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(11/02/09 5:18am)
Homecoming will get a makeover this year with the return of an old tradition: the Homecoming parade.“Carolina has tons of school spirit, and now we can have this event to get us excited for this important football game against the Blue Devils,” Student Body President Jasmin Jones said.Jones thought to bring back the Homecoming parade and directed efforts to organize its return.“It’s really something Jasmin wanted to bring back to the Carolina community,” senior and Homecoming director Courtney Brown said.Brown said she skimmed records and thinks the last homecoming parade was in 1993. The event stopped due to low turnout.“We are going to move mountains to get people out there,” Jones said.The parade will start at 11 a.m. Saturday on East Cameron Avenue, roll through campus and finish on Raleigh Street. The route will be closed to traffic during the parade, but organizers do not expect issues from people coming for the game.“There is going to be a lot of walking and cars,” Jones said.About 70 student groups will be represented in the parade, most using cars rather than floats to save money, she said. Carolina Fever is the last group in the parade and the only one with a float.“We wanted to end with a bang,” Jones said. “Carolina Fever represents what this parade is all about.”Other student groups represented will include the Heelraisers, student government and the UNC Marching Tar Heels, which will be performing throughout the event.Jones said parade groups are not allowed to throw candy for safety reasons, but observers can expect lots of waving, chanting and celebratory hollering.A number of pregame events will be held next week, including a carnival on Hooker Fields.The Homecoming parade’s return comes at a cost of about $400, half of which will go to cleaning Franklin Street after the parade Jones said.Department of Public Safety officers already scheduled to work the football game will be present, and the University will pay overtime costs for Chapel Hill Police support.Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.
(10/28/09 4:20am)
On a recent 1360 WCHL newscast, correspondent Babe the Pig offered her thoughts on chocolate-covered bacon at the N.C. State Fair.Babe the Pig was in fact local comedian Molly Buckley. She, along with the rest of Carrboro’s Dirty South Improv Comedy Theater, has been satirizing the news daily on WCHL since May.Their segment, called DSI Witness News, is written and performed by members of the theater.Zach Ward, executive producer and artistic director of the improvisation theater, and Kit FitzSimons, theater manager, were responsible for starting and organizing DSI Witness News.“People get shocked by things because we’re so used to having a normal day-to-day nonpolitical existence,” FitzSimons said. “Putting it in comedy moves things to where someone can deal with the issue and move forward from it.”The theater has done satirical news skits since 2006, but the partnership with WCHL started in May, FitzSimons said.“Our interest is in more local comedy, immediately connecting to our audience,” he said. “With WCHL’s hyper-local content, we fit right in with what they do.”In September, they reported former Chapel Hill Town Council member Bill Strom resigned and moved from Chapel Hill after becoming frustrated with downtown 20 mph speed limits, the color Carolina blue and long lines at Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen.This year’s mayoral candidates have been a popular target for the comedians, including Matt Czajkowski, whose campaign had raised more than $23,000 as of mid-October.Augustus Cho and Mark Kleinschmidt are also running.In a skit earlier this month, Chapel Hill High School junior Pat Czajkowski outspends his opponents in the race for student body president and responds to accusations of trying to buy supporters’ friendship.“I just spend money so people will like me more,” the fictional Czajkowski said.Comedians also called on former mayoral candidate Kevin Wolff to resume his campaign in order to provide them with skit material.“The plan all along was to add some humor and laughter to the community,” said Zina Almers, WCHL president and general manager.Every week a team of 10 to 12 theater members meet to search the news for material and present ideas gathered throughout the week, FitzSimons said. He and Ward write final scripts, perform a live episode Monday and then record the rest of the week’s material with theater members.“Our character pieces often take a playful poke at local celebrities, but no one has been insulted by it,” FitzSimons said.
(10/16/09 3:38am)
Local realtors took a two-day break from competing for customers to paint walls, remodel cabinets and cut down trees.The Greater Chapel Hill Association of Realtors remodeled the home of Kaye Martinez, an assistant librarian of 23 years at Culbreth Middle School in Carrboro.“It’s fun to work on the home and be a part of this group,” said Jim Bulbrook, a mortgage specialist at Carolina Home Mortgage. “We all work together and help each other out.”During the third annual Fix-A-Home event, which began Wednesday and ended Thursday, the Association of Realtors worked alongside interior decorators, contractors and mortgage specialists. Martinez lives at 423 S. Greensboro St. with her husband and son.“I’ve been here all my life,” she said. “My dad built this place with his own hands in 1948 when he got back from the war.”The association teamed up with Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools to find an educator whose house needed remodeling, said Tom Wiltberger, an association member and a Realtor with Terra Nova Global Properties.“We wanted to give back to someone in the community who helps educate our children,” said interior decorator Laura Koshel of Interiors by Decorating Den.The association received 30 applications, Wiltberger said. Martinez was chosen because her house needed the most work and because she had worked with the school for a long time.Martinez said she has made some improvements to her house during the years, but the process has not kept up with the rate of decay.“All the wood my dad used to build this house with, he scavenged from the old ammunition plant that was in Carrboro, where my mom had worked during the war,” she said.The association is remodeling the kitchen and bathroom, changing the doors and working on the front porch, Wiltberger said. Volunteers also resurfaced the driveway and cut down two trees that were in danger of falling on the house.“That driveway was always a bit of a wagon trail,” Martinez said.The association is also replacing her refrigerator, TV and washing machine.“I’d been using a pair of pliers to get the old one started for a while now, and it leaked,” Martinez said of her washing machine.Local businesses donated all of the materials and appliances, said Pat Neagle, chairwoman of the association’s community service committee. Fix-A-Home projects have had increased participation each year, she said.“It takes all year to plan these Fix-A-Home projects,” Neagle said. “But it’s going off nicely.”Volunteers said they are prepared to return to their typically competitive business relationships come Friday.“When you get us out of this house and into business, we fight like dogs,” said Jay Parker, a partner and broker-in-charge at Weaver Street Realty.Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.
(10/12/09 5:13am)
William Thorpe Jr. has spent his life watching other people act.He’s seen his father, the late councilman Bill Thorpe Sr., serve on the Chapel Hill Town Council and direct efforts to rename Airport Road in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.He’s worked on political campaigns, figuring out how to best show another’s message.But Thorpe now feels it’s time to share his own.After his father, an activist who served several terms on the council, died last fall, Thorpe Jr. decided he could fill the void.“My dad was a huge influence on what I did and how I thought,” Thorpe said. “I want to strive for a better world like he did.”Thorpe is working on putting fruit kiosks in Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools to promote healthy eating. He also named a town internship program after his father.The only other time Thorpe remembers overcoming his quiet personality is his term as the first black student body president at Chapel Hill High School, he said.“My friends said I couldn’t do it,” he said, “I wanted to prove them wrong.” During his tenure as class president, Thorpe focused on two issues: the lack of a black history class and the absence of black athletic coaches.“The black community at that school needed to progress,” he said.After high school, he left the spotlight and began what he calls his private phase.“The past 20 years of my life have been about studying human society,” he said.Thorpe graduated college with degree in sociology and now works as a political consultant.Thorpe said he has become a representative of his father’s legacy.“I see this as my public phase in life,” he said. “Before now I was learning, preparing myself for this time in private.”Fred Battle, former president of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is a longtime friend of the Thorpe family. “I don’t know about his political ambitions,” Battle said. “But he is turning into a fine community activist.”Thorpe’s father helped create a paid undergraduate internship program with the town. Last month, he worked to have the internship renamed in his father’s memory.“I figured it would take a couple weeks or months,” he said. “But they unanimously decided to change the name that night.”Thorpe’s current fruit kiosk program mirrors his father’s values.“(My father) always tried to help young people,” he said.Thorpe is planning the Inaugural Bill Thorpe Golf Classic fundraiser for Oct. 26 to help raise money for the fruit kiosks.NAACP lawyer Alan McSurely has known Thorpe for 14 years. “In time, William will surpass his father,” McSurely said. “He has all the tricks of the trade his daddy had and more.”Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.