Brent's Blog

Times-News Scott Muthersbaugh snapped this photo of an “ice cream truck” in High Point.

Some Open and Shut cases

We started the Monday Open & Shut column in January 2006.

Since then, it’s become one of the most popular features in the newspaper. The column appears on the Region front in print on Mondays and posts at TheTimesNews.com Sunday night. Every Monday morning, I log on to the site to find that Open & Shut is always atop the most viewed stories list.

Open & Shut tracks news about local businesses, but it targets places to shop and eat. What’s new. What’s closed down. What’s moved. What’s under new ownership.

We think that’s definitely news readers can use, especially in a growing community like this one that is constantly seeing new shingles hung out.

After keeping up with the comings and goings in local business, I thought a period of five years would be a good time to look back at what has opened and closed since I’ve been writing the column.

We’ll call it the Open & Shut awards, or just a look at the landscape around here in the eyes of one shopper/eater.

Biggest openings:

It’s hard to overstate what a difference the building of the University Commons and Alamance Crossing shopping centers in west Burlington has made. The same thing will soon be said about the Tanger Outlets in Mebane.

Bringing national retailers like Target, Best Buy and Barnes & Noble to the county has affected shopping patterns throughout the area.

Other big happenings and trends showing up in the column over the years include the purchase of the Burlington mall by a local ownership group, the opening of bars in downtown Burlington and the rise of businesses that rent shop space to artists, antique dealers and the like.

The reopening of The Cutting Board was interesting. The northern transplants I know were excited to see a Dunkin Donuts kiosk open at the Hess station on Webb Avenue. This county got by without a single Starbucks for years and then, just as the stereotype dictates, there were five of them.

I was happy when Smithfield’s brought eastern-style barbecue to the county and when we got a Zaxby’s and a Moe’s. The addition of an Andy’s on Garden Road and The Mellow Mushroom on Huffman Mill Road were also welcome additions.

Saddest closings:

The recent end of A&M Grill in Mebane was disappointing. In business since the 1940s, A&M Grill was on most lists of the barbecue landmarks in North Carolina.

It’s only the most recent of many sad closings.

I miss the Company Shops newsstand and the Roasters Café, both in downtown Burlington, more than just about anything else.

Other closings that have stood out in the last few years have included Wright Brothers steakhouse and Carolina Barbecue and Seafood.

Beating the odds:

For years, I watched the restaurant space at the intersection of South Church Street and Chapel Hill Road open and close, open and close. I didn’t think that anything would be able to stick there, but the Burlington Diner has, since 2008.

Most ado about nothing:

For a place with nasty little oniony burgers, Krystal sure does have a loyal following.

A Krystal restaurant opened on Huffman Mill Road in Burlington for a short period, drawing people from all over the state including one of my best friends, who would drive from the Triangle just to eat there.

Then it was gone.

Most glaring omission:

There are a few places that haven’t come to Alamance County that should. I guess that Swedish furniture overlord Ikea and West Coast legend In-N-Out Burger are pipe dreams, but there are other places that need to be here. Hopefully if the economy ever improves, they will be.

Greensboro and Raleigh have Five Guys burger restaurants. There needs to be one here as well.

Cook Out is good and all, but Raleigh boys like me are partial to Char-Grill. There’s one in High Point, how about here? Like within walking distance of my desk.

Also, how can this county not have a Krispy Kreme store? Does that make any sense to anyone? We’re less than an hour from Winston-Salem.

I’ll look forward to writing the lead “Hot doughnuts now!” in the Open & Shut column one day.

City editor Brent Lancaster can be reached at blancaster@thetimesnews.com or 336-506-3040.

Can’t let your guard down for a second

It’s a call any grandparent fears.

A grandchild is in trouble. Big trouble. Will you help? Of course you will.

The world’s full of people looking to rob, steal and deceive for their own gain. Unfortunately, the ones who are really good at it know to prey on those with kind hearts, those who actually have a sense of right and wrong.

They hit them in the blind spot they have for their family. Elsie Hunter and her husband received one such call last Tuesday.

A man called their home on the Orange County side of Mebane. He told them that a grandson had been put in jail. He had been charged with driving while impaired and causing an accident.

The other driver, who was in a rental car, was from another country and was scheduled to leave the United States shortly. Money to pay for the damages had to be made available immediately.

They knew the name of a grandson and seemed to have some detailed information about him, Elsie Hunter told me.

His grandparents didn’t even know that their grandson drank, she said. The man told her that her grandson wanted it all kept quiet until he could get out of jail. He wanted to tell the rest of the family himself.

Elsie and her husband, both 75 years old, went to Western Union and wired $2,900. They paid $59 to do it.

The grandson, it turned out, was sick at home, not in jail. They were scammed.

It seems we get at least couple of scam calls a month. Folks who have been ripped off are so hurt, so angry and frustrated, that about the only positive thing they can think of to do is to try to warn others.

So we talk to them. We talk to police. We write stories.

But it still happens.

We’ve written before about the grandchild in danger scam. It’s happened to people in Alamance County before.

Greensboro police are warning about the same type of scam this week. They offered these tips.

Make sure older relatives are aware of this scam.

Tell grandparents to check with family members before sending any money.

Register your home phone and mobile phone in the Do Not Call list at donotcall.gov.

If you are called by a scammer, file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission at ftc.gov or call 877-382-4357.

I’m not sure, with all the bad news and the talk about this country going down the tubes these days, whether the balance has been tipped away from those who would help their neighbor to those who would harm him. I hope that it hasn’t.

I do know that those who would take any measure to enrich themselves at the expense of others, who steal without thought or regret are out there.

And they’re calling someone’s grandparents right now.

City editor Brent Lancaster can be reached at blancaster@thetimesnews.com or 336-506-3040.

Metro magazine in Raleigh has a sit-down with Alamance County’s Meg Scott Phipps.
I’m too deep in Friday copy to read it now, but apparently in the issue she says that federal prosecutors threatened to seek an indictment against her father, the late Bob Scott of Hawfields, if she didn’t cooperate.
A former governor of North Carolina, Scott lived in the Hawfields community between Mebane and Haw River.

Phipps served as North Carolina’s secretary of agriculture. She pleaded guilty in 2003 to federal charges including taking illegal campaign contributions and did a prison sentence in West Virginia.

Here’s the link to the Metro story

I received a phone call from the past today. A phone call from a curious creature indeed.
This creature is a dedicated newspaper reader, God bless him. He loves news just as I do.
But he needs to get online.
He called to complain that a comment by former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan on Sunday was not highlighted in any of the print newspapers he read on Monday.
Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” if the U.S. might one day default on its massive debt, Greenspan emphatic.
He said, and I’m paraphrasing, that the United States can pay off its current debt. All the country has to do is print more money.
I had seen the headline somewhere today, probably on The Drudge Report. The caller doesn’t read news on the Internet, and since it wasn’t in print today that no one is discussing it.
A visit to Google News shows no less than 649 online news stories about Greenspan’s comments.
It’s a shame to think that someone could have access to so much information and not use it.
Look, I love print newspapers as much as anyone. But I also love news much more than I have any certain allegiance to how it’s delivered. If you

Another rite of parenthood

The time has come.

I can’t put it off any longer.

There’s no turning back.

We’re going to buy a minivan.

We have two children, you see. Minivans are perfect for hauling children, and all their accompanying provisions, around. Need to haul their friends, too? Put them in the back and go.

Our youngest does not ride well. Go on a long trip with her crying in the back seat and you’ll likely never get there. In a car, all you can do to deal with her is stop. In a van, one parent can ride in the back and handle child issues while the Lancaster express just keeps on rolling.

I think we’ll buy a Honda. We’d like to have a Toyota, but they are a bit expensive. I drive a Honda that has racked up 250,000 miles, so I feel good about their reliability.

Minivans are ubiquitous among parents these days. My son and I decided to count them in the parking lot of his preschool Wednesday morning and we ran out of fingers. And toes.

Our son is excited. We went to the car lot on Saturday to look at vans and he’s been asking me every day since if we are going to buy one today.

My wife is excited. Despite the fact that she’s only driven one of these things once or twice, she’s fully on board. This is her idea, really. She wants one, so she can have it. It means that I can have her car, which has a sunroof. Also, it doesn’t have 250,000 miles on it.

She was talking about our plans on the phone this week with her middle brother, who exhibits more enthusiasm about the minivan he drives than any other male I know. It makes me worry about him a little bit.

He’s excited.

I guess I’m excited.

I’ve always thought of myself as a little too cool to be seen in a minivan. Sure, I can see 40 over the horizon, but I still hang on tightly to the vestiges of my 20s.

I can’t help but think of Clark Griswold, Chevy Chase’s character in the “National Lampoon’s Vacation” movies, whenever I think of minivans. Sure, Clark drove a station wagon, the minivan of my youth, but what he represented was much more complex. The clueless father and husband.

Here’s when you know you’re really a father: You’re behind the wheel of a family-oriented vehicle (be it minivan or station wagon) stuck in the middle of cruising traffic in Myrtle Beach, S.C. There’s probably one of those shells full of luggage on the roof rack of your vehicle. You wish these noisy kids would get out of your way so you can get this family to the restaurant and fed in time for you to go back to the room and watch the Braves game.

Suddenly, instead of being the preteen slumped down and hiding your face in the back seat, you’re the dad.

At least that’s what I thought. I used to think that being a parent turned you into something different. It doesn’t. I’ve realized that being a parent doesn’t mean you have to change who you are.

So no, I will not wear black socks and sandals with shorts.

I may drive around in a minivan, but I will still be Brent.

Not Clark Griswold.

City editor Brent Lancaster can be reached at blancaster@thetimesnews.com or 336-506-3040. Read his blog at brentsblog.freedomblogging.com.

All the news that fits, and some that doesn’t

There was some complaining and head scratching in our newsroom this week over one of the daily Associated Press news digests.

The top story on the digest that day, ostensibly the most important thing happening on Planet Earth, was a report on former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s admission that he had fathered a child with one of his employees. More important than the flooded Mississippi. More important than the economy. More important than the three Middle East wars this country is involved in.

Schwarzenegger is no longer the governor of California. Though the admission calls into question his character, the only real consequence is that it busted up his marriage to Maria Shriver.

Welcome to the new media world.

Hey, it’s an interesting story. But it’s not important. It’s indicative, though, of the way in which news has changed and how no news organization in this country, no matter how seemingly important and serious, hasn’t changed because of it.

Americans want fun, salacious stories. They want entertainment and lifestyle stories. They want their news blended with their entertainment (see “The Daily Show,” the very epicenter of this shift).

Americans are busy. We are easily bored. You have to positively hammer us on the head over a problem before we are convinced that it is a problem.

This is dangerous in some ways, but who am I to tell people what they should want? We need to let people know about taxes, annexation, the courts and public safety. Shame on us if we can’t do it in a way that captures our audience’s attention.

I’ve only worked in the news business since 1998, but I’ve seen it change unbelievably in that amount of time. Here are some thoughts on what’s good, and bad, about these changes.

The good …

Choice. This is the single best thing that has happened. You no longer have to rely on what your local newspaper and television stations say. That is essential.

Search for a big story on Google News and you can see how 100 different media organizations covered it. Think there’s a slant to how news is presented? Now you can see it for yourself.

Some wags contend that all this choice allows media consumers to only hear from media that fits their point of view. I think that’s a condescending point of view. People can decide for themselves.

Accessibility. Another great thing. You can be alerted to important news no matter where you are, on a camping trip or in your bathroom.

Competitiveness. There’s no longer a monopoly on news gathering and dissemination. If you’re biased or just bad at what you’re doing, someone else is going to take your audience.

Citizen journalism. I despise that phrase, but it’s valuable to let those who are on the scene submit content.

Social media. Hear from important people exactly what they think, with no filtering.

The bad …

Anonymity. Get mad at the Times-News, and you can call us. You can come to 707 S. Main St. in Burlington, North Carolina during regular office hours and talk to someone about it.

Try that with a blogger acting under a made-up name.

The 24-hour news cycle. It’s very hard to keep up with all this stuff. Important stories can barely hold on to people’s attention for 12 hours.

Accuracy. The editing and fact-checking system employed by newspapers like ours is imperfect. At least there is a system.

Free content. There are a lot of smart, talented people in this business who do great work. Their work seemingly has no value anymore.

Social media. Hear from professional athletes and celebrities exactly what they think, with no filtering.

City editor Brent Lancaster can be reached at blancaster@thetimesnews.com or 336-506-3040. Read his blog at brentsblog.freedomblogging.com.

- Reddit list of web sites you need to know about.
- A ‘rail zeppelin?’ That’s right. A rail zeppelin.
- Jack Daniels will produce Tennessee honey whiskey.
- The Fifth Season of “Mad Men” will be delayed.

I’m writing a story on how to figure out how to watch your team in the NCAA Tournament and found this on the FAQ section of WFMY’s site. I thought it was funny.

Why do you show color episodes of “The Andy Griffith Show”?
The only way to purchase “The Andy Griffith Show” is to buy all 249 episodes of which only 159 are in black and white, 90 are in color. With that purchase the station receives a specified number of runs for each program in the library equally. If we just ran black and white programs, we would run out of episodes to air before the agreement concluded. Don’t be surprised, many viewers watch the color episodes even though the favorites are the black and white ones.

- Here’s a lot of information on crude oil.
- Daylight Savings Time is only four days away!
- Do the Saudis have what they say they have?
- Las Vegas East.
- The 10 most popular things to give up for Lent. I’m doing sweets.
- A review of the new Tina Brown edited Newsweek.
- Can the recovery handle higher oil prices?