Bail Bondsmen in Raleigh are known for their clever marketing techniques, and Teddy Wright on Salisbury Street is no exception. Every week the muppet in the storefront window is doing something new. This week, he fell fast asleep while reading the book of Revelation in the Bible.

Raleigh’s Richard B. Haywood House

About a month ago we published an article on this blog about Raleigh’s “nail buildings”. It cited two adjoining downtown businesses, Poole’s Diner and Doug Van de Zande’s photography studio, as examples. The term ‘nail house’ or ‘nail building’ is used to describe businesses or residences whose owners refuse to allow their buildings to be demolished, even in the face of development all around them. (The phrase refers to a nail in wood that is difficult to remove.) That description made me think of the historic Richard B. Haywood house, located at the corner of Edenton and Blount Streets.

However, the encroaching development in this case was not a high-rise building or construction site, but a four-acre expanse of state government parking lots.
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About a week and a half ago I got my first live experience of alt/roots rock and alt country at Slim’s as Austin Collins & The Rainbirds (above) and Patty Hurst Shifter (below) took the stage to play some deep, rustic, and hard rockin’ grooves.

I had read about Patty Hurst Shifter and Austin Collins a few days before the show in the Independent, but didn’t know much else beyond that. Although I didn’t know what to expect, I experienced a very intense and memorable couple of hours. It began with a gradual and steady buildup with Collins’ set and led out with intense rock and roll fury with the final closing and subsequent solo guitar sets by Patty Hurst Shifter.

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