Further impressions of an unwell city
Ok, I might have been slightly hard on Charlotte in my last post. But only slightly. When the weekend is over, the people come back into the city to work. But they never appear on the street. At lunchtime, I looked out the window of the hotel and noticed that the streets were completely devoid of human presence, as usual. I ducked over to the underground shops beside the hotel to grab a sandwich and found a small cafe type place with a lineup about 30 customers long stretching out the door. So there are people here, but they don't go out in the sun, it seems. The parking lots that sat empty all weekend are now full, but I assume they will empty again at 5 pm.
On the positive side:
I found a nearby place to get kickass espresso. And it's not Starbucks. They even have a sign on the counter saying "Friends don't let friends visit Starbucks." Which made me vow on the spot to give them all my considerable caffeine custom for as long as I'm here (other than the free conference coffee which I'm duty bound to accept).
I found a street that has a fair number of restaurants on it, some of them even open on the weekend (but for shortened hours). So far, not very good food, but they've still got a couple more chances. So far, what I've eaten has been vastly overproportioned meals with not much taste and a strangely foreign, shipped-from-some-place-far-from-here kind of note to them -- lack of taste and texture, colour a bit too proper. I also had pizza with bits of tomato that came from a can. Not the tomato sauce, mind you, but the tomato itself.
Whoops, steering back into negativity.
The booze seems fine. Some nice Francis Coppola Diamond Claret that I drank at the Hilton and therefore paid as much for a glass of it as the bottle itself cost. A glass or two of Blue Moon which, in spite of its dodgy appearance, is a fine enough Belgian white (even if now owned by Coors-Molson). None of it made here. Some menus say "ask about our local brews" but, if you ask, it turns out that the local brews are brews made in remote places and then put in bottles attached to labels made some place far away but sporting local names.
Oh, and here's my favourite moment of the trip so far: I was out yesterday and, for the first time in at least 25 years, I was asked for ID. At first I thought it was a joke, or a server angling for a good tip, but on extensive questioning I'm pretty sure that she thought I might be under 21. I asked her how old she thought I was. She said 'probably early 30s'. When I told her I was 49, she spent an especially long time poring over my driver's license, trying to find the secret flaw in the forgery. There was a moment when it looked as though I wasn't going to get my glass of Newky Brown (you'd think all I'm doing here is drink, drink, drink. Well I'm not. It's more like work work drink drink work drink drink drink work drink drink drink drink drink....
The conference itself is interesting as hell, though the presentations seem to be variable in quality. This is clearly a conference designed for people who are interested in designing virtual reality systems rather than using them. Wrong place for me to be on a regular basis, but the right place for me to be right now. I'm in a steep learning phase on this stuff. Or at least I should say that I was, until I quit for the day about 20 minutes ago. Now it's time to go find that Irish Pub I spotted yesterday. I'm sure they'll be offering up some authentic Southern fare....
On the positive side:
I found a nearby place to get kickass espresso. And it's not Starbucks. They even have a sign on the counter saying "Friends don't let friends visit Starbucks." Which made me vow on the spot to give them all my considerable caffeine custom for as long as I'm here (other than the free conference coffee which I'm duty bound to accept).
I found a street that has a fair number of restaurants on it, some of them even open on the weekend (but for shortened hours). So far, not very good food, but they've still got a couple more chances. So far, what I've eaten has been vastly overproportioned meals with not much taste and a strangely foreign, shipped-from-some-place-far-from-here kind of note to them -- lack of taste and texture, colour a bit too proper. I also had pizza with bits of tomato that came from a can. Not the tomato sauce, mind you, but the tomato itself.
Whoops, steering back into negativity.
The booze seems fine. Some nice Francis Coppola Diamond Claret that I drank at the Hilton and therefore paid as much for a glass of it as the bottle itself cost. A glass or two of Blue Moon which, in spite of its dodgy appearance, is a fine enough Belgian white (even if now owned by Coors-Molson). None of it made here. Some menus say "ask about our local brews" but, if you ask, it turns out that the local brews are brews made in remote places and then put in bottles attached to labels made some place far away but sporting local names.
Oh, and here's my favourite moment of the trip so far: I was out yesterday and, for the first time in at least 25 years, I was asked for ID. At first I thought it was a joke, or a server angling for a good tip, but on extensive questioning I'm pretty sure that she thought I might be under 21. I asked her how old she thought I was. She said 'probably early 30s'. When I told her I was 49, she spent an especially long time poring over my driver's license, trying to find the secret flaw in the forgery. There was a moment when it looked as though I wasn't going to get my glass of Newky Brown (you'd think all I'm doing here is drink, drink, drink. Well I'm not. It's more like work work drink drink work drink drink drink work drink drink drink drink drink....
The conference itself is interesting as hell, though the presentations seem to be variable in quality. This is clearly a conference designed for people who are interested in designing virtual reality systems rather than using them. Wrong place for me to be on a regular basis, but the right place for me to be right now. I'm in a steep learning phase on this stuff. Or at least I should say that I was, until I quit for the day about 20 minutes ago. Now it's time to go find that Irish Pub I spotted yesterday. I'm sure they'll be offering up some authentic Southern fare....
posted by Colin at 3:58 PM
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