M I SPY
Looking for King-Sized Service in North Carolina’s ‘Queen City’ The gleaming southern city of Charlotte, N.C., is associated more with finance than with music. Even the “shag” style of rhythm-and-blues and dancing owes its origins to the beach culture of the Carolina coast and not to the region’s biggest metro area. Prosperity has swelled the area’s population to some 2.5 million people. Financial heavyweights continue the strong growth that began here in the 1980s, making the Charlotte area a hot market for both jobs and housing. Bank of America, LendingTree and Wyndham Capital are some of the household names that call North Carolina’s “Queen City” home. Charlotte boasts a gleaming business district called “Uptown” and a thriving sports, theater and music scene. For more daring music aficionados, several area venues have become destinations in their own right. Earning serious cred among southerners whose tastes veer to the edgy is the Milestone Club, which bills itself as a “bare bones” staple of the rock/punk/ underground rock scene. A tad more mainstream is Charlotte’s Fillmore Club, located just north of Uptown. It is modeled after the venerable San Francisco ballroom of the same name. But that’s enough from my notes on the agency’s Queen City intelligence briefing. Your trusty MI Spy’s assignment this month was to secure a beginner-level flute. The flute makes a good choice for a mystery shopper because middle-school, high-school and college marching bands are as ubiquitous as football in the south. And for beginners, the flute is a perennial favorite. Flutes also find their way into the music programs of well-endowed — and well-attended — orchestras and megachurches. In his search, MI Spy learned that Charlotte has one rather unusual retail establishment: an outlet store devoted entirely to the sale of flutes. By chance, this store, as well as the other three retailers covered here, were all in neighborhoods well south of Uptown. This prompts a cautionary note. While casual shopping in Charlotte can be confined to Uptown or to those neighborhoods served by the X-shaped Lynx light-rail system, you’ll need a car to traverse this sprawling metro. As with so many American cities, its size dwarfs the scope of its public transportation system. 36
The family-owned Sam Ash music chain was MI Spy’s first stop on this foray into the Charlotte ‘burbs, in part because of its proximity to uptown. It is roughly halfway between Interstate 277, the freeway that rings Charlotte’s inner business district and oldest neighborhoods, and I-285, the outer freeway. The store is in a well-traveled shopping district right off the Bill Lee Freeway (I-77). That and its mammoth selection makes it a must for parents shopping for any type of musical gear. Helping to navigate that big selection was a store manager who sadly was clearly suffering from a cold. Sniffles aside, his outline of the selection and the pros and cons of each model was both extensive and useful. “We sold a lot of flutes when school started but have slowed down,” he noted. He also explained that parents can score the best deals on rentals in late August and early September. Leases are also only available at the start of the school year. The store’s Jean Baptiste private-label line provides an economical alternative for virtually any beginner instrument, including flutes. At the time MI Spy visited, the store was offering a nice discount of 33 percent off list price on this line. Among these, the JBFL284 provides the beginner with an excellent balance of durability and ease of use. It offers a silver-plated body and drop-forged silver-plated keys. List prices typically begin in the $500 range, but the store usually offers a hefty discount.
Sam Ash 5533 Westpark Drive Charlotte, NC 704.522.9253
MAY 2019
