Duran Duran Coming to Cary
The Koka Booth Amphitheatre ‘s season will get started soon. One of their first events of the season is Duran Duran with Your Vegas on May 21. Reserved seats are $65 and lawn seats are $35. Tickets went on sale March 14, but are still available .
WCPSS Calendars for Outlook, Google, and PDAs
The Wake County Public School System has many different calendars for their schools. I’ve imported most of these schedules in the .CSV format.
Outlook/Palm Users:
- Create a new folder in your in Outlook calendar (WCPSS_Trad08, for example). Use the File | Import and Export… to import from “another program or file”, then “Comma Separated File (Windows)”. This will set up the school schedule in your new sub-calendar where you can make whatever changes you want.
- When you are happy with the way the subcalendar looks, change the calendar view to “Events” (instead of 7-day or 31-Day or whatever view you’re using). “Select All” from the list, and drag them over to your main “Calendar” (The Treo and other Palm Handhelds only sync to the main calendar – time for Palm to get with the program on that one!). If you want to keep your sub calendar intact, use Ctrl-drag instead of plain drag. That will create a copy of each event to the main Calendar and keep the WCPSS_Trad08 calendar in place. Sync your handheld to copy the events to the handheld.
iCal Users:
- Use iCalTextImport to import the .CSV version of the schedule.
Download The Calendars
- Traditional Calendars
- Year-Round – Track 1
- Year-Round – Track 2
- Year-Round – Track 3
- Year-Round – Track 4
(right click on the links above and "Save As…")
Note: Use at your own risk. The Wake County Public School calendars are subject to change, and the latest can be found on their site. Gogoraleigh.com does not accept responsibility for any consequences resulting from errors in the schedule.
Carolina Rollergirls On for Sunday
Backed by a slew of hungry newbies, the Debutante Brawlers are determined to send some fur flying when they take on the Tai Chi-tahs this Sunday at Dorton Arena. Roused by their recent 104/33 defeat by the Trauma Queens, the Tai Chi-tahs are on the prowl for vengeance and poised to pounce upon the powerful pink posse.
The March 29 game broke attendance records! Many thanks to the thousands of fans who packed Dorton Arena and got the 2008 season off to an amazing start. Derby fever is spreading like kudzu!
The only thing bigger than our hits are our hearts. Please be sure to visit our team charity tables at the upcoming bout. The Debutante Brawlers proudly support the breast cancer awareness organization, the Sisko Foudation . The Tai Chi-tahs are wild about the Angels Among Us Walk , which benefits the Duke Pediatric Brain Tumor Center. Also, pop those tabs off your soda & beer cans this week, the Trauma Queen’s charity booth is collecting them for Ronald McDonald House .
Sun. April 20—Debutante Brawler s.
Tai Chi-tahs
Doors open at 5pm; the action starts at 6pm.
- adults: $10 in advance, or $14 at the Dorton Arena Box Office
- kids: $5 in advance, or $7 at the Dorton Arena Box Office
- students: $8 (w/ID) at the Dorton Box Office
- groups: $8 (15+) online only at CarolinaRollergirls.com
BUY TICKETS NOW or pick them up at the Skate Ranch of Raleigh, Percolator, Schoolkids Records in Raleigh, or Bull City Records in Durham.
The first 50 students get in free! Visit the rollergirls website for more information.
Triangle Food Tour
Get ready for a delicious, guided, walking food tasting tour, sprinkled with historical tidbits of downtown Raleigh. The
Triangle Food Tour
affords the chance to explore and discover a culinary perspective of downtown Raleigh that even an insider might not know. The tour will be stopping numerous times for sample tastings. For example,
- A landmark barbecue restaurant where the people are as unique as the barbecue, or
- A boutique grocery that thinks it’s a gourmet restaurant, or
- An Asian restaurant that will have you dreaming of dumplings, or
- An international chocolate shop that goes beyond Belgium. And many more…
The tour takes pace Thursdays- 9:00 am (don’t be late) and is $38 per person (includes all tastings). Wear comfortable shoes because the tour is usually about 3 hours, and continues rain or shine.
Tickets must be purchased in advance at www.trianglefoodtour.com or by phone at (919) 319-5674. The tour meets at the Capital City Grocery Porch, 10 minutes before departure.
"Cooke Book" Now At Prime Only Downtown
A great option for live entertainment is the Sam Cooke show now appearing at
Prime Only’s
Rat Pack Lounge
. The show features Darrian Ford’s covers of Cooke hits like "You Send Me", "Twisting the Night Away", and more.
The show runs through April 26, and features two shows nightly (at 8pm and 10pm). For more reservations and more information call 835-2649.
McCall’s to Reopen Wednesday
McCall’s Barbecue (no relation) in
Knightdale
Clayton will reopen on Wednesday,
according to a WRAL article
. The restaurant has been closed since September 21 when a private airplane crashed into the restaurant.
Third of Never Featured on XM Tonight
XM Channel 43 will feature NC band Third of Never on tonight’s Radar Report at 10pm. Click the link for more information.
MEZ Brings Contemporary Mexican to RTP
The
Chapel Hill Restaurant Group
has done it again. Their already fantastic collection of moderately priced restaurants is now joined by
MEZ
, the new contemporary Mexican restaurant in RTP. MEZ is at the intersection of Page Road (the exit at the Sheraton Imperial) and Slater Road, just off of I-40 in a new, LEED-certified stand-alone building.
map it
The atmosphere reminds me of a cross between 518 West and Winston’s Grille. Its large, airy central bar with hard walls and hard floors looks like it could easily get as noisy as 518, and lacks the level of decorative warmth felt in the restaurant’s siblings.
The menu layout is extremely similar to that at 518 and 411. There is only one weekly special, but there are roughly 8-10 regular entree dishes, several salads, and some delicious looking appetizers. Given the restaurant group’s reputation, I was reasonably expecting a menu that would rival Atlanta’s Nava . While MEZ doesn’t quite reach the level of Nava, it still has its merits.
Greg Cox does an excellent of outlining the building’s place in the market , so I tried MEZ for the first time last night. I started out with the corn chowder which was fine. The two main flavors were cream and corn. The soup honestly needed more flavor from either its green chili pepper, some other smokey source of flavor (like bacon), or plain ol’ cumin.
I kept things basic and got the outstanding chicken enchiladas. While the chicken flavor was good, the dish really shines with its tortilla flavor and its deep red chili pepper sauce. The sauce had just the right amount of zing to kept me interested without overwhelming my palate. The dish is served with some delicious rice and beans that rival those at Rosa Mexicano .
Without a doubt, I plan on returning to MEZ. As Cox mentioned, Jibarra shoots for a higher price point, but MEZ is somewhere in Sedona’ s price range, and is a slightly more complete package. The next time I go I plan on delving into some of MEZ’s seafood and beef dishes, though.
It will be interesting to see how crowds are at MEZ. Spanky’s, 411, and 518 have a decidedly urban tilt to them, so they tend to have large crowds after work and on the weekends. In contrast MEZ takes CHRG’s suburban experience way past the domain of Squid’s. RTP restaurants tend to be crowded on weeknights, and empty on weekends. On the other hand, CHRG has such a great reputation in the area, that Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill residents are likely to join the quickly growing RTP population in clogging up the wait list on weekends. Regardless, I’ll be finding more time to eat there.
Janiva Magness Playing Artsplosure
2008 nominee for the BB King award,
Janiva Magness
, will be playing at the
Artsplosure
festival on May 17.
Swell Season/Landes Coming to Meymandi
On May 15 The Swell Season (Irish musician Glen Hansard and Czech singer and pianist Markéta Irglová) will be performing at Meymandi Hall in the Progress Energy Center downtown. The duo is best known from the movie Once . Opening is Dawn Landes . This concert is sold out .
850 The Buzz Seeks Female Host
This ad at Radio and Records (who incidentally has a great collection of music charts) states that 850 is seeking a female radio host who "must have strong opinions and can handle lots of calls." I wonder what time slot they are filling…
Z-19-08 Plan Brings Mixed-Use to East Downtown
The City Council heard discussion last night surrounding a yet-to-be-named project headed by Gordon Smith (of Exploris fame). The property bounded by Hargett, East, Martin, and Bloodworth Streets once contained 15 small houses. Those have been cleared to make way for a 4-story mixed-use building. The complex will feature street level retail on all four facades, 220-230 units of market-rate rental units across 3 floors, and an internal parking structure.
map it
Two representatives from the neighboring area spoke in favor of the project, which was originally proposed to by much larger. While complementing the developer’s willingness to engage neighborhood opinion, they outlined two distressing aspects. Neighbors want a small community grocery store to be included in the project. The developer has pledged to his best to address this concern.
The second issue regards the “market-rate rental” space that will occupy the residential areas of the complex. Lonnette Williams (Central CAC Chair) cited an 85% renter-occupancy rate in the immediate area, but seemed comforted by the long-term plan to convert the project to condominiums.
At this point the project, publicly known as Z-19-08, has minimal information online . WRAL covered this story the day of the CAC meeting. According to reports, the history of the neighbors’ opinions has been an enigma. The CAC meeting was apparently full of much dissent, yet the final vote was and emphatically FOR the rezoning that will allow the project’s construction. Keep checking here as more info comes about.
Gregory’s Now Open in Cary
Gregory’s restaurant reopened last week in Cary. The restaurant formerly had locations in North Raleigh on Six Forks and in Cary’s Waverly Place, but is now open in the former Fox and Hound location on Kildaire Farms Road. They currently do not have a website, so this is the exclusive online site for the Gregory’s menu (.pdf).
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