"Vibrancy Index"

In 2006, downtown Winston-Salem had 50 restaurants and 15 retail businesses.  The greater city boasted 20 galleries and museums, 13 music venues, and hosted 670 cultural events and 7 festivals per year.  During the time period of July 2010-June 2011, those numbers increased to 81 restaurants and 76 retail businesses downtown, 16 music venues, 22 festivals (not including 2 biennial festivals not held this year), and a whopping 2,519 cultural events.

The numbers speak for themselves.  Interestingly, the information was presciently gathered by the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County to quantify the revitalization efforts going on in the city.  While there are a few caveats (such as the fact that "bars" were not counted as restaurants in 2006 but were in 2010-2011), the findings over this time period are nevertheless astounding considering they took place in the face of one of the nation's worst ever financial crises.

2 Developments Worthy of Note

Two developments worthy of notice on this blog were reported by the Winston-Salem Journal yesterday:

1) Ziggy's: First, after some delays, Ziggy's is re-opening. Ziggy's was a music venue in W-S that drew big-name acts ranging from the Dave Matthews Band to Slipknot to Ziggy Marley to Slick Rick. It's old location was near the Lawrence Joel Veteran's Memorial Coliseum; it's new location is closer to downtown on the corner of Trade and 8th Street. Links: website, Wikipedia page, yesterday's W-SJ article.

2) Andy Roddick: Andy Roddick, the former World No. 1 tennis-player, has signed on to play at the Winston-Salem Open. This bodes well for the tournament and, in turn, for the city.