Where hipness goes to die

Walking past the corner of Weaver and North Greensboro yesterday evening in Carrboro after picking up Graham's car at Autologic, I saw the lot that CVS had wanted to build on many years ago and had been stopped from doing so by a bunch of folks, roughly in the "Occupied" mode of thinking. I posted about the horrible waste of a great location on Facebook and a bunch of people piled on, while others were generally supportive.

I was reminded of a quote by the great Juan Alva some years ago, to the effect that Carrboro is "where hipness goes to die." There's a lot of truth in that. I stopped going to the music festival many years ago because it was such an oldster fest. If I want to see some guy in his 50s playing old songs on an acoustic guitar, I can just set up in front of a mirror in my house.

There are still students there, for sure. And some nice places to eat and get coffee and so on. One can even buy a used book and some guitar strings, praise the lord. And it's nice that one can get around on foot. But Carrboro has long since ceased to be a particularly dynamic place where interesting things happen. It could get some of that back by letting more stuff get built.