefits? There’s a reason for this, and it is part of a secret that has been quietly believed by the obscenely wealthy for centuries: it is better to look good than to actually be good.
Sure, we could have used the multimillion dollars that will be spent on the new Veterans Park to provide newly annexed residents with working sewer lines within a shorter time span than 15 years, but then where would we put all of our multiple veteran monuments? Those things are like bunnies. If you leave ’em alone together, they’ll just keep multiplying.
Technically, we already have a Veterans Park, but then, technically we already had a performance park too, in Rowan Park (or the apartment complex formerly known as “Rowan Park”), but that didn’t stop us from dropping more than $15 million on building Festival Park.
Festival Park might not seem like such a great deal when you consider its lack of available parking, lack of sufficient space and apparent overabundance of active train track, but remember, being good isn’t the goal here: think “drive-by.”
When driving by Rowan Street and glancing over at the attractive performance park with its pretty statues and no visible homeless people (smart move not building benches), or any other form of human life — doesn’t it look well planned?
Good. Now all you as the viewer must do is “keep on driving” and never look back. Let it remain perfect in your memory. Besides, it’s not like we built anywhere for you to park.
Rowan Park
The city wants to pave paradise and put up a parking lot. With a pink condominium, a boutique and a swinging hot spot.
And I can’t say I blame them.
Plans on the table would put apartments, townhouses, a restaurant and a commercial building — and the parking lot — on Rowan Park’s high grounds.
Rowan Park happens to be my favorite park in Fedvul.
I’ve combed every square inch of it, from its abandoned tennis courts, to the Blue Whale (which would never be built today; too dangerous for our overprotected children), to the creek, to the amphitheater. My kids have swung on its swings, sat on its concrete dinosaur and climbed all over its playground structure.
What is most distinctive about the park is that it follows nature’s contours. It slopes and meanders, and is trisected by two creeks (one that is usually dry, the other that is always wet). Its stately trees would take a century to replace.
Were Rowan Park not already here, Fayetteville would pay millions to build it (think Linear Park, but wider and prettier).
But here’s the rub: almost no one uses Rowan Park (think Linear Park) — except war protesters and the occasional concert. But large events are the exception (think Festival Park, but with two pedestrian bridges instead of one).
Most of the countless times I’ve been there, by myself and with my kids, we’ve had the park to ourselves. The other times, we shared it with one or two people.
The grass that remains still gets mowed, but you can see that the park is no longer a city priority. Someone burned down the only restrooms there and the drinking fountains don’t work (do any in Fayetteville?). Across the street, a vacant lot once used for overflow parking is now a hotel.
Rowan Park is one of several creekside parks in the Haymount area. The others are much smaller and can’t be developed, so they’re safe. But Rowan Park — now that’s one mighty fine looking parcel.
So the city wants developers to take the upper portions and put in housing, a restaurant and businesses.
I would complain long and loud about it if I thought anyone else valued the park as much as I do. And when I say value, I don’t mean “Wow, what a pretty park. It should be protected.” I mean, “Wow, what a pretty park. I love going there.”
And I can’t say that I always “love going there.” During the depths of summer, biting flies keep me away. Maybe folks who live in those new condos will find out what I mean.
I think it’s actually a great plan. It preserves the major parts of the park, including the whale. A “freedom trail” would connect Rowan Park to Freedom Memorial Park and the proposed Veterans Park next to the Airborne & Special Operations Museum.
That way folks will have another scenic walkway not to walk on.
Still, had I my ’druthers, Rowan Park would be well-loved and widely used and immune from development. Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone?
Sure enough, the Pink Floyd Gunman turned out to be a hoax
Never really thought of Pink Floyd fans as the bell-tower types
Hopefully, this turns out to be a false alarm.
Appalachian State University has put its campus on lockdown after a report of a gunman in the campus area. The university in a statement on its Web site said the gunman was seen in the area of Appalachian South Apartments and Hill Street. The man was described as being white, 6 feet tall, wearing a black Pink Floyd T-shirt with a rainbow prism partially covered by a dark jacket, either a black or blue ski mask and red and green tennis shoes.
Al-Hollywood
Like most Americans who oppose terrorism, I didn’t watch the Oscars Sunday night, because Hollywood supports Al-Qaida.
Sarah and I had our TV favorites — “House” on Tuesdays and “Pushing Daisies” on Wednesdays. (On Sundays, it was “The Sopranos” and, when they were fresh and new, “Rome,” “Deadwood” and “Carnivale,” but HBO’s shortage of great Sunday night programming is a topic I’ll leave for some other time.)
Weekday nights were spent with Sarah rushing the kids through their homework and meals and off to bed (I was doing stuff during that time, too — important stuff) so that we could hunker down at 8 p.m. — TV-watching time.
For awhile, there was nothing we wanted to watch the rest of the week, so those days we chopped firewood, canned vegetables, spun yarn, braided rope and did all those other little things Americans do on bad TV nights.
When the TV writers went on strike in their selfish pursuit of money, and the TV executives refused to budge in their selfish pursuit of money, new programming came to a halt, and Al-Qaida prevailed — because any time consumers (which is shorthand for Americans) lose, the terrorists win.
But fortunately, there are options. Around 1995, I started spending more and more time on the Internet and less and less time watching TV. That ended when I bought a laptop computer. With a laptop, I could watch TV and explore the Internet at the same time.
The writers’ strike put a temporary halt to new programming. TV had failed me, but my laptop (which is shorthand for Internet) was there to fill the gap.
My friend and colleague Jim McBee points out that what makes the Internet different from other media is that the Internet is a two-way street. Not only can you select what you want to see like you can with other media (like switching a TV channel, pushing a radio button or turning a newspaper page), you can also participate (upload videos, blog or chat with friends and enemies).
One of my favorite things is Stumble Upon. You click on a button and it takes you to an interesting place on the Internet you’d never think to go to otherwise. It’s a great time-waster, but every now and then I find something useful, like the site I found the other day that has 50 great — and best of all, free — toys you can make out of paper. Now I just have to find the best way to make paper.
On the TV front, Sarah and I are newcomers to the “House” phenomenon. The Fox show is about a loveable, scruffy jerk who confirms all my suspicions about the medical community — that doctors don’t really know what’s wrong with you and just throw different medicines at you until one works, or you die. Good times, good times.
Several seasons of “House” went by unnoticed, and after the writers’ strike, Sarah discovered that all the old episodes are available online — if you don’t mind Chinese subtitles and product logos, and if you can figure out how to navigate a Web site written in Mandarin. There have been nights during the long, frigid writers’ strike when we watched episode after episode of “House” until that nagging, pesky thing called sleep interrupted our viewing pleasure.
That’s another example of that two-way street thing I was just talking about: we can watch what we want, when we want.
HBO is catching on to the idea. It is starting a YouTube channel that will have HBO original programming once, sometime in the future, HBO has something worth watching again.
Low Tolerance Joe
Build it and they will come — city officials with clipboards and a thousand reasons why you can’t be clever.
Skateboarders decorated some weathered old trees near the intersection of Blount and Winslow streets. The result is something awesome to behold — skateboard after skateboard completely coating the trunks of two trees, crawling up to the highest reaches. But that’s not all! Shoes dangle from scraggly branches like ornaments on Charlie Brown’s tree (the one that eats kites, not the Christmas tree).
If you haven’t been to that part of town lately, you might be surprised to find that Blount Street has lost some of its luster over the years, despite new pavement and a fancy “City Center” sign at Gillespie Street. Think “urban industrial decay,” but without the charm.
An entrepreneur refurbished a warehouse, slapped some paint on the exterior, added a few embellishments and created the Skate Shop, thus making one of the nicer looking businesses along Blount Street. The trees add to the ambience.
City Hall cannot be expected to see everything that goes on within its borders. For that it relies on citizens who have low tolerance for such things. And as always happens, someone complained.
Since the trees happen to be in the vicinity of a business that caters to skateboarders, the city has declared them a sign for the Skate Shop — a sign that violates city rules that govern such things.
Down must the skateboards come, the city says.
Skateboarders are a rebellious lot. They fight for their pastime more vigorously than most, but then again, their pastime attracts more criticism than most. Having been chased off from downtown sidewalks and parking lots, and now with a location they can call their own, it leaves the skateboarders some free time to say No to Authority.
Thus, fight city hall we will, the skateboarders reply.
I think the trees look interesting, but more importantly, they make a statement about who spends time there. Plus it keeps debris out of the landfill. It’s recycling, which ought to be embraced as a good thing.
The mistake the skateboarders made is that they should have applied for a grant. Nothing makes the city of Fayetteville tolerant of public eyesores like a grant. Just look at downtown Fayetteville’s skyline, which is punctuated with red, yellow and white polls decorated with Erector Set leftovers held in place by tangled fishing line.
Ugly? Yes. Art? Yes. City cease-and-desist order? Not when the community paid good money for those things.
And look at downtown’s Hurley pots. In some parts of the world, things like that are used to burn tar or detonate unwanted ammunition. Ugly? Yes. Art? Now they are, now that they’re being adorned with decorative plantings.
Basically, if you want to do something ugly and atrocious in Fayetteville, just fill out the proper paperwork and pay the fee like any good upstanding citizen would.
That way when Low-Tolerance Joe drives by and tsk-tsks on his cell phone to City Hall, the answer will be: “Can’t do a thing about it. All the permits are in place. And besides, it’s art.”
Follow up
Last week I took to the streets, singles bars and book stores (literacy is hot) to find love in the form of 7-digits. My results were mixed, and by “mixed” I mean dismal. Out of 100 Fayetteville women (and one effeminate-looking man), only 19 were willing to distribute the numerological goods.
Still, as almost 50 of those women were married, and at least one was a lesbian (not the effeminate dude), my editor assured me that I had actually done fairly well, and besides, I have to call all of these ladies back, so 19 is actually a very doable number.
I started with the hotter women (duh) and worked my way down to the little old ladies (cougars to my elk).
Little known fact: Women are mean.
The first number I called was a girl we’ll call Amanda (because that’s her name). I met her in a Spencers Gifts Store (a good sign that she appreciates terrible jokes), and I knew the instant she opened her mouth — her voice was tolerable. Awesome. Sorry, but this is a step up from some girls I’ve dated.
I set up a date with her at Paddy’s Pub on Raeford Road at 9 p.m. Alcohol, loud music, drunken Irishmen playing darts while blind folded, how could the night go wrong?
At about 9:42 p.m., the “how” had become much clearer. There’s nothing that screws up a date quite like when one of the daters does not attend.
At about 10:06 p.m. the invisible woman made her first appearance via cell phone call. It seems she had second thoughts after remembering that as much as she begrudged her boyfriend, she probably shouldn’t screw around on him.
To be honest, the last thing I want is to be one of “those guys.” The guys who troll around Fayetteville hoping to snag a married woman who’s man is deployed somewhere fighting for their lives so that these trolls have the freedom to troll. But if you’re going to change your mind, let a guy know a little sooner than an hour after your predetermined meeting time.
Well known fact: Girls are really, really mean.
There is a huge difference between a “woman” and a “girl.”
When faced with the awkward question as to whether or not a woman wants to give up her number, most women know that a firm “no” should be the first course of action.
Girls, however, will present you with false hope, namely, a fake number.
Just to any girl who thinks that a fake number will help you prevent having to crush a guy’s spirit, usually a fake number is even more hurtful than a firm “no.” Sure, the pain is delayed, but a fake number not only says to the guy that you think he’s a loser, but a gullible loser.
Hidden truth: the female species is the second greatest thing to ever happen to mankind (just behind the invention of stuffed crust pizza).
After a few more duds, I did finally manage to have some actual fun dates. As I am a gentleman, I won’t go into too much detail, but I will say that the single greatest thing to come out of this experience hasn’t been the off chance of a romantic encounter, or even the meeting of new people, but the blessing of rejection. I found after the experience of being rejected more than 80 times, I didn’t have the fear I once had of simply approaching a pretty girl. Abs of steel, a great car, or an impressive job title will never be able to compete with the fearless confidence offered by being able to take “no” for an answer.
‘Course, the car couldn’t hurt.