A Visit to Big Lick: Old stomping ground.

As a teenager in Jr. high School, I used to hang out and work in the various shops, restaurants, live theatre and museums in downtown Roanoke. Market Square was my hallowed haunting ground. Jody used to say that Roanoke was like a movie set. I always have a rush of mixed feelings whenever I come back to these parts.



When I first met Chris Crooke, he was working at 309 First Street as a dishwasher. After work, he and I would sit in the parking lot just across the street and hang out and talk for hours. Now there is a new building in its spot.

Just up the street, you can see the building which housed the former Mill Mountain Theatre dormitories. On the second floor in the back was the first place I lived when I moved out of my house when I was 14 years old.


Farmers market stalls.



Mill Mountain Theatre scene shop entrance. The original scene shop was just in the back of Center in the Square, just off to stage right. My friend Reed and I credit Bob Sims for teaching us the base of everything we know about building and welding. I spent many a late nights working over there doing set construction.



I've always liked the Agnew Seed Building. I never understood how they were able to stay in business considering that you never really see anyone patronizing the place and aside from the $0.10 seed packages, not much in there costs more than $20 bucks. It was nice to see it still there though.

Deco.

For months now, my father has been telling me about the former Grand Piano Building in Downtown Roanoke. Apparantly when the city was doing some rennovations to revamp the old empty warehouse into apartments, they discovered under the decades old layer of red bricks, this incredible Art Deco facade. Amazing that the orignal windows were all there too which had been covered both inside and out.

The Art Museum of Western Virginia - New Building Project.

With a $40 million budget that I believe has already been pushed to closer to $60 million, I was surprised to see such a significant building squeezed into the space of the old Hunter Viaduct. Several of my friends who still live in the area were referring to the building as "an ugly monstrosity," though being a New Yorker, I found that I quite like the building. It seems though that perhaps for a building this fantastic, it might be better suited if it were to have been placed out in an open area. Perhaps even more appreciated if it the site could include some grass and landscaping, rather than forced amongst the Historic Deco downtown buildings. But I guess that's what all the controversary has been about.

The Hot Dog King.

This is the exact same guy who used to sell me my hot dogs when I was a little kid. I can't believe he is still there.



With all the new Building Development going on in downtown Roanoke, my father was telling me that there was some debate on if they were going to let The Weiner Stand stay in the same location. When I was a little kid, the style of this place was more 50s "drugstore diner style" that served Nehi Grape Sodas in glass bottles plus Two Hot Dogs for $0.75. They revamped the place after the big flood of '85.


Although my father has been a vegetarian for years, even he couldn't resist sharing a couple of Weiner Stand Chili Dogs with me.

A new Patrick Henry.

Of all the many changes I witnessed in my short four day weekend, the one I was most taken aback by was the fact that they had torn down my old High School. Post 9/11 and Post Columbine, Roanoke City decided to do away with the spread out campus style layout and house all the classrooms in one gigantic building instead.

Since Victory Stadium, the main sports arena used by all the city and county schools for sporting events was torn down recently as well, the city funded individual football fields and stadiums for each local area High School.

End of an era.

Boxey.

Whenever I would come back into town, this was always my first stop. If Eddie wasn't already there tinkering around under some hood or chasis, Walter could always tell me where to find him.

This visit, when I walked into the garage, Walter looked up at me and immediately stuck out his hand to shake mine and said, "Well hey lady. Nice to see you. It's been many, many moons." Even though Eddie's not around any longer, it sure was good to see ole' Walter.

Well below the Mason-Dixon line, firearms and all.

Vintage.

Skateboarders: The Next Generation.

When I was in Jr. High and High School, I used to always accompany my skater friends, Eddie Barger and Pro-Skater Ben Mullen (formerly of Powell Peralta) on many of their skateboarding adventures. Most nights this usually consisted of meeting them over by the tennis courts next to River's Edge Park, behind the big storage warehouse off Franklin Road and watching them do tricks all night. As the night wore on, usually someone would get a wild hair to venture up to the top of Mill Mountain and do something crazy like skateboard down the Parkway in the darkness of the night.

Now that several of my nephews are of the ages of 13-15, they were impressed with my knowldege of skateboarding terminology and lingo. I think I won definite cool points by also showing them my friend's Framework skateboarding DVD that came out a couple of years ago. After watching the movie, they told me they felt inspired and wanted to go down to the Wasena Skate Park. I remember years back hearing they had put one in in Roanoke, but had never made it down there to check it out in my more recent visits.

When I was driving my nephews to pick up some food after leaving the park, they all asked me if I could score them a Framework tee-shirt with Ben Mullen's autograph. I told them that I'd see what I could wrestle up.


Justin doing an "Ollie."


Isaiah going for a "50-50".


Justin pulling off a "50-50".


My 6'3" father showing Isaiah, my 13 year old nephew, who is still the tallest.