First Friday in Raleigh

Oh beautiful Friday.

The most anticipated day of the work week gets even better the first week of every month. That's because downtown Raleigh's cultural and artistic hot-spots are teeming with free food samples, local craft vendors, wine, beer and live music.



Organized by the Downtown Raleigh Alliance, First Friday is a fantastic opportunity for Triangle citizens and visitors to enjoy a self-guided tour of local art galleries, studios, museums and other alternative venues.

A walk around December's iteration of First Friday included: Crank Arm brew and local vendors inside HQ Raleigh (including great talks and pumpkin bread samples from Relay Foods), wine and beer while admiring new exhibits at CAM,  hot cocoa and local fashion at Raleigh Denim Curatory and great music with no cover (and $4 Foothills beer special) at The Pour House.

Keep up with featured events for the next First Friday, on January 2nd, and start the New Year celebrating all varieties of Raleigh art and culture!

Local One-Stop Holiday Shopping

With the gift-giving season heavily upon us, I've been brainstorming about the perfect somethings for each person on my holiday list. To me, nothing says "You're worth more than a gift card from the check-out line at Wal-Mart" better than merch from a local business.

Luckily for Triangle residents, there are PLENTY of fine independent establishments at which to do your holiday shopping. And three of those great places are located side by side by side on East Franklin Street in Raleigh.

Fabulous trifecta of local shops in Raleigh:
Wine Authorities, Edge of Urge and Lumina Clothing Co

Sampling pours at
Wine Authorities

Cheers to self-service

For the Foodie:

Shopping for the tastebuds of that special someone? Wine Authorities has you covered. They focus on stocking estate grown wines from different regions around the world (estate: meaning a family-owned winery that grows all the grapes that go into the final product).

Inspiration from the Capital City

The more time I spend in Raleigh, the more I'm inspired by the stuff going on in the Capital city.

The recent influx of young entrepreneurs, artistic expression, and community-focused development in the past few years is sprouting a seemingly endless supply of Raleigh spots worth exploring.

Last week, I was fortunate enough to take an entire day perusing the city (accompanied by an extremely patient girlfriend), and got to check off a few things that had been on my Raleigh to-do list for quite a while.

Here's how the day unfolded:

Tom Shields's Forest of Chairs brings

wooden furniture back to their natural habitat

First stop was the North Carolina Art Museum's sprawling outdoor art walk: Art in the Park. 

NCMA commissions artists to create pieces that are interlaced with the natural surroundings, stretching across 30 acres of land between Blue Ridge Road, Wade Ave and 440. 

Varying in size, scale and subject matter, the Art Park exhibits sparked some great ideas and conversation, while we tried to decipher the artist's message about society and our current role interacting with nature. There were also some cool old chairs hanging out in trees.

We wandered through the Art Park trails, back up towards the NCMA main buildings, and came across the Rodin Sculpture Garden.