Can you buy a Snickers bar in uptown Charlotte after 5:30 p.m.?

That was the simple question at the heart of a memorable column Observer business writer Doug Smith penned two decades ago.

The idea came to him by way of urban planner Michael Gallis, who had a snack attack late one afternoon and had to walk 10 blocks along Tryon Street to locate one of the world’s best-known and most common consumer products – a Snickers candy bar.

The fact that he labored to find a simple Snickers bar after office hours seemed to crystallize a larger point about uptown Charlotte’s all-work, no-play atmosphere.

To become a true world-class city, Doug reasoned, Charlotte’s uptown must be more than an office park that turns ghost town after 5:30. It needs to be a place where people live, eat, shop and play around the clock.

The kind of place, in short, where finding a simple Snickers bar is no big deal.

With that in mind, Doug and Gallis in 1993 set out to see whether finding the candy bar was really as hard as Gallis thought.

The pair walked from the south end of Tryon

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College basketball may have witnessed a historical first Thursday night at Radford University’s Dedmon Center.

Talk about a theater of the absurd. National television in the house via ESPNU for a contest in which the general public wasn’t allowed through the doors because of abominable weather conditions.

Thank goodness for the approximately 1,500 RU students who waded through nearly 2 feet of snow to pull for the home team, Highlanders coach Mike Jones said.

Following the game, Jones grabbed a microphone and told the students: “I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming across that bridge and down that hill in the snow tonight and the rest of the season.”

Jones threw the students more praise Friday.

“It was awesome!” Jones said. “It made me feel good because in my three years here the attendance from the student population has really grown. And to see that kind of turnout in 2 feet of snow is a testament to our guys and what they’re doing.”

Certainly, the Highlanders gave the hearty troopers a party they likely won’t ever forget.

Overcoming a career-high

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News release

Harpers Ferry, WV (February 13, 2014) – The Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC) is pleased to announce that volunteers devoted a record number of hours last year to maintaining and protecting the Appalachian Trail (A.T.) for hikers to use. For the federal fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2013, close to 6,000 volunteers reported approximately 245,500 hours, donating time equivalent to what is completed by 118 full-time workers.

Since the ATC began reporting volunteer hours in 1983, volunteers have contributed 4.9 million hours to the A.T., and the past 10 years have seen a 33 percent increase in volunteer hours. In 2013, volunteers contributed to a wide variety of projects, including maintaining the A.T. corridor, monitoring and removing invasive species, supporting teachers in the Trail to Every Classroom (TTEC) program and assisting A.T. Communities near the Trail. Volunteers were also crucial to the success of the ATC’s Biennial, with many individuals leading hikes, registering guests, distributing information and assisting with parking, camping and reception coordination.

ATC volunteers represent A.T. Trail Clubs and Trail Crews; Visitor Center and regional office volunteers; and participants in additional ATC programs, such

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Radford, VA (SportsNetwork.com) – Ya Ya Anderson and Rashun Davis both notched 21 points, helping the Radford Highlanders top the UNC Asheville Bulldogs, 102-92, in Big South Conference play at the Dedmon Center.

Javonte Green netted 16 points and pulled down nine rebounds for the Highlanders (17-9, 7-4 Big South), who won their third straight game. Brandon Holcomb added 11 points, seven boards and four blocks.

Andrew Rowsey recorded an impressive 41 points, a career-best, for the Bulldogs (13-12, 7-4), who had a three-game winning streak snapped. Corey Littlejohn tallied 15 points, while Sam Hughes and Jaron Lane each added 10.

The Highlanders shot a confident 51.6 percent from the field in the opening half and made 18-of-28 at the free-throw line. At the other end, the Bulldogs shot 43.3 percent and went into halftime down 54-45.

Radford kept up the pressure, improving to 58.3 percent from the floor in the second half, also hitting 16-of-22 at the line. The Bulldogs dropped to 39 percent and trailed by as many as 13 points as they failed to erase the deficit.

The Highlanders outscored the visitors 39-20 in bench points and hit 34-of-50 at

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Franklin County’s Zarkia Mattox (14) takes a shot in front of GW Danville defender Bronaza Fitzgerald (34) during the first half of Tuesday’s 64-41 FCHS victory. (Staff Photo by Steven Marsh)More Photos

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

By STEVEN MARSH – Sports Editor

For the second straight night, Franklin County’s girls’ basketball team trumpeted its presence early in the Piedmont District tournament.

On Monday, a 27-0 game-opening blitz settled the issue early in what turned out to be a 54-point, quarterfinal-round waxing of Halifax County.

On Tuesday, FCHS (18-4) scored the first 12 points of its semifinal against hardwood nemesis George Washington-Danville and that run foreshadowed a 63-41 victory at Samuel M. Hawkins-Central Gymnasium.

The win, FCHS’s sixth in a row and second this season over Danville, places FCHS in the tournament’s title game against either Patrick County or Magna Vista.

But weather is wreaking havoc with the annual postseason event and it’s uncertain whether a championship contest will be played.

If it is played, it will be on FCHS’s home floor where they are 11-1 this season with 11 straight wins.

Counting its years in the Western Valley District, FCHS will be playing for a district tournament crown for the seventh in a row.

If a championship game

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My newest novel, The Vanishing, just hit the shelves, and my publisher decided to send me down south for the first leg of my book tour. I was thrilled! I hadn’t visited any of the bookstores on my southern schedule before, and I was eager to meet new readers and the booksellers who were kind enough to open their stores to me.

One of the things I love to do at any bookstore I visit is ask for book recommendations. Oftentimes, they’ll point me to fantastic books I might have otherwise missed. And that’s just what happened when I asked booksellers at FoxTale Bookshoppe in Atlanta, Park Road Books in Charlotte, Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, Malaprops Bookstore and Cafe in Asheville and Octavia Books in New Orleans to recommend some titles they thought I might like.

Here they are.

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• The House on Tradd Street by Karen White

  Ellen Ward at the wonderful a href=”http://www.foxtalebookshoppe.com” target=”_hplink”FoxTale Bookshoppe/a in Atlanta recommended a ghostly, mysterious Southern series set in Charleston by author a href=”http://www.karen-white.com/books.shtml” target=”_hplink”Karen White/a. It’s about a real estate agent who loves old houses and

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