Swingin Richards band that is. Last night David Jordan and I took in the tours, sounds and fun times at the NC Music Factory holiday party. A good time was had, friends we’re seen, and new ideas we’re hatched. In case you missed it, we missed you.

The factory, while seemingly out of the way, is smack on the west site of downtown Charlotte on the back side Elmwood Cemetary. Map and directions here.

Good luck to the NC Music Factory team. Their hard work is starting to pay off.

Here’s a back-at-cha to Creative Loafing for including OhMyCharlotte.com in their round up the Queen City’s onliners. Started around two years ago from the team that built INTV.com (Ryan Fields and myself), OMC was our un-funded take on OhMyNews.com for the area citizen journalism.

While the site is a bit dated, the content stays fresh in part due to the work of bloggers in the area that are hooked to the site via RSS. One thing we noticed when we started playing with stats, a heafty round of traffic on the site heads straight for our traffic cams page.

I’ve put together a venue map for this weekend’s events. Use Google Maps keywords “ConvergeSouth 2007 Venues“.

So Bruton Smith wants to build a drag strip. Fine. Just like every other business he can apply and pay for his development permits, and upon approval can get started.

I doubt seriously that the City of Concord wants to block the project.. but grading before permits, or even siting review seems like poor planning on Mr. Smiths part. It looks to me like he promised this thing out the NHRA, didn’t get his planning ducks in a row early enough, and just started hiring work teams in hopes of skirting formal civic planning.

In all this fuss over the speedway owners project I still have not seen on a map where the quarter mile is sited. Seems to me that that is the key to being a good neighbor, finding responsible placement for your noisy activities.

So where on this massive property is he trying to site? Surely not right next to a housing area on the fringes of his tract?

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