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SEPTEMBER 2014 volume 13: issue 9
FESTIVALS, page 2ELF, page 4
By Laurie Janzen
When the ancient Romans gathered together for
festivals, man sparred against lion and there was
blood and death. Today, excluding the running of
the bulls in Pamplona, we have a slightly different version
of festivals. It’s a chance for food, family, dancing, buying
beautiful crafts or showing off your ability to create
beautiful crafts. It is important that we continue a time-
honored tradition such as this – especially one that has
evolved into a chance to take your hair down, put on a
long skirt and dance around with a drink in your hand.
In our area, there are many local festivals. Some
have been celebrated for decades and others are still
blossoming and within their first five years. However, all
are a chance for art, music and/or family fun.
A crowd-pleaser is the 17th annual Carrboro Music
Festival. This year the event will be started Saturday,
Sept. 27 with a free kick-off concert held at the Cat’s
Cradle Back Room. The day-long event will begin
the following Sunday, Sept. 28, at 1 p.m.
and include 180 performing acts at 25
different indoor and outdoor venues
located around Carrboro. These
performances will include bluegrass,
folk, jazz, country, rock and roll, classical
and world music. This event’s goal is to
bring people together with a strong sense of
community to enjoy Triangle-area performers.
If you’re looking for a fun festival for you and
your friends or family and leashed pet, then you’ll
enjoy Centerfest in downtown Durham. Centerfest will
be hosted in the downtown Durham Loop on Main and Chapel
Hill Streets in the Five Points and CCB Plaza areas for the 40th
year in a row. It is the largest arts and community
festival in Durham. This year it will
take place on Saturday, Sept. 20
from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and
Sunday, Sept. 21 from
10 Local
Festivals You
Can’t Miss
By Bob Bevan
Ponder huffing and puffing
your way up a towering hill on
your bicycle, clothes soaked
in sweat when the summit is
reached on a mid-summer day.
Now imagine scaling that
same incline on a three-
wheeled trike, flipping a
switch and overpowering that
hill with a battery fed by sun-
shine – and bicycle pedals if
you so choose.
Imagine no more.
Welcome to the future at
Durham-based Organic Transit,
where the 160-pound egg-
shaped ELF, a solar and pedal
hybrid vehicle, runs on sun-
shine and sweat, as the BBC
so aptly states. A startup busi-
ness in 2012, Organic Transit
has sold 350 of its solar-pedal
trikes thus far. The company
sold 250 trikes between March
2013 and February 2014 and
an additional 100 since then.
By Laurie Janzen
When the ancient Romans gathered together for
festivals, man sparred against lion and there was
blood and death. Today, excluding the running of
the bulls in Pamplona, we have a slightly different version
of festivals. It’s a chance for food, family, dancing, buying
beautiful crafts or showing off your ability to create
beautiful crafts. It is important that we continue a time-
honored tradition such as this – especially one that has
evolved into a chance to take your hair down, put on a
long skirt and dance around with a drink in your hand.
In our area, there are many local festivals. Some
have been celebrated for decades and others are still
blossoming and within their first five years. However, all
are a chance for art, music and/or family fun.
A crowd-pleaser is the 17th annual Carrboro Music
Festival. This year the event will be started Saturday,
Sept. 27 with a free kick-off concert held at the Cat’s
Cradle Back Room. The day-long event will begin
the following Sunday, Sept. 28, at 1 p.m.
and include 180 performing acts at 25
different indoor and outdoor venues
located around Carrboro. These
performances will include bluegrass,
folk, jazz, country, rock and roll, classical
and world music. This event’s goal is to
bring people together with a strong sense of
community to enjoy Triangle-area performers.
If you’re looking for a fun festival for you and
your friends or family and leashed pet, then you’ll
enjoy Centerfest in downtown Durham. Centerfest will
be hosted in the downtown Durham Loop on Main and Chapel
Hill Streets in the Five Points and CCB Plaza areas for the 40th
year in a row. It is the largest arts and community
festival in Durham. This year it will
take place on Saturday, Sept. 20
from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and
Sunday, Sept. 21 from
10 Local
Festivals You
Can’t Miss
RUNNING ON
SUNSHINE AND SWEAT
Durham Company
Produces Hybrid
Vehicle
Organic Transit’s ELF

2. SEPTEMBER 2014 | www.southernneighbor.com
2
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FESTIVALS
Listeners at West End Poetry Festival
Music at Three Rivers Arts Festival
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Celebrating our
35th Anniversary in 2014
Family Owned
Family Operated
11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Entrance to the
festival is free but a $5 donation
at the gates to help fund the event
is recommended. Centerfest will
be hosting 140 juried visual artists
from 17 states. These artists will
be displaying art in clay, drawings,
fibers, glass, paintings, printmaking,
photography, wood, jewelry, mixed
media and sculpture. There will
also be over 70 performing acts on
six different stages playing music
and dancing. There will be locally
sourced foods and international
cuisine, a bike valet for easy
transportation and a kid-zone with
face-painting and a Moon Bounce.
October brings nearly unlimited
fun in the way of festivals.
Pepperfest began in 2008 with a
few friends tasting peppers from
Piedmont Biofarms. This year, on
Sunday, Oct. 5, at Briar Chapel
there will be music, dancing,
entertainment, food, beverages, and
– did we mention? – peppers front
and center.
On the same day, Festifall will
be held for the 42nd consecutive
year, on West Franklin Street in
downtown Chapel Hill. It will
feature performing arts and a
multitude of local artists selling
hand-made crafts. Join the Chapel
Hill community in meeting different
artists and maybe inspiring your
own inner artist, discovering new
downtown restaurants, dancing to
local music and watching amazing
local dance groups and even
participating in making new hands-
on arts and crafts.
Shakori Hills GrassRoots Festival
is a local treasure. From Oct. 9 to
12, enjoy four days of four stages
with over 60 bands performing
throughout the weekend. This
family-friendly festival for music and
dance lovers takes place in Chatham
County at 1439 Henderson Tanyard
Road in Pittsboro. Tickets to the
four-day event can be purchased
online for $90 to $110.
For all you foodies, a true local
gem is the TerraVita Food & Drink
Festival. This will take place from
Oct. 9 to 11 in Chapel Hill. TerraVita
features five events over the course
of three days. This festival is in
its fifth year and to celebrate the
half-decade mark, they have made
tickets to all five events plus three
private events available. Don’t miss
this chance to learn from some
of the top North Carolina chefs
and taste some of their delicious
concoctions.
“This year we’re honored to host
the North Carolina premiere of the
second season of the award-winning
PBS series A Chef’s Life, with
Chef Vivian Howard – a longtime
TerraVita supporter,” said Colleen
Minton, the festival’s founder and
director. Additional dinners, tasting
events, educational classrooms, after
parties and chef demos have been
added.
Autumn Fest is an annual festival
held in downtown Mebane that
was started with the intention of
embracing and celebrating Mebane’s
unique small-town atmosphere. It
will be held on Saturday, Oct. 11

3. SEPTEMBER 2014
3
CREATING SUCCESSFUL CHILDREN
from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. There will be
a kid’s area, hayrides, live music and
vendors set up on Clay Street selling
antiques, vintage goods and hand-
crafted items.
Perhaps the most obscure of the
bunch, a rather well-kept Carrboro
secret, is the West End Poetry
Festival. This is a two-day event
that takes place Friday, Oct. 17 and
Saturday, Oct. 18. The festival will
begin Friday evening at Flyleaf
Books, 752 Martin Luther King Jr.
Blvd, Chapel Hill, with five readings
from poets and some light wine
and hors d’oeuvres before and
after. The festivities will continue
at noon on Saturday at the Century
Hall in Carrboro, 100 N. Greensboro
St., Carrboro, with four 75-minute
sessions on writing poetry – one
taught by Cathy Smith Bowers,
a former North Carolina poet
laureate, about using form in poetry.
The sessions will be followed by
an hour-long reception, poetry
readings from local and national
poets, and an open-mic session.
“Carrboro is a great place, open
and committed to the arts and
artists, and the West End Poetry
Festival is one way the town
proves that every year,” said Celisa
Steele, the current poet laureate
of Carrboro and a member of the
Carrboro Poets Council. “I love
that the festival offers an eclectic
mix of poets – behind the podium
and in the audience listening – and
that there’s the chance, during
breaks and receptions, to meet
new people and reconnect with old
acquaintances.”
If poetry is not your thing, try
the Three Rivers Arts Festival in
Chatham County. This festival will
be held at a farm located at 1064
Walter Bright Road in Sanford
on Saturday, Oct. 18 from 10
a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday, Oct.
19 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. This is
a young festival, celebrating its
fifth year. It began in 2010 with
only six vendors and now will be
operating at maximum capacity
with 40 vendors. The vendors will
be set up in barn stalls, a covered
riding ring, the barn lot and in the
front horse pasture. The vendors
will be local artists from painters
to potters, woodworkers, basket
and jewelry makers, quilters and
much more. There will be micro-
breweries selling beer, baked goods,
Italian ice, hot food and live music
throughout the festival. There will
also be horses in the back pasture
that visitors can visit and feed with
the assistance of volunteers.
Oct. 27 brings Oktoberfest to
Motorco Music Hall in Durham. This
year the daytime family-friendly
event with live German music &
dancing with Little German Band
from noon – 5 p.m. will be joined
by an evening adult show from 6
p.m. – 11 p.m. that will include
themed dance routines from
burlesque troupe The Vaudevillain
Revue along with the Little German
Band. Now in its third year, Motorco
continues to expand the event with
an indoor & outdoor beer garden
as well as the main Showroom
fully decorated like a tent at the
Oktoberfest in Munich.
For more information about these
festivals visit:
www.centerfest.durhamarts.org
www.carrboromusicfestival.com
www.abundancefoundation.org/
events/pepper-festival
www.townofchapelhill.org/
festifall/
www.shakorihillsgrassroots.org
www.terravitaevent.com
www.downtownmebane.com
www.westendpoetsweekend.com
www.threeriversartsfestival.net
www.durhamoktoberfest.com
The food is divine at the Terra Vita Festival.