NoDa by b1bob
Much as SoHo means South of Houston, NoDa means North Davidson. Since the previous year's trip to Asheville, where I was surprised by the Bohemian nature of the downtown, I was oddly drawn to such places. Don't worry, folks, this will not change me and make me a part of that lot. There are coffee houses, art galleries, and bars. For those of y'all from Roxboro, Smelly Cat (the coffee house on the top half of the photo- please enlarge) refers to a song often sung at a similar coffee house on the internationally-known American programme Friends.
My good friend Mark, who is closer to my philosophy than that of the NoDa crowd, has read poetry at the Evening Muse (the purple-coloured cafe on the bottom half of the frame) for a university assignment. The truth is, I could hang with the poetry crowd with something like this:
There once was a man in Monroe
Built a weather-conditioned chateau
By his technical blunders
The dining room thunders
And the bathrooms incessantly snow
The only thing about NoDa is that it covers such a small area, basically on North Davidson Street between the 34th and 36th cross streets. With vacant warehouses all the way through to the Uptown line, there is the potential to expand this funky and Bohemian area much the way it was done in Richmond's Shockoe Bottom and in the Fan.
