Hello, folks! As you all may know, May 1 was First Friday, which meant that there was all kinds of biking, rollerblading, drinking and socializing, all in the name of Art! Several galleries were new to us, at least in the sense of us biking to them. Pictured above is the group at Flanders Seaboard. We had 90 riders in the photo, and at least 100 overall for the second month in a row! Way to go, Raleigh bikers!

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Although the heyday of Raleigh’s City Market had been in decline for years before I snapped this photo on a slow day in the mid-1970s, it continued to serve downtown Raleigh as an open air produce venue for the remainder of that decade. Read more »

Being a fan of local history, things that take place after nightfall, and good mysteries, I was incredibly intrigued by a story I read last year in the N&O. In it, Josh Shaffer (my favorite local journalist), tells the tale of a person or persons who for the last 20 years have decorated the tombstone of a rebel soldier buried in the Confederate Cemetery of Oakwood:

Each April, a stranger creeps into Oakwood Cemetery and drapes a single gravestone with a black sash. He lights a candle in tribute to a doomed Confederate hanged for firing a last-ditch shot at Raleigh’s Yankee occupiers. … After 20 years, the soldier’s secret admirer remains a small-time legend among history buffs who like to guess at his identity. The guessing begins anew each April 13, the death date of the hotheaded Texan with no known first name.

— Josh Shaffer

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