The adventures of a Nextdoor enthusiast
Plus: No more birthday parties at Sports Connection?; Super-cheap award tickets on American; PPP loan fraud; First seltzer brewery to open this week; Panthers lose after Sir Purr breaks with tradition
This post is from the September 14, 2020, edition of The Charlotte Ledger, an email newsletter delivering original local news and analysis in Charlotte. Sign up for free here to receive The Ledger straight to your inbox:
Today’s Charlotte Ledger is sponsored by Count on Me CLT. To help save lives, jobs and businesses, please wear a mask, wait 6 feet apart and wash your hands often. Visit CountOnMeCLT.com for more information.
I was reluctant to join Nextdoor. But now it’s my favorite place to buy and sell — and the highest form of entertainment.
Online bazaar: You can find almost anything on Nextdoor’s “For Sale & Free” section.
By Colleen Brannan
It took some convincing for middle-aged me to join Nextdoor, the social app that helps you connect with neighbors. Intrigued by the idea of online neighbors and never having much luck with real ones, I began as a voyeur.
I’d watch great debates unfold about poorly kept yards, unreliable contractors and pet waste disposal etiquette. There were heartbreaking posts about lost dogs and threads about “what kind of bird is this?” But I remained on the sidelines, unsure if I should share my amateur ornithology knowledge with strangers.
But when I discovered the marketplace side of the platform — a section called “For Sale & Free” — a whole new world opened up. I quickly went from amused to enthused to Nextdoor-obsessed.
From trash to treasure
Why am I such an enthusiast? Well, where else can I unload a birdhouse made of branches, boxes of FLOR carpet tiles found in the garage and my husband’s outgrown shorts, all in one week? I also relish the marketing challenge — or so I like to tell my marketer self.
Instead of “men’s shorts for sale,” why not “my husband’s weight loss is your gain”? And what did I do with that $320? I pumped some of it back into the Nextdoor economy by purchasing a bunch of Lululemon items from a Waxhaw woman, as well as a barely-used Pottery Barn sleeper sofa, gaming chairs and a ping-pong table from an empty-nester in Matthews.
See … everybody wins! Their trash. My treasure. And vice versa.
An emotional ride
Nextdoor has definitely delivered a rollercoaster of emotions:
Angry when I saw someone selling the family cat for $45.
Happy when Logan the Husky was found.
Terrified when a neighborhood girl went missing walking her dog (and was later found safe.)
Foolish when I thought I could buy a Jeep with low mileage, in great condition, for $1,400 from a recently widowed doctor leaving the country on military duty. (Yes, it was a scam.)
Disappointed in seemingly done deals that don’t happen … and never knowing why, because the seller ghosted you.
Appalled that some posters regularly demonstrate they are unaware that neighbors are struggling in a bad economy.
Neighbors to the rescue
Recently, I was in desperate need of a notary on a weekend. Knowing banks were closed, I took to my trusty Nextdoor and asked if anyone in the surrounding area was a notary willing to do me a favor. I quickly had several options, one just a few miles from me. This lovely woman let me go to her house on a Sunday and didn’t even want payment. When I insisted, she said she would donate it to the Humane Society.
On the flip side of that delightful experience, one woman posted in a panic that her sitter cancelled and they had a “could not miss” event that evening. I offered up my daughter, a seasoned babysitter, and they were grateful. Since she didn’t drive at the time, I dropped her off and picked her up.
Sound like a lot of work for someone we don’t know? It was. Add two bratty kids, two drunk parents who did not come home on time and the $40 they tossed her getting out of an Uber, and you’ve got “never again.” No question why the other sitter cancelled.
No good deed goes unpunished
Back in March, at the beginning of Covid, an elderly gentleman, “Larry,” posted that he needed grocery help. As someone who makes a daily Teeter run, I was happy to oblige and wished someone would do the same for my parents, who live in Virginia.
The first trip went smoothly with just a few basic items — milk, bread and eggs — but with each visit, Larry’s demands grew. My time in the store doubled as I tried to find obscure items and brands. The straw that broke the camel’s back was “Breakstone 2% small curd cottage cheese, no substitutes.” With that level of specificity, I introduced him to another neighbor: Harris Teeter online shopping.
Better than the dollar store
It takes true dedication to pore through the free items sometimes called “Curb Alerts.” You definitely see a ton of heavy items that would cost more than their value to move, like pianos and safes. Items that are no longer needed are also quite common, such as “contacts after cataract surgery” or, my personal favorite, “incontinence and denture cleaning supplies.”
There are also some unique items, with fairly strict criteria for new ownership such as the “personalized Damon football mirror” and “2-year-old birthday candle, used once.” This section is one of my highest forms of entertainment.
So what have I learned from my Nextdoor adventures? Aside from the fact there are items you didn’t even know you needed — like a neon banana sign for $10 — here are my top 10 recommendations:
Insist on contactless transactions: Tell potential buyers, up front, electronic payments only and porch pickup (after payment is received).
Keep communications in the app. Don’t take the conversation to email or text because these people know where you live.
Be realistic about pricing. Even new with tags or in the box, you cannot fetch the same as current retail pricing.
Use your manners and spellcheck. I tend to penalize poor grammar and aggressive behavior.
Be responsive as a buyer and seller. No ghosting or playing people against each other.
Mark items sold or delete old posts that never sold and people will stop contacting you.
Bundle when it comes to clothing. Selling individual items is tedious but a true score when someone finds 10 items in the right size.
Create detailed posts. To avoid a bunch of questions regarding size, age and condition of item, put it all in the original post with a photo.
Choose geographic area wisely when posting. Choosing all surrounding areas brings people from all over to your house.
Consider the time you post. My not-so-scientific data shows prime Nextdoor posting time to be 9 p.m. to midnight. The pre-Covid me used to wake up and check email, then social feeds, but now I start my day on the Nextdoor app to see what fantastic finds have emerged overnight.
Oh, and if anyone is looking for a dozen Masters golf balls or his-and-her Mickey Mouse watches — all new in box — guess who just posted them!
Colleen Brannan, one of The Ledger’s inaugural 40 Over 40 winners, owns BRANSTORM PR and uses her Gamecock journalism degree to write stories like this for fun. She welcomes more followers on Instagram (Colleen_Brannan), Twitter (@colleenbrannan) and LinkedIn but vows never to join Facebook.
More fun with Nextdoor
The yearly musical comedy production “Charlotte Squawks” poked fun at Nextdoor in 2019 with a parody called “On Nextdoor” set to the tune of Les Misérables’ “One Day More.” You can watch it on Charlotte Squawks’ Facebook page. (Sample lyrics: “On Nextdoor / Another post of pure inanity / This chilling window on humanity / These neighbors posting stuff online have surely lost their freaking minds / On Nextdoor”)
Today’s supporting sponsors are T.R. Lawing Realty …
… and Landon A. Dunn, Attorney at Law in Matthews:
Once the ‘Walmart of birthday parties,’ Sports Connection fun centers face an uncertain future
For more than a dozen years, Allan Haseley had a $0 marketing budget for his Sports Connection family entertainment centers in Ballantyne and Northlake — every party he hosted was a marketing tool in and of itself, and it worked like a charm.
Huge buildings with bowling alleys, bounce house rooms, arcades and laser tag arenas hosted hundreds of parties every month. Rainy weekends or sweltering summer days meant throngs of families walking in to let the kids burn off some steam.
The doors have been closed at the two family fun centers since March 13, and it’s unlikely that when they do open, the original business model will ever return, Haseley told The Ledger.
More likely, he said, is that they’ll get out of the mass birthday party business and morph into special event facilities, which can be rented out for family reunions, church lock-ins, graduation parties or company off-sites.
“To open up partially doesn’t make sense. Until we can open at full capacity and have four parties at a time, it’s not worth turning the HVAC back on and restocking the coolers with the pizzas,” Haseley said. In North Carolina, bowling alleys can now operate at 30% capacity, but entertainment venues remain closed and mass gatherings are limited to 25 people indoors.
“Right now there’s two sides of the equation: What we’re legally allowed to do, and what makes smart business sense,” Haseley said.
“I just don’t think that even if the governor says we can open up at full capacity that people are going to be flocking to come play in moon bounces anytime soon. They’ll straggle in,” he said. “We aren’t prepared to go through setting up the Plexiglas and doing all the safety protocols … it would not be worth it, because people are not going to come in large amounts.”
‘Walmart of birthday parties’: Haseley designed the centers to be like “the Walmart of birthday parties” — high volume, reasonable prices — and let parents do the marketing.
“All we needed to make sure was that when you or your child left, you left with a smile on your face,” Haseley said. “And if you did that, you would tell somebody, and we wouldn’t have to do anything.”
All that stopped when Haseley was forced to close his doors because of Covid. He laid off 250 employees at his two family entertainment centers as well as the Sports Connection volleyball and pickleball facilities he owns and the two Inner Peaks climbing gyms he owns.
He gave back $1.3M in refunds for the 500-some birthday parties and other big events that had already been booked for the spring and summer. He said he ran out of money for refunds and in mid-April started giving credits in the hopes that he can eventually give more money back.
He’s reopened the volleyball and pickleball operations and the climbing gyms have reopened. He’s hired 21 staff members back.
Business trajectory: Haseley opened the Ballantyne family entertainment center 13 years ago in the midst of a deep recession, and saw instant success.
“People didn’t go to Disney World and Myrtle Beach; they came and spent $200 and had a family outing,” he said. “We benefitted during the recession. We’re not benefitting during the pandemic.”
As Charlotte’s entertainment options have grown in the last few years with everything from new Dave & Buster’s locations to Top Golf and trampoline parks, Haseley says his party business had slowed down. Several years ago, the family fun centers hosted upwards of 400 parties a month; prior to the pandemic, the number was closer to 200.
“You’ve got so many things competing now for every entertainment dollar,” he said.
‘Hurry up and wait’: Haseley, 58, and his wife, Kelly, were volleyball enthusiasts who started what became the Sports Connection business 25 years ago as a volleyball facility and club.
They expanded into the gym arena (they no longer own gyms, but lease building space to the national Fitness Connection chain), then purchased two Inner Peaks climbing gyms and opened the family fun centers in Ballantyne and Northlake.
The pickleball and volleyball sides of the business are picking back up. He owns the buildings his family entertainment centers occupy, so he’s taking some time to figure out their future. These days, he says, he feels like “we’re right back where we started, running a volleyball club.”
“I feel like I’m on the entrance ramp to a busy highway and I’m just not ready to merge into traffic yet,” he said. “I just want to wait to see where to merge in. We are hoping to figure out where is a market niche we can slide into now,” he said.
“We’ve had a good run,” he said. “We provided a lot of birthday parties for a lot of people and made a lot of good memories.” — CB
Super-cheap American award tickets available from Charlotte
If you’re feeling adventurous about air travel at the moment — or think you might be in the next few months — you might want to check out some of the frequent flier fares available on American Airlines out of Charlotte right now.
Not everybody has a bunch of American miles. But a lot of people in Charlotte do, since American dominates Charlotte’s airport with more than 90% of the flights. And since the start of the pandemic, few people have probably cashed in those miles.
In the next few months, American is offering flights as low as 5,000 miles each way out of Charlotte — including many to the Midwest, Texas and the West Coast. They tend to be to smaller airports that require a connection. Notably, those low fares are available even the weeks of Thanksgiving and Christmas, and there are some available to, for example, Colorado in January and February.
To find them, go to American’s new award map, enter “CLT” as your starting airport, 5,000 miles to use and then “one-way” (under “more options”). A search for the first week of December yielded 56 destinations that could be reached for 10,000 miles round-trip.
Additionally, American has said it will waive change fees on all tickets booked by the end of the year — including award tickets.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that although viruses don’t spread well on planes because of air circulation and filtration, there is an increased risk of getting or spreading Covid during air travel because social distancing is usually difficult. —TM
Sir Purr exiled to Midtown Bojangles
With no fans at the stadium for the Panthers’ home opener yesterday, Sir Purr was forced to take his pregame hijinks elsewhere. We spotted him dancing atop his Cat Cruiser at the Midtown Bojangles on Sunday morning. Any connection to the Panthers’ loss? You make the call.
Teen Talk quiz winners
We’re highkey thrilled to announce the winners of Saturday’s Charlotte Ledger Teen Talk quiz, where readers flexed their knowledge of how today’s young people speak. We were impressed by how many emailed responses came in early Saturday — clearly our readers know how to speak like teenagers, but they don’t sleep as late.
These winners will receive a Charlotte Ledger “40 Over 40” koozie — maybe not as boujee as a fancy trophy, but it’ll impress their cocktail buddies. And that’s no cap.
Winners: Jeff Vandiver, Denise Wilcox, Matt Ausman, Liz Kakacek, Gray Dyer.
Correct answers:
Those fancy “schoolcations” offered at the Four Seasons Orlando seem like a really boujee way to do remote schooling.
Panthers fans are hoping new QB Teddy Bridgewater can yeet the football to D.J. Moore in the end zone on Sunday. [editor’s note: He didn’t.]
Big flex: I turned 16 yesterday, and my parents bought me a new Tesla!
See this salad? I grew all the vegetables in it from my own garden, and that’s no cap.
I highkey love the milkshakes infused with doughnut bits they serve at the new Krispy Kreme in South End.
In brief:
PPP loan fraud: Federal prosecutors in South Carolina have charged seven people in connection with a money-laundering scheme that included $397,000 worth of money from a Paycheck Protection Program loan. The indictment says that a 41-year-old Georgia man who owned a business called Wild Stylz Entertainment inflated the company’s payroll and number of employees on the PPP loan application. When the money arrived at an unnamed “federally insured financial institution based in Charlotte, North Carolina with branches throughout the United States,” the man withdrew nearly $350,000 in two days — including $50,000 in cash — and distributed it to the other defendants. The Justice Department said last week that a total of 57 people nationwide have tried to swindle $175M from the PPP.
Fewer fans at sports bars: For the first Sunday of the NFL season, fans turned out to watch games, but the numbers were down from a typical fall Sunday, owners said. About 150 people turned up for the start of the season at Steamers Sports Pub in east Charlotte, about half as many as usual. About 315 showed up at Dilworth Neighborhood Grille, which can accommodate 375 under social distancing rules. (WFAE)
Early holiday shopping this year? Will retailers start the holiday season earlier because of Covid? Tanger Outlets, based in Greensboro, says it’s starting the holiday shopping season on Nov. 1 and providing “the best deals of the season earlier than ever” with expanded hours. It has shopping centers in Myrtle Beach, Charleston and Hilton Head in South Carolina and Mebane and Blowing Rock in North Carolina.
CATS marketing: The City Council is expected to award a $300,000 annual contract to Saturday Brand Communications to help market the Charlotte Area Transit System. “Employing a marketing firm will assist CATS in reaching various audiences and enhancing the brand while strengthening its image around the Charlotte region,” according to the council’s meeting agenda.
Watch out, White Claw: The “first spiked seltzer brewery and taproom on the East Coast” opens this week in Charlotte’s Wesley Heights neighborhood. Starting Friday, Summit Seltzer Co. will offer alcoholic seltzers that are “colorful and often a little hazy because they use real ingredients like cucumber, lime, pineapple, and jalapeño.” When it’s safe to do so, the spot will also hold “yoga and fitness classes, charity events, birthday parties and silent disco parties.” (Charlotte Agenda)
Taking stock
Unless you are a day trader, checking your stocks daily is unhealthy. So how about weekly? How local stocks of note fared last week (through Friday’s close), and year to date:
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Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Contributing editor: Tim Whitmire, CXN Advisory; Reporting intern: David Griffith