CONTEMPORARY EXPLORER

  There are buildings that create aw, cause you to pause, standing as a monument to the architect. Few parking garages engender the same. A developer once cautioned, “Never pay an architect until he finishes the garage.” They are the last thing the architect wants to do, no more than a necessity. If not done well, construction can leave rough edges and marks that remain scars for years. Over time though they take on their own artful way. Such a place is South Park Mall’s parking garage. A giant sprawling place left largely empty the majority of the year, except holidays. Even on quiet days finding your way into and out of the place is a puzzle.  In the sixties, cities seemed to fall in love with giant urban garages. Places they envisioned would make parking your car easy and keep downtown shopping attractive. Often though, they became dark holes in the urban fabric, especially as shopping trends changed. It’s easy to spin a crime story or worse in a dark parking garage. You pa...

  Trade Street cuts across Tryon at Charlottes center. A trading post originally marked the spot. People would travel from both sides of Tryon to do business there. Trade Street's past is Long gone, but change still defines it. The ever change of culture, building and business. Here you can find everything from the Mighty Midget grocery to the building once housing the Mint. One thing you always find on Trade Street is color and surprises around every turn. It still has many stories to tell....

  The Last Showgirl starring Palmela Anderson and Jamie Lee Curtis directed by Gia Coppola is a deep dive into ordinary life. Made even more impactful by Las Vegas. It’s a story all at once of the perils of reaching for glitz and glory, how time and changes can trap you. How getting older corners you. How thinking it will always go on can leave you short of planning for the future until it’s too late. How you can never really escape yourself. It lays bare the imperfectness of relationships. It touches on the times of beauty in part of our careers. The reaching to try to keep it alive. All this ground down into the true lives of ordinary people by the backdrop of Vegas. A city where change is always happening. The movie is not shot from the glitz of casinos but instead from backrooms of shows and parking lots with Vegas only seemingly a distant vision. A place you can’t touch completely or count on. So much of life can be like that, but above it all the movie showed how dreams an...