James Hepler (hepler@email.unc.edu) proffered:

: I'd hardly think that people like those on this list are to blame for the
: downfall of Ye Olde Chapel Hill. [...]

No, of course not, though my bitter and confused babbling didn't make that
clear. I'm just saying that any Chapel Hill you're ["you" plural] thinking
of "preserving"  is a recent invention, and one as doomed as the Chapel
Hills before it. This area wil never get as bad as State College, because
we're actually near other places instead of in a valley in the middle of
nowhere. I look to Charlottesville as a more precise model. A better
Charlottesville, because there is culture here and there isn't there. 

State College has better ice cream than we do. 

The other thing is that most discussion of "Chapel Hill" really is about
old Chapel Hill and Carrboro, the sections over 300 feet above sea level
and within a few miles of the University and West Franklin/East Main
Street. If you consider the 'burbs and strip malls down the Hill and
remove Carrboro from your conception of "Chapel Hill" the town looks a lot
crappier all of a sudden. Chapel Hill and Carrboro are two very different
places, at least in my estimation. Chapel Hill Down the Hill is getting
steadlity more upper class white conservative RTP working (I blame the
construction of the last stretch of I-40 to blame) by the year, and that
filters through the whole town, via people's spending patterns and voting
tendencies and everything. Chapel Hill probably wouldn't elect "Ellie"
Kinnaird; in Carrboro she could have successfully run for the post of
Dictator for Life.

As for Jeff's comment, maybe I had my timeline screwed up, but Visart
certainly isn't some ancient local institution. If it came before
Blockbuster it wasn't by very much at all. 

It's not a Huge Chain in terms of size (five stores, three in CH/Carrboro
and two in Durham), but it is in management and such. 

Nate Florin

"I'm creating scarcity. It drives prices up."
		-Rizzo the Rat