(For Part One you can read yesterday’s post about the brand new Bowling Alley and sports bar called Strike City located in the EpiCentre in Uptown Charlotte North Carolina.)

Strike City is also prepared to make money because there are plenty of things to do while you are waiting on your slow friend in front of you to bowl his frame. There is a big dining area and it allows you to choose from the full menu of Libretto’s Pizzeria which is located just next door. It is a Manhattan pizza parlor and is a fixture in New York City. StrikeCity managers are banking that Charlotte customers will buy a lot of Italian dishes like baked ziti, chicken marsala and eggplant parmesan. But all of you who think this food is out of place for a bowling alley - do not worry. Burgers and hot dogs are available to order too. All choices on the menu are between $7.50-$13.95.

On the weekends, Strike City will move the dining tables out to make room for a dance floor and a game room has really old and vintage arcade games and pool tables. This sounds like a really fun place!

The environment will predominately be a family atmosphere on Monday through Friday until 9PM. It sounds like it will be the kind of place you can go with your family or throw a birthday party for a group of eight year olds! But after 9PM the venue turns 21 and up.

If you want to visit Strike City you can find it at 210 E. Trade St. on the bottom floor in the EpiCentre, under EpiCentre Theaters. I think I will try it out soon.

Charlotte North Carolina. Charlotte NC. Charlotte NC Real Estate. Charlotte North Carolina Real Estate.

If you live in Charlotte North Carolina there is a good chance you have heard of the EpiCentre that was recently constructed in uptown Charlotte. Additions and improvements are continually being made. The newest addition is Strike City.

StrikeCity is a brand new bowling alley and restaurant. It officially opened today! This may be the last entertainment addition to the EpiCentre in Uptown. Strike City is really very different from your average bowling alley though. It is more like a Sports Bar where you can eat good Italian food, watch sports on all the big screen televisions and hang out with your friends. There also happens to be a bowling alley. It sounds like a fun combination!

James White who is an operating partner was quoted as saying “This isn’t your father’s bowling alley.” The environment sounds like it is very very nice from all the descriptions I have heard. This is what White was referring too. Nice chairs, nice lights, and nice floors all throughout Strike City.

Another quote that is very interesting is from Thom Perez who works with Full House Productions. He called Strike City “next-generation” bowling. “It’s the most high-tech, state-of-the-art experience you can have in a bowling alley.” It sounds like bowling alleys may all start to move this direction? That would be interesting considering most bowling alleys conjure up images that are just the opposite of “state-of-the-art” and “nice.”

There are 12-foot screens at the end of each of the 18 lanes. There is even a private room with six lanes so that some could have a private party and rent the space for themselves. Guys especially will be happy to know that there are 75 flat screen televisions located throughout the 25,000-square-foot Strike City!

MUCH more to come about Strike City in tomorrow’s post!

Charlotte NC. Charlotte NC Real Estate. Charlotte North Carolina Real Estate. Charlotte North Carolina.

(This is part two of two in a series of posts that began yesterday on this blog. You can read yesterday’s post that included 2 reasons that Farm Bureau Insurance of North Carolina is a great company to use for all your different insurance needs.)

1 - Farm Bureau helps young people! Whether it is helping elementary school aged children plant gardens in participation with Farm Bureau’s Agriculture in the classroom program, or hosting a week long tour of the state’s agricultural careers and land grant universities through the organization’s Institute for Future Agricultural Leaders, or providing college scholarships for students pursuing agriculturally related careers through the R. Flake Shaw Scholarship fund, North Carolina Farm Bureau is making a difference for all kinds of young people.

2 - Farm Bureau is helping protect our future. Farm Bureau also has programs focused on producing outstanding leaders. This program is a cool idea = Farm Bureau has a program called Young Farmers and Ranchers which helps farmers 18-35 years old focus on their leadership skills through special programs and events that foster their development.
Another program that continues leadership training is the organization’s Leadership Education Activity Development effort. This LEAD program continues developing the skill set farmers acquired through participation in the YF&R program.
In addition to these programs which help educate young people and develop them into future leaders, Farm Bureau is helping protect the farmer. The best way to ensure a continued supply of safe and abundant food for the state and nation’s citizens is by keeping farmers on the farm.

Of course most of these do not benefit me directly, but it’s nice to know that I am employing an organization that is giving back to the community in many ways.

Charlotte NC. Charlotte NC Real Estate. Charlotte North Carolina Real Estate. Charlotte North Carolina.

Yesterday I wrote about the insurance company that I use for our life insurance, car insurances, and home owner’s insurance. I think they are great. But below are a couple reasons you might want to use them as well!

1 North Carolina Farm Bureau Insurance members get cool extra benefits for a slim twenty five dollar yearly membership fee. These extra benefits include things like savings on prescription drugs, certain hotels, car rentals, and other products. Some of these other products even include getting an inside track on certain NASCAR products! You can go to www.ncfb.org for more informaion on all these benefits.

2 North Carolina Farm Bureau Insurance helps your community! County Farm Bureaus are major employers in their communities, with all kinds of office support employees and all the agents ready to help anyone who needs any of the organization’s insurance services. Something different about Farm Bureau is that (as its name suggests) local farmers really are actively engaged with community activities in great ways that make really make a difference.
*Something you might be interested to know is that Farm Bureau is actually a NON-PROFIT organization! It is continually hosting many community events with intentions to benefit the whole community. They host events like D.A.R.E and Safety Days and all sorts of other awareness programs. So, not only do the help the community financially through bringing more jobs, but also through social awareness help.

Be sure to check back in tomorrow and i will let you know of a couple more interesting things as well as great reasons to use North Carolina Farm Bureau Insurance.

Charlotte NC. Charlotte NC Real Estate. Charlotte North Carolina. Charlotte North Carolina Real Estate.

Life Insurance. Car Insurance. Home owners insurance. OH MY! This sort of thing is somewhat stressful to me. I hate having to stress and keep up with all this stuff. Honestly it is just a pain. My wife and I were married just over three years ago and we had to get all these new insurances.

We started shopping around for insurance which is really a pain. Nationwide Mutual. Geico. State Farm. Allstate. Progressive. Metropolitan Life. Liberty Mutual. MetLife. WOW! There are so many insurance companies! How do regular people have any idea who to get their insurance with?

And then I meet many people who have these three different insurance policies through two or three different companies! How confusing is that?!?

THANKFULLY my father had a friend who he has recommended clients to for years. This man is now a friend of mine too. His name is Robert Lee and he lives right here in Charlotte North Carolina. Which is great! I like that way better than dealing with a website or some random person on the phone somewhere.

Robert works for Farm Bureau Insurance of North Carolina. They are a local insurance company which I think has many great advantages. Robert sat down with my wife and I in our home for hours and hours on several different occasions. He helped us understand what was the best insurance for us in our situation.

So now, we have our life insurance, home owners insurance, and car insurance on both our vehicles all through Farm Bureau with Robert Lee as our personal agent. It’s a great deal. If you live here in Charlotte I highly recommend this company for your insurance needs.

Many times before on this website we have talked about Stephen Curry, the basketball phenom who has been taking the nation by storm for the past two seasons. Stephen plays at Davidson college and is leading the nation in scoring right now. Davidson a small community is here just north of Charlotte North Carolina. Last season he led Davidson to within one shot of the Final Four before losing to eventual national champions Kansas.

This year Stephen Curry is one of the three big names in the talks about national player of the year (which will probably go to Tyler Hansbrough of the Carolina Tarheels) and he has led his team, the Davidson Wildcats to be ranked in the top 25 almost all season long.

Stephen Curry is a hometown hero. He grew up here in Charlotte North Carolina as his dad was a long time fan favorite with the NBA Charlotte Hornets. In high school Stephen played for Charlotte Christian along with his little brother Seth Curry. And now Seth Curry is making headlines like his big brother Stephen has been.

Seth is is a freshman at Liberty University in Lynchburg Virginia. Seth is averaging 20.7 points per game this season and it looks like he will be the first freshman in Big South Conference history to average twenty points per game or more!

The league record for a freshman is 18.1, set by Coastal Carolina’s Tony Dunkin (1989-90). Seth Curry should outpace that by a long shot. And I think it is great that Stephen’s little brother is such a great player and playing at a small Christian school like Liberty.
Charlotte North Carolina is representing well in the college basketball department this year!

Charlotte NC. Charlotte North Carolina. Charlotte North Carolina Real Estate. Charlotte NC Real Estate.

This has been a very very rare time for this blog on the “My Charlotte Home Team” Website! For more than the past 100 days… since October 1st I have been writing a blog on this website basically every single day. UNTIL the past three days. Did you miss me? Well, I missed all of you!

This was definitely not a planned absence. If I would have known I would be gone I would have warned you! Or planned ahead of time to have a way to post for you all. So, I apologize.

Well, why were you gone? I am glad you asked. I was on a retreat in the north Georgia mountains from Thursday through Saturday. So today is my first day back here in Charlotte. We were literally on top of a mountain, and of course, we did not have any internet access. Honestly, in a way it was kind of nice to be away from all the hustle and bustle and email, etc…

We had an unbelievable view from the window of the cabin we stayed in. So ALL weekend long… at every meal, every time we were in the living room, there was a breathtaking view of the mountains and lakes!

It was really really nice. For three days we relaxed and had a great time. It was tough to return to reality, but it is nice to get back to writing for all of you. Thankfully the trip was only a few hours to these beautiful mountains.
And THAT is one of the great things about the city of Charlotte. Charlotte is a big modern city, but in just a couple hours you can enjoy the beach or the secluded beautiful mountains. It is like having the best of three worlds all within driving distance!

Charlotte North Carolina. Charlotte North Carolina Real Estate. Charlotte NC. Charlotte NC Real Estate.

There is a whole lot of coverage, hype, and pomp and circumstance surrounding this inauguration of our new president Barack Obama. Coverage yesterday began at 8:30AM and continued well into the night.

Today there was the national inaugural prayer service at the National Cathedral in Washington DC. It is called the nation’s cathedral and also the church of presidents. There are traditions dating back years and years for all the presidents in which they had their inaugural prayer service in this church.

President Obama got to choose who he wanted to ask to pray for him and the country at this special inaugural prayer service. It was webcasted live on the national cathedral website as well as televised on C-Span and Fox News. All together there were maybe eight or ten different pastors and religious leaders who were asked to pray. There were only two I had ever heard of…

One of the men I had heard of is a very politically active pastor you may have heard of named Jim Wallis. He is also a very popular and best selling author. Jim is the founder and president of Sojourners magazine and the author of many many political/religious books and has a passion for social justice.

But the other man who prayed is the one with the connection to Charlotte. His name is Andy Stanley and he is the founding and lead pastor of North Point Community Church in Atlanta, Georgia. I helped start and work for a church here in Charlotte North Carolina. We were planted by and are a strategic partner of North Point in Atlanta. Andy Stanley is actually one of our teaching pastors. We pipe him in most Sundays. He is like one of our pastors and he got asked to pray for the president at this service. That’s a pretty big deal and we know him… I’ve sat next to him for dinner. So, of course I watched his prayer. Pretty good.

Charlotte NC. Charlotte North Carolina. Charlotte North Carolina Real Estate. Charlotte NC Real Estate.

I had a full day at the office planned today and a meeting that was supposed to start at 8:30AM. Of course all night last night the news and weather casters were predicting five inches of snow to accumulate by this morning because of a cold front and winter weather system moving in from the south.

I woke up a little before 7AM and looked outside. There was not much snow at all. MAYBE an inch here at my home in north Charlotte. BUT in south Charlotte where I work they had around three inches and all the schools were closed. So, I ended up working from home today.

Which all worked out great because I got to work at home all day while enjoying this most momentous and historic day in our nation’s history. I moved my office to the living room and turned the inauguration coverage on starting at 8:30AM.

Of course today, the first ever African American man was sworn in as the president of the United States of America - Barack Obama. Even though I definitely don’t agree with many of his beliefs and policies, I am excited that America has its first African American president. I am excited that our country has overcome it’s evil that would not allow that to happen in our past.

I don’t know if he will be a good president or not? I guess it’s hard to tell until they actually get to work. I hope he changes his mind about some things. But I know myself and many others are praying for him. I hope he turns out to be a great president for our country. And I am glad I got to be home today and watch it snow plus watch history in the making at the same time.

As for Charlotte weather - the rest of the week is warming up. Good news for me.

Charlotte NC. Charlotte North Carolina. Charlotte North Carolina Real Estate. Charlotte NC Real Estate.

The meteorologists have been saying all day today that it is supposed to snow here in Charlotte TONIGHT! The whole city is alive with excitement and anticipation. Grocery stores are running out of milk and bread! But, even if it snows things do not really change for my wife and I. We both work all day tomorrow no matter what.

Everyone likes snow. Well, it seems like almost everyone really likes the snow. I do not think I have ever met a child who does not like snow. Just think about when you were a child… didn’t you love snow? Even if you loved snow for no other reason than so you could get out of school for the day!

I can vividly remember one such moment when I was in 6th grade. It was a cold winter here in Charlotte and on Saturday night my dad took me to a Charlotte Hornets game. That’s right, it was the Hornets not Bobcats back then. I remember we ran over a traffic cone by accident in the Jeep Cherokee and it carried two of the cones all the way back to our house. Now we had two cones.

It snowed that week like it hasn’t snowed since here in Charlotte! There was a huge hill in our Easthaven neighborhood in East Charlotte. The whole hill which was a street iced over in the snow storm. It was very thick. All of us kids sledded on that hill all week long. And to guarantee that no one would drive on that hill and mess up our ice (not that the could anyway since it was such bad ice, but just so they wouldn’t even try…) my dad put those two cones at the entrance to that hill to block it! So we were out of school for a whole week and enjoyed a great week of sledding on that hill.

Maybe that will happen again this week?