In Charlotte, Mingling the Familiar and the New

Road Trip to the Queen City

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There are people who like to drive in the mountains, and people who don’t. If you fall into the latter category, you’re better off flying (non-stop, on American) to Charlotte, North Carolina. After crossing the east-west length of Tennessee, arrow-straight I-40 climbs the Appalachians and gets twisty. The final leg of the nine-hour drive can be exhilarating or stressful, but on a sunny summer day, the views are incredible.

Tennessee and North Carolina have a lot in common, culturally. For more than a century, from 1663 when King Charles II signed the Carolina Charter to 1789 when the state of North Carolina ceded the land west of the highest ridge from Stone Mountain in Virginia to the Georgia border, we were the same state. Waves of Scots-Irish immigrants pushed west, displacing the native populations, which had been devastated by disease and war. Alongside the yeoman farmers, a large population of African-descended slaves toiled on the Piedmont’s plantations.

Charlotte was named for the wife of English King George III, earning it the nickname of the Queen City. Its second nickname comes from British General Cornwallis, whose troops were driven from the city by guerrilla warfare during the Revolutionary War. He called Charlotte “The Hornet’s Nest.” The city’s NBA team reclaimed the name Hornets in 2014.

The Hornets play in the Spectrum Center, smack dab in the middle of downtown. Like Memphis, the 2005 construction of the 19,000-seat arena heralded a revitalization of the city’s downtown area. The once-sleepy area has become a hub for banking, with Bank of America and Wells Fargo both running their East Coast operations from headquarters here. Charlotte today is a forest of cranes constructing gleaming towers.

One of the most recent additions is the Kimpton Tryon Park Hotel, a brand-new 19-story luxury hotel in the heart of the Uptown neighborhood. The hotel is in easy walking distance to virtually everything of interest in the area, from the Spectrum Center to the Bank of America Stadium where the Carolina Panthers NFL team brings hoards of fans to town in the fall.

“This used to be a crumbling parking lot,” says Scott Smith, director of event technology at the Kimpton Tryon Park. Now, one of the hottest spots in the city is Merchant and Trade, the hotel’s rooftop bar that provides visitors sweeping views of downtown to accompany their artisan cocktails. On the ground floor is Angeline’s, a fine-dining restaurant with an Italian bent, offering pizza and pasta selections alongside entrees such as a pork shank osso bucco and bistecca, a generous ribeye dry-aged for 21 days.

Smith grew up in the area and returned to Charlotte after a stint in the military. “It’s almost a big city. But I live in the south part, so I wake up to deer and bunnies in my yard,” he says. “It’s a city, but it’s like being in the country. Charlotte is growing and cleaning up, but it’s still small enough that you get that Southern hospitality.”

THE LEVINE MUSEUM OF THE NEW SOUTH

As we learn more with each passing year, the history of the South is complicated. The commingling of racial and economic factors has brought out both the best and the worst in people. At the direction of Sally Dalton Robinson and Anne Batton of the Mecklenburg Historical Society, which founded the institution in 1991, The Levine Museum of the New South faces history unflinchingly. Just around the corner from the Spectrum Center, and housed in a beautiful Modernist building, the museum is dedicated to telling the story of the Carolina Piedmont after the Civil War.

The centerpiece is the “Cotton Fields to Skyscrapers” exhibit that traces the parallel stories of the African-American community’s struggle to find itself and secure newfound freedoms after Emancipation, and the region’s growing economic influence. The people of the Piedmont largely tell their own story, with plenty of first-person accounts and photographs among the more than 1,000 artifacts on display. The exhibit helps you see through African-American eyes the false start of Reconstruction, through the regression of Jim Crow, and the promise of the Civil Rights era. It also tells the history of the labor movement that arose after the Gilded Age to fight for workers’ rights in a series of strikes in the early twentieth century.

Upstairs is “K(NO)W Justice, K(NO)W Peace,” an exhibit dedicated to preserving the history of the protests against police violence that swept the nation in 2015-16. It’s a remarkable work of real-time curation, filled with ordinary objects turned into artifacts by the sweep of history, like the bandages and rubbing alcohol in a protestor’s ad hoc street medic kit that sits on display not far from a riot cop’s shield and boots.

“It’s the moment we woke from a years-long ignorance of deep-seated problems in our community,” says Adam Rhew, the associate editor of Charlotte magazine, quoted on a plaque. “It’s the moment we could be lumped in with Ferguson and Baltimore. It’s the moment that will fundamentally change Charlotte. It will be a marker in history for our city, and for me.”

In the museum’s lobby, I met Joe Rogan, who became familiar with the area during his military career, when he was posted at nearby Camp Lejune. “Charlotte is a great city, a growing city,” he says. “I think it’s a city of opportunity. I did 25 years in the Marines, and I noticed a lot of changes here since the early 1990s. It’s really grown up in the last few years. Not only in terms of population, but in terms of attitudes of the people. There have been a lot of people migrating from the North who have settled here. I’ve heard people say that Charlotte is the new Atlanta.”

THE NASCAR MUSEUM

The most popular museum in Charlotte is the NASCAR Hall of Fame. The sport of stock car racing evolved in the Carolinas with the help of moonshiners who plied the curves of the mountain roads in hot rods beefed up to outrun the law. Now, the curves on the racetracks are even and high-banked to allow drivers to compete at speeds in excess of 200 mph.

The NASCAR Hall of Fame’s most striking feature evokes the sweep of the race track. Glory Road curves around the perimeter of the huge central exhibition space, lined with significant cars from the sport’s 60-year history, beginning, appropriately enough, with a 1952 Hudson Hornet that belonged to pioneering NASCAR driver Marshall Teague; Fireball Roberts’ 1957 Ford Fairlane, complete with tail fins; and the tricked-out 1939 Chevy Coupe that launched “Rapid Roman” Richie Evans on a career that spanned from short track to a record nine NASCAR championships. Moving clockwise around the track, the cars become more modern, their designs more refined and specialized, but also more generic, at least until they are joined in the 1990s by Mike Skinner’s Chevy Silverado, representing a growing interest in truck racing.

Where the NASCAR Hall of Fame really excels is in giving people up-close access to a sport that is watched from afar through layers of protective fencing. In one hands-on exhibit, families are invited to try their hand at being a pit crew. The giant, 278-seat High Octane Theater hosts regular race-viewing parties where visitors get spectacular, multiview coverage of NASCAR races on three curved, cinerama-style screens.

The most popular attraction at the museum is the racing simulator. Driving a fast car in a counterclockwise circle may look like a breeze on TV, but strapping into this state-of-the-art, immersive simulator quickly dispels that notion. It’s difficult to even get these mechanical monsters moving in a straight line without spinning out and losing control. After a preliminary training session, guests race each other in a meticulously rendered virtual environment. Their video game race is projected on a large screen for the rest of the visitors to see. The line for the simulator is always long, with many people buying memberships to the museum just so they can come back and drive again and again.

THE U.S. NATIONAL WHITEWATER CENTER

The other sport with deep ties to this part of the country is whitewater rafting. People have long navigated the rivers and streams spilling down from the mountains, first out of necessity, and later because, well, it’s fun. “Between here and Asheville, you’ve got some of the best whitewater rafting in country,” says Eric Osterhus, brand manager for the U.S. National Whitewater Center. “People come from all over the world to paddle on it.”

Located a short drive outside the city limits on the banks of the Catawba River, the Center is a sprawling, unique complex dedicated to the sport. Its centerpiece is the largest man-made recirculating river in the world. Twelve million gallons of water races around two courses, one easy and one hard. “It’s a very accessible sport, and we give you the resources to learn it here. We teach you how to roll, how to paddle, and how to read water,” says Osterhus.

New rafters are given a safety briefing and kitted out with an intimidating array of life vest, helmet, and paddle before being split into crews and loaded eight at a time into boats. Rowing through the aquatic rollercoaster is the definition of a team-building experience. When the alternative is being tossed into the roiling waters, you and your crew mates quickly learn to work in unison under the command of the knowledgeable coxswain.

As we struggled through the roaring rapids, my boat was easily passed by a muscular woman in a sleek, black kayak emblazoned with the Stars and Stripes and Olympic rings. The artificial river is not only a tourist attraction, but a training ground for athletes looking to compete in canoe and kayak slalom at the international level. “They train here five days a week during the warmer months of the year,” says Osterhus. “The athletes use this as training, and then you see families rafting for the first time right next to them.”

The artificial river is just the beginning of the Whitewater Center’s attractions. For the less adventurous, there’s flat-water paddling on the Catawba. A ropes course winds through the thick tree canopy. A hundred-foot-tall hawk tower overlooking the entire complex serves as the anchor point for a pair of thousand-foot-long zip lines. Or you could choose to exit the tower by means of a counterweighted jump from the top. “You feel every bit of that hundred feet when you’re up there!” he says.

Osterhus says he was a regular visitor to the center before he “decided to see if I could get paid for my time.” His current favorite activity is relatively new. “We’ve built one of the world’s only deep-water climbing complexes. These are climbing walls that reach 20, 35, and 45 feet above the water. Then you drop into the water after your climb,” says Osterhus.

FOOD AND DRINK

The craft brewery scene has exploded in recent years,” Osterhus says. “Only six or seven years ago, it felt like there were only a few to choose from. Now it feels like we’ve got a brewery on every corner. It’s great.”

The local craft brews are well represented at the National Whitewater Center. The beer garden on the island in the middle of the whitewater course features more than 40 local taps. Visitors not wanting to get wet can find entertainment in the weekly River Jam music series, or the monthly festivals, the largest of which is Tuckfest in April, where a diverse, 14-band bill attracts 40,000 people over four days.

Charlotte’s Scotch-Irish heritage means it’s a city that takes St. Patrick’s Day very seriously. At the Whitewater Center, the river is dyed green. Downtown, there’s a charming local parade that lasts for hours in the morning. Then, many revelers don matching green T-shirts to throw down in a massive pub crawl that takes them from the quaint confines of the Latta Arcade’s Valhalla Pub and Eatery to the sprawling Ink and Ivy sports bar and the Carolina Ale House.

Probably the most inviting spot we found on our trip was Amélie’s French Bakery and Cafe. It somehow manages to feel cozy while occupying a rambling, split-level space in the heart of downtown. It’s usually filled with a cross-section of bankers and other downtown workers grabbing a quick bite of French breakfast foods, and students from nearby Montreat College and Northwestern University fueling their studies with caffeine. Across downtown in the Mint Museum, Halcyon Flavors from the Earth is one of the city’s most striking eateries. The elegant space serves farm-to-table delicacies sourced primarily from the Piedmont.

But I know: The foremost culinary question on your mind is, how’s the barbecue? The Carolinas claim rivalry with the Mid-South and Texas in the realm of slow-cooked meats. We decided to try Mac’s Speed Shop, whose team took second place in the Whole Hog category at the 2017 Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest. We started off with a cup of Brunswick stew, a Piedmont specialty that can contain anything from chicken to squirrel meat, depending on what’s easily at hand. It was savory in the extreme, reminding us of a pot roast in soup form. Then, in the interest of science, we got the full combo platter with pulled pork, beer can chicken, St. Louis Ribs, and Texas-style beef sausage. After dipping the meats in the variety of provided sauces, including mustard- and vinegar-based versions, we were suitably impressed by everything with the exception of the sausage.

As a Memphian writing for Memphis magazine, I’m probably expected to report that the North Carolina barbecue was laughably inferior to ours. And while I will stick up for the Bar-B-Q Shop and Cozy Corner all day long, I must admit that the ’cue at Mac’s Speed Shop is absolutely world-class. But let’s not look at this as a hit against the ever-fragile Memphis civic ego, but instead as an opportunity to discover common ground with some fellow Southerners. That attitude will take you far with your visit to the Queen City.