6 minute read
Our Town
THE USUAL OUR
From left: Jonathan Melton, Wes Scercy, Max Fitch, Britt Ellis, Richard Flenory, Will Brackett, and Paul Cash.
Advertisement
“You go fr om having teammates to having fr iends and then you go fr om having
fr iends to having family.” –Richard Flenory, community outreach director of Stonewall Sports League and avid kickball player
SPRING CONJURES A FRIENDLY GAME OF KICKBALL FOR Richard Flenory and his fellow Stonewall Sports league participants. “You hear people, teammates calling out, screaming – the clapping, the cheering. Dogs. People hugging each other because they haven’t seen each other.” One of Flenory’s fi rst activities aft er moving to Raleigh in March 2014 was to attend the kickball game of a few fr iends. He was struck by the family-like atmosphere at fi rst. “Th en I found out it’s an LGBT league,” knew it was the right fi t, and signed up. “Th e league’s original intent was to give the LGBT community a safe environment to be athletic and play sports in,” he says, adding that all are welcome regardless of sexual orientation. “We have people of all sexualities, religions, and ethnicities.” Open-minded camaraderie is precisely what founder Jonathan Melton says he hoped to accomplish by starting the Raleigh recreational sports league in 2013 (inspired by his fr iends’ original chapter in DC). It started as a few teams playing weekly kickball games; today Stonewall encompasses more than 1,000 members on kickball, dodgeball, volleyball, bowling, and fl ag football teams. Weekly games end in a shared meal or happy hour, and teams also volunteer together at organizations like Habitat for Humanity or Note in the Pocket. “Th e diversity of our service projects refl ects the same diversity we have in our league,” says Flenory. Melton says the crowd favorite remains kickball, which opens registration this month and plays April - June. “We call kickball our gateway sport. It’s something most people are familiar with fr om when they were a kid. It’s not intimidating. It’s a welcoming environment.” –J.A.
–Jeff Hastings, co-owner of Burke Brothers Hardware
NEAR THE STATE FAIRGROUNDS ON HILLSBOROUGH Street, Burke Brothers Hardware stands out for its neon “established in 1936” sign and hammer door pulls. “There’s only a handful of this type of store left in North Carolina,” says co-owner Jeff Hastings. As its neon sign attests, the store opened more than eighty years ago, first as a food market and, since the ’50s, as the hardware store it is today. Paul Burke started the operation with his brother Paul; over generations, sons, brothers-in-law, and, just last year, a trusted friend (but non-family-member) became involved. Today, Paul Burke’s son Henry Burke, son-in-law Jim Garriss, and hardware professional Jeff Hastings run the business. “A hardware store is kind of like your family physician,” Garriss says. “The family physician is a general practitioner for whatever ails you. We’re the practitioner for your home. You come in with a problem, we try to get you a cure.” Among packed rows of screws, nails, tape, and tools is an old-school hardware store touch: a popcorn machine. On Wednesdays and Saturdays, fresh popcorn is free for the taking. “On the occasional day the machine is down, you see people’s faces just drop,” Garriss says with a chuckle. “They know when it’s popcorn day and they look forward to it. That’s what it’s about: to build relationships and to build memories.” “It’s just another personal element,” Hastings says. “We hope people think of us as an extension of their home, as their hardware home. Our goal is to get you everything you need. When you leave here, you shouldn’t have to make any extra trips.” –J.A.
OUR Town GAME PLAN
–Jason Botts, coordinator of the Wake County Junior Master Gardeners
IT’S 6:30 P.M. ON A THURSDAY EVENING AT JC RAULSTON Arboretum. Elementary school students are perfecting their botanical sketches; middle schoolers are learning which seeds might grow best in the Southeast this spring; and high schoolers are gathered in a yurt on the back of the property, blending up pesto and talking vegetable gardens. They’re all here for the monthly Junior Master Gardeners gathering, a Wake County 4-H program for ages 4 - 18. “Each of the leaders has designed their program around their target group – high schoolers love to eat – but it’s always tied back to horticulture,” says Jason Botts, the overall coordinator. Master Gardeners are adult graduates of a fairly extensive garden science certification program that emphasizes volunteering; this junior version is much less intensive. Any interested child is welcome to sign up online, and there’s a nominal voluntary donation. In adolescence, Botts says, there are no brown or green thumbs, only curious minds. “Kids love to dig in the dirt. We’re helping them learn about it.” This is the first year the fifty-something JMGs have met at the arboretum (they were previously in the Wake County Cooperative Extension office) and the new venue has inspired them all. “Being here is like we’ve died and gone to heaven, because we’re surrounded by everything at work. The kids have really been having fun with it. It’s awesome. The sky’s the limit.” Or, rather, the ground. –J.A.
“I don’t look at it as an additional revenue stream as much as I look at it as an engaging tool for the community. That’s just as important.” –Andrew Cash, owner, Jubala Coffee
JUBALA COFFEE OWNER ANDREW CASH HAD A PIE-IN-THEsky dream for an extension of his coffee shop: “If you could cut a piece of our bar, put it on wheels, and move it out, you could get the same coffee experience from this cart as you can in the shop.” But in the busy early days of 2011, that dream took a back seat to building his new business. The stars aligned later that year when Jubala won a contest sponsored by a then-brand-new mobile credit card processing company, Square: “It was $10,000 to go toward our business.” Cash knew what that money could do. He worked with friend and architect Matt Griffith at In Situ Studio to design a mobile coffee cart that left no amenity behind: a state-of-theart custom-made espresso machine from Seattle atop a handmade steel countertop and a frame by Arrowhead studio, and cabinets by Dopko Cabinetry. The final product weighs 2,000 pounds, scoots around on wheels, and lives in a special enclosed trailer in Cash’s garage. Jubala uses it for events from nonprofit benefits to weddings. Now, Jubala – which opened a second location on Hillsborough Street in 2016 – can not only go on the road, it can give the stores’ baristas a chance to focus on what they do best, Cash says. Operations director Kevin Stone, often on tap for the cart (and pictured above), can vouch for that. “In the shop, there’s so much going on – not only do you serve customers but you restock fridges, clean. With the cart, everything’s already set up and ready to go. You just keep your space clean and other than that, your entire job is to engage everybody that comes up. –J.A.
