Queen City's Punk Underbelly

Tuesday, October 1, 2024

5:18 p.m.

Corner of Commonwealth and Thomas Avenue, Charlotte, North Carolina

By the layers of punk band placards and posters on the light poles around here, you wouldn't think this is Charlotte. But the fact that you sat in traffic to get here—interstate or not—reminds you that you're in Queen City. Outside of this corner, Charlotte is quite a fancy place, with enough luxury SUVs, boutique shops, and high-end grocery stores to make the collar on my Walmart denim shirt stand up.

Frankly, I've yet to find a part of Charlotte where the weeds are long overgrown in the cracks of a urine-stained parking lot—the places where I can afford to live. Nevertheless, I've stumbled upon some cheapness without traffic congestion in a corner of Plaza Midwood.

There's a lot here—boutique shops, noodle bars, market delis, coffee shops, a small music venue, and even an African art gallery. Famished from crawling along northbound I-77 at rush hour, my associate and I saw a menu plastered outside a non-descript concrete block building and had a look.

The prices at "Dish" appeared reasonable, nothing over the $20 mark. The fare appeared reasonable as well, with burgers, sandwiches, and some interesting takes on southern cuisine. But through a myriad of gravy-covered entrees and Cajun-seasoned goodness was our lodestar to comfort: deviled eggs.

Inside, Dish is no-frills, and I don't mean some artfully-appointed minimalist haven. You can tell that much of the furniture and plates on the wall are from the Goodwill down the street. It screams malaise, but in an ironically unironic way—the kind of stuff that makes me feel at ease. The eggs come two ways—a spicy version and then one for WASPs at cookouts. To be honest, they were nothing to write home about, but the spicy one gets a B- for effort. The real kicker was the $1 draft PBRs. Even though I don't drink anymore, I'll always return to a place with a sense of class and cultural awareness like that.

Around the corner, my associate and I took a short stroll down the alley beside The Common Market. Just after the video of wall art ended, a man approached my associate to ask if we were the origin point of the smell of the Devil's Lettuce around us. Simultaneously, a man wearing a purple skirt carrying a guitar walked by—all of which I failed to capture on camera.

Little did we know this fun bunch was the primary crowd of the Common Market. Apparently, a few of these are scattered throughout the city, and it's nice to see folks here who didn't arrive in a late-model luxury car, especially not the man in the skirt who was just then getting up to the microphone with his guitar to perform on the patio.

Inside, it's hard to call this place eccentric. Some may point to the cooler door dedicated to inexpensive selections called "lawnmower beer," but all of this screams honesty to me—something lacking in theis curated experience of a country. Who drinks an IPA while riding a John Deere anyway?

Apart from some folks trying hard to look like they're not trying hard, things are fun in here. A duck machine, massive rice crispy treats, stickers from places nationwide, musical entertainment, and a bathroom where individuals of any gender—conforming or not—can experience equitable claustrophobia.

Across the street at Moxie Mercantile—a place where there aren't as many mushroom-themed goods as you may think—there was the only pencil sharpener I've seen since I was in college marking circles on a Scantron sheet.

It's a nicely weathered, post-war, Rockford-built APSCO, with hand-cranked twin-milling cutters. It automatically stops sharpening once the pencil lead is a geometrically perfect point. Some say it self-lubricates with the powdered graphite taken off the pencil, and in its day, was revolutionary for its ability to hone six types of writing utensils of varying widths. I'm more partial to the Dexter model from the interwar period with its polished nickel finish, but that's beside the point.

What is the point of this anyway?

Hmm…

Well, it's the free entertainment that often manifests. Bespoke stickers on street signs. Watching Zoomers make TikToks at Milkbread. Indie bands with funny names. A man wearing a purple tutu signing Bob Dylan. The look on your sister's face when the waiter announces $1 PBR on draft. Celebrations of nostalgia, whether people watching with a lawnmower beer or dancing awkwardly to 90s one-hits wonders.

It's a small swath of the worn and genuine in a sea of glass-covered monuments to modern architecture—like the Diamond Restaurant's sightly defunct sign in front of the mixed-use high-rise being built behind it to house more of the curated experience many are encouraged to have.