The Charlotte Optimist

1 week ago | charlotteoptimist.com | Michael Graff

The oak trees are gone. We’re riding down a street he once traveled every day, looking for the home where his kids took their first steps. But the trouble with growing old is you might outlive the shade trees in the front yard. “I don’t know where the hell I am,” Hugh McColl says on a late April morning. He’s in the passenger’s seat of my truck, and we’ve driven all around Charlotte, time traveling.

3 weeks ago | charlotteoptimist.com | Michael Graff

In her final days in business in the neighborhood she helped shape, Lesa Kastanas sold everything. The jewelry. The candles. The kitschy buttons that said things like “I wanna rock and roll all night-ish, and party every third day.” Even the shelves and mannequins. Now she was packing up the vinyl records. Those were not for sale. They have 30,000 of them, and you read that right.

1 month ago | charlotteoptimist.com | Michael Graff

Federico Rios made a quick stop for Lunchables at the Food Lion on Beatties Ford Road one morning a few years ago, when he noticed a woman sprinting across the parking lot. Ahead, he saw what she was chasing, in this city where people are always chasing something. The No. 7 city bus was pulling away. Rios had places to be — drop-off at Oaklawn Language Academy for the kids, then work for him — but he couldn’t keep his eyes off the runner.

2 months ago | charlotteoptimist.com | Michael Graff

Hello. Maybe you’re here because you’ve followed my work over the years, or maybe you’re hungry for new ideas for local media, or maybe you arrived by mistake and you’re already trying to close the window. In any case, I’m grateful. Welcome to The Charlotte Optimist. More on what it is below. But first, a quick story:I was having lunch last month with Ric Elias, a longtime friend and trusted weathervane, when he mentioned that one of his dear friends died that morning.