Charlotte: A Best Bets Retrospective

I am not a Charlottean.

But in my youth, I lived near Charlotte, which was to a youngster Metropolis itself, Gotham extraordinaire. It was where smiling people on local TV news could be spotted shopping for scarves (hello, Barbara Stutts!). It was where enormous shopping malls laid out a bounty more impressive than a gas station candy aisle or a mountain trading post. It was an escape from small towns and a source of always-fascinating activity that kids like me dreamt of – anticipated before we went, yearned for after we returned.

Charlotte in those years was not yet the banking and corporate powerhouse it is today, marked by jutting skyscrapers, professional sports, circuitous highways, and escalating real estate. At that time, the city had a manageable familiarity. Sure, the slow rise of buildings as we drove in from forested outskirts gave it the appearance of an Emerald City, but you knew that, for all its impressiveness, once inside its bounds, you were headed for only a few chosen places. These were our Charlotte.

1) My earliest recollection of the city is built around The Open Kitchen, a restaurant that's been around since 1952. Today, its American-Italian fare seems far distant from authentic cuisine, but its oft-dreamt-of veal parmigiana was the distinct goal of much-planned road trips. Lines at the door were invariably long, and the place was dark and otherworldly, its wax-ridden chianti bottles and warren of rooms as mysterious as you'd want in a special-occasion restaurant. It also boasted a small puppet sitting astride a bicycle who would pedal along a tightrope wire stretched high across the dining room. His death-defying actions mesmerized us endlessly, making the wait for thick slabs of veal buried beneath brown-bubbly cheese somehow bearable.

2) Excursions to The Open Kitchen were frequently paired with visits to the once-glorious Eastland Mall, which had two magical features that we considered the height of civility: an indoor ice-skating rink, and escalators. Moving steps provoked enough awe-inspired questions about the latter to drive our parents to distraction, and the chance to glide across a sheet of ice on the former, beneath the admiring gaze of patrons on three levels, was a dream of immortality itself. Certainly, school clothes were the usual reason for a trip to Eastland, but even the allure of Ivey's and Belk (it had parquet floors!) held not a candle to the technological glories of an urban mall.

3) Also a mainstay was the Coliseum – although not the late-come debacle built for the NBA Hornets and then demolished when the NBA Bobcats entered the picture. No, this was the Coliseum that's now called Cricket Arena, the Independence Boulevard venue that was the site of widely attended concerts, circuses, and shows. Albeit now eclipsed by more recent additions to the scene, the original Coliseum holds a special place in the hearts of many residents and long-ago visitors. From Elvis Presley to Neil Diamond, it hosted a wealth of legendary performers and was a great source of pride for the Queen City when Charlotte was coming into its own.

These three old-school institutions were the stuff of Charlotte's fame in ages past, and they definitely fall into my own 10Best, my personal Best Bets – at least colored, as they are, by past memories. Other favorites from NC's largest city – some are still around, some have faded away – include:

4) Bob Inman – onetime anchor of CBS affiliate WBTV, Channel 3. Bob gave up his news desk to focus full-time on a writing career and has seen success as a novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. Locals are proud of his literary prominence but can't get over his onscreen absence, missing his honesty, good-natured spirit, and real connection with viewers.