Night on the Townie

I’ve already written about how much I love the Town of Davidson (circa Christmas). However, it consistently manages to fascinate me with its small town charm and hole-in-the wall finds. The kind of places you only find because you accidentally stumble across them or because someone, somewhere has mentioned it. Fortunately, last weekend, we had our own personal tour guide.

Right off of Main Street on the corner is a little coffee shop called Summit. It tends to be more of a “summer” hangout for my coworkers because of its spacious outdoor patio that doesn’t bode well in colder weather. It has a wide selection of IPAs and insanely good cookies made in the home of one of my coworker’s friends. It only has about 10 tables inside and the upstairs has a random collection of broken-in couches and overstuffed armchairs. It has that hole-in-the-wall feel I love about Davidson with a little outdoor ambiance and the occasional live band.

Summit on Fridays usually means a few beers on the patio and maybe splitting a bottle of wine. Since cookies don’t qualify as a meal, around 5:30 we start talking about food and/or making plans to go home and get food on our own. Me, my three coworkers, and one significant other decided on a little Italian place called “Meatballs on Main” that no one other than the one townie had ever heard of.

Meatballs on Main was located about a mile down the road in an old house. While it’s not that far off for businesses and restaurants to be built into houses, this one still had every wall and room intact. Minus the granite bar in the front room and the mismatched tables, you’d never think it was a fully operating restaurant.  It had cute, decorative hanging light fixtures and a stairwell that ran right in the middle of the main hallways. The menu had a make-your-own pasta option and five different kinds of grilled cheese. Top it off with baked mac and cheese and it’s pretty much all my favorite foods in one place.

 Wall decor inside of Meatballs on Main

After dinner, we headed down the block a ways to Carolina Cone, a small ice cream shop that served 40 flavors of Hershey’s ice cream and had every type Mylar balloon you could possible imagine. In a way, it reminded me of an old school soda shop. It had a merry go round and playground outside, old yellow booths and gumball machines inside, and all different kinds of balloons taped to the ceiling for display. Not to be overlooked were the 30 different colors of regular latex balloons where one of my coworkers negotiated a deal and plans to bring 100 strategically-picked balloons into work. The only problem: how exactly is he (are we) going to get them there?

 

Old School Gumball Machines!

 

Ceiling decorated with hundreds of balloons.

In a span of about 5 hours, I swam in the charm that I love so much about Davidson thanks to a group of coworkers I enjoy just as much in the office as I do outside of it. And, with the help of our own personal townie tour guide, we got to experience three little gems that I probably otherwise wouldn’t have ever stopped at. I realize Charlotte is a huge place and I have SO much left to try, but coming up on a year of living here and I’m still blown away by all the little secrets this place has to share.

Here’s to another adventure in Davidson and another blog post inspired by a night out with people that can turn any shitty week completely on its head.